Google+Facebook+iPhone: 09/08/11

Thursday, 8 September 2011

Oracle Raises Concern Over Mediation in Google Case

Shortly after agreeing to mediation with Google in its lawsuit over alleged Java patent violations in the Android mobile OS, Oracle has taken issue with the executive Google proposed to represent its side, saying he is not senior enough and was also part of past failed attempts at a resolution.

Google had offered up Android head Andrew Rubin and general counsel Kent Walker to argue its case in mediation, while Oracle proposed sending co-president and CFO Safra Catz and Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of product development.

"The Court's mediation plan is the last chance to resolve this case before a major investment of time and resources by the parties and the Court," Oracle said in a filing late Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. "The Court's September 2, 2011 Order appropriately directs the parties to identify 'top corporate executives' to participate in the mediation. Oracle believes the prospects for a successful mediation will be far greater if Google's executive-level representative is a superior to Mr. Rubin, who is the architect of Google's Android strategy -- the strategy that gives rise to this case."

In a filing Wednesday, Google said Rubin is "knowledgeable regarding the issues in this case and he is fully empowered to resolve this matter on reasonable terms."

Rubin also reports directly to Google CEO Larry Page, as Catz and Kurian do to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Google said.

But Oracle rejected the comparison in its filing, saying it "ignores important differences in their roles."

"Mr. Rubin is a Senior Vice-President with responsibility only for Google's mobile strategy," Oracle added. "Indeed, Google itself does not identify Mr. Rubin as a top corporate executive in its own public disclosures to investors. In contrast, Ms. Catz is Oracle's President, CFO, and a member of its Board of Directors. She has company-wide responsibility for all financial and legal matters."

Moreover, Rubin and Walker represented Google during previous, unsuccessful attempts at mediation, and therefore Judge William Alsup should order Google to appoint someone who meets the standard of "top corporate executive," Oracle said.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, but if the pace of filings in the case so far is any indication, its attorneys will likely respond quickly.

Google Launches A Slick Music Beta App For iOS — Web, Not Native

Now that Google Music Beta has been out there for a few months, it’s time to focus on how to get people to use it. One key: mobile.

While Google launched an Android app for Music Beta alongside the initial unveiling at I/O this year (it’s baked into the Music app), iOS users were SOL. Not anymore. Today, Google has rolled out an app so they can get in on the fun as well. But it’s not a native app, it’s a mobile web one. And it’s still pretty slick.

While the app still has the Safari chrome around it, it functions smoothly. You can easily play all of your songs, search, shuffle, etc. Swiping left and right takes you between Artists, Albums, Songs, etc. The transitions are very well done.

The music even continues to play in the background when you exit Safari. And it can be controlled by the iOS music controls.

And yes, it all streams from the cloud. You can get to it simply by directing your iOS Safari browser at music.google.com.

I’ve asked Google if there are any plans for a native app as well. That will be key for travel, etc. I’ll update when I hear back.

Interestingly enough, while Amazon’s rival cloud music service works on iOS through the browser now, we hear there are plans of a native app…

Does Google want to own or organize information?

No doubt that Google decision to acquire Zagat gives its local business strategy a nice boost.

Google's Marissa Mayer(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

But it's not without some tension. Google, which likes to think of itself as the great organizer of the world's information, is increasingly owning important chunks of it. And that raises questions about whether the company will give the information it owns preferential treatment over information owned by others.

"This is exactly why Google is on the hot seat for antitrust," said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, an activist and frequent thorn in Google side. "This is when the search engine becomes the find engine."

It's not an academic point. Fears about Google playing favorites with its properties have emerged before, and even tripped the company up. Last year, competitors in the air travel business raised those concerns when Google announced plans to buy ITA Software, which provides travel information to various Web sites. Companies such as Expedia, Kayak and Hotwire worried that Google could have created rival Web sites and not given them information necessary to compete. That led federal regulators to step in and require Google to continue licensing ITA's travel technology to competitors for five years on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" terms before approving the $700 million deal.

Google declined to discuss the potential conflict for this article, instead pointing to a blog post announcing the deal by Marissa Mayer, its vice president of local, maps, and location services. In that post, Mayer writes that "Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering."

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20103530-93/does-google-want-to-own-or-organize-information/#ixzz1XPASA5RW

Report: Turntable.fm iPhone App Will Launch Next Week

Streaming music site Turntable.fm is reportedly getting ready to launch an iPhone app.

According to a TechCrunch report, Turntable has been testing the iOS app with a number of people over the past several weeks and will launch it next week. TechCrunch says it works well on Wi-Fi connections, but is less reliable on 3G networks. It’s possible that Turntable is waiting to clear this hurdle before it releases the app, which was reportedly built by 19-year-old iOS developer Sahil Lavingia.

Screenshots show that the look and feel of the Turntable.fm site is maintained on the app. It includes deep Facebook integration, and you presumably still need to know a Facebook friend that has access to Turntable to start using it yourself.

It’s unknown whether or not Turntable is also working on an Android app.

Lowe’s Upgrades Website, Adds 42,000 IPhones to Spur Sales Q

Lowe’s Cos. is enhancing its website and equipping store employees with iPhones as the second-largest U.S. home-improvement retailer seeks to catch up to Home Depot Inc. (HD) and boost sales from its existing locations.

Next month, Lowe’s will introduce its MyLowes online tool that customers will be able to use to store owner’s manuals, warranties and paint formulas, Chief Information Officer Mike Brown said in an interview. The Mooresville, North Carolina- based company is arming workers with 42,000 iPhone 4s to answer shoppers’ questions and ring up purchases.

The company is working to catch larger Home Depot, which gave employees Motorola Inc. handheld devices last year to let them spend more time helping customers and less on behind-the- scene duties. Atlanta-based Home Depot has had stronger same- store sales than Lowe’s for nine straight quarters.

“Home Depot is ahead of Lowe’s in that regard,” said Tim Hoyle, research director for Radnor, Pennsylvania-based Haverford Investments, which oversees $6.5 billion, including 370,000 Home Depot shares and 20,000 Lowe’s shares. “The two are fierce competitors. To believe that Lowe’s can’t catch up would be naive.”

After years of expansion, Lowe’s and Home Depot have saturated many markets and are shifting capital spending from opening new stores to technology that can help them squeeze more sales and profit from existing outlets.

