T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Tab to Cost $399 Nov. 10

T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Tab

T-Mobile USA will bring the Samsung Galaxy Tab to market in the United States Nov. 10 for $399 with a two-year contract. That beats rivals Verizon Wireless and Sprint by between one and four days.

Looking to beat rivals Verizon Wireless and Sprint to market, T-Mobile USA said it would be the first to bring the Samsung Galaxy Tab to market in the United States, offering the WiFi/3G device Nov. 10 for $399 with a two-year contract.

T-Mobile told eWEEK existing T-Mobile Tab buyers can choose among webConnect mobile broadband plans. WebConnect with 200MB starts at $24.99 per month, with the 5GB plan for $39.99 per month.

Over the course of a two-year contract, that stands to run T-Mobile customers $600 for the 200MB plan and up to $960 for the 5GB plan. Cost of device plus data plans is $1,000 for the 200MB plan and $1,360 for the 5GB plan.

New T-Mobile customers will pay more for Tab plans with webConnect: $29.99 per month for 200MB and $49.99 for 5GB of data consumption.

As a third option, users may leverage prepaid mobile broadband rate plans, starting at $10 per week for 100MB, $30 per month for 300MB or $50 a month for 1GB.

T-Mobile's upfront price point for the Tab, coming after a $50 mail-in rebate, matches that of rival Sprint.

Sprint said it would sell the Android 2.2-based Galaxy Tab Nov. 14 for $399 after a $50 rebate, with monthly data rate plans of 2GB with for $29.99 or 5GB for $59.99 per month.

After the initial $399 purchase, Tab on Sprint will cost consumers a minimum of $720 over the life of a 2GB contract, and as much as $1,440 over the life of a 5GB contract.

Verizon Wireless kicked off the Galaxy Tab announcements in the United States last week, announcing that it would sell the Tab for $599.99 sans contract Nov. 11.

The No. 1 wireless carrier will offer a $20 per month data plan for 1GB of data.

The pricing plans have analysts raining skepticism because they expected the Android tablets to cost less than Apple's iPad, which is $499 for WiFi-only model and $629 for the iPad/3G model.

The choices should give consumers some food for thought as they mull mobile electronics purchases for the holiday season.

The Galaxy Tab, based on Google's Android 2.2 operating system, sports a 7-inch touch screen, supports Adobe Flash and comes with front and back cameras to enable video calling. T-Mobile said it has integrated Qik Video Chat on the Galaxy Tab.

The iPad, which blazed the tablet trail in the United States and sold 4.19 million units in the fourth quarter, does not support Flash or have cameras.

The iPad's screen is 9.7 inches and iPad owners have 25,000 dedicated iPad apps of the 300,000 apps in Apple's App Store from which to choose.
Clint Boulton

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Mozilla patches Firefox zero-day bug in 48 hours

Mozilla patches Firefox zero-day bug in 48 hours 

Computerworld - Less than 48 hours after receiving a report of a critical flaw in Firefox, Mozilla issued an emergency update on Wednesday that patched the problem.

Around mid-day Pacific time today, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6.12 and Firefox 3.5.15 to patch the vulnerability, which had been exploited by malware secretly planted on the Nobel Peace Prize Web site.

Mozilla acknowledged the bug Tuesday and said it was at work on a patch, but provided few details. Today, the company said the vulnerability existed in the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux versions of Firefox 3.6 and the older Firefox 3.5.

The currently-stalled Firefox 4 was not at risk, Daniel Veditz, a Firefox security engineer, said in comments appended to the Mozilla blog post that confirmed the flaw.

"Firefox 4 beta users appear safe for the moment," Veditz said on Tuesday. "The underlying problematic code does exist, but other code changes since Firefox 3.6 seem to be shielding us from the vulnerability."

Mozilla credited Morten Kråkvik of the Norwegian security vendor Telenor SOC for reporting the bug on Monday. In a pair of blog posts yesterday and today, Telenor said that visitors to the Nobel site were redirected to a Taiwanese attack server that launched a JavaScript-based exploit, which if successful, planted a Trojan horse on victimized Windows PCs.

The Trojan was designed to install more attack code on compromised machines; that code would then hijack the PC and give the hacker complete control.

Earlier on Wednesday, a German security company, Avira, said the Trojan's links to the hacker's command-and-control servers had been severed.

