Tech News Stop - Sharing by Wasim Akhtar

::::Yahoo's CEO is out. Now what?::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337167372_temp.top.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reuters/INtechnologyNews/~4/EoOcb0zwwSc" border="0" width="1" height="1" />NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Scott Thompson, Yahoo's third CEO in about three years, has officially left the building.That barely makes a dent in Yahoo's problems. Now that Thompson's resume-embellishing scandal has reached a resolution, Yahoo (YHOO,Fortune 500) will be forced to confront new questions -- and longtime issues that are still unsettled -- on its rough road to reinvention.Now Yahoo is a rudderless ship -- again. Yahoo media chief Ross Levinsohn, who had been a rumored permanent successor to Carol Bartz (fired from Yahoo by phone in September), will serve as the interim CEO.Task #1: Find a new CEO.Thompson left the company just four months into his tenure, after the discovery that his official Yahoo bio and other documents embellished his academic credentials. Thompson claimed a dual degree in "accounting and computer science," but his actual degree is only in accounting.Analysts are waiting to see whether Yahoo will launch yet another CEO search -- a potentially lengthy and expensive process -- or stick with its in-house talent."Ross has been at a number of different firms, and he's had a lot of success," said Scott Kessler, equity analyst at S&P Capital IQ. "He knows media, he knows advertising. But most importantly, he is well-liked and well-respected."Those may sound like obvious characteristics for any potential CEO, but Yahoo's recent leaders haven't fared well. Bartz's phone firing followed a tumultuous relationship with the board. Before her came Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who stepped down as CEO amid shareholder anger after snubbing a $47.5 billion buyout offer from Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500)."Yahoo has been dealing with different predicaments and personalities for years," Kessler said. "They really have to be enamored of the type of person Ross has proven himself to be: someone who has the vision, can communicate the strategy and gets along with people."Make peace with new board members -- after a nasty fight.Thompson's resume issues came to light via Third Point, the activist shareholder that launched a proxy fight in February. Dan Loeb, Third Point's CEO, had proposed four new board members for Yahoo, including himself. When Yahoo wouldn't play ball, the fight got ugly.By uncovering the resume lie, Third Point got a lot of what it wanted. In addition to Thompson's exit on Sunday, Yahoo also named three of Third Point's four nominees to the board.One of them is Loeb himself; the other two have backgrounds that reveal where Loeb thinks Yahoo should go. Harry Wilson is the CEO of Maeva, a corporate restructuring and turnaround firm; Michael Wolf is CEO of media consulting company Activate.The three new Third Point-nominated board members extend a year of turnover for the Yahoo board. In February, four of Yahoo's directors said they wouldn't stand for re-election. A fifth, Patti Hart, stepped down last week after Thompson's resume scandal came to light."The change on the board is a good one -- not so much because I know the new members will be successful, but because the old members were so unsuccessful," said Clayton Moran, a stock analyst at Benchmark Capital. "Change is a good thing for Yahoo."Figure out Alibaba. Yahoo's Asian holdings have long been considered the company's most valuable asset.Yahoo owns about a 40% stake in Chinese Internet giant Alibaba. But Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and Bartz had a public dispute over ownership ofAlipay, an online payment unit similar to eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500)-owned PayPal.The companies reached an agreement in July 2011, but tensions continued. Ma said at a conference in late September that Alibaba would be "interested" in buying all of Yahoo. Earlier this year, talksreportedly collapsed between Yahoo, Alibaba and Japan-based Softbank over a potential deal to sell Yahoo's stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.Negotiations surrounding the Alibaba stake are reportedly back on, but without a permanent CEO, Yahoo may have to put those discussions on hold."The Asian assets are so valuable that I have to think the new board will also be interested in monetizing," Moran said. "But I would think [the Thompson debacle] means nothing is imminent."The age-old question: What is Yahoo? Even if Yahoo scores cash by selling its Alibaba stake, it will still need to develop a roadmap for its future.The central question of just what Yahoo is, exactly, has stumped most of its recent CEOs. The company calls itself "the premier digital media company," and its news properties do attract tons of traffic, but Yahoo has a sprawling product portfolio and a brand name with a lot of baggage attached.Thompson tried his hand at defining Yahoo during his short tenure. Just last month, he reorganized the company into three groups: consumer, ad-focused "regions," and technology. Now, Thompson won't be there to see that vision to the end.Like so many of his predecessors, Thompson promised a new dawn for Yahoo. The clouds have yet to break. 

