Redesigned Technology blog moves to new address

The L.A. Times Technology blog has been redesigned, and with our new duds we're rolling out a new URL. So if you've been a loyal follower of our work, please update your bookmarks.

Our hope is that you'll find the new look to be cleaner and easier for reading, viewing photos and watching videos. Please let us know what you think about the new look by leaving us a comment on the Technology blog's Facebook page or by shooting a tweet to @LATimesTech.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

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Image: A screenshot of the Technology blog's new look. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Microsoft Stores taking $25 deposit on Nokia Lumia 900

AT&T, Microsoft and Nokia haven't said when the Lumia 900 will hit stores or how much it will cost, but if the flagship Windows Phone is a device you just have to have, you can now pre-order it.

Microsoft's retail stores are currently taking a $25 deposit for those looking to reserve themselves a Lumia 900 on launch day, whenever that is. The deposit offer was first reported by The Verge and confirmed to The Times on Friday through Microsoft Store employees.

Rumor has it that the Lumia 900 could launch in March at a price of about $99 on a 2-year contract, which would undercut top-of-the-line rivals such as Apple's iPhone 4S and the Android Ice-Cream-Sandwich-equipped Galaxy Nexus, built by Samsung.

In the U.S., the Lumia 900 will be exclusive to AT&T and feature a 4.3-inch display, a polycarbonate body in cyan or black, a 1.4-gigahertz Qualcomm single-core processor, 512 megabytes of RAM, 16 gigabytes of built-in storage, an 8-megapixel/720p video rear camera and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

I spent a bit of time with the Lumia 900 at CES in Las Vegas last month, and the phone did look quite impressive and something I thought could sell at $150 or $200 on a 2-year contract. Check out my hands-on look at the Lumia 900 below.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

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Photo: A Nokia Lumia 800 smartphone sits on display inside a Nokia retail store in Helsinki, Finland. Credit: Ville Mannikko / Bloomberg

Most Facebook users get more from it than they put in, study says

The Pew Research Internet Project released a report about Facebook on Friday, providing insights into the company that you won't find in its IPO filing.

Rather than focusing on the company's financials, the report "Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give" sheds light on how Facebook's 845 million users engage with Facebook and what they get out of it.

The findings show that social interactions on Facebook closely mirror social interactions in the real world.

For example, over the course of a one-month period, researchers found that women made an average of 11 updates to their Facebook status, while men averaged only six. Also, women were more likely to comment on other people's status updates than men.

"There was a general trend in our data that women use Facebook more than men," said Keith Hampton, a professor at Rutgers and lead author of the report. "This is a phenomenon that is not unique to Facebook. Women are traditionally in charge of social relationships offline, and that seems to be true of the online world as well."

The report says men are more likely to send friend requests and women are more likely to receive them. That's something else we see in the real world -- especially in bars.

The report also says that most people who use Facebook get more out of it than they put into it, which may explain why they keep coming back.

Researchers found that 40% of Facebook users in a sample group made a friend request, while 63% received at least one friend request. They found that 12% of the sample tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo. And each user in the sample clicked the "like" button next to a friend's content an average of 14 times but had his or her own content 'liked' an average of 20 times.

Why the imbalance?

"There is this 20% to 30% who are extremely active who are giving more than they are getting, and they are so active they are making up for feeding everyone extra stuff," Hampton said. "You might go on Facebook and post something and have time to click 'like' on one thing you see in your news feed, but then you get a whole bunch of 'likes' on your news feed. That's because of this very active group."

He also said extremely active users tend to have a niche: Some are really into friending, others are really into tagging photos, and still others click the 'like' button a lot. Rarely is any one user extreme in all those ways.

I asked Hampton what he could tell me about these extremely active people, whom he calls Facebook "power users." Are they unstoppably social? Unemployed? Lonely?

"It could be people who are always active -- whatever they are doing in their life, they are very active. Or it could be that just in the one month we observed them they are active and another month a different group of people would rise up," he said. "It could be that there is something going on in their life that causes them to be very active, or it could be that some people think of it almost as a job to be active on Facebook."

ALSO:

Facebook's IPO filing, by the numbers

Vizio's 21:9 aspect CinemaWide TV due in March at $3,499

Steve Jobs turning over in his grave? Look-alike touts rival Android

-- Deborah Netburn

Photo: A worker at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park. Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP Photo

Facebook's IPO filing, by the numbers

Facebook's IPO filing on Wednesday offers investors, bankers, analysts, journalists and anyone willing to read the massive S-1 document a deeper look at the business and financial side of the world's largest social network than we've ever had before.

