Latest news

According to the Financial Times, social networking giant Facebook tried to purchase microblogging site Twitter in 2008 for $500 million, but was rejected.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says he wanted the service to become "a viable business" rather than have it taken over by a larger company.

"We've created something that people are finding value in," added Stone. "But we haven't yet created a business out of this, and we really wanted to do that."

In 2008, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered $500 million in private Facebook shares for the company but Twitter founders Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey each agreed that Facebook offered nothing that they wanted.

The microblogging site has 175 million registered users. 95 million tweets are sent daily.

Twitter has been valued at over $3 billion in recent fund-raising sessions despite never making one cent of profit.

Goldman Sachs has invested $450 million in social networking giant Facebook, valuing the site at $50 billion.

The investment values the company higher than Time Warner, eBay and Yahoo.

Says angel investor Chris Sacca (via NYT):

"When you think back to the early days of Google, they were kind of ignored by Wall Street investors, until it was time to go public. This time, the Street is smartening up. They realize there are true growth businesses out here. Facebook has become a real business, and investors are coming out here and saying, ‘We want a piece of it.’"

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long resisted going public, but many recent reports have suggested an IPO (initial public offering) for the company could be coming in 2012.

As part of the deal, Goldman has invested $450 million, and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies has invested another $50 million. DST now has over $400 million invested.

Goldman also has the right to sell up to $75 million worth of their stake to DST.

When DST first invested, however, their stake valued the company at $10 billion, meaning their investment is already worth five times what they paid for it, in just a short number of years.

Sony has filed a patent infringement complaint against LG this week with the U.S. ITC (International Trade Commission), claiming many of the company's mobile phones and modems infringe on Sony's proprietary tech.

One of the patents relates to pictures associated with phone numbers. Most phones give the option for owners to add pictures of friends and family that will show up when that person calls.

According to Bloomberg, "Sony also said LG infringes on patented technology for encoding and transmitting audio in ways that adjust to available bandwidth capacity; delaying the start of audio recording for a set amount of time so that the recording doesn't pick up inadvertent noises; and technology for using the images streaming through a device's camera as a real-time viewfinder, then switching to saving better-quality files when the user decides to snap a picture."

Vizio, the top LCD maker in the United States, will make a move into the smartphone and tablet markets, say multiple reports.

The HDTV maker teased their latest moves during a short commercial played during the Rose Bowl, yesterday.

Reports state the company will reveal the products before the CES event later this week, perhaps even as early as a press conference tomorrow.

The Vizio "Via" smartphone will run on Android 2.2, have a 4-inch screen, and dual-cameras.

Vizio's tablet will have an 8-inch HD screen, Wi-Fi, run on Android 2.2, and include dual-cameras, as well.

Both devices will sell through Wal-Mart and Costco.

Barnes & Noble has followed Amazon's recent Kindle announcement by claiming that the Nook e-reader is their best-selling item, ever, just like the Kindle is for Amazon.

The Nook sells for $149, and the company recently released the Nook Color for $250.

Over the holiday season, the Nook Color was the best-selling gift, adds the company.

Furthermore, the company says digital books have begun to outsell physical book purchases, with 1 million digital books being sold on Christmas Day, alone.

Amazon made a similar announcement in July.

Neither company has released concrete sales figures on their e-reader devices.

Microsoft has been bombarded with reports to start the new year, each claiming that their old Hotmail messages have disappeared.

Some of the other reports claim that their inboxes have been automatically moved to the "deleted mail" folder, without user consent.

Windows Live support has responded by saying they are aware of the issue, and are currently working on a fix.

Hotmail/Live is the most used email service in the world, with 360 million users.

"At this point it appears to be a limited issue, and Microsoft is working with individual users who are impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers," says Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker.

In early 2010, Ubisoft began releasing PC games with the controversial "always-connected" DRM, which meant gamers could not play their single-player games without being always connected to the Internet.

If your connection hiccuped at any point, the game would return you to the main menu, losing any forward progress you had made since last saving.

It appears, after months of complaints and outrage, that the publisher has finally updated a few of its games to remove the DRM, including popular titles like Assassin's Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

After the latest patch, players can enjoy their games without needing to be always connected to the Web, but an active Internet connection will still be needed to first start the game and validate the install.

In general, Ubisoft has shied away from the DRM, even choosing to not use it in its latest RTS game, "RUSE."

According to Citigroups’s US Internet Stock 2011 Playbook, Apple will likely generate $2 billion in revenue from the iOS App Store in 2011.

The report shows off research from Gartner, as well, which claims the total app market will bring around $4 billion in revenue in 2010, but grow to $27 billion in just three years.

Citi expects the smartphone market to continue strong growth into 2013, with 29 percent growth next year, and mid-20 percent growth for the following two years.

Smartphone sales grew by 53 percent in 2010.

The iOS Store has 300,000 apps and the Android Market recently hit 200,000.

Androlib has said this week that the Android Market has reached a new milestone, 200,000 apps, just months after October's announcement of 100,000.

Furthermore, the site says a total of 2.56 billion apps have been downloaded in the Market's history.

Since October, Rovio released their extremely popular Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons, Epic Games released a gaming development tool, and social gaming giant Zynga has begun to focus on the platform, explains TG, leading to much more visibility of the market.

Google said recently that 300,000 Android devices are activated every day.

