China is threatening to revoke Google's business license over the company's decision to redirect Chinese traffic to computers in Hong Kong that are not governed by the communist government's censorship practices. The latest skirmish between Beijing and the Internet search leader threatens to cripple the company in one of the Web's biggest markets. Google agreed Tuesday to dismantle the virtual bridge to its Hong site that was created in March, but it was unclear whether that will be enough to stay in business in China. The license is required for the company to continue providing its mapping and music services in China. Google hopes to keep its license by turning its Chinese website into a so-called "landing page" anchored by a link that users must click on to send visitors to the Hong Kong search service. The company has no plans to revert back to its previous practice of omitting search results that the Chinese government considers subversive or pornographic. "This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self-censor and, we believe, with local law," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a blog post. A foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said he had not seen Google's announcement and could not comment on it. However, he added, "I would like to stress that the Chinese government encourages foreign enterprises to operate in China according to law." The impasse could drag on for months, analysts predicted, as both Google and the Chinese government jostle in a heavyweight wrestling match unfolding on an international stage. Google Inc. announced in January that it would no longer comply with Chinese censorship after being hit by a hacking attack traced to China. The high-profile challenge irritated Chinese leaders, even though they want foreign companies to help develop the country's technology industry. Google met a Wednesday deadline to apply to renew its Internet license in China. It's not clear how long the Chinese government will take to review the application, but BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis expects the company "to twist in the wind for a while." Google's uncertain fate in China could become a distraction for management, but it's one that is probably worth the trouble, said Gartner Inc. analyst Whit Andrews. That's because China already has about 400 million people online, making it the world's largest Internet market, and that figure is expected to steadily grow for decades to come. "Google knows its shareholders think it's important to be in China, and a lot of its future value is riding on that," Andrews said. And China's government knows it has to flex its muscle because "if it looks like Google is running the show, it could affect their power." Google shares fell $17.82, or nearly 4 percent, to $454.26 on a rough day throughout the stock market. China has not produced a big windfall for Google yet, partly because it's one of the few markets where the company's search engine is not the most popular. (The homegrown Baidu.com holds a 60 percent share compared with about 30 percent for Google.) Analysts estimate Google gets $250 million to $600 million in annual revenue from China, or about 1 percent to 2 percent of its total revenue. Even if Chinese regulators approve Google's new navigation tool, the added click to reach Hong Kong could still drive away some users. If that were to happen, "then advertisers will panic and cut spending," said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, an Internet research firm in Beijing. Google could still remain in China even if the government pulls the plug on its website in that country. The company has indicated it would like to retain its engineering staff in China to take advantage of the country's technology talent and to maintain a sales force that also sells ads to Chinese businesses trying to reach customers outside the country. If Google.cn is shut down, mainland Chinese users could still reach Google's services by manually typing in the address of the Hong Kong site. But China's government could also use its own technology tools, sometimes called a "Great Firewall," to prevent its citizens from connecting to Google's sites outside the country. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company launched its China-based site in 2006 after Chinese government filters blocked many users from reaching the company's U.S. site.

China is threatening to revoke Google's business license over the company's decision to redirect Chinese traffic to computers in Hong Kong that are not governed by the communist government's censorship practices.

The latest skirmish between Beijing and the Internet search leader threatens to cripple the company in one of the Web's biggest markets.

Google agreed Tuesday to dismantle the virtual bridge to its Hong site that was created in March, but it was unclear whether that will be enough to stay in business in China. The license is required for the company to continue providing its mapping and music services in China.

Google hopes to keep its license by turning its Chinese website into a so-called "landing page" anchored by a link that users must click on to send visitors to the Hong Kong search service. The company has no plans to revert back to its previous practice of omitting search results that the Chinese government considers subversive or pornographic.

"This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self-censor and, we believe, with local law," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a blog post.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said he had not seen Google's announcement and could not comment on it. However, he added, "I would like to stress that the Chinese government encourages foreign enterprises to operate in China according to law."

The impasse could drag on for months, analysts predicted, as both Google and the Chinese government jostle in a heavyweight wrestling match unfolding on an international stage.

