NEW YORK - MySpace users will be able to add games, e-mail services and other features from outside developers without ever leaving the site under a new program the popular online community will fully launch next month.

MySpace already allows users to customize their personal profile pages. But they generally must go off the site, grab the lines of programming code they are interested in and cut and paste that into their profiles. Now, users will be able to add those features more directly.

Under the MySpace Developer Platform, an outside e-mail provider can write a program that sits on the personal home page users see when they log on. Users can check for new messages right there.

Or — instead of taking visitors to another site to view photo albums — a photo-sharing service can write a program that appears on a MySpace profile page that friends visit.

The company unveiled details of the previously announced platform Tuesday and said developers would be able to write and test interactive programs, called "widgets," on up to five users for a month before making them available to the broader MySpace community.

MySpace's launch of a developer platform follows a May decision by its smaller rival social network, Facebook, to open its platform to developers. That has proven a boon for music-sharing startup iLike.com, photo-sharing service Slide Inc. and other companies.

Those applications, in turn, have helped make Facebook more popular, although it still ranks second behind MySpace, a unit of News Corp.

By bringing features from other sites with the developer program, MySpace hopes users will have fewer reasons to leave the site — and view ads elsewhere.

Amit Kapur, MySpace's chief operating officer, said all applications would be treated equally, even though the openness means competitors could siphon traffic from MySpace's own products — such as the MySpaceTV feature that competes with Google Inc.'s YouTube.

"If somebody builds a better feature than we do, we want to see that succeed," he said. "It's shortsighted for us to think we can do everything."

Age, hometown, photo albums and video clips posted on MySpace profiles will be among the data available for incorporation into the widgets. The company said developers would have access only to data already publicly visible, and users can keep that information from developers by restricting profile access to friends only.

MySpace will let developers sell ads, sponsorships and products on special pages assigned to each application, but no ads will appear on the widgets themselves.

 

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SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday that its $44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc was generous and it expects Yahoo's board and shareholders to agree to the buyout quickly.

"We trust the Yahoo board and the Yahoo shareholders will join with us quickly in deciding to move down an integrated path," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in an annual strategy meeting with analysts.

Microsoft's comments follow a weekend of maneuvering by Yahoo, which, according to sources familiar with Yahoo's strategy, is considering a business alliance with Google Inc to rebuff Microsoft's proposal. It has also received preliminary contacts from media, technology, telecommunications and financial companies, another source close to Yahoo said.

At the same meeting, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell also said the company may borrow money for the first time in its history to fund a portion of the 50-50 cash and stock offer for Yahoo.

"If you look at the cash component ... we could fund most of that through our cash holdings, but it's likely we're actually going to borrow for the first time," said Liddell. "It's going to be a mixture of the cash we have on hand plus debt."

Liddell said he expects Microsoft's revenue to grow at a double-digit percentage in the coming fiscal year starting in July despite a potential U.S. economic slowdown.

Microsoft also announced that its first major update to Windows Vista was released to manufacturing. Usually, large organizations wait for the first major update before deploying a new operating system.

Shares of Microsoft rose 5 cents to $30.50 in early Nasdaq trading, while Yahoo shares rose 44 cents to $28.82.

(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Michele Gershberg in New York, editing by Dave Zimmerman)

Copyright 2008 Reuters

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Google issued a statement Feb. 3 criticizing Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, which the software vendor made public Feb 1.  

In a statement, Google's senior vice president of development and chief legal officer, David Drummond, said that "Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions."

Drummond also suggested that Microsoft would attempt to dominate the market for Web mail and instant messaging in  the same manner as it has used its size in the past to dominate the market for PC software.

"Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies—and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets," Drummond said.

But rather than focusing on search and online advertising—two markets where Microsoft and Google have been competing fiercely—Drummond's letter focuses on IM and Web-based mail.

Indeed, each company has been making incursions into the other's territories in recent months. Google is developing Web-based applications that could replace Microsoft's office productivity suite of applications, while Microsoft has been looking to build social networking and community-based tools.

Forrester analyst Charlene Li blogged that a combination of Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook could emerge as "the media company of the future."

Microsoft acquired a 5 percent stake in Facebook, a popular social networking company. 

That prospect was clearly at the root of Drummond's concerns. He noted that a combination of Microsoft and Yahoo "equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and Web email accounts... Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services?"

