New app rescues people from bad dates

NEW YORK | Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:16pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Most people have been there, trapped on an awkward date that is going nowhere. But relief could be on the way with a new app that provides an incoming rescue call.

The Bad Date Rescue app, which was launched by the dating website eHarmony.com this week, lets users arrange for a call to appear on their iPhone to graciously allow them to bow out if a date isn't going well.

"There are all sorts of reasons for why people would want to get out of a date," said Arvind Mishra, director of product management at eHarmony. "We can all sympathize because we have all been on bad dates in our lifetime."

The free app includes several ways to set up a rescue. Users can pick a number from their address book for the call, for example from their mother or a friend. It the person's picture is stored on the app it will appear on the screen when the call comes through.

Scripts are available giving the reason for the call, such as a neighbor calling about a leaky pipe; a mother informing that a sister just had a baby; or a boss saying he needs help immediately.

"It graciously allows you to play along and to get out of that situation," Mishra explained.

The free app can be pre-set before the date to call at a specific time and there is a quick rescue that can be triggered on the spot to ring in a few seconds or minutes.

"There are all sorts of reasons for why people want to get out of a date. We are helping them do it in a way that is fun and light and not abrupt," he added.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Christine Kearney and Leslie Gevirtz)

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CEO vows to turn RIM into "lean, mean machine"

1 of 14. Research In Motion Limited (RIM) President and CEO Thorsten Heins speaks during the annual general meeting of shareholders in Waterloo July 10, 2012. Research In Motion Ltd's slate of directors was re-elected at the BlackBerry maker's annual general meeting on Tuesday, Chairwoman Barbara Stymiest said.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Cassese

By Alastair Sharp

WATERLOO, Ontario | Tue Jul 10, 2012 8:10pm EDT

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd's new CEO vowed on Tuesday to turn around the embattled company with the new generation of BlackBerry devices coming next year, saying he would transform RIM into a "lean, mean, hunting machine."

But Thorsten Heins, presiding over his first annual meeting since taking the helm, offered little to disgruntled shareholders beyond his faith in the power of the BlackBerry 10 line to reverse RIM's fortunes. Its battered stock fell another 5 percent after he spoke.

"There was no mention of a sale of the company, no mention of a breakup of the company, and again, our big, big concern is if the BB10s are a dud," said Vic Alboini, chief executive of Jaguar Financial and a long-time RIM critic. "Where are we then?"

After a year that wiped out nearly 80 percent of RIM's value, Heins acknowledged the frustration of shareholders with his decision to delay the launch of the new phones until after the crucial holiday shopping season.

"I am not satisfied with the performance of the company over the past year," Heins told the mostly subdued audience. "Many of you are frustrated with the time it has taken us to make our way through the transition."

But Heins, who joined RIM from electronics giant Siemens AG four year ago and took over as CEO in January, expressed confidence that RIM was heading in the right direction.

"I have assembled a leadership team for RIM that's truly capable of taking us into future," he told shareholders.

RIM virtually invented mobile email with its first BlackBerry devices more than a decade ago, but its market share has evaporated as consumers flock to Apple Inc's iPhone and devices based on Google Inc's Android system.

RIM last month posted its first operating loss in eight years, and it was much deeper than expected. The company also said it was cutting 5,000 jobs, almost a third of its workforce, as it struggles win back its reputation as an industry innovator.

At the same time the company pushed back the launch of the BlackBerry 10 devices to next year from the final quarter of this year. Heins said the delay reflected RIM's determination to make sure that the devices were ready for the big time.

"We're working day and night to bring it out and prove the point that it is what we say it is," he told reporters after the meeting.

RIM plans to prune down its extensive array of BlackBerry models to focus on high-end and mid-range devices that will come with either touchscreen or physical keyboards, Heins said.

But things will probably get worse before they get better. Heins conceded that RIM would likely suffer lower average selling prices and declining service revenue this year as it pushes to sell existing BlackBerry devices.

TAME AUDIENCE

Despite the deep problems, investors who attended the meeting in a university lecture hall in RIM's hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, avoided many of the tougher questions that analysts have thrown at the BlackBerry maker.

One shareholder blasted earlier versions of the board which he said had failed to keep management accountable, while another poked around the details of the CEO's compensation package.

Throughout the session Heins was adamant that RIM's best path forward was the BlackBerry 10, even if the strategic review now underway concludes that a sale of the company makes the most sense. RIM has said it is examining all options, including partnerships, joint ventures or a break-up of the company.

