Facebook reports higher earnings as mobile use grows

Facebook reported higher earnings in the first three months of 2013, as the social media company focuses on catering to its growing number of mobile users.

The company's net income for the first quarter was $219 million US, or nine cents per share, up from the $205 million, or nine cents per share, Facebook made a year earlier before it went public.

Revenue for the first quarter grew to $1.46 billion US, 38 per cent higher than last year. Advertising, which makes up 85 per cent of its total revenue, brought in $1.25 billion.

Almost a third of advertising revenue came from mobile ads, as a growing number of Facebook users access the site through their smartphones.

The company reported that there are now 751 million mobile users who log in at least once per month, a 54 per cent increase from last year.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said the results are likely to quiet skeptics who doubted Facebook's ability to mine its growing mobile traffic for revenue. He was particularly impressed by the 23 per cent increase in Facebook's mobile ad revenue, even though the company's overall ad revenue for the period dipped six per cent from the final three months of last year.

"Their mobile business is probably bigger than any mobile business on the planet other than the (wireless telecommunications) carriers and Google," Pachter said.

Facebook started showing mobile advertisements in early 2012.

During a conference call Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that engaging mobile users would be a key area moving forward.

He talked about Facebook Home, a family of apps released last month that allows Android-based phone users to view and post content from their home screens.

?It really brings your phone to life,? Zuckerberg said. ?Over the next few months, we hope to push this out more broadly.?

Zuckerberg also said that the company aims to create higher-quality ads that are more personalized and integrated with Facebook news feed content.

The company?s mobile expansion impressed Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia. "They are making the transition to mobile faster than anyone anticipated," Bhatia said. "It seems like they are delivering."

Bhatia thinks Facebook will fare even better on mobile devices once Zuckerberg firms up its plan to make money from the growing audience checking into Instagram, a photo-sharing service that the company bought last year for $521 million. The analyst believes Instagram will play a bigger role in Facebook's business next year.

Instagram now has 100 million monthly users, compared to 22 million when Facebook acquired the company last year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-reports-higher-earnings-mobile-grows-223628267.html

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Israel: Conflict over recognition, not territory

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel's prime minister insisted Wednesday that the conflict with the Palestinians is not about territory, rather the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland, appearing to counter a modified peace proposal from the Arab world.

Benjamin Netanyahu has not commented directly on the Arab League's latest initiative, but his words questioned its central tenet ? the exchange of captured land for peace.

The original 2002 Arab initiative offered a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Muslim world in exchange for a withdrawal from all territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Sweetening the offer this week, the Arab sponsor said final borders could be drawn through mutually agreed land swaps.

Netanyahu questioned the premise that borders are the key.

"The root of the conflict isn't territorial. It began way before 1967," he told Israeli diplomats. "The Palestinians' failure to accept the state of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is the root of the conflict. If we reach a peace agreement, I want to know that the conflict won't continue ? that the Palestinians won't come later with more demands."

The Palestinians have rejected Netanyahu's demand to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, saying it would undermine the rights of Israel's Arab minority as well as millions of refugees scattered throughout the world whose families lost properties during the war surrounding Israel's establishment in 1948. The fate of the refugees is a core issue that would need to be resolved as part of a final peace deal.

Though Netanyahu's office has remained silent on the modified Arab proposal, his chief peace negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, has welcomed it, as have Israel's president and the main opposition parties. However, Netanyahu's own political base and one of his main government coalition partners are either opposed to giving up land or suspicious of the Arabs' motivations.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani tried to allay some of the Israeli concerns as he presented the offer on Monday.

Speaking on behalf of an Arab League delegation, he reiterated the need to base an agreement between Israel and a future Palestine on the 1967 lines, but for the first time, he cited the possibility of "comparable," mutually agreed and "minor" land swaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The U.S. has been trying to restart long-frozen peace talks with the Palestinians, and Secretary of State John Kerry called the new peace plan a "very big step forward." Palestinian officials were cool to the concept.