Google Inc. announced in January that it would no longer comply with Chinese censorship after being hit by a hacking attack traced to China. The high-profile challenge irritated Chinese leaders, even though they want foreign companies to help develop the country's technology industry.

Google met a Wednesday deadline to apply to renew its Internet license in China. It's not clear how long the Chinese government will take to review the application, but BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis expects the company "to twist in the wind for a while."

Google's uncertain fate in China could become a distraction for management, but it's one that is probably worth the trouble, said Gartner Inc. analyst Whit Andrews.

That's because China already has about 400 million people online, making it the world's largest Internet market, and that figure is expected to steadily grow for decades to come.

"Google knows its shareholders think it's important to be in China, and a lot of its future value is riding on that," Andrews said. And China's government knows it has to flex its muscle because "if it looks like Google is running the show, it could affect their power."

Google shares fell $17.82, or nearly 4 percent, to $454.26 on a rough day throughout the stock market.

China has not produced a big windfall for Google yet, partly because it's one of the few markets where the company's search engine is not the most popular. (The homegrown Baidu.com holds a 60 percent share compared with about 30 percent for Google.)

Analysts estimate Google gets $250 million to $600 million in annual revenue from China, or about 1 percent to 2 percent of its total revenue.

Even if Chinese regulators approve Google's new navigation tool, the added click to reach Hong Kong could still drive away some users.

If that were to happen, "then advertisers will panic and cut spending," said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, an Internet research firm in Beijing.

Google could still remain in China even if the government pulls the plug on its website in that country. The company has indicated it would like to retain its engineering staff in China to take advantage of the country's technology talent and to maintain a sales force that also sells ads to Chinese businesses trying to reach customers outside the country.

If Google.cn is shut down, mainland Chinese users could still reach Google's services by manually typing in the address of the Hong Kong site. But China's government could also use its own technology tools, sometimes called a "Great Firewall," to prevent its citizens from connecting to Google's sites outside the country.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company launched its China-based site in 2006 after Chinese government filters blocked many users from reaching the company's U.S. site.

Android-powered Samsung Vibrant to shine on T-Mobile

June has brought us an embarrassment of smartphone riches, starting with the jumbo-screened, WiMax-enabled HTC Evo 4G on Sprint, followed by the unveiling of the Samsung Captivate for AT&T, the eye-catching Motorola Droid X for Verizon, and the arrival of a little thing called the iPhone 4. Well, turns out we've got at least one more smartphone superstar ready for its close-up this month: the Samsung Vibrant.

The Vibrant was announced via Twitter by T-Mobile (and spotted by my former colleague Philip Berne at Phone Scoop), but we're still in the dark as far as exact release dates and pricing. We should learn more this coming Tuesday, though, during a Samsung press event in Manhattan.

T-Mobile's been teasing us with an online rebus puzzle about the Vibrant for days now, but the carrier went ahead Thursday and spilled the beans on Twitter.

Among the details revealed in T-Mobile's tweets: a 1GHz Samsung "Hummingbird" processor, a five-megapixel camera, HD video recording, and — perhaps best of all — a four-inch Super AMOLED display, which would put the Vibrant's screen somewhere between the iPhone's 3.5-inch display and the 4.3-inch screens on the Evo 4G and the Droid X.

The news comes on the heels of AT&T's announcement that it'll take on the Samsung Captivate, yet another "Galaxy"-class Android smartphone with ... you guessed it, a four-inch Super AMOLED display, a five-megapixel camera, a 1GHz processor, and HD video recording.

I haven't seen the Captivate or the Vibrant in person yet, but I have been playing around with the original Galaxy S for the past few days, and it's a beaut. The phone's Super AMOLED display (designed to boost touch sensitivity and improve viewability in direct sunlight, which is the Achilles' heel of standard AMOLED screens) is indeed as vibrant and high-contrast as they say, and the 4-inch size of the screen manages to feel jumbo without straying into waffle territory. I was also blown away by how light the 4.1-ounce handset felt — so light, in fact, that at first I thought it was missing its battery.

