Friendster to delete users' content by May 31

Attention, Friendster users: You have until May 31 to save your account contents including photos, testimonials, and blogs —or else you'll lose them in the social network's upcoming major reformat.

Friendster, a pioneer social networking site launched in 2002, issued the warning as it prepares a "new and improved version" in the coming weeks.

"Your Friendster account will not be deleted. You will still have the same email login and password in the new Friendster. Also, your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information. However, all the photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs, forums and groups that you may have now will no longer be part of your account by May 31, 2011," it said in its help forum.

To be preserved are the user's list of friends, along with basic profile information, wallet, and games.

But to help the user save his or her account content, Friendster offered an application to help download or export photos and blogs securely to third party sites, such as Flickr or Multiply.

Dubbed the Friendster Exporter, the app will be rolled out gradually and is now available for users inSingapore.

Users in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia can expect the app to be available in a few days after April 14, it added.

It said that the app will be available to all Friendster users before the end of April 2011.

Relaunching Friendster

Friendster was acquired in December 2009 by MOL Global, the parent company of Asia’s leading online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad.

Friendster said that it and MOL have been combined to create Asia's largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL's offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster's large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia.

But MOL CEO Ganesh Bangah explained that the new Friendster aims not to compete with, but instead to complement, Facebook.

Complementing Facebook

He noted that, while Facebook is a site where people can communicate with and find out what their real-life friends are doing, Friendster will be the place where people can meet new friends and play games and enjoy music with them. The pioneering social network will continue to innovate and be at the forefront of the social networking scene, he said in an article on ZDNet Asia.

Friendster said that its "new and improved" version will be focused on entertainment and fun, and will have new features to better enable users to connect with friends or engage new friends with similar interests.

"Our improved site is designed to create new profiles that allow you to connect differently with people and do things differently than other networking sites. Basically, the new site will complement your existing online presence in other social networking sites," the company said.

Popular in Asia

A July 15, 2010 article in the Global Post said that, while Friendster lost users in the United States to MySpace and Facebook in the mid-2000s, the social network exploded in the Philippines, where nearly half of its userbase is located.

It said that Friendster later spread to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Now, roughly 80 percent of Friendster’s 116 million users live in Southeast Asia, the report said. — TJD, GMA News

WD TV Live Hub

The WD TV Live Hub media centre puts all your personal entertainment right on the 1TB hard drive, so it's easily accessible. Enjoy music, videos, photos or even the stuff you love to watch on the Internet – an Ethernet connection makes it a cinch to get connected to your wired network, while Full HD playback lets you enjoy spectacular picture quality on your HDTV.

Product Features

Load up the high-capacity drive with all your media to create your own personal media jukebox. With just a few clicks, you can play your home movies, share vacation slideshows, and play your music on the big screen and sound system in your living room.

• Access popular Internet content from the comfort of your living room via wired network connection
• Full HD 1080p video playback makes this Hub the perfect partner for your compatible HDTV
• Use the programmable remote control to make your entertainment choices using animated navigation menus
• Play almost any type of media file; the WD TV Live Hub supports a wide variety of the most popular file formats including HD camcorder video formats (no need to spend time transcoding)
• Store all your media on the 1TB hard drive, and the Live Hub finds and categorizes it all and displays it in one easy-to-view menu system
• Copy, move or delete files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, your camcorder, or a camera to the Live Hub built-in drive using the on-screen menus
• Stream any file on the WD TV Live Hub media center to a WD TV Live Plus or WD TV Live media player or any DLNA/UPnP compatible TV, Blu-ray Disc player, or game console
• Powerful enough to handle multiple streams so you can stream a movie in one room, while viewing photos on your TV upstairs
• Cool, quiet and ultra-compact design
• Supports a wireless network connection to your home network with an optional USB wireless adapter (sold separately)
• HDMI 1.4, composite video and component video output 
• An optical audio output sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience

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Messi Facebook page draws over 6 million

Following tens of millions of other social media fans worldwide,Barcelona midfield star Lionel Messi set up a Facebook page on Wednesday.

