Red Hat shares up on acquisition and 3Q results

Red Hat Inc.'s shares jumped Friday on the software company's solid third-quarter results and plans to acquire cloud-based software company ManageIQ.
THE SPARK: Red Hat said late Thursday that it would buy privately held ManageIQ for $104 million in cash.
The Raleigh, N.C., company also reported that it earned 29 cents per share for its fiscal third quarter on an adjusted basis, up a penny from the prior year and in line with analyst expectations. Its revenue for the period increased 18 percent to $343.6 million, which beats the $338 million that analysts polled by FactSet had forecast.
THE BIG PICTURE: ManageIQ's software helps businesses deploy and manage private clouds. Red Hat said the deal will expand the reach of its public-private cloud setups for its customers. The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat's revenue for its fiscal year ending in February.
THE ANALYSIS: Stifel Nicolaus analyst Brad R. Reback said that the company has been able to maintain momentum even in a difficult environment and he thinks the latest deal offers an interesting longer-term angle for its business. He thinks the company is well positioned to generate at least 15 to 20 percent billings growth in the future. He reiterated a "Buy" rating and a $65 price target on its shares.
SHARE ACTION: Shares gained $2.25, or more than 4 percent, to $54.86 in afternoon trading. Shares have traded between $39.19 and $62.75 in the past 52 weeks.

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Dozens of Android Games, Apps Discounted for Google Holiday Sale

The Google Play store -- that's the name of the Android "app store," or the "Android Market" for those of you new to the change -- is featuring dozens of game and app sales for Android smartphones and tablets. Well, actually, it's not; you can see some of the discounted apps on the front page, but there's no special section of the website or on-device market that says where the ones on sale are, or even how to find them. And the "Holiday Surprise" feature is only a handful of deals picked by Google itself.
Here's a look at some of the major game publishers' Android sales, along with discounted creativity apps and where to find more details.
Gameloft's "Android Christmas" sale
It may be too late for Hanukkah this year, but top-tier Android publisher Gameloft has put a dozen of its titles up for sale for Christmas just $0.99 . These games are normally in the $5-7 range, making them among Android's priciest.
Besides its licensed games based on movies -- like superhero films "The Dark Knight Rises" and "The Amazing Spider-Man," and (inexplicably) "The Adventures of Tintin" -- Gameloft is best known for creating mobile versions of popular PC and console games. Not in the sense that they are official ports, so much as that they're remarkably similar, to the extent that they arguably could be official ports if the serial numbers were filed off. With that in mind, several of its Modern Combat (which are totally not Modern Warfare) and N.O.V.A. first-person shooters (which are totally not Halo) are included in the sale, although the most recent installment of the former -- Modern Combat 4 -- is not.
Superhero fans may also want to check out Marvel Games' Avengers Initiative, which isn't a Gameloft title but is also on sale for $0.99 .
Square-Enix's "Winter of Mobile" sale
Best known for having invented the jRPG genre, Square-Enix has brought several of its most popular titles to Android, and most of them are discounted (from their extremely high launch prices) for the holidays.
Crystal Defender, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy have all received numerous 1-star reviews on Google Play for technical issues, and reviewers complain that the titles haven't been optimized for Android hardware. The Chaos Rings titles, however, fare much better with reviewers, and are much more steeply discounted as well, at $3.99 each compared to their usual price of $12.99. They're ports of the iOS originals, which were Square-Enix's first attempts at making "real" jRPGs for mobile devices.
SEGA's Holiday Sale
SEGA's games are on sale for the holidays across the board, on pretty much every platform. On Android, that mostly amounts to Sonic 4 (episodes 1 and 2) and Sonic CD, all of which are on sale for $0.99 . Strategy title Total War Battles and rollerblade platformer Jet Set Radio, meanwhile, are on sale for $1.99.
Creativity / productivity apps on sale
Android phones and tablets aren't just for gaming. If you didn't pick up Microsoft Office-compatible OfficeSuite Pro 6+ during Google's earlier $0.25 sale, it's discounted to $0.99 now from its regular price of $14.99. Autodesk's professional drawing apps, SketchBook Mobile and SketchBook Pro for Tablets, are $0.99 and $2.99 compared to $1.99 and $4.99 regularly, and the Jotter handwriting app -- which requires a Samsung Galaxy Note -- is half-off at $1.99.
Stay up to date
Many more Android games and apps are being discounted for the holidays. Apps such as (the aptly-named) AppSales can help keep you apprised of the latest additions. Meanwhile, the Android Police blog is maintaining an up-to-date "Enormous List" of all holiday sales.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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El MIDI, la tecnología que le abrió la puerta a la música digital, cumple 30 años

