Online retailer Online retailer eBay Inc. on Thursday said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had upheld an earlier decision that a patent recorded by MercExchange was “obvious” and should not have been issued.

EBay and MercExchange are embroiled in a patent battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court this week. EBay was found by a district court to have infringed on two e-commerce patents that MercExchange said were key to eBay’s “Buy it Now” feature, but instead the court awarded monetary damages in the case instead of issuing an injunction.

The case has thrown a spotlight on complaints by technology companies that the frequent imposition of injunctions in patent-infringement cases leave them at the mercy of the owners of questionable patents who have no plans to actually make a product.

EBay said it learned on March 27 that the Patent Office had dismissed arguments raised by MercExchange to a prior rejection of that company’s claims.

Online video and game company Atom Entertainment Inc. on Thursday unveiled a new service to let people upload their own videos and footage taken on mobile phones.

Privately held Atom, formed 5 years ago by the merger of Atom Films and Shockwave.com, hopes the new features on its AddictingClips Web site will draw more users and close the gap with YouTube, a popular site for sharing homemade video clips.

Atom Chief Executive Mika Salmi said YouTube probably receives more than 10 times the number of unique visitors than his site does, but added: “With all these new features we think it’s a bit of a horse race.”

Salmi said he expected the Atom site’s traffic to grow fairly quickly. “Our goal would be to get to the size of YouTube,” Salmi told Reuters, “but realistically, we think that in the next three to four months, we’re going to be nipping at their heels.”

Atom would highlight the best videos on AtomFilms, its Web site for showing independent short films, Salmi said. The new features add to the semiprofessional films and short films currently shown on the site.

That would help draw advertisers, many of whom have been reluctant to sponsor video Web sites because of the racy or mature content that often appears on them, Salmi said.

“We have AtomFilms, so we immediately have a place where we can elevate the best stuff,” Salmi said. “We have carved out a kind of advertising-safe area.”

Atom’s video service also competes with an offering from Web search leader Google Inc., which aims to let video producers sell their clips online.

Cable operator Comcast Corp. on Thursday said it will sell popular NBC television shows, such as “Law & Order” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” through its video-on-demand service starting in May.

The deal makes available top prime-time and late night programs from the NBC broadcast network, as well as popular shows from NBC Universal’s USA, Bravo and Sci-Fi cable channels.

NBC’s prime-time programs will be available to Comcast digital cable subscribers as early as the midnight following broadcast for 99 cents each, the companies said. Late night, daytime and cable shows will be available for no additional charge.

Comcast offers more than 7,000 on-demand programs per month, a response to the changing habits of consumer interested in scheduling their own television viewing rather than watching programs according to times set by the networks.

The No. 1 cable operator in the United States reached an agreement early this year with CBS Corp. to offer its programing on-demand.

The company hopes to soon sign on the remaining top U.S. broadcast networks, its chief operating officer said.

“I think in fairly short order we’ll have ABC and Fox,” Stephen Burke told investors at a Bank of America media conference in New York.

Officials at ABC, part of the Walt Disney Co., could not immediately be reached and a spokesman for News Corp.’s Fox declined to comment.

U.S. broadcast television networks have also been changing aspects of their business models to meet the challenge posed by digital video recorders and the Internet.

General Electric Co.-controlled NBC and its rivals sell episodes of their hit shows to be viewed on the popular iPod digital video and music device.

Comcast rival Time Warner Cable, part of Time Warner Inc., said earlier this week it was in talks with the four top U.S. networks to create a “Hits channel” with on-demand access to their most popular shows.

Comcast shares were up 8 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $26.58 in afternoon Nasdaq trade. General Electric shares were up 70 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $34.63 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Internet search leader Google Inc. on Thursday began offering marketers more features for local advertising, allowing them to add logos and business information to their listings on a Google map.

Local advertising on the Internet is expected to be a prime driver of growth in the sector.

The new features allow an advertiser to insert a business logo or picture in a balloon that pops up next to its location on the Google map, as well as provide additional information in several lines of text, such as a phone number of business description.

It can be used by any advertiser targeting a local market, from a neighborhood plumber to the closest restaurant of a national fast-food chain.

“Since we launched maps last year, advertisers have come to us asking for more control on (Google) local,” Dominic Preuss, product manager of local advertising at Google, told Reuters. “There has been really strong demand for this.”

The Google Local service already provides textual information on a business when a user conducts a search, and a reference map with the street address.

Advertisers can purchase the space through Google’s AdWords program, where marketers bid via an auction-style system for popular search terms related to their business. Preuss said Google will not charge an additional fee for the map icons, but the price will be determined by the auction system.

“If people find these ads are more valuable they will bid higher,” he said. “It will simply be market driven.”

Google has been testing the service over the last two weeks with a handful of advertisers, including bookseller Barnes & Noble. The features become available to the wider marketing community on Thursday night.