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t's been a busy 24 hours in the online space. First, Amazon.com announced it was buying Audible. And now Microsoft has made a $44 billion bid to acquire Yahoo! Such aggressive takeovers generally occur either close to a top-when buyers are really optimistic-or after a bust, when survivors pounce on opportunities to pick up companies on the cheap. But coupled with yesterday's disappointing earnings report from Google, the deal-making points to a new phenomenon: the first economic slowdown of the Web 2.0 era. After a few quarters of defying the broader economic decline, even the best-of-breed technology companies are showing themselves to be subject to the business cycle. The slowdown is gutting margins, causing executives to revise their Power Point presentations on growth, and depressing stocks. As a result, the hot young singles of the NASDAQ are seeking to cut costs and ride out the storm by shacking up together.

Audible is a new media company that old-media types like to root for. Its founder and chief executive officer is the excellent magazine journalist and author Donald Katz, and its services provided a potential new revenue stream for long-form journalists. Audible survived the dotcom meltdown in 2000, and quietly built a significant business. (Projected 2007 revenues: $106-$108 million). But as shown by its third quarter earnings, impressive revenue growth of about 30 percent has been unable to overcome persistent spending on technology, marketing, and operations. The upshot: Audible is still losing money.

Enter Amazon.com, which, though it continues to put up excellent numbers, remains a retail stock. And when the end of a business cycle approaches, retail growth frequently comes at the expense of margins. Amazon.com's fourth quarter earnings release, which came out on Wednesday, showed sales rose an impressive 42 percent from the 2006 fourth quarter, to $5.67 billion (with an assist from foreign exchange translations). But operating income grew only 38 percent, and operating margins fell in the core North American market. (Translation: Amazon had to discount, or throw in free shipping, more than it did last year to help goose sales.) For 2008, Amazon is expecting revenue growth to slow to between 26 and 33 percent. So why get hitched? Amazon's huge infrastructure investments and distribution capabilities may make it possible for it to run Audible profitably, even if sales growth is muted. And Audible represents a significant revenue stream that it can acquire without spending too much. The agreed-upon price is $11.50 a share. While that's a small premium to Audible's January 30 closing price $9.33, it's below where Audible traded for much of the past year. At the end of October, Audible's stock traded at about $13.75.

Economic slowdowns are also bad news for media companies, as marketers cut back on advertising spending. And it stands to reason that while online advertising is still growing at a much more rapid pace than overall ad spending, reduced budgets may take a bite out of interactive marketing. The darkening outlook for online advertising and e-commerce, as well as the continuing challenge of competing against Google, is likely behind Microsoft's bold bid for Yahoo.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft are struggling online. Yahoo's fourth quarter earnings, released earlier this week, showed that in the 2007 fourth quarter, revenues rose a meager 8 percent from 2006, while operating income fell 38 percent. In Microsoft's bright quarterly earnings report, the one dark spot was the online division, which lost money, despite rising revenues. In the six months ended December 2007, losses increased from $236 million to $510 million over the same period in 2006, even as revenues rose from $1.16 billion to $1.53 billion. Google has been eating their lunch competitively, and the overall market isn't growing rapidly enough to allow all the major players to prosper. The stock of Yahoo, which is in the midst of a long-running (and so far, unsuccessful) turnaround plan, closed yesterday at $20, its lowest level since the fall of 2003. That has given Microsoft, which has invested billions in its own efforts to compete against Google in search and advertising, the opportunity to acquire Yahoo for a decent price. Yahoo said it would evaluate the offer. (So did the Justice Department.) By sharing development and infrastructure costs, Microsoft and Yahoo will likely have a better shot of going head to head against Google.

But even Google is showing signs of challenge. The company announced its fourth quarter results yesterday (Thursday). Revenues grew 50 percent from the year-before quarter. That's an impressive gain off a large base, but Google's rate of year-over-year revenue growth is slumping, from 57 percent in the third quarter. Operating income as  percentage of revenues fell from about 33 percent to about 30 percent. The stock fell sharply on the news and is off by nearly 30 percent since its peak in November.
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RSS feeds, mashups and social networking poised for big year in enterprise

By Jon Brodkin, Network World, 01/30/08

Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration products will "continue to steamroll the [enterprise Web 2.0] market" in 2008, despite taking heat from some observers about SharePoint's wiki, blog and social networking functionality, Forrester analysts say.

Continued success for Microsoft was one of nine predictions Forrester made for the enterprise Web 2.0 market in 2008 in a report that says the implementation of Web 2.0 software will be a priority for 24% of businesses over the next year.

SharePoint users have sometimes found basic Web 2.0 features difficult to use, and complain about a lack of advanced features commonly found in best-of-breed products, such as tools that let you build lightweight applications on top of a wiki, says Forrester analyst and report lead author Oliver Young.

These concerns won't limit adoption rates of SharePoint, though, he says.