Our team of tech and business reporters has been digging into the filing, reporting on the Menlo Park, Calif., company's $3.7-billion revenue, rivalries with Twitter and Google+, perspective on China, social mission and hacker ethos, Zynga accounting for 12% of Facebook's revenue, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's pay cut from $600,000 in 2012 to $1 in 2013 and even what the IPO could mean for the Winklevoss twins.

But that wasn't all the S-1 had to say. Here are some other highlights from Facebook's IPO filing before the company actually goes public in May:

Users: Facebook has an average of 845 million monthly active users, 483 million of whom log into the social network daily.

Workforce: At the end of 2011, Facebook had 3,200 full-time employees, up 50% from 2,127 employees 2010. In 2009, the company had 1,218 employees.

Worldwide: Facebook's plan, unsurprisingly, is to continue to grow by gaining more users in countries around the world. But the company also said in its S-1 that it plans to grow its workforce worldwide as well. "We plan to continue the international expansion of our business operations and the translation of our products," Facebook said. Currently, Facebook is offered in more than 70 different languages, and the company has data centers in more than 20 different countries.

Popularity: Facebook said that about 60% of the online population in the U.S. and U.K. is registered on the social network. But Facebook is more popular in Chile, Turkey and Venezuela, where the company has "penetration rates of greater than 80% of Internet users."

There are more than 2 billion Internet users worldwide and Facebook said its goal is to connect all of them through its social network.

"In countries such as Brazil, Germany, and India we estimate that we have penetration rates of approximately 20-30%; in countries such as Japan, Russia, and South Korea we estimate that we have penetration rates of less than 15%; and in China, where Facebook access is restricted, we have near 0% penetration," the filing said.

Money in the bank: Facebook said that it had $1.5 billion at its disposal in a mix of "cash and cash equivalents" as of Dec. 31, as well as $2.3 billion in "marketable securities." In 2010, Facebook had $1.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents and no marketable securities. Total assets on hand amounted to $6.6 billion in 2011, while Facebook had a total of $1.4 billion in liabilities.

R&D: Facebook's research and development efforts have seen massive growth over the last few years. In 2011, the company spent $388 million, or about 10.5% of its revenue, on R&D. In 2010, Facebook spent less than half that amount, with $144 million going toward R&D. In 2009, the company spend $87 million on R&D, up from $47 million in 2008 and $81 million in 2007.

Patents: Faceook said a major factor in whether or not the company will be able to maintain the huge success it's had thus far will ride on its ability to "protect our core technology and intellectual property."

To do that, Facebook will "rely on a combination of patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, including know-how, license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements, and other contractual rights." The social media giant ended 2011 with 56 patents and 503 patent applications filed in the U.S., along with 33 corresponding patents and 149 patent applications filed in foreign countries.

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Facebook IPO: Mark Zuckerberg's salary falling to $1 in 2013

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

Facebook.com/nateog

Twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Visitors pose in front of a sign at the entrance of Facebook's new headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Wednesday. Credit: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP/Getty Images

Steve Jobs turning over in his grave? Look-alike touts rival Android

Steve Jobs likeness continues to pop up in the most unlikely places. He's been immortalized as a bronze statue in an office park in Hungary, his image was painstakingly recreated in what might be the world's most detailed action figure, and now a Taiwanese commercial making its way around the Internet depicts the recently deceased Apple visionary as a shill for an Android-based tablet called Action Pad.

Oh, the irony!

The man playing Jobs in the commercial is Taiwanese comedian and impersonator Ah-Ken, according to a report in Reuters. The commercial never explicitly uses Jobs name, but Ah-Ken is dressed in Jobs trademark black turtleneck and blue jeans, his hair is a silvery grey, and he's wearing glasses. He's standing on a stage meant to mimic those that Jobs paced across during major Apple announcements and speaking excitedly to an applauding audience. One thing he has that Jobs never had: a halo and wings.

At the end of his talk he says, "Thank God I can play another pad."

Jobs of course hated Android with his whole being. His biographer Walter Isaacson writes that he never saw Jobs as angry as when he was talking about a lawsuit Apple had filed against Android.

After telling Isaacson that he considered Google's Android to be a wholesale ripoff of the iPhone, he said:

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty."

Maybe things change in the afterlife?

Action Electronics, the company that makes the Action Pad along with other electronic gadgets, sees no problem with the advertisement. "Steve Jobs always promoted things that were good for people, Apple products, so his image can also promote other things that are good," a spokeswoman told Reuters. "It's just an impersonator, not Jobs," she said.