Hopefully we'll learn more about both the Vibrant and the Captivate — including pricing and release info — at next week's press conference. And who knows, maybe we'll get confirmation of yet another Android superphone: the rumored Galaxy S Pro, a QWERTY slider that's said to be Sprint's next WiMax phone after the Evo 4G.

Android vs. iPhone: 5 Battlefields

Apple's iPhone and Google's Android smartphones are getting set for another epic battle next week as these two titans of the smartphone industry show off their latest devices.

First, on June 23 the Axis of Don't Be Evil composed of Google, Verizon, and Adobe will announce the next wave of Android-based Motorola Droid devices. Then a day later on June 24, the Tenacious Tandem of Apple and AT&T launch the iPhone 4, the latest iteration of the popular smartphone, in the United States (the device will also launch internationally on June 24 in France, Germany, Japan and the U.K.).

Apple already sold 600,000 iPhone 4 devices in one day despite severe technical problems with ordering systems in the United States. Motorola Droid is the most popular smartphone in the Android army, and the June 23 announcement is expected to bring significant upgrades to Motorola's popular Android brand.

The stage is set, and the next battle is about to begin as Google and Apple compete over who will become the number one contender to compete for Research In Motion's smartphone crown.

So, as we get ready for next week's showdown, let's look at some of the key areas where the two smartphone platforms will compete, as well as some quick and dirty predictions over who has the advantage in each category.

Devices

The new iPhone 4 is boasting some impressive specs, including a front-facing camera, high-definition 720p video recording capability, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, longer battery life, three-axis gyroscope, and a 960-by-640 resolution 3.5-inch LED display.

On the other side, the big news expected to come out of the June 23 Android announcement is the recently-confirmed Droid X. The Droid X features a 4.3-inch display , HDMI output, and 720p video recording capability. The new Droid device is also said to sport an 854-by-480 resolution screen, and 8-megapixel camera with flash. The Droid X is likely to run Android 2.1 (Eclair), according to Engadget. It's unclear whether the new Droid device will be capable of running the oft-hyped Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices.

Both devices sound impressive, but Android appears to be missing one key feature present on the iPhone 4: the front-facing camera. But on the other hand, there's already an Android device that boasts this feature on Sprint's network: HTC's Android-based EVO 4G.

While Apple typically brings out some nice hardware every year, a new and better Android device appears on the market every few months. Apple simply can't keep pace with the multiplicity of different Android devices being produced, with each one typically being better than the last. Advantage: Android

Sales and Market Penetration

One Morgan Stanley analyst believes the iPhone is headed for 100 million total users worldwide by the end of 2011. That's a pretty big jump from the 30 million iPhone users said to be around today. Right now, Nielsen says that Apple owns about 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, while Android makes up just 9 percent of U.S. smartphone users. Both the iPhone and Android, however, grew equally by 2 percent year-over-year during the firs t quarter of 2010.

Earlier, NPD Group released a report saying that Android sales had outpaced iPhone sales during the first quarter of 2010, while Gartner said that Android grew by 707 percent during that same quarter.

So Android appears to be coming on strong, but the iPhone still has a much larger share of the smartphone market despite the plethora of Android devices. If Google wants to beat the iPhone it will have to sustain its phenomenal growth over the long term, but it's difficult to keep up enthusiasm when you're announcing a new Android device every few weeks. Also, despite Google's successes with Android, it still hasn't been able to replicate the iPhone mania that occurs around every launch of a new Apple smartphone. In fact, there's already one brave soul camping out for the iPhone 4 in Dallas six days before the new device is released. Advantage: iPhone

Carriers

There's an Verizon or T-Mobile, and even speculation about Sprint.

Apple can withstand the calls to move to multiple operators for the moment, but if Android keeps growing quickly Cupertino may have to consider making its device available in the United States on more than one network. Advantage: Android

Operating System

Apple has just one operating system available for sale at a time, and until recently it made iOS updates available to almost all of its older hardware. Android, on the other hand, suffers from a multiplicity of available devices with new and old versions of the hardware, including Android 1.6, 2.1 and the upcoming 2.2. That can get to be confusing for users, since you have to figure out which operating syste m you're phone has, whether it's going to get upgrades, and which features you may be missing.

