Goldman resumes coverage on U.S. Internet sector

We've already seen?fish wielding tools and?ravens socializing, and now we're seeing another hint to the inevitable world domination by animals. This?bearded dragon has mastered the video game?Ant Crusher on its owner's cellphone. Sure, the game seems perfectly tailored to the … Continue reading →

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SAY Media acquires tech blog Read Write Web

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - SAY Media announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Read Write Web, a popular and respected technology blog.

In addition to that acquisition, SAY has brought aboard Dan Frommer, one of the founding editors of Business Insider and founder and editor-in-chief of SplatF. He will fill the role of editor-at-large for Read Write Web and continue to write for SplatF, which SAY also owns.

"ReadWriteWeb has established itself as a leading news and analysis source for the tech community, reaching high-level business influencers and decision makers. Its editorial team is frequently sourced and considered to be one of the best in the business," Matt Sanchez, CEO of SAY Media, said in a statement.

Read Write Web boasts 1.5 million unique visitors a month worldwide (about half of which come from the United States), according to Quantcast -- but that number has declined year-over-year. The addition of Frommer and Sanchez' assertion that RWW will add "new star writers" signal that SAY hopes to boost that number back up.

Richard McManus, founder and editor-in-chief of RWW, will remain in charge of the site's expanding editorial operations.

SAY is the result of a merger between online advertising network VideoEgg and blog consortium Six Apart.

SAY owns and operates a series of media properties, and this acquisition is intended to bolster its Tech channel, which already includes Android and Me, SplatF and others.

AdWeek's Anthony Ha broke the news, and an embargo.

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Top Diggs: Fire dept. watches home burn down, Achmed the dead Santa Claus

We've already seen?fish wielding tools and?ravens socializing, and now we're seeing another hint to the inevitable world domination by animals. This?bearded dragon has mastered the video game?Ant Crusher on its owner's cellphone. Sure, the game seems perfectly tailored to the … Continue reading →

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House clears way for spectrum auction; bill faces veto

We've already seen?fish wielding tools and?ravens socializing, and now we're seeing another hint to the inevitable world domination by animals. This?bearded dragon has mastered the video game?Ant Crusher on its owner's cellphone. Sure, the game seems perfectly tailored to the … Continue reading →

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Facebook launches tool to report suicidal behavior

(Reuters) - Facebook launched a new suicide prevention tool on Tuesday, giving users a direct link to an online chat with counselors who can help, the company said.

Friends are able to report suicidal behavior by clicking a report option next to any piece of content on the site and choosing suicidal content under the harmful behavior option, Facebook spokesman Frederic Wolens said.

Facebook will then email the user in distress a direct link for a private online chat with a crisis representative from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as well as the group's phone number.

The new tool gives people who may not be comfortable picking up the phone a direct avenue to seek help.

"This was a natural progression from something we've been working on for a long time," Wolens said.

Users also have the ability to report suicidal behavior by going to the site's Help Center or search for suicide reporting forms. They can also use reporting links around the site.

Worried friends who reported the behavior will also receive a message to say it is being addressed, Wolens said.

Facebook, the most popular Web-based social networking site, has more than 800 million active users worldwide. The Palo Alto, California-based company was co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004.

The new suicide reporting tool will be made available to people who use Facebook in the United States and Canada.

Wolens said that all reporting on the site is done anonymously and so a distressed user will not know who reported the suicidal content.

Nearly 100 Americans die by suicide every day, according to the Surgeon General of the United States.

In the past year, more than 8 million Americans 18 or older had thought seriously about suicide, according to a blog post by the Surgeon General accompanying the release of the new Facebook tool.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper; Editing by Peter Bohan and Richard Chang)

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Tablet owners are shunning 3G and loving Wi-Fi

Based off a year-long study conducted by?The NPD Group’s Connected Intelligence, the percentage of tablet owners that utilize Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet has increased over 2011. During April 2011,?60 percent of tablet owners stated that they only use Wi-Fi to go online, but only five percent had plans to invest in a mobile 3G broadband plan within the following six months. By October 2011, Wi-Fi only users had grown to 65 percent while users that utilize both Wi-Fi and cellular data, users that only use cellular data and users that don’t use any Internet connection shrunk. ?

