LTT with the same story!

Tuesday - 7/21/2009
By: Abdel Eljaroshi (ABDELSALAM KHALIL ELJAROSHI)

In the last few days Libyan telecommunications and technology corporation LTT, which is the main provider of internet services in the country, posted a notification on their website saying that there will be some difficulties in page loading while browsing on the internet, the reason as they claimed is that a fiber optic cable has been (damaged), therefore communications are negatively effected.

The company assured that maintenance crews are working to resolve the issue, I my self am still wondering: WHY IS IT THE SAME LOUSY EXCUSE ALL OVER AGAIN?

Can't those guys admit that they lack a bit of knowledge, can't they say that they need to learn, and cannot remain accurate 100% of the time? Is it wrong to admit ones fault? So I guess everytime that there is a power drop or loss, water leakage or insufficient pressure, telecom (unexpected) under performance, I guess they will always blame the hardware and equipment, not their genius out-of-space brains.

Music Industry Lures ‘Casual’ Pirates to Legal Sites

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July 20, 2009
By ERIC PFANNER

PARIS — Record company executives say there are three kinds of music fans. There are those who buy music, and those who get a kick out of never paying for it. And then there are those whom Rob Wells at Universal Music Group calls “dinner party pirates”: the vast majority of listeners, those who copy music illegally because it is more convenient than buying it.

If those low-level copyright cheats could be converted to using legal music services, the digital music business would get much-needed help. Yet even industry executives acknowledge that until recently, they were not giving those listeners many ways to do what they wanted: to sample new music and to play it back anytime, at little or no cost.

Over the past year, however, as sales of CDs have continued to fall and paid-for downloads from services like Apple’s iTunes have fallen short of hopes, record companies have moved to embrace casual file-sharers. Legal services offering free, unlimited streaming of music, rather than downloads, are proliferating. According to a survey published last week, they are taking some of the wind out of the pirates’ sails.

“Consumers are doing exactly what we said they would do,” said Steve Purdham, chief executive of We7, a service that says it has attracted two million users in Britain in a little more than half a year by offering unlimited access to millions of songs. “They weren’t saying, ‘Give me pirated music’; they were saying, ‘Give me the music I want.”’

The music industry has high hopes that the growth of sites like We7, whose investors include the former Genesis musician Peter Gabriel, can change the reputation of Europe as a hive of digital piracy. Similar businesses include Deezer, in France, and Spotify, which was started by two Swedish entrepreneurs and has grown rapidly in Britain and elsewhere. All of them are licensed by the music industry and hope to make money from advertising.

Last week, Microsoft said it, too, planned to offer a music streaming service in Britain, via its MSN Web business, though it provided few details.

Meanwhile, the survey by two research firms, Music Ally and Leading Question, showed that Britons were adopting such services in large numbers. Among British teenage music fans, 65 percent said they listened to streamed music at least once a month, with 31 percent saying they did so every day.

The survey showed a striking decline in the number of British teenagers who said they had regularly engaged in unauthorized file-sharing; only 26 percent said they had done so as of January, when the survey was taken, compared with 42 percent in December 2007.

Music industry executives say that does not mean the piracy problem has been solved. The survey results did not distinguish between licensed and unlicensed streaming services or others, like YouTube, where both kinds of music can be found. Illegally copied music still accounts for the vast majority of digital listening, they add.

Still, executives say there are some promising signs. Rather than cannibalizing existing digital businesses, they say, the new services are often attracting people who previously shared files illegally. According to research by one of the major record companies, nearly two-thirds of Spotify users say they now engage in less piracy.

Spotify says it has two million registered users in Britain and another two million in Sweden, Spain and France. Paul Brown, managing director of its British arm, said it wants to expand to the United States by the end of the year.

There, it would go up against a number of digital businesses that also offer free music in various ways, including MySpace Music, Imeem, Last.FM, Pandora and others.

While Pandora has said it expects to be profitable by the end of the year, analysts say most other free streaming services are still losing money. Some advertising-supported free music sites, like SpiralFrog, have already gone out of business.

“You only have to use these services for a while to realize that there’s not a lot of advertising on them,” said Paul Brindley, chief executive of Music Ally.