The reaction on YouTube has been mixed with commenters vacillating between disgust and amusement, but the video itself is rapidly racking up views.

 

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-- Deborah Netburn

Image: Screen grab from a Taiwanese commercial for Action Pad that depicts Steve Jobs as a shill for the Android-based tablet. Credit: YouTube

Vizio's 21:9 aspect CinemaWide TV due in March at $3,499

Just in case your widescreen, high-definition TV isn't wide enough for you and you've got a few extra thousand dollars to spend, Vizio's new 58-inch CinemaWide TV is set to hit retailers next month at a price of $3,499.

With a price that will help shed Vizio's bargain-brand image a bit, the new set will feature a 21:9 aspect ratio that the Irvine-based electronics maker says is closer to the screen orientation found in a movie theater.

For the last few years, nearly all TVs have a been sold with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Most TV shows and sporting events are broadcast with a 16:9 image, and most video games have been produced with that aspect ratio as well.

So if you are watching TV on a CinemaWide set, you'll be almost guaranteed to see black bars running to the left and right of the picture, but Vizio says that screen real estate won't go to waste.

The CinemaWide sets will be able to upscale and stretch video to fit the entirety of the 21:9 screen, or the leftover space can be used to browse the display's VIA apps, such as Facebook and Twitter, the company said.

And if you're watching a widescreen movie, you might be able to watch without the "letterbox" black bars above and below the image, found when watching on a 16:9 set.

Rather than the standard 16:9 high-definition resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, the CinemaWide TV will feature a 2,560 x 1,080 pixel resolution. The CinemaWide sets will also be a line of LED-backlighted, 3-D TVs with four pairs of passive glasses thrown in at no added cost.

For now, Vizio is only listing the price and release window for the 58-inch CinemaWide TV, but 50-inch and 71-inch screen sizes are planned as well.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

Facebook.com/nateog

Twitter.com/nateog

Image: Vizio's CinemaWide 21:9 aspect ratio TV. Credit: Vizio

Facebook IPO: Winklevoss twins could reap big payday

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss could have a lot to gain when Facebook begins selling its stock to the public: as much as $300 million.

The Menlo Park, Calif., social networking giant filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the first step to an initial public offering that could raise as much as $10 billion and value the company at $100 billion.

The Winklevosses rose to pop-culture fame claiming that they -- not Mark Zuckerberg -- invented Facebook. And they wanted to risk their windfall to prove it.

But their case got tossed, and now they may be all the richer for it.

The ambitious young Olympic rowers made famous in the Oscar-winning "The Social Network" contested an out-of-court settlement they reached with Facebook, saying they were duped into accepting less than they should have.

In the end, they took their settlement in stock, and now, even at the low end of a Facebook valuation, that stock would be worth $225 million.

Tyler Winklevoss declined to comment. But on Twitter, Cameron Winklevoss wrote: "We r excited 4the #FacebookIPO + wish the company + all involved the very best,an amazing accomplishment!"

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-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Tyler Winklevoss, left, and his brother Cameron Winklevoss. Photo credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

Frequency, Showyou bring order to online-video chaos

Deloitte's annual survey of the media landscape, released early last month, reported that 9% of the people interviewed had canceled their pay TV subscriptions in favor of watching shows online, and another 11% were considering it. Those are big, scary numbers for cable and satellite TV operators, as well as for TV producers who haven't found a way yet to make online viewing as lucrative as the combination of advertising dollars and monthly subscriber fees they collect from the likes of Comcast and DirecTV.

But there's another phenomenon that should be more alarming to industry incumbents: the emergence of services that capably transform the chaotic jumble of online video into compelling channels of entertainment. Two good examples are Los Angeles-based Frequency, which makes apps for mobile devices, computers and connected TVs, and Showyou, an iPad and iPhone app from San Francisco-based Remixation.

Unlike Clicker, neither company pays attention to the broadcast or cable TV episodes that are online, nor do they offer an index to movies on demand (at least not yet). Instead, they aggregate clips and links from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, among other sources, then organize them into feeds by genre and popularity. They also use social-media tools to create personalized feeds curated by one's Facebook friends, Twitter connections and other users of each app.

They have different strategies -- Frequency is trying to put its app on every device a person might use to watch video, while Showyou is focused primarily on iPads and iPhones -- and their apps have different looks -- Frequency presents multiple channels in separate scrollable columns, Showyou a single array that can be scrolled in two directions. But they have a similar effect, which is to present online video in the familiar, channel-based, lean-back context of television. It's interactive, sure, but without all the effort (or the keyboard).