For comparison's sake, the older Apple iOS App Store has over 305,000 apps and the baby Windows Phone 7 marketplace has 5000 apps. RIM's more selective BlackBerry World has 15,000 apps.

The site also brings up an interesting figure in the free vs. paid discussion, showing how 99 percent of the most popular apps in the store (those with 250,000 or higher downloads) are free. 1411 of the 1414 apps with those kind of download figures are free, but many are supported by ads, like Angry Birds.

This is typically a time for my personal roundup of past year's most interesting news from our extensive news archive and also a time to wrap up of the events that have happened here at AfterDawn.

iPad and tablets

Now, the year's most hyped event was definitely the launch of Apple's iPad tablet computer. While the device itself didn't offer anything new with its specs, in typical-to-Apple fashion, the user experience, the design and the pre-launch hype of the product basically re-invented the entire "tablet PC" genre.

The success of iPad created a massive halo effect that will probably outlive the iPad itself. Previously, tablet PC market was a small, specialized niche with extremely expensive Windows-based devices. By the end of the year 2010, tens of manufacturers had entered the tablet computer market and most of them opting for Android based solutions. Now, when the price range of such devices is closer to $200 than to $400 with most new devices, it is quite fair to say that tablet PCs actually managed to destroy the netbook market, that seemed to be extremely strong only a year ago.

Playstation Move & Kinect

When the current-generation consoles were about to be launched, Nintendo's odds with outdated hardware and DVD as its distribution media seemed very thin. However, as everyone knows, wii's unorthodox controllers changed the game, entirely, and made Wii the unlikely winner of the first couple of years of console wars.

Lookout Mobile Security has reported this week that a new Android-based Trojan Horse dubbed "Geinimi" has been taking down Android devices in China over the past month.

So far, there have been no reported cases in Europe or the Americas, as the malware-infected apps have only been seen on Chinese mobile apps websites.

Says the security firm:

A new Trojan affecting Android devices has recently emerged in China. Dubbed “Geinimi” based on its first known incarnation, this Trojan can compromise a significant amount of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers. The most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date, Geinimi is also the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities. Once the malware is installed on a user’s phone, it has the potential to receive commands from a remote server that allow the owner of that server to control the phone.

Geinimi is effectively being “grafted” onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications, primarily games, and distributed in third-party Chinese Android app markets. The affected applications request extensive permissions over and above the set that is requested by their legitimate original versions. Though the intent of this Trojan isn’t entirely clear, the possibilities for intent range from a malicious ad-network to an attempt to create an Android botnet.

The European Commission has approved standards for a new universal USB smartphone charger that will hopefully put an end to drawers full of proprietary chargers for year's worth of old phones.

Based on the MicroUSB, the new standard has already been accepted by fourteen smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, Nokia and Samsung.

All new smartphones from those companies will include a port using the new standard starting next year.

Says Antonio Tajani, European Commission VP for industry and entrepreneurship (via IW):

I am very happy that the European Standardisation Bodies have met our request to develop within a short space of time the technical standards necessary for a common mobile phone charger based on the work done by industry.

Now it is time for industry to show its commitment to sell mobile phones for the new charger. The common charger will make life easier for consumers, reduce waste, and benefit businesses. It is a true win-win situation.

BlogKindle has posted instructions on how to root the new Nook Color e-reader, opening up the device to Android apps like the Amazon Kindle application.

The Kindle app is, obviously, not authorized on the Nook Color but rooted users can now enjoy both bookstores on one device.

Reads the article:

Yep, you are reading this right. It’s actually quite easy now to get Kindle books on Nook color and have both eBook stores available to you on a single device. This is possible because Nook Color is more of an entry level Android tablet than a dedicated eReader. As it comes out of the box it just happens to start the Nook application by default and not let users run anything else.

However that can easily be fixed by rooting the device and enabling the Android Market. With Andoid market you can install all kinds of applications, including Kindle, Kobo reader. You would also be able to play Angry Birds and watch Youtube videos. Installing the Kindle application for Android will let you read Amazon Kindle books on your Nook Color device.

The blog does warn that rooting may void your warranty or stop you from eventually updating when Barnes & Noble upgrades the device to Android 2.2.

ViewSonic will introduce a new tablet at the upcoming CES event, one that will also include phone features.

Despite being dubbed a tablet, the device will only have a 4-inch screen, and run on the Android mobile OS.

There is no word on what processor the tablet will run on, but the company has already introduced a larger tablet which runs on the dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2.

Most notably, the tablet will be able to connect to 4G LTE networks, like the ones Verizon and AT&T are rolling out this year and next.

Dell released a 5-inch tablet/phone hybrid earlier this year, dubbed the Streak, but there are no figures on its sales.

Viewsonic's current 7-inch tablet has seen lackluster sales thanks to critical reviews of the user interface.

According to the government's official daily newspaper, popular VoIP service Skype may soon be banned in China, joining the ranks of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and countless others.

If accurate, the ban will extend to all VoIP services, with the exception of those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom.

Both phone carriers are state controlled.

There is no current timetable for the implementation of the restrictions. When it does go into effect, the paper speculates "services like Skype will become unavailable in the country."

Skype has used the Chinese mobile Internet carrier TOM Online to offer their software in the nation, in its native language, since 2007, and Skype has confirmed it is still up-and-running as of writing.