According to VP of?Connected Intelligence?Eddie Hold, he stated “Concern over the high cost of cellular data plans is certainly an issue, but more consumers are finding that Wi-Fi is available in the majority of locations where they use their tablets, providing them ‘good enough’ connectivity. In addition, the vast majority of tablet users already own a smartphone, which fulfills the ‘must have’ connectivity need.” According to a study conducted by?market research company Informa Telecoms and Media, the amount of?public Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to skyrocket by 350 percent over the next four years and will likely reach nearly six million hotspots.

Tablet owners are going to have less of a reason to purchase expensive cellular data plans as the amount of Wi-Fi locations increase over time. Cellular companies are also likely having a difficult time convincing smartphone owners to purchase a second data plan for a tablet. Owners of the 3G-enabled version of the iPad 2 have to pay between $15 (250MB) to $25 (2GB) a month for service with an additional $10 for each gigabyte beyond that cap. Verizon Wireless users can choose from a 2GB plan for $30, a 5GB plan for $50 or a 10GB plan for $80 a month. Similar to AT&T, each additional gigabyte beyond the cap costs an additional $10 a month.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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First look: The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime

Livestand takes on Flipboard: Our hands-on analysis

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A Web Celebrity-Spotting Guide to the Latest Anti-SOPA Site

If your job has some kind of online component (and pretty much every job these days does) you'll have fun with the endless scrolling feature on "I Work for the Internet," the latest website set up to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In that "We Are the 99 Percent" kind of way, the site basically amounts to a bunch of webcam portraits of self-appointed Internet employees standing up against SOPA. All it takes to join is a photo of yourself and a brief description of what you do and where you're from, and your mug will be added to a neverending stream of nerdy-looking faces. Looking to see if your web-savvy friends have signed up is pretty fun (Hi Annie!) but what's even more fun? Internet celebrity spotting, of course.

Related: The Web Collectively Protests Congress's Censorship Law

This seemed like a good idea until we realized that "I Work for the Internet" is already being trolled.?The guys at?Vice?played a little prank on both the SOPA protesters as well as the bloggers making fun of them. On Tumblr, the magazine admitted to posting a photo of Andrew Breitbart as well as "a picture of a popular blogger … who had made fun of 'I Work For The Internet' campaign." Gawker's Ryan Tate had spotted him too and?blogged about his few issues with the site on Monday night:

This legislation would curb the rights of everyone online, but on "I Work" the pictured opponents are mostly pasty male nerds, often in glasses, the same sort of people who have been?activating their asthma inhalers at Tumblr HQ over SOPA and who are at this very moment?contemplating shutting down Wikipedia in protest. …

Hey, that's fine. It's fine that this site was created by the same guys who made "Free Bieber." It's fine that web geeks and their startups sat relatively mute as Americans got assassinated by the military without trial …?as Wall Street took nearly $8 trillion in federal commitments while torpedoing meaningful regulation and exerting its influence to avoid meaningful oversight.

Tate complained about a few more issues that the angry Internet could've taken on, but you get the point. He also pointed out Andrew Breitbart (pictured below) as evidence that all of the people who've signed up for "I Work For the Internet" were nothing more than "self-centered, melodramatic dopes." Vice was sure to make fun of Tate for falling for their prank.

Related: Hollywood Dominates the Debate at Internet Censorship Hearing

Nevertheless, there do appear to be some other recognizable faces in the crowd. Before we launch into a listicle and start naming names, we must admit that our definition of "Internet celebrity" is pretty broad. We took a screenshot of pretty much anyone we recognized and made a list of people we thought our readers might recognize, too. Because the relative anonymity offered by only allowed one letter for each last name, we surely missed some famous names, but we've made this listicle of the famous faces. Email us screenshots if we missed anybody noteworthy!

Related: Tech Companies Not Taking a Stand on Censorship Are Being Blacklisted

Big Government blogger and conservative rabble rouser?Andrew Breitbart??does?sounds cooler when you call him "Andy B." Vice explains the name and the prank:

Earlier today, the anti-SOPA 'I Work For The Internet' campaign ‘became viral’. VICE Magazine Tumblr Team’s first reaction was to post a picture of a really cute kitten, because kittens run the internet. When we saw that photos were being moderated, we realized the kitten probably wouldn’t make it past the intern screener. So we thought of who the most hated person on the internet was, and, probably because we read an article about him earlier in the day, decided to post a picture of Andrew Breitbart. We called him 'Andy B' and said he lived in Washington DC, MD because it looked funny and also because DC wasn’t an option in the drop down.