Analysts say the European services like Spotify, We7 and Deezer are different from most of the American streamed offerings because they focus on the music, rather than using it to build, for instance, a social networking service. They also give users more control than, say, Pandora, which is more like an online radio service, with preselected programming, rather than on-demand listening.

To try to supplement advertising income, Spotify offers users a premium service, priced at £9.99, or $16.32, in Britain, which eliminates advertising. The company also plans to add other enhancements to the premium service, including a mobile offering for Apple’s iPhone and other devices.

Mr. Brown declined to say how many users were upgrading to the premium service, but added: “Each new addition creates customers who say, ‘Hey, I want that.’ It’s not just about the ads.”

Over all, he said, revenue has doubled every month since the company began its commercial operations in Britain in February.

Costs are rising, too, because Spotify and similar services pay royalties to rights holders, including music companies, every time a track is streamed.

Those payments are turning into a promising revenue source for the record companies.

In Sweden, a market where piracy has been rampant, Spotify is already the biggest digital revenue earner for Universal Music, even though it has been operating for less than a year, said Mr. Wells, senior vice president of Universal’s international digital operations.

Analysts say record companies have agreed to reduce licensing costs slightly in recent months, with the typical going rate dropping to about 0.8 cent a track from 1 cent a track. The labels are also striking different kinds of agreements, insisting on equity stakes in some cases, or a share of revenue from advertising or subscriptions, in an effort to ensure that they benefit from the growth of the new services.

“Now they have to turn these into sustainable businesses,” said Dan Cryan, an analyst at Screen Digest in London. “You can have 1,001 start-ups, but if they all close down after two years, you’re not any better off.”

Copyright 2009

Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global

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July 20, 2009
By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — At first glance, Japanese cellphones are a gadget lover’s dream: ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators.

But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan’s handset makers have little presence beyond the country’s shores.

“Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn’t been able to get business out of it,” said Gerhard Fasol, president of the Tokyo-based IT consulting firm, Eurotechnology Japan.

The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galápagos syndrome.

Japan’s cellphones are like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galápagos Islands — fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins — explains Takeshi Natsuno, who teaches at Tokyo’s Keio University.

This year, Mr. Natsuno, who developed a popular wireless Internet service called i-Mode, assembled some of the best minds in the field to debate how Japanese cellphones can go global.

“The most amazing thing about Japan is that even the average person out there will have a superadvanced phone,” said Mr. Natsuno. “So we’re asking, can’t Japan build on that advantage?”

The only Japanese handset maker with any meaningful global share is Sony Ericsson, and that company is a London-based joint venture between a Japanese electronics maker and a Swedish telecommunications firm.

And Sony Ericsson has been hit by big losses. Its market share was just 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009, behind Nokia of Finland, Samsung Electronics and LG of South Korea, and Motorola of Illinois.

Yet Japan’s lack of global clout is all the more surprising because its cellphones set the pace in almost every industry innovation: e-mail capabilities in 1999, camera phones in 2000, third-generation networks in 2001, full music downloads in 2002, electronic payments in 2004 and digital TV in 2005.

Japan has 100 million users of advanced third-generation smartphones, twice the number used in the United States, a much larger market. Many Japanese rely on their phones, not a PC, for Internet access.

Indeed, Japanese makers thought they had positioned themselves to dominate the age of digital data. But Japanese cellphone makers were a little too clever. The industry turned increasingly inward. In the 1990s, they set a standard for the second-generation network that was rejected everywhere else. Carriers created fenced-in Web services, like i-Mode. Those mobile Web universes fostered huge e-commerce and content markets within Japan, but they have also increased the country’s isolation from the global market.

Then Japan quickly adopted a third-generation standard in 2001. The rest of the world dallied, essentially making Japanese phones too advanced for most markets.

At the same time, the rapid growth of Japan’s cellphone market in the late 1990s and early 2000s gave Japanese companies little incentive to market overseas. But now the market is shrinking significantly, hit by a recession and a graying economy; makers shipped 19 percent fewer handsets in 2008 and expect to ship even fewer in 2009. The industry remains fragmented, with eight cellphone makers vying for part of a market that will be less than 30 million units this year.

