Twitter sues 'spamming' websites

Twitter has filed lawsuits against five websites it accuses of creating tools for spamming and barraging its users with anything from Viagra ads to virus-ridden links.

Often billed as a service to help a Twitter account gain followers, websites can take control of an account, known as a bot, that follows or sends automated tweets at real users in the hope that some will follow the bot back or click through links the bot has sent out.

"As our engineers continue to combat spammers with strong safeguards and technical efforts, today we're adding another weapon to our arsenal: the law," Twitter said in a blog post.

Twitter now claims 140 million active users. As its user base has grown, so have bots and spam, emerging as a problem that Twitter fears could dilute the online conversation and irk bona fide users.

Litigation isn't a novel approach: both Facebook and Google have taken spammers to court in recent years with success.

The defendants listed in the suit filed in the U.S. Federal Court in San Franciso are TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, James Lucero of justinlover.info and Garland E Harris of troption.com.

The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.

"We've focused on tool providers; They have willfully created tools that enable others to propagate spam on Twitter," Twitter said.

"With this suit, we're going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter."

In its blog post, Twitter noted its recent acquisition of Dasient, a web security company that Twitter says represents a part of its "larger investment in security and fraud protection."

Samsung: Our first quarter will rock | Mobile

The consumer electronics heavyweight says it expects to report an operating profit of about $5.1 billion. Give credit in the Galaxy Note and other smartphones.

As HTC continues to stumble in the face of increased competition in the mobile market, Samsung seems to be doing just fine.

Samsung disclosed early estimates for first-quarter sales today, approximating that it generated 45 trillion won (about $40 billion) during the period. In addition, the South Korea-based company said that its operating profit hit about 5.8 trillion won ($5.1 billion). Samsung didn't disclose its net profit.

The strong showing in the quarter just ended would dwarf the first quarter of 2011, when sales hit 37 trillion won and operating profit could only muster 2.95 trillion won. And although sales were slightly higher in the fourth quarter, reaching 47.3 trillion won, Samsung's operating profit hit 5.3 trillion won during that period.

The mobile firm's success during the period was due mainly to mobile devices, according to James Song, a Seoul-based analyst who commented on the earnings with Bloomberg. He told the publication that "sales of new models of smartphones, such as the Note, were better than expected."

Samsung has become a mobile juggernaut. In the fourth quarter, for example, Juniper Research revealed that 21.7 percent of all smartphones shipped during the period came from Samsung. It was only beaten by Apple, which scored 25 percent market share. Given the sheer number of devices Samsung sells, and considering how popular many of those products are, it's widely believed that the company will eventually pull ahead of Apple and possibly not look back.

"The scale of Samsung's product range is saturating the market," Juniper analyst Daniel Ashdown said last month in a statement. "Apple has had to counter Samsung's products like the Galaxy Ace in order to maintain the visibility of its brand."

Samsung plans to release its full, official first-quarter earnings later this month. When it does so, we'll get a fuller look into just how successful last quarter was for the consumer electronics giant.

Twitter admits 'unfollowing bug'

The microblogging company has now admitted that there is a problem. A Twitter spokesman said: “This is a bug, and our team is working to fix it.”

The bug is causing Twitter users to randomly unfollow people without account holders’ prior consent or knowledge. Twitter has advised affected people to visit its support page and go to fellow tweeters’ profile pages to check whether they are still following them or not.

Labour MP and fanatic tweeter, Tom Watson, has been affected by the bug and tweeted: “I thought I was doing something wrong,” and then linked to an advice column on the topic, published by Jeremiah Owyang, a technology industry analyst writing for TechCrunch.

Owyang wrote: “I wonder how many businesses, personal, and casual relationships are strained by the bug haphazardly unfollowing. It causes us to give pause and question the stability of the Twitter infrastructure, usage of my personal data and social network, and what important messages I may have missed from my trusted Twitter network.”

Thousands of users have been tweeting about their experiences of the unfollow bug and their reaction to it.

Adam Rifkin, the co-founder of a conversation website Pandwhale,tweeted, “Is it me or has Twitter's unfollow bug been going on for a while? Why is this such a hard bug to fix?”

