GoDaddy finds sugar daddies

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Timberlake to turn MySpace into online 'Idol'?

For those who live for seeing someone rise from obscurity to reach the heights of temporary fame, seeing "American Idol" once a year just isn't enough.

In any case, it's only on two nights a week. What are you supposed to do with the other five? Pray that Simon Cowell's new show "The X Factor" will somehow be entertaining?

It seems that Justin Timberlake, he who is one of the new purchasers of MySpace, is at one with human feelings.

For, according to the Associated Press, Timberlake's manager, Johnny Smith, said after the purchase that, though the specific format still needs to be worked out, using MySpace as a vehicle for new talent is very much in the plans of Timberlake and Specific Media, the new purchasers.

"Whether it becomes a talent competition or something like that, those are things that we will still flesh out. We definitely want to bring the industry back to MySpace to really look at the talented people that have put their faces there."

This seems like an excellent idea. It seems that half the world now spends its days sitting at desks wearing headphones. They could very easily be sitting in instantaneous judgment over new performers for at least three hours of each of those days.

Perhaps each day of the week could have its own genre. To snap the world into renewed focus, Monday could be rock 'n' roll day, while Wednesday, the so-called hump day, would be a prime candidate for a little R&B.

Saturday, the night that's alright for fighting, would surely be punk day.

Another fine element of this MySpace notion is that Timberlake, unlike some of, say, the "American Idol" judges, is possessed of considerable taste. We might actually see acts that are truly progressive, rather than the strange MAD magazine-cover country figure, Scotty McCreery, who won this year's "Idol."

The new owners say they will hold a press conference on August 17 to announce their plans. After this announcement, office life might experience a radical new musical dawn.

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Extension slurps Facebook contacts into Google+

There are caveats that doesn't make the Facebook-to-Gmail data export process as a single click, but that's how it begins for those who want to bring their Facebook contacts to Google+.

(Credit: Mohamed Mansour)

The biggest challenge to making Google+ a viable competitor to Facebook is that people must reproduce their social graph--their collection of connections--at the new service. But a Chrome extension makes that process a lot easier by automating the extraction of contact information that your Facebook contacts have shared.

The extension, from open-source programmer Mohamed Mansour, is called Facebook Friend Exporter. It's not a simple one-click process, but it's close.

The tool, though, likely won't sit well at the dominant social-networking site. Section 3.2 of Facebook's terms of service states, "You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission."

The arrival of Google+ has brought new concrete reality to the previously somewhat academic spat in 2010 between Facebook and Google about who owns information about your social-network connections.

Google, which often has championed openness, believes you should be able to extract information about your contacts from the online services you use, and with Google Takeout, you can. Facebook, which sees no particular reason why it should give a powerful rival the keys to its kingdom, disagrees.

Mansour, who by the way also wrote a Chrome extension that lets you cross-post Google+ messages to Twitter and Facebook, said he agrees with Google.

"I am scraping my own data that my Facebook friends allowed me to use and view," Mansour said in a Google+ conversation about the extension. "Facebook doesn't own my friends. I want my friends to be in a place that is easily accessible, extractable, and shareable. And if that results a ban/expulsion/termination, so be it."

The extension cautions users even as it tries to persuade them Facebook's data-export policies are misguided.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

He offers this note of caution, though: "Use at your own risks! From the 30K+ users who used it, no one got a ban notice from Facebook, but I don't guarantee that."

Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mansour's extension jumps straight into the fracas by copying the information your contacts have shared with you already on Facebook--name, e-mail address, phone number, birthday, Web site, address--then letting you save it as a spreadsheet file or import it directly into your Gmail address book.

And of course your Gmail address book is the foundation for your social ties on Google+. The service lets you sift through your Google contacts and add them to "circles" such as "friends" or "following," making it easy to send a message to a specific group.

Even though the Chrome extension lets you extract the Facebook contact information, it still can be a lot of work to sort it properly in Google+. If you have 20 friends on Facebook, it's not too big a deal. I have 437, and it's a pain.