Several Japanese companies are now considering a push into overseas markets, including NEC, which pulled the plug on its money-losing international cellphone efforts in 2006. Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba and Fujitsu are said to be planning similar moves.

“Japanese cellphone makers need to either look overseas, or exit the business,” said Kenshi Tazaki, a managing vice president at the consulting firm Gartner Japan.

At a recent meeting of Mr. Natsuno’s group, 20 men and one woman crowded around a big conference table in a skyscraper in central Tokyo, examining market data, delivering diatribes and frequently shaking their heads.

The discussion then turned to the cellphones themselves. Despite their advanced hardware, handsets here often have primitive, clunky interfaces, some participants said. Most handsets have no way to easily synchronize data with PCs as the iPhone and other smartphones do.

Because each handset model is designed with a customized user interface, development is time-consuming and expensive, said Tetsuzo Matsumoto, senior executive vice president at Softbank Mobile, a leading carrier. “Japan’s phones are all ‘handmade’ from scratch,” he said. “That’s reaching the limit.”

Then there are the peculiarities of the Japanese market, like the almost universal clamshell design, which is not as popular overseas. Recent hardware innovations, like solar-powered batteries or waterproofing, have been incremental rather than groundbreaking.

The emphasis on hardware makes even the newest phones here surprisingly bulky. Some analysts say cellphone carriers stifle innovation by demanding so many peripheral hardware functions for phones.

The Sharp 912SH for Softbank, for example, comes with an LCD screen that swivels 90 degrees, GPS tracking, a bar-code reader, digital TV, credit card functions, video conferencing and a camera and is unlocked by face recognition.

Meanwhile, Japanese developers are jealous of the runaway global popularity of the Apple iPhone and App Store, which have pushed the American and European cellphone industry away from its obsession with hardware specifications to software. “This is the kind of phone I wanted to make,” Mr. Natsuno said, playing with his own iPhone 3G.

The conflict between Japan’s advanced hardware and its primitive software has contributed to some confusion over whether the Japanese find the iPhone cutting edge or boring. One analyst said they just aren’t used to handsets that connect to a computer.

The forum Mr. Natsuno convened to address Galápagos syndrome has come up with a series of recommendations: Japan’s handset makers must focus more on software and must be more aggressive in hiring foreign talent, and the country’s cellphone carriers must also set their sights overseas.

“It’s not too late for Japan’s cellphone industry to look overseas,” said Tetsuro Tsusaka, a telecom analyst at Barclays Capital Japan. “Besides, most phones outside the Galápagos are just so basic.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Collaborating for Profits in Nanotechnology

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
Ivo Atanasov of the Electron Imaging Center for Nanomachines at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. The institute allows start-ups to use its machines.

July 16, 2009
Entrepreneurial Edge
By JAMES FLANIGAN

THE economic news in California has been pretty bleak lately. Its businesses, small and large, are becalmed by the recession. The state has taken to issuing i.o.u.’s in the wake of political wrangling over how to resolve a $26 billion budget deficit. Most ominous, the state’s once-great public universities and its community colleges and local schools face budget cuts that amount to critical surgery.

Yet in the midst of all that, there is a promise for the future in the collaboration by California’s university research centers, small companies and venture finance firms in an emerging area called nanotechnology.

Working with materials that are a thousandth the diameter of a human hair, nanotechnology companies do not produce finished products in any one industry. Rather, nano particles improve performance and open new possibilities in activities as varied as water purification, biomedicine, battery power, environmental repair and agriculture.

The universities have been essential in this development process. In some cases, they make direct equity investments in start-up companies. Other times, universities grant licenses to their research and give small companies access to expensive laboratory equipment in return for user fees. And some universities have set up incubators where small companies develop technological products and processes.

Why are universities investing scarce budget cash in start-up companies? “Partnerships with private industry are a way of making this new technology available for public benefit,” said Leonard H. Rome, interim director of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Also, in times of strained budgets, such partnerships bring needed funds. The NanoSystems Institute, Mr. Rome said, “has attracted more than $350 million in research and development grants from industry.”

