Target Groups?

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will return.

In business, a target group of
people can be seniors citizens,
teens and/or toddlers, for
example.

The target groups are people
an organization directs its
advertising message to, and
these people are likely to
purchase the organization's
product or service.

Target groups help with an
organization's mission, use of
resources and long-term
goals. It's a matter of survival
for an organization to figure-out
its target group/ market.

If an organization pin-points the
wrong target groups than it can't
make a profit or fulfill its
business mission.

Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_target_groups_used&updated=1&waNoAnsSet=2

Twitter Purchases Tweetdeck

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will return.

Twitter purchased TweetDeck,
an application for organizing
the display of tweets, for more
than $40 million using cash
and stock, per sources.

Twitter's PR account tweeted,
"For all those who might be
curious, we continue to not
comment on rumors."

Betaworks, a key investor in
TweetDeck, was not available
for comment.

A management stir-up, with
co-founder Ev Williams out
and Jack Dorsey back as head
of product, the company is
focusing on building/owning
Twitter's most compelling
features and interfaces.

In February, reports of
UberMedia, the leading
developer of apps and Web-
based services for Twitter
users and other social media
platforms, was in talks to
purchase Tweetdeck.

The deal didn't happen.

Around times of the deal chats
with UberMedia, Twitter
suspended UberMedia's
UberTwitter and twidroyd,
two popular apps used for
mobile Twitter access,
citing policy violations.

Twitter has been improving
its own main site as TweetDeck,
and many "Twitter clients"
began to surface over the
past two years.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20110524095924writ.nb/topstory.html

Wikileaks Secret Documents on Guantanamo Detainees

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will return.

The classified U.S. military
secret documents, about 800,
obtained by WikiLeaks give
details about the alleged
terrorist activities of al
Qaeda operatives captured
and housed at the U.S. Navy's
detention facility in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba.

The secret documents were
shared with several news
organizations, including the
New York Times and the Washington
Post. Some have been published by
WikiLeaks, an organization that
shares secret information.

The secret documents spot-light how
detainees behaved while at Guantanamo,
and what level of danger to the
United States. They are intelligence
assessments of almost 779 individuals
who have been held at Guantanamo
since 2002, per the Post.

The classified files described some
of the detainees as being compliant
while others threatened violence
against guards. One stated he would
fly planes into houses.

The secret documents explain al Qaeda
as it grew stronger in Afghanistan
during the 1990s, prepared for the
9/11 attacks and scattered after.

According to the New York Times, the
secret documents show most of the 172
prisoners still held at Guantanamo have
been rated as a "high risk" of posing
a threat to the United States and its
allies if released without adequate
rehabilitation. They show that many
others who have been released or
transferred to other countries were
also designated "high risk," the
newspaper explains.

Detainees are assessed "high," "medium"
or "low" in regard to their intelligence
value, threat they pose while in
detention and continued threat they
could pose to the United States if
released.

Cell Phones Watch Your Every Move

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will return.

Malte Spitz, German Green party
politician, found out that we
are always being tracked even
if we don't volunteer to be.

Cell phone companies don't
usually tell how much
information they collect,
so Spitz went to court to
find out exactly what his
cell phone company,
Deutsche Telekom, knew
about his location.

Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28,
2010, Deutsche Telekom
recorded and saved his
longitude and latitude
coordinates more than
35,000 times. It traced
him from a train to
Erlangen from the start
until his last night,
at home in Berlin.

Spitz gave a look at of
what is being collected
as we walk around with
our phones, per privacy
experts. Unlike many online
services and web sites that
must send "cookies" to a
user's computer to link its
traffic to a specific person,
cell phone companies just
sit back and hit "record."

"We are all walking around
with little tags, and our
tag has a phone number
associated with it, who we
called and what we do with
the phone," Sarah E. Williams,
expert on graphic information
at Columbia University's
architecture school. "We don't
even know we are giving up
that data."

"At any given instant, a cell
phone company has to know where
you are. It's constantly
registering with the tower,
strongest signal," Matthew Blaze,
a professor of computer and
information science at the
University of Pennsylvania who
has testified before Congress
on the issue.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20110330120057writ.nb/topstory.html

Supreme Court Case Could Effect Most Businesses With Employees

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will return.