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::::Windows 8 makes it easier for parents to track kidsâ€˜ internet usage::::

<img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337135329_temp.jpg" border="0" alt="Image" width="300" height="200" align="left" /><h2 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px" class="strapline txt20">Microsoft's Family Safety tool helps parents limit site usage</h2> Microsoft's Windows 8 will include a brand new suite of tools to help parents keep track of what their kids are doing on the internet.The Windows 8 Family Safety toolset will send weekly usage reports about the sites that have been visited, and will allow parents to block specific websites and apps, set time limits for usage, lock search engines into strict SafeSearch, and track Windows Store purchases.All of this can be done through a parent's administrator account, so the kids don't have access to the information and tools.The reports aren't limited to a single device, either, instead collecting information on websites visited, time spent on each website, search histories, and apps and games usage from every device a child uses his or her Windows account on.The administrator is meant to set up separate accounts for each child so they can keep track of exactly who is doing what.<h4 style="margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; width: 480px">Microsoft has some parenting advice</h4>"Computers give children access to many positive experiences; however, parents face challenges in monitoring what their children see online, the people they meet, and the information they share," said Phil Sohn, Microsoft's senior program manager for family safety, in a blog post."Parenting techniques like this are important, but they may be difficult to employ if your household has multiple PCs or if your kids use laptops and tablets. And glancing over a teenager's shoulder can be awkward for both parents and kids," he continued.Sohn said the purpose of using individual Windows accounts for each family member isn't solely to monitor what they're doing online."It is also a great way for each family member to maintain their own unique online identity while still sharing a single PC," he said.He believes that the simplicity of the new Windows 8 Family Safety tools will cause more parents to readily use them.

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::::Thinking of investing in Facebook? Here are some things to consider::::

<img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337135127_temp.jpg" border="0" alt="Image" align="left" />Hoping to get in on Facebook's hotly anticipated public stock offering? You'll need Facebook friends at very high levels, or a lot of money.  Most people who like the idea of owning Facebook's stock will have difficulty getting it at the offer price, which is now expected at $34 to $38 a share, according to a regulatory filing by the company Tuesday. Unless you know the right people at Facebook, you'll likely need to have a large, active account with one of the big banks or brokerage firms directly involved in the stock sale.  Otherwise, you can take your chances by buying shares after the initial public offering is completed, when Facebook begins trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol ``FB.'' That's likely to happen Friday.  Doing it that way typically means paying much more for the stock, however. And heavy demand skews the early stock price, leaving an investor vulnerable to the risk of a big drop.  Jerome Cleary isn't deterred. One of a legion of Facebook fans, he has never wanted to own a stock as much as he wants to buy this one. Cleary, a standup comedian in Los Angeles, says he has already signed up for an account with a discount online brokerage so he'll be ready.  ``I know you should buy stock in what you know and like,'' Cleary says. ``I feel that because they have an incredible mass of wealth and such growing popularity, the stock really may pay off.''  Facebook Inc.'s IPO is expected to be the largest ever for an Internet company. It's expected to raise as much as $11.8 billion for Facebook and its early investors, far more than the $1.67 billion raised in Google Inc.'s 2004 IPO.  Analysts say there's so much interest in Facebook's stock that some underwriters are closing their books as early as Tuesday. This means they won't be taking any more orders from potential buyers. The IPO is expected to be completed late Thursday, with shares available for trading Friday.  If you're thinking of investing in Facebook, here are some things to consider.  IPO SHARES  Facebook and its early investors are selling more than 337 million shares, but those shares are parceled out very carefully, away from the public's eyes.  Typically individuals get to buy no more than 10 percent to 20 percent of shares sold at an IPO's offering price. The vast majority will go to company insiders, institutional investors, the underwriters selected by the company to handle the process and preferred clients of all of them.  Morgan Stanley leads the team of 33 underwriters selected for the Facebook offering, followed by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.  The inclusion of online broker E-Trade Financial Corp. as an underwriter was seen as a glimmer of hope that Facebook might make more shares available than usual for retail investors through discount brokerages. But chances of getting any are very slim regardless. <div id="storydiv" class="storydiv" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left"><div class="Normal" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px">ELIGIBILITY  The big online brokerages have been taking formal requests from customers for Facebook's IPO. They anticipate they'll get their own allocations from one source or another, such as one of the underwriters. E-Trade, Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade, among others, have been fielding abundant queries.  But the requirements they set on who gets them eliminate most small investors.  Fidelity, which will be getting an undetermined number of shares from underwriter Deutsche Bank, says customers should have $500,000 in their accounts and have made 36 trades in the past year to be eligible. Ameritrade's account requirements are at least $250,000 and 30 trades in three months. Schwab's are a minimum $100,000 or 36 trades in the past year, but the firm says it also has other requirements.  E-Trade, as an underwriter, would not divulge specifics but acknowledged the customer interest. ``It's a pretty hot topic,'' spokesman Brett Goodman said.  Even meeting the requirements is no guarantee of getting shares.  Joshua Freeman, an information technology professional in New York, knows investing in Facebook is risky, but he believes ``it's got a pretty good shot to make some money.''  He has been investing with E-Trade since the mid-1990s and has about $200,000 in his account. But he's pessimistic about his request for 100 Facebook shares at the IPO price, given the frenzy over the offering.  ``I'm hoping to get some but I'm guessing that I won't,'' Freeman says. ``I'm hoping it follows the trend and goes crazy and then dips a little bit. If it does that, I may buy some on the open market.''  OPEN MARKET  If you strike out as an insider, it will still be easy, but expensive, to buy shares on the open market. Open and fund an account with a brokerage. Then for a transaction fee of as little as $7, you can buy Facebook stock at whatever price the market demand has driven it.  Be aware that the price could jump significantly by the time you place your order. Among last year's hottest IPOs, Groupon Inc. soared in the opening minutes and gained 31 percent on the first day of trading. Zillow Inc. jumped 79 percent and LinkedIn Corp. more than doubled.  Investors buying on the open market miss much or perhaps all of any first-day ``pop.''  The first-day market price of newly issued stocks during the past decade has been an average 11 percent higher than the offer price, according to University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter.  For investors buying at the offer price, Facebook is likely to produce a gain on the first day, he says. But once it starts trading, investors should think of it as just another stock that's as likely to go down as up.  Consider this: Groupon, which went public at an IPO price of $20 six months ago, soared as high as $31.14 on the first day. It closed Monday at $11.73, 41 percent below the offer price.  As for the idea of buying the stock at a low point a few months from now, Ritter says that has not worked historically as a reliable strategy with IPOs. And this one's starting at a very high price, he emphasizes, with optimistic expectations of future growth built into it.  The only sure winners, he says, will be Facebook employees and venture capitalists who invested in the company when it was private.  James Breyer and his Accel Partners firm, investors since 2005, stand to make up to $1.34 billion from the 38.2 million shares they are offering. Zynga Inc. CEO Mark Pincus, a Facebook investor since 2004, stands to make up to $35 million on 1 million shares.  ``The time to buy Facebook was five years ago,'' he says.</div></div><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left"><div class="tabsintbgshow1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; clear: both; background-image: url('http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/photo/4583284.cms'); height: 35px"> </div></div>