Moreover, the new nanotechnology industry demands interdisciplinary collaboration. “The medical school needs to be collaborating with the engineering school,” said Mr. Rome, who is also senior associate dean of research at the university’s School of Medicine. In fact, the institute was first authorized in 2000 as part of a $100 million grant from the state of California to spur university research.

Examples from several universities and fledgling companies demonstrate the potential. NanoH2O Inc., for instance, uses nano materials to improve the performance of reverse osmosis membranes in making dirty water clean or in desalination. Two years ago, the company licensed the membrane research of Eric Hoek, a professor of environmental engineering at U.C.L.A. Then it leased lab space in the NanoSystems Institute, which opened in 2007, because being at U.C.L.A. allowed the company to use expensive electron microscopes and other equipment.

“Being able to use the core facilities of the university couldn’t help but accelerate our progress,” said Jeff Green, chief executive of NanoH2O. It also helped attract $20 million in venture capital from Oak Investment Partners and Khosla Ventures. Now, NanoH2O is moving to a factory where it can manufacture membranes composed partly of nano-size elements of alumina and silicon. The membranes filter out salts and impurities yet allow water to flow faster, thus saving energy in desalination or water reuse processes.

Matrix Sensors Inc. is a new tenant at the NanoSystems Institute. The company is developing nano membranes that are so sensitive to resonance they can detect molecules of bacteria as well as proteins and DNA and thus diagnose early stages of illness. Matrix Sensors is working on licensed research of three professors, James K. Gimzewski of U.C.L.A., and Calvin F. Quate and Butros T. Khuri-Yakub of Stanford University. U.C.L.A. and Stanford have invested in the company, along with Miramar Venture Partners of San Diego, which has put in $1 million. That is a sign, said Michael Cable, chief executive of Matrix, that investors, even in the recession, are supporting nanotechnology.

QuantumSphere Inc., in Santa Ana, Calif., is approaching nanotechnology on a broad scale by making an array of catalysts that allow batteries to operate for longer periods, electronic displays to be manufactured at lower costs and ammonia fertilizers to be produced using less energy while also generating less carbon dioxide.

“It’s not a question of making nano materials alone but what applications are you using nano for,” said Kevin D. Maloney, president of QuantumSphere, a seven-year-old company that got its start with $100,000 investment from two angel investors: Jon Faiz Kayyem, a trustee of California Institute of Technology, and Marc H. Goroff, who has a doctorate from Caltech and is the founder of several companies.

The reason infinitesimal nano particles can give batteries more power is, paradoxically, “that at the nano stage there are more atoms available on the surface of a molecule proportionate to its volume, so there are more active atoms to store and release electricity,” said Douglas Carpenter, co-founder and senior science adviser of QuantumSphere. Mr. Carpenter designed rocket fuel for aerospace companies for many years and helped invent Quantum’s nano catalysts.

“At the nano level, elements change their properties,” Mr. Carpenter explained. Aluminum, for instance, cannot burn at micron levels, or one millionth of a meter, but burns and gives off an intensely glowing light at nano levels, or one billionth of a meter. QuantumSphere gets to do research on powerful microscopes and other equipment at the University of California, Irvine, paying fees to the university for each use. It has raised $17 million from private equity and venture funds, including $2 million from OM Group Inc., a specialty chemicals company based in Cleveland.

In an example of global collaboration, Rachid Yazami, research director of France’s National Center for Scientific Research, has done his work on battery technology since 2000 at Caltech. He is co-founder along with a Caltech professor, Robert H. Grubbs, of CFX Battery Inc., of Azusa, Calif., which makes lithium ion batteries that can power electric cars, medical devices, mobile phones and computers. The technology transfer office at Caltech invested in CFX and helped raise $15 million to get the company started.

“But lithium is expensive and coming into short supply,” Mr. Yazami said. So he is trying to develop a battery powered by nano particles of sodium and water. “You know the work of Jules Verne,” Mr. Yazami asked, referring to “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” “He wrote of using seawater as a battery.”

A Virtual Game to Teach Children Languages

July 16, 2009, 1:20 am

By Claire Cain Miller

The star video game developer behind Age of Empires has turned his gaming talents to something new: teaching children languages.