Avira also expressed surprise at the unreliability of the malware, and wondered why the attacker had essentially thrown away a valuable zero-day vulnerability on such poorly-written code. "Usually cybercriminals abuse [zero-day vulnerabilities] for profitable malware," Avira said.

Today's update was the fourth one-fix patch from Mozilla this year, and the first rush job since April, when the company plugged a hole used by a German researcher to win $10,000 at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mozilla has prided itself on the speed with which it patches Firefox vulnerabilities, and has often argued that it gets fixes to users much faster than either Microsoft and Google do for their users of Internet Explorer and Chrome.

Firefox was last patched a week ago when Mozilla fixed a dozen flaws in its open-source browser.

Users can update to Firefox 3.6.12 by downloading the new edition or by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu within the browser. Firefox 3.5 users can obtain version 3.5.15 by calling up the integrated update tool.

Firefox 3.5 is living on borrowed time. On Mozilla's site the company states that it will maintain 3.5 "with security and stability updates until August 2010," or two months ago. Typically, Mozilla ships patches for an older edition only six months after the release of a new version; Firefox 3.6 launched in January 2010.

By Gregg Keizer

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Apple brings unlocked, contract-free iPhone to Germany

NOT ANYMORE WILL THE IPHONE BE LOCKED IN GERMANY

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As T-Mobile loses its iPhone exclusivity in Germany to O2 and Vodafone, Apple has begun offering the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 unlocked without a contract to German customers, with the 16GB iPhone 4 model selling for 629 euros.

Wireless carriers O2 and Vodafone began carrying the iPhone in Germany Wednesday after several years of T-Mobile exclusivity in the country, though T-Mobile will continue to sell the iPhone. The carriers offer a variety of contracts and plans, some with subsidized iPhone prices as low as 1 euro.

Apple's Online Store (Google Translation) in Germany has been updated to carry the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 unlocked and contract-free, advertising that it will "work with the wireless carrier of your choice." The company reminds users on its website that the iPhone only works with GSM networks and the iPhone 4 will require a micro-SIM card.

Customers can also puchased the iPhone from one of Apple's four German retail stores, reports German Mac site Macerkopf.de. The 8GB iPhone 3GS is available for 519 ($715) euros, while the iPhone 4 16GB and 32GB models cost 629 euros ($866) and 739 euros ($1017) respectively.

Germany going multi-carrier with the iPhone is yet another step in Apple's slow-and-steady carrier strategy. In January of this year, Apple officialsrevealed that they will go with multiple carriers where they believe it is appropriate, but denied that it was inevitable in every market.

"I don't want to imply that would happen in every market or that we are headed that way in every market," said Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

The vision of an unlocked iPhone future came more into focus Wednesday with the rumor that Apple may be working together with chip manufacturer Gemalto to develop a programmable SIM that can be activated without having to call or visit a carrier. With the rumored technology, iPhone users could travel to other regions and countries and obtain service without the need for a unique SIM from each different location.

The next big blow to iPhone carrier monopolies could come in the form of the long-rumored CDMA iPhone. Though rumors of a CDMA-capable iPhone have persisted for years, multiple media outlets (1, 2, 3) now report the handset as ready to begin production this fall. A CDMA iPhone would work on a number of networks around the world, including Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and China Telecom.
by Josh Ong

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Yahoo Mail is getting its biggest redesign since 2005

Yahoo wants to catch up rivals such as Microsoft and Google

Yahoo Mail is getting its biggest redesign since 2005 to make it a message hub for its 279 million users.

At the centre of the revamp is a plan to make the communications system much more compatible with social media.

This means users can post updates to Facebook and Twitter without ever leaving Yahoo Mail.

Texting and sending instant messages has been updated. Yahoo said the service will be twice as fast as Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail.

Users will also be able to view photos and videos from Flickr, Picasa and YouTube inside their e-mail inbox.

Priority email

Priority Inbox was rolled out to Gmail users in September

"People spend more than 30 billion minutes a month on Yahoo Mail," Dave McDowell, Yahoo Mail senior product director told BBC News.

"It is a critically important product to our users and this represents [the] most significant upgrade to Yahoo mail in five years."

Other upgrades to Yahoo's service include improved spam filtering, and tools to search through mail that will help better sort and prioritise messages.

By revamping its mail system, Yahoo is mirroring refreshes already pushed through by rivals.