It's an issue involving whether
the justices should permit
certification of the largest
class action employment lawsuit
in United States history. The
dispute is against Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. over alleged gender
bias in pay and promotions.
Arguments in the case are
scheduled Tuesday morning and
ruling can be expected by late
June.

If the class action passes,
hundreds of thousands of women
could join in the largest
discrimination claim of its
kind. Tens of billions of
dollars or more in damages.

The court case is among the
biggest of the current term,
and could establish binding
standards over liability
involving companies large
and small.
It started with six women
from California, unknown
to each other, initially.

"I'm a fighter if nothing
else, and so are all the
other women that are
involved," Christine
Kwapnoski, one of the
original plaintiffs.

Kwapnoski, 46, started at
Sam's Club retail warehouse,
part of the Wal-Mart brand,
in 1986, relocated to a store
in Concord, California.
When 2000 rolled-around, she
was the longest tenured hourly
employee at the store, but
claims she was being paid
"virtually the same" as male
associates with half her
experience. She was promoted
in 2001, two weeks after the
lawsuit was filed, and is
still at the company.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Joseph
Sellers, explains that there's
a "corporate culture" at Wal-Mart,
where female associates are
treated as second class
employees, and that the company's
"strong, centralized structure
fosters or facilitates gender
stereotyping and discrimination,"
which flows down to individual stores.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20110328091100writ.nb/topstory.html

Openleaks To Rival WikiLeaks

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will return.

Former WikiLeaks deputy, Daniel
Domscheit-Bergto, plans to start
a rival web site, Openleaks. The
web site has no content on it except
a logo and the message "Coming soon!"

In an interview with the OWNI technology
web site, Domscheit-Berg didn't go into
reasons for his disagreement with WikiLeaks
but suggested it strayed from its mission.

"In these last months, the organization has
not been open any more, it lost its open-source
promise," he explained, adding that Openleaks
plans to provide the means for leaked
information to be published, without itself
being a publisher.

Domscheit-Berg, had been involved with
German hacker group the Chaos Computer Club.

Openleaks would begin trials in early 2011 and
turn to bigger media later, Domscheit-Berg
confirmed. It currently has 10 members.

Hackers And Activists Gear-Up For War on "Wikileaks Phenomena"

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will return.

Fighting lines between supporters
of the whistle blowing web site
WikiLeaks and its critics began
to form on Sunday. Supporters
raised numerous copies of the
site on the Internet. The United
States put pressure on Switzerland
not to offer a haven to the site's
founder, Julian Assange.

Major Internet companies stopped
services to WikiLeaks. Activists
created hundreds of like sites that
host exact copies of another site's
content, making censorship difficult.

An informal group of hackers and
activists declared war on Sunday
against enemies of Mr. Assange. They
called on supporters to attack
sites/companies that don't support
WikiLeaks and to spread the leaked
material online.

The American ambassador to Switzerland,
Donald S. Beyer Jr., responded in the
weekly magazine NZZ am Sonntag that the
Swiss should carefully consider whether
to provide shelter to someone who is on
the run from the law.

On Friday, WikiLeaks looked for refuge in
a diffuse web of financial and Internet
infrastructure spread across Europe
especially in Switzerland.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20101206100112writ.nb/topstory.html

Google's $6 Billion Bid

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will return.

Google is willing to pay around $6
billion for e-commerce coupon web
site Groupon per media sources. The
first payment will be 5.3 billion,
and 700 million will be used as
incentive to keep current employees
according to AllThingsD.

This offer comes as it's rumored that
Yahoo would offer $3 billion to $4
billion to purchase the company. It
turned out that the two companies
paired up as partners for Yahoo Local,
details have not been specified.

The social shopping network is two years
old, revenue is about $600 million.
Industry experts feel that figure will
grow.

Groupon's revenue is from offering members
big discounts from retailers. Retailers get
lots of traffic for their inventory.

Groupon is located at Groupon.com that is
localized to many major markets in both the
United States and Canada. Originally, it
launched in November 2008. Groupon first
arrived in Chicago, Illinois. It was off
to Boston, New York City and Toronto. As
of October 2010, Groupon now serves more
than 150 markets in North America as well
as 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South
America.

Groupon is reportedly thinking about Google's
offer.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20101130110155writ.nb/topstory.html

Parcel Bombs Designed To Get Pass Detection Devices

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will return.