Wiz World Online, developed by 8D World, a start-up based in Shanghai, China, and Woburn, Mass., was built by Rick Goodman, who developed the popular games Age of Empires and Empire Earth. In his latest virtual world, instead of re-enacting historical battles, Chinese children can learn English.

Alex Wang, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, said the idea grew out of his personal experience landing at the San Francisco airport on his first visit from China, 21 years ago, when he was in his 20s.

Though he had studied English for years and scored well on the written part of the GRE test, he discovered that he could not read the McDonald’s menu in the airport, nor could he converse with the server. Alhough he was hungry, “I was never in that kind of conversation before, and I ended up with a jumbo Coca-Cola with tons of ice,” he recalled.

“Hundreds of millions of people experience the same problem worldwide, particularly in Asia,” he said. “People study languages, but cannot talk, cannot communicate.”

The biggest problems, he said: children studying languages do not get to practice the language in their daily lives, they do not get much attention from teachers in large classrooms and they are often afraid to make mistakes when they do try to speak different languages.

Those are the problems that Wiz World Online aims to solve. Kids choose an avatar and pick a scene, like a castle in a fantasy land or a supermarket in the United States. They are confronted with challenges, like dodging flying monsters or buying fruit, all of which ask them to use English. If they hit a ceiling in their language capabilities, they go to the wizards’ library and read so-called magical books that teach them lessons.

The company is initially focusing on kids age 7 to 12 in China but plans to expand globally, eventually teaching many different languages to kids all over the world.

Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are increasingly interested in Web companies that have to do with education, an area they say has not yet been transformed by the Internet.

“The fundamental education business models are coming down,” said Alex Finkelstein, a general partner at Spark Capital, which led a $7 million venture capital round for 8D World.

Only a few years ago, he said, people did not think education could be done on the Web, but companies like Rosetta Stone, a language learning Web company that went public this year, has proven them wrong. “Those are educational products that not only teach people but are becoming very very big, profitable companies,” he said.

Mr. Goodman and Mr. Wang met at Boston Post Mortem, a group of game developers that meets regularly. They started the company in 2007 but kept its educational purpose a secret. Some bloggers guessed that it would be a massive, multi-player fantasy world. This summer, they unveiled Wiz World Online in Shanghai.

Though China has cracked down on some Internet companies, Mr. Finkelstein called the Chinese government “our best distribution partner.” Shanghai public schools are using Wiz World Online in classrooms and in July, the Shanghai government will launch the Wiz World Cup, an oral English competition.

Wiz World Online is free for now as it works out the kinks, but the company plans to charge $120 to $150 a year for subscriptions starting in September. Down the road, the company could also make money selling virtual goods or sponsorships to advertisers, Mr. Finkelstein said.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Twitter Hack Raises Flags on Security

July 16, 2009

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and BRAD STONE

SAN FRANCISCO — You might think your password protects the confidential information stored on Web sites. But as Twitter executives discovered, that is a dangerous assumption.

The Web was abuzz Wednesday after it was revealed that a hacker had exposed corporate information about Twitter after breaking into an employee’s e-mail account. The breach raised red flags for individuals as well as businesses about the passwords used to secure information they store on the Web.

On Web sites containing personal information like e-mail, financial data or documents, there is usually just a user name and password for protection. More individuals are storing information on Web servers, where it is accessible from any online computer through services offered by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, social networks like Facebook or back-up services like Mozy.

But password-protected sites are growing more vulnerable because to keep up with the growing number of passwords, people use the same simple ones on numerous sites across the Web. In a study last year, Sophos, a security firm, found that 40 percent of Internet users use the same password for every Web site they access.

The attack on Twitter highlights the problem. For its internal documents, the company uses the business version of Google Apps, a service that Google offers to individuals free. Google Apps provides e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and calendars over the Web.

The content is stored on Google’s servers, which can save time and money and enable employees to work together on documents at the same time. But it also means that the security is only as good as the password. A hacker who breaks into one person’s account can access information shared by friends, family members or colleagues, which is what happened at Twitter.