Google introduced its priority inbox feature at the end of the summer to help users grade e-mail into four categories.

Meanwhile Microsoft updated its Hotmail e-mail system in a similar fashion to help people organise messages better.

Cool factor

The Yahoo Mail refresh had been touted back in September as part of an overall product strategy to show the company remains relevant amid increased competition from Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Last week the early internet pioneer posted mixed financial results, increasing pressure on executives to turn the company around. 

Industry analyst Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence, said the upgrades to Yahoo mail are important in showing the firm still has products that can compete.

"Yahoo Mail is a critical product for the company with an enormous user base," he said. "The challenge for them is to make having a Yahoo Mail address cool."

"It has lost some of its chic or cachet to GMail among early adopters or the tech savvy so there is a brand issue there," he added.

"In the past I would have said people don't want all these functions in their e-mail box but with people now having so many sites to visit this makes sense," said Mr Sterling. 

"I think if Yahoo Mail performs well, they will win people over," he said.'

BY  Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News

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Microsoft, Yahoo Complete Paid Search Shift

ADCENTER GET PAID FOR ADDS ON YAHOO AND MICROSOFT

Microsoft and Yahoo have completed their search transition in the U.S. and Canada, the companies said today.

The two companies announced the transition of paid search to the Microsoft-powered AdCenter platform.

"The search alliance creates a competitive alternative in search, allowing advertisers to reach a combined audience of 163 million searchers in the U.S. and 15 million searchers in Canada via Bing and Yahoo! Managing a single account for both Bing and Yahoo! will let advertisers save time and simplify their campaigns," the companies told WebProNews.

In August, Microsoft's Bing began powering Yahoo search in the U.S. and Canada. The second phase of that relationship was to transition paid search over to Microsoft's AdCenter, which was accomplished on Wednesday.Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz said on Oct. 19 that about 86 percent of those billing transactions had been already completed, Bartz said, and with 97 percent of the company's "premium" accounts shifted over. The project was on schedule to be completed in October, Bartz said then.

The third step is to run a fully transitioned, organized marketplace with Microsoft, Bartz said. Yahoo's goal is to deliver a stabilized marketplace in time for the Christmas holidays, with it completely finished by the second quarter of 2011.

Yahoo Mobile ads will also be transitioned over, as will international properties. Organic search in Latin American markets will be transitioned during the first quarter, with paid search moving over in the U.K., France, Ireland and India in the second quarter of 2011, WebProNews reported.

by Mark Hachman

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Apple Opens Online Store In China

MORE JOBS GOING TO CHINA

On July 4, Lenovo chairman Liu Chuanzhi famously told a Financial Times reporter, "We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble."

Looks like he spoke too soon. Yesterday Apple debuted a Chinese online retail store and App Store that features localized featured apps and charts in Simplified Chinese.

Offering free shipping, free engraving, and free customization for Mac products, the new distribution channel will make it much easier for those living outside Shanghai and Beijing, where Apple has four retail stores, to purchase an Apple product. Furthermore those based in the mainland will be able to download legal Apple apps for the first time.

But it remains to be seen whether Apple can maintain the same consumer enthusiasm seen at the launch of iPhone 4 last month, especially when the average rural worker makes $752 per year, and the mean in cities is $2,700 per year.

Apple released the iPad in China on Sept. 17 and the iPhone 4 on Sept. 25. Days later, there were reports of scalpers purchasing dozens of iPhones and re-selling them at inflated prices to those who could not get their hands on the coveted device. The issues prompted Apple to temporarily shut down one of its Beijing retail stores.

In related news, a day after China's Apple Store launched, a local manufacturer accused it of copyright infringement over the iPad name. Proview Technology, a screen manufacturer, claims it owns the rights to the iPad name in China, AFP reports. Proview shareholder Li Su claims the iPad trademark is worth $800 million.

By: Sara Yin

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Progress 40 Launches to the ISS

Officials at the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) announce that a new unmanned cargo space capsule has just taken off for the International Space Station (ISS) for Kazakhstan.


The Progress 40 spacecraft took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the Kazakh steppes, and its is taking vital supplies, experiments and spare parts to the station just a week ahead of space shuttle Discovery's launch, planned for November 1.

The Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress spacecraft took off
at around 1511 GMT Wednesday, October 27, and is scheduled to arrived at the ISS in two days.


