ALL RECENT AP STORIES

Federal officials plan to kill a proposal to build a new national high-speed wireless network after concluding it would in some cases jam personal-navigation and other GPS devices. The Federal Communications Commission sought comments Wednesday on revoking LightSquared's permit after a federal agency that coordinates wireless signals, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, concluded that there's no way to eliminate the risk of interference with GPS devices. The FCC had...

Networking company Cisco said Wednesday that it is challenging Microsoft's $8.5 billion takeover of Skype at the European Union's top court to ensure Microsoft won't block other video conferencing services. Microsoft completed the deal in October shortly after the European Commission, the EU's competition regulator, cleared the takeover. Microsoft Corp. hopes that owning Skype will allow it to better compete with other tech giants including Apple Inc. or Google Inc. But for Cisco Systems Inc.,...

The federal government is cracking down on "robocalls," those automated phone calls with the tendency to interrupt Sunday dinners and otherwise annoy consumers. The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday that it will now require telemarketers to obtain written consent from people before placing a robocall. Written does not mean handwritten, though _ electronic forms are OK. The new rules also eliminate a loophole that allowed telemarketers to place robocalls if they had an "established...

He's considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. But Sir Isaac Newton was also an influential theologian who applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture, Hebrew and Jewish mysticism. Now Israel's national library, an unlikely owner of a vast trove of Newton's writings, has digitized his theological collection _ some 7,500 pages in Newton's own handwriting _ and put it online. Among the yellowed texts are Newton's famous prediction of the apocalypse in 2060. Newton...

Investors sold off shares of Zynga on Wednesday after the company behind the most popular Facebook games fell shy of high expectations for its first earnings report as a publicly traded company. Zynga Inc. of "FarmVille" and "CastleVille" fame reported better fourth-quarter results than what Wall Street was expecting, at least according to the average estimate compiled by FactSet. But Barclays analyst Mark May said the results fell short of some recent, more bullish expectations. The company...

When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher's home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled. "My wife and I were terrified," said teacher Michael Kimotho. "But the alarm raised by the chief helped." The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site...

The tidy Swiss want to clean up space. Swiss scientists said Wednesday they plan to launch a "janitor satellite" specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships. The 10-million-franc ($11-million) satellite called CleanSpace One _ the prototype for a family of such satellites _ is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL. Its...

It's become the routine in the cable industry that subscribers stream out the door every quarter, hanging up on cable in favor of service from satellite or phone companies. But in the October to December quarter, Comcast Corp. nearly managed to stop that flow. The country's largest cable company on Wednesday said it lost 17,000 TV customers in the fourth quarter, the smallest number of defections in five years. It compares with a loss of 135,000 subscribers in the same quarter a year earlier....

Alibaba Group and Japan's Softbank will go directly to Yahoo's chief executive, bypassing negotiators from the U.S. Internet company, after talks over the sale of Yahoo's Asian holdings broke down, a person familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday. The struggling Internet company has been in discussions to sell its stakes in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan back to Alibaba and Yahoo Japan shareholder Softbank Corp. But the person, who declined to be identified...

Online game maker Zynga Inc. reported a net loss for the last three months of 2011, weighed down by hefty stock-compensation expenses and other costs in its first quarter as a public company. Its adjusted earnings and revenue inched past Wall Street's expectations, but that wasn't enough to lift the stock of the company that is behind the most popular games played on Facebook. Zynga's stock fell 6 percent in after-hours trading following its report. San Francisco-based Zynga said Tuesday that...

The Associated Press is suing a digital news distributor, claiming it infringed on AP copyrights. The complaint, filed Tuesday in New York federal court, alleges that Meltwater U.S. Holding Inc. and its Meltwater News Service have been illegally selling content created by the AP, a 166-year-old news cooperative that sells its services to newspapers, broadcasters and websites around the world. Meltwater News, based in San Francisco, is an 11-year-old electronic news clipping service that helps...

A U.S. security company whose tear gas has been used against Egyptian demonstrators has become the latest victim of the Anonymous movement, hackers claimed Tuesday. In a statement posted to the Internet, hackers claimed to have broken into Combined Systems Inc.'s website and stolen personal information belonging to clients and employees of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based firm. They accused the company of being run by war profiteers who sell "mad chemical weapons to militaries and cop shops around...

Bulgaria could join Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland in delaying its decision on whether to sign an international copyright treaty that some Internet users say could lead to online censorship. Bulgarian Economy Minister Traicho Traikov said Tuesday he will ask his government to suspend ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement on Wednesday until the EU has dealt with opposition to it. Last weekend, protests were held against the treaty in Bulgaria, Poland, Germany, Finland...