Parcel bombs on UPS and FedEx flights
cost $4,200, per a report in Inspire
magazine that analysts say is published
by al Qaeda's branch in Yemen.

The latest issue is committed to the plot,
which it calls "Operation Hemorrhage."

"The operation has succeeded in achieving
its objectives. We thank Allah for His
blessings," the magazine, released late
Saturday.

On October 29, authorities in the United
Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates
intercepted parcel bombs sent from Yemen,
addressed to U.S. synagogues.

Al Qaeda bomb-makers designed the parcel
bombs to get pass detection devices and
elude sniffer dogs, stated the article.
It lists making the explosive mimic
printer toner and integrating the bombs'
circuits into printer cartridge circuits
as methods to get pass security detection.

Inspire gave adoration for the 2001
September 11 attacks on the United States
for their destruction, and for the high
number of lives they took.

"It is more feasible to stage smaller
attacks that involve less players and
less time to launch and thus we may
circumvent the security barriers America
worked so hard to erect," Inspire.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20101122084406writ.nb/topstory.html

Google's Fashion Shopping Web Site

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will return.

Google created a new e-commerce web
site that improves how fashion is
presented and sold online.

Boutiques.com is a collection of
hundreds of virtual boutiques
merchandised by designers, retailers,
bloggers, celebrities and just people.

Shop for the style of the actress Carey
Mulligan or Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen
to name a few celebrities who signed up
for the launch.

You can build your own boutique and amass
followers who can comment on your style.

For every boutique on the web site, there
are dozens of additional choices inspired
by a designer's or celebrity's style;
generated by algorithms with product
photos that are much larger/sharper than
on other shopping web sites.

The inspiration panel automatically adjusts
for your style.

The technology was developed by Like.com, a
Silicon Valley company co-founded by Munjal
Shah, which Google acquired last summer for
a reported $100 million.

Mr. Shah leads the team for Boutiques.com.

AOL Advisers Present Merger Options With Yahoo

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will return.

AOL is exploring strategic ways for
the company that could include a possible
combination of assets from itself and
Yahoo, per The Wall Street Journal sources
on Sunday.

The report pointed-out a match of AOL and
at least a part of Yahoo's assets are just
one of the directions the company is
exploring through an advisory team.

"Among the scenarios being examined by
AOL are a combination of Yahoo and AOL's
online businesses after a spin-off of
Yahoo's Asian assets that would return
capital to share-holders, people familiar
with the matter said," according to the
paper. "Another scenario would have private
equity firms take a stake in the combined
operations, along with a plan to pay a
dividend to Yahoo share-holders, the people
added."

The firms mentioned by the Journal: Silver
Lake Partners and Blackstone Group, but as
many as three other groups could be included.
In Sunday's report, the paper said that AOL
held merger talks with Yahoo before, but not
this time.

AOL has talked to Yahoo before, but not with
a formal proposal.

Parcel Bomb Plot Uncovered

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will return.

Two parcels addressed to Jewish
institutions in Chicago contained
the lethal explosive PETN hidden
in ink toner cartridges, and
uncovered Thursday on cargo planes
headed to the United States in
Britain and Dubai.

The Dubai bomb was composed of a
highly explosive combination of
PETN and lead azide, concealed
inside a computer printer with a
circuit board and mobile phone SIM
card attached, security officials
explained.

The boxes were stopped in transit
and searched," per an official. "At
the time, people obviously took notice,
knowing of the terrorist group's interest
in aviation- considered the possibility
that AQAP might be exploring the
logistics of the cargo system."

ABC News, first broke the news, commented
it had been told by senior officials that
ever since the September discovery of
suspicious packages from Yemen, the U.S.
intelligence agencies had specific concerns
about AQAP's interest in Chicago.

Saudi bombmaker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri,
has emerged as a key suspect in the bomb
plot.

The militant, thought to be hiding in Yemen,
was already wanted for crafting the "underwear"
bomb worn by the young Nigerian accused of
trying to bring down a packed airliner as it
landed in Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

A team of U.S. experts is heading to Yemen to
give screening, training and equipment to examine
cargo shipments at the main international airport
in the capital Sanaa.

LimeWire Shut-Down By Court Injunction

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will return.

LimeWire has been shut-down, stopped
its file sharing after a federal
judge signed an injunction to stop
LimeWire from further business.