The original 2002 Arab peace initiative offered Israel peace with the entire Arab world in exchange for a "complete withdrawal" from territories captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, all seized by Israel in 1967, for their future state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Though the latest proposal appears aimed at the Palestinians, the original formula refers to other territories as well. Israel also captured the Sinai from Egypt and Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war, withdrawing from Sinai in 1982. Peace talks between Israel and Syria over the fate of the Golan failed more than a decade ago.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-conflict-over-recognition-not-territory-140408627.html

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Jawbone UP fitness bracelet will soon work with other health apps ...

By now, most of us are familiar with the Jawbone line of products. It started with a series of wireless headsets, then made waves with the Jambox, a stylish, portable wireless speaker that pumps out amazing quality sound, and branched out even more to introduce Bluetooth earpieces. Its latest product, the UP wristband, actively tracks sleep patterns and movement, and also allows users to add meals and mood, among other things, to keep track of health and fitness.

But now, according to TechCrunch, Jawbone has announced that its going to open its UP platform and will be introducing an open API in the near future.

What is the significance of this? It means that, beyond the tracking that comes with the gadget, once the 2.5 update for iOS is released, other health-centric apps ? like Lose It!, MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, and Sleepio, and more ? can be synced together to give users a much broader sense of their overall health, from multiple sources, all visible from your UP stream.

What?s even more is that you can also reverse integrate the information, and feed your UP data into the partner apps to give a much fuller experience in all of those as well.

?We spent a lot of time sitting with developers, looking at what they can enable, what their data structure was, how to pull their experience back into UP, how you really create robustness around them, how to build APIs that work dependably and how we can make sure users can get this stuff,? said Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman.

At first, Jawbone is just introducing this open concept to a handful of partners, like those mentioned above, but soon it plans to open its API up for any developer looking to create a Jawbone-integrated app of their own.

Jawbone UP retails for $130 and comes in three different sizes. There?s no word yet as to when, or if, this integration will be introduced to Android devices.

Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/jawbone-up-fitness/

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Pentagon deploys small number of troops to war-torn Mali

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Feast clue to smell of ancient Earth

Apr. 29, 2013 ? Tiny 1,900 million-year-old fossils from rocks around Lake Superior, Canada, give the first ever snapshot of organisms eating each other and suggest what the ancient Earth would have smelled like.

The fossils, preserved in Gunflint chert, capture ancient microbes in the act of feasting on a cyanobacterium-like fossil called Gunflintia -- with the perforated sheaths of Gunflintia being the discarded leftovers of this early meal.

A team, led by Dr David Wacey of the University of Western Australia and Bergen University, Norway, and Professor Martin Brasier of Oxford University, reports in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the fossil evidence for how this type of feeding on organic matter -- called 'heterotrophy' -- was taking place. They also show that the ancient microbes appeared to prefer to snack on Gunflintia as a 'tasty morsel' in preference to another bacterium (Huroniospora).

'What we call 'heterotrophy' is the same thing we do after dinner as the bacteria in our gut break down organic matter,' said Professor Martin Brasier of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, an author of the paper. 'Whilst there is chemical evidence suggesting that this mode of feeding dates back 3,500 million years, in this study for the first time we identify how it was happening and 'who was eating who'. In fact we've all experienced modern bacteria feeding in this way as that's where that 'rotten egg' whiff of hydrogen sulfide comes from in a blocked drain. So, rather surprisingly, we can say that life on earth 1,900 million years ago would have smelled a lot like rotten eggs.'

The team analysed the microscopic fossils, ranging from about 3-15 microns in diameter, using a battery of new techniques and found that one species -- a tubular form thought to be the outer sheath of Gunflintia -- was more perforated after death than other kinds, consistent with them having been eaten by bacteria.

In some places many of the tiny fossils had been partially or entirely replaced with iron sulfide ('fool's gold') a waste product of heterotrophic sulfate-reducing bacteria that is also a highly visible marker. The team also found that these Gunflintia fossils carried clusters of even smaller (c.1 micron) spherical and rod-shaped bacteria that were seemingly in the process of consuming their hosts.