Angry Birds has joined Facebook. The popular avian menace game debuted on the social network globally Tuesday. Rovio Asia senior vice president Henri Holm said the company launched the new version of the game in Jakarta because it's the "world's most Facebook-connected city." He said he hoped the game could reach more than 800 million users worldwide. More than 17 percent of Indonesia's 240 million people have Facebook accounts. He said more than 17 million are in Jakarta and surrounding areas....

When the demonic first-person game "The Darkness" was released in 2007, it was a twisted breath of fresh air among all the war simulators and space-marine romps. AP video game reviewer Lou Kesten called it an "intriguing mix of stealth and first-person shooting." Unfortunately, a sequel that's arrived five years later isn't as much of a revelation. "The Darkness II" (2K Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $59.99), developed by Digital Extremes instead of Starbreeze Studios, feels like an...

UnitedHealth Group's Optum business is launching a service that allows doctors to share information about patients over the Internet, as health care companies continue their push to improve care with better coordination. The system, known as cloud computing, involves storing information and software applications on remote servers that are accessed through a secure Internet connection. In health care, this means a doctor does not have to go to a particular computer for patient information or care...

Zynga will show whether it was able to further boost its rapidly growing number of followers, as well as its profit and revenue as a publicly traded company, when the online game maker reports fourth-quarter results Tuesday. It will be Zynga's first quarterly report since going public in December. Analysts, on average, expect the San-Francisco company to post earnings of 3 cents per share on revenue of $302.1 million, according to a poll by FactSet. Zynga Inc. makes nearly all of its money from...

A Chinese company said Tuesday it will ask customs officials to ban imports and exports of Apple's iPads due to a dispute over ownership of the trademark. All of Apple's iPads are manufactured in China, meaning global sales of the popular tablet computers might be affected if authorities agreed to enforce such a request by Shenzhen Proview Technology. The dispute with Proview, which won a court ruling that it owns the iPad name in China, has resulted in authorities seizing iPads from retailers...

Mike Trang likes to use his iPhone 4 as a GPS device, helping him get around in his job. Now and then, his younger cousins get ahold of it, and play some YouTube videos and games. But in the past few weeks, there has been none of that, because AT&T Inc. put a virtual wheel clamp on his phone. Web pages wouldn't load and maps wouldn't render. Forget about YouTube videos _ Trang's data speeds were reduced to dial-up levels. "It basically makes my phone useless," said Trang, an Orange County,...

A senior Iranian military official said Monday that Tehran's nuclear and other industrial facilities suffer periodic cyber attacks, but that the country has the technology to protect itself from the threat, an official news agency reported. Iran considers itself to have been waging a complicated cyber war since 2010, when a virus known as Stuxnet disrupted controls of some nuclear centrifuges. "Most enemy threats target nuclear energy sites as well as electronic trade and banking operations,"...

Many Iranian web users say their access to foreign email services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail appears to have been restored after a four day outage. Elaheh Ansari and Reza Estiar are among dozens of Internet users who told The Associated Press that their access was back on Monday. The semiofficial Mehr agency had said that more than 30 million people in the country were affected by the outage. Authorities in Iran's national telecommunications company declined to comment, saying the...

Iraq's capital is embracing Valentine's Day this year with a huge public display of affection in what its residents say is the nation's most amorous celebration of the holiday ever. Street corners across Baghdad are blanketed with the synthetic red fur of teddy bears, while silken nighties and lip-shaped satin pillows hang in store fronts. It's a vivid counterpoint to a place that's still a far cry from warm and fuzzy _ with bombings remaining a fact of life since the withdrawal of U.S. forces...

Malaysia's government on Monday defended its decision to deport a young Saudi journalist who may face persecution at home for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter. International rights groups have slammed the deportation but Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia was not a safe haven for fugitives. Jiddah-based newspaper columnist Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained Thursday at the Malaysian airport while in transit to New Zealand. He was deported Sunday despite fears from...

Piece by piece, in backpacks and carry-on bags, American aid contractor Alan Gross made sure laptops, smartphones, hard drives and networking equipment were secreted into Cuba. The most sensitive item, according to official trip reports, was the last one: a specialized mobile phone chip that experts say is often used by the Pentagon and the CIA to make satellite signals virtually impossible to track. The purpose, according to an Associated Press review of Gross' reports, was to set up uncensored...

Netflix pressed the rewind button on its fourth-quarter earnings after settling allegations that the video subscription service violated a consumer-privacy law. Accounting for the $9 million settlement resulted in a 14 percent decrease in the fourth-quarter net income that Netflix Inc. reported Jan. 25. The bottom line for the final three months of last year now comes to $35.2 million, or 64 cents per share, down from the previously reported $40.7 million, or 73 cents per share. The company,...