Earlier this week, Google said it reached an agreement to allow Verizon Communications Corp.’s online directory SuperPages.com to sell Google search terms to its millions of listed businesses, aiming to boost for its local advertising base.

More than half of all small businesses in the U.S. — as many as 13 million — experienced a security breach last year, according to a survey by the Small Business Technical Institute.

In response, the Council of Better Business Bureaus and Privacy & American Business, a nonprofit think tank, have launched a new national education initiative intended to help small business owners secure and protect customer and other critical digital data.

According the Small Business Technology Institute survey, conducted in July, approximately 70 percent of small businesses consider information security a high priority, and more than 80 percent are confident that they’re doing a great job of securing their computer networks against hack attacks and scams.

But it seems that perception is at odds with reality: 56 percent of those polled experienced one or more serious online or offline security incidents in the past 12 months.

Almost one-fifth of the polled small businesses do not use antivirus programs to scan e-mail — one of the most basic security protection measures. More than 60 percent do not protect their wireless networks with even the simplest form of encryption, a procedure that’s not as well-known as antivirus applications but is just as necessary.

To help small business owners strengthen their security defenses, the Council of Better Business Bureaus is offering a free, downloadable kit called Security & Privacy Made Simpler.

The kit is intended to demystify data-security procedures and give small businesses a roadmap that will enable them to secure their customer data.

“Small businesses aren’t quite in step with their larger industry counterparts in addressing data security,” said Steve Cole, president and CEO of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, in a statement.

“They often believe they’re better protected than they really are, because they don’t have in-house experts to advise them.

“This makes us all vulnerable, as small businesses are a strong part of our economy. Business owners of all sizes need to be vigilant in protecting their customers, their employees and themselves.”

Aimed at non-technical users, the kit emphasizes the importance of developing a comprehensive security and privacy plan and provides checklists for everyday security practices, such as restricting access to sensitive records, keeping e-mails free of personal information and training employees on new privacy and security policies.

Low-tech and high-tech data theft scams, from dumpster diving to phishing and hacking, are detailed along with ways to thwart these schemes.

The material also points out that simple procedures like shredding documents, spot-checking employees’ backgrounds and not responding to phishing e-mails are just as important as buying new security software.

There is plenty of common sense advice, such as “if you don’t absolutely need a piece of customer information, the best policy is, don’t collect it,” and “if you possess customer data you no longer need, discard it — securely.”

Another kit, covering security procedures for managing employee data, will be released in the fall.

The Web site will also include downloadable educational seminars and ongoing updates about new security and privacy developments that affect small businesses.

The program was developed with the help of two privacy and security experts; Dr. Alan F. Westin, founder of Privacy & American Business and Dr. Lance Hoffman, distinguished research professor, George Washington University Department of Engineering and Applied Science.

The toolkits will also be distributed through the 116 local Better Business Bureaus across the U.S. Corporate sponsors who are participating in the program, including IBM, Visa U.S.A., Equifax, Verizon Wireless, The Wall Street Journal, eBay and PayPal, will also distribute the toolkit to their own small business customers.

What do you get when Google and Nike get together and brainstorm? A sneaker-shaped server? A great TV ad for web search? No, you get Joga.com, an online football community that combines Google technology with Nike’s unique sports content and access to players. Joga brings people all over the world together to celebrate their shared passion for the game of football (for you Americans out there, by “football” I mean “soccer”).

What can Joga.com members expect? Three words: content, community, and players.

Content – Create your own personalized page to add your favorite pictures, videos and blogs, and view what your fellow fans have added. Members can keep current with Friend Requests, Alerts, and Messages too.

Community - Joga users can create their own teams, find local fields, and play other Joga teams in their community.

Players - Gain exclusive access to profiles and information about Nike players.

What does it all mean? Well, Joga.com comes from “Joga Bonito,” Portuguese for “play beautiful,” a phrase that symbolizes both any football player’s desire to embody the grace of the game and our goal to offer a community site that helps promotes the sheer fun, skill, sportsmanship and community spirit that make football truly the world’s favorite game.

Whether we’ve succeeded, of course, will be up to all of you to determine. We look forward to seeing football-crazy people from around the world playing as beautifully as possible at Joga.com.

Source-Google Blog

The success and even uninterrupted operation of many small businesses depends on making sure critical data is backed up regularly and securely stowed both onsite and offsite. That said, what’s the best storage technology for the job?

Three primary back-up storage technologies are available for small server back-up: optical, tape, and hard disk drives. The premise of this article is that an external hard drive equipped with server back-up software, when used as an element of a proactive back-up and information security solution, is superior to rival back-up approaches in cost, performance, reliability and ease of use.

Most small business wont amass the terabytes of information processed by large enterprises, but the ability to access business information is just as critical.There are many reasons why data may be lost or inaccessible, including natural disaster, human error, malicious intervention, software errors, data corruption and hardware failures. Whatever the cause, if you’re running a business you can’t afford the interruption. And if it happens, most small business owner probably don’t have an IT department to call to bail them out.

Today, mid-range small-business servers generally come equipped with hard drive capacities ranging from 40GB up to 300GB. There’s a dearth of cost-effective, efficient backup solutions to address these capacities.

For faster and more robust back-up performance, hard disk drive based back-ups offer the only practical solution. But not just any hard disk drive-based backup. Enterprise solutions such as network-attached storage (NAS) devices and terabyte-class disk autoloaders aren’t ideal for small businesses.

Deciding which solution is best for your organisation means evaluating several criteria. Here are a few worth considering:
Simplicity: The more you can remove human fallibility from your back up process, the safer you’re likely to be. People get busy and forget, and they make mistakes. This is why an automated back-up solution has the advantage over swapping media to complete a storage session. And ideally you should be able to start backing up right out of the box. A user-friendly backup solution will let you set it up easily and forget it as it does its job without requiring your attention or intervention.

Performance: You don’t want to twiddle your thumbs through hour after hour of downtime while a system restore is in progress. Restore times expose one of tape’s critical weaknesses. Unlike hard disk drive- and optical disk-based products, which store and retrieve data by direct access, tape is linear.

Data is accessed by first finding the appropriate tape, gathering information from the media’s header area to find out where the desired file is located, and then mechanically fast forwarding, for seconds to several minutes, to find and retrieve the desired file. By contrast, pulling up a given file from a hard disk drive takes milliseconds.

Cost: There are many variables and considerations in the cost of backup devices. The most obvious is related to the hardware: the price tag for the drive and blank media. But don’t underestimate the cost of man-hours to perform backups and manually swap out recordable media. Also consider the complexity of the backup solution. With greater complexity often comes greater cost for installation and maintenance.

Reliability: A number of studies have shown that optical and hard disk media can retain data integrity for decades. Tape storage, by contrast, does not offer anything close to the same longevity. In addition, tape media is known to stretch and can become brittle. Dust and dirt can also destroy a tape’s mechanics, and the oxide within the tape’s data layer is prone to self-demagnetisation over time.

Portability: Whether you elect to use optical media, tape or an external hard disk, never trust your critical files to one physical location. Online data backup companies might seem an ideal solution for offsite backup because the process is usually hands-off and automated, but annual costs can run from $100 to $350 or more per gigabyte.

By now you see that there are plenty of pitfalls and headaches inherent in small server back-up. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a superior solution ready to resolve the shortcomings of traditional small business backup technologies—namely, a large-capacity external hard drive with automated back-up software.

Such a drive, when used as an important element of an overall backup strategy, represents the best mix of performance, durability, style, and value for the small-business user.

An external hard drive back up solution is optimised for maximum productivity, minimal maintenance and low cost of ownership.Because the drive is external, safeguarding data is further assured for those who rotate two or three drives to offsite locations as part of an overall back-up strategy throughout the week.

No solution comes close to matching an external drive for small server backup. USB-based drive back-up used as an element of a total back-up strategy for small business servers is still a fairly new concept. For now, though, consider this: the less time employees spend managing backups and administering restores, the more efficient the operation.
And you can take that to the bank.

StreamCast Networks, maker of the Morpheus file-swapping software, filed charges against the founders of Skype and developers of Kazaa, alleging the defendants engaged in numerous violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

The company also claims it owns the software used by the peer-to-peer Internet phone service.

StreamCast is asking a jury in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California to award the company $4.1 billion in damages and to make Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis turn over their profits from the $2.6 billion sale of the peer-to-peer VoIP company to EBay.

EBay is not named among the defendants, which include Kazaa’s new owner, Sharman Networks.

Skype, Kazaa and several other defendants, “orchestrated an elaborate overseas shell game in an attempt to steal and wrongfully profit from technology that rightfully belongs to StreamCast,” according to the court papers obtained by internetnews.com.

Before forming Skype, Zennstrom and Friis developed Kazaa, file-exchange software that competed with StreamCast’s Morpheus. After a dispute over licensing the underlying FastTrack software, Morpheus shut down and Kazaa was sold to Sharman Networks.

The FastTrack software was sold to Sharman even though Kazaa had agreed earlier StreamCast would get the first chance to buy the technology, according to court papers.

StreamCast charges the Kazaa developers and others used a Trojan horse to turn off access to FastTrack and “funneled” 28 million Morpheus users to Kazaa/Sharman.

Sharman could not be reached for comment. And according to a Skype spokesperson, the company “does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.”

First filed Jan. 20, the case was reassigned earlier this month to U.S. District Court Judge Steven V. Wilson who presided over MGM Studios v. Grokster.

That case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Grokster and StreamCast. James Baker, the lead attorney for StreamCast in that case, is heading up the lawsuit against Skype and Kazaa.

Beyond confirming a lawsuit had been filed, Baker told internetnews.com that StreamCast intends a vigorous case.

Red Hat (Quote, Chart) capped a rough day on Wall Street Tuesday with better than expected results after the close.

Red Hat’s earnings of 13 cents a share were a penny ahead of estimates. Sales rose 37% to $78.7 million, beating $78.26 million forecasts. Subscription revenue rose 44% to $66.7 million. Margins also improved in the quarter, and the company boasted $1.1 billion in cash and investments at the end of the quarter.

“This past year’s results affirmed our ability to scale for growth,” Red Hat CFO Charlie Peters said in a statement. “Margins continued to expand even as we built out our infrastructure through investments in headcount and systems. Moreover, our cash flow from operations improved significantly in FY 2006.”

The company’s forward guidance was in line with estimates, but despite the solid numbers, Red Hat shares slipped 3% in late trading.

Accenture (Quote, Chart) also beat Wall Street estimates after the close, but the company reported a large charge for contract losses and fell in after-hours trading.

The broader market tumbled Tuesday after the Federal Reserve continued its nearly two-year rate hike campaign and suggested that more rate hikes are on the way. Bond prices fell and oil prices surged.

The Nasdaq lost 11 to 2304, the S&P 500 fell 8 to 1293, and the Dow lost tumbled 95 to 11,154. Volume rose to 2.15 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.04 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led 20-11 on the NYSE, and 18-12 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 73% on the NYSE, and 60% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 148-48 on the NYSE, and 198-32 on the Nasdaq.

Level 3 (Quote, Chart) jumped 16% after raising guidance, while Lexar (Quote, Chart) fell 7% on its guidance. Micron (Quote, Chart), which plans to acquire Lexar, lost 2%.

Open source firm JBoss is adding more flesh to its service oriented architecture (SOA) portfolio for the enterprise market with new open source JBoss Messaging and JBoss Web Server products.

JBoss Messaging is a standards-based messaging platform geared to help big corporations communicate via computers. JBoss Web offers high-performance Web server capabilities to Apache Tomcat and JBoss Application Server users.

JBoss Messaging and JBoss Web are free to download and use under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

The new software products were created to boost the company’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS), which the company markets as an open source alternative to proprietary runtime platforms from giants IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems.

While the market for infrastructure software that helps applications run remains pretty crowded, JBoss believes its open source approach of offering software free under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL) will appeal to corporations looking to escape traditional per-processor licensing models.

JBoss said in a statement that JBoss Messaging 1.0 uses a messaging core capable of supporting large SOAs, which provide a framework for Web services to zip across computer networks to exchange messages or execute business transactions.

Messaging 1.0 is compatible with Java Message Service (JMS) 1.1 and 1.0.2b standard applications running on JBossMQ without any changes.

The software also allows a JMS client to connect to a JBoss Messaging server, send and receive messages, and interact with queues, topics and other key elements of a messaging platform.

The tool also includes a messaging core, which is a transactional and distributed messaging foundation, and integrates with the company’s flagship JBoss Application Server.

In fact, while JBoss Messaging is currently available as a standalone product, it will be the default JMS technology in JBoss Application Server 5.0, as well as the foundation for JBoss ESB 1.0. Both of these products will appear later this year.

JBoss Web Server provides enterprises with a runtime platform for Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java Servlet technologies, Microsoft ASP.NET, PHP and CGI.

To provide a speed boost over competing Web servers, the product employs a hybrid design that incorporates open source technologies for crunching data with support for Java Enterprise Edition (EE) specifications.

JBoss Web Server is built on Apache Tomcat, incorporating the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and a Tomcat native layer, all of which adds up to allow the software to handle over 10,000 concurrent connections.

Other JBoss Web Server features include support for the HTTP, HTTPS and Apache JServ Protocol protocols; OpenSSL for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support; real-time URL rewriting that supports an unlimited number of rules and rule conditions; support for CGI and PHP scripts and ASP.NET applications; and an application load balancer.

JBoss Web 1.0 is currently in a community release, with a final production release targeted for June 2006.

JBoss expects the new products will help bring JEMS, already running in trading exchanges and e-commerce businesses, even greater penetration into what IDC said is a $7 billion market that was carved out by giants IBM, BEA, Oracle and others over the last decade or so.

Unlike those larger vendors who charge customers with per processor licenses, JBoss makes its money through a number of subscription services that offer professional support for every stage of the application lifecycle.

While smaller than those giants, JBoss is highly regarded for its technology, so much so that Oracle was reportedly considering whether or not to purchase the company.

Such a buy would give Oracle’s application middleware offerings a new dimension at a time when open source software continues to gain steam.