In contrast to his electronic peers, however, within just a few hours his page had attracted more than six million followers.

Such popularity warranted a speedy response from the Argentina international.

"Welcome to everyone and thanks for all the messages you have been sending me. Now we shall be closer with Facebook," said the two-time world footballer of the year, whose followers come from all corners of the globe.

Messi, 23, was later hoping to help propel Barcelona towards the Champions League semi-finals with Barca taking on Ukraine's Shakhtar Donetsk at the Nou Camp Wednesday.

Assuming the three-time winners advance they will likely face La Liga rivals Real Madrid, 4-0 up from their first leg with Tottenham- a semi-final which will doubtless attract a welter of further posts from player and fans alike.

Greed and technology tempt insider trading culprits

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rooting out one dishonest investment banker amongst the hundreds who sign confidentiality agreements for a merger is virtually impossible despite the checks and balances banks put in place.

On Wednesday, U.S. federal prosecutors accused two men of running a 17-year conspiracy to trade on corporate merger secrets stolen from three of the nation's most powerful law firms, including venerable Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC.

The charges come amid a broad government crackdown on insider trading, including the criminal trial of Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and last month's charges that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration chemist traded on insider information about drug approvals.

Questions also have surfaced about David Sokol, a former top deputy to Warren Buffett who quit Berkshire Hathaway Inc last week amid questions over his trading in stock of a company Berkshire later agreed to buy.

Despite clear rules governing non-disclosure of inside information, investment bank's large compliance departments, and code words used to conceal merger partners' identities, insider trading cases still continue to happen.

"You can't legislate human behavior. People will act as people will do," David Lazarus, senior managing director, co-founder, EdgeRock Realty Advisors, said at the Reuters Global Mergers and Acquisitions Summit in New York.

"The greed of humans and the way it's structured in the U.S. is a good thing because it's the way of capitalism, but there's always those people who will go over the line," Lazarus said.

In any given merger auction, for example, several hundred people ranging from investment bankers and lawyers to corporate executives and public relations consultants and event planners may know private information that could move the stock market.

"You have three advisors with five people teams. Another 10 at the firms who know they're working on it. You have a couple of law firms. Eleven bidders you sent books to. The universe gets to 250 people pretty damn quick. It's very, very hard to manage that kind of information," Lazarus said.

"The way info flows these days: computers, emails, fax, texts -- very, very hard to manage these processes in a way that they can stay confidential," Lazarus said.

Still, every firm, boss and co-worker needs to be vigilant to make sure sensitive information remains private, bankers said.

"When people come to me and say 'Gee, I'm thinking of investing,' or I see someone trade a lot of stocks in my group, my antenna goes up because I don't do it," said Jackson Hsieh, vice chairman of UBS investment banking group.

"People start spending in unusual ways, buying certain things, basic stuff, you have to ask questions -- what happened? You married a rich wife? You inherited it?" Hsieh said.

"It's a small percentage but it does happen. People do stupid things," Hsieh said.

Corporations, banks and law firms have long had rules in place about the disclosure of proprietary information. Compliance departments also oversee the stock trades of employees and ethics training happens for new and existing employees, bankers said.

"We all have very, very careful procedures," said Garrett Moran, chief operating officer of the private equity group at Blackstone Group LP "You just don't do a trade unless you ask your compliance department in advance."

"I think it's really a question of executing on policies, people being more vigilant, educating junior bankers in the right way, making sure people don't get arrogant or view their role in transactions in a different way than they have historically or how policies would dictate," said Brad Whitman, co-head of FIG M&A at Barclays Capital.

"Confidentiality and conflicts and Chinese walls and all that are taken incredibly seriously. It could destroy your reputation in the market. It's staying focused and making sure no one is trying to elevate themselves above their clients or our institutions," Whitman said.

Another insider trading case in 2009 included an executive at the Blackstone Group, who was charged with masterminding a $3.6 million scheme.

"These stories are incredible -- that someone would put themselves above the clients and above the firm and I think just mis-assessing. Their judgment is just way off," Whitman said.