'Android to overtake iPhone for app downloads'

Android smartphone users will download more apps than Apple iPhoneowners this year, as sales of devices using the Google operating system surge ahead.

Applications, which range from games to alarm clocks and weather information, will jump from a total 7.4bn downloaded in 2010 to 18bn this year, according to a report from telecoms analyst Ovum.

For the first time, phones running on Google's Android operating system will download more apps than iPhones, with 8.1bn going to Android phones compared with Apple's 6bn.

Last year, Apple and Android reached 1.4bn and 2.7bn respectively.

In the second quarter of the year, Android accounted for 46% of smartphones sold, while Apple was the second highest seller at 20%.

Ovum says Android will reinforce its lead, and by 2016 there will have almost twice the number of downloads as the iPhone – 21.8bn compared with 11.6bn.

By 2015, the prediction is that Windows Phone, currently undergoing a facelift, will gain ground and overtake BlackBerry for third place in both total number of downloads and revenues by 2015.

However, iPhone is expected to retain its lead in generating the most paid for downloads, with $2.86bn (£1.78m) in 2016, compared with $1.5bn of revenue from Android devices.

iPhone again No. 1 in customer satisfaction: J.D. Power

For the sixth straight time in three years, Apple's iPhone ranks highest in customer satisfaction for smartphones, according to J.D. Power and Associates' 2011 U.S. Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study. HTC, maker of both Android and Windows smartphones, is second.

When it comes to more traditional cellphones, or feature phones, Samsung ranks highest in customer satisfaction, getting good marks for performance, ease of operation and features. Behind Samsung are LG, Sanyo and Sony Ericsson. Samsung also was No. 3 in smartphone customer satisfaction, followed by Motorola, RIM (BlackBerry), LG, Palm and Nokia.

J.D. Power does the smartphone and "traditional mobile phone" satisfaction studies twice a year. The smartphone study is based on experiences reported by 6,898 smartphone owners; the traditional phone study, on 8,775 cellphone owners; both studies were done between January and June.

In order of importance, the key factors of overall satisfaction for smartphones are: performance (35 percent); ease of operation (24 percent); features (21 percent); and physical design (20 percent). For traditional mobiles, it's: performance (31 percent); ease of operation (24 percent); physical design (24 percent); and features (20 percent).

Among the other findings about mobile phone costs and apps released Thursday:

$71 is the price of a traditional wireless mobile phone, "compared with an average of $81 at the beginning of 2009. The decline is primarily due to discounts provided by handset providers and wireless service carriers to incentivize sales." Indeed, 42 percent of traditional cellphone owners say they got a free phone when they signed up for a contract.

More than two-thirds of smartphone owners say they have downloaded games and social networking apps to their phones; 54 percent have downloaded entertainment-oriented apps; and 52 percent, travel software such as maps and weather apps.

And, while 4G, or fourth-generation, wireless is still becoming a reality for most of the country, those smartphone owners who do have devices labeled as 4G are "highly satisfied" with them, J.D. Power says, more so than customers using 3G, or third-generation, wireless devices (which most smartphones are now, including Apple's iPhone).

Size — both of phones and their screens —matters greatly, giving heft (so to speak) to "the old adage that 'thinner is better,' " says J.D. Power. Highest customer satisfaction is with smartphones that don't weigh more than 5 ounces and are less than .45 inches thick.

iPhone again No. 1 in customer satisfaction: J.D. Power

$71 is the price of a traditional wireless mobile phone, "compared with an average of $81 at the beginning of 2009. The decline is primarily due to discounts provided by handset providers and wireless service carriers to incentivize sales." Indeed, 42 percent of traditional cellphone owners say they got a free phone when they signed up for a contract.

Report: Photo on Flickr Shows 8-Megapixel Camera for iPhone 5

Apple is reportedly very close to revealing the iPhone 5, and a photo posted on Flickr shows that the iPhone 5 will likely come with an 8-megapixel camera.

PocketNow discovered a photo posted to the account of an Apple engineer that is marked as having been snapped using an iPhone 4. However, PocketNow took a closer look at the metadata which contained pieces of information suggesting that it was taken using an 8-megapixel camera.

The site says that the photo of a plate of sushi “claims to have been taken by and iPhone 4, but the rest of its EXIF data tells a different story: although the image has been cropped to 2235x2291 (5.12 megapixels), the original picture was a much larger 3264x2248 – or just shy of eight megapixels. What’s more, the lens was recorded as a 4.3mm f/2.4, which is closer to that of a point-and-shoot than the iPhone 4’s actual 3.85mm f/2.8.”

The person that posted the photo said it was just a picture of his lunch, but the data behind the image seems to say much more. On top of that, the image was marked private after news of its existence spread throughout the blogosphere. The person that posted the photo lists his job as “Apple Software Engineer” and the GPS coordinates are tagged 1 Infinite Loop, Apple’s famous address.

Police investigating accusations in bizarre lost iPhone 5 case

Apple and possibly some San Francisco police officers may have overstepped legal bounds in attempting to retrieve yet another missing iPhone prototype that was reportedly left behind at a San Francisco bar. The SFPD has now begun an internal investigation into allegations that officers were involved in a late July search of a San Francisco home where Apple had apparently tracked the missing device.

iPhone prototype redux
In 2010, an Apple engineer left an iPhone 4 prototype at a Mountain View bar after going out for drinks for his birthday. Another bar-goer named Brian Hogan found the device and took it home. After removing a case designed to disguise its appearance, Hogan discovered he was in possession of what appeared to be a prototype iPhone device. Hogan and a friend shopped access to the prototype around to several news sites, Ars included, and Gizmodo ultimately bought it for $5,000. The site subsequently published details of the device long before Apple unveiled it publicly.

Now, it seems the story is playing out all over again, but the sequel is a bit different. In July of 2011, a similar incident occurred with what may be an iPhone 5 prototype. The device was reportedly left behind at a tequila bar named Cava 22 in San Francisco's Mission District. Two people who are part of Apple's security team attempted to track the device using its GPS location feature, apparently pinpointing it to the home of an individual named Sergio Calderón.

According to Calderón, six people came to his home in late July asking if he had been to Cava 22 on the night the phone went missing, and if he had it in his possession. Calderón admitted he had been there on the night in question, but said he knew nothing about a missing phone. At least one of the people present at Calderón's home claimed to be an SFPD officer.

