Alibaba Reaches Agreement With Yahoo, Softbank on Alipay Payment Schedules

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. reached an agreement yesterday with Yahoo! Inc. and Softbank Corp. (9984), its largest shareholders, ending a four-month spat over how to compensate investors after an ownership change in China’s most popular online-payment service.

Alibaba, which transferred the Alipay unit to a company controlled by Chairman Jack Ma last year, will get as much as $6 billion if Alipay sells shares to the public, according to a statement yesterday. Before any sale, Alibaba will receive 49.9 percent of Alipay’s earnings.

The deal leaves Alibaba, and by extension Yahoo and Softbank, with less access to the growth of the payments business. Yahoo’s shares had lost almost 30 percent of their value in the past three months on concern that its future in the booming Chinese market was at risk. The U.S. company disclosed the loss of Alipay in May, saying it only learned about the August 2010 transfer in March.

“The market had feared that Yahoo would be diluted, and I guess that fear has been realized,” said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida, who has a “hold” rating on the stock.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, fell 3 percent to $13.10 in New York trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Shares of Softbank fell 3.5 percent to 3,010 yen in Tokyo yesterday.
‘Little Visibility’

Alibaba will get at least $2 billion in the case of an IPO or “other liquidity event” at Alipay, according to the statement. Within the range of the agreement, the amount to be paid to Alibaba in such events will be calculated by multiplying Alipay’s equity value by 37.5 percent.

Before the transfer, Alibaba owned 100 percent of Alipay and all of its profit, and the agreement reduced both the ownership and the share of earnings, Doug Anmuth, an analyst at JPMorgan & Chase, who rates Yahoo “neutral,” said in a note today.

“In addition, there is very little visibility into the exact timing of an IPO,” he said.

Alipay will continue to offer payment services to Alibaba on preferential terms, the companies said in the statement. Alibaba will also license patents and technology to Alipay, for which Alipay will pay royalties.
‘Marginally Profitable’

The Alipay business is only “marginally profitable,” Joseph Tsai, chief financial officer of Alibaba, said in a conference call yesterday. The announcement is the culmination of a series of constructive discussions between Alibaba Group Management, Yahoo and Softbank, he said.

Ma said earlier this month that Yahoo, Softbank and Alibaba would receive “very large” compensation for the loss of the unit, according to an interview with the China Entrepreneur magazine. He has said that for three years Alibaba’s board had discussed the need to reorganize Alipay to comply with China’s restrictions on foreign investment in payment operators, and that the spinoff was “transparent” and “legal.”

Investors grew impatient with Yahoo after it announced May 10 the transfer of Alipay in a regulatory filing.

Greenlight Capital Inc., the hedge fund run by David Einhorn, sold its stake in Yahoo for a “modest loss” over doubts surrounding the value of the company’s investment in Alibaba, the firm said earlier this month. Greenlight had previously predicted that the China unit stake might be worth as much as Yahoo’s entire market value.
Bartz’s Turnaround

Yahoo’s main business, which Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz has been trying to turn around for more than two years, is under pressure from rivals such as Facebook Inc., the world’s most popular social-networking site. Yahoo is expected to cede its spot as the top seller of display advertising in the U.S. to Facebook this year, according to research firm EMarketer Inc.

Yahoo’s second-quarter results disappointed investors. Excluding sales passed on to partner sites, revenue was $1.08 billion, missing the $1.11 billion predicted by analysts, according to Bloomberg. Sales will be $1.05 billion to $1.1 billion in the current period, Yahoo said. That fell short of the $1.12 billion projected by analysts.

The new deal brings some closure to concerns about the Alibaba stake, said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Capital in New York.

“It’s great to have resolution and we can stop talking about it -- and start talking more about the Yahoo business,” said Schachter, who has a “neutral” rating on the stock. “But the reality of the Yahoo business is not something a lot of people want to talk about because it doesn’t look good.”

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Bill Gates sells 5m shares in Microsoft

Bill Gates sells 5 million shares to fund the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Bill Gates has sold another 5 million of his Microsoft shares, according to a regulatory filing.

Microsoft's multi-billionaire founder has been selling shares in recent months. He is the company's non-executive chairman, having stepped back from running the software firm in 2008 to concentrate on his charity work.

According to the filing, Gates sold 5m shares in Microsoft at an average $27.59 each on July 27. He has sold more than 90m Microsoft shares in the past 12 months.

Gates still has more than 500m shares in the company, but has decreased his shareholding over the last two years to fund his charitable endeavours and to diversify his portfolio.

This week the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it was making $42m available for eight universities to develop a toilet that does not need a sewer connection, water or electricity to operate. The ain is to improve people's health in parts of the world where there are few if any flushable toilets.

