Microsoft is on the verge of purchasing Internet phone company Skype for over $7 billion, in what would be the company's largest ever acquisition.

Negotiations are in the final stages but the deal could still fall apart, say multiple sources speaking to WSJ.

Skype has 663 million users globally and says 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls were made over the service in 2010.

In 2007, Microsoft overpaid for online advertising firm aQuantive, paying $6 billion in what is their current largest deal, ever. In 2008, Microsoft offered $48 billion for Yahoo but was turned down and eventually the deal collapsed. Yahoo is valued at $25 billion today so it certainly appears that Microsoft dodged a bullet.

The Skype deal will be very expensive given the company's history of no profits.

In 2010, Skype had nice revenue of $860 million but lost $7 million. Google and Facebook were reported as being interested in the VoIP company, as well.

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Google has confirmed that it will be adding 3000 movies to its YouTube movie rental service.

It is unclear what films will be available but reports have stated that Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. have all signed up.

Says Salar Kamangar, Head of YouTube:

Today, we're going to start adding around 3,000 new movie titles for rent available to users in the U.S. (more on this in a post later today) that will be accompanied by reviews and behind-the-scenes movie extras. Whether it's short movie trailers, funny movie parodies or full-length blockbuster films, we encourage you to sit back and settle in to the YouTube movies experience.

In addition to expanding our movie offerings, we're also bolstering our investment in the content that's already being viewed by hundred of millions of people on YouTube. Our 20,000+ partners—folks like Machinima, Annoying Orange and Ryan Higa—are producing original content for the web and commanding TV-size audiences for their own brand of programming. Through YouTube Next, we're helping fuel the creation of this type of content with initiatives like the YouTube Creator Institute and YouTube NextUp, following past initiatives like Partner Grants (which brought us Key of Awesome, creators of one of 2010's most-watched videos) and $1,000 B&H Photo credits. In the coming year, we'll bring even more content to YouTube. Building on the success of Partner Grants and YouTube NextUp, we're providing even more resources to creators who you'll know from TV or Hollywood, and to existing YouTube partners who have already built loyal audiences on the site. Look out for more details on this in the coming months.

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In Google's latest note on Android release figures, it appears that 2.3 Gingerbread is still not seeing any distribution, with the operating system being seen on only 4 percent of all Android devices.

The 4 percent is a slow but gradual growth from the 1.7 percent share it held in March, although many current devices do not even have a timeframe for receiving 2.3.

Android 2.2 Froyo kept increasing its share, this time to 66 percent.

Google's tablet-centric Android 3.0 Honeycomb is only on 0.3 percent of all devices, showing widespread lack of adoption for the Xoom. At .3 percent share, it would imply that only 150,000-200,000 Xoom units have been sold since launch.

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Nvidia has confirmed its plans to purchase the mobile chipmaker Icera for $367 million in cash in an effort to better compete with Qualcomm and Intel.

The deal will let Nvidia join the market for baseband/radio chips.

With the deal, Nvidia should be able to package its Tegra processors with cellular baseband chips, making it more potent.

The company says Icera should help it double revenue generated from sales of each tablet/smartphone.

Both Qualcomm and Intel offer combos of processors and radio chips, although Intel has yet to see much demand for its mobile processors or architectures.

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According to the annual BrandZ Global Top 100, Apple is now the most valuable brand in the world, beating out perennial winner Google.

Apple blasted 84 percent year-over-year to a value of $153 billion, ahead of Google at $112 billion.

IBM jumped 17 percent, as well, enough to hold third place at $100 billion and leave McDonald's in fourth at $81 billion.

"It's clear that every single Apple employee, from Steve Jobs and Tim Cook to the summer interns, see protecting and nurturing that brand as a top priority," adds Millward Brown Chief Executive Officer Eileen Campbell in the report. "Tablet computing also drove value growth not just for Apple, but also for the providers who support yet another networked device."

Facebook saw the largest jump, running 246 percent to $19.1 billion, good for 35th on the list.

In other big news, Amazon overtook Wal-Mart as the most-valuable retail brand, jumping to 14th as Wal-Mart stayed in 15th.

Check the full chart here: BrandZ Global Top 100

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Microsoft has revealed some of the new features coming with the Windows Phone 7 "Mango" update, and WP7 users should be excited for them.

Users will get native podcast support, turn-by-turn voice direction in Bing Maps, voice-recognition SMS, Bing Vision and Bing Audio (like Shazam/SoundHound/MusicID).