RIM might be able to provide more about on the outcome of the strategic review in a few months, Heins told a handful of reporters after the meeting.

"There is a lot of action going on, looking at very different options for what the company could do," he said. "When it's time to go public with it, we'll go public with it."

KEEPING FAITH

The stock, which slipped 5 percent to $7.29 on Nasdaq, once traded as high as $148.13, and several small investors told Reuters they were confident RIM could regain at least some of its past glory in the next two or three years.

"They're in survival mode, but if they survive their business will go right back to, in my view, the levels above $60," said Ted Cross, a retired 76-year-old who bought his shares in the high $20 range. "I'm confident the company will survive and thrive."

One of the few dissenting voices in the hall came from Jaguar Financial's Alboini, who says he speaks for an informal alliance of disgruntled RIM investors. He asked what steps RIM was taking to attract more new board members with technology and financial industry experience.

Chairwoman Barbara Stymiest said the company aimed to add several new members to the board this year and hired an external firm to assess candidates. She pointed out that four of the board's 10 members have joined in the last year.

Despite RIM's recent performance, the company's slate of directors was elected at the meeting with token opposition, although preliminary results showed some shareholders withheld their votes, including 19 percent for former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

John Richardson had 30 percent of votes withheld, following the recommendation of proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis. It said Richardson, as lead director, had failed to properly oversee the provision of stock options to RIM employees, which were erroneously back-dated over an eight-year period.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Writing by Frank McGurty and Euan Rocha; Editing by Peter Galloway and Janet Guttsman)

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Analysis: Tech Inc's invincible aura fades

By Jim Finkle

Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:48am EDT

n">(Reuters) - Hopes are evaporating that leading technology companies will offer a safe harbor this year from the economic storms swirling across Europe, Asia and the United States.

Investors should brace for some of the biggest names in U.S. software and hardware -- from Microsoft Corp and IBM to Intel Corp -- to disappoint when Big Tech begins reporting quarterly earnings next week, analysts said.

The trio's shares are all in the red for July, in the wake of earnings warnings over the past week from smaller peers, including Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Applied Materials Inc and Informatica Corp.

Corporate IT budgets have historically proved more resilient to worsening macroeconomic conditions than other kinds of spending, because businesses invest on the assumption that technology boosts productivity and helps save them costs over the long term.

But investors may have misjudged the depth of the European crisis, and with once-reliable-as-clockwork Chinese growth waning, demand in other emerging markets has not picked up enough of the slack.

The profit warnings could signal a broader pullback in orders, which means that Wall Street's earnings projections now appear over-optimistic to some outside experts.

"I don't think the companies or the market anticipated the kind of slowdown like the one we are going to see in the second half," said Fred Hickey, editor of the High-Tech Strategist Newsletter for investors. "Companies haven't had a chance to adjust estimates yet and they will. That's coming," said Hickey, who has been following the tech industry since the 1980s.

ASIA BEATEN DOWN, TOO

The sense of impending gloom is not confined to the United States.

Samsung Electronics, Asia's top-earning tech company and the world's leading maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, has predicted record quarterly profit of $5.9 billion for April-June -- but its stock has slumped more than a fifth since May on concerns about the broader outlook for chip demand and the impact of the euro zone crisis on sales of its TVs and home appliances.

Since mid-June, analysts have cut by more than a quarter their earnings forecasts for LG Electronics, South Korea's other tech heavyweight, according to Thomson Reuters Starmine SmartEstimates, which accords higher weight to the timeliest forecasts from historically more accurate analysts.

Shares of China's Lenovo, the world's No.2 PC maker behind Hewlett Packard, have retreated to 5-month lows with brokers downgrading their outlooks for the company as global economic weakness damps demand for personal computers.

In Japan, a fast fading powerhouse in consumer electronics and technological innovation, shares in Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp are mired near more than three-decade lows as investors fret over their ability to regain profitability in today's hostile macro environment and against tough competition from nimbler rivals in South Korea and Taiwan.

SHINY APPLE

The one bright spot is Apple Inc, which still has many fans on Wall Street. The iPhone and iPad maker is one of the few major tech stocks to have gained in July, up 4 percent.