He is also backing research into improving education. "Every student needs a meaningful credential beyond high school," Gates said in a speech last week. "Higher education is crucial for jobs," he said, calling education an equaliser in society and the answer to getting urban America back to work and fighting poverty.

Forbes magazine estimates Gates's fortune at $56bn. Once the world's richest man, he is now second to Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim after giving away a large chunk of his fortune to his charity.

Gates and long-time friend Warren Buffett have pledged to give away the majority of their fortunes to charity before their deaths, and have convinced a host of other billionaires, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, to follow suit.

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Microsoft ordered to pay dollar 70 million to Alcatel

The US software giant had been ordered to pay dollar 358 million to Alcatel-Lucent by a different court but the damages award was thrown out on appeal.

The US appeals court upheld the lower court’s ruling that Microsoft had infringed a patent involved with selecting the date in Outlook and other programs but asked for a recalculation of the damages in the case.

The new jury, sitting in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, ruled Friday that Microsoft should pay dollar 70 million for infringing a patent held by Lucent Technologies.

Microsoft was found to have infringed the Lucent patent between January 2003 and December 2006 in versions of Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Money and Windows Mobile.

The firm then known only as Lucent filed a 15-patent suit in 2003 against computer makers Dell and Gateway for allegedly selling machines with Microsoft software that used Lucent technology without permission.

Microsoft weighed into the case to protect its partnerships with computer makers and to stop the litigation from being broadened to other companies using Microsoft software.

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Apple, Google and Microsoft revalue smartphone DNA

A battle royale has recalibrated the market for smartphone DNA. With Apple, Google and Microsoft duking it out for control of the mobile market, each needs or desires more and better patents for supremacy. Without them, their devices are vulnerable to shakedowns for royalties or, worse, demands to stop using the innovations. This has sparked a mad dash to acquire such portfolios -- for use as both a saber and a shield.

The auction of some 6,000 patents from bankrupt Nortel in late June lit the fuse. Google's stalking-horse bid set a floor price of $900 million. But when the gavel came down, a group including Apple and Microsoft, as well as Ericsson, Research In Motion and others, walked off with the portfolio for an unexpected fortune of $4.5 billion. Since then, InterDigital, an owner of wireless intellectual property, put itself up for sale and Carl Icahn, the uppity 75-year-old billionaire, has pressured Motorola Mobility to sell its patent portfolio. And Google recently bought over 1,000 patents from IBM covering multiple areas of technology to bolster its relatively weak war chest.

The valuation calculus has changed, and quickly. Such patents, which cover everything from app icons to address books, could very well dictate the future of the rapidly growing smartphone market. Though once appraised almost exclusively based on their royalty streams, mobile-related patents now command healthy strategic premiums.

Qualcomm helps to illustrate the point. The wireless chip maker owns an important collection of patents for next-generation 4G handsets. But with a $95 billion market capitalization, no one will be swooping in for a Qualcomm takeover any time soon. Its value -- and therefore presumably that of its patent portfolio, too -- has hardly budged since the Nortel auction. Yet InterDigital's has soared more than 60 percent and Motorola Mobility's rose more than 20 percent on Icahn's demand, before falling back somewhat.

Potential buyers secure two major benefits from adding to their collection of patents. First, the new owner pays fewer royalties and can make itself subject to fewer lawsuits. More importantly, tolls can be levied on rivals. Microsoft is asking Samsung to pony up as much as $15 for each device using Google's Android software because of alleged infringement. With so many millions of phones being manufactured monthly, the cash can add up.

The fees can also reduce a phone's consumer appeal. An iPhone, say, might wind up costing less than a rival device or have more features because of fewer patent considerations. More significantly, in lieu of earning a small patent royalty fee from a customer buying a rival phone, Apple could instead perhaps pocket 10 times as much profit upfront from an iPhone sale, and earn potentially much more from advertising, music, app and other sales.

The winner-take-all nature of technology also plays a part. If control of intellectual property can nudge customers toward a particular smartphone, it might establish the shape of the market for a decade. That could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Just look at what the rollout of the iPhone did to Apple's market capitalization.

That explains why Google might dig deep to acquire InterDigital's or Motorola's intellectual property -- and why Microsoft and Apple would be equally amenable to paying up to keep it out of the hands of rivals. The three tech giants combined do have more than $160 billion of cash on their balance sheets.

With big buyers willing to pay over the odds, it's no wonder Icahn has pushed Motorola to sell its portfolio and InterDigital is shopping itself. Motorola has more than 17,000 patents, mostly in wireless. InterDigital, meanwhile, has 50 percent more patents than Nortel did, yet its market value is less than $3 billion when adjusted for its cash.