Bing Audio will be integrated right into Bing search, and will work just like similar products. Press a button while you are listening to a song you want to remember or buy (or don't know) and the service will connect you to a match.

The US, Great Britian, France, Italy, Germany and Spain will be the first with Bing Audio support.

Bing Vision is a camera-based search app, that will read barcodes, MS Tags, QR codes and text through OCR.

Click here for screenshots of the upcoming features: New Mango Features Coming For Windows Phone 7

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The hacking group Anonymous has taken time to write a full PR release responding to accusations that it was behind the massive PSN hack that has compromised the personal data of 101.6 million gamers.

Two weeks ago, Sony hinted that they found files on the attacked server that imply Anonymous was behind the attack, and the media has gone even deeper in accusing the group.

I have posted the entire PR release below, or you can read it here (with clickable cites).

"SONY, I AM DISAPPOINT"
For Immediate Distribution
Press Release
May 7th, 2011
A 'HiveMind Effort' from
Anonymous Holdings LLC (Bermuda)


Yesterday, an article appeared in Financial Times, alleging Anonymous' involvement in the data and identity theft of some hundred million users of Sony's Playstation Network and Sony Online Entertainment. This crime is now being investigated by the Homeland Security Agency (HSA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other legal entities.

Once again Anonymous has been blamed for a security breach, this time by the journalist Joseph Menn, in his article "Hackers point finger over Sony incursion" [1]. Here, Anonymous wishes to lay out our case against these allegations and false assumptions:

First, let us consider a different article by Menn published on the Financial Times website and entitled "Hackers Warned of Arrest" [2]. This poor piece of journalism has already been extensively referenced in the Sony matter and is being used by many people who oppose Anonymous as proof of guilt. The only quoted source used by Menn was the now infamous Aaron Barr, former CEO of the humiliated HBGary. Barr made the claim that a chat room called #anonymous, founded by the identity "Q", was irrefutable proof that this "Q" began the movement known as Anonymous. Confident in his assertion, he attempted to sell this and other pieces of so-called "intelligence" about the nature of Anonymous to the U.S. FBI.

His information, however, was incorrect. It would be considered common knowledge that Anonymous began as a "meme", or shared belief, at the turn of the century and later developed to become a "global collective conscience" in 2006. But it was not until 2008 that Anonymous became a true display of "power in numbers". Organised protests against the "Church" of Scientology were staged in over 140 cities around the world, forever associating the Guy Fawkes mask and the right to protest with the movement.

Second, just like Anonymous, John Doe and Joe Bloggs are placeholders, rather than proper names, and are available for free use without repercussions. However because of this, there is no membership to Anonymous and anyone can claim to be a "member". It could be said that "Anonymous is anonymous to Anonymous".

Barr and Menn did not pause to protect the integrity of their professions, but instead made clearly misinformed assumptions, and accordingly published a factually incorrect article. The article was highly scrutinized as being blatantly biased against Anonymous and its participants, and many readers pointed out obvious inconsistencies in the technicalities, and the physical time line.

Third, in the primary article, Menn claims that a "member" of Anonymous, Kayla, made comments as an apparent admission of guilt from the "leaders". Kayla reportedly said, "If you say you are Anonymous, and do something as Anonymous, then Anonymous did it". This statement is inherently weak; an equivalent statement would be that "I confess to being human. Humans performed the attack". Andy Greenburg at Forbes [3] got it right.

Finally, Menn's reference to "technical details" [1] regarding a vulnerability in Sony's network without revealing actual content isn't useful. Until the forensics reports are released we don't know which exploit was used. The forensic investigators need to conclude their work, and speculation in articles, blogs and comments brings the factual results no closer.

Menn's anonymous source claims that "a few ops disappeared" but so has a solid chunk of software infrastructure including NickServ and channel bots over attacks during the PSN outages. Menn's other quotes are a vague mixture of assertions and denials. During the PSN downtime, Anonymous closed #opsony and put "sony" on the automatic kick list as 'profanity' last week.

Is all of this attention on Anonymous acting as a distraction from other problems, and overhyping the nature of the DDoS attacks? Sony's recurring issues are beyond providing free game credits:

In order to process credit cards, every company needs to be PCI compliant. "If you are a merchant that accepts payment cards, you are required to be compliant with the PCI Data Security Standard" [4]. Since Sony's network was "unpatched and had no firewall installed" [5], that is a clear violation of the PCI standards and ongoing reviews [4], thus likely to be criminal negligence [see Further Reading]. More importantly, "I can't think of a major data breach where the company was PCI compliant," said Ira Rothken, the lead attorney handling the class action lawsuit [6].