Un pequeño teclado y un ordenador portátil: hasta que apareció la tecnología MIDI, hace 30 años, nadie imaginaba que sólo con ese equipo se podría dar un concierto. Dicen los entendidos que para apreciar realmente el tema Shine on you crazy diamond , de Pink Floyd, es mejor escucharlo en vinilo.
Las emisiones de los sintetizadores estallan a través del crepitar de la púa sobre el disco, mientras la guitarra y la batería marcan un ritmo ondulante. Es un sonido enorme que define toda una época, y uno puede sumergirse por completo en el espíritu de esos años con esa versión en vinilo.
Pero más allá de la impresionante creatividad de la música, el sonido evidencia una importante limitación en la forma en la que los instrumentos musicales electrónicos se controlaban en aquel momento.
"Una banda como Kraftwerk, por ejemplo, utilizaba 200 teclados analógicos distintos", explica el músico argentino Cineplexx.
Pero la tecnología de la Interfaz Digital de Instrumentos Musicales (MIDI, según sus siglas en inglés) permitió conectar los instrumentos a una computadora y entre sí, lo que supuso un cambio enorme.
"Yo cuando doy un concierto utilizo un teclado con 20 teclas y un ordenador portátil", cuenta Cineplexx .
Con estos elementos es posible componer, secuenciar, programar, modificar y reproducir el sonido de cualquier instrumento, como "un vibráfono o un sintetizador".
Un lenguaje común
El protocolo MIDI nació en California, de la mano de Dave Smith, un fabricante de sintetizadores, que convenció a sus competidores para que adoptaran un formato en común que permitiera controlar de forma externa a los sintetizadores, con otro teclado o incluso a través de una computadora.
MIDI pronto se convertiría en el estándar industrial para conectar diferentes instrumentos electrónicos, cajas de ritmo, samplers y ordenadores. Esta tecnología abrió una "nueva era de procesamiento musical".
"Lo que hizo MIDI es permitir el nacimiento de los primeros estudios de grabación caseros", cuenta Smith en conversación con Tom Bateman, de BBC Radio 4.
El Prophet-600 de Sequential Circuits en acción

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Private picture of Mark Zuckerberg's family leaks

 Even Mark Zuckerberg's family can get tripped up by Facebook's privacy settings.
A picture Zuckerberg's sister posted on her personal Facebook profile was seen by a marketing director, who then posted the picture to Twitter and her more than 40,000 followers Wednesday.
That didn't sit well with Zuckerberg's sister, Randi, who tweeted at Callie Schweitzer that the picture was meant for friends only. Schweitzer replied by saying the picture popped up on her Facebook news feed.
Randi Zuckerberg eventually said Schweitzer was able to see the picture because they had a mutual friend. Those tweets have since been taken down.
Many people reacted sharply to Randi Zuckerberg, saying that her brother's company makes privacy settings hard to navigate.

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Foxconn's Big Improvements Include Chairs, Knitting Classes

The New York Times took a victory lap of sorts, when it published the latest installment of its iEconomy series explaining how Foxconn changed after global outrage over working conditions. In a way, a victory lap is warranted. The Times's series is partially responsible for raising awareness about how badly workers in Foxconn factories, elevating what had previously been rumors on fanboy blogs into Pulitzer bait. Nearly a year after the paper published a jaw-dropping story on the "human costs" of building an iPad, they've circled back to the Foxconn factory floor to find that things have improved, if only slightly.
RELATED: Foxconn Plant Closed After a Massive Brawl Among Workers
Take the case of Pu Xiaolon. Before the mistreatment of Foxconn workers was making headlines, she had to spend 12 or so hours a day inspecting iPads on a rickety wooden stool. Now she has a chair -- with a back. She's also been indulging in the knitting classes that Foxconn started offering a few months ago. These sound like tiny improvements, but it sounds like they're having a big impact on worker morale. Ms. Pu, for instance, doesn't feel as much like a robot any more. "“There was a change this year," she told The Times. "I'm realizing my value."
RELATED: Explosion at Apple Supplier Foxconn Kills Two
Chairs and classes won't solve all of Foxconn's problems, though. It was nearly a year ago that Foxconn claimed to have fixed all of its worker issues, but as the months went by, more reports surfaced of insane overtime hours, student interns being forced to work on the assembly line and The company is still breaking Chinese law by letting its employees work more than 49 hours a week, though it says it can have this resolved by next summer, and student interns are still showing up on Foxconn's factory floor. We haven't heard of suicide pacts, lately, but we haven't heard of Foxconn workers jumping for joy at their wonderful new working lives either.
RELATED: China Thinks It's Apple's Responsibility to Fix Foxconn
As The Times does a good job of expressing, though, Apple is going to have to get involved, if we're really going to see change in how electronics are built. Fat chance. "Apple is scared that if we open the kimono too wide, it will ruin what has made Apple special," said the former Apple official. "But that's the only way to really improve things. If you don't share what you know, then no one else gets a chance to learn from your mistakes and discoveries.