Calderón said he agreed to a search after being told the police could return with a warrant, though the search turned up nothing. Apparently members of Apple's security team also went through Calderón's computer to look for evidence that the device had been plugged in. Those same Apple investigators—one of which was later identified as retired San Jose Police sergeant Anthony Colon—offered money for the device and even made veiled threats about contacting the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) when the search turned up nothing. "One of the officers is like, 'Is everyone in this house an American citizen?' They said we were all going to get into trouble,'" Calderón said.

SnapRetail Named to Social Media Examiner's "Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages"

PITTSBURGH, Sep 08, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- SnapRetail, a company that makes it easy for independent retailers to use email, Facebook and Twitter to market products, drive increased sales and compete with larger retailers, has been awarded third place in Social Media Examiner's 2011 contest for "Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages" nationwide.

"The team at SnapRetail is thrilled to be recognized by Social Media Examiner as one of the nation's Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages in 2011," said Ted Teele, CEO of SnapRetail. "The people who work at SnapRetail are passionate about helping small business owners across the United States to compete with larger retailers by using social media, which makes this recognition even more rewarding."

Recently recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of America's 100 Brilliant Companies, SnapRetail is the fastest growing technology provider to independent retailers in the $75 billion U.S. market for gift and home products.

Crystal Vilkaitis, Director of Social Media at SnapRetail, added, "We find that independent retailers are hungry for easy-to-understand information on Facebook to use in their own businesses. So we load SnapRetail's Facebook page with lots of how-to's for our customers."

Social Media Examiner's panel of experts reviewed landing pages, engagement, reader involvement and creative use of promotions. SnapRetail was recognized for having good use of quotes, links and personal stories in posts, a welcome tab with good video and integration with other social media platforms as well as SnapRetail's "Snappy Hour," which increases involvement and answers social media marketing questions.

Navy Corpsman in Brig in Bomb Threat Probe; Students Vent on Facebook

A Navy medic was being questioned today by military police in the brig at Camp Pendleton in connection with Wednesday's bomb scare at San Clemente High School.

Military officials said they found the threat during a search of Daniel Morgan's belongings at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Air Station after he failed to show up for work that morning.

No charges have been filed against Morgan, 22, said Marine spokesman First Lt. Eric Flanagan. He said military authorities had taken over the investigation.

Orange County Sheriff's Department Lt. Steve Doan said the department remains available to assist in the probe, but because the alleged threats were made on the Marine base, Morgan's case falls under the jurisdiction of military law.

While school is back in session today, many students are sharing their reactions to Wednesday's events on a newly created Facebook page. The students are either insulting Morgan, thanking him for getting them out of school early, or both. Nearly 250 people have "liked" the page. (A warning to readers: The page contains vulgar language.)

The 3,200 students and 180 staff personnel were evacuated from the high school Wednesday, the first day of school, after military police notified the Sheriff’s Department of the threat.

Morgan turned himself in at the base that afternoon. No explosives were found at the school.

Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said that the only discernible connection between Morgan and the high school was its close proximity to the base—the two are about five miles apart. Morgan had been stationed at Camp Pendleton for only a short time, Amormino said.

San Clemente High School Principal George Duarte thanked parents and law enforcement in an open letter posted on the school website yesterday afternoon, after the campus was cleared of danger.

“First, I want to assure you that the entire campus has been checked and given the all clear by law enforcement,” he wrote. “School will be in session tomorrow. Second, I want to commend the students and staff for their calmness and responsibility. Additionally, I am thankful to the county and federal agencies who responded to keep our kids safe. I also want to thank you parents for the trust you placed in our district’s communication efforts to keep you informed.“

What Facebook wants parents to know about its website

Facebook is currently designed for two age groups (13-18 year olds and 18 and up), and we provide extensive safety and privacy controls based on the age provided. However, recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don't circumvent a system or lie about their age. We believe that education is critical to ensuring that people of all ages use the Internet safely and responsibly. We agree with safety experts that communication between parents or guardians and kids about their use of the Internet is vital. We believe that services such as Facebook have a role to play in encouraging this. Our recent announcements around social reporting and our Family Safety Center are testimonies to our ongoing efforts to ensure we are giving detailed and helpful advice to help support these conversations. Just as parents are always teaching and reminding kids how to cross the road safely, talking about Internet safety should be just as important a lesson to learn.

Social Reporting

Social Reporting is a feature of the reporting tool that helps you resolve issues with posts, profiles or other content on the site. If you are reporting content you don't like, but that doesn't violate the Facebook Terms, we make it easy for you to communicate with the person who posted it. For example, if you are reporting a photo of yourself, you can easily send the person who posted it a message letting them know you don't like it. In most cases, they will take the photo down if you ask.

In cases of bullying or harassment, where you don't feel comfortable reaching out to the person directly, you can use social reporting to get help from a parent, teacher or trusted friend. You can share that piece of content and a message about the situation with someone you trust. You also have the option to block the person who posted the content and report it to Facebook so we can take action, if appropriate.

When a child is bullied online there is a digital record of the harassment. Before removing any harassing posts, children and parents should print them out or save them as PDF files on their computer.

Employees Can’t Be Fired for Facebook Complaints, Judge Says

Five workers fired for complaining about their jobs on Facebook will go back to work after the National Labor Relations Board ruled in their favor, affirming workers can safely vent their frustrations about the workplace on social networks.

The dust-up began last year when an employee at the non-profit agency Hispanics United of Buffalo vented on Facebook, on a non-working Saturday, about a co-worker’s accusation that she didn’t do enough for the organization’s clients.

Other co-workers chimed in to make comments like, “What the f… Try doing my job. I have 5 programs,” and “Tell her to come do [my] f***ing job n c if I don’t do enough, this is just dum.”

The co-worker saw the messages and passed them along to a supervisor, who fired the workers, citing the company’s social media policy banning cyber harassment of co-workers.

One of the terminated employees complained to the National Labor Relations Board. The judge, in the first social media case that didn’t involve a unionized workplace, ruled the employees were within their rights to converse among themselves about working conditions.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, employees have the right to talk to each other about improving work conditions, and the board viewed the Facebook conversation as an example of just that.