Sony has been accused of false billing, especially in the repairs department: customers who provided credit card details for an MMORPG are charged $150 for repairs to PS3s that they don't own; repairs are double billed and then referred to retailers; equipment is charged $150 multiple times (2-4) for repairs that aren't performed. [7 and Further Reading]

A decent credit card transaction gateway includes recurring billing as an option. Data mining by corporations has a profit motive, but as Sony has demonstrated it can be a massive liability. Why not start a discussion about corporate responsibility to protect user information, especially since they didn't need it to begin with?

Sony's response to the U.S. Senate [8] is to request more laws and further the myth of "best practices." Since Sony was warned of security holes months in advance [5], one of those "best practices" would be to accept the advice of the experts. In Sony's passing the blame there is no justification for the collection and retention of personal information they didn't need.

Outraged about the blatant coverup and shameful misdeeds, other internet hacker groups will apparently proceed with attacks [9] over Sony's mishandling of the matter. These reactions prove that requesting legislation to cover up corporate crimes and the abuse of law is frowned upon by all online communities, not just the Legion of Anonymous. Apparently Sony will have to learn the hard way that corporate malfeasance will not go unpunished. When the dust settles Sony may have more to fear from a massive class action lawsuit by their user base than the brief actions of the Global Hacker Nerd Brigade, Anonymous... Let THE GAMEs begin. :>

Knowledge is free.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

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Last week, Sony outlined its plans to give all PSN users in the U.S. free identity protection and $1 million insurance for a year.

The insurance will cover legal expenses, identity-restoration costs and lost wages if your ID is stolen.

Sony admitted last week that 101.6 million accounts were compromised by two "highly sophisticated attack" on Sony's servers on April 17th.

Today, the company has outlined its plans for similar protection for European users affected by the downtime.

Says Sony:

As I have explained previously, creating a similar offering for the many countries within the SCEE region is a very complicated process. Each country has a different way of handling identity theft; some offer relatively sophisticated services whilst others are much more modest.

We are currently in the process of identifying how we manage this situation and once the programme is ready to launch, we will provide details of exactly which services are available in each country and explain how to sign up. We hope to do this early next week.

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Samsung has noted today that its upcoming Galaxy S II already has 3 million pre-orders worldwide, not including the U.S. where the phone hasn't gone up for sale, yet.

In Samsung's home country of Korea, the phone is already on pace to outsell the iPhone 4, which has been on sale for over 9 months.

The smartphone has a 4.27-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, Android 2.3.4, a 1.2GHz Samsung dual-core processor, an 8.49mm thin chassis (at lowest), an 8MP camera with autofocus and 1080p recording, NFC support, a 2MP front-side camera and HSPA+, WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0+HS.

Furthermore, the device will run on Samsung's updated TouchWiz UI.

There is still no set date for launch in the U.S. following a delay from late March.

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Although the company has had to delay the resurrection of the PSN, Sony is looking to make amends to frustrated gamers and will offer up two free PS3 games to everyone affected.

Users will get to choose the games from a small 5-lot of select titles.

For now, it is unclear what those titles will be, however.

Additionally, Sony announced last week that it would be offering everyone a free 30-day trial to the premium PlayStation Plus service.

After first announcing that the service would be up by yesterday, over the weekend Sony confirmed that they would have to delay the return of the service to an unknown time.

Adds Nick Caplin – Head of Communications, SCEE:

Please be assured that we are continuing to work around the clock to have some PlayStation Network and Qriocity services restored and will provide you with specific details shortly.

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Daily deal behemoth Groupon has teamed up with Live Nation this week, in an effort to bring discounted ticket deals.

The new venture, GrouponLive, is already available if you want to use your email to subscribe to deals but deals won't start until the summer.

Live Nation Entertainment, a venture by Live Nation and Ticketmaster, currently promotes 20,000 shows every year.

Says Groupon CEO Andrew Mason:

With unprecedented access to Live Nation's expansive roster of performers and events, GrouponLive will be the destination for exclusive live event deals. We're excited to work with Live Nation to further deliver on our commitment to offer amazing local experiences to our subscribers.

Adds Michael Rapino, President and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Entertainment:

GrouponLive represents a new channel to drive value for fans, while helping artists and others to reach ever larger audiences. By adding this channel to our ticketing platform, we will also provide our venue partners with another option for driving ticket sales across a wide range of events. Our success is based on selling tickets and filling seats and GrouponLive gives us another platform to achieve this.

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