Apple's approach is much simpler since it makes available (and supports) only two versions of the iPhone -- currently iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 -- at once. Even better, the feature difference between the two phones is not that great and immediately obvious. Advantage: iPhone

Apps

You would think that apps would be the biggest battleground for these two smartphone platforms, since most critics agree that available applications are what attract new users. Both companies love to boast about how many apps each store has--Apple has more than 200,000 and Google has some 30,000. But the truth is, both smartphones have reached a level that will serve the needs of most consumers. Sure, if you're looking for something like a specialty medical app you owe it to yourself to do the research and figure out which platform is best. But for most users, there are plenty of apps to go around.

The key here will be whether Apple's recent policies on banning cross-platform app-building tools will sour developers' attitudes over the long term. Conversely, will Google's embrace of things like Flash and Android's perceived openness woo more developers to work on the Android platform? For now, both sides appear to have an equally aggressive application library regardless of the total number of apps in each store. Advantage: neither

Twitter traffic spikes with World Cup goals

When a World Cup goal is scored, Twitter celebrates.

The social networking site is seeing huge traffic when a big goal is scored in the soccer tournament. Though Twitter normally sees about 750 tweets per second on an average day, there were 2,940 tweets per second, then a record, after Japan scored against Cameroon on Monday.

Nearly as much traffic was reported after Brazil's first goal against North Korea on Monday, as well as after Mexico's tying goal against South Africa on June 11.

Twitter has yet to announce its numbers for Friday's U.S.-Slovenia 2-2 draw, which was likely to have caused huge amounts of activity.

Basketball, though, is still trumping soccer. Thursday night's NBA Championship game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics generated as many as 3,085 tweets per second.

Enormous traffic from the World Cup has contributed to frequent outage problems for Twitter. The site is postponing a planned network overhaul until the World Cup tsunami is over.

Nintendo woos gamers with classics, 3-D

You won't need special glasses to play games in 3-D on Nintendo's newest handheld device, but don't expect the technology to hit big-screen TVs anytime soon.

The 3DS, as the Japanese video game maker's upcoming gadget is called, uses a technology that's specially suited to a handheld device. It's a "parallax barrier" LCD screen, whose pixels are aligned so your left and right eyes see different portions of the image.

It's as if two sets of thin blinds were laid over the screen so each eye sees its own version. Combined in the brain, the two versions become a 3-D image, explained Satoru Iwata, president and CEO of Nintendo Co.

Nintendo showed off the 3DS along with a broad swath of upcoming video games Tuesday at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles, an industry conference of 45,000. To please its longtime fans, Nintendo also introduced updates to classic game franchises like "Donkey Kong," "Zelda" and "Kirby."

The technology behind the 3Ds requires viewers to sit at a certain angle and distance from the screen. That's why it works for a handheld device but not — at least not yet — for a TV.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said Nintendo "blew people away" with the 3DS. But the big question is the price, as the technology behind it could be expensive.

Nintendo didn't say how much the 3DS would cost or when it will be available. But Iwata didn't sound worried about a price barrier and noted that Nintendo has long been in the business of marketing products that appeal to the mass market.

When the company launched the Wii in the fall of 2006 at $250, the console easily sold online for months at times that suggested price.

The new device and game updates are part of an effort by Nintendo to stay ahead of its rivals by sticking to what it knows best — video games. Meanwhile, Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are working to expand the reach of their consoles beyond gaming, marketing them as all-in-one entertainment hubs.

So far, Nintendo's strategy has paid off. The company has sold at least 70.9 million Wiis, compared with over 40 million Xbox 360 consoles from Microsoft and 35.7 million PlayStation 3s from Sony.

Game developers preparing for diverse E3 show

There might be something for everyone at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Once a boisterous bastion for geeky gamers, the gaming industry's annual convention has in recent years morphed into a more modest showcase of the latest in hardware and games from publishers and developers who now want to reach consumers of all kinds — not just guys. This year's E3 is likely to mimic last year's shift to a cautiously glitzy affair.

