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Internet News: Mystery buyer acquires vatican.xxx web address

Mystery buyer acquires vatican.xxx web address

REUTERS

Reuters US Online Report Oddly Enough

Dec 21, 2011 12:54 EST

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican said on Wednesday an unknown buyer had snapped up the internet address vatican.xxx, a domain combining its name with an extension reserved for pornographic content.

“This domain is not available because it has been acquired by someone else, but not the Vatican,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Vatican radio.

It was not clear from his statement if the Vatican had tried to acquire the domain in order to prevent future misuse and had been beaten to the punch by the unknown buyer.

Lombardi denied Italian media reports that the Vatican had, like many other organizations including companies, universities and museums, registered the xxx domain to prevent its misuse.

The xxx domains are being launched this month for pornographic content and many organizations have preemptively acquired them so others cannot.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Barry Moody)

Source: Reuters US Online Report Oddly Enough

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Saudi Prince Alwaleed buys Twitter stake

Saudi Prince Alwaleed buys Twitter stake

Sitaraman Shankar

Reuters US Online Report Technology News

Dec 19, 2011 18:15 EST

DUBAI (Reuters) – Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi billionaire and an investor in some of the world’s top companies, has bought a stake in microblogging site Twitter for $300 million, gaining another foothold in the global media industry.

Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s king who was estimated by Forbes magazine this year to have a fortune of over $19 billion, already owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp and plans to start a cable news channel.

Twitter was a key means of communication for protesters in the Arab Spring revolts this year, violence that threatened Saudi Arabia until the kingdom unveiled a populist $130 billion social spending package.

The Twitter stake, bought jointly by Alwaleed and his Kingdom Holding Co investment firm, resulted from “months of negotiations,” Kingdom said.

The investment was a secondary market transaction, meaning that Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding bought the Twitter shares from existing shareholders, rather than making a direct investment, according to a person familiar with the matter. The financing took place at around the same time as a $400 million venture-capital investment in Twitter that closed in September, but was part of a separately arranged transaction, another person familiar with the matter said.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo acknowledged the company was valued at $8 billion in the secondary markets in October, according to media reports, which would peg the size of Alwaleed’s investment at just under 4 percent.

Kingdom’s executive director Ahmed Halawani told Reuters that “substantial capital gain” was the motivation behind the investment, adding that there were no moves to ask for a board seat or influence strategy at Twitter.

Twitter, which allows people to send 140-character messages, or Tweets, to groups of followers, is one of the Internet’s most popular social networking services, along with Facebook and Zynga Inc.

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Featured Article: Galaxy and iPhone to top smartphone holiday sales

Galaxy and iPhone to top smartphone holiday sales

Tarmo Virki

Reuters US Online Report Technology News

Dec 16, 2011 08:10 EST

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Apple’s long-awaited iPhone 4S and Samsung Electronics’ fresh, broad offering are likely to stand out in this holiday season’s smartphone sales which will otherwise be clouded by global economic uncertainty.

Apple, which lost its position as the world’s largest smartphone maker to Samsung last quarter, could regain top spot as consumers rush to buy the latest iPhone after waiting 16 months since the previous model went on sale.

Like millions elsewhere, 36-year-old Vanessa Pigeon last week took up an offer from her telecom operator and replaced her aging Blackberry with the latest iPhone.

“I liked the design and I wanted to change for a long time,” said Pigeon, a recruitment official in Paris.

In neighboring Britain, which is often seen as the indicator for the rest of the European market, the iPhone took a whopping 43 percent market share in October, overtaking phones using Google Inc’s Android platform, according to research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

“It’s really only the iPhone family and the (Samsung) Galaxy family flying off the shelves. Everyone else is just picking up the leftovers,” said Neil Mawston, analyst at research firm Strategy Analytics in Milton Keynes, Britain.