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Amazon most satisfying website to shop: survey

 Amazon.com Inc remained the best website for shopping online while JC Penney Co Inc suffered the largest drop in customer satisfaction of any major online retailer this holiday season, according to a survey released on Thursday.
Flash sale sites Gilt.com and RueLaLa.com were among the worst performers in online shopping satisfaction this season, according to ForeSee's Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index.
"The importance of satisfying them and giving a great consumer experience is going to pay back huge dividends in terms of profitability for these retailers," said Larry Freed, president and chief executive officer of ForeSee, which measures customer satisfaction for companies, including retailers.
Amazon has held the highest score in each of the eight years of the index, due in part to the wide variety of merchandise it offers and a site that is easy to use.
"They've really done a great job in setting the standard for everybody else," Freed said of Amazon.
Amazon's score was again 88 out of 100, while Gilt.com and Fingerhut.com shared the lowest score of 72. LLBean.com had the second-highest ranking, 85, up 4 points from a year earlier.
A score of 80 or higher is considered strong, Freed said.
JC Penney's score fell to 78 from 83.
"They've struggled a lot in their stores as they've tried to reinvent themselves a bit and that's carried over a little bit to the website," Freed said.
Other retailers that saw their ForeSee satisfaction scores drop included Apple Inc - down to 80 from 83 - and Dell Inc, which fell to 77 from 80.
At Apple, as the popular tech company has brought out more products, navigating the site has become more of an issue, said Freed. Improving the functionality of the site would give it the biggest boost, he said.
No. 1 U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which is trying to grow its online sales, scored a 78 for its Walmart.com website, down from 79 in 2011. Rival Target Corp's website scored 79, up from 76 last year, when it had some struggles after taking over control of the site from Amazon.
As for those flash sale sites coming in at the low end of the scores, Freed noted that some are trying to grow beyond the premise of flash sales, which offer a limited amount of marked down merchandise at specific times.
"It works for some kinds of consumers, it's not going to work for every kind of consumer," said Freed. "Their models today are going to work and they're going to have a chance to be successful, but at the end of the day it's not the right answer for everybody."
ForeSee's 2012 report was based on more than 24,000 surveys collected from visitors to websites of the 100 largest online retailers from Thanksgiving to Christmas, up from 40 retail sites in prior years.

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Private picture of Mark Zuckerberg's family leaked

Even Mark Zuckerberg's family can get tripped up by Facebook's privacy settings.
A picture that Zuckerberg's sister posted on her personal Facebook profile was seen by a marketing director, who then posted the picture to Twitter and her more than 40,000 followers Wednesday.
That didn't sit well with Zuckerberg's sister, Randi, who tweeted at Callie Schweitzer that the picture was meant for friends only and that posting the private picture on Twitter was "way uncool." Schweitzer replied by saying the picture popped up on her Facebook news feed.
The picture shows four people standing around a kitchen staring at their phones with their mouths open while Mark Zuckerberg is in the background.
Randi Zuckerberg, who used to run Facebook's marketing department and now produces a reality television show, eventually said Schweitzer was able to see the picture because they had a mutual friend. Those tweets have since been taken down.
Schweitzer declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press. Randi Zuckerberg didn't reply to a message via Twitter seeking comment.
Randi Zuckerberg used the dustup to write about online sharing etiquette.
"Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency," she posted on Twitter.
But Randi Zuckerberg's comments sparked sharp reactions from people who thought the issue wasn't about etiquette, but rather Facebook's often changing and often confusing privacy settings.
"The thing that bugged me about Randi Zuckerberg's response is that she used her name as a bludgeoning device. Not everyone has that. She used her position to get it taken it down," said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group in San Francisco.
While Facebook has made improvements in explaining the social network's privacy settings, Galperin said they remain confusing to most people. She added that with people using Facebook as part of their everyday lives, the consequences of fumbling privacy settings can become serious.
"Even Randi Zuckerberg can get it wrong. That's an illustration of how confusing they can be," she said.
The Menlo Park, Calif., company recently announced it is changing its privacy settings with the aim of making it easier for users to navigate them.
The fine-tuning will include several revisions that will start rolling out to Facebook's more than 1 billion users during the next few weeks and continue into early next year.
The most visible change — and perhaps the most appreciated — will be a new "privacy shortcuts" section that appears as a tiny lock at the top right of people's news feeds. This feature offers a drop-down box where users can get answers to common questions such as "Who can see my stuff?"
But Galperin said Wednesday's incident also illustrates a general concern about Internet privacy. Essentially, she said, if you share information or a photo with your social network, people in your network have the ability to share that with whomever else they choose.
The mobile photo-sharing service Instagram, which is owned by Facebook Inc., had to answer to backlash to privacy concerns recently when new terms of service suggested user photos could be used in advertisements. The company later said it would remove the questionable language.