Earlier this year, a court settled another complaint by the NLRB citing that same right, this time involving a union issue at the American Medical Response of Connecticut.

In that case, the judge ruled the terminated employee’s Facebook comments, which took issue with her boss’ handling of a customer complaint, were considered “protected concerted activity” under the NLRA.

Former SBA Chief Joins Facebook

A former Small Business Administration chief and co-chair of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has joined Facebook’s board of directors, the social-networking giant reported this week.

Erskine Bowles, who began his career at Morgan Stanley, was an SBA administratorunder President Clinton in 1993 and spent much of the decade as a White House chief of staff.

He was also an official at the National Security Council and the National Economic Council, and president of the University of North Carolina system.

As a board member, Bowles’s experience in government, business and academia offers the company insight into “how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Payvment has an actual plan for making money from Facebook ecommerce

Aw, shucks. They’re all grown-up! Today, Payvment, a Facebook ecommerce platform, announced some improvements to its free social discovery-based shopping application, but the bigger news is that it has a strategy to make money.

Payvment is going after big e-retailers, brands and agencies with two new paid versions available later this month called Payvment Premium and Payvment Platinum.

“This has been free for the last two years, so there’s been this speculation about how we were going to monetize,” said Christian Taylor, founder and CEO of Payvment, in an interview with VentureBeat. “This is the first time we’ve showed behind the curtain of what our strategies are.”

The paid versions of Payvment give online shopkeepers a deeper, analytics-based understanding of how shoppers are talking about and sharing goods on Facebook and Twitter. You can preview the paid version at my.payvment.com.

Palo Alto-based Payvment (the company is located across the street from Facebook) launched in 2009 with a focus on individuals wanting to sell goods and services on Facebook’s expansive social platform. That’s still their main business model. Payvment uses PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API to let anyone create an ecommerce site and start selling. All they have to do is copy and paste one line of code to get going. They also let users with little or no sales experience manage inventory, shipping information and terms of service.

The new additions to that platform, announced today, include analytics delivered on a product-by-product basis, automated and product-specific social promotions (with coupon codes), a new way to review and respond to customers, and the ability to manage up to five storefronts from a single dashboard.

Payvment Premium, which includes all the existing features of Payvment’s free application as well as the new features listed above, will be available for $29.95 per month or at a discounted rate of $299.95 yearly. Payvment Platinum is designed for large sellers or agencies with multiple clients. It gives users an unlimited number of storefronts, account administrators, one-on-one training and priority customer support.

“Most people will be using the Premium version,” said Taylor, who says the new analytics featured in that version provide a new level of social shopping data.

Taylor says 100,000 businesses have launched storefronts with Payvment, and 60,000 businesses are truly active. He says new sellers take two or three days to get their first sale on Facebook. Six months ago it took two weeks.

“It’s been growing like a weed,” said Taylor.

S. Korea FTC Raids Google Over Android Practices

The Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) raided Google's Seoul offices, according to an individual familiar with the matter, starting on Tuesday. The KFTC planned on conducting their raid for evidence and information on the 6th and 7th. It has yet to be confirmed whether the raid has officially concluded.

The reason for the raid was a claim from NHN Corp and Daum Communications Corp, two Korean companies involved with search engines in that country, that Google is engaged in anticompetitive practices with their Android operating system. The claim stated that Google's pre-installation of Google software on the Android OS, as well as features of Android that are "systematically designed" to make switching to another search provider difficult, are anti-competitive.

Facebook Is Breathing Down Google's Neck... Well, Ankle

Google's paranoia about Facebook is an established fact; much as Google execs may claim Google+ isn't intended to compete with Facebook, it's hard to take the assertion at face value, considering how many areas of overlap there are between the new social network -- sorry, I mean "suite of social tools" -- and Facebook.

It's true that Facebook has laid hold of an unprecedented share of Internet activity in terms of time spent and user engagement. But these metrics don't necessarily equal revenue and profitability, and on that note, the most recent projections from eMarketer have me wondering (not for the first time) whether Google's Facebook fixation is entirely rational.

According to eMarketer, Google's total U.S. revenues will grow an impressive 27.3% from $10.03 billion in 2010 to $12.77 billion in 2011; assuming a conservative growth rate of 25%, global revenues (including the U.S.) could increase from $29.32 billion in 2010 to $36.65 billion. This certainly seems plausible enough, considering total (global) first-half revenues jumped 29.4% from $13.6 billion in 2010 to $17.6 billion this year.

Of course, the lion's share of Google's revenue still comes from search advertising -- $10.92 billion or 85.5% of the total in 2011, per eMarketer -- and importantly, its share of that crucial market is still growing. In short, Google remains the dominant player in what remains the dominant discipline in Internet advertising. Indeed, Google's share of the total online advertising market also continues to increase, from 38.5% in 2010 to 40.8% this year.

Meanwhile, according to eMarketer Facebook's U.S. revenues will grow 81% from $1.21 billion in 2010 to $2.19 billion in 2011, as global revenues roughly double to $4.05 billion. These are admittedly big numbers, but just as clearly nowhere near Google's: Facebook's U.S. revenues in 2011 will amount to 17.1% of Google's, up from 12.1% in 2010, and its share of the U.S. ad market will increase from 4.6% in 2010 to 7% in 2011. Globally, Facebook's revenues in 2011 will amount to perhaps 11% of Google's total.

Now, there's no question that Internet advertising is a dynamic, fast-changing marketplace, and Google's top execs aren't paid to be complacent about potential threats, even if they appear small for the time being. But the fact remains that Facebook, for all its massive user base and high level of engagement, is attracting roughly one-tenth the ad spending going to Google -- hardly a terrifying spectacle.

Google to Update Android to Stop Fragmentation

Google chairman Eric Schmidt said a new version of Android, dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich,” will arrive in “October or November,” as the company stems fragmentation to compete with Apple’s iOS 5 platform.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s Android update will reportedly put an end to software fragmentation moving forward. Currently, more than half of Android phones run version 2.2, while a large majority operate 2.3.

In addition, Android tablets, which run on a version dubbed “Honeycomb,” have different code than smartphones that run on “Gingerbread,” making it difficult for developers to write apps for both platforms.

Analysts had speculated Ice Cream Sandwich would make its debut before the end of the year, but Schmidt’s comments are Google’s first official confirmation.