New Google +1 Feature "Check It Out"

Google has implemented a new feature on its search engine which will allow users to share recommendations with their friends and contacts, very much like the Facebook 'likes' feature.

According to Google, +1 is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "check it out!" The new Google +1 feature will let users who are logged in to their Google account recommend search results to their chat buddies or contacts.

Visitors to Google search will also be able to view search results that have been recommended by their friends. All the recommendations made via +1 will be public, Google said, adding that users will be able to manage their recommendations from the Google Dashboard.

“The beauty of +1’s is their relevance—you get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results),” Robert Spiro, a product manager at Google, said in a statement.

The search engine giant said that soon the +1 feature will be able to incorporate recommendations from connections on social networking platforms like Twitter. In order to start +1'ing, users would need to create a Google Profile or update their existing one. The new feature is still at an experimental stage and will be rolled out slowly in English on Google.com.

10 gadgets you should actually get rid of (or not)

If you haven’t been to the New York Times‘ website recently, a visit today will show that the most popular story is Sam Grobart’s “Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (Or Not).”

In the piece, Grobart outlines several consumer electronics that you may or may not need, from digital cameras to books. But in reading it, I found myself disagreeing with several of his suggestions, which are meant for a broad (but fairly educated) audience — after all, the Timesis among the most popular news outlets in the world.

So I feel compelled to respond with my own take, as an editor immersed in the gadget world for the last three years. I agree with the basic premise that we need fewer gadgets than ever; which gadgets we give up, that’s a different matter entirely.

His takes, with my responses:

1. The desktop computer.

Grobart’s take: “Lose it…laptops have all the necessary computing power the average user needs.”

Nusca’s take: Agree. I gave up my desktop in 2005, and haven’t looked back. (I currently pipe my MacBook Pro’s visuals into a Dell IPS monitor, complete with external keyboard and mouse.) Gamers and other users with computing-intensive applications are exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of users no longer need the bulk.

2.) Broadband Internet.

Grobart’s take: “Keep it,” because a 3G mobile broadband connection may offer connectivity, but it fails at video streaming, data caps and coverage.”

Nusca’s take: Agree, but for different reasons. I do think a large portion of computer users — those who use them occasionally — could get by on 3G, video streaming be damned, but the data caps and spotty coverage give me pause. Broadband is more Internet than most homes need, but 3G isn’t enough.

3. Cable TV.

Grobart’s take: “Depends. While you may and should hold on to a good broadband connection at home, it is debatable whether you need to pay for cable TV.”

Nusca’s take: Keep it, unequivocally. While I advocate cutting the cord in principle, my colleagues at CNET Reviews have demonstrated that the reality is not nearly as easy as it sounds. This isn’t about sports or movies — this is about simplicity. And setting up TV service without calling the cable company is about as easy as setting up a home network with Windows 95.

4. Point-and-shoot cameras.

Grobart’s take: “Lose it. Yes, a dedicated camera will probably take a better picture than the small lens and image sensor of a smartphone, but it will not be that much better.”

Nusca’s take: Depends. For candid photos around town and of the kids, a current-generation smartphone handles this task, despite some quibbles about resolution. But if you’re still getting photos printed and framed, you might consider a proper point-and-shoot. (I still use them to cover events.) World travelers will likely go the dSLR route, anyway.

5. Camcorder.

Grobart’s take: “Lose it…that camcorder you have now is probably the last one you will own.”

Nusca’s take: Keep it, assuming it’s a Flip-type model. Grobart says digital SLR cameras now handle HD video with aplomb, rendering conventional shotgun-style camcorders useless, but most folks aren’t willing to shell out for such expensive (and bulky) cameras. If you’ve got a conventional camcorder, ditch it — most cheaper models don’t offer much better quality than the Flip and its counterparts, and handheld comfort isn’t enough to justify a second gadget.

6. USB thumb drive.

Grobart’s take: “Lose it. File sharing does not require hardware anymore. In almost any case you can think of, you can move files around digitally via the Internet.”