Within just over a week, Netflix and Hulu are both debuting their first stabs at original scripted programming. The shows amount to a milestone in Internet television, an early sign of the leveling between broadcasting and streaming. Programming options between TV and the Web are increasingly separated by little more than the "video source" button on your remote. But the most salient thing about the new offerings from Netflix and Hulu are just how "TV" they are. Earlier this week, Netflix released...

A request for an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make Brazil the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments' requests. Twitter unveiled plans last month that would allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws. "As far as we know this is the first time that a country has attempted to take Twitter up on their country-by-country take down," Eva...

In game six of the 2004 American League Championship Series, Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling beat the New York Yankees despite playing on an injured ankle _ one that bled so badly that Schilling's victory became known as the "bloody sock" game. It's the stuff of baseball legend. And it's a legend that's more dramatic than anything in "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning" (Electronic Arts, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $59.99), the first game from Schilling's 38 Studios. It's a solid rookie...

FBI background interviews of some people who knew Apple co-founder Steve Jobs reveal a man driven by power and alienating some of the people who worked with him. In the FBI documents released Thursday, many of those who knew Jobs praised him, speaking highly of Jobs' character and integrity and asserting that he always conducted his business dealings in a reputable manner. They recommended him for a post during the George H.W. Bush administration. The 1991 interviews were part of a background...

A news report says Apple plans to unveil a new iPad early next month. AllThingsD, a website affiliated with The Wall Street Journal, says Apple Inc. is holding an event in San Francisco the first week of March _ the same week Apple announced the iPad 2 last year. The report cites unnamed people familiar with the device. Apple declined comment Thursday. It's not known whether the new device will be called the iPad 3, and when it will be available for sale. Last year, sales of the iPad 2 began...

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra officials insist it's not "American Idol" meets Mozart. But its new video contest on YouTube does have at least one similarity: voting by the public. Videos submitted by instrumental soloists will be up for anyone to watch. The top four vote-getters will get a chance to audition for musical director and conductor Manfred Honeck. The winner _ if Honeck picks one at all _ gets $10,000 and a paid trip to perform with the orchestra at Heinz Hall this fall. But the orchestra...

A federal grand jury has indicted a Romanian citizen on charges he hacked into 25 climate-research computers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Tuesday's indictment charges Robert Butyka, 25, with one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. Officials said the 2010 attack made computers in the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder Program unusable for two months while malicious code was removed and data restored. The...

Cisco, the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, on Wednesday said that its net income jumped 44 percent in the latest quarter as it continues to put last year's slump behind it. Cisco Systems Inc. has emerged leaner after a round of layoffs and a narrowing of its focus. Net income was $2.2 billion, or 40 cents per share, in the fiscal second quarter, which ended Jan. 28. That compares with earnings of $1.5 billion, or 27 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding the cost of stock-based...

Time Warner Inc. got a boost from its movie studio and cable TV networks in the last three months of the year, and the company expects growth to continue in 2012 even with the end of its lucrative Harry Potter franchise. Fourth-quarter net income grew slightly as revenue increased 5 percent. Adjusted earnings for the quarter and the growth forecast for this year topped Wall Street's expectations. Time Warner, which owns Warner Bros., HBO, CNN, Time and People magazines and other media properties,...

A consumer watchdog group is suing the Federal Trade Commission in an attempt to prevent Google from making sweeping changes to its privacy policies next month. The planned revisions would enable Google Inc. to bundle the personal information gathered by its Internet search engine and other services, such as Gmail, YouTube and Plus, so the company can gain a better understanding of its users and potentially sell more advertising. Google has depicted the switch as an improvement that will make...

Social-sharing app Path has come under fire for accessing and uploading users' phone address books without their permission. The information has now been deleted, and Path has apologized. Path dubs itself a "personal network," letting its users share photos, videos and updates with close friends. That Path prides itself on strict privacy controls makes the mishap even more glaring. CEO Dave Morin said in a blog post Wednesday that Path is "deeply sorry" if its users were uncomfortable with the...

Karaoke lovers typically fall into two categories: Those who enjoy it, and those whose arms have to be twisted to get up and sing in public. Enter Soulo, a software and microphone kit that can turn an iPad or other Apple device into a karaoke machine. It gives you instant karaoke in the privacy of your own home, or wherever you carry your Apple gadgets. That's the idea, anyway. In practical terms, the quality of the karaoke experience depends largely on the kind of sound system you pipe Soulo...