Nearly 250 exhibitors, including publishing giants Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, plan to hype their latest games and gizmos. The Entertainment Software Association expects 45,000 attendees this week, which would be 4,000 more folks than last year. That's still shy of the massive crowd of 70,000 who flocked to the Los Angeles Convention Center back in 2005.

"I think there will be a couple of surprises and a couple of expected things," said Greg Zeschuk, co-founder at Electronic Arts' BioWare. "Obviously, the thing that Sony and Microsoft are going for is to broaden their reach with consumers. It'll be interesting to get hands on and see what kind of products they'll have that use the motion controls."

Microsoft and Sony unveiled their respective motion-control doodads at last year's E3 and will focus their attention at this year's show on games that use the camera-based systems. Nintendo, who launched motion control into the mainstream in 2006 with the Wii, will meanwhile flaunt their pulse-detecting Wii Vitality Sensor and the 3DS, a 3-D handheld device.

In anticipation of the expo, which has events beginning Sunday but officially kicks off Tuesday, Sony lunged into 3-D gaming last week by releasing three downloadable 3-D games for the PlayStation 3. The publisher plans to demonstrate 3-D versions of bigger games at E3, such as "Killzone 3" and "Gran Turismo 5." Other game makers will also exhibit 3-D titles that require a 3-D TV or computer.

Besides motion control and 3-D gaming, many attendees will no doubt be buzzing about what effect mobile and cheap-to-produce-and-play online games, such as "FarmVille" and "Mafia Wars," will have on the industry, though such titles won't have a major presence at the convention. Developers of bigger games are now paying attention to the popular little guys.

"I see it as quite an interesting challenge," said Jamie Jackson, creative director at Activision's FreeStyleGames. "It feels to me it's the start of a new type of gaming. It feels like it's going to be here to stay. It doesn't feel like it's going to go away. It almost reminds me of when handheld blew up again, and we started seeing the DS and the PSP."

Jackson will be showing off "DJ Hero II" at E3. The music game boasts new modes and songs featuring Lady Gaga and Rihanna. In a sign that the genre isn't played out, game makers will add the adventurous "Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock," hip-hop rap-along "Def Jam Rapstar" and "Rock Band 3," which introduces a piano controller, to the E3 mix.

E3 will also include celebrity appearances and absurdly lavish soirees. "The O.C." actress Rachel Bilson is hosting THQ's "Homefront" pool party while "Saturday Night Live" cast member Kenan Thompson is throwing EA's "Bulletstorm" bash. "Deadliest Catch" captain Sig Hansen and "Man vs. Wild" explorer Bear Grylls will descend on the Crave Games booth.

More importantly, the convention will serve as an opportunity for people in the gaming industry to see what their peers have been working on. Josh Olin, community manager for "Call of Duty: Black Ops" developer Treyarch, is looking forward to experiencing "Gears of War III," the third installment of Epic Games' bloody third-person shooter series.

"I'm a big 'Gears of War' fan," said Olin. "They have always told a great story, and they have a great narrative. Personally, I'm a single-player guy. I really live for good action stories. With 'Black Ops,' of course, we're telling a pretty good story this time, so that makes me happy, but 'Gears of War III' is another big one I'm looking for at E3."

Other new installments slated to be on display include intergalactic first-person prequel "Halo: Reach," expansive role-playing sequel "Fable III" and cyborg blaster "Deus Ex: Human Revolution." Among the anticipated franchise follow-ups are survival space thriller "Dead Space 2," futuristic shooter "Crysis 2" and behemoth zombie slasher "Dead Rising 2."

There will probably be surprises of new sequels, too. Games rumored to be making their debut at E3 include a next-generation edition of the James Bond first-person shooter "GoldenEye 007," a new "Legend of Zelda" title for the Wii and possible third chapters of the alternate history first-person saga "Resistance" and action-adventure series "Uncharted."

New cyberattacks in SKorea; sites suffer no damage

Two South Korean government websites were struck by the second cyberattack in a week, but suffered no major damage, the government said Saturday.

Most of the computers trying to access the websites were traced to China, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security said in a statement.