In the past, Google tried to crack down on the issue by asking Android distributors to sign a “non-fragmentation clause,” essentially giving the Internet giant final approval over code tweaks added to the original platform. But, the efforts haven’t stopped the fragmentation problem.

Google’s fragmentation issue is in stark contrast to Apple’s unified iOS software, allowing developers to create apps that run across all devices, and giving consumers a streamlined experience.

Apple will take its platform unification one step further this fall with iOS 5 and iCloud, a new service that will automatically sync calendars, e-mail, photos and music downloads over the air across devices running the platform.

Microsoft inks Android and Chrome patent deals

Microsoft's Horacio Gutierrez

Microsoft struck two new patent-protection deals with hardware makers seeking to avoid being sued for using Google's Android and Chrome operating systems

Acer signed a licensing deal with Microsoft that includes "broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for Acer's tablets and smartphones running the Android platform," Microsoft said in a press release. Acer's Iconia Tab, among other devices, runs Android.

"We are pleased that Acer is taking advantage of our industry-wide licensing program established to help companies address Android's IP issues," said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft.

The software giant's deal with ViewSonic covers tablets and mobile phones running either Android or Chrome. ViewSonic's ViewPad 7 will run Android. And the company has reportedly been considering using Chrome in its tablets as well.

The companies didn't disclose terms of the deals, except that Microsoft will get royalties from ViewSonic under that agreement.

Rather than going after Google for patent violations, Microsoft has targeted device makers, pressing them to license Microsoft's patents that it alleges Android and Chrome infringe upon. Last year, Microsoft cut a deal with its longtime partner HTC. And in recent months, it's inked agreements with several smaller device makers including Wistron and Onkyo.

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20103309-75/microsoft-inks-android-and-chrome-patent-deals/#ixzz1XOO15N52

What happens when Google declares a thriving company is dead?

It’s been a long day, and you’re looking forward to dinner at that café you heard about from your friend a few days back. You look up the address on Google Maps, and … wait, what? It’s permanently closed? That’s weird; your friend said she was just there a few days ago.

This scenario has been playing out more and more frequently over the past few months, as healthy businesses – ones that are, in reality, open and eager for customers – find themselves listed as “closed” due to a quirk in Google’s crowdsourcing techniques. David Segal at the New York Times notes that many businesses have found themselves digitally shuttered for only a few hours, but sometimes the problem can last for weeks. And all the while, potential customers may be passing up the place, assuming it’s a goner.

The quirk lies in the way Google Places, the hub that feeds location data to Google Maps, accepts user input. A Places listing usually contains, in addition to the business’s address, description, and reviews, a drop-down arrow enabling users to “report a problem” with the business. One of the problems that can be reported is that “this place is permanently closed.” Once enough users report that a business is closed, the business’s digital storefront can be labeled either “reportedly closed” or “permanently closed.”

Google’s M.O. isn’t malicious – they’re harnessing the power of crowds to keep listings up to date, rather than trying to manually curate profiles or relying on business owners to update their listings when they close shop or move. But it only takes a few malicious users – such as unscrupulous competitors – to mark a business as “closed” online. The problem apparently started becoming widespread back in June.

Google does provide a way for a wrongly-shuttered business to be “reopened” online, but it’s not always effective. Next to any business that’s been marked “closed,” there’s a link reading “Not true?” Clicking it will, in some cases, remove the “closed” designation, but many business owners have reported the problem persisting for days or weeks, in spite of their efforts to remove the label. Like most algorithms at Google, the alchemy whereby a business is digitally closed or reopened remains a guarded trade secret – or at least shrouded in mystery.

Google Buys Zagat

12:32 p.m. | Updated Google has agreed to buy Zagat, the guide to restaurants around the country, in an effort by the search giant to expand its local offerings.

Terms of the transaction, including price, were not disclosed. Tim and Nina Zagat, the husband-and-wife team behind the company, said they planned to remain involved in the business as co-chairs.

“We couldn’t be happier to see our baby placed into such good hands and are looking forward to being Googlers in the years ahead,” the Zagats wrote in a letter posted on their company’s Web site.

In a blog post, Marissa Mayer, Google’s top executive for local and location services, wrote that Zagat would become the cornerstone for the search giant’s local offerings.

“Their iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and ’snippeting’ sentiment were ‘mobile’ before ‘mobile’ involved electronics,” she wrote.

Google has been itching to gain a foothold in the local business market for several years, and on the company’s earnings call in July, Larry Page, its chief executive, said local was one of his top priorities as an emerging business. The prize is a piece of the $140 billion that small businesses spend on local advertising.

Known for its 30-point scale and its quote-laden reviews, Zagat has grown from a two-page typed list to a global empire with millions of loyal readers and reviewers happy to rave about their favorite restaurants and bars.

Google Details Electricity Usage of Its Data Centers

Google released what was once among its most closely guarded secrets on Thursday: how much electricity its enormous computing facilities consume.

The company said that its data centers continuously drew almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant — to run Google searches, YouTube views, Gmail messaging and display ads on all those services around the world.

Though the electricity figure may seem large, the company asserts that the world is using less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, driving to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure, said in an interview.

Google says that people conduct over a billion searches a day and numerous other downloads and queries, and it calculates that the average energy consumption for a typical user is small, about 180 watt-hours a month, or the equivalent of running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours. The overall electricity figure includes all Google operations worldwide, including the energy required to run its campuses and office parks, he added.

While comparing different types of electricity loads is difficult, utility companies estimate that 260 million watts could power all of the homes in a sizable city — say, 100,000 to 200,000 homes.

For years, Google maintained a wall of silence worthy of a government security agency on how much electricity the company used — a silence that experts speculated was used to cloak how quickly it was outstripping the competition in the scale and sophistication of its data centers.

The electricity figures are no longer seen as a key to decoding the company’s operations, said Mr. Hoelzle. Google is known to have built efficient data centers. Unlike many data-driven companies, Google designs and builds most of its data centers from scratch, including its servers that use energy-saving chips and software.

Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, applauded Google for releasing the figures but cautioned that despite the advent of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing tools, electricity use at data centers was still rising, as every major corporation now relied on them. He said the figures did not include the electricity drawn by the personal computers, tablets and iPhones that use information from Google’s data centers.