Even with the renewed fever for patents, there may yet be roadblocks to acquisitions. Motorola is an operating company. Selling its portfolio could leave it without an armory to protect its handset operations against lawsuits from rivals. Structuring a deal could prove exceedingly knotty.

As for InterDigital, and other similar patent holders, it's a question of whether the inventions are sufficiently important. Can they, for example, be used to block Nortel's? Assessments vary. After all, analyzing thousands of patents is a complex undertaking. The future of smartphones is still rapidly evolving. The value of a 4G patent depends on how fast operators roll out the standard.

Either way, the final answers will almost certainly come from the executive suites of Google, Microsoft and Apple. Where they go, the future value of patents will follow.

CONTEXT NEWS
-- Google purchased more than 1,000 patents from IBM in mid-July. They covered areas ranging from database software design to making Web searches more efficient. This news was first reported by the blog SEO by the Sea.

-- Motorola Mobility shares gained more than 20 percent on July 21 after activist investor Carl Icahn urged the wireless company to consider shopping its portfolio of patents. The company holds more than 17,000 of them, mostly in the areas of wireless and cable technologies.

-- InterDigital, which owns some 9,000 patents, many of which relate to mobile phones, said on July 19 it was considering a sale of the company. Since the announcement, the company's market capitalization has increased nearly 75 percent to $3.3 billion.

-- A consortium made up of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony paid $4.5 billion for 6,000 patents and patent applications held by Nortel, the networking company said on June 30.

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Google+ Passes First Tests, but Challenges Remain

Showered with intense praise and criticism during its first month out in a limited beta trial, Google+ has eluded the failures of other Google social networking efforts, but it's too early to tell if it will fulfill its ultimate mission as a Facebook slayer.

Compared with Google Buzz, the Twitter-like service that ignited a disastrous privacy firestorm, and Orkut, the seven-year-old social networking site popular mainly in Brazil and India, Google+ represents an initial victory for the company.

Google+ has had privacy glitches, but none of a Buzz magnitude, and some early adopters have criticized Google for deleting profiles set up by organizations and by individuals using pseudonyms, both of which are currently prohibited.

Critics have also grumbled that the world's foremost expert on search hasn't found the time to add a search function in Google+, and others are bewildered that the developer-friendly company hasn't yet made it possible for them to create third-party Google+ tools and applications.

However, on the whole, Google+ has emerged from a first month of close scrutiny in fairly good shape, certainly positioned to continue pursuing its goal of triggering a mass exodus of Facebook members.

Of course, accomplishing that is far from a sure thing at this point, and it remains to be seen if the average Facebook user will find Google+ to be a compelling enough alternative to justify the effort of moving their online social activities from one site to the other.

Not that it hasn't happened before, as the collapse of the once-mighty MySpace proves, but Facebook's dominance in social networking is unprecedented, with 750 million members whose average time spent on the site continues to rise.

"It's very early to tell whether Google+ will appeal only to a group of insiders who like to use it a lot, which is the case with Twitter, or whether it will become a broad threat to Facebook," said Forrester Research Senior Vice President Josh Bernoff.

Google+ has so far exceeded Bernoff's expectations. Meanwhile, Charlene Li, Altimeter Group founder, sees a clear potential for success in Google+. "It's got the whole package to take on Facebook," she said.

Sensing the threat, Facebook has been quick to respond to Google+, launching video chat to compete with Google+'s Hangout feature and reaching out to businesses interested in setting up a Facebook page, while Google scrambles to allow business profiles on its site.

Li predicts that Facebook changes and improvements will continue flowing out quickly, particularly in the area of managing friend lists, connections and content sharing, in response to Google+'s Circles feature.

Li expects that Facebook will make it easier to segment one's friend list into different groups, something that she finds is too complicated to do on the site now, and which Google+'s Circles makes much simpler.

She also forecasts that Facebook will begin to allow members to "follow" the public posts of others, the model popularized by Twitter and incorporated by Google into Circles.

Google+'s main selling point has been that, compared with Facebook, it simplifies privacy controls and gives people more confidence that they're sharing content with their intended audience.

Facebook takes exception to this knock, saying that its privacy settings give users granular, unparalleled control over their sharing. It is also not certain that the average user will take the time and effort to create multiple Circles, Bernoff said.

If most people don't take advantage of the Circles feature, that could remove a major reason for using Google+.

"In the long run, Circles matters only if people join Google+ and make the effort to put friends in different groups," he said. "It does put a maintenance burden on the user."

Despite Circles, Google is far from done addressing potential privacy issues with Google+, Bernoff said. Although it doesn't now, Google+ eventually will carry ads, feature business profiles and open up its platform to third-party developers, and Google will have to handle those in a privacy-sensitive way, he said.