The Korean Culture and Information Service and the Justice Ministry were the targets of the so-called denial of service attacks on Friday, in which large numbers of computers try to connect to a site at the same time to overwhelm the server, the statement said.

The security ministry said it quickly blocked access by 274 computers with Internet Protocol addresses — the Web equivalent of a street address or phone number — mostly in China.

On Wednesday, similar attacks originating from China occurred on a site run by the security ministry.

The statement said it was investigating who was behind the attacks.

Last year, government websites in South Korea and the U.S. were paralyzed by similar cyberattacks that South Korean officials believed were conducted by North Korea.

South Korean media have reported that North Korea runs an Internet warfare unit aimed at hacking into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather information and disrupt service.

The two Koreas are still technically at war because the three-year Korean War ended in 1953 with an cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

Google tells lawmakers it never used Wi-Fi data

Google Inc. is telling lawmakers that it never dissected or used any of the information that it accidentally sucked up while collecting data about public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries.

In a letter to three key members of the House Commerce Committee, the company apologized for collecting fragments of e-mails, search requests and other online activities over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

The company got the information while photographing neighborhoods for its "Street View" mapping feature. Google said it was trying to gather information about the location, strength and configuration of Wi-Fi networks so it could improve the accuracy of location-based services such as Google Maps and driving directions. Going further and collecting snippets of information traveling over those networks "was a mistake," Pablo Chavez, Google's director of public policy, wrote in the letter.

Google's letter, released Friday, was a response to an inquiry by Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, a key member of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. The letter was addressed to Barton, Markey and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., has also expressed concern about Google's actions.

Although the company used its Street View cars as a platform for the Wi-Fi equipment, the Street View photographs and the collection of Wi-Fi network information are separate efforts. Google says it has stopped grabbing Wi-Fi data from its Street View vehicles since it discovered the data collection problem last month following an inquiry by German regulators.

In the letter sent to the House, Google said that any personal information inadvertently swept up in the process of mapping Wi-Fi networks was "not used to identify any specific individual or household" and was stored only in "raw, aggregate, binary form." It added that "the payload data has never been used in any Google product or service, nor do we intend to use it."

The company also said it is aware of only two Google engineers who have even seen the data: the engineer who designed the software used to process information about the Wi-Fi networks being mapped, and the engineer who tested the data that had been collected after the company learned of the problem.

For now, Google is retaining the data collected in the United States to comply with a court order stemming from pending civil litigation. The company has deleted data that came from Ireland, Denmark and Austria at the request of authorities in those countries.

Google's explanations did not do enough to appease Barton and Markey, who have called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the company's actions.

"Google now confesses it has been collecting people's information for years, yet claims they still do not know exactly what they collected and who was vulnerable," Barton said in a statement. "This is deeply troubling for a company that bases its business model on gathering consumer data."

Twitter buys Web analytics firm

Twitter said Thursday it had bought Smallthought Systems, a small Web analytics firm. "As we grow, analytics becomes an increasingly crucial part of improving our service," Kevin Weil, the head of analytics at the micro-blogging service, said in a blog post.

Weil said the San Francisco-based Twitter was particularly interested in a tool from Smallthought called Trendly, which allows users to sort through analytics data from Google.

The four-member team at Smallthought "will focus on integrating ideas from Trendly into our current tools and building innovative realtime products for our future commercial partners," Weil said.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Twitter has made a number of purchases recently including Cloudhopper, a small SMS technology company, and Atebits, a company that developed an iPhone program for Twitter.

Twitter, which was launched in March 2006, allows users to exchange 140-character-or-less messages known as "tweets."

PTA joins with Facebook to promote Internet safety

The PTA and Facebook are joining forces to promote Internet safety through a set of tools and resources for kids, schools and parents.

The world's largest online social network and the National PTA will work together to build a program to provide information and support about such issues as cyberbullying, good online citizenship and Internet security.

Because the partnership is just starting, officials do not have much detail on what kinds of resources they plan to offer through their respective websites and through other means. But Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said the plan is not just to educate kids about being on Facebook, but about being online.