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China tightening controls on Internet

 China's new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.
The measures suggest China's new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors' anxiety about the Internet's potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.
"They are still very paranoid about the potentially destabilizing effect of the Internet," said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "They are on the point of losing a monopoly on information, but they still are very eager to control the dissemination of views."
This week, China's legislature took up a measure to require Internet users to register their real names, a move that would curtail the Web's status as a freewheeling forum to complain, often anonymously, about corruption and official abuses. The legislature scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss the measure, suggesting it was expected to be approved.
That comes amid reports Beijing might be disrupting use of software that allows Web surfers to see sites abroad that are blocked by its extensive Internet filters. At the same time, regulators have proposed rules that would bar foreign companies from distributing books, news, music and other material online in China.
Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive or obscene and blocks access to foreign websites run by human rights and Tibet activists and some news outlets. Controls were tightened after social media played a role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.
In a reminder of the Web's role as a political forum, a group of 70 prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers circulated an online petition this week appealing for free speech, independent courts and for the ruling party to encourage private enterprise.
Xi and others on the party's ruling seven-member Standing Committee have tried to promote an image of themselves as men of the people who care about China's poor majority. They have promised to press ahead with market-oriented reforms and to support entrepreneurs but have given no sign of support for political reform.
Communist leaders who see the Internet as a source of economic growth and better-paid jobs were slow to enforce the same level of control they impose on movies, books and other media, apparently for fear of hurting fledgling entertainment, shopping and other online businesses.
Until recently, Web surfers could post comments online or on microblog services without leaving their names.
That gave ordinary Chinese a unique opportunity to express themselves to a public audience in a society where newspapers, television and other media are state-controlled. The most popular microblog services say they have more than 300 million users and some users have millions of followers reading their comments.
The Internet also has given the public an unusual opportunity to publicize accusations of official misconduct.
A local party official in China's southwest was fired in November after scenes from a videotape of him having sex with a young woman spread quickly on the Internet. Screenshots were uploaded by a former journalist in Beijing, Zhu Ruifeng, to his Hong Kong website, an online clearing house for corruption allegations.
Some industry analysts suggest allowing Web surfers in a controlled setting to vent helps communist leaders stay abreast of public sentiment in their fast-changing society. Still, microblog services and online bulletin boards are required to employ censors to enforce content restrictions. Researchers say they delete millions of postings a day.
The government says the latest Internet regulation before the National People's Congress is aimed at protecting Web surfers' personal information and cracking down on abuses such as junk e-mail. It would require users to report their real names to Internet service and telecom providers.
The main ruling party newspaper, People's Daily, has called in recent weeks for tighter Internet controls, saying rumors spread online have harmed the public. In one case, it said stories about a chemical plant explosion resulted in the deaths of four people in a car accident as they fled the area.
Proposed rules released this month by the General Administration of Press and Publications would bar Chinese-foreign joint ventures from publishing books, music, movies and other material online in China. Publishers would be required to locate their servers in China and have a Chinese citizen as their local legal representative.
That is in line with rules that already bar most foreign access to China's media market, but the decision to group the restrictions together and publicize them might indicate official attitudes are hardening.
That comes after the party was rattled by foreign news reports about official wealth and misconduct.
In June, Bloomberg News reported that Xi's extended family has amassed assets totaling $376 million, though it said none was traced to Xi. The government has blocked access to Bloomberg's website since then.
In October, The New York Times reported that Premier Wen Jiabao's relatives had amassed $2.7 billion since he rose to national office in 2002. Access to the Times' Chinese-language site has been blocked since then.
Previous efforts to tighten controls have struggled with technical challenges in a country with more than 500 million Internet users.
Microblog operators such as Sina Corp. and Tencent Ltd. were ordered in late 2011 to confirm users' names but have yet to finish the daunting task.
Web surfers can circumvent government filters by using virtual private networks — software that encrypts Web traffic and is used by companies to transfer financial data and other sensitive information. But VPN users say disruptions that began in 2011 are increasing, suggesting Chinese regulators are trying to block encrypted traffic.
Curbs on access to foreign sites have prompted complaints by companies and Chinese scientists and other researchers.
In July, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said 74 percent of companies that responded to a survey said unstable Internet access "impedes their ability to do business."
Chinese leaders "realize there are detrimental impacts on business, especially foreign business, but they have counted the cost and think it is still worthwhile," said Lam. "There is no compromise about the political imperative of controlling the Internet.

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Instagram says no plans to put user photos in ads

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, said on Tuesday it has "no plans" to incorporate user photos into ads in response to a growing public outcry over new privacy policies unveiled this week. Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said in a blog post that users had incorrectly interpreted Instagram's revised terms of service, released on Monday, to mean that user photos would be sold to others without compensation. "This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing," Systrom said. "To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear." But Systrom said Instagram may display users' profile pictures and information about who they follow as part of an ad - a social marketing technique similar to what Facebook uses in its "sponsored stories" ad product. He added that Instagram will not incorporate users' uploaded photos as ads because the service wants "to avoid things like advertising banners." Instagram, which is free to use, triggered an uproar this week when it revised its terms of service in order to begin carrying advertising. Facebook bought the fast-growing photo service - now with 100 million users - earlier this year in a cash-and-stock deal valued initially at $1 billion. The transaction closed in September at $715 million, reflecting a decline in the value of Facebook shares.