"The minute Google brings in third-party participation, both from application developers and from marketers, you're going to see the potential for privacy violations, if it's done wrong," Bernoff said.

"So Google has the opportunity to build something similar to Facebook in a way that is more usable, but they could also screw it up," he said.

Privacy issues aside, success in social networking depends by definition on there being a critical mass of people on a site that others want to connect and interact with. The market is littered with cool services that never gained enough traction.

Hitwise reported that after weeks of skyrocketing growth, visits and time spent on Google+ dropped last week, a sign that some early arrivals to Google+, finding that their friends aren't there, have stopped checking it out.

Of course, that problem is a by-product of Google's decision to limit access to the site by allowing only people who are invited by current members or by Google. Once the site opens its doors to everyone, the issue could be moot.

Li also said that Google+'s "follow" model coupled with its allowance of long posts could help draw people to the site, regardless of whether their friends are on the site or not. The key is to get members to create compelling content others will want to follow.

"Can Google+ get enough people on it creating unique content that though you may be happy on Facebook, slowly but surely you may evolve some of your social activity to Google+, if only to follow someone there?" Li said.

Initial indications are promising, because already many in this first wave of about 20 million members are posting very interesting information, and the Google+ commenting feature is outstanding so it fosters exchanges and discussions, she said.

It's hard to tell how much ill will has been attached to Google+ over the business profile and pseudonym profile deletions. To its credit, Google addressed both controversies quickly.

It admitted it should have made business profiles a priority and said it has put their development on a fast track, hoping to open them up in the coming months.

Although it is sticking to its policy of requiring people to use their real names in personal profiles, it has made the process of dealing with infractions a friendlier one, providing more details to affected users and giving them a chance to appeal before deleting their profile.

Whatever ends up happening with Google+, end users are clear winners for now, Li said. Google is one of a few companies with the resources to attempt unseating Facebook, and its entry into the market adds an option and spurs competition and innovation.

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Skype update connects you deeper with Facebook

Skype has released the latest update to its online calling software for Windows, offering more options for Facebook users.

Officially out of beta since Wednesday, the latest Skype 5.5 for Windows lets you check which of your Facebook friends are online and available to chat, all without having to leave Skype. Simply clicking on the View menu in the Skype software and then choosing Facebook Friends shows you the list.

By clicking on and then closing the Skype Home screen, you can also update your Facebook status and scroll down to view your entire Facebook wall.

Beyond the Facebook integration, Skype says that its latest version offers improved controls for video and group calls for Windows, better call reliability, and various design changes in the interface.

For some reason, I was unable to directly update my current version of Skype (5.3) to 5.5. Clicking on the "Check for Updates" link in the Help menu told me I was already running the latest version. I had to manually download and install the 5.5 version to get the new update.

But once it was installed, I was able to use Skype 5.5 to view my online Facebook friends, access my wall, and post status updates just as easily as I could in Facebook.

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Facebook offers bounty to bug hunters

Facebook wants to give out $500

Facebook wants you to crush the bugs plaguing its online infrastructure – and it is willing to pay you a substantial amount of cash if you can. In an open letter published today, Facebook reps invited  researchers to pick through its site, and look for errors that "could compromise the integrity or privacy of Facebook user data," including scripting flaws and "remote code injections." Your reward? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $500.

In order to qualify for the bounty, users will have to abide by the Facebook "Responsible Disclosure" agreement, which asks researchers to "give [Facebook] a reasonable time to respond to your report before making any information public and make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data and interruption or degradation of our service during your research," etc.

Translation: If you find a problem with Facebook, let Facebook know, and give them time to fix that problem, instead of taking the problem straight to the court of public opinion. To help corral all these bug reports, Facebook is creating a portal for so-called White Hat researchers; as incentive, Facebook has already posted the names of folks who have already registered a "responsible" disclosure.

Sounds pretty good, right? But there are a few caveats: These bugs have to be native to the Facebook site, and not a third-party researcher. (FarmVille problems don't apply.) Also, Facebook is offering only one bounty for each bug; being late to the party won't count for anything. Of course, as Dan Goodin notes over at the Register, the bulk of folks cashing in on the Facebook bounties aren't going to be casual users. They are going to be weathered Web hands.

"The move comes as good news to legions of researchers who spend considerable time and expertise finding and reporting serious vulnerabilities in the websites and software they use," Goodin writes. "More often than not, they receive little more than a public acknowledgement in return. Microsoft, Oracle and virtually every other software manufacturer and website steadfastly refuse to pay for private bug reports, even though their products also benefit from it."

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Congress gathering debt-crisis feedback via Facebook

(CNN) -- As members of Congress navigate the shifting political sands of the debt-ceiling crisis, many of them are turning to a digital platform more associated with sharing personal updates and funny videos about cats: Facebook.