He said "the sooner we can get instilling responsible behavior, the better."

The PTA will reach out to local parent-teacher groups to promote the program, while Facebook plans to do the same on its site.

Anne Collier, co-director of Connectsafely.org, a forum about online safety issues, said the deal combining Facebook's broad reach and the PTA's relationship with schools and parents "makes a lot of sense."

"Citizenship online and offline needs to be a part of the child's life," she said. "It needs to be taught at school and at home — it's not just a digital thing."

Child safety advocate Parry Aftab also welcomed the program, and said it's important for parents not to be scared of technology but to use it to their advantage to communicate with their kids.

"It's not about turning it off any more, it's not about scare tactics," Aftab said. "It's all about teaching our kids the skills they need to survive in this digital world."

Google Adds Caffeine for More Up-to-date Results

Google has introduced a new Web indexing system to provide users with more up-to-date search results, the company said Tuesday.

The new system, called Caffeine, delivers results that are closer to "live" than Google's previous system, the company said.

Previously, Google would crawl a fraction of the Web each night, index it and push it out in its results. With Caffeine, as Google crawls the Web and finds new information, it indexes it immediately. "We process it immediately so we can serve it seconds later," said Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team. He unveiled the news at the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle.

When Google started, it would update its index only every four months, he said. Around 2000, it started indexing every month in a process that took a week to 10 days. "The funny thing is, we didn't have enough capacity to update all our data centers at once," he said. That meant that people might get different results when searching for the same term if they were hitting different Google data centers.

Caffeine went live "in the last few days" and is now being used in all Google data centers, he said.

In addition to serving "fresher" results, Caffeine "massively increases our ability to scale up," Cutts said. The company will be able to index many more documents -- "on the order of 100 petabytes," he said.

Caffeine adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day, Google said in a blog post.

The progression in how Google does its indexing mirrors how people increasingly expect to find the very latest information online. Google noticed that after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., when people were looking for the most up-to-the-minute information possible, Cutts said.

Twitter touted as major force behind opposition victory

Social networking site Twitter played a major role in the surprise opposition victory in South Korean local elections this week, newspapers said Friday.

The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) secured only six out of the 16 posts for provincial governors or city mayors nationwide in Wednesday's vote.

Analysts and politicians agreed that the unexpectedly strong turnout by young and liberal voters worked unfavorably for the ruling party.

Turnout was 54.5 percent, the highest since the country's first local elections in 1995.

Newspapers attributed the surge to Twitter messages exchanged through smart phones among young voters who flocked to the polls, inspired by "go and vote" online postings from friends and celebrities.

"Twitter and other mobile devices appear to have brought more young voters to the booths," Hwang Young-Min, a civic group activist, told the Korea Times.

About 400,000 Koreans, mostly in their 20s and 30s, use Twitter, he said, adding they encouraged one another on the election day.

Kim Chul-Gyun, a presidential aide for new media policies, has played down the role of Twitter.

"People may have urged each other to vote via Twitter, but there is no way of telling how much of an actual influence it had," he said Thursday.

Twitter, which combines the strengths of blogs and instant messaging services, enables users to send and receive short messages of up to 140 characters on personal computers and mobile devices.

Twitter was touted as a major factor behind Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election in 2008.

Facebook malware continuing its march

Facebook users are being pounded by “clickjacking” attacks that have been affecting the site at unusually heavy levels for weeks.

The BBC notes that popular topics like the World Cup and Hayley Williams are driving the attacks, with users now regularly seeing posts claiming to offer “Justin Bieber’s phone number,” which have allegedly been “liked” by their friends. When a user clicks on one of these posts, the “like” spreads further on the user’s own Facebook wall — even if the user never actually clicked the “like” button at all.

Right now these attacks are seen as relatively benign, since they only propagate these likes (and get more people to visit the Web page) but don’t damage your computer. That could change, though, experts note: All an attacker needs to do is code malicious content on the landing page of one of these likes, and the world could be in for a major security headache.

In fact, other attacks with malicious intent are spreading on the site. As BioScholar notes, three new phishing attacks hit over the weekend, with malicious code attempting to steal log-in and password information from users after they were duped into downloading a video on the site.