Facebook says Paul Ceglia should be ordered to pay attorney fees

Facebook fired back at Paul Ceglia, the New York man who claims he's entitled to half of Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar stake in the social networking giant, saying he should pay the legal fees its lawyers are requesting.

In papers filed in federal court in Buffalo, N.Y., Facebook said its attorneys had "substantially discounted" and were asking for an amount "far less than what defendants actually paid." 

Ceglia, fined last month for failing to turn over evidence in his case against Facebook, is protesting the "stratospheric" legal fees from Facebook's lawyers.

Ceglia said he should not have to pay as much as $716 an hour to Facebook's highest-billing partner for a "garden variety" contract case.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio said last month that Ceglia must reimburse Facebook for legal fees it incurred in trying to get him to comply with a court order in the partnership dispute.

Ceglia's lawyer, Dean Boland, said in court papers that the fees are unjustified.

Ceglia merited a mention in Facebook's registration statement filed Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook filed papers to sell its stock to the public and will likely begin trading in May.

"We continue to believe that Mr. Ceglia is attempting to perpetrate a fraud,” the filing said.

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-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Photo: The Facebook sign outside the company's new campus in Menlo Park, Calif. Credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg

Facebook IPO: Mark Zuckerberg's salary falling to $1 in 2013

With Facebook's S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for what is set to be a blockbuster IPO worth at least $5 billion in May, Mark Zuckerberg is now firmly sitting among Silicon Valley's top chief executives, if he wasn't already.

And, probably with that in mind, Zuckerberg is falling in line with a tradition among some of the valley's top CEOs: a $1 annual salary.

Zuckerberg received a $500,000 salary in 2011 and he'll get a $100,000 raise to $600,000 this year, Facebook's S-1 filing said. Zuckerberg also received a $220,500 bonus in the first half of 2011, the filing said.

"In the first quarter of 2012, our compensation committee discussed and approved a request by our CEO to reduce his base salary to $1 per year, effective Jan. 1, 2013," the document said.

Zuckerberg asked for the dramatic salary cut in the first quarter of 2012, according to the S-1, which would mean he made the request sometime in January, given that the document was filed Feb. 1.

The pay cut falls in line with the $1 annual salary taken by Steve Jobs from 1997 until his death last year as Apple's chief executive, and the $1 annual salaries taken by Google's former and current CEOs, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page; Larry Ellison at Oracle; and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard.

But make no mistake, the 27-year-old Zuckerberg is being compensated for his leadership of the world's largest social network in many other ways -- not the least of which is Zuckerberg's 28% stake in Facebook, a company valued at as much as $100 billion.

Facebook, for example, has paid for a home security system and "security personnel" for Zuckerberg, the S-1 said.

"Because of the high visibility of our company we have implemented a 'comprehensive security program' for Mr. Zuckerberg to address safety concerns resulting from his position as our founder, chairman and CEO," the filing said. "We require these security measures for the company's benefit because of the importance of Mr. Zuckerberg to Facebook, and we believe that the costs of this comprehensive security program are appropriate and necessary. We paid for the initial procurement, installation and maintenance of security measures for Mr. Zuckerberg's personal residence, and we pay for the annual costs of security personnel, neither of which constitutes taxable income to Mr. Zuckerberg."

The company also "has also authorized our CEO and COO to use private aircraft for business purposes," the S-1 said. "This practice maximizes such executives' productive time and ensures their quick availability. In addition, Mr. Zuckerberg may use private aircraft for personal purposes in connection with his comprehensive security program. On certain occasions, Mr. Zuckerberg may be accompanied by family members or others when using private aircraft.

"For flights involving passengers flying for personal purposes, the aggregate incremental cost of such personal usage is reported as other compensation to Mr. Zuckerberg. The reported aggregate incremental cost is based on costs provided by the applicable charter company and includes passenger fees, fuel, crew and catering costs. The incremental cost attributable to Mr. Zuckerberg's use of private aircraft in 2011 is disclosed in the 'All Other Compensation' column in '—2011 Summary Compensation Table.'"

Zuckerberg's "Other Compensation" in 2011 totaled $783,529, the filing said, with about $692,679 going "to personal use of aircraft chartered in connection with his comprehensive security program and on which family and friends flew during 2011." The remaining $90,850 was for "costs related to estate and financial planning during 2011," the filing said.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

Facebook.com/nateog

Twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder and chief executive, speaks at the company's F8 developers conference in San Francisco in September 2011. Credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg