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| Microsoft counts on shooter game 'Titanfall' to fire up Xbox One sales Monday, Mar 10, 2014 08:13 PM PDT  By Malathi Nayak SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is betting on making sci-fi combat game "Titanfall" a hit big enough to boost sales of its Xbox One videogame device, helping it catch up in terms of sales with rival Sony Corp's PlayStation 4 console. Retailers are gearing up to get in on the buzz that has built up around the release of the game, one of the most anticipated new products for the latest version of the Xbox, by hosting over 6,000 midnight launch events worldwide. On sale from Tuesday exclusively for the Xbox One and personal computers, the $60 game allows players to go toe-to-toe as soldiers, or take control of giant robots in a war-torn urban setting. "We're making a big bet that 'Titanfall' is going to be a blockbuster launch for Xbox," Yusuf Mehdi, head of marketing and strategy for Microsoft's Xbox group, said in an email interview. Full Story | Top |
| A missing plane and emotional reunion, played live on Twitter Monday, Mar 10, 2014 07:40 PM PDT  (Reuters) - Hours before Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was scheduled to depart on Saturday, a U.S. woman tweeted to her co-worker who was on a business trip that she was feeling ill and overworked. The anguish and relief played out live on Twitter. Reuters could not independently confirm whether the man, who goes by the Twitter name @KaidenDL, was indeed booked on the flight. Cylithria Dubois, in an emailed response to Reuters, said Kaiden was her "love and business partner". Full Story | Top |
| Snowden: Proposed NSA reforms vindicate my data leaks Monday, Mar 10, 2014 04:32 PM PDT  By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Former security contractor Edward Snowden, addressing a sympathetic crowd at a tech-heavy event in Austin, Texas, on Monday from a secret location in Russia, said proposed reforms at the National Security Agency show that he was vindicated in leaking classified material. NSA officials declined to comment on the Snowden remarks. Full Story | Top |
| EBay rejects Icahn board nominees, asks investors to do same Monday, Mar 10, 2014 04:22 PM PDT  EBay Inc on Monday rejected activist investor Carl Icahn's two nominees to its board, saying both were unqualified, and urged shareholders to vote against them at its next annual meeting. Icahn, who owns just over 2 percent of the e-commerce company, has been pressuring eBay for weeks to spin off its PayPal payments business. He has also repeatedly accused eBay of poor corporate governance. The chairman of eBay's corporate governance and nominating committee, Richard Schlosberg III, said the board considered both but rejected them because "neither nominee has relevant experience or expertise." EBay said since each Icahn nominee currently sits on four public company boards, they are not in compliance with eBay's guidelines on "overboarding." EBay founder and Chairman Pierre Omidyar in a statement urged shareholders to support the company's slate, which includes Chief Executive John Donahoe. Full Story | Top |
| Omega's Cooperman: eBay should spin off portion of PayPal Monday, Mar 10, 2014 04:22 PM PDT Leon Cooperman, chief executive of hedge fund Omega Advisors, said Monday that he agreed with activist investor Carl Icahn's push for eBay Inc to spin off its PayPal online payments business. "I give Carl a lot of credit for taking the time and showing the energy, and in this case, we happen to agree with him," Cooperman, an eBay shareholder, said on CNBC television. "I think they should spin out a portion of PayPal," he said, noting that he owns about 2 percent of eBay shares. Icahn, who owns just over 2 percent of the e-commerce company, has been pressuring eBay for weeks to spin off PayPal. Full Story | Top |
| Mt. Gox files U.S. bankruptcy, opponents call it a ruse Monday, Mar 10, 2014 02:27 PM PDT  Mt. Gox, once the world's largest bitcoin exchange, received U.S. bankruptcy protection on Monday to temporarily halt U.S. legal action against the Japanese company by traders who allege the operation was a fraud. Judge Harlin Hale in Dallas granted temporary bankruptcy protection to Mt. Gox, which had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan in February. Attorneys for Mt. Gox said without bankruptcy protection the company would be irreparably harmed by a proposed class action in Chicago federal court and a breach of contract case in Seattle federal court. Full Story | Top |
| Google finance, business chiefs get millions in bonuses Monday, Mar 10, 2014 02:27 PM PDT  Google Inc will pay Finance Chief Patrick Pichette a $3 million annual bonus, and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora a $3.5 million bonus, a slight increase from the previous year, following a year in which the Internet company's stock surged nearly 60 percent. Google Chief Executive Larry Page and co-founder Sergey Brin will receive no bonus, the company said Monday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, continuing the founders' practice of not taking a bonus. Page and Brin, who are each paid a $1 a year in salary, have a large portion of their personal wealth tied directly to Google's stock. Google's shares shot up 58 percent in 2013, breaking the $1,000 mark for the first time and outpacing the Nasdaq's 38 percent gain for the year. Full Story | Top |
| Yahoo names U.S. surveillance critic as chief security officer Monday, Mar 10, 2014 01:58 PM PDT  Yahoo Inc has named well-known security researcher Alex Stamos as its chief information security officer, tapping a vocal critic of the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs for the position. Yahoo officials and Stamos could not be reached for comment on his appointment, which was announced Monday on the company's blog by Yahoo Senior Vice President Jay Rossiter. The blog said Stamos will lead a team of Yahoo "paranoids" charged with making products as secure as possible. Stamos most recently served as chief technology officer of the security firm Artemis. Full Story | Top |
| IBM CEO's take-home down 14 percent in 2013 Monday, Mar 10, 2014 12:39 PM PDT  (Reuters) - International Business Machine Corp Chief Executive Virginia Rometty was paid $13.97 million in 2013, down from $16.2 million she took home in 2012, according to documents filed with the SEC on Monday. Rometty's base pay was unchanged at $1.5 million, but cash bonus under IBM's annual performance-based incentive program was cut to zero from $3.9 million last year, due to a decline in revenue and related cash flow in 2013. In explaining the move the company said "in view of overall results, Mrs. Rometty and her senior team recommended forgoing their annual incentive payout for 2013. ... Full Story | Top |
| T-Mobile US CFO says industry consolidation is inevitable Monday, Mar 10, 2014 12:37 PM PDT  By Marina Lopes NEW YORK (Reuters) - T-Mobile US expects to engage in some form of cellular industry consolidation, the CFO of the United States' fourth-largest carrier said on Monday, boosting investor expectations that a merger with Sprint Corp could be on the horizon. "It is not a question of if, it is a question of when," Braxton Carter said about the company's prospects for consolidation at a media, internet and telecom conference. The comments come on the eve of an address by the president of SoftBank Corp, which owns 80 percent of Sprint, to investors and technology policymakers in Washington on Tuesday. Hopes for a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, the No.3 and No.4 U.S. mobile service providers, faded last month when reports surfaced that the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission would look skeptically on a merger. Full Story | Top |
| Warburg Pincus seeks buyer for software firm iParadigms: sources Monday, Mar 10, 2014 11:29 AM PDT By Soyoung Kim NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private equity firm Warburg Pincus is looking to sell education software maker iParadigms and has tapped Evercore Partners Inc to assist with the effort, people familiar with the matter said on Monday. IParadigms, based in Oakland, California, makes Web-based solutions for plagiarism prevention and claims more than 1 million educators use its products to check students' papers for originality and online grading. Representatives for Warburg Pincus declined to comment, while iParadigms and Evercore did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Warburg Pincus made a controlling investment in the firm in 2008 for an undisclosed amount. Full Story | Top |
| Iliad profits soar, sees lift from merger of rivals Monday, Mar 10, 2014 08:14 AM PDT  By Leila Abboud and Gwénaëlle Barzic PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in French low-cost telecoms company Iliad soared 15 percent on Monday after it announced industry-beating sales and profit growth and signed what could be a transformative mobile network deal with larger rival Bouygues. Iliad, backed by tycoon Xavier Niel, stands to benefit from sector consolidation in prospect after media company Vivendi received two bids for the second-biggest French mobile service, SFR. Bouygues, which is one of the bidders, said on Sunday it had agreed to sell its entire mobile network and some of its spectrum to Iliad for up to 1.8 billion euros ($2.50 billion) to assuage regulatory concerns if Vivendi accepts its offer for SFR. Full Story | Top |
| Hearing-aid apps pump up the volume, double as headphones Monday, Mar 10, 2014 07:08 AM PDT  By Natasha Baker TORONTO (Reuters) - New smartphone apps that link to hearing aids are helping people with impaired hearing to pump up the volume on their devices or to use them as headphones to stream phone calls, YouTube videos and music. About 36 million American adults have some hearing loss, according to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. But only a fifth of people who could benefit from a hearing aid wear one. "People will always need really good hearing aids, but moving forward, what will differentiate competitors will be connectivity (to smartphones), and it will need apps," Lars Viksmoen, chief executive of GN ReSound, a maker of hearing aids based in Denmark, said in a telephone interview. Full Story | Top |
| Chinese state-owned firm offers to buy chipmaker Montage Monday, Mar 10, 2014 06:58 AM PDT (Reuters) - A Chinese state-owned company offered to buy Montage Technology Group, a Shanghai-based chipmaker, in a deal valued at about $600 million, roughly four months after failing to buy rival RDA Microelectronics Inc. Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment Co Ltd offered $21.50 per Montage share in cash, a 25 percent premium to the company's closing price on Friday. Shares of Montage, which counts Intel Corp among its top shareholders, were up 19.5 percent at $20.51 in early trading on the Nasdaq. The fabless chipmaker, which went public at $10 per share in September, makes analog and mixed-signal chips for set-top boxes and servers for cloud computing, and counts the world's four largest DRAM chipmakers as its customers. Topeka Capital Markets analyst Suji De Silva said it was difficult to predict if there would be rival offers since Montage was not a cellphone-focused chipmaker, unlike RDA and Spreadtrum Communications Inc. "But the price seems low, so there could be chance of topping up," De Silva said. Full Story | Top |
| Proteus picks UK for 'smart pill' production and testing Monday, Mar 10, 2014 04:36 AM PDT Privately held Proteus Digital Health, which is working with drugmakers including Novartis and Otsuka, said on Monday the new site would employ some 200 skilled staff and serve as a hub for the emerging digital medicine industry. The move was welcomed by Prime Minister David Cameron, who said it showed Britain's ability to attract high-tech companies. Proteus already has European and U.S. approval for its "smart pill" technology system, in which a tiny sensor is embedded in a tablet and linked to a patch worn on the patient's abdomen. Several teams within Britain's state-run National Health Service plan to test the benefits of using the sensor technology in various fields, including in treating hypertension, or high blood pressure. Full Story | Top |
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