In recent days, lawmakers have swarmed the popular social network to post videos outlining their positions, conduct opinion polls, reach new constituents and ask for feedback.

"Over the past week, our team has seen a marked increase in the number of members of Congress speaking directly to constituents through their official Facebook pages," said Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications for Facebook.

The number of posts including video or radio snippets also has increased over the past week as lawmakers seek to engage their followers in new ways, Noyes added. As more members speak in front of C-SPAN's cameras, he said, "we fully expect to see the pace of these postings pick up."

All of House Speaker John Boehner's Facebook posts in the past two weeks have articulated his positions on the debt crisis. It's not clear whether they're nudging the needle of public opinion, but they are sparking dialogue: A message by Boehner on Monday drew more than 15,000 comments.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have used Facebook to rally opposition to Boehner's debt-ceiling bill. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, posted a C-SPAN clip of his comments from the House floor, while Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, asked Facebook users to sign his online petition urging Congress to adopt a "sensible" bipartisan solution.

Observers say politicians have embraced social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter because they allow them to communicate directly with constituents without having their messages altered.

"You can convey emotion in a Facebook update or a YouTube video. It offers an authenticity," said Brad Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to improving citizen engagement with Congress.

"They [lawmakers] aren't letting the dialogue be created by someone else. They're creating the dialogue," Fitch said. "And they are very excited about avoiding the pesky media."
You can convey emotion in a Facebook update or a YouTube video. It offers an authenticity.
--Brad Fitch

Some members of Congress are addicted to the instantaneous feedback they receive on Facebook and Twitter, Fitch said.

"Politicians long for public reaction, and they long to be loved," he said.

Members of Congress also use Facebook and Twitter to quickly rebut published reports or opponents' claims they disagree with.

One challenge of communicating through unfiltered social media -- especially on hot-button political issues -- is that comments can degenerate into name-calling or worse. On Friday Rep. Bobby Schilling, R-Illinois, had to remind his Facebook fans that profane, threatening or inappropriate comments would be deleted.

So does all this social-media messaging by Congress really influence public opinion?

Probably not, says Nick Judd, assistant editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, a website about the intersection of politics and technology.

"It seems that while the population of Americans on social media is large and growing, folks who talk politics on social media are already polarized. You could think of it a little bit like being at a large party where the political junkies are huddled up in a back corner, talking amongst themselves," he said.

"How much gets from that group to their apolitical friends, I don't know -- but one prevailing theory now is that Facebook in particular makes it hard to breach that barrier." Judd cited a recent book, Eli Pariser's "The Filter Bubble," which argues that Facebook tends to surround users with like-minded friends and shield them from opposing views.

That's not stopping politicians from turning to the social network to get their message out. A recent survey of congressional staffers by the Congressional Management Foundation found that nearly 75% think Facebook is "somewhat or very important" for communicating their members' views, followed closely by YouTube and less so by Twitter.

"Facebook has become a critical channel for government communication," Noyes said. "Politicians are only getting more creative with social media as the the debate over the debt ceiling and other crucial public-policy issues continue."

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JustHost Internet Hosting Approach – How To Set Up

I am certain that if you are going to this web page, you will be interested in Justhost. With a JustHost hosting  approach, it is quite straightforward to set up a web site with WordPress. It is designed to enable you with everything that you want in managing a weblog from set up to incorporating plug-ins. The subsequent are pointers and measures that you can engage in to setup your very own blog. With a domain identify and a JustHost account, all you need to have to do is log into your management panel. The following you will enter your username and password provided in your JustHost welcome e mail found in the handle panel part.

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Following that, you need to click on on the pop-up that says set up the WordPress and you will proceed to a page wherever you full the installation by clicking on the pop-up end set up. Plug-ins are also incredibly substantial in WordPress to increase functions this kind of as polls, research engine optimization, sitemap era, associated submit generators, login customizers and anything at all else that will raise effectiveness. You need to have dependability which you can get from JustHost blog site hosting.

To create the plug-ins, go to plug-ins and then click on on the option add new. There are useful ones that will automate a lot of processes to make your perform simpler. The concept can also be altered to match your blog site content material product. This you can achieve by clicking on the visual appeal icon in the sidebar on the left in the dashboard and then click on on install tab. The following you will get numerous alternatives to decide from that will make your subject material stand out.

This course of action offers no cost at all platforms that are offered on the web. When you use cPanel world wide web internet hosting account it gets straightforward to deploy the subject material administration systems. WordPress is well-liked and has been all-around for some time now and it presents an innovative podium and open up supply. This implies that it ought to be in a position to support builders to leap on the machine and generate jerks to the technique every time they demand features. JustHost internet hosting business provides set up sorcerers on the cPanel world wide web hosting user interfaces that will permit you to create a brand name new website. JustHost is an excellent alternative when putting in your website.