SFPD: We're Investigating Our Missing iPhone 5 Investigation

Face it, the only reason we're covering this missing Apple iPhone 5 story is because everyone else is covering it. It's like the snake swallowing its tail, kind of like the latest wrinkle in this whole sleuthing mystery: The San Francisco Police Department will investigate—wait for it—the San Francisco Police Department, for the manner in which it reportedly aided Apple employees while Cupertino went a-huntin'—perhaps illicitly—for the supposedly AWOL next-gen iPhone.

So says the San Francisco Examiner, anyway, which quoted an SFPD spokesperson as admitting the department has launched an "internal investigation" into the incident.
If you're just bumping into this story, the brouhaha's over a so-called iPhone 5 (everyone realizes we don't even know that's what Apple plans to call it, right?) belonging to an apparently careless Apple employee who lost it at a San Francisco Mission District tequila bar in July. How do you lose a super-secret unannounced prototype? I know. You'd think a company as sophisticated as Apple would have security tech to thwart this sort of employee incautiousness. You know: shock collars, invisible fences, that sort of thing.

Read more at http://techland.time.com/2011/09/08/sfpd-were-investigating-our-missing-iphone-5-investigation/#ixzz1XOIf9vOp

iPhone 5 Production Ramps Up At Foxconn

Apple might be expecting to sell a heck of a lot of iPhones in the remaining months of 2011. According to supply chain sources cited by DigiTimes, Apple's long-time partner Foxconn is churning out as many as 150,000 iPhone 5s per day, at a pace of 5 to 6 million per month. That puts the total for the rest of the year in the ballpark of 22 million, which is in line with analyst estimates on what Apple might be able to do.

At this point, however, Apple hasn't even admitted that such a device exists and no details are known with certainty.

Many of the reports that have flooded the interwebs this year indicate that the Apple iPhone 5 will have the same dual-core A5 processor found in the iPad 2, it will have an 8-megapixel camera, it will be thinner, but wider and longer, and it will be sold by AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and maybe even Sprint.

According to a leaked internal memo, published by SprintFeed last week, the higher-ups at Sprint want the company's retail store employees to downplay reports that the Now Network may sell the Apple iPhone come October.

The memo, which is addressed to All Dealers reads: "Action Required--Do Not Speculate about Sprint Getting the iPhone. If you are asked by a customer or by friends and family members, you need to avoid making any comments about the iPhone and simply state 'no comment.'"

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint will carry both the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4 for the first time. Sprint won't be alone, however. The iPhone 5 will launch on AT&T and Verizon Wireless's networks the same time it goes on sale from Sprint in mid-October.

Sprint suggests that employees may acknowledge the Wall Street Journal report, but can't offer any information or comment about it, and should refer inquisitive customers to Sprint's newsroom.

DTE Energy Intros iPhone App

DTE Energy (DTE - Analyst Report) has introduced a new interactive iPhone application (“app”) of Apple Inc. (AAPL - Analyst Report) that will help its customers to be updated with a variety of latest information, including real-time outage information from their mobile devices.

The DTE Energy Outage Center app is available to customers from the Apple iTunes App store or Apple.com free of charge. The Outage Center is an online central area where its consumers can get the latest information about power outages, and are guided for other frequently asked questions.

This mobile capability is added to the existing suite of outage-related offerings in order to bring useful information to customers in the manner they want. The application helps the customers to report power outages, view the status of a reported problem and explore a map that shows the number of outages reported throughout the area.

Other mobile communications offerings that are currently under development include ability to check account balances and submit mobile payments. Moreover, the company is working on an application that supports Android devices. Android device is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.

The introduction of an iPhone app will help the company to enlarge the reach of Outage Center tools to a wider audience. DTE Energy is one of the first utilities in the country to allow customers to report power outages via a downloadable native mobile smartphone application.

DTE Energy has a stable and growing utilities business with complementary non-utility businesses. Going forward, growth momentum is expected to be maintained by higher rates for its regulated business and a strong balance sheet. There are also plans to monetize its Barnett Shale assets, which would alleviate the need for external borrowings.

NuForce offers new audiophile grade amp for the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad

NuForce has a new amplifier that is for the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that promises audiophile grade quality out of the music stored on your device. The amp is called the NuForce Icon iDo and it comes in several colors. You can get the external amp in white, black, red or blue for $249.99. The amount claims to take the music from your digital device and deliver CD quality sound.

The amp connects to the device via the charge and sync port and then it has a power supply that you plug into the wall. The device has a max sampling rate of 48kHz and a resolution of 24-bits. Outputs include analog RCA out and digital coaxial RCA 75-ohm output. The headphone output is a 3.5mm jack to drive headphones up to 300 ohms.

Sprint reportedly prepping for iPhone 5

Sprint is said to be preparing to sell the iPhone 5 by setting up new cellular equipment in Apple stores, according to a story in Beatweek Magazine earlier this week.

Citing an anonymous source, Beatweek said that Sprint is installing network repeaters at Apple retail stores to ensure a strong signal so that potential iPhone 5 buyers can test the device on the carrier's cellular network.

The source, who lives in Austin, Texas, is quoted as saying "one thing I can tell you is that the electrical contractor that I work for is contracted to install Sprint 'repeaters' at The Domain. There is a Apple Store at The Domain. One of the 'repeaters' is to be installed INSIDE the Apple Store. There is to be a total of 5 'repeaters' installed. The equipment is CDMA and 4G (Sprint)."

The Apple store located in the Domain is also in Austin, Texas. Sprint uses CDMA for its 3G network, the same as Verizon Wireless. But analysts and other industry watchers have expressed doubts that the next iPhone would be a 4G device, citing Apple's concerns that the technology isn't yet mature. Apple and at least one iPhone carrier have reportedly been testing 4G LTE internally, but an actual 4G iPhone isn't likely to surface until next year.

A story from The Wall Street Journal last month claimed that Sprint would start offering the iPhone 5 along with AT&T and Verizon Wireless when the new phone makes its debut, which is expected in October. Such a move would make T-Mobile the only U.S. carrier without the iPhone, at least until AT&T manages to pull off its merger deal.