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Sberbank to buy Yandex online payments service: source

Sberbank, Russia's top lender, plans to buy Yandex.Dengi, an online payment service owned by Russian search engine Yandex, a source familiar with the matter said. Sberbank declined to comment. Yandex, which was not available to comment, was expected to hold a news conference on Wednesday. Sberbank, which accounts for a third of overall lending in Russia, has been expanding in the consumer credit market amid weak corporate loan portfolio growth. In recent years, it has launched its own credit card business and tied up with French bank BNP Paribas in a joint venture focusing on point-of-sale lending, a popular form of in-store consumer finance in Russia. Yandex, which raised $1.4 billion when it floated on the U.S. stock market in May 2011, came under scrutiny during election protests over the past year when it was reported that opposition leaders were raising funds via Yandex.Dengi.

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Tubular raises $2.5 million to serve burgeoning YouTube industry

Tubular, a small San Francisco start-up that provides analytics for YouTube content creators, has raised $2.5 million in venture capital in the latest sign of how far the business ecosystem has evolved around the Google-owned video repository. YouTube was once known as Wild West of online video, but over the past two years Google has focused on raising the quality of YouTube content through a series of direct investments and the cultivation of third-party "networks". The result is a cluster of small studios, mostly based in Los Angeles, that acts like a digital Hollywood, pumping out slick YouTube hits. With the ultimate goal of hosting enough high-quality content to lure big-spending advertisers to YouTube, Google doled out more than $100 million last year in grants to its networks and bedroom stars. In May Google led a group of investors who poured $35 million into Machinima, a leading network, to stoke growth in the YouTube industry. That market has now grown to the point that it can support its own start-ups, says Tubular's founder Rob Gabel. COMPETITION As more semi-professional and professional YouTube creators enter the sector, with increasing competition among them, there is a growing need for analytical services. Tubular is one such service, allowing customers to monitor and measure when videos get the most views and comments, or the sources of referred traffic. The software includes a dashboard that displays the real-time analytics, which are generated by tapping into a stream of data provided by YouTube. "If YouTube is a multibillion-dollar market, then that's billions of dollars going out to content creators who can then invest that again," said Gabel, a former Machinima employee. "On every platform, from Google to Facebook to Twitter, people have turned to third parties' helpful tools." At a high level, the pie is large and continuing to grow rapidly. Former Citi analyst Mark Mahaney estimates that YouTube will bring Google a total of $3.6 billion in 2012. Rich Heitzmann, a co-founder of FirstMark Capital, which led Tubular's latest funding round, said that Google is far from wringing out all of the potential revenue from YouTube. "We think the ecosystem is at least the size of Facebook's, considering it has a billion users and if you consider the time spent on YouTube," Heitzmann said. "The advertising opportunities are there, and yet the ecosystem hasn't evolved technologically." SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS Other investors in Tubular's first tranche of equity financing included High Line Venture Partners, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures and Bedrocket Media Ventures. Still, Gabel is betting that he can create a long-term, sustainable business on YouTube's platform at a time when some Silicon Valley companies are wary of building on the backs of larger companies. Twitter, for instance, courted controversy this year when it made a business decision to shut off its firehose of data for a number of popular third-party developers to drive more visitors to its own site. Allen DeBevoise, the CEO of Machinima who is also a Tubular investor, said that YouTube has reason to foster its independent developers rather than squash them. "It's a thriving and fast-moving ecosystem now," he said. "But a lot of players are needed to make it all work." Though Gabel acknowledges that the YouTube industry's rapid expansion is no guarantee of success, he has high hopes.