"IT departments taking a leadership role in enterprise 2.0 deployments will look at SharePoint first," Young writes. "While the rest of the market – analysts included – will continue to gripe about SharePoint in 2008, Microsoft is clearly in an enviable position and can afford to wait for the market to come to it."

Microsoft has answered concerns about SharePoint's Web 2.0 functionality by releasing a social networking tool pack and partnering with vendors such as Socialtext and Atlassian to plug advanced functionality into SharePoint, Young says. IT shops have to pay more for that extra functionality provided through partnerships, he says.

Young says he expects major Web 2.0 upgrades in the next version of SharePoint, whenever that is released, but for now says Microsoft executives have given customers "the best solution that they can." (Learn more about collaboration products in our Collaboration Buyer's Guide.)

Here are some more of Forrester's Web 2.0 predictions for 2008, based partly on a survey of enterprises and small businesses in North America and Europe (fellow industry watcher Gartner also issued predictions this week):

* Web 2.0 will make it big in the enterprise. "CIOs will concede that they cannot quell passionate employees' use of consumer-oriented or SaaS Web 2.0 tools and will mitigate risk by deploying enterprise-class tools in their stead," Young writes.

* RSS feeds will become substantially more popular. "In 2007, many firms discovered the value of blogs and wikis for knowledge workers," he writes. "However, for these tools to truly fulfill their potential, an RSS deployment becomes a must-have, otherwise new content goes unnoticed and most blogs and wikis will fall out of daily view of their users."

* Businesses will be more willing to buy social networking platforms. "Suite offerings that include social networking like Awareness Software, Jive Software and IBM's Lotus Connections offering stand to benefit greatly from the attention, but nearly any vendor that uses the term 'social networking' will get at least some consideration," Forrester states.

* Midtier vendors, rather than start-ups, will pour into the enterprise Web 2.0 market. Vendors from adjacent markets such as search and portal will unveil Web 2.0 offerings, and an increase in specialized services will fragment the market and intensify competition.

* Enterprises will have more choices of consultants and systems integrators. "Look for services vendors like Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte Development, and IBM Global Services to capture much of this nascent services market," Forrester writes.

* Trial deployments will spread through more of the enterprise. The vast majority of deployments in 2007 were limited to small groups and teams, and "as of yet very few have hit the point of pan-enterprise adoption," Forrester says.

* Mashups will get better. With innovations from IBM, Microsoft, Serena Software and others, "enterprise mashups will move from a few one-off pilots to true enterprise-class software in the coming 12 months," Forrester states.

* Don't expect major acquisitions and market exits. The Web 2.0 market will eventually undergo some serious consolidation because there won't be enough demand to keep every active vendor afloat, but "very few will cash out in 2008," Forrester predicts. 

 

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In a twist, security researchers have discovered a group of hackers who are exploiting a new category of victims: aspiring Internet scammers.

 

A Moroccan group called "Mr. Brain" is offering free phishing kits on a Web sitehosted in France, said Paul Mutton, Internet services developer at Netcraft, a security company in Bath, England.

The software packages make it easy to quickly set up a fraudulent Web site mimicking a known brand in order to trick people into divulging credit card details or bank account numbers. Templates for spam e-mail are also included, targeting brands such as Bank of America, eBay, PayPal, and HSBC.

Mr. Brain's Web site lists the kits and what kind of details each one is capable of collecting, such as usernames, passwords, or Social Security numbers. Netcraft posted screenshots on its Web site.

But what the aspiring scammer doesn't know is that the phishing kits are designed to send any sensitive information that's collected back to e-mail accounts controlled by Mr. Brain, Mutton said.

"Obviously, that's why they are offering this stuff for free," Mutton said. "I was impressed by it."

Mr. Brain hides the special e-mail function in a blend of PHP scripts, one of which is encrypted, Mutton said. Just in case someone decrypts it, Mr. Brain has written at the top of the file "Don't need to change anything here. Created by Mr. Brain Morocco Team."

The scheme seems to be targeted at new phishers, Mutton said. Mr. Brain benefits since other wannabe scammers shoulder the cost and risk of finding an ISP to host the phishing site, Mutton said.

"Essentially, they're exploiting all these novice phishers -- basically getting them to do all the hard work," Mutton said.

It's difficult to tell without further research how many of the free phishing kits linked with this latest scam are live on the Internet, but Mutton said Netcraft noticed one earlier this month targeting Bank of America.

"Clearly, these are actively being used in phishing attacks," Mutton said.