The extension doesn't solve the biggest problem with Google+, though: getting people to actually use it. Even when an easy sign-up replaces Google+ beta's hobbled invitation process, you'll still have to convince your Facebook pals to tune into another conversation channel. And people might not necessarily list Gmail addresses at Facebook, making it harder to get in touch over Google+, which of course requires a Google account.

You'll be missing history, too: the photos you've seen and the scads of earlier conversations you've had won't be on Google+ unless people put them there.

But that's going to be a problem with any new Facebook challenger. With more than 15,000 downloads, Mansour's extension apparently already has helped many clear the basic address-book hurdle.

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Boeing, ANA begin flying 787 Dreamliner test routes in Japan

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Fox News reports Twitter hack to Secret Service

A Fox News Twitter feed was hacked and used to publish false items that President Obama had been killed.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Fox News has alerted the U.S. Secret Service that the cable news show's Twitter feed was used today to publish false reports that President Obama had been killed.

The attack apparently was complete about 11 p.m. PT Sunday night, when a tweet appeared that said, "Just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th."

Shorly afterward came the first of several Obama-related tweets: "@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead."

Nine hours later, the tweets are still live on the Twitter Web site. The attack was on a verified Twitter account, one that Twitter has verified to belong to a specific person or organization.

Fox News said it alerted the Secret Service, the organization responsible for the president's physical safety. Fox News also is holding Twitter's feet to the fire.

"We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts," said Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital, in the story.

It's possible, though, that Twitter wasn't responsible. For example, an attacker could have acquired a password by breaching Fox News itself, then simply logged on.

Twitter declined to comment beyond sharing its generic advice for keeping Twitter accounts secure.

A group called Script Kiddies claimed responsibility, the BBC reported, but its account has been disabled.

The move is one of a rash of online attacks in recent weeks.

Updated 8:55 a.m. PT with comment from Twitter.

A Fox News Twitter feed was hacked and used to publish false items that President Barack Obama had been killed.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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The delicious irony of MySpace, Zynga, and Owen Van Natta

How's this for irony:

It was less than a year and a half ago that Owen Van Natta was ousted from his job as CEO of MySpace.

But last week--just as the failed social-networking site sold for a paltry $35 million--Van Natta could have bought it himself for a fraction of his stake in Zynga, the social-gaming phenom that just filed for its IPO and where he's a top exec and shareholder.

Owen Van Natta, chief business officer of Zynga

(Credit: Facebook )

As the San Francisco-based Zynga's chief business officer, he was listed second after CEO and founder Mark Pincus on its S-1 on the list of top management and also serves on its board.

The filing also showed that Van Natta got about $43 million in total compensation in 2010.

That was due to part to his large Zynga holdings, including about 3 million shares he owns outright via restricted stock units that Zynga calls ZSUs, as well as 6.75 million more in options priced at a low $6.43 each.

All told, he has a 1.6 percent stake in the company. That could be worth upward of $325 million if Zynga garners an expected $20 billion valuation. And it could be even more if its public offering pops higher as other recent Internet outings have done.

And that's why when Van Natta arrives at the fancy and exclusive Allen & Company mogul fest in Sun Valley, Idaho, this week, he might want to thank News Corp. digital head Jon Miller--the man who fired him from MySpace.

After the MySpace debacle in February 2010, according to its filing, it appears that Van Natta bounced back quickly to enter into a consulting agreement with Zynga in mid-April via his Luminor Group.

By August, he was hired on full-time by Pincus and also became a director. One reason for getting that plum post, Zynga said, was Van Natta's experience as a longtime Internet exec at Amazon and, more importantly, Facebook.

He left the social-networking giant in mid-2007--where he had served as COO and, later, chief revenue officer--after relations with its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg became somewhat tense.

But that's water under the bridge now; and, in fact, the filing was full of information about the close relationship with Facebook, which is a critical one for Zynga.

And, of course, for Van Natta, who gets the my award for best Silicon Valley recovery of 2011.

Had he stepped up and bought MySpace from his large Zynga proceeds, though, he would have gotten my lifetime achievement award for pure moxie.

Story Copyright (c) 2011 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

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Microsoft signs search pact with China's Baidu

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