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Some Mistakes With Your Site Cloud Hostings Are Never Worth It

“Your target market is ultimately what creates or breaks your site, and which plus excellent site cloud hosting is about to serve you adequately in your business. Your site may win cloud hosting awards, some nevertheless whenever the content fails to satisfy your readers, and so those awards is about to incline to really not matter much method. This article is about to discuss some web cloud hosting mistakes which we feel allbody should acknowledge about. Good Cloud hosting is a should for your business. There should never be all guesswork involved when it comes to grasping the intention of your site. Whenever you have been overline much method, and so you have landed over sites which just sawmed a bit scattered. Basically all type of negative feeling induced by a site is about to not bode well for which visitor sticking around. As you acknowledge, overline readers do not commonly spend a lot of time reading because they skim text; so which implys your text has to be formatted to support which. One of the worst cloud hosting mistakes is to put huge chunks of content over your site which appear to be just like unreadable blocks.dedicated hosting cloud hosting hosting
business Articles over ArticleSnatch.com

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Washington Post website jobs section hacked

WASHINGTON — The Washington Post said Thursday that a hacker had gained access to nearly 1.3 million email addresses and user IDs on its online jobs section.

The Post said no passwords or other personal data were compromised in the attack on the jobs section of WashingtonPost.com which occurred last week.

"We quickly identified the vulnerability and shut it down, and are pursuing the matter with law enforcement," the Post said. "We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience."

The Post said users of the jobs site were informed of the incident by email and told to beware of unsolicited emails that try to trick them into giving up personal information such as credit cards, passwords or bank account numbers.

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Google+: Google Reverses Its Social-Network CurseGoogle+: Google Reverses Its Social-Network Curse

 With technology, as in the rest of life, eternal verities have a funny way of turning out not to be so eternal after all. For eons, everybody has known that Google is hopelessly inept when it comes to building social-networking services. Each one it has unveiled has seemed to confirm that truism, from Wave (shuttered 2½ months after opening to the public) to Buzz (still extant, but famous mostly for the uproar over its shoddy privacy practices).

Last week, the search-engine kingpin announced Google+, its latest attempt to muscle its way into the people-centric territory where Facebook and Twitter reign supreme. Rather than launch this offering with a prematurely triumphant media event like the ones it gave Wave and Buzz, Google alerted the world to Google+'s existence via a modest blog post and a few videos. Then it began a closed field test and let in a bunch of bloggers and journalists — some of the same folks who have delighted in bashing the company for its lack of social skills. And ... they liked it! A lot! (See pictures of the meteoric rise of YouTube.)

It's too early to declare Google+ a success. For one thing, it's still not fully open to the public. (Google has been admitting newcomers in small, sporadic batches; you can get on the waitlist at plus.google.com.) For another, it's an unapologetic work in progress. But it has enormous potential — both to be a cool online destination and to redefine the dynamics of the ongoing battle between the Web's biggest companies. Already, it's having an impact. Facebook unveiled a new person-to-person video-calling service in partnership with Skype this week, but the fact that Google+'s Hangout feature permits up to 10 people to chat via Webcam made Facebook's news less of a big whoop.

Google calls Google+ a "project," which is about right. It's not one thing but several of them loosely stitched together and with existing Google services like the Picasa photo-sharing service. Some of it is cribbed directly from Facebook. The Stream is Facebook's News Feed, Posts are the Wall, and the +1 button is a shameless imitation of the Facebook Like button that's been pressed billions of times all over the Web.

Google+ replicates only a fraction of Facebook, though, and it offers several things that Facebook doesn't — like Sparks, a special-interest search engine that helps you find stuff on the Web to share with your pals, with topics ranging from recipes to robotics. It also borrows a fundamental principle from Twitter rather than Facebook: you can follow other members without seeking their permission, and it's a unidirectional action that doesn't require them to follow you back. (Watch TIME's video "Quick and Easy Facebook Tricks.")

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, adding people in Google+ forces you to add them to one or more Circles, which are customizable clusters of related people — Google provides you with ones for Friends, Acquaintances, Family and Following, and you can add your own, such as Poker Buddies or Book-Club Members. Every time you share anything, you can limit it to specific Circles or individuals or both. (The mandatory organization is for your eyes only. If you decree that certain people are Acquaintances rather than Friends, they'll never know.)

At the moment, Google+'s population is so small and homogeneous that it's tough to properly evaluate Circles. But they could be a boon from both the standpoint of privacy and making Google+ a place where the conversation is relevant rather than random. Want to share photos of your kids with family members and nobody else? That's a cakewalk. So is discussing your high school reunion with just your classmates and not with co-workers who couldn't care less about it. It's a strikingly different emphasis than the one at Facebook, where privacy is possible but public sharing is clearly encouraged — and where repeated dustups over the company's handling of personal information have left some folks permanently cynical about its intent.

