Technology News

Larry Dignan / CNET:How Facebook's bankers saved an IPO, kept shares above $38  —  Facebook's IPO was a roaring success — for Facebook.  Investors aren't quite sure what to make of it after Facebook's underwriters repeatedly stepped in to make sure shares didn't fall below the $38 mark.

How well do you know the $100 billion social network? From private planes to petabytes, here are some of the most surprising Facebook tidbits.

Given the complexity of today's applications, it's folly to suggest that the future role of the CIO is less technical and more businesslike, columnist Bernard Golden writes. If anything, it's the opposite -- the business side of the enterprise should embrace technology.

Twitter has announced support for "Do Not Track," immediately implementing it to halt online tracking of users who trigger a setting in their browsers.

New submitter The God of Code writes "EA has announced that they will be waiving all Origin distribution fees for crowd-funded games — like those from Kickstarter — for the first 90 days. 'The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,' Origin VP David DeMartini commented. 'It's also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. Gamers around the world deserve a chance to play every great new game, and by waiving distribution fees on Origin we can help make that a reality for successfully crowd-funded developers.' The recently funded Wasteland 2 developer Brian Fargo applauds EA's move, saying, 'Having Origin waive their distribution fees for 90 days for fan funded games is a major economic bonus for small developers. We look forward to bringing Wasteland 2 to the Origin audience.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sprint's had text-to-speech services on devices like the Samsung Epic 4G for quite some time, and now, looking to build up on that, the company's introducing its My Wireless STS feature. The new speech-to-speech service aims to help people with speech disabilities by giving them access to an operator-assisted line every day of the week and all year round. Folks wanting to use the My Wireless STS will have to dial *787 from their device, after which a Now Network rep will start a call and repeat every spoken word -- or ones that are unclear -- depending on users choice. Relay Director, Michael Ellis, says Sprint is "the first in the industry to bring this service to market," and that the project was developed closely with the help of speech disabled communities. If you're interested in learning more, there's a mighty presser waiting on you just past the break.Continue reading Sprint introduces My Wireless STS service to assist folks with speech disabilitiesSprint introduces My Wireless STS service to assist folks with speech disabilities originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 17:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  Sprint  | Email this | Comments

Dan Primack / Fortune:38 Special: Facebook bankers got it right  —  Facebook shares stay flat, and that's okay.  —  FORTUNE — Facebook (FB) shares didn't pop. They didn't crumble.  They closed the day at $38.23 per share, or less than a percentage point higher than where the company's IPO had priced last night.

CowboyRobot writes "Opening with the line, 'To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive,' Steve Wozniak gave his system description of the Apple-II in the May, 1977 issue of BYTE. It's instructive to read what was worth bragging about back then (PDF), such as integral graphics: 'A key part of the Apple-II design is an integral video display generator which directly accesses the system's programmable memory. Screen formatting and cursor controls are realized in my design in the form of about 200 bytes of read only memory.' And it shows what the limitations were in those days, 'While writing Apple BASIC, I ran into the problem of manipulating the 16 bit pointer data and its arithmetic in an 8 bit machine. My solution to this problem of handling 16 bit data, notably pointers, with an 8 bit microprocessor was to implement a nonexistent 16 bit processor in software, interpreter fashion.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:Bankers Got Too Aggressive With Pricing Facebook As Shares Barely Break Above $38  —  The underwriters of Facebook's $16 billion debut on NASDAQ fought to the finish to keep the company's shares above last night's final price of $38 a share.  Sources tell us that the syndicate of banks underwriting …

Om Malik / GigaOM:Facebook buys Karma app  —  The newly public Facebook says it is buying Karma, a mobile social gifting app.  The news was released via Karma's blog.  The deal terms were not announced.  Facebook plans to keep the service alive.  A Facebook spokesperson said this is an acqusiton and not an acquhire.

