Beyond the Blame Game: Can Facebook Be Fixed?
The honeymoon is over for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, it ended before it began. Facebook's long-awaited and much-hyped IPO is just over a week old, and the blame game is on as the company has lost 16 percent of its value since the initial offering. Wall Street's take on Facebook has gone from jubilant to jaundiced.

Google Opens Its Piracy Complaint Books
Google has updated its Transparency Report to include requests to take down URLs that contain copyrighted material. Such requests, made by content owners or their representatives, are at the heart of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Until now, Google has only publicized government requests to remove content; the new data provides an interesting glimpse of which companies are crying foul over the unauthorized posting of their intellectual property.

Activists Pressure Amazon Into a Change of Heart
Faced with a public rally outside the venue for its shareholder meeting at the Seattle Art Museum on Thursday, Amazon announced it would withdraw from a conservative business group and improve workers' conditions at its warehouses. The protesters wanted Amazon to quit the American Legislative Exchange Council.

European Regulators Put Google in the Hot Seat on Privacy Changes
The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty is running up against what seems to be a chronic problem with Google: difficulty in getting all of the information it requested. The CNIL was tapped by Europe's Article 29 Working Party to take the lead in analyzing Google's new privacy policy, which went into affect on March 1. On March 16, CNIL sent a questionnaire to Google, which the search engine giant responded to on April 20.

Networks Hammer Dish Over Ad-Skipping DVR
Fox, CBS and NBC filed lawsuits against Dish Network Thursday over a feature found in a new digital video recorder that lets subscribers automatically skip the advertisements on recorded shows from major networks. Dish countered by asking a judge to declare that the feature does not infringe on any copyrights as claimed by the networks.

Salesforce.com Chatter Unlocks Doors to Enterprise Collaboration
Salesforce.com is adding more functionality to its Chatter tool -- in this case, real-time communication capabilities. The two new features soon to be available are Chatter Messenger and Chatter Screensharing. Chatter Messenger is an instant messaging application to be used within the Chatter application. When it launches as part of Salesforce.com's Summer release in a few weeks, it will give users live chat functionality.

iPad-vertising Is Taking Off
Tablets are now a solid fixture in the mobile ad ecosystem, according to a new report. However, the format hasn't been fully exploited yet, in spite of the tablet's strong presence in the mobile world, thanks to Apple's iPad. Non-phone mobile devices -- primarily, tablets -- accounted for 20 percent of all impressions for Q1 2012, compared to 15 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to Millennial Media's latest mobile advertising report.

Apple to DoJ: I Know You Are, but What Am I?
Apple on Thursday struck back against the United States Department of Justice's charges that it joined several major publishers in an effort to fix the prices of e-books. In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Apple contended that the government's complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law.

A Chosen Few Escaped Facebook's IPO Fumble
While it sounded like a sure thing, it was apparently anything but. Investors lined up to take part in last week's Facebook IPO with hopes of skyrocketing returns, but instead of blasting off, the stock lost ground. For Facebook, it might as well have crashed and burned. Nothing is certain with stocks, of course. But this week it was reported that during its pre-IPO roadshow, some potential investors were given special advance warnings.

HP Touts R&D as Silver Lining to Massive Layoffs
HP has posted its second quarter earnings and announced it will lay off 27,000 workers worldwide in an effort to simplify its business and increase efficiency. HP beat Wall Street expectations with its earnings but still faces questions about how it will compete in a changing tech industry.

Java Jurors Douse Oracle's Hopes
Executives at Google no doubt are heaving signs of relief at the outcome of the latest -- and possibly last -- phase of the Java copyright and patent trial: The jury unanimously found that Google did not infringe Oracle's patents. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is presiding over the trial in the U.S.District Court of Northern California, dismissed the jury after the verdict was read.

Technology Firms' Latest Weapon of Choice
When AOL made a $1 billion deal to sell patents to Microsoft last April, its stock jumped up about 43 percent on the news. After all, AOL could use a $1 billion shot in the arm. Who couldn't? But what is behind this string of sales of patents? Why are patents so important to large tech firms like Microsoft, Google and Apple?

Blame Change for Social CRM's Plodding Pace
I remember being an impatient kid when something I really wanted was on its way. The first time I was aware of my parents mail-ordering something for me -- I think it was a baseball jersey I especially coveted -- I can recall bombarding them with a chorus of the phrase, "when is it going to get here?" I realize now that hearing a six-year-old ask that question 300 times a day for three or four days was genuine torture for my parents.

Solving the Sprint Problem
A quick look at the wireless industry over the last several years shows wave after wave of innovation and success. In fact, success has been bigger than anyone's wildest dreams. However, success does not come to all. Why do some companies, like AT&T and Verizon, seem to hit the ball out of the park, while Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile keep striking out? And what can they do about it?