Nusca’s take: Keep it. While Internet sharing is indeed a large part of the daily grind — I send myself documents through the cloud all day — connectivity problems and speed (large photos, home videos, applications) aren’t worth taking the time to upload to the cloud, just to bring back down again. Always-on connectivity might work for the office, but it’s not always efficient at home.

7. Digital music player.

Grobart’s take: “Lose it (probably). Do you have a smartphone? Then you have a music player.”

Nusca’s take: Agree for most of the population. Only gym rats would consider a small player like the Apple iPod nano, and even then, a smartphone just as easily sits in the cupholder of your treadmill. The only exception are outdoors runners, who need to shed weight.

8. Alarm clock.

Grobart’s take: “Keep it…setting and resetting smartphone alarms may require a dive into one submenu too many.”

Nusca’s take: Lose it. Modern smartphones can offer shortcuts into said menus, and unless you’re attached to the babbling brook setting, your phone will wake you just as effectively. Plus, overseas travelers rely on them, since a U.S. alarm clock won’t stay accurate plugged into a wall in Europe.

9. GPS device.

Grobart’s take: “Lose it…your smartphone can do the same thing, if not more, for half that price, or even free.”

Nusca’s take: Keep it, for the same reason that Grobart said to keep your alarm clock: simplicity. Sure, top-of-the-line smartphones have navigation capability, but it’s a mess of menus — not something you want to deal with when you’re driving around lost. In due time this will be corrected, but the GPS thing is still far too early to ditch your cheap, windshield-mounted unit.

10. Books

Grobart’s take: “Keep them (with one exception)…consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries.”

Nusca’s take: Depends on your use case. If you’re a public transit rider, an e-reader is a godsend, doing away with the weight and bulk of a traditional bound book. For beachgoers, paperback books can handle sand and sun and humidity without giving you heart palpitations. For armchair readers, an e-reader works just as well — provided you can find the stuff you want to read.

That’s my take. What’s yours?

Consumers would be losers in AT&T merger with T-Mobile

UP TO this point, competition in the cellphone industry has yielded major benefits for consumers, who can choose from a vast array of handsets and service plans. The possible merger of AT&T, the second-largest carrier, with T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest, threatens that competition, and the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division should be highly skeptical in evaluating whether to approve the deal.

AT&T caught telecom analysts off guard this week when it announced a $39 billion proposal to buy T-Mobile USA from its current owner,Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile was widely thought to be a takeover target for the third-largest carrier, Sprint Nextel. Besides, the regulatory hurdles seemed stiff, and rightly so: AT&T and the top carrier, Verizon Wireless, already dwarf all other competitors, and letting one of them absorb T-Mobile, which offers a number of low-cost plans and has shown a willingness to experiment with interesting technologies, could significantly reduce pressure to keep prices down.

But the Obama administration, which last year approved the combination of concert-industry giants LiveNation and Ticketmaster, hasn’t been as stringent in antitrust enforcement as it promised. A tougher posture is in order now.

AT&T contends that the merger will help with its plans to deploy a higher-speed data network, and that it should help ease a bandwidth shortage that can only get worse as more and more people use their phones as their primary way to surf the Internet. The bandwidth crunch is a real problem for which the FCC must devise a systematic solution. But it’s not a reason to let just two companies — Verizon and an expanded AT&T — dominate an ever more vital industry. If regulators let AT&T buy T-Mobile, they’d be hard-pressed to stop Verizon from buying Sprint. And while merger advocates note that in most cities, customers can also choose from smaller carriers, it’s the big national carriers that have been responsible for technological innovation.

Should regulators block the deal, AT&T agreed to pay stiff penalties — a $3 billion fee, plus some spectrum rights to T-Mobile. These terms helped persuade T-Mobile to pursue a merger with AT&T rather than Sprint, but they also put subtle pressure on the FCC, whose job is not just to police the wireless industry but to nurture it.

The breakup of the original AT&T in 1984 paved the way for a previously unthinkable level of innovation in telecommunications. The breakup was necessary because building a competing national communications network from scratch was all but impossible. Those same concerns are valid today. A country of 300 million people can support four major national carriers, and federal regulators should think twice before letting one of them buy another.