Apple has beaten analysts' earnings forecasts in seven of the past eight quarters by at least 12 percent. Last quarter, it reported earnings 22.5 percent above Wall Street estimates. Its performance has propped up the entire sector and analysts expect a new iPhone this year to keep that up.

Apple is likely to report earnings of more than 1 percent above the Street's average forecast, according to StarMine SmartEstimates. In contrast, Microsoft, which is preparing to launch the Windows 8 operating system and its first tablet computers, may report earnings 0.7 percent below the average.

"Guidance could turn out to be very conservative given momentum with new Macs, a potential iPad mini and ongoing success with the new iPad," Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes said in a research note. Apple said the latest iPad will hit Chinese store shelves on July 20.

Apple aside, market watchers expect the economic malaise will broadly hit technology companies in the second half of the year, even at firms that managed to squeak by in the second quarter and avoid issuing preliminary earnings warnings.

Over the past three months, analysts have largely held on to their second-quarter earnings forecasts for technology and telecommunications companies, while cutting estimates in other sectors. Now many may have to make up for that oversight.

An IDC survey of chief information officers (CIOs) at about 250 U.S. companies conducted two weeks ago found, on average, that they expected their budgets to decrease for the first time since early 2009.

"There is this sense among CIOs that things have slowed down and they are going to have to think about ways of cutting back," said IDC analyst Stephen Minton.

Analysts currently forecast companies in the S&P 500 Index will report profit growth of 5.8 percent in the second quarter, with technology earnings growing at 7.9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

They are more optimistic about prospects for the second half and that's where some expect cuts to come.

Analysts forecast third-quarter earnings growth of 12.9 percent for the S&P 500's technology index and fourth-quarter growth of 14.9 percent.

SHIFTING SENTIMENT

Companies at risk in the second half include services giant IBM, No. 1 chipmaker Intel, as well as software makers including Microsoft and VMware Inc, analysts said.

It's not a surprise to some that sentiment has shifted so quickly.

Historically when businesses have frozen or cut technology budgets, they have sometimes done so suddenly, taking tech companies and Wall Street by surprise. That process appears to have begun.

"Sentiment is turning into reality," said Cliff Waldman, senior economist with the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation. "Negative sentiment is truly starting to affect investment spending."

When it issued its warning last week, Informatica said business conditions "dramatically" worsened in June with customers scrutinizing deals more closely.. Applied Materials warned on Tuesday that it expected weak demand from chipmakers to put a damper on sales through at least the third quarter.

"Demand is weaker than expected in Europe and China, and this makes chipmakers delay or cancel equipment orders," said James Song, analyst at KDB Daewoo Securities in Seoul. "They are slowing investment in capacity expansion or technology migration."

Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, which manages about $54 billion, blames the tech turmoil on Europe, a strengthening U.S. dollar, which reduces the revenue contribution from overseas sales, and concerns about a U.S. tax increase.

"If there is no improvement on domestic data points, or news from Europe that the saga has ended, why should there be a change?" Luschini said.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta, Editing by Edwin Chan, Tiffany Wu and Ian Geoghegan)

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Judge who shelved Apple trial says patent system out of sync

Federal Judge Richard Posner poses in his Chambers in Chicago July 2, 2012. The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple Inc's smartphone technology battle thinks policymakers should examine whether patents should cover software at all. Picture taken July 2, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/John Gress

By Dan Levine

CHICAGO | Thu Jul 5, 2012 8:42am EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all.

Richard Posner, a prolific jurist who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, told Reuters this week that the technology industry's high profits and volatility made patent litigation attractive for companies looking to wound competitors.

"It's a constant struggle for survival," he said in his courthouse chambers, which have a sparkling view of Monroe Harbor on Lake Michigan. "As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem."

Posner, 73, was appointed as a federal appeals court judge by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and has written dozens of books, including one about economics and intellectual property law.

Posner, who teaches at the University of Chicago, effectively ended Apple's lawsuit against Google Inc's (GOOG.O) Motorola Mobility unit last month. He canceled a closely anticipated trial between the two and rejected the iPhone maker's request for an injunction barring the sale of Motorola products using Apple's patented technology.

Apple is in a pitched battle with its competitors over patents, as technology companies joust globally for consumers in the fast-growing markets for smartphones and tablet computers.

Posner said some industries, like pharmaceuticals, had a better claim to intellectual property protection because of the enormous investment it takes to create a successful drug.

Advances in software and other industries cost much less, he said, and the companies benefit tremendously from being first in the market with gadgets - a benefit they would still get if there were no software patents.