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:Facebook's IPO becomes the first ever to see 565M shares traded in its first day  —  The Facebook IPO opened hot and heavy in trading on its first day, with an opening price of $38, a spike to $42 and a closing price of $38.37.  According to CNBC, it also became the first IPO …

benrothke writes "Elementary Information Security, based on its title, weight and page length, I assumed was filled with mindless screen shots of elementary information security topics, written with a large font, in order to jack up the page count. Such an approach is typical of far too many security books. With that, if there ever was a misnomer of title, Elementary Information Security is it." Read below for the rest of Ben's review Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, rang the opening bell from company headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Where to see the annular solar eclipse Sunday afternoon, visible in a band from the Pacific Coast, near the Oregon-California border, crossing Nevada, Utah and New Mexico and ending at sunset near Lubbock, Texas.

Facebook’s stock market debut seems to be creating a frenzy everywhere but  Facebook. Shares have been fluctuating between $40 and $42, as of 2 p.m. ET since opening Friday morning, amid reports that  Nasdaq was experiencing some technical hiccups. Gizmodo reported shares were trading at...

The world’s first “Wikipedia town” will launch on Saturday in the small town of Monmouth in Wales. The town now has more than 1,000 ceramic plaques on every important building, school and on hundreds of shops. The plaques each have a unique QR bar code...

Gogo has a virtual lock on in-flight WiFi for the US, but most of us forget that everything goes dark the moment you decide to cross the border. The company already has a deal with Inmarsat for Ka-band Internet connections, and now it's partnering up with AeroSat to bring Ku-band satellite access. The tie-in will let Gogo offer precious relief from tedium on international flights, whether it's a modest hop to the Great White North or an hours-long trip across the ocean. Gogo considers the deal an interim step until Inmarsat's technology is ready, making for much quicker availability than if it had just waited until it could use Ka-band: Ku-band satellite linkups should be on airliners as soon as the end of 2012, while Ka-band won't even show its face until at least late 2014. It's unknown what kind of premium we'll pay over the $13 maximum Gogo normally charges, but if AeroSat lets us squeak in a few more Twitter updates on our way home from Barcelona, it'll be worthwhile.Continue reading Gogo and AeroSat get friendly on Ku-band, bring international in-flight WiFi closerGogo and AeroSat get friendly on Ku-band, bring international in-flight WiFi closer originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 16:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Historically SAP are an enterprise structured data software company: as society evolves unstructured data is ever more important. How are SAP coping with the opportunities and red herrings our...

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:The Price Is Right: Facebook Closes Near Opening Price  —  After the weeks of private equity dealmaker palm rubbing and investor anticipation, Facebook's IPO on Friday was something of an anticlimax.  Shares in the newly public company rose to $45 before closing at $38.37.

PCWorld has released a new ebook detailing the various tech amenities available to tech-using travelers in the nation's largest airports.

Perhaps the Next iPhone won't be called iPhone 5 but the Zombie iPhone, in honor of the new spate of rumors that the late Steve Jobs is still with us in a sense, as the chief designer of the upcoming handset.

Commentary - As a society, we learn about the world and advance our well-being through science and engineering. The United States may be known around the world for its higher education, but...

Facebook on Thursday priced its shares at $38, giving itself a valuation of $104 billion, and raising $18.41 billion. Earlier today, Facebook went public at 9:30 AM EST and then started trading on...

Lance Whitney / CNET:Americans watched 37 billion online videos last month  —  (Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)  —  How much online video did you watch last month?  —  Across the U.S., 181 million Internet users tracked by ComScore caught a total of 37 billion videos in April.

(Reuters) - Intelsat Global Holdings S.A., which provides satellite communications services, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $1.75 billion in an initial public offering of common stock.