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By Kelly Sims (c) 2007

You are a business owner with a web presence. During a routine Google search for your page ranking, you discover something disturbing. There is another company out there with a name very similar to yours and almost identical content on their website. What do you do? Is your company name and website content automatically protected by copyright law? Should you have registered your company name as a trademark? Can you demand that they change their name and dismantle their website immediately?

Intellectual Property can be a confusing topic, and one that all business owners should know about. Sadly however, many entrepreneurs simply don't. Intellectual property is in very simple terms an idea that legally belongs to somebody, be they a company or an individual. Only the owner of that idea, or somebody the owner has a legal agreement with can use the idea. Generally, the owner of the idea is usually its creator unless someone paid them to create the idea, in which case the idea's owner is the person who paid for the idea. There are different kinds of intellectual property, but for the purpose of this article, we will focus on copyright, patent and trademark.

Patent – A patent protects the creators of new inventions. An invention can include anything from a new product or business method to a recipe. If you decide to patent your invention, there a few things you should know. First, you will need to apply for a patent in every country where you would like your invention to be protected.

Secondly, getting a patent is going to cost you a pretty penny. You will have to pay thousands of dollars to patent your idea and it will take a minimum of 2 years (probably more) before you are granted a patent. Also, your precious invention will no longer remain a secret since your patent application will be made public once your application is submitted. If all of this wasn't enough bad news, patent protection generally only lasts for twenty years from the date of your application. Phew! On the up side, once your patent is accepted, you can sue anyone who tries to manufacture or sell your invention.

It's worth mentioning here that another method to keep your invention protected is to keep the method of manufacturing it a `trade secret'. If you choose this process, of course, in order to manufacture your product, you will have to tell somebody. You would have to have anyone who would learn your secret sign a confidentiality agreement. Consult a lawyer if you plan to use this method.

Trademark – Trademarks are the marks used to distinguish one company's products or services from another's. They can include a product name, a slogan, and any other mark that is deemed to be unique to a company such as a logo or unique packaging. As a rule, you can't trademark descriptive words, geographical names or a person's name. You also cannot register a business' name. You can however, register part of a name used to identify a product or service. For example "Kellogg's Company" is the owner of the "Kellogg's" trademark and the "Rice Krispies" trademark. You cannot register a trademark similar to one that is already in use by another company.

Beware; a trademark does not have to be registered in order to prevent others from using it. If a company is using an unregistered trademark in your geographical area, they can still prevent you from using it. You could perform a search in a trademark database and find later that you are using another company's unregistered trademark. If you find another company in a completely different industry using your unregistered trademark, you probably won't be able to do anything about it if they are not your competitors or if they are not in your geographical vicinity. Protection of a registered trademark however, is much stronger than an unregistered one, and once you have a registered trademark, you can prevent competitors from using it, or confusingly similar ones anywhere in the country in which your trademark is registered.

Copyright – Any written text, artistic work, or computer program is automatically protected by copyright. Anything you or I write, be it published, online text or unpublished, handwritten text, is copyrighted. Also anything we draw, paint, photograph, film, or compose is also protected by copyright. Copyright can be registered, but it doesn't have to be in order for it to be illegal for individuals to copy someone else's work. Copyright also lasts for an extremely long time. Usually it lasts the duration of the author's life plus fifty years at which point it becomes a part of the public domain and can be used by anyone.

Factual information cannot be copyrighted. For example, this article is based on fact. Although you cannot copy my article and claim to have authored it yourself, you can take the facts included in the article and use them in your own written material. If you would like to use a very small portion of someone else's written work, this is usually acceptable as long as you credit the author.

Finally, what do you do if someone uses your work without your permission? Your first step should be to contact the individual. You can usually either go to the contact page on the offender's web site or go to www.whois.com and enter the offender's domain to find contact information. If your initial communication doesn't get results, you should then send a 'cease and desist order'. For sample orders, just perform a search on 'cease and desist orders'. Finally if still no action is taken by the offending party, contact their web host and advise them of the situation and finally, contact search engines and make them aware of the situation. These actions should render the offender's website useless or at the very least give them enough trouble to convince them to remove the copied material.

For more information on intellectual property in Canada, visit the Canadian Intellectual Property Office at www.cipo.ca, for the U.S., visit the United States Patent and Trademark Office at www.uspto.gov and for Europe please visit the European Patent Office at www.european-patent-office.org.

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Google will be holding a conference call at noon eastern to unveil the details of its long-rumored Android mobile operating system. Joining CEO Eric Schmidt will be other members of the 34-member Open Handset Alliance, including the chief executives of Deutche Telekom, HTC, Qualcomm, and Motorola. According to the press release, the "Android platform will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses," and will be composed of a "fully integrated mobile 'software stack' that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications." More details to follow.

 
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