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20103293-37/sprint-reportedly-prepping-for-iphone-5/#ixzz1XOGZ3bxA

"Leaked" photo suggests the iPhone 5 camera won't be much of an upgrade

A photo of a sushi lunch, which appears to have been posted by an Apple engineer to his Flickr account before being marked as private, seems to support rumors that the next-generation iPhone will be equipped with an 8 megapixel camera sensor. While the authenticity of the image and its metadata can't be 100 percent verified, our own analysis leads us to believe that the data seems plausible, and can provide us a few clues to the possible camera hardware in the iPhone 5.

The photo, which was quickly marked "private" on Flickr after reports of its origins spread on Wednesday, contains a number of metadata pieces that support the theory that it was taken using an iPhone model not yet in circulation. The account of the person that posted the image lists his job title as "Apple Software Engineer," the GPS coordinates point to office space at 1 Infinite Loop, and the time it was taken is marked as 11:52am (lunch time!). Additionally, the original caption on Flickr read, "Lunch at work: Uni (sea urchin), hirame (wild halibut), sake (wild Alaskan salmon), avocado roll." And, as some readers may know, Apple's corporate cafeteria is known for, among other delicacies, its sushi.

While EXIF metadata can certainly be faked, the combination of details at least makes sense. Assuming the data is genuine, we can make a number of conclusions about the iPhone 5's camera.

The photo's resolution is about 5MP, but the final pixel dimensions (2291 x 2235) don't match the existing iPhone 4 (2592 x 1936). The photo is clearly cropped—it's not a common 4:3 ratio, and the EXIF data tells us the original resolution was 3264 x 2448 pixels. That just so happens to be the exact resolution as both OmniVision's latest 1/3.2" 8MP backside illuminated sensor as well as Sony's 1/3.2" 8MP Exmor R sensor.

OmniVision supplied the 1/3.2" 5MP backside-illuminated camera sensors for he iPhone 4, so its OV8830 sensor could almost be a drop-in replacement. However, Sony's CEO claimed earlier this year that its "best" sensors (i.e., the Exmor R) were being supplied to Apple for its mobile devices. Which one of these sensors could come with the iPhone 5 is hard to say, but both have been rumored as replacements—one rumor even suggested that Apple was dual-sourcing sensors from both Sony and OmniVision.

Other details in the EXIF metadata tell us a little bit more about the camera hardware. For instance, the maximum aperture of the lens is listed as f/2.4, while the maximum aperture of the iPhone 4 is f/2.8. That's about a third of a stop brighter, but it also appears that the 8MP sensor itself is about a third of a stop slower than the one in the iPhone 4. Essentially, the improvement in aperture was necessary to compensate for the sensitivity decrease.

First Biblically Based Facebook Game Journey of Moses Receives High Reviews

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Facebook's first biblically-based game, Journey of Moses, continues to receive high accolades from both users and reviewers since its mid-August launch.

Rapidly growing in monthly active users, the Journey of Moses game, which takes players through the twists and turns of milestones in the life of Moses, has been rated a 4.4 out of five stars on Facebook. In addition, several game critics and media outlets have written positive reviews of the game, such as:

"It's a well-polished game with amusing visuals and a surprising amount of depth, much more so than Vatican Wars or Holy Town."

AOL Games blog

"The Journey of Moses, like Facebook itself, is addictive, and advancement through the game, in which there is 'no winning or losing,' is contingent on social connections."

CNN Belief blog

"The very fact that this game does a pretty good job of clearly relating these events [of Moses' life] in such a simple format like a Facebook game is pretty impressive ... Besides, if you're going to waste time on Facebook playing a game, why not play a well-made one that's about the Bible?"

Hollywood Jesus

"With relatively few games sporting religious themes, this title has seen its usage skyrocket since launching earlier this month."

Mister Softee Jazzes Up Display Ads To Fight Facebook, Google

Microsoft announced that it will be adding new features to its Internet display advertising products to stop customers from defecting to Google‘s orFacebook‘s competing products. [1]

Display advertising could grow to around $12.3 billion in the U.S. according to Bloomberg. While Google leads the search advertising market, Facebook is the clear leader when it comes to display ads with a 17.7% share. Yahoo and Google come in next with 13.1% and 9.3% of the market followed by Microsoft with 4.9%. [2] Facebook and Google have been expanding their market share rapidly in the last couple of years at the expense of Yahoo and Microsoft.

We estimate that Microsoft’s online division contributes just under 5% of our $28 Trefis price estimate for Microsoft. Our price estimate implies 10% upside to the current market price.

Read more at http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/09/08/mister-softee-jazzes-up-display-ad-technology-to-fight-facebook-google/

Motorola’s New Facebook Phone Revealed

Motorola’s no stranger to shoehorning social media into their devices (I’m looking at you, MotoBlur), but a new device passing through the Bluetooth SIG website reveals just how serious Motorola is about Facebook integration.

Before we go any further, I’ll have to ask you to lower any expectations you may have about a Motorola Facebook phone. A little bit more. And… there we go.

The EX225 is Motorola’s first phone with a Facebook button, joining the illustrious ranks of the HTC ChaCha/Status, HTC Salsa, and the, erm, Vodafone Blue 555. Unfortunately, the EX225 seems to skew toward the Vodafone as far as execution goes, as it seems to lack any smartphone DNA and only has a 2.4-inch display. It’s tough to tell given size of Motorola’s image, but UnwiredView thinks it’s running a BREW-based OS, which makes sense given Motorola’s recent feature phone offerings.

Fired Facebook commenters ordered back to work

Five people who were fired from their jobs after posting complaints on Facebook about working conditions will now be able to return their positions, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal organization that safeguards employee rights, announced yesterday.

Last week, administrative law Judge Arthur Amchan ruled on the case between the five employees and their former employer, Hispanics United of Buffalo. According to the information included in the judge's decision, the five employees last year took to Facebook to discuss their issues with other employees, as well as how much work they take on. Soon after, the five employees were terminated for the comments made on the social network.

In his ruling, Amchan argued that the company was "looking for an excuse to reduce its workforce and seized upon the Facebook posts as an excuse for doing so." Because of that assertion, Amchan ordered all five employees back to work, and required that they receive all back pay (plus interest) since their termination.
The issue illustrates the difficulty in determining what can and cannot be said on social networks. Generally, companies can fire employees if they have exceedingly off-color things to say about their employers or if they engage in harassment towards other employees. However, if the things they say are protected under the National Labor Relations Act, they have a defense.