HTC and Research In Motion — No.4 and No.5 smartphone vendors — have already warned of weak holiday sales. The year end is a key sales season for smartphone vendors as consumers often replace their models for the holidays.

Vendors are expected to sell a total of 142 million smartphones in October-December, up 42 percent from a year ago, according to a Reuters poll of analysts.

NO SANTA?

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Analysis: Could RIM’s survival mean abandoning the BlackBerry?

Analysis: Could RIM’s survival mean abandoning the BlackBerry?

Alastair Sharp and Pav Jordan

Reuters US Online Report Technology News

Dec 16, 2011 20:36 EST

TORONTO (Reuters) – It might seem like corporate heresy but an increasing number of technology investors and experts are asking whether Research in Motion needs to ditch its BlackBerry handset business to survive.

The idea that is gaining favor, albeit only among a minority of shareholders, would see the Canadian company fully open its secure and highly respected network to rival smartphone providers and concentrate on that business while getting out of the hardware game altogether through a sale.

Disappointing quarterly results, including a dismal outlook for Blackberry sales and word that RIM would delay the introduction of new devices, sent its shares down more than 11 percent to their lowest levels in almost eight years on Friday.

Just before those numbers were released, activist shareholder Jaguar Financial called on the company to sell its handset business and monetize its patent portfolio while retaining the high-margin services business. “Jaguar believes that the road map to value restoration lies in a sale of RIM whether as a whole or in separate parts,” it said.

RIM’s spidery, data-crunching network reaches behind corporate firewalls and taps into mobile networks globally.

The network, unique among handset makers, has been a cornerstone of the BlackBerry’s growth – with email and instant messages routed through RIM’s own enterprise servers and data centers, where it is encrypted and pushed out to subscribers.

There are no middlemen to intercept corporate or state secrets, or even the flirty chats of teenagers who love the free BlackBerry messaging.

TERMINAL DECLINE?

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App helps viewers shop while watching TV programs

App helps viewers shop while watching TV programs

Natasha Baker

Reuters US Online Report Internet News

Dec 05, 2011 05:03 EST

TORONTO (Reuters) – Looking for the dress you saw on a hit television show or the jerseys worn during a football game or soccer match? An iPad app aims to help viewers shop while watching TV.

Unlike television shopping channels, Watch with Ebay is a new feature in eBay’s iPad app that lets users buy items related to the program they’re currently viewing.

“The idea is to provide a new form of TV watching entertainment that includes the possibility of shopping and discovering interesting products people never would have discovered otherwise,” said Steve Yankovich, vice president of mobile at eBay.

After entering the network provider and channel, items related to the TV show, the actors, guests or teams in a sporting event surface within the app.

“We’ve seen that guys sitting around watching a sporting event will buy jerseys for the team they like,” Yankovich said. “And normally when you’re sitting around watching a sporting event on TV, you’re not really thinking about being in shopping mode. But that’s because no one presented it to you in a frictionless and pleasing way.”

A recent study by Yahoo/Nielsen found that 86 percent of smartphone and tablet owners use the devices while watching TV and 25 percent of them are searching for information related to the show.

“There’s already a natural thing happening where people are using their device like a companion to TV watching,” explained Yankovich.

Purchasing the item in a particular scene of a TV show isn’t possible yet, but that could change.

Yankovich said content providers are beginning to tag video frames with the items in those scenes, which will make it possible in the future.

“It will get down to actual product. It could literally be the brand name of clothing that each person is wearing in the scene, including the actual stock-keeping unit (SKU) for the piece of clothing,” he said.

When it happens the app could sync with the program to display the item in a scene of a show.

Yankovich said plans for the app are to provide recommendations based on the user’s shopping interests, whether it is watches, shoes or autographed memorabilia. When the items are related to the show they’re viewing, they will be featured on the screen.

“We will be your personal shopper paying attention so you don’t have to. You just lean back, watch TV and we show you stuff you care about on the app,” Yankovich said.

Source: Reuters US Online Report Internet News

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