The Twitter breach occurred about a month ago, Twitter said. A hacker calling himself Hacker Croll broke into an administrative employee’s e-mail account and gained access to the employee’s Google Apps account, where Twitter shares spreadsheets and documents with business ideas and financial details, said Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder.

The hacker then sent documents about company plans and finances, confidential contracts, and job applicants to two tech news blogs, TechCrunch, in Silicon Valley, and Korben, in France. There was also personal information about Twitter employees including credit card numbers.

The hacker also broke into the e-mail account of the wife of Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, and from there accessed several of Mr. Williams’ personal Internet accounts, including those at Amazon and PayPal, Mr. Stone said.

TechCrunch revealed documents showing that Twitter, a private company that so far has no revenue, projected that it will reach a billion users and $1.54 billion in revenue by 2013. Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder, said in an interview that the hacker had also sent him detailed strategy documents about potential business models, the competitive threat from Facebook and when the company might be acquired.

Some analysts say the breach highlights how dangerous it can be for people and companies to store confidential documents on Web servers, or “in the cloud.”

But Mr. Stone said that the attack “isn’t about any flaw in Web apps,” but rather about a bigger issue that affects individuals and businesses alike. “It speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords,” he said.

Instead of circumventing security measures, it appears that the Twitter hacker managed to correctly answer the personal questions that Gmail asks of users to reset the password.

“A lot of the Twitter users are pretty much living their lives in public,” said Chris King, director of product marketing at Palo Alto Networks, which creates firewalls. “If you broadcast all your details about what your dog’s name is and what your hometown is, it’s not that hard to figure out a password.”

Security experts advise people to use unique, complex passwords for each Web service they use and include a mix of numbers and letters. Free password management programs like KeePass and 1Password can help people juggle passwords for numerous sites.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, a network security company, suggested choosing false answers to the security questions like “What was your first phone number?” or making up obscure questions instead of using the default questions that sites provide. (Of course, that presents a new problem of remembering the false information.)

For businesses, Google allows company administrators to set up rules for password strength and add additional authentication tools like unique codes.

The Twitter hacker claims to have wanted to teach people to be more careful. In a message to Korben, the hacker wrote that his attack could make Internet users “conscious that no one is protected on the Net.”

The (True?) Story Behind Facebook's Founding

Ben Mezrich - Lynn Goldsmith / Corbis

Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009 - By Kristi Oloffson

Facebook has long been viewed as the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the social-networking juggernaut that has garnered more than 200 million users in five short years. But Ben Mezrich, author of the 2003 smash hit Bringing Down the House, wants to make sure readers learn a few more of the names behind Facebook's runaway success — including that of Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg's former best friend and an original Facebook co-founder, and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the classmates who originally hired Zuckerberg to code a website of their own.

In Accidental Billionaires — The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, Mezrich, a 1991 Harvard grad, traces the company's progress from its 2004 origins in a beer-soaked dorm room to the worldwide phenomenon it has become. The book, which is labeled nonfiction and has already been optioned for a movie, uses some of the same controversial literary techniques Mezrich deployed in Bringing Down the House, including re-created dialogue, imagined details and compressed conversations. He talked with TIME about his controversial methods, why he considers himself a journalist and how Facebook is permanently shaping our lives — whether we like it or not.

TIME: One thing you don't really get into in the book is how you came upon the story and why you chose to write about it. Can you tell me how you got to know Saverin?
Mezrich: I got an e-mail at 2 in the morning one night from a guy named Will McMullen, who was a senior at Harvard [when Facebook was founded]. He was just shooting an e-mail out to me saying one of his good friends co-founded Facebook, and would I be interested in the story?

I was immediately intrigued. I met the kid for a drink, and he showed up with this geeky, gawky kid who ended up being Eduardo. Eduardo and Mark [Zuckerberg] had been best friends before their friendship fell apart, and I thought there was a pretty cool drama in that. (Read "Is Your Facebook Account a Gold Mine for Identity Thieves?")

And you weren't able to get Zuckerberg to speak with you for the book?
No, Mark opted not to talk to me. You know, he was nervous. I think Facebook as a whole was kind of terrified about what I might write. It takes place in his sophomore year, and there's a lot of semi-scandalous stuff in the book. In truth, I'm a big fan of Mark's. But this is a story they didn't want told.