Related: U.S. Authorities Seize Domain Names

TechCrunch editor?Erick Schonfeld and newly hired blogger Eric Eldon look a lot like their Twitter avatars. Eldon also blogged about the site. We wonder if Schonfeld might be the other blogger Vice added:

Related: The Knives Come Out in the Battle to Stop SOPA

Uniqlo sweater model and Tumblr founder David Karp and longtime Tumblr designer Peter Vidani were among the first on the list, leading us to believe that Tumblr -- a site that's been especially aggressive about protesting SOPA -- probably played a role in developing the site.

Dave Morin is early Zuckerberg disciple who built the Facebook Platform and then went on to found Path, which he refused to sell to Google for $100 million earlier this year.

You might not recognize his face but you've surely watched videos on the site he co-founded and designed: Vimeo. Meet?Zach Klein, who's now a venture capitalist with the Founder's Colletive and sort of looks like a nerdier version of Ryan Gosling.

Texts from Last Night is the site that you probably laughed at with your friends in college. Co-founder Lauren Leto now runs a start up called bntr in New York, where she apparently has a "fabulous" life.

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Russian security council chief wants Web regulation

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Internet must be subject to "reasonable regulation," the head of Russia's Security Council said in remarks published on Wednesday, a fresh sign of Kremlin concern about the use of social networks to promote anti-government protests.

Opposition groups and ordinary Russians used Facebook and the Russian site VKontakte to organize protests last week over a December 4 parliamentary election they charged was rigged to benefit Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling party.

Tens of thousands of people rallied on Saturday in the biggest anti-government protests since Putin came to power 12 years ago, many chanting "Russia without Putin!"

Opponents plan further protests ahead of a March election expected to return Putin, a former Soviet KGB officer and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, to the presidency.

"Attempts to stop people from communicating are in principle counterproductive and even amoral," Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, who headed the FSB during Putin's 2000-2008 presidency, told the daily Argumenty i Fakty.

"However, one must not ignore the use of the Internet by criminals and terrorist groups. Reasonable regulation, of course, must be conducted in Russia, as is done in the United States, China, and many other countries," he said.

Chinese government controls on the Internet are far stricter than those in the United States, and Patrushev gave no details in the newspaper interview, but his remarks suggest Russian authorities are considering ways of reining in the Internet.

Putin has publicly said that the state's ability and right to control Internet use is limited, and suggested his government would not try to do so. Analysts say hardliners close to Putin would like to impose controls similar to China's.

Vkontakte, Russia's top social networking site, said last week that it had rejected a request by the FSB to block opposition groups from using it to organize street protests.

A spokesman for VKontakte, used by tens of thousands of people to coordinate support for the December 10 protests, said the company was not pressured or threatened.

Ahead of the parliamentary vote, however, the websites of the independent election monitoring group Golos and at least two media outlets that had aired reports of alleged campaign violations were blocked by denial-of-service attacks.

The head of Golos, a Western-funded group that has a site with a map showing reported cases of electoral violations, said she suspected the FSB was behind the attacks.

Russian officials have expressed concern about the powerful role of online communication in the unrest that has brought down governments in the Arab world in the past year.

A senior FSB officer said in April that uncontrolled use of Gmail, Hotmail and Skype were "a major threat to national security."

(Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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AOL TV gets HuffPost makeover

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - AOL TV has been rebranded as HuffPost TV.

The retooled site, huffingtonpost.com/tv, launched Wednesday morning as part of editorial boss Arianna Huffington's ongoing makeover of AOL's editorial properties.

Following the model established at The Huffington Post, it will feature prominent bloggers such as Aaron Sorkin, Norman Lear, Bill Maher and Dr. Phil McGraw.

"It's going to be a sophisticated, bordering on obsessive take on the most buzzworthy shows," Michael Hogan, executive entertainment editor at Huffington Post Media Group, told TheWrap. "But I also think we're going to be looking for ways to connect what's happening on TV to the broader culture."

Hogan said that Jaimie Etkin, former associate culture editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, has been hired to serve as editor. AOL TV's five staffers will move to the new site.

Hogan said that HuffPost TV will retain the television listings and show pages from AOL TV -- but will have a different color. Moreover, its tone will better reflect the Huffington Post's.

"People really love to talk about TV, and they know that the Huffington Post is a place to have conversations online, so to me it's like the internet and TV were kind of made for each other," Hogan said.