The most recent of these attacks attempts to get users to click on a “hilarious video” on the site, then requests Facebook log-in information so the video can be watched, installing malware along the way under the guise of adding a media player application to the PC. The login information is stolen, of course, and the user’s account is compromised from that point on unless the password is changed. And the malware “media player” installed on the PC stays behind even if the account information is altered.

The bottom line on Facebook security appears to be becoming more and more plain: Don’t click on anything.

Hewlett-Packard to cut 9K jobs in services unit

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest information-technology company, plans to lay off about 9,000 employees as it tries to cut costs in its back-office computing centers and deepens its use of software, rather than people, to do some of the work that those hubs require.

The changes to these data centers, which are clusters of computers that run websites and process information for HP's corporate customers, will be made over about three years, the company said Tuesday. The layoffs amount to about 3 percent of HP's global work force, which had 304,000 employees as of October, the most recent figure available.

HP said it will take $1 billion in accounting charges, part of which will be used for severance to the laid-off workers. But it also said it plans to replace two-thirds of the jobs elsewhere in the company, by hiring 6,000 people to boost its global sales and delivery staff.

Like most companies that offer such services, HP has data centers around the world. The company has more than 100 centers that it operates for its customers and plans to cut that number roughly in half, but it did not specify the locations.

HP's drive for better productivity and automation in data centers — and the fact that most of the jobs could be replaced — reflect healthy demand for computing services overall and the rewards waiting for providers that can automate as much as possible.

Over the past decade computer services companies such as IBM Corp. and HP have used geographic location as a way to cut costs. For instance they have been hiring workers in lower-cost areas such as India and Eastern Europe to replace higher-paid labor in the U.S. and Western Europe. Now HP says it is betting that the next phase of cost cutting will come from a sharper focus on how technology is used rather than on geography. Although HP would not specify the automation it expects to deploy, much of the work inside data centers, such as monitoring for trouble and determining which servers should be provisioned for certain tasks, can be handled by sophisticated software rather than humans.

"We think the next five to 10 years is going to be about who can best use technology to automate the delivery of services," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president for HP Enterprise Business, during a conference call with analysts.

But one analyst called the company's emphasis on technology in Tuesday's announcement a "red herring" that diverts attention from the larger issue, which is that HP is cutting expenses as a way to stimulate profit.

"It's not about automation. It's about costs and profit," said analyst Bob Djurdjevic, president of Annex Research.

HP said it will see savings of about $500 million to $700 million a year from the changes, once they are completed. Investors largely shrugged at the news, sending HP shares down 4 cents to $45.97 in afternoon trading Tuesday.

Census figures show that overall, 375,000 people in the U.S. worked in a category called "data processing, hosting and related services" in 2007. Their work is not entirely going away, but likely being repositioned, said Tom Smith, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor's. In fact, some of the technicians HP is laying off may be the same ones it hires to ramp up its sales force.

"It's not a Rust Belt kind of industry that keeps shrinking, but an industry with a lot of (research and development) that can regenerate itself," Smith said. "As companies invest in new things, there is potential for growth that's not immediately obvious."

Beyond automation, HP and other companies are reducing the number of data centers they operate by taking advantage of the fact that today's more powerful servers can handle more work. Also, virtualization software, which allows one server to replicate the function of multiple machines, is letting companies get more out of each server they own.

And the moves give HP another potential benefit: showing its customers how to cut their own information-technology costs, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Inc.

Cost savings have been a hallmark of CEO Mark Hurd's five-year tenure at HP, the world's biggest maker of PCs and printers and the top information-technology company by revenue. To boost its services business, the company, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., bought Electronic Data Systems in 2008 and then cut 24,600 jobs as part of that acquisition.

S&P's Smith called HP's latest actions the "next step toward efficiency gains" after the initial integration of EDS. EDS ran data centers of its own before it was brought into HP.

In addition to pursuing more profit from business services, HP is also pushing into the mobile market with its planned acquisition of struggling smart phone maker Palm Inc., announced in April.