Dr Wacey said that: 'recent geochemical analyses have shown that the sulfur-based activities of bacteria can likely be traced back to 3,500 million years or so -- a finding reported by our group in Nature Geoscience in 2011. Whilst the Gunflint fossils are only about half as old, they confirm that such bacteria were indeed flourishing by 1,900 million years ago. And that they were also highly particular about what they chose to eat.'

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Oxford, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. David Wacey, Nicola McLoughlin, Matt R. Kilburn, Martin Saunders, John B. Cliff, Charlie Kong, Mark E. Barley, and Martin D. Brasier. Nanoscale analysis of pyritized microfossils reveals differential heterotrophic consumption in the ?1.9-Ga Gunflint chert. PNAS, April 29, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1221965110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/hiDQhD4eNRI/130429154107.htm

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S&P 500 closes at record, led by energy, tech shares

By Ryan Vlastelica

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 index ended at an all-time high on Monday as growth-oriented stocks, including energy and technology, lead the way to the index's sixth rise in the past seven sessions.

Stronger-than-expected housing data also boosted the market, as did Italy's formation of a new government, ending months of uncertainty and raising hopes for new policies to promote growth in the euro zone's third-largest economy.

Pressure has grown on the European Central Bank to lower interest rates with the euro zone mired in recession. Money market traders are evenly split on whether the ECB will cut rates at its meeting on Thursday, according to a Reuters poll.

Wall Street followed European stocks higher as Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta urged a focus on growth policies and away from austerity measures in his inaugural speech.

"After the election there was a lot of uncertainty about whether Italy could form a government, so now there is not only a great deal of relief over that, but also expectations for additional monetary policies from the ECB," said Alec Young, global equity strategist at S&P Equity Research in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 106.20 points, or 0.72 percent, at 14,818.75. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 11.37 points, or 0.72 percent, at 1,593.61. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 27.76 points, or 0.85 percent, at 3,307.02.

The U.S. Federal Reserve will also meet this week for a two-day session beginning on Tuesday. The Fed is expected to maintain its stimulus policy. Data on Monday showing muted inflation gave the Fed room for accommodative measures.

Also lifting markets was Apple Inc , which jumped 3.1 percent to $430.12 after taking initial steps for what would be its first debt sale. Technology stocks <.splrct> rose 1.7 percent, making the sector the best-performing on Monday.

Among energy shares, Chevron Corp rose 1.1 percent to $121.32.

A report showed contracts to buy previously owned homes rose last month to their highest level since April 2010, showing underlying strength in the housing market recovery, even though the pace of sales growth has cooled in recent months.

The S&P 500 closed just barely above its previous record hit earlier this month of 1,593.37.

"The market's trend continues to be higher, but it is still attractive at these valuations," said Young, who has a 12-month target of 1,670 for the S&P.

About 71 percent of New York Stock Exchange-listed companies closed higher while 65 percent of companies traded on the Nasdaq ended in positive territory.

Volume was light, with about 5.10 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.36 billion shares.

Moody's Corp was the S&P 500's top percentage gainer, jumping 8.3 percent to $59.69 after the company settled a lawsuit alleging that it had misled investors about the safety of risky debt vehicles it had rated.

McGraw-Hill Cos , whose Standard & Poor's unit said it settled similar suits, rose 2.8 percent to $53.45.

Roper Industries Inc fell 3.8 percent to $118.68 after reporting first-quarter revenue that missed expectations, though it raised its full-year profit outlook.

Of the 274 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date for current season, 69 percent have beat analysts' expectations and 43.2 percent have reported revenue above expectations.

The second half of the earnings season may not be as strong as the first one, data showed.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-higher-ahead-data-corporate-results-115148731.html

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Hulu: Paid subscriptions have doubled to four million in past year

Hulu's future ownership may be in question, but the video streaming site is apparently doing fairly brisk business on the paid subscription front. During an advertiser event this morning, the site announced that it has managed to double its Hulu Plus accounts in the past year, up to four million. The site's revenue also hit a record for the first quarter of the year, though Hulu's not giving out any numbers. As with rivals Netflix and Amazon, the company's making a big bet on original programming, with a number of exclusive series, including the animated The Awesomes and western Quick Draw.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Hulu Blog

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/30/hulu-plus/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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