Hackers affiliated with the group Anonymous obtained personal information for more than 150 police officers from an old website of the West Virginia Chiefs of Police Association and posted the data online. The FBI is investigating, said William Roper, the association's president and the police chief of Ranson, W.Va., said. "It's a shame that folks have to do this," Roper said Wednesday. He said the hackers obtained the home addresses, home phone numbers and cellphone numbers of current and retired...

For a president who promotes technology at every opportunity, Barack Obama often strikes an awed, self-effacing pose in the presence of technicians, scientists and high tech machinery. "If I'm nodding, you should just assume that everything you said is going completely over my head," he once told winners of a New York science fair. Still, he loves the stuff. At no point has his inner geek been more evident than on Tuesday as he mischievously _ "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about...

For a president who promotes technology at every opportunity, Barack Obama often strikes an awed, self-effacing pose in the presence of technicians, scientists and high tech machinery. "If I'm nodding, you should just assume that everything you said is going completely over my head," he once told winners of a New York science fair. Still, he loves the stuff. At no point has his inner geek been more evident than on Tuesday as he mischievously _ "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about...

CAREER OPPORTUNITY: All those apps being made for smartphones, computer tablets and Facebook's online social network are helping the U.S. economy lower its unemployment rate. A study released Tuesday by the technology trade group TechNet estimates apps are responsible for creating about 466,000 U.S. jobs since 2007. MORE JOBS TO COME: TechNet thinks the so-called "app economy" is still in the early stages of a boom likely to last for many more years as the number of Internet-connect devices and...

Looking for a promising career in a lousy economy? A new study suggests you're apt to find it in apps _ the services and tools built to run on smartphones, computer tablets and Facebook's online social network. The demand for applications for everything ranging from games to quantum physics has created 466,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2007, according to an analysis released Tuesday by technology trade group TechNet. The estimate counts 311,000 jobs at companies making the apps and another 155,000...

Phone company Verizon Communications Inc. will challenge Netflix and start a video streaming service this year with Redbox and its DVD rental kiosks. Verizon and Coinstar Inc., Redbox's parent company, said Monday that the service will be national and available to non-Verizon customers as well. It adds another dimension to Verizon's quest to become a force in home entertainment, and it looks set to compete to some extent with the cable-TV services it already sells. Unlike competing services from...

Coinstar's fourth-quarter earnings soared past analyst estimates as the company's Redbox kiosks for renting DVDs picked up customers who stopped getting their discs through Netflix's rival service. The performance announced Monday was sandwiched amid a couple deals aimed at making Redbox an even bigger player in the home entertainment market. Investors were particularly impressed with the fourth-quarter numbers and outlook for this year, lifting Coinstar's stock by more than 16 percent in extended...

A new Internet streaming venture built around Redbox's DVD-rental kiosks adds to a crowded field of online video-viewing services dominated by Netflix. In announcing the new venture Monday, Verizon Communications Inc. and Redbox's parent company, Coinstar Inc., did not say what types of content will be available or how much the service will cost when it starts in the second half of this year. But executives did say the service will bundle streaming and DVDs, which Redbox currently rents through...

A developing Senate plan that would bolster the government's ability to regulate the computer security of companies that run critical industries is drawing strong opposition from businesses that say it goes too far and security experts who believe it should have even more teeth. Legislation set to come out in the days ahead is intended to ensure that computer systems running power plants and other essential parts of the country's infrastructure are protected from hackers, terrorists or other criminals....

Google India has removed web pages deemed offensive to Indian political and religious leaders to comply with a court case that has raised censorship fears in the world's largest democracy, media reported Monday. The action follows weeks of intense government pressure for 22 Internet giants to remove photographs, videos or text considered "anti-religious" or "anti-social." A New Delhi court Monday gave Facebook, Google, YouTube and Blogspot and the other sites two weeks to present further plans...

Facebook's billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls himself a hacker. For most people, that word means something malicious _ shady criminals who listen in on private voicemails, or anonymous villains who cripple websites and break into email accounts. For Facebook, though, hacker means something different. It's an ideal that permeates the company's culture. It explains the push to try new ideas (even if they fail), and to promote new products quickly (even if they're imperfect). The hacker approach...

Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet. Unfortunately for the cyber sleuths, the hackers were in on the call too _ and now so is the rest of the world. Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the call on the Internet on Friday, gloating in a Twitter message...

The European Union's data protection authorities have asked Google to delay the rollout of its new privacy policy until they have verified that it doesn't break the bloc's data protection laws. Google publicized its new privacy rules _ which regulate how the Web giant uses the enormous amounts of personal data its collects through its search engine, email and other services _ with much fanfare last week. Since then, it has launched a huge publicity campaign informing its users around the globe...