"One of the primary objectives here is not just to kind of hear ourselves speak and pat ourselves on the back, but to really engage with an audience that we know is there," he said. "They're already there reading The Huffington Post and commenting on The Huffington Post, but also, we know there are all these communities around all these shows, so we want to provide the best possible venue for people to talk about the shows."

He said that people want to talk about the shows they've just watched -- and that HuffPost TV will give them a place to do that.

AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million this past February. When it did, it installed Arianna Huffington as president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which includes AOL properties.

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Kenya army, Somali militia swap Twitter insults

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenyan soldiers and members of an extremist Islamist militant group have been fighting each other in Somalia since Kenya invaded two months ago. Now, their spokesmen are taking the battle onto Twitter, with taunts, accusations and insults being directly traded in a rare engagement on the Internet.

The propaganda war on the microblogging website shows the increasingly sophisticated use of media by both sides and underscores that there is often little reliable information about the conflict in Somalia that now directly or indirectly involves a half-dozen nations, analysts say.

"The tweets themselves will not be entirely accurate but it will allow analysts to triangulate that information and come up with a more accurate picture of what is really happening," said E.J. Hogendoorn of the International Crisis Group think tank.

On Monday, the Islamic insurgent group al-Shabab used its Twitter feed to accuse Kenya of having a history of committing "barbarous acts" toward ethnic Somalis, and cited a 1984 massacre where human rights groups say Kenyan troops killed around 3,000 ethnic Somali men in eastern Kenya.

Addressing more recent actions, al-Shabab's tweets that began last week claimed that Kenyan soldiers in Somalia "flee from confrontation & flinch in the face of death." The Twitter feed also described al-Shabab's own press release giving details about Burundian soldiers killed in an October battle between African Union peacekeeping troops and the insurgents. Al-Shabab claimed to have killed more than 150 AU troops at the time.

The AU only reported 10 casualties although Mogadishu-based security sources say the figure was closer to 70.

Al-Shabab's tweets, written in fluent English, mocked an earlier Twitter posting by Kenya's army spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, that threatened to bomb concentrations of donkeys that might be moving weapons for the insurgents.

"Your eccentric battle strategy has got animal rights groups quite concerned, Major," the al-Shabab posting said.

The Associated Press has determined that both Twitter accounts — HSMPress and MajorEChirchir — are legitimate. It's not clear who is writing the al-Shabab tweets. Several Americans, most of Somali descent, have in recent years joined the group that Washington has designated a terrorist organization.

Chirchir has responded with his own barrage of tweets.

"With Al Shabaab joining tweeter, lets take fight to their doorstep," he wrote. Chirchir accused al-Shabab of stoning an innocent girl to death and chopping off hands. He noted that many commanders have banned bras in their territory, and urged readers to retweet the message in support of Somali women.

Al-Shabab, which is fighting the weak U.N.-backed Somali government and controls much of southern Somalia, follows strict Shariah law and has carried out amputations and executions, including stoning to death a girl who Amnesty International said was a 13-year-old rape victim. It also enforces a strict dress code, flogging women whose robes it deems are not thick enough.

Kenyan human rights activist Hassan Omar Hassan says the flurry of tweets obscures the paucity of information about actual operations by the Kenyan military since it entered Somalia in October. Kenyan leaders have not said how long the intervention might last or what the ultimate goals are.

"To make an honest judgment about the war, Kenyans need more accuracy in war reporting," said Hassan. "We don't know the full story ... the government has been able to circumvent accountability."

The military originally portrayed the incursion as a short mission sparked by the kidnappings of foreigners in Kenya, near the Somali border. But Kenya has been pushing for the establishment of a buffer state along its border with war-ravaged Somalia for many years.

Last week, Kenya's parliament approved a plan to eventually place the Kenyan troops under the command of African Union forces in the Somali capital, indicating that Kenyan forces could remain in Somalia for a long time. The plan has not yet been approved by the U.N. or donors funding the AU force.

Analysts say if al-Shabab tweets timely, accurate information about events it may force more disclosures from Kenyan and African Union military authorities. But al-Shabab has already allegedly exaggerated the numbers of wounded civilians and its military victories.

On Saturday, al-Shabab tweeted that Kenyan jets had bombed a Red Cross feeding center in the town of Bardhere, with scores of women and children injured.

A day later, the Red Cross confirmed their center was hit, but said there were no casualties because it was empty at the time.

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Follow Katharine Houreld at http://twitter.com/khoureld

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