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::::Google could be inviting more friends to Nexus party::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337134994_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div>Google may be rethinking its Nexus Android strategy in a big way. It’s reportedly getting set to team up with multiple Android hardware partners to launch devices based on the next full version of Android, instead of picking one lucky vendor to be the “lead device” for a new generation of software, as it did last fall with Samsung and the Galaxy Nexus.The Wall Street Journal reports that the new strategy will accompany the launch of Android 5.0–to be known as Jelly Bean, in keeping with Google’s sweet tooth for Android code names–and involves several Android vendors. Several devices, including both tablets and unlocked smartphones, will be sold directly through Google’s Web site and through some unnamed retail partners.If this comes to pass, it has big ramifications for the Android community. For one thing,Android vendors have been very wary about Google’s proposed acquisition of Motorola, which is still languishing under review from Chinese authorities nearly nine months after it was first announced last August. The fear was that Google would look to promote Motorola’s hardware at the expense of other vendors, such as Samsung or HTC, but if Google is cutting everyone in on the lead device strategy, that concern becomes less important.It’s also perhaps the most telling sign that Google has finally figured out that it needs togain more control over Android software updates. Should Google be able to stimulate demand for unlocked phones and tablets not tied to wireless carriers, it would presumably be able to update those devices in a much more timely fashion than at present, when carrier concerns can hold up new software for weeks or months.We’ll see what happens, but this could be a big development for the evolution of Android. Stay tuned.