For an emerging generation of Japanese innovators, the dream isn't a job for life at a big company. They have new ambitions, and they're determined to go places. Especially Silicon Valley. Small but growing numbers of Japanese entrepreneurs are jumping into the startup scene in northern California, particularly since the earthquake and tsunami last March. They include Naoki Shibata, who took the plunge by giving up the sort of life many Japanese in past decades spent their lives trying to attain....

The goody-two-shoes among us say it's better to give than to receive. That's not true for the average Facebook user, though. A new study out Friday found that the average user of the world's biggest online social network gets more than they give. That means more messages, more "likes" and more comments. Yes, even more "pokes." Behind all that is Facebook's relatively small group of "power users," who do more than their share of tagging, liking and uploading. The report from the Pew Research Center's...

Poland's prime minister says he is suspending the ratification process for an international copyright treaty after widespread protests and attacks on government websites. Donald Tusk said Friday that first a wider discussion must be held on the issue to include Internet users and privacy protection office. The government signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, late last month but it must still be approved. Tusk says Parliament may not do so if it conflicts with Polish law. The...

The goody-two-shoes among us say it's better to give than to receive. That's not true for the average Facebook user, though. A new study out Friday found that the average user of the world's biggest online social network gets more than they give. That means more messages, more "likes" and more comments. Yes, even more "pokes." Behind all that is Facebook's relatively small group of "power users," who do more than their share of tagging, liking and uploading. The report from the Pew Research Center's...

Facebook has filed paperwork for an initial public offering of stock. Its public debut will be the most anticipated tech IPO since Google went public in August 2004. Below is a look at how the stocks of some recently public companies are faring. The companies are all loosely Internet-related, though their businesses vary widely. _ Zynga Inc., developer of online games, first day of trading on Dec. 16, 2011 Pricing: $10 per share First-day close: $9.50, down 5 percent from IPO price Thursday's...

AOL and the Huffington Post are launching a live video network that aims to combine broadcast news with social media. The Huffington Post Streaming Network was previewed Thursday at AOL's Manhattan headquarters. The online network will launch this summer, streaming news video live 12 hours a day on weekdays, expanding to 16 hours a day next year. The Huffington Post, which AOL purchased for $315 million a year ago, is dedicating 100 employees to the project. It will be webcast from studios in...

Facebook's much-hyped initial public offering promises to be an exciting spectacle when the social media giant goes public this spring. But should you update your status to "shareholder"? The potential rewards from this $5 billion IPO are big, but so are the risks. Some numbers that came out in Facebook's filing late Wednesday were impressive: a $1 billion profit in 2011, $3.7 billion in revenue, 845 million users. What's still unknown: the initial stock price that connected buyers will be able...

Viacom Inc., the owner of Paramount Pictures, MTV and Comedy Central, on Thursday posted a 65 percent drop in net income for the latest quarter, as it took a charge related to the "Rock Band" series of video games. Revenue was below analyst estimates, sending its stock down. Viacom earned $212 million, or 38 cents per share, in the October-December quarter, down from $610 million, or $1 per share, a year ago. The New York-based company took a charge of $379 million to cover an arbitration award...

Figuring out how to pack a processor and other electronics into a machine gun bullet has been a challenge for engineers at Sandia National Laboratories, so weapons experts say the miniature guidance system the lab has developed is a breakthrough. Three years in the making, the bullet prototype represents another step toward a next-generation battlefield that scientists and experts expect to be saturated with technology and information. "In the laboratory, I'm able to make machines so incredibly...

Amazon.com is coming to India, with the Thursday launch of Junglee.com, a watered-down version of its global shopping portal. Junglee.com offers 12 million products from more than 14,000 Indian and global brands, the Seattle-based company said in a statement Thursday. The site allows shoppers to compare prices, but most actual purchases must be made through a network of third-party retailers. Indians will be able to buy shoes from Reebok, computer gadgets from Microsoft India, clothes from Fabindia...

Facebook is baring its business soul. The unveiling came late Wednesday when the company that depends on people to share their lives online filed its plans to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering of stock. It's a revelatory moment that prospective investors, curious competitors and nosy reporters have been awaiting for two years. During that time, Facebook established itself as a communications hub and emerged as a threat to the Internet's most powerful company, Google Inc. As with...

Gov. Jerry Brown's administration and state lawmakers on Wednesday hailed Facebook's much-anticipated plans for a public stock offering as a potential windfall for California's cash-strapped treasury, while some already say the extra revenue should go to preventing cutbacks to public schools. "If it is as big as it is being billed, then on behalf of a grateful state, I will go to Mark Zuckerberg's house and either wash his windows or mow his lawn," said Brown's finance spokesman, H.D. Palmer....