The automated transfer system on the capsule will allow for it to catch up with the ISS on Saturday, October 30, and to dock to the orbital facility at around 1639 GMT.

Progress 40, also known by its Russian designation M-08M, already unfurled its communications and navigations antennas, and has also opened up its 35-foot solar panels for energy production.

The capsule will take the place of another Progress spacecraft, which was ejected from a docking port on the Pirs module this Monday. M-08M is scheduled to remain on the ISS until mid-January 2011.

Food, spare parts, life support gear and experiment hardware make up for about.2,804 pounds of Progress' new cargo.

Additionally, 1,918 pounds of propellant will also be delivered to the six-astronaut crew aboard the ISS, for transfer into the Russian segment of the complex. The fuel will feed the facility's maneuvering thrusters.

Astronauts will also get 498 pounds of water and 1,100 pounds of oxygen, to replenish the station's systems, the official flight manifest shows.

After the ISS crew finishes up with arranging Progress' cargo, they will also have to deal with Discovery. The shuttle is launching on November 1 from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida.

It will deliver a new Multipurpose Logistics Module (MLM), as well as the first humanoid robot in space, Robonaut-2. The machine was developed by NASA and General Motors.

Discovery will remain attached to the ISS for about 11 days, during which time its astronauts will conduct two extra-vehicular activities (EVA) for maintenance purposes, Space reports.

The STS-133 mission will be the orbiter's last flight ever. Discovery is the oldest shuttle in the fleet, and this last flight will be its 39th.








Video description: the Progress 40 spacecraft, enclosed in its payload fairing, is being delivered to a Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad aboard a Soyuz rocket

By Tudor Vieru

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RIM Launches BlackBerry Bold 9780

RIM LAUNCHES BLACKBERRY BOLD 9780

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has updated its Bold series to the 9780 officially. The Bold used to be the BlackBerry flagship model, till the Torch 9800 which seems to have taken over the throne. The 9780 is very similar in terms of look and feel to its predecessor, the Bold 9700. What has changed for the better is a camera upgrade to 5 megapixel from 3.2 megapixel. Second, the screen is minutely smaller by 0.04-inches, now measuring 2.4-inches but has a reportedly lower resolution of 400 x 360 pixel resolution (the Bold 9700 had a 480 x 360). We can't say we're entirely convinced by this though. 

Finally, it's also got double the amount of RAM i.e. 512 MB. Reasons cited for this upgrade are so that it their newer BlackBerry OS 6 needs that much for a smooth operation. What we're itching to know is what will be the fate of existing models with 256MB RAM impending their OS 6 update; will they work noticeably laggy? OS 6 will bring big changes like a re-designed menu structure, universal search, a webkit-based browser and integration of all social networking feeds. Otherwise, all other hardware is the same - the 624 MHz processor, GPS/Wi-fi/3G and a QWERTY keyboard with an optical track-pad. For current Bold 9700 owners, there seems to be not such a great reason to upgrade; since they'll be getting the OS 6 update as well.

However, for the first time BlackBerry buyers, the 9780 will basically ensure a slightly better experience. In U.S., it'll be sold by T-mobile for $130 with a two year contract. We'll let you know the India pricing when it is announced.

Source: PC Mag

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LimeWire Told to Shutdown (no more illegal downloading )

NEW YORK—Popular file-sharing website LimeWire has been ordered to permanently shut down six months after a federal judge found it liable for copyright infringement on a "massive scale."

In an order Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan entered a permanent injunction, ordering the service to disable the searching, downloading, uploading or file trading of its software and to block the sharing of unauthorized music files.

The lawsuit was brought in 2006 on behalf of the major record labels by the Recording Industry Association of America.

In May, the judge found that LimeWire had violated copyright laws and induced users to infringe on copyrights. She also found Mark Gorton, LimeWire's founder, personally liable.

"Plaintiffs have suffered—and will continue to suffer—irreparable harm from LimeWire's inducement of widespread infringement of their wires," the judge wrote in her order.

In a statement Tuesday, the RIAA said the court will conduct a trial in January to determine damages.

"For the better part of the last decade, LimeWire and Gorton have violated the law," the RIAA said. "The court has now signed an injunction that will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that LimeWire and Gorton used to enrich themselves immensely."

On its website, LimeWire posted a notice that said it was under court order to stop distributing and supporting its software. "Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal," the notice said.