As you write in your author's note, you've re-created dialogue, changed or imagined details and compressed conversations. Why did you decide to use those techniques?
My style is this sort of immersion journalism, where I go inside the story and build it as a thriller, as a narrative. There are a lot of journalists who don't get what I do. They don't understand my style, or they're frustrated by it. And sometimes they're quite angry about it, which is funny. I re-create the story. It's a true story. It's nonfiction.

But in certain scenes and certain instances, I have multiple sources and many pages of documentation — like thousands of pages of court documents. [While] creating the scene from those documents and from opposing views of what actually happened, I have to choose what I believe really happened. And I'm very clear about that. When I get into a scene that I know I'm working off of documents or a lot of different opinions, I say, "This is what probably happened." My audience understands what I do and likes the way I write these narratives. I think as a whole, this book is nonfiction. I don't think anybody could look at it and say differently.

Do you consider yourself a journalist?
I mean, in a way. I'm a different sort of journalist than someone who writes a textbook or someone who writes a documentary. I write a form of journalism that I think a few people are doing. Go back to Michael Lewis or Sebastian Junger, or all the way back to Hunter S. Thompson. I think I see myself as that sort of journalist — someone's who telling a true story, but in an entertaining way. (Read "Can Computer Nerds Save Journalism?")

Did finding out what really happened change your perception of Zuckerberg in any way?
I don't really have an opinion [on the book's events]. I lay it out there, and I couldn't tell you whether or not Mark stole [the idea for Facebook] or not. I feel like there was definitely a reason for each one to have the view that they had. My opinion of Mark hasn't really changed. I think he's a genius. I think he started this massive company that's amazing. But I also think that socially, he's very unaware.

Was it hard to track down these characters to get the real story?
The way I write my books and my stories is, I really just go in there as someone who's just having a great time with them. It's not me with a notepad running around trying to get an interview. It's me hanging out with people who love Bringing Down the House, who want to talk about Vegas and want to go to Vegas, that kind of thing. It's a very different form of journalism, I think.

How do you see Facebook evolving as a business?
I honestly think we're just at the beginning of Facebook. Facebook is growing enormously. It's 200 million users and growing. I see no reason why it doesn't have a billion users in a couple years. And I really think it's going to become a lifestyle. In terms of revenue, they're growing and they're going to find a way to make real money. If everyone who's on Facebook paid a dollar a month for the service, they'd be one of the most profitable companies in the world. The more I've read about it and gotten inside of it, I think this is something that can be very life-changing. And the future will look differently because of Facebook.

Read "Facebook: Movement or Business?"

Read "How Facebook Is Affecting School Reunions."

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1910473,00.html

Google Voice Goes Mobile

July 15, 2009, 12:01 am

By Miguel Helft

Google Voice, the universal voice mailbox and call-routing service that Google rolled out in March, has always been accessible from mobile phones. Users dialed their Google Voice number and could access their voice mail or hit a button and be prompted to make a call.

But it was clunky, especially for placing calls. For example, users had to type in numbers they wanted to call, rather than accessing them directly from their address books.

Now Google is unveiling a mobile application that will address these kinds of problems. The app, which is only available for BlackBerrys and Android phones, will allow users to make calls directly from their phones. Those receiving the call at the other end will see the user’s Google Voice number, rather than their mobile phone number. Text messages will also appear to have been sent from a user’s Google Voice number.

These features have the potential to make Google Voice’s Internet calling service, a potential rival to Skype, far more useful.

The Google Voice app will also allow users to access their voice mail, to view message transcripts and have the app read them in what Google calls “karaoke style,” with the app highlighting the words being read.

The nifty new features will only be available to the limited number of Google Voice users. In June, the company said it was beginning to expand its user base by notifying people who had requested an invitation that they could sign up. A Google spokeswoman said the company was still working through a backlog of requests.