FB? That's the best they could do? The company that changed how politicians raise money, dissidents start revolutions and parents keep tabs on their kids announced its stock ticker symbol Wednesday. And it used about as much creativity as liking someone else's status. This was Facebook's place on the ticker, the electronic river of American commerce. This was a chance to make a statement, assert an identity _ a choice as fundamental as picking blue for the ribbon at the top of the screen. But...

In Facebook's regulatory filing for an initial public offering of stock, CEO Mark Zuckerberg included a letter to potential investors about the company's thinking. He described it as a social mission to make the world more open and connected. He also discussed Facebook's approach to culture and management in Wednesday's letter: "As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people....

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined five core values for Facebook in a letter to potential investors. The letter appears in regulatory filings Wednesday for Facebook's initial public offering of stock. Here is that portion of the letter: Focus on Impact If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone...

Some key developments in the eight years since Facebook's creation: February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University. March 2004: Facebook begins expansion to other colleges and universities. June 2004: Facebook moves headquarters to Palo Alto, Calif. September 2004: Facebook introduces the Wall, which allows people to write personal musings and other tidbits on profile pages. Lawsuit filed against Facebook claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook...

How the number of active users at Facebook has grown: December 2004: 1 million. December 2005: 5.5 million. December 2006: 12 million. April 2007: 20 million. October 2007: 50 million. August 2008: 100 million. January 2009: 150 million. February 2009: 175 million. April 2009: 200 million. July 2009: 250 million. September 2009: 300 million. December 2009: 350 million. February 2010: 400 million. July 2010: 500 million. July 2011: 750 million. September 2011: 800 million. February...

Facebook is hoping to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering of stock. It would be the largest IPO ever for an Internet company. Here are the top 10 so far, according to Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment adviser: Google Inc., IPO on Aug. 18, 2004, $1.67 billion raised. Yandex N.V., IPO on May 23, 2011, $1.3 billion raised. Infonet Services Corp. (now part of BT Group PLC), IPO on Dec. 15, 1999, $1.08 billion raised. Shanda Games Ltd., IPO on Sept. 24, 2009, $1.04 billion raised....

Facebook has filed paperwork for an initial public offering of stock. Its public debut will be the most anticipated tech IPO since Google went public in August 2004. Below is a look at how the stocks of some recently public companies are faring. The companies are all loosely Internet-related, though their businesses vary widely. _ Zynga Inc., developer of online games, first day of trading on Dec. 16, 2011 Pricing: $10 per share First-day close: $9.50, down 5 percent from IPO price Wednesday's...

GOING PUBLIC: Facebook files paperwork for its much-anticipated initial public offering of stock. It hopes to raise $5 billion, the most ever for an Internet IPO. WHAT THAT MEANS: Facebook will have financial clout as it tries to make its service even more pervasive and expand its audience. It also could help Facebook fend off an intensifying challenge from Google, which is looking to solidify its status as the Internet's most powerful company with a rival social network called Plus. TRADING:...

Microsoft Corp. slammed search rival Google Inc. with full-page newspaper ads Wednesday, saying that recent changes at Google that allow it to internally merge the data it collects on user activity across services such as YouTube and Gmail are meant to allow advertisers to better target customers. Google has touted the overhaul it announced last week as a simplification of detailed but obtuse policies and a way to provide a better user experience. Microsoft offered up its own Web-based alternatives,...

Lawyers for Facebook are looking for $84,000 in legal fees from a New York man after a judge ruled he caused delays in his lawsuit seeking part ownership in the social networking site. They also want a judge to freeze Paul Ceglia's legal case until the fees are paid. Ceglia's attorney called the lawyers' rates "stratospheric" and asked the judge this week to reject them in favor of an amount more in line with what lawyers are paid in Buffalo, where the case is being heard. The judge didn't immediately...

A group of Internet hackers said Wednesday it took down the website of the Banco do Brasil, Brazil's largest state-run bank. It's the third such attack against financial institutions in a week. "Attention sailors: Target hit! ... BancodoBrasil is sinking. TANGO DOWN," said a Twitter post from the group that calls itself "Anonymous Brasil." It threatened further attacks on other banks. Banco do Brasil said in a statement that its website was not taken down but was "slowed down" by a flood of...

A South Carolina company's lawsuit accusing a former employee of costing it hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business when he took Twitter followers can go forward, a federal judge has ruled. On Monday, San Francisco-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James ruled that Noah Kravitz had not made strong enough arguments to dismiss the lawsuit by PhoneDog LLC. A hearing in the case is set for later this year. Kravitz worked for the Mount Pleasant-based company _ a website that reviews...