On its corporate parent's Web site, LimeWire Chief Executive George Searle said the company was "disappointed" with the turn of the events and notes the injunction only applies to the LimeWire.

"We are extremely proud of our pioneering history and have, for years, worked hard to bridge the gap between technology and content rights holders," Mr. Searle said in the statement. "However, at th

By CHAD BRAY

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Windows 8 Scheduled For 2012?

Microsoft in the Netherlands blogged that it will take about 2 years before Windows 8 will come to market.

This is the most credible piece of information we know of that indicates that Microsoft is already hard at work to prepare the next, most likely much more substantial new operating system upgrade than Windows 7 was. The blog post used quotation marks when it referred to Windows 8, so there is no certainty that this will be the final name, but if the time frame is correct, then we know that Microsoft should be within three to six months of a milestone M1 release that is provided to the company’s closest partners.

A 2012 release date puts Windows 8 three years after the release of Windows 7, which was built on the foundation of Windows Vista and, conceivably, indicates that 2012 will be the right time for Microsoft to release a major new operating system, as Microsoft typically releases significant new operating systems every 5 to 6 years. Windows 8 would follow the general line and release scheduling of Windows 95, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

If we were to guess, then we would say that the name Windows 8 is highly unlikely, as Microsoft needs to differentiate this new operating system from its predecessors. Windows 7 has been a rather strange choice for the current OS release anyway as it is not the 7th generation of Windows. Several years ago, Microsoft revealed that it may soon be necessary to rewrite the entire Windows code or write it entirely from scratch to make the software more secure and respond to progress in computer hardware. At that time, the company announced the Singularity project, which provided a research operating system that includes many new ideas of Microsoft’s researchers and engineers.

Windows 8 could and probably needs integrate some of the Singularity ideas, if this is the operating system that will be the company’s OS foundation until 2017 – 2018. We previously heard that Windows 8 may also include an app store, which should not be a big surprise, given the current app frenzy. Also expect a much greater focus on mobile connectivity and integration as well as cloud computing that will seamlessly integrate features such as Windows Live Essentials.

By Wolfgang Gruener (conceivablytech)

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Google Will Launch 1-G bps broadband network.

Google will launch a 1G-bps broadband network for faculty homes on Stanford University's campus in 2011. Think of it as a flight test for its planned community deployment.

Some city leaders resorted to extreme measures (jumping in freezing water, swimming with sharks, renaming islands) to catch Google's eye 

to be the site for an ultra high-speed broadband zone.

The Stanford test, characterized as a "beta deployment," will serve as a template for how future deployments in the winning city or cities might fare.

Google Fiber Product Manager James Kelly made it clear that the Stanford network "is completely separate from our community selection process for Google Fiber, which is still ongoing."

Even so, Kelly said this is the first time Google is trying its service out with real customers.

"We'll be able to take what we learn from this small deployment to help scale our project more effectively and efficiently to much larger communities," Kelly added.

The test will allow Google to play with its new fiber optic technologies, normally the purview of broadband carriers such as Verizon, Comcast and AT&T, as well as the networking gear providers who make the equipment.

Google cited Stanford as the first customer test because the university is close to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and is open to the company experimenting with new fiber technologies on its streets.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google at Stanford, which later invested in the project that would become the world's leading search engine.

While Google likes to characterize these broadband network dalliances as tests, the company never does anything without some higher meaning and goal.

It's unlikely Google will become a massive, certified global carrier of broadband. But it could create a decent-sized footprint of pipes through which it can sell its own brand of Web services, starting with Google TV, which was launched in October on Logitech companion boxes and Sony Internet TVs and Blu-ray players.

While Google has not formally announced advertising plans for Google TV, the company is the Web's premier digital ad provider, so there's no question it's got an idea of how it wants to target consumers with ads while leveraging the convergence of Web and TV.

Populating speedy broadband networks can help Google TV, as well as boost the company's Web apps and services, such as YouTube. 

By: Clint Boulton

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Google Says Whole Emails Gathered By Street View Cars

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Google Inc. (GOOG) acknowledged Friday the cars its uses to collect data for its online mapping service had inadvertently gathered entire emails and passwords, a disclosure that prompted the Internet giant to appoint a privacy chief and tighten its policies.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet search giant said it wanted to delete the information as quickly as possible. It also announced several steps its would take to improve its internal privacy and security practices, including the appointment of Alma Whitten, who specializes in computer security, as director of privacy for both engineering and products.