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Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media. In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has claimed some rights that have been practically unheard of among its prominent social media peers, legal experts and consumer advocates say. Users who decline to accept Instagram's new privacy policy have one month to delete their accounts, or they will be bound by the new terms. Another clause appears to waive the rights of minors on the service. And in the wake of a class-action settlement involving Facebook and privacy issues, Instagram has added terms to shield itself from similar litigation. All told, the revised terms reflect a new, draconian grip over user rights, experts say. "This is all uncharted territory," said Jay Edelson, a partner at the Chicago law firm Edelson McGuire. "If Instagram is to encourage as many lawsuits as possible and as much backlash as possible then they succeeded." Instagram's new policies, which go into effect January 16, lay the groundwork for the company to begin generating advertising revenue by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information such as who users follow in advertisements. The new terms, which allow an advertiser to pay Instagram "to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)" without compensation, triggered an outburst of complaints on the Web on Tuesday from users upset that Instagram would make money from their uploaded content. The uproar prompted a lengthy blog post from the company to "clarify" the changes, with CEO Kevin Systrom saying the company had no current plans to incorporate photos taken by users into ads. Instagram declined comment beyond its blog post, which failed to appease critics including National Geographic, which suspended new posts to Instagram. "We are very concerned with the direction of the proposed new terms of service and if they remain as presented we may close our account," said National Geographic, an early Instagram adopter. PUSHING BOUNDARIES Consumer advocates said Facebook was using Instagram's aggressive new terms to push the boundaries of how social media sites can make money while its own hands were tied by recent agreements with regulators and class action plaintiffs. Under the terms of a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is required to get user consent before personal information is shared beyond their privacy settings. A preliminary class action lawsuit settlement with Facebook allows users to opt-out of being included in the "sponsored stories" ads that use their personal information. Under Instagram's new terms, users who want to opt-out must simply quit using the service. "Instagram has given people a pretty stark choice: Take it or leave, and if you leave it you've got to leave the service," said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Internet user right's group. What's more, he said, if a user initially agrees to the new terms but then has a change of mind, their information could still be used for commercial purposes. In a post on its official blog on Tuesday, Instagram did not address another controversial provision that states that if a child under the age of 18 uses the service, then it is implied that his or her parent has tacitly agreed to Instagram's terms. "The notion is that minors can't be bound to a contract. And that also means they can't be bound to a provision that says they agree to waive the rights," said the EFF's Opsahl. BLOCKING CLASS ACTION SUITS While Facebook continues to be bogged in its own class action suit, Instagram took preventive steps to avoid a similar legal morass. Its new terms of service require users with a legal complaint to enter arbitration, rather than take the company to court. It prohibits users from joining a class action lawsuit unless they mail a written "opt-out" statement to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park within 30 days of joining Instagram. That provision is not included in terms of service for other leading social media companies like Twitter, Google, YouTube or even Facebook itself, and it immunizes Instagram from many forms of legal liability, said Michael Rustad, a professor at Suffolk University Law School. Rustad, who has studied the terms of services for 157 social media services, said just 10 contained provisions prohibiting class action lawsuits. The clause effectively cripples users who want to legally challenge the company because lawyers will not likely represent an individual plaintiff, Rustad argued. "No lawyers will take these cases," Rustad said. "In consumer arbitration cases, everything is stacked against the consumer. It's a pretense, it's a legal fiction, that there are remedies." Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends. Facebook acquired Instagram in September for $715 million. Instagram's take-it-or-leave-it policy pushes the envelope for how social networking companies treat user privacy issues, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "I think Facebook is probably using Instagram to see how far it can press this advertising model," said Rotenberg. "If they can keep a lot of users, then all those users have agreed to have their images as part of advertising."

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FTC tightens rules protecting children's online privacy

The government announced tighter rules on Wednesday to protect children's online privacy by restricting the collection of data, like the child's location, unless parents consent. The actions by the Federal Trade Commission mark an update to rules that were based on the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, developed when most computers were big beige boxes sitting under office desks instead of smartphones in backpacks, and online social media was unheard of. "The Commission takes seriously its mandate to protect children's online privacy in this ever-changing technological landscape," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. Under the updated rule, IP addresses, which are unique to each computer, will be added to the list of personal information that cannot be collected from children without parental consent if the data will be used for behavioral advertising or tracking. Location, photos, videos and audio files were also added to the definition. Leibowitz said the commission struck "the right balance between protecting innovation that will provide rich and engaging content for children, and ensuring that parents are informed and involved in their children's online activities." But Senator John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, which oversees the FTC, said he had wanted legislation that went further. "There are groups that will complain about it (COPPA being too weak), and so will I, but we can't do anything more about it right now," he said. "Children's privacy as far as I am concerned is an absolutely top line issue." Privacy advocates and advertising companies had been watching closely to see if the agency would go through with a pledge made in August to add IP addresses to the restrictions. Advertisers had argued against the move since several people in a family - adults and children - could use the same computer. Privacy advocates said it was needed to protect children. Also under the updated rule, plug-ins and other third parties connected to children's websites and apps cannot allow third parties to collect information on children without parental consent. Big companies would be able to deal with the changes but the tighter regulators could be onerous for smaller firms, said John Feldman of the law firm Reed Smith LLP. "I represent companies who are trying to sell products and services," he said. "The bigger companies feel like they can deal with it. There are significant costs that will be associated with this." Privacy advocate Kathryn Montgomery, who teaches at American University, said the update was needed, given the growth of social networks and mobile computing. She urged the FTC to be tough about enforcing the rules. "The new rules should help ensure that companies targeting children throughout the rapidly expanding digital media landscape will be required to engage in fair marketing and data collection practices," she said. The proposal also specifies that family websites, which are websites aimed at children and adults, would be allowed to screen users to determine their ages and only provide protection to children under age 13. Currently, all visitors to the websites must be treated as if they are under age 13. The FTC's rule implementing COPPA became effective in 2000. The updated rule takes effect on July 1. It was approved by a vote of three to one with one commissioner abstaining.