While Janet Davis, an art and design historian, posted: “Twitter's always done it. [It's] worse in recent weeks.”

BlackBerry maker posts loss, some executives exit

Research In Motion said on Thursday several senior executives resigned as the BlackBerry maker posted a quarterly loss, stung by slipping smartphone shipments and limited deliveries of its poor-selling PlayBook tablet.

The company reported a fiscal fourth-quarter loss of $125 million, or 24 cents a share, as it booked writedowns on its BlackBerry 7 phones and goodwill.

On an adjusted basis, net income dropped to $418 million, or 80 cents a share, on revenue of $4.19 billion in new CEO Thorsten Heins' first quarter as chief executive. A year ago it earned $934 million, or $1.78, on revenue of $5.56 billion.

Analysts, on average, had expected RIM to earn 81 cents a share on revenue of $4.54 million.

The company shipped 11.1 million BlackBerrys and more than 500,000 PlayBooks in the three months to March 3.

New Apple iPad in wi-fi trouble?

Apple's new iPad has trouble picking up and holding on to wi-fi signals, say users. A thread on Apple's official forums has 144 posts from angry users, and has been read by 5,000 people, Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

"This is a problem Apple - you need to fix it," says one user.

"The laptop wifi reception is as strong as it gets, but the iPad only registers a weak signal. Anyone else having similar problems? Any suggestions?" Daily Mail quoted one user as saying.

Other Apple launches have been blighted by similar problems, including the original iPad and some models of iBook, the newspaper said.

The news comes as users complain that a hidden "upgrade" to the new machine has meant that many older smart covers - the magnetic covers used by Apple which turn on the machine automatically when opened - won't work.

The problem is particularly bad with third-party covers made by companies other than Apple, but older official Apple covers also fail to work, the paper added.

Apple's new iPad is making waves in the video game market

Apple Inc's faster and sharper-looking new iPad is drawing the notice of the traditional video game industry, as developers are envisioning games for it that have more in common with the visceral 3D shooter "Call of Duty" than "FarmVille." The company is also setting itself up to take onMicrosoft and Sony on their home turf of game consoles. From Electronic Arts to "Crysis" developers Crytek, industry executives are figuring out ways to migrate graphics-intensive so-called hardcore games to the iPad. Epic Games and Namco Bandai took the stage at Apple's iPad unveiling this week to show off what they can do with an iPad that has a faster quad core processor. 

With more than 55 million iPads sold to date, including 15.43 million last quarter, the tablet is quickly catching up to the number of consoles on the market: thePlayStation 3 has sold 62 million units and Xbox 360 has moved more than 65 million units. That growing user base is drawing developers who want to see their games played on as many devices as possible. 

"Apple is definitely building their devices as if they care a lot about 'triple-A' games," said Mike Capps, president of Epic Games, the studio behind "Gears of War" for consoles and "Infinity Blade" for the iPad. 

The "triple-A" moniker is bequeathed to only the highest-quality video games -- those with the best graphics and that cost in the tens of millions of dollars to produce. So far, not many "triple-A" titles appear on mobile devices. 

Capps, who has appeared on stage at all three of Apple's iPad launches, said he is trying to push the console manufacturers, Sony and Microsoft, to come out with more powerful devices so they do not get left behind. On Wednesday, he told the crowd in San Francisco the new iPad has better screen resolution and more memory than Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation. 

While gamers today might still prefer to play shooter games at home on big screen TVs with a handheld controller, that could soon change, Capps said, especially if a bluetooth controller is developed for the iPad. 

"It is quite easy to imagine a world where an iPad is more powerful than a home console, where it wirelessly talks to your TV and wirelessly talks to your controller and becomes your new console," Capps said in an interview. 

Meanwhile, the industry is bracing for change. Frank Gibeau, president of Electronic Arts' Labels, who oversees the company's biggest games such as "Battlefield 3" and "Star Wars: The Old Republic," said the company is eyeing Apple's moves closely. 

"When the iPad gets to the processing power that's equal to an Xbox 360 and it connects to a television, that's no big deal to us. We'll put the game through the iPad and have it display through the television." Gibeau said.  EA has already brought some games from its marquee franchises to the iPad: "Dead Space" and "Mass Effect". 