"It's not clear that we really need patents in most industries," he said.

Also, devices like smartphones have thousands of component features, and they all receive legal protection.

"You just have this proliferation of patents," Posner said. "It's a problem."

GENERATION SMARTPHONE

The Apple/Motorola case did not land in front of Posner by accident. He volunteered to oversee it.

Federal appellate judges occasionally offer to preside over district court cases. Posner had alerted the district judges of his interest in patents, so after part of the smartphone battle landed in Wisconsin federal court, the judge there transferred the case to him.

When Posner began working on the smartphone case, he told the litigants he was "really neutral" because he used a court-issued BlackBerry made by Research In Motion Ltd (RIM.TO). He soon accepted an upgrade to an iPhone, but only uses it to check email and call his wife, he said.

"I'm not actually that interested in becoming part of the smartphone generation," he said.

Posner's corner office is filled with the requisite library of law tomes, and a row of books he wrote sits alongside his family photographs. He also has a signed photograph from the late Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., for whom he clerked in the early 1960s.

Judges rarely speak openly to the press, but Posner is outspoken on a range of topics. Last week in online magazine Slate, he penned a withering critique of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's recent dissent in the Arizona immigration case.

"It wouldn't surprise me if Justice Scalia's opinion were quoted in campaign ads," Posner wrote.

MOTOROLA V. APPLE

Motorola sued Apple in October 2010, a move that was widely seen as a pre-emptive strike. Apple filed its own claims against Motorola the same month.

In canceling the trial, Posner said an injunction barring the sale of Motorola phones would harm consumers. He also rejected the idea of trying to ban an entire phone based on patents that cover individual features like the smooth operation of streaming video.

Apple's patent, Posner wrote in his June 22 order, "is not a claim to a monopoly of streaming video!"

Not all judges in the patent wars share Posner's skepticism of injunctions. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, granted Apple two critical pretrial injunctions against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) last week: one against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the other against the Galaxy Nexus phone.

In Friday's 101-page ruling barring the Galaxy Nexus, Koh cited the harms to Apple due to competition from phones that infringe its patent on the Siri search feature. Samsung is appealing both injunctions.

Posner said he had not read Koh's orders.

In his own ruling, Posner also barred Motorola from seeking an injunction against the iPhone because the company had pledged to license its patent on fair and reasonable terms to other companies - in exchange for having the technology adopted as an industry standard.

Posner's idea of examining whether industries like software should receive patent protection is a mainstream one, especially in the computer industry, said John Allison, a professor at University of Texas at Austin who studies intellectual property rights.

However, recent patent law reforms passed by the U.S. Congress did not directly address the issue, and Allison said classifying industries for the purposes of intellectual property protection - as Posner suggests - was "completely impractical" because talented lawyers could game the system.

When it comes to the smartphone litigation wars, Posner said tech companies should not be blamed for jumping into court since they are merely taking the opportunities that the legal system offers.

Given the large cash reserves in Silicon Valley, high legal fees are not a deterrent. Apple, for instance, had $110 billion in cash and securities as of March 31.

"It's a small expense for them," Posner said.

Posner said he had been looking forward to presiding over a trial between Motorola and Apple, but had no other choice than to toss the case.

"I didn't think I could have a trial just for fun," he said.

(Editing by Martha Graybow and Lisa Von Ahn)

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Russia-focused online games developer eyes new markets

By Tova Cohen

HERZLIYA, Israel | Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:18am EDT

HERZLIYA, Israel (Reuters) - Israel-based online games developer Plarium, whose multi-player game Total Domination has attracted 20 million users in just a year, expects revenue to double annually in coming years as it launches new games and enters new markets such as the United States.

"We are growing very fast," Plarium CEO Avi Shalel told Reuters. "Since the beginning we have doubled revenue every year and we expect this pace to continue."

The private company, which has so far focused largely on Russia and eastern Europe, does not disclose financial data but Shalel said revenue had reached tens of millions of dollars a year and the company is profitable.

Plarium has six new games in the pipeline, including two that will be launched in coming weeks, and is entering new platforms such as Facebook (FB.O) and mobile devices, as well as starting its own standalone website.

Plarium, which was founded three years ago and employs 250 staff, has over 70 million users, mostly in Russia and eastern Europe, including 3 million active daily users.