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20103310-17/fired-facebook-commenters-ordered-back-to-work/#ixzz1XOEMbGFU

Facebook Commerce Evolves with New Version of Payvment

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sep 08, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Payvment, the number one Facebook ecommerce platform, today unveiled the latest version of its social commerce solution that includes an array of new features designed to meet the needs of larger retailers, brands and agencies. Payvment is integrating these new features into two new enhanced paid versions that will be available in late September: Payvment Premium and Payvment Platinum. Payvment's award-winning free Facebook store will continue to be offered alongside these new versions, making it easy for anyone to get started with social commerce.

Since launching in 2009, Payvment has developed a robust infrastructure for social discovery and promotion that includes Facebook's most popular ecommerce application as well as Facebook's only Shopping Mall. With this latest release, Payvment takes Facebook ecommerce to the next level with the industry's most advanced social commerce functionality to date.

Key new features include:

1. Advanced analytics. Payvment's new analytics functionality moves beyond simple sales and traffic data to provide key insights into social interactions -- such as Likes, comments and Tweets -- on a product-by-product basis, enabling sellers to evaluate the impact of promotions and understand which products are trending or driving viral reach.

2. Automated and product-specific social promotions. Sellers can now schedule posts to their Wall and Twitter feeds to promote key products and deals. For the first time, sellers will also be able to run promotions on individual products using product-specific coupon codes, with the ability to pre-configure these promotions ahead of time for automated posting.

3. Centralized management of all customer conversations. Payvment is the only Facebook ecommerce platform to provide sellers with a unified view of all their customer interactions. Sellers can now review and respond to all shopper inquiries, ratings of their store and comments on their products directly from the Payvment Dashboard, streamlining the customer engagement process and ensuring sellers stay in the center of the conversation.

4. Multiple storefronts and administrators. Sellers can now manage up to 5 storefronts from a single dashboard, with global controls and analytics by store or across all stores and a unified view of product performance across multiple stores.

Payvment Premium, which includes all of the existing features of Payvment's free application as well as the new features listed above, will be available for $29.95/month or at a discounted rate of $299.95 yearly. For large sellers with more sophisticated needs, or an agency handling a large number of clients, Payvment will also offer Payvment Platinum, a custom version that includes all the features of Payvment Premium plus an unlimited number of storefronts, account administrators, 1:1 training and priority customer support.

"Since launching our beta product in late 2009, Payvment has continually introduced new functions that enable sellers to quickly promote their products and drive social discovery, and we now have over 60,000 active storefronts using the free version of our social commerce platform," said Christian Taylor, founder and CEO of Payvment. "Having established the strong demand for our approach to Facebook ecommerce, we're now expanding our capabilities to meet the needs of any sized company or agency."

Is Shopping What's Next On Facebook? Sneakpeeq Combines Shopping And Gaming

Two of the more successful verticals to build social-focused applications on Facebook have been gaming companies such as Zynga and dating apps such as Zoosk.

But shopping and ecommerce is another category that may be ripe for change. A start-up Sneakpeeq has been growing with its game-like social shopping app, which incorporates some of the social and gaming features that have made gaming and dating sites popular. It now has more than 300 brands signed up and more than 200,000 members since launching in May.

Using the Sneakpeeq Facebook app people can browse through products and see what their friends are browsing. The product prices aren’t listed. But if people like products they click to “peeq” at the price, which looks like flipping over a price tag. The peeq is similar to a Facebook “Like” in that it shows friends that you like a product. Each time someone peeqs at a product, the price goes down. The catch is people then have 15 seconds to decide if they want to purchase. If they don’t purchase, it could be gone when they come back. People get 10 peeqs every 24 hours, but by peeqing at items you get game-like points and higher status levels that give more peeqs and perks like free shipping.

The gaming mechanics of the app are an integral part of the shopping experience. Just as Turntable.fm is as much a social as a music listening experience, Sneakpeeq is also as much a game as it is shopping. The prices are visible only to the person who purchases it so brands do not have to worry about their brand being seen as heavily discounted and diluting its street price.

Sneakpeeq has provided some new data about how brands have done using the service. 479 Popcorn, a gourmet San Francisco food company used the service for three days. During the sales, 77% of customers shared their purchases with friends through the Facebook app and more than 1,000 customers shared a product with at least one friend. The company also received 25,000 peeqs, which are also seen by friends using the app. In total the company received more than 1 million impressions and more than 90% of purchases were first-time purchases.

Another customer, CC SKYE in Southern California is a high end jewelry company, which generated 805,000 impressions in five days with more than 18,000 peeqs. A full 100% of purchasers were first time buyers and 61% of people peeqing at a product shared with at least one friend on Facebook. Finally a larger brand, surfing apparel company O’Neill Girls got a2.4 million impressions and 52,000 peeqs in eight days in August. O’Neil boosted its Facebook Likes and has decided to expand on Sneakpeeq to include other lines such as swim and accessories.

The idea of Sneakpeeq is to create a shopping mall-like experience, says Henry Kim, co-founder of Sneakpeeq and a former private equity investor who worked for Ron Burkle investing in fashion companies like shoe retailer Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon, and Sean Combs’ Sean John. “We’re replicating the hustle and bustle of offline stores and bringing that online using game mechanics,” Kim says.

While in the past people used search engines like Google to search for products, now people are discovering new products on Facebook, Kim says. The social features are tightly integrated into Sneakpeeq to enable people to easily share and see their friends’ interests. Soon Sneakpeeq plans to introduce badges so that if you peeq at a brand often you could get discounts or invites to events from that brand.

Brands use Sneakpeeq as a way to advertise and acquire new customers. It also is a way to sell products. “From a brand perspective what they really like is that we’re one of the few or only concepts out there that are merging commerce with advertising,” Kim says. “Every time you peeq, your friends can see it posted to your social stream. (But) we’re not a marketing company. We’re an e-commerce company. All the advertising and impressions–all these things brands really like–they get that in addition to making sales on Facebook.”

Sneakpeeq offers limited quantity of each product, typically 200 or 300 items. But Sneakpeeq is not for unloading excess inventory at a big discount, in the way that some flash sales sites operate. It’s generally in-season or upcoming new products. The company typically runs sales for brands for three to five days every four to six weeks. The company has already sold out slots for brands for the holiday season, Kim says.