Google says it is working with Apple to bring its Google Voice app to the iPhone. In the meantime, iPhone users can access the service through their Web browser.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Intel’s Results Give Hope to Industry

July 15, 2009

By ASHLEE VANCE

The darkest time in the personal computer industry’s history may have ended.

In the last few months, hardware makers like Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Dell have suffered as one-fifth to one-quarter of their computer sales vanished. For the first time ever, Microsoft, the world’s largest PC software company, experienced a drop in sales of its Windows software and carried out large-scale layoffs.

As a result, analysts predicted that computer sales would decline at a rate four times greater than during the dot-com bust, the previous low-water mark.

But now there are signs that companies tied to the PC industry may stop setting unwelcome records.

On Tuesday, Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., reported second-quarter sales of $8 billion for the quarter ended June 30. While that was a far cry from the $9.5 billion it posted in the same period last year, it beat analysts’ expectations by $700 million.

And for the first time since the recession hit, Intel felt comfortable enough to provide a forecast for its current quarter, saying it expects revenue of $8.1 billion to $8.9 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earlier that Intel would post revenue of $7.8 billion this quarter.

“Our second-quarter results were clearly better than we expected,” said Paul S. Otellini, Intel’s chief executive, during a conference call with analysts.

In April, Mr. Otellini declared that he thought the PC slump had reached bottom, and the company’s recent financial results appear to confirm this.

As the world’s largest chip maker, Intel helps set the pace for the computing industry. For that reason, analysts keep a close eye on the company’s take on the overall market. Increases in the sales of Intel’s chips tend to translate into higher computer sales for H.P., Dell and others down the road.

Intel has warned that businesses remain cautious about buying new PCs given the still-limping global economy. Consumers have been the ones who are proving more willing to buy new computers, particularly laptops and their diminutive low-cost cousins, netbooks.

“We saw strengthening through June,” said Stacy J. Smith, the chief financial officer at Intel, during an interview. Intel expects the rising demand to carry over into the second half of this year.

Mr. Smith added that sales in Asia had picked up, particularly in China, and that sales in the United States were solid. Over all, however, the immediate fiscal conditions remain sobering for Intel.

During its second quarter, Intel’s net income fell to $1.0 billion from the $1.6 billion it reported during the same period last year. Intel earned 18 cents a share, down from 28 cents, beating analyst estimates by 10 cents.

Those figures exclude charges tied to a $1.45 billion fine levied against Intel by the European Commission for anticompetitive practices in the PC market. With the fine included, Intel posted a loss of $398 million, or 7 cents a share.

Still, Intel reported higher-than-expected gross margins and a quarter-to-quarter rise in sales of chips, lifted by healthier sales of laptop chips.

“I would say the worst is behind us,” said Srini Pajjuri, an analyst at Calyon Securities. But he warned that Intel’s strong results appeared to have come on the back of retailers and other sellers restocking in anticipation of higher demand in the coming months. For there to be a true PC recovery, those products will actually have to make their way into consumers’ hands.

“That’s the part we don’t know about,” Mr. Pajjuri said.

All of the major PC companies maintain hope that the release of Microsoft’s new version of its Windows software will coax businesses and consumers to upgrade their computers. The software, Windows 7, should reach the market in October.

“Hopefully, Windows 7 will be part of a catalyst,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, during a speech Tuesday. “Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.”

The PC doldrums have put intense pressure on some of the industry’s largest players. Dell, in particular, has had a steeper decline in sales than its main rivals, H.P. and Acer, because it is more dependent on PC shipments to business customers.

To bring its costs more in line with those of H.P. and Acer, Dell has spent much of the recession increasing its use of contract manufacturers to build its computers. That strategy runs counter to Dell’s traditional approach of producing PCs at its own factories.

“That stuff is behind us, and we have made those decisions,” said Brian T. Gladden, the chief financial officer at Dell, during a meeting Tuesday with analysts. “I think we have a path to do better here.”

Dell believes large businesses will begin upgrading their computers in the months to come. “Frankly, this PC refresh that we expect to happen will give us a nice path,” Mr. Gladden said.

Shares of Intel rose 2 percent to $16.83 ahead of the company’s earnings announcement. In after-hours trading, Intel’s stock jumped more than 7 percent to just above $18.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company