It started out by developing applications such as a social poker platform for Russia and eastern Europe, initially focusing on the social network VKontakte and then expanding to other sites such as Mail.Ru (MAILRq.L).

"There was no Farmville, no poker, there was a tremendous need for it but no one was developing it," Shalel said.

Plarium has become the leading developer of online games in Russia and eastern Europe in terms of revenue, though Social Quantum, which focuses on casual games, or non-hardcore games played once in a while, has more users.

GOING GLOBAL

"We realized that if we want to go global we must be able to develop original content. We decided to start developing for the hardcore and midcore game audiences with the aim of going international," the 26-year-old CEO said.

Plarium's first original online game Total Domination was launched a year ago and has 20 million users, while its second, Pirates, is approaching 10 million after six months. They are known as "massively multiplayer online" (MMO) games, capable of supporting thousands of players simultaneously.

Plarium has five animation studios - one in Israel, one in Russia and three in Ukraine - and is seeking to open one in the United States.

While users can play the games for free, they must pay for special content and benefits. Plarium is also experimenting with carrying advertising in eastern Europe.

"We don't see it being a main business model in the near future. We want to make sure we don't spoil the user experience with advertisements," Shalel said.

Plarium has two main competitors, Kixeye and Kabam, in the hardcore gaming market. Shalel believes Zynga (ZNGA.O), the world's largest social game publisher whose games include Farmville, will eventually enter the hardcore market.

"They will need ... to enter new genres and hardcore games will be on their radar. By that time we hope to establish ourselves as the dominant player," he said

Born in Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union, Shalel is a native Russian speaker who moved to Israel as a teenager. After attending university in the United States he founded Plarium with six partners, who used their own money to start the company and did not have to seek out venture capital.

"We are building the company to go public," Shalel said. "We are not looking for an early exit or to sell the company."

(Editing by David Holmes)

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Oracle continues to add social media muscle with Involver deal

The company logo is shown at the headquarters of Oracle Corporation in Redwood City, California February 2, 2010. Picture taken February 2, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith

By Gerry Shih

SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Jul 10, 2012 7:54pm EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oracle Corp said Tuesday it had acquired social marketing firm Involver, notching the third deal in as many months in a red-hot area for enterprise software makers.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

San Francisco-based Involver, founded in 2007, provides tools for developers to create advertising campaigns on social media networks such as Facebook.

"Companies are looking to harness the full potential of social media to increase brand loyalty, connect with potential customers and anticipate buyers' needs," Oracle said in a statement.

Oracle, the world's No. 3 enterprise software provider, has aggressively fleshed out its social media capabilities in recent months, beginning in May with a deal for Vitrue, a social media engagement service. The following month, Oracle acquired Collective Intellect, a social media analytics company.

Even though Facebook's troubled IPO in May cast some doubt over consumer social media, deals in the enterprise sector have continued at a scorching pace.

Salesforce.com Inc snapped up social media advertising firm Buddy Media in a $689 million tie-up in June, while Microsoft Corp acquired workplace collaboration software maker Yammer for $1.2 billion in July. (Reporting by Gerry Shih)

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European ruling on Google privacy policy set for September

PARIS | Tue Jul 10, 2012 11:30am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - France's data protection watchdog said it will likely wrap up the inquiry of Google's new privacy policy, which it is conducting on behalf of European regulators, in September.

France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique (CNIL) had expected to decide in June whether Google's new approach to privacy that took effect in March conforms with European law, but the process has been slowed as the company provided more information to the regulator.

"We just received answers to questions we put to the company in May, and we are studying them closely," said Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the director of the CNIL, at a press conference on Tuesday.

The CNIL will then draw its conclusions and present them to the wider group of data protection regulators of the 27 European Union member states, known as the G29.

Under its new approach, Google consolidated 60 privacy policies into one and completed its ability to pool the data collected on users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and its social network Google+

The Mountain View, California-based search giant says this allows it to better tailor search results and improve services for consumers. Users are not allowed to opt out.

The CNIL review could lead to financial penalties of up to 300,000 euros or administrative sanctions for the U.S. search giant, but it is not clear whether they would be imposed collectively or if individual states would seek their own fines.

The Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday that Google is close to paying $22.5 million to settle charges that it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple's Safari browser.

The fine would be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Journal said citing officials briefed on the settlement terms.

(Reporting by Gwenaelle Barzic; Writing by Leila Abboud; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

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