If you've been staring lustfully at an electric motorcycle but needed that little extra push to make the jump, Zero Motorcycles has a unique incentive in store: it'll pay for your first 25,000 miles on the road. Should you take the keys to any one of the company's two-wheelers between now and the end of May, you'll get a Visa gift card for the amount within a few weeks. Of course, the reason it can make such a seemingly generous offer is through the sheer efficiency of an electric engine: at a typical 10 cents for every kilowatt-hour, you're looking at just under $200 for what's likely several months or more of driving, even if you're particularly enthusiastic. Knowing that riding the same amount with a gas-powered bike practically requires taking out a small mortgage in the current economy, though, we'd say that Zero is just reminding us of an an advantage e-motorbikes already have.Zero Motorcycles will pay for your first 25,000 e-motorbike miles, wants you to ride guilt-free originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 15:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  Zero Motorcycles  | Email this | Comments

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a short speech before he rang the Nasdaq bell remotely from his company's headquarters in Menlo Park. In short, he's happy, but not ecstatic.

Alistair Barr / Reuters:Social media stocks knocked as Facebook debuts  —  (Reuters) - Social media stocks, led by Zynga Inc (ZNGA.O), dropped in volatile trading as traders used the securities to hedge or bet against the day's star of the sector, Facebook Inc (FB.O), which went public in a somewhat disappointing debut on Friday.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is eyeing a stake in Telekom Austria and is believed to have held initial talks with its two biggest investor groups, Austrian magazine Format reported, without citing sources.

mblase writes "SpaceX and NASA have been working hard to make this weekend's launch happen — and that has meant navigating the cultural differences between this small, young startup and the huge veteran space agency. The relationship involves daily calls and emails between people who live in two different worlds: age versus youth, bureaucracy versus a flat startup-like structure, and a sense of caution versus a desire to move forward quickly. But they both have an almost religious belief in the need for humans to venture forth into space, a geeky love for rockets, and technical know-how — plus, they both need each other to succeed."The launch is scheduled for 4:55AM EDT (08:55 GMT) tomorrow morning. NASA TV will begin coverage at 3:30AM EDT, and there will be a press conference at 8:30AM. SpaceX's press kit (PDF) has mission details. The rendezvous with the ISS is scheduled for day 4 of the mission after a series of maneuvering tests to ensure the Dragon capsule can approach safely. It carries 1,200 pounds of supplies for the people aboard the ISS, and it carries 11 science experiments designed by students. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers reveal details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip.

Micro-blogging service Twitter will support an initiative that lets people browse the web without being monitored.

Hacker group Anonymous has carried out a series of attacks against government and political websites in India.

Newcastle University helps to develop a computer game to help those who have suffered strokes.

China Mobile, the main mobile service provider in China and the largest in the world by users, could soon offer its customers Apple's iPhone.

The Government may miss its cloud computing targets because of a lack of enthusiasm from public sector IT staff, a report suggests.

Japan completes its first successful commercial launch of a foreign-made satellite early on Friday, marking its entry into the launch business.

The French privacy watchdog, acting on behalf of the EU, is to meet Google to scrutinise its controversial privacy policy changes.

Scottish scientists are working on a device to restore sight in people with a form of age related blindness.

Google is facing legal action for not labelling the body of water separating Iran and neighbouring Arab Gulf states on its map service.

As Facebook floats itself on the stock exchange, technology experts attending the Future Everything conference in Manchester give their views on the company's worth.

MPs have had their fingers burned by texting and technology, and may have regretted the odd text or tweet.

Honda Motors unveils a new auto-balancing unicycle that can be controlled hands free - and other technology news stories.

One of the biggest floatations ever seen on world stock markets will take place today when shares in the social networking site Facebook go on sale.

Sir Martin Sorrell explains to Rory Cellan-Jones the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook when it comes to advertising, as the company prepares to float on the stock exchange.

HMRC is targetting people who use sites such as eBay and Amazon to sell items online at a profit.

How the social network’s first female engineer beat old-fashioned views in Silicon Valley

The social networks breaking Asia's stock market traditions

Can Facebook crack the Chinese market?

Scotland's latest bid for tidal power