March, 2010 Issue

He wasn't lining up for an interview with Ryan Seacrest about what designer made his suit, but a few eagle-eyed bloggers on location at the 82nd Academy Awards on Sunday evening say that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was in attendance. In a tux, not a black turtleneck. Blogger and Web video personality Wayne Sutton snapped a far-away shot of someone whom he believed to be Jobs, accompanied with "OMG it's Steve Jobs! I'm the only one yelling at him." Indeed, Sutton's photo shows Jobs' unmistakable profile filing into the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. CNET has placed an inquiry to Apple PR to verify that it is indeed him (Jobs has a famous satire-blog impersonator, after all). Jobs has reason to be at the Oscars, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he once got played onscreen by actor Noah Wylie in a made-for-TV movie: the Apple CEO acquired animation studio Pixar in 1986 before selling it to Disney two decades later. He's now the largest individual shareholder in Disney; the Pixar film "Up" was nominated for the Best Animated Feature and Best Picture category this year.

Microsoft is discontinuing its Windows Essential Business Server product, a bundle aimed at midsize businesses, the company said Friday.

First, there was the Macintosh. Then it was the iPod, the iPhone, and now the iPad. Next up in Apple's arsenal: The lawyers.

Facebook may pull in an excess of $1 billion in revenues, according to estimates and poking around on behalf of industry blog Inside Facebook. That's an increase from the same publication's estimate of $700 million last year. Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively. (Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn't disclose its financials.) What can Facebook credit this big jump in revenue to? It's all about the Social Ads program. Facebook ditched banner ads altogether earlier this year when its longstanding ad partnership with Microsoft ran out and has chosen to focus on its edgier "engagement ads" program instead--and often these are sold by encouraging brands to promote their presence on Facebook with ad space. However accurate these new estimates from Inside Facebook are, Facebook is certainly making money--and it's making money because the Facebook "fan page" and complementary ad space to promote it are the hottest ticket in brand marketing right now. They won't always be, and Facebook will have to maintain that front-runner status in plenty of advertising innovations down the road as the industry evolves faster than ever. Plus, it's well-known that some of the biggest buyers of Facebook advertisements are social-gaming companies looking to pull in more players: how long can they, in turn, keep up their place in the sun? Critics have long since pointed out the number of third-party companies that are effectively dependent on Facebook for traction and revenue, but the reverse is likely true as well. Facebook has a potentially lucrative new revenue stream emerging when its virtual currency system, Facebook Credits, launches in full--Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all proceeds. But the developer world isn't totally sold, and the product has grown far more niche from the days when it was rumored to be a "PayPal killer." As Inside Facebook points out, advertising is still the core of the company's business model. And here, it has to stay ahead of the pack more than ever.

A couple of years ago, they were everywhere: fresh, design-savvy start-ups, taking everything you might ever want to know your friends were doing on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and goodness knows what else. Social-network feed aggregators--FriendFeed, Socialthing, Plaxo's Pulse--have been part of the dizzying array of Web apps ever since it became evident that the average Internet user was using more than one of these nifty social-media services and just might want to have them all in one place. But they've been on the way out for some time: FriendFeed sold to Facebook, and Socialthing to AOL, both brands buried within their sprawling new owners. And earlier this week, another small start-up in the space, the well-regarded Streamy, announced that it had closed its doors; one co-founder departed for Facebook, the second for social-gaming powerhouse Zynga.

Google is moving forward in the booming health care technology market. The search giant this week announced several new partnerships designed to expand its free Google Health service.

The imagined inventions of Victorian-era French novelist Albert Robida may be coming closer to reality.

Microsoft warned of a new hole on Monday that could be exploited by attackers to take control of older Windows systems running Internet Explorer and for which proof-of-concept exploit code has been released publicly. The vulnerability affects Windows 2000-, XP- and Server 2003-based systems.

Sony's PlayStation Network is on the fritz. Microsoft's Xbox Live network has had its problems. And there was that one Wii system software update that was turning consoles into pretty looking paperweights. It's times like this, as we dissect failures in digital entertainment technology, when we have to ask the question: Is it too soon to blame digital rights management? Two console generations ago, problems like this would have been inconceivable, or at least wouldn't have had the kind of domino effect they do today. The current PlayStation bug (which is believed to be due to the inclusion of trophies in firmware v2.40) affected games, rented movies, and access to both Netflix streaming and the company's online storefront--all things that continue to work without issue for users of the newer PS3 Slim hardware. You'd simply never get this kind of problem back when the only thing you could use your system for was to play something off a disc or a cartridge. Though the main problem is less about progress and more about the security countermeasures put into place to keep consoles or users from doing something they shouldn't. Using digital rights management has become one of the easiest ways to do this, though it can also make things more difficult for the consumer. And while DRM may not end up being the culprit in Sony's snafu, the situation is a startling reminder of how little control we have over these little boxes that are sitting in our living rooms. That's by design though. All three of the big console makers (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) use various types of security to make sure people do not run downloadable games or content that they have not purchased. Here's a brief rundown of how they work:

PayPal has received the green light from the Reserve Bank of India to resume bank withdrawals for settlements involving exports of goods and services, but personal payments remains suspended.