Kayak Fixes Share Price For IPO
After an initial S-1 filing in November 2010, Kayak has finally set a price range for its shares at $22-$25 each, AllThingsD reports. The company will put up 3.5 million shares with the goal of raising about $100 million. Kayak’s IPO has been delayed since its first filing due in part to Facebook’s May IPO this year, and before that, by Google’s purchase of travel technology company ITA Software in 2011.
Sharp Settles Lawsuit With $198 Million Payment To Dell, Others
Sharp has settled a lawsuit with Dell and two other unnamed technology companies out of court, paying the trio $198.5 million for a suit relating to Sharp's thin-film-transistors (a piece of LCD display hardware) in Europe and North America. While the statement doesn't make clear what the charges were related to, one possibility is that it relates to a lawsuit filed in 2009, with Dell alleging price fixing by Sharp and a host of other manufacturers.
A slew of electronics makers, including Toshiba, LG, Sharp, and Samsung have been accused of LCD price fixing leading to a long running series of lawsuits, fines, and settlements in the recent past. Earlier this month, a U.S. court found one among them--Toshiba--liable for $87 million in damages to other manufacturers and consumers, for price fixing activities conducted between 1999 and 2006.
Yahoo Launches Genome
Yahoo's new big data-centric online advertising platform, Genome, went live today. Using data parsed from Yahoo, advertiser submitted-data, and web user data sets from partner Interclick, Genome allows advertisers to custom-craft campaigns for highly specific demographics.
Advertising targeting via Genome leverages proprietary Yahoo individual user data for 76% of the American population and information obtained from over 25 data provider firms. Advertisers already using Genome include BMW and STP.
Facebook App Center Gets International Roll Out
As revealed by hints of a UK Facebook App Center release last week, the social network has now officially rolled out the system to the UK, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa. Seven more nations around the world are coming soon, and to support the multilingual nature of this enterprise there's even a translation tool. Although App Center began in the U.S. it's a big move for Facebook to push its own apps because 80% of its userbase is overseas along with many of its app partners--Spotify being the most obvious example.
Cell Phone Surveillance By Law Enforcement On The Rise
In the last five years U.S. law enforcement agencies have roughly tripled the volume of information requests they’ve made to cell phone carriers for surveillance operations--as revealed in a first report of its kind, made available in response to a Congressional inquiry. U.S. carriers have shared details about the number and kinds of subscriber information requests they've answered, totalling about 1.3 million, the New York Times reports. According to theTimes, AT&T fields an average of 700 requests a day, Cricket, a smaller provider, answers about 116, with Sprint ahead of them all with 1,500 requests daily. Agencies are also spending more on cell phone surveillance. AT&T reported the fees that it charged agencies for the additional processing rose from $2.8 million in 2007 to $8.3 million for last year.
Rumor: Samsung Building A Windows RT Tablet
Samsung is rumored to have another tablet in the works, this time running ARM-based Microsoft Windows RT, Bloomberg has heard. ARM, the low-power tech used in smartphones, has been adopted by tablet makers including Apple for use in iPads and other compact, slim devices--as opposed to Intel's more traditional chips designed for laptops and desktop PCs. According to Bloomberg's sources, the Samsung tablets will feature guts made by chip-maker Qualcomm. Windows RT is the first version of Windows that is compatible with ARM, and the OS will run on one of the two versions of Microsoft’s own Surface tablet. Windows RT is expected out in October this year.
New Kindle Fire Rumors Point To Late Summer Release, Better Screen
AllThingsD has heard from what seem to be insiders intimately familiar with Amazon's plans, and is saying that the company is releasing an updated Kindle Fire tablet in the third quarter of 2012. Clearly tweaked to rival the iPad 3's impressive screen and other threats like Surface and the Nexus 7, the tablet will have an improved 1,280 by 800 pixel screen (up from the current 600 by 1,024 pixels) , a thinner profile and a built-in camera. Sales of Amazon's current Fire are said to have tailed-off recently--news that hit before MS and Google's tablets really hit the limelight. Meanwhile the firm is also said to be planning an own-brand smartphone to directly rival the iPhone and many Android units.
Microsoft Rumored To Be Launching Bing Fund, To Back Startups
According to well-sourced rumors, Microsoft is poised to reveal the Bing Fund, a brand new incubator effort. It's not a typical fund, however, and as its name suggests it's actually intended to drive innovation in Microsoft's own Online Services Division (the segment of the company that contains Bing, MSN, AdCenter, and other online tools for tasks like advertising), and a Microsoft job ad says it's going to be "working with startups and accelerators to bring a wave of innovation to OSD." Bing has been a huge and controversial effort by Microsoft to steal search market share away from Google and thereby drive revenues through online advertising associated with Bing's search results. Microsoft last week had to write down $6 billion for the purchase and failure of online ad seller aQuantive--a move that pushed its quarterly finances into a technical loss.
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