The way Circles look is as noteworthy as the way they behave. Google has given them an inventive user interface, masterminded by legendary software wizard Andy Hertzfeld, one of the inventors of the Macintosh. Friends and potential friends appear on tiny cards that you can drag into the appropriate Circle, whereupon the people in question spin into place like digits on a rotary-dial phone. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is fond of describing his brainchild as a "utility," and its look and feel are, indeed, utilitarian; Google+'s playful touches help give it its own character. (See why social networks are bad businesses.)

Right now, Google+ has a Garden of Eden feel about it, especially compared with the overdeveloped, uncontrolled sprawl of Facebook. It's inhabited primarily by Google+ enthusiasts who spend most of their time praising the service and suggesting ways to make it even better. Celebs and big-name brands have yet to discover it, and there are no distant cousins sharing videos of windsurfing pigs or allowing FarmVille to pelt you with auto-generated crop updates. Actually, there's no auto-generated anything on Google+: it consists entirely of items generated by a human being, which gives it a refreshingly humane, handcrafted flavor.

Google, of course, isn't interested in operating Google+ as a salon where a handful of agreeable geeks wax enthusiastic about Google+. The very name "Google+" indicates the audacity of its ambition: this could be the future of the whole company. So it's a safe bet that Google is going to stuff the service with new features. It's going to open the platform up so game companies and others can build apps on top of it. It's going to do everything in its power to deeply integrate Google+ with other Google offerings and encourage as many people as possible to give it a whirl.

For us charter Google+ members, that's a scary proposition: a fully fleshed-out version might devolve into a variant of Facebook. Nobody needs that. But if Google+ gets big without losing its personality, it would be good for both Google and consumers. Heck, it might even be good for Facebook, which could use the motivating power that only an archrival can provide. Consider the conventional wisdom about Google's social-networking incompetence shattered — and stay tuned.

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Schmidt preaches 'deep integration' desire with Facebook, Twitter As Google+ ambitions come into view

Google chairman Eric Schmidt reckons that Mountain View's decision to keep invites to its latest social network to a minimum is already starting to pay off for the company.

It announced Google+ last week, when it began a limited "field test" that was clearly done to make the project more desirable among the happy-clappy Web2.0 crowd.

In a chat with reporters at the annual Allen & Co media shindig in Sun Valley, Idaho, yesterday, Schmidt claimed that tons of requests were flooding in for access to the firm's unfinished Google+ product.

The company used the same tactic at the launch of its largely forgotten near real-time Google Wave communication tool. But after the initial frenzy to sign-up to the product died down, disappointed users quickly abandoned Wave. Down the line, so did Google.

Arguably Google+, coming after the ad broker learned some tough lessons from its failed, privacy-lite Buzz launch, is a much stronger contender in the popularity stakes, given that the company has already baked, for example, video chat dubbed "Hangouts" into the system.

Facebook announced this week that it had hooked up with soon-to-be-if-cleared-by-regulators-Microsoft-owned Skype, which is a clear acknowledgment that social networks need to get serious about VoIP.

Schmidt told the likes of Reuters and the Wall Street Journal that there was plenty of room for other social networks alongside Google+ to wiggle around in online.

He added that Google would "love to have deeper integration with Twitter and Facebook".

That's an interesting statement, given that Google reached a stalemate with Twitter late last week when its Realtime Search deal with the microblogging site ended without any renewal of contracts.

Similarly, in recent months the company has failed several times to penetrate Facebook's famously sealed-off network. Just this week, Mark Zuckerberg's company blocked a Google Chrome extension that allowed users to export information about their Facebook "friends" so that data could be funnelled into rival services.

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How to Strengthen Your Twitter Security in Four Clicks

As the team at Fox News discovered—to its chagrin—earlier this week, security lapses on social networks can have wide-ranging consequences.

As we reported, persons unknown took control of the Fox News Politics Twitter feed in the early hours of July 4th, and started trying to spread rumors that the president had been assassinated.

(MORE: Obama Dead Hoax Sweeps Twitter After Fox News Feed Hack)

Luckily most people saw through the ruse, but it didn't stop the #obamadead hashtag from spreading across the face of Twitter for many hours.

Today, security experts have declared Twitter less secure than some of its rivals, saying the lack of what's called "two-factor" or "two-step" authentication is a glaring error on Twitter's part.

If you're worried about losing control of your account, here are some things you can do to prevent it:

First, make sure you have a strong password and that it is different from your passwords on other services.