Barnes & Noble is attempting to irk its publishing rival Amazon.com Inc. by not stocking Amazon published titles in its stores. The largest U.S. traditional bookseller has lost customers to cheaper online rivals like Amazon.com and discount stores. To fight back, it has invested heavily in an e-bookstore and Nook e-book readers, which compete with Amazon's Kindle e-readers. Amazon, meanwhile, has been steadily expanding its publishing operations, signing exclusive deals with authors such...

Ukrainian authorities have shut down a popular file-sharing website saying it violates copyright laws, officials said Wednesday. Interior Ministry spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk said that Ex.ua was closed Tuesday after complaints from Microsoft, Adobe and other companies. The ministry said it has confiscated 200 servers that were used to support the website and law enforcement agents were questioning 16 of its employees. The Recording Industry Association of America has named Ex.ua among the...

Shoppers spent more money online this holiday season than ever before, and yet, Amazon _the world's largest Internet retailer_ failed to meet Wall Street's sales expectations with its latest financial results. In a surprise, the company's revenue fell nearly $1 billion short of Wall Street's expectations, even as it grew 35 percent from a year earlier. The quarter included Amazon's headline-grabbing November launch of the Kindle Fire, its answer to Apple's iPad. Its net income also fell sharply...

Samsung took a double-hit in its battle against archrival Apple when the European Union announced it would investigate whether it was illegally trying to hinder competitors and Germany blocked sales of some of its tablet computers. Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. are engaged in a strategic war over patents in many countries across the world as they try to draw market share away from each other. The EU's antitrust watchdog thinks the South Korean company may be overstepping the bounds and launched...

A group of Internet hackers said Tuesday it took down the website of Brazil's second largest private sector bank, one day after it did the same with the country's largest private bank. The group that calls itself "Anonymous Brasil" said on Twitter: "Attention sailors: Target hit! The http://bradesco.com.br is sinking. TANGO DOWN." Banco Bradesco SA said in a statement that its site suffered "momentary interruptions," due to a denial of service attack, but that it was never forced offline. However,...

The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy's virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threatened with a knife to give them up. The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the theft conviction of a youth who stole another boy's possessions in the popular online fantasy game RuneScape. Judges ordered the offender to perform 144 hours of community service. Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions...

Everyone in the retail world wants to see if Ron Johnson can work his magic a third time. For 15 years, he helped shape Target's cheap chic image. Then, he spent about a decade changing the way Americans shop for electronic gadgets at Apple. Now, Johnson faces perhaps his biggest challenge yet as CEO of J.C. Penney: dust off one of the dowdiest brands in retailing to make it cool again. To do that, he's borrowing from Apple's uber-successful playbook. During an hour-long interview in which he...

Federal prosecutors say data from users of Megaupload could be deleted as soon as Thursday. U.S. prosecutors blocked access to Megaupload and charged seven men, saying the site facilitated millions of illegal downloads of movies, music and other content. The company says its millions of users stored their own data, including family photos and personal documents. They haven't been able to see their data since the government raids earlier this month, but there has been hope they would be able to...

Thailand is welcoming Twitter's new policy to censor tweets in specific nations where the content might break laws. Technology minister Anudith Nakornthap said Monday the new policy was a "constructive" development. The Southeast Asian country routinely blocks websites with content deemed offensive to the Thai monarchy. Anudith said it was good that Twitter "felt responsible to cooperate with governments to make sure basic rights are not violated through the use of social media." Thailand's...

In Silicon Valley's white-hot competition for tech talent, programmers can face a daily barrage of calls from recruiters seeking to woo them to rival companies with offers of better pay and perks. But workers for some of the biggest names in the business claim their phones fell silent because of a conspiracy among their employers. And they claim the world's biggest tech icon was at the center. A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose claims senior executives at Google Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe...

When Facebook makes its long-expected debut as a public company this spring, the social-networking company will likely vault into the ranks of the largest public companies in the world, alongside McDonald's, Amazon.com and Bank of America. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Facebook is preparing to file initial paperwork for an offering that could raise as much as $10 billion and value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission...

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has launched a webcast player that will allow music lovers to enjoy an upcoming performance of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 and other concerts online for free in the comfort of their homes. People in about 40 countries are expected to view Saturday's high-definition "Live from Orchestra Hall" webcast, and the orchestra expects its webcast series to surpass 30,000 views with this weekend's episode. The orchestra said the webcast player will make online viewers feel...

Business and social media leaders teamed up Friday to tackle the transmission of HIV from mothers to babies, saying the medicine and the money are largely in place, and with the right organizational skills they can eliminate HIV-infected births by 2015. John Megrue, CEO of Apax Partners U.S., will chair a business group that includes bankers and consulting experts and will help coordinate work being done by several governments and other international donors, as well as filling in gaps in the funding....