The development comes as Google faces heightened regulatory scrutiny around the world prompted by revelations in May that its cars had collected personal data from unsecured wireless networks while taking photos for its Street View mapping service. Google initially said the data was fragmentary, but external reviews discovered that some of the data was more complete than expected.

"A number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations," Alan Eustace, a senior vice president in charge of engineering and research, said in a blog post. "It's clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords."

Google's admission came just days after Canada's Privacy Commissioner said the company violated the privacy of perhaps thousands of Canadians when it captured sometimes highly sensitive personal information such as complete emails, email usernames and passwords, and even information about certain Canadians' medical conditions.

"Canada has played an important role in blowing the digital whistle," said Jeffrey Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

Privacy groups have increasingly become concerned by the amount of data companies collect on consumers as they use the Internet. Google Buzz, a social networking project, quickly became the target of complaints when user information was revealed more broadly than anticipated.

Social network Facebook Inc.'s privacy policies have also been scrutinized.

Eustace said Google would enhance training on the proper collection and use of data for its engineering, product management and legal groups. In December, all employees will be required to take a new information awareness program.

Google said the data collection was caused by the accidental inclusion of coding from an experimental project.

On Friday, Google shares were little changed at $612.53.

By Scott Morrison and Andrew Morse Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

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Facebook, Amazon and Zynga bet on social web

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (centre) is backing the fund

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga will invest in a fund to help entrepreneurs develop applications and services for a new era of the social web.

The lion's share of the sFund's $250m (£160m) will come from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Details were announced at an event at Facebook's California headquarters.

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

"We think that every industry is going to be fundamentally re-thought and designed around people."

That was a view backed by KPCB partner John Doerr, best known for investing in Amazon, Google and Netscape.

"These social networks are going to go from a half a billion people to billions of people connected on the planet and so represents an extraordinarily exciting time on the internet," he told BBC News.

"Think of it as a quarter-billion-dollar party. The third great wave of the internet is mobile and social together. It's going to be tectonic," added Mr Doerr.'Hopes and dreams'

The sFund will provide financing, advice and relationship capital for a new generation of start-ups to deliver on the promise of the social web.

Amazon will help businesses get access to the company's web services platform for one year, as well as provide business and technical support.
The backers of the fund believe the social web will become even more important in the coming years

Facebook will contribute access to its platform teams, beta APIs, and new programmes like Facebook Credits.

The essence of the sFund is similar in concept to KPCB's $200m iFund aimed at companies that create applications for Apple's iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

That fund, which started in 2008, has invested in 14 start-ups so far.

The sFund will be led by Bing Gordon, a partner at KPCB and former chief creative executive at Electronic Arts.

The main focus will be on social start-ups in all industries from consumer to enterprise and from health to mobile. It will not invest in direct competitors to Facebook, Amazon or social gaming company Zynga.

"We intend to be very loyal to the people we are working with. Our hopes and dreams get kind of enmeshed with theirs," Mr Gordon told the BBC.

"The companies we will invest in will be the Zynga of health, the Zynga of education, different kinds of commerce, of social utility, of finance. There is an opportunity to build Zynga-sized companies that will scale up.

"Social is just getting started and the opportunities are vast. As in the early days of the internet, the race is on."'Facebook effect'

For Google, which harbours social ambitions of its own, the creation of the sFund could be seen as a blow to the search giant.

"It is aligning everything against Google," said MG Siegler of the technology blog TechCrunch.

"I am sure the sFund will say they will be okay to fund things built on Google's upcoming social graph but it will be a long time before any of those companies pop up. This really does bolster the Facebook effect here."

Asked why Google is not taking part in this fund, Mr Doerr, who sits on their board, told reporters, "Google is still developing their social strategy. Stay tuned."

At the event the sFund's first investment was announced.

Cafebots closed a first round of $5m. The company is involved in what has been termed "friend relationship management". They did not make any comment because they are in stealth mode.

Other companies that KPCB said would have made the grade for the sFund were ones that the venture capital firm had invested in.

They included Jive, Lockerz and Flipboard.

"Everything is becoming more and more social," said Evan Doll, co-founder of Flipboard.

"This is about people. Applying that point of view to a lot of businesses and services will be great going forward and help the internet feel less like this cold and impersonal technological space," Mr Doll told BBC News.

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