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Pa. woman sues Google over Gmail privacy, ads

A Pennsylvania woman has accused Google Inc. of illegal wiretapping for "intercepting" emails she sent to Gmail accounts and publishing content-related ads.
Her lawsuit echoes others filed around the country by class-action lawyers who say the practice violates wiretap laws in some states. They represent email users who do not have Gmail accounts and have therefore not signed the company's acceptance terms.
"The terms are that Google can intercept your emails and use them for direct marketing purposes," said lawyer Richard M. Golomb, who has sued Google in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida. "They are also intercepting emails of the non-Gmail account holder, in violation of wiretap laws in some states."
In court filings in the Maryland case, Google acknowledged that it routinely scans emails for spam and computer viruses, but said that's permitted under similar federal wiretap laws.
Google argued that selling advertising based on the content of a received email is a routine business practice permitted under an exception written into the wiretap law. Google notes Yahoo and other email providers sell ads through similar methods.
"There can be little doubt that selling advertising in order to provide a free service to consumers is a 'legitimate business goal,'" Google lawyer Michael G. Rhodes and others wrote in a Nov. 9 motion to dismiss the Maryland case. "If it were not, then the entire model by which content is provided on the Internet would be illegitimate, as would the business model by which television programming has been provided for free for the last half century."
Courts reviewing email wiretap cases have repeatedly held that "parties expect and impliedly consent to having their communications intercepted and recorded whenever they use email," the Google lawyers wrote. Rhodes did not immediately return a call for comment Monday.
At least one electronic privacy expert called it "a bit of a stretch" for Google to compare a search for advertising leads to rooting out spyware.
"People think when you send a message, communications companies can filter out spam and malware, and that's correct. But filtering out spam and malware is not the same as looking at the content of the email to (find) keywords for advertising purposes," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
"(What) if you were making a call on your Verizon cellphone, and you were talking to an Italian restaurant trying to make reservations for Friday and a Verizon agent jumped on the line and said, 'Oh, how about this place?'" Rotenberg said. "You're not supposed to be listening to my communications to try to sell me stuff — even if it's a better restaurant."
The Philadelphia plaintiff, Kristen Brinkman, does not have a Gmail account and never signed the company's acceptance policy, according to her Nov. 30 lawsuit, which has been assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody.
Google wants the various legal disputes resolved in northern California, where the first such lawsuit was filed in June. The area is also home base for Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif.

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Huawei to double staff in European expansion

Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies plans a hiring spree in Europe, seeking growth outside the United States where its prospects have been clouded by spying concerns.
Huawei said on Monday it planned to double its workforce in Europe and would set up a research center to develop new smartphones in Finland, where former global leader Nokia Oyj is shedding thousands of workers.
"Europe has proven to be quite an open business environment for Huawei," company spokesman Roland Sladek said.
The expansion plans for Europe come two months since a U.S. congressional report alleged Huawei's equipment could be used for Chinese espionage. The company has also been barred in Australia from tendering in a $38 billion national high-speed broadband network project due to unspecified security concerns.
The group aims to employ over 14,000 in Europe within three to five years, doubling the current workforce of around 7,000, and also plans to spend 70 million euros ($91 million) over five years on the new R&D center in Finland.
It will be Huawei's 11th center in the region and will have a planned staff of around 100.
Underscoring its European expansion, Huawei also said it won a services deal with 3 UK, owned by Hutchison Whampoa, a contract previously held by rival Ericsson.
With Nokia cutting 3,700 jobs in the country, the Chinese group may face little difficulty finding recruits for its research center.
While Nokia has been losing market share to both high-end smartphone makers and cheaper handset rivals, Huawei has been expanding its mobile phones business with new handsets using Google Inc's Android software.
Mobile devices last year accounted for 22 percent of Huawei's business, which mostly focuses on routers and other telecoms equipment.
Huawei has said it wants to launch new smartphones including Windows Phone 8 devices, which would add to the competitive pressure on Nokia.
Huawei declined to give an estimated launch date for a new Windows Phone 8 device, but said its plans were "short term".

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Cyber attacks on Gulf infrastructure seen rising