Nintendo's chief is determined to get right the launch of its next game machine, Wii U, set for this year's holiday shopping season, and acknowledged Friday some mistakes with selling its 3DS handheld. But Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata warned earnings for the fiscal year set to begin April will be the toughest ever for the Japanese manufacturer behind the Super Mario and Pokemon games. Nintendo went against conventional wisdom with the original Wii in 2006. The quirky, cheap game console...

The federal government's plan to expand computer security protections into critical parts of private industry is raising concerns that the move will threaten Americans' civil liberties. In a report for release Friday, The Constitution Project warns that as the Obama administration partners more with the energy, financial, communications and health care industries to monitor and protect networks, sensitive personal information of people who work for or communicate with those companies could be...

America may be a technology-driven nation, but the health care system's conversion from paper to computerized records needs lots of work to get the bugs out, according to experts who spent months studying the issue. Hospitals and doctors' offices increasingly are going digital, the Bipartisan Policy Center says in a report released Friday. But there's been little progress getting the computer systems to talk to one another, exchanging data the way financial companies do. "The level of health...

Nintendo's chief is determined to get right the launch of its next game machine, Wii U, set for this year's holiday shopping season, and acknowledged Friday some mistakes with selling its 3DS handheld. But Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata warned earnings for the fiscal year set to begin April will be the toughest ever for the Japanese manufacturer behind the Super Mario and Pokemon games. Iwata's remarks come a day after it lowered its annual earnings forecast to a 65 billion yen ($844 million)...

Samsung Electronics Co. reported a 17 percent jump in fourth quarter profit on the strength of smartphone sales even as the company battled claims it had copied Apple's iPhone. Samsung said Friday in a regulatory filing that its net profit reached 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) in the three months that ended in December. The company earned 3.4 trillion won in the same quarter a year earlier. The Suwon, South Korea-based company said its operating profit jumped 75.8 percent to 5.3 trillion won...

Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis. The additional flexibility announced Thursday is likely to raise fears that Twitter's commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money. But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or "tweets," remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet...

Hollywood's Snow White rivalry is heating up. Movie studio Relativity Media on Thursday pushed back the release of its lighthearted fairy tale starring Julia Roberts, "Mirror Mirror," by two weeks to March 30. That cuts the time between it and Universal Picture's pulsating action movie, "Snow White and the Huntsman," to nine weeks instead of 11. Relativity insists its PG-rated version of the Brothers Grimm story is a family comedy while Comcast Corp.'s Universal is marketing "Huntsman" as a gritty...

Poland on Thursday signed an international copyright agreement, sparking more demonstrations by Internet users who have protested for days over fear it will lead to online censorship. After the signing, protesters rallied in the Polish cities of Poznan and Lublin to express their anger over the treaty. Lawmakers for the left-wing Palikot's Movement wore masks in parliament to show their dissatisfaction, while the largest opposition party _ the right-wing Law and Justice party _ called for a referendum...

AT&T Inc. is still the home of the iPhone. It activated 7.6 million of them in the latest quarter, accounting for one out of every five iPhones sold globally. And AT&T remains heavily dependent on the iPhone to gain and keep customers, despite a vow by CEO Randall Stephenson a year ago to "very aggressively" market competing smartphones in 2011. That vow came in the wake of AT&T's loss of an exclusive right to sell the iPhone in the U.S. The iPhone accounted for about 80 percent of...

How do you make that familiar galaxy far, far away fresh again? Take it back to an even longer time ago. Way back. Well before Vader, Luke, Leia, Yoda and especially Jar Jar. More than 3,000 years before, in fact. That's the setting for BioWare's engaging "Star Wars: The Old Republic," a multiplayer online game for PCs that debuted last month. (The standard version costs $59.99, with 30 days of game time; afterward, users are required to buy subscription plans.) It's not quite alien territory...

Young people tweeting from BlackBerrys and iPhones are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, with South Africans by far the most vociferous, according to new research published Thursday. Kenya-based Portland Communications and Tweetminster published findings indicating Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation and is fast becoming an important source of information. More than 80 percent of those polled said they mainly used it for communicating with friends, 68 percent said they...

Nintendo Co. sank to losses for the April-December period, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld, a strong yen that erodes overseas earnings and competition from mobile devices such as the iPhone that offer games-on-the-go. The Japanese video game machine maker behind the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises said Thursday it now expects to sell far fewer of its 3DS machines, which feature three-dimensional images. It is forecasting sales of 14 million machines for the fiscal year through...