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::::Holy moly: Netflix clocks 42B API requests per month::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337134927_temp.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div> Netflix clocked close to 42 billion API requests per day in January, according to the company’s director of engineering Daniel Jacobson, who revealed the number as part of a presentation he recently gave to the Paypal engineering team. In his slides, Jacobson pointed out that the number of API requests has grown 70-fold in just two years, from 600 million in January of 2010 to 41.7 billion in January of 2012.<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-521884" src="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-42-billion.jpg?w=604&h=440" border="0" title="netflix api 42 billion" width="604" height="440" />Providing an API that is resilient enough to handle these kinds of demands is not a small feat, and Jacobson’s slides reveal some of the principles behind the architecture used for the task. However, there’s an even bigger story to this: The sole reason that Netflix’s API has gotten so popular in the last two years is that the company’s service is seeing huge amounts of traffic from connected devices.Netflix originally built its API with third-party developers in mind, which used it to build websites and apps to manage one’s DVD queue and similar things. However, the Netflix engineering team eventually realized that it could use the very same API to bring Netflix to devices like the Roku, the PS3 and the Xbox. To see how much of an impact that decision had, check out where API requests came from in 2008:<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-521889" src="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-requests-2008.jpg?w=604&h=456" border="0" title="netflix api requests 2008" width="604" height="456" />Compare that with API requests in 2011:<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-521890" src="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-requests-2011.jpg?w=604&h=457" border="0" title="netflix api requests 2011" width="604" height="457" />Guess which segment Netflix is focusing on these days? Exactly:<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-521891" src="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-emphasis.jpg?w=604&h=472" border="0" title="netflix api emphasis" width="604" height="472" />

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::::Developers begin seeing iOS 6 hits in App Store application usage logs::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337134838_temp.png" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div>Last week, we revealed Apple’s decision to drop Google Maps in iOS 6 in exchange for its own in-house solution branded simply as “Maps.” At the time, we told you many versions of iOS 6 have been floating around Apple’s campus, which indicated Apple is likely on track for a mid-June unveiling at this year’s World Wide Developers Conference. Shortly after, references to an upcoming iOS 6 beta were found in the code strings of the iCloud.com beta website.One app developer informed us today that it has recently noticed users running iOS 6 using its app. The developer observed the “iOS6″ string when collecting the OS version from analytics software. It has not been able to trace exactly when the iOS 6 users started appearing, but it was sometime over the past week. Other developers that we spoke to began seeing hits in late April. There is a good chance that this means Apple is amidst iOS 6 compatibility testing with higher-profile applications from the App Store. The process of next-generation versions of iOS appearing in developer usage logs occurred last year too.Although Apple’s new Maps app and its 3D mode will likely be pushed as a major feature of iOS 6, we noted previously that anyone anticipating major home screen changes or Android-style widgets will likely be disappointed. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported Apple was preparing tounveil an upgrade to iCloud at WWDC that would include new sharing and commenting features for photos, as well as video syncing capabilities that will likely be the Video Stream feature we told you about last year.Apple is also set to unveil its new ultra-thin 15-inch MacBook Pro that we revealed earlier this week, and, according to reports, it will officially announce Mountain Lion’s release date. 

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::::Apple, Disney discuss bringing WatchESPN feature to Apple TV::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337134732_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div>Bloomberg has updated its story to say that Disney and Apple are actually NOT in talks to bring the WatchESPN service to the Apple TV.No deal is imminent with Apple, said Amy Phillips, a spokeswoman for Bristol, Connecticut-based ESPN. “We’re not having conversations with Apple about authenticating WatchESPN,” Phillips said.According to a report from Bloomberg, which cites ESPN executive Sean Bratches, Apple is currently in talks with Walt Disney’s ESPN network to bring the WatchESPN app, currently available for iPhone and iPad and recently opened up to Comcast customers, to Apple TV:ESPN subscribers with AppleTV would gain access to the network’s Internet service on their sets. The sports network, which today announced programming for the TV season starting in September, said a deal isn’t imminent.Bratches spoke with Bloomberg in an interview today:“We’re a platform-agnostic content company… To the extent that in the future there’s an opportunity with Apple to authenticate through the pay-TV food chain as we’re doing with Microsoft, that’s something that we will participate in.” The WatchESPN iOS app currently provides access to live streaming for the majority of ESPN’s content to Bright House Networks, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon FiOS TV customers. The app offers content from nearly every ESPN channel including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, and ESPNU. A full list of features from the iOS app’s iTunes page is below:The WatchESPN app features:Live streaming access to the top events from the ESPN family of networks, including: * NBA Regular Season and Playoffs * Major League Baseball * The Masters, US Open and The Open Championships * College Football and Basketball * Barclay’s Premier League, Spanish Primera Division and Euro 2012 Soccer * All 4 Grand Slam tennis events …and thousands more live events airing on the ESPN networks 

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