For publishers, "it used to be, oh hey, it's just the Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft show, but that's not the case anymore," Gibeau said. 

Germany's Crytek, which developed "Crysis 2" for consoles and PCs, is working on its first game for the iPad, due out in the spring. While that game will be puzzle-based -- minus the free-wheeling pyrotechnics -- the company said it could one day bring that genre of hardcore games to the device. 

"As more people come to these platforms, we have to follow our fans," said Kristoffer Waardahl, a Crytek studio manager. 

While speedier iPads will soon be getting into more gamers hands, Jeremy Parish, editor in chief of gaming blog 1UP.com, said it does not necessarily put pressure on console makers to come out with a new product any faster. The Xbox 360 launched in 2005 and the PlayStation 3 came out in 2006. 

"For the console makers, it has got be a little bit of an embarrassment to say that this tablet has more power and better screen resolution. But at the same time, this will not be the motivating factor to get them to jump into a new generation of consoles," Parish said. 

Yet the industry is counting on a new wave of gaming hardware in the near future. Nintendo will release the "Wii U," its first console with high-definition graphics, later this year. 

For now, experts are divided as to whether the new iPad will make a dent on consoles but at least one investor said he does expect sales of rival gaming products to be hurt. 

"While consoles won't cease to exist, it does create pressure on them by hurting their growth and taking away some of their customers," said Michael Yoshikami, CEO of Destination Wealth Management. 

Sony spokesman Dan Race said "the PlayStation 3 business is having its strongest year ever" and the "PlayStation $249 price point is resonating with gamers and families alike." 

Nintendo's US executive vice president of sales and marketing, Scott Moffitt said "Regardless of the device, consumers have repeatedly demonstrated that they care more about the experience than the tech specs." 

Microsoft declined to comment. Apart from the iPad, Apple's fledgling TV product is also being watched closely by video game companies. Hudson Square analyst Dan Ernst said he doubts the iPad will affect console sales, but said an Apple TV with an app store could one day pose a viable threat.

Google tops favourite search engine list

Google is almost everyone's favorite search engine, despite misgivings about data-collection and advertising practices that are widely seen as intrusive.

A survey of released Friday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 83 percent of U.S. search engine users rated Google as their preferred search engine. That was up from 47 percent in 2004, the last time that Pew gauged people's attitudes about Internet search engines.

Yahoo's search engine ranked a distant second at 6 percent, according to the latest numbers, down from 26 percent in 2004.

Google Inc. has turned its dominant position in Internet search into a gold mine. The company's Internet search engine is the hub of an advertising system that generated $36.5 billion in revenue last year - up from $3 billion in 2004.

But the Pew findings also indicate Google may be risking its popularity by trying to learn more about users in a quest to sell more advertising.

Nearly three-fourths of search engine users said they don't want search engines to sift through their personal information to deliver results tailored to their individual interests. 

Google has been doing this more frequently since January when its search engine began to include personal information pulled from Google's social networking service, Plus.

More than two-thirds said they don't want to be targeted by customized ads because they don't want their Web surfing activities to be tracked and analyzed.

Google might be vulnerable to a backlash if its major rivals, including Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc., didn't also collect personal information to help them aim their ads at the right audiences.

Like its rivals, Google believes a well-placed ad is appreciated by most Web surfers. To gain a better grasp on people's preferences, Google this month overhauled its privacy policy to enable the company to compile individual dossiers on its logged-in users' activities on more than 60 different services, including Internet search.

Pew took its survey of 2,253 adults, including 1,729 Internet users, before the March 1 revision to Google's privacy policy, but mostly after the company had announced its changes. The poll spanned Jan. 20 through Feb. 19. The changes were announced Jan. 24. The results based on Internet users have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points

Google and its rivals say they offer a variety of tools to protect their privacy, including ways to erase their search histories. But only 38 percent of Internet users are aware of these privacy-protection options, Pew found.

Whatever privacy fears might be nagging them, most people remain comfortable using search engines. Pew found 59 percent of online Americans use a search engine at least once day, up from 29 percent in 2004.