Dell Shares Take Thrashing After Sour Earnings Report
Dell took a hard hit on Wall Street Wednesday after it revealed sluggish PC sales and a disappointing quarterly earnings report. Shares of Dell were down 17 percent Wednesday, Dell's biggest one-day drop since 2000. The stock, already down 15 percent on the year, closed at $12.49. Shareholders expressed disappointment with the company's Tuesday earnings report.

Apple, Samsung Chiefs Pick Up Their Marbles and Go Home
Before Apple and Samsung launched a new chapter in their multicountry, multiargument patent dispute, Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, told the two sides to sit down and try to iron out their differences. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung duly complied with the judge's orders, spending at least nine hours in each other's company over the course of two days.

SAP Gets New Stairway to the Cloud With Ariba Buy
SAP has revealed plans to acquire Ariba, an enterprise e-commerce network, for US$4.3 billion as part of the German company's expansion into cloud computing. SAP will purchase Ariba for $45 per share -- about 20 percent more than its market price. Ariba's board approved the purchase unanimously. The sale is expected to be completed during the third calendar quarter of 2012, dependent on Ariba shareholder approval.

Facebook Fallout Widely Scattered
After dropping to $31 per share on Tuesday, Facebook's stock is hinting at a turnaround Wednesday morning, hovering around $32.15 per unit. Unless the stock surges past its $38 per unit launch price, however, it is hard to imagine how those responsible for its disappointing debut will be able to redeem themselves in the eyes of irate investors, disappointed employees and suspicious regulators.

Under Google's Wing, Motorola Can Stop Dabbling
Motorola Mobility's financial performance has been less than stellar in the last three years, so its acquisition by Google for $12.5 billion could be a boon for the company. "Motorola has been running at an operating loss for quite a few quarters," observed Ramon T. Llamas, who analyzes mobile devices technology and trends for IDC.

The Salesperson's New Toolbox
Last week was like the fireworks on the Fourth of July. You know how at the end they fire off a huge flourish of explosives, and if you live in Boston for some reason the Boston Pops play "The 1812 Overture?" It was like that minus the Pops. SAP, NetSuite and Xactly, just to name a few, all had conferences.

The 183 Billion-Dollar Brand
Apple was named the most valuable brand in the world in a study released Tuesday by research agency Millward Brown. It's the second year in a row the tech giant took the crown. The company raised its brand value over the past year by 19 percent to a $182.9 billion, Millward Brown reported. IBM, Google and Microsoft were among the top five.

New Venture Firms See Major Opps in Federal IT Market
U.S. government agencies are looking everywhere they can to cut costs -- including the cost of information technology. Tight budgets will be the dominating factor in federal IT procurement over the next several years -- at least. Yet in the face of budget discipline -- and even slightly projected declines in spending -- two venture capital companies see great promise in the federal IT market.

Are Amazon Pre-Orders a Sign of Galaxy S III Fever?
Amazon has begun taking pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S III, a handset that will become available in Europe at the end of this month. The offering has caused some head-scratching: If this were the newest iPhone, the rush to get one might be understandable. However, the unlocked Galaxy S III smartphone will cost an eye-popping $799.99, and it won't be fully compatible with any U.S. network.

Google Gets Motorola's Patents - and Problems
Google has officially closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This could transform the search engine giant from a software player to a maker of hardware: smartphones, tablet PCs and even set-top boxes. More importantly for Google is gaining control of Motorola's patent portfolio, which could help it fend off lawsuits from rivals such as Apple and Microsoft.

Apple Runs Galaxy Tab Blocking Play
Apple filed a motion for an injunction against a familiar patent sparring opponent Friday, requesting that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 be banned from sales in the U.S. The company made a similar bid last year as part of the ongoing and many-faceted legal battle between Apple and Samsung.

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Apple claims US government sides with monopoly in e-book case
The U.S. government has sided with monopoly rather than competition in bringing a case of e-book price-fixing against Apple, the company said in a filing on Tuesday before a federal court.

ICANN's gTLD application system back in action
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said its application system for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) has reopened, more than a month after it was brought down because of a software glitch.

Inside Apple's secret plan to kill the cash register
Apple's plans for a Bluetooth 4.0-based iWallet could be the beginning of the end for the venerable cash register.

Update: Facebook shares rise as trading begins
After all the buildup, Facebook's long-anticipated initial public offering is finally here.

If Facebook's IPO goes south, social, tech markets could take a hit
With Facebook's initial public offering creating such a frenzy of interest, there's an important question to be considered: What happens if tomorrow or next week or five months from now, this investment goes south?

Facebook raises stock offering, shoots for $18.5B with IPO
Facebook is working to increase the size of its IPO by 85 million shares -- a move could lift the value the company's upcoming stock offering to about $18.5 billion.

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