The former chief of the United Arab Emirates' air force said his country's advanced cyber infrastructure made it a favorite target for hackers, especially when tension heightened in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The last war in Gaza led to a barrage of cyber attacks because UAE has advanced telecommunications infrastructure," retired Major General Khaled al-Buainnain said.
"The biggest attack was during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war which was carried out by pro-Israeli hackers who did not understand the nature of the conflict and its parties."
His comments came a few months after a virus infected 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Saudi Aramco, which said on Sunday the attack was aimed at stopping oil and gas production at the world's biggest oil exporter.
The attack failed to disrupt production, but was one of the most destructive cyber strikes against a single business.
Cyber attacks on infrastructure by hostile governments, militant groups or private "hacktivists" have the potential to disrupt oil and gas supplies to power plants and desalination plants, on which the Gulf states are heavily reliant.
"There is an interest at the political level in cyber security which has prompted investments in protection systems to protect the interest of the people, the government and national security," Buainnain said, speaking on the sidelines of a cyber security conference in Dubai.
"All the evidence that we have confirms that the attacks will increase," said Robert Eastman, vice president for global solutions at Lockheed Martin.
Eastman said Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's top supplier, was in discussions with officials in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates about the company's training and vulnerability analysis systems.
A company official estimated last month that 5 to 8 percent of Lockheed's revenues in the information systems sector were related to cyber security. Lockheed generated $9.4 billion sales in that division in 2011.
CYBER RISKS
"All companies have to prepare response plans," said Hervi Meurie, general manager of C4 Advanced Solutions LLC, an Abu Dhabi-based technology and security firm. "What happens if the electricity network gets hit by a virus and goes down for three days?"
Iran, the target of international economic sanctions focused on its oil industry over its disputed nuclear program, has been hit by several cyber attacks in the last few years.
In April, a virus targeted Iranian oil ministry and national oil company networks, forcing Iran to disconnect the control systems of oil facilities including Kharg Island, which handles most of the country's crude exports.
Iran has blamed some of the attacks on the United States, Israel and Britain; current and former U.S. officials told Reuters this year that the United States built the complex Stuxnet computer worm to try to prevent Tehran from completing suspected nuclear weapons work.
Buainnain said he believed Iran would remain the target of cyber attacks rather than a source for them.
"I don't think Iran poses any threat," he said. "I think their activity is less aggressive and more focused on intelligence gathering, they are in fact subject to cyber attacks because of the nuclear program."
He said the UAE was in the process of creating a government body that will be responsible for handling cyber threats, adding that the National Electronic Security Authority was expected to be officially launched within the next few months.
While it is standard industry practice to shield plant operating networks from hackers by running them on separate systems, these have not been enough to fend off cyber attacks.
Qatar's natural gas firm Rasgas was hit by a cyber attack in September, although it has not said how much damage was caused or whether it was the same virus that hit Aramco.
Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis which organized the conference, said governments and companies must stay on high alert.
"You're always in catch-up mode because the bad guys can out-think the good guys faster," he said. "The Gulf states need to stay as far ahead as possible given their enemies who may be more technically savvy.

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Android 4.2′s built-in antivirus software only detects 15% of malware

The latest version of the Android operating system has been called one of the most bug-ridden releases since Honeycomb, although it has also been recognized as the safest version yet. With Android 4.2, Google (GOOG) integrated a unique and high-powered security feature into the platform that scans for malicious or potentially harmful codes in apps that are loaded onto a user’s device. According to a study conducted by researchers at NC State University, however, the company’s malware protector was found to be less than satisfactory.
Google’s app verification service was found to identify malicious apps only 15.32% of the time, compared to various anti-virus programs that varied from 51% to 100% accuracy. The experiment used 1,260 samples of malware, to which the built-in feature in Android 4.2 only detected 193 of them.
“By introducing this new app verification service in Android 4.2, Google has shown its commitment to continuously improve security on Android,” Xuxian Jiang, an associate professor of computer science at NC State University, said. “Based on our evaluation results, we feel this service is still nascent and there exists room for improvement.”
It should be the noted that in real world situations a majority of users will not experience malware, which is generally found in pirated software.

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Russia backs down on proposals to regulate the Internet

A Russia-led coalition on Monday withdrew a proposal to give governments new powers over the Internet, a plan opposed by Western countries in talks on a new global telecom treaty.
Negotiations on the treaty mark the most sustained effort so far by governments from around the world to agree on how - or whether - to regulate cyberspace.
The United States, Europe, Canada and other advocates of a hands-off approach to Internet regulation want to limit the new treaty's scope to telecom companies.
But Russia, China and many Arab states, which want greater governmental control, have been pushing to expand the treaty beyond traditional telecom operators.
Representatives from about 150 countries - members of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) - have been negotiating for the past eight days in Dubai on the new treaty, which was last revised in 1988, before the advent of the World Wide Web.
The Russia-led proposal could have allowed countries to block some Internet locations and take control of the allocation of Internet addresses currently overseen by ICANN, a self-governing organization under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
An ITU spokesman said this plan had now been scrapped.
"It looks like the Russians and Chinese overplayed their hand," said American cyber security expert Jim Lewis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
U.S. ambassador Terry Kramer welcomed the decision to withdraw the Russia-led plan. But he also said: "These issues will continue to be on the table for discussion in other forms during the remainder of the conference."
China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates had co-signed the aborted proposal. The UAE insisted the document had not been withdrawn.
"It may come down to the wire," said a Western delegate on condition of anonymity. "There are a lot of other (similar) proposals so I don't think this represents a substantial conclusion and could be just maneuvering."
The ITU usually takes decisions by consensus, but the intransigence of both sides means it could come to a vote in which the United States and its allies might be in the minority.
The United States' position is that the Internet has flourished with minimal state interference. It wants this to continue, arguing that many of the proposed treaty changes could allow governments to stifle free speech, reduce online anonymity and censor Internet content.
Russia and its allies have insisted they need new powers to fight cyber crime and protect networks.
Countries can opt out of parts of the revised treaty when it is finalized or even refuse to sign it
The talks are due to end on Friday.

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