(WATCH: Two Minute Video: How to Create Strong Online Passwords)

Second, switch on the additional security that's available, but not active by default. Doing this is extremely easy:

Click 1: On your Twitter home page, click your username, shown in the top-right corner.

Click 2: In the menu that appears, click Settings.

Click 3: On the page that appears, scroll all the way to the bottom and look for a checkbox marked "Always use HTTPS" - make sure this is checked.

Click 4: Click the Save button at the bottom of the page.

That's it, you're done.

From now on, your connection to Twitter will be encrypted, adding a mighty useful extra layer of security between you and the service itself.

In response to today's accusations, Twitter did say that it intends to make this encrypted connection the default one day. But until that day comes, switching it on manually is the next best thing.

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Investigating Google

The Federal Trade Commission’s decision to open an investigation into potential anticompetitive or deceptive practices at Google is a welcome move. While the Internet company has been a leader in innovation, giving consumers exciting new choices online, the public’s interest lies in ensuring fair competition in this fast-changing arena.

There is no conclusive evidence that Google abuses its dominance in search by putting its own services, like YouTube, at the top of search results while shoving down competitors. Nonetheless, its aggressive expansion into new businesses, coupled with its ability to determine the all-important order of search results, warrants an increased level of scrutiny by regulators. Each new venture gives Google a new reason to use its tools to shut out rivals.

Take the company’s push into the smartphone market with its Android operating system. Skyhook Wireless, which provides location services to pinpoint the position of cellphone users, filed a suit late last year accusing Google of getting manufacturers like Motorola to break contracts with Skyhook and use Google location services on Android phones instead. It alleged Google made bogus claims that Skyhook’s system did not comply with Android specifications and that Google had threatened Motorola with denying it timely access to new versions of Android and other Google applications. Google declined to discuss the case but has called it “a baseless complaint” in court filings.

The F.T.C.’s investigation should look into Google’s behavior across all its businesses. Google’s argument that it must maintain the integrity of Android is plausible. So is its claim that it tweaks its search algorithm to improve the quality of its results — bumping down low-quality Web sites like link farms with no original content. Even favoring its own services, say delivering a Google map as a response to an address query, could serve consumers. The investigation will not necessarily lead to charges of misconduct. Google, however, is too important to most people’s Internet experience for regulators not to examine its behavior.

– New York Times

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Andy Coulson to be arrested over phone hacking

Andy Coulson has been told by police that he will be arrested on Friday morning over suspicions that he knew about, or had direct involvement in, the hacking of mobile phones during his editorship of the News of the World.

The Guardian understands that a second arrest is also to be made in the next few days of a former senior journalist at the paper.

Leaks from News International forced police to speed up their plans to arrest the two key suspects in the explosive phone-hacking scandal.

The Guardian knows the identity of the second suspect but is withholding the name to avoid prejudicing the police investigation.

Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's director of communications in January, was contacted on Thursday by detectives and asked to present himself at a police station in central London on Friday, where he will be told that he will be formally questioned under suspicion of involvement in hacking.

After being questioned by detectives from Operation Weeting – a process that could take several hours – the former rising star of News International is likely to be released on bail conditions that include appearing at court at a later date along with his three former colleagues who have already been arrested: Ian Edmondson, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherup.

The arrest will be embarrassing for Cameron, who consistently defended his decision to hire the controversial former journalist amid mounting evidence of his involvement in the hacking scandal.

Coulson was editor of the News of the World between 2003 and 2007. A close friend and deputy of the News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks when she edited the paper, Coulson resigned a few weeks before the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed after admitting intercepting messages on royal aides' phones.

In July of that year, he became the head of the Conservative party's media operation and then communications chief for the prime minister after the formation of the coalition government in May 2010.

He has always strenuously denied any knowledge of the illegal telephone hacking that is at the heart of the scandal rocking the Murdoch empire.

When he resigned in January from his Downing Street role, he insisted he had done so because persistent allegations that he must have known that his reporters had been hacking into voice messages had made it impossible for him to continue.

Coulson is one of three News of the World journalists whose evidence to the trial of Scottish MSP Tommy Sheridan is being examined after doubts were cast on his claim that he was unaware of any wrongdoing by News of the World journalists.Evidence leading to the two imminent arrests has come from a cache of emails recently uncovered during News International's internal investigation into phone hacking.

The arrests had been planned to take place before 8 August, when Operation Weeting had agreed to pass all the relevant material in their possession to lawyers acting in the civil cases against News International for victims of phone hacking – thereby giving suspects the opportunity to discover what evidence the police hold against them.

The Guardian understands News International had promised police they would not make public the existence of evidence identifying Coulson and the other journalist, but that detectives began to fear the information would be leaked, after reports appeared suggesting that Coulson approved payments to police officers.

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