The suit was filed by the Recording
Industry Association of America in
the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York,
charged LimeWire with facilitating
"pervasive online infringement."
Also, it accused LimeWire of allowing
and actively encouraging users to
participate in music piracy.

"For the better part of the last decade,
LimeWire and Gorton have violated the
law," the RIAA explained. "The court has
now signed an injunction that will start
to unwind the massive piracy machine that
LimeWire and Gorton used to enrich
themselves immensely."

The lawsuit was filed against the company
in 2006 on behalf of the major record
labels by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA).

LimeWire posted the following on its
web site:

"THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT
LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED
INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND
SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE.
DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED
CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS
ILLEGAL."

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange: Living In Fear

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will return.

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange is
living in fear of being arrested,
and has been running since the release
of secret United States military documents
related to the Iraq war via his web site.

Assange checks into hotels with false names,
dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas/floors. He uses
cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed
from friends, a United States daily, which
interviewed him last week, pointed-out.

"They called me the James Bond of journalism...
it got me a lot of fans, and some of them ended
up causing me a bit of trouble," he shared, feared
that the UK may act against him if the United
States decides to prosecute. This course of
action is being looked at.

"When it comes to the point where you occasionally
look forward to being in prison on the basis that
you might be able to spend a day reading a book,
the realization dawns that perhaps the situation
has become a little more stressful than you would
like."

On Friday, his online whistle blower web site leaked
nearly 400,000 secret United States documents on the
Iraq war. They gave graphic accounts of torture,
killing of over 66,000 civilians and Iran's role in
the conflict.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20101025063306writ.nb/topstory.html

Facebook Leaks Identifying Information

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will return.

Many popular applications, apps, on the
social networking site Facebook Inc. have
been leaking identifying information like:
access to people's names, their friends'
names, to dozens of advertising and Internet
tracking companies, per a Wall Street Journal
investigation.

This wrinkle spreads to millions of Facebook
app users, even those whose profiles are on
Facebook's strictest privacy settings.

"A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared
by a user's Internet browser or by an application,"
Facebook's spokesman explained. ID knowledge "does
not permit access to anyone's private information
on Facebook." He added that Facebook would introduce
new technology to contain the problem identified
by the Journal.

"Apps" are software pieces that let Facebook's 500
million users play games/share common interests with
each other. The Journal discovered all of the 10 most
popular apps on Facebook were leaking users' IDs to
outside companies.

Most apps were no longer available to Facebook users
after the Journal told Facebook that apps were leaking
personal information. No reason was given for their
unavailability. Online defenders of tracking point to
the observation as beneficial.

No one knows, for sure, if developers of many of the
apps leaking Facebook ID numbers knew that their apps
were doing so. The apps were using a common Web standard,
known as a referrer, which passes on the address of the
last page viewed when a user clicks on a link. Facebook
as with other social networking sites, referrers can
expose a user's identity.

It's a ballooning concern of companies that store
detailed databases on people to track them online.

Wal-Mart's Cheaper Medicare Drug Plan

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will return.

Humana Inc. is combining forces with
Wal-Mart Stores to offer a low cost
Medicare prescription drug plan,
nationwide.

Humana, based in Louisville, Ky., is one
of the largest U.S. health insurers and
second largest provider of privately run
Medicare health plans. It has the highest
exposure to Medicare among the major
national managed care businesses.

A typical Medicare prescription drug
beneficiary could save about $450 a year on
the lower premium, co-payments/cost- shares,
compared with average total costs for
Medicare drug benefit plans, the companies
pointed out. They referred to the U.S.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
figures.

The plan will go into effect next year at a
monthly premium of $14.80, which is the
lowest premium for stand-alone Medicare
prescription drug plans being offered
nationally for 2011 per Humana.

Facebook Refused To Admit It's Making A Smart-Phone

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will return.

Yesterday, TechCrunch, technology
site, ran a story pointing-out that
Facebook was developing, through a
third party, mobile phone software.
TechCrunch was going on information
from a "source with knowledge of
the project."

"Specifically, Facebook wants to
integrate deeply into the contacts list
and other core functions of the phone.
It can only do that if it controls the
operating system," explained Michael
Arrington, TechCrunch's editor. Facebook
refused to admit it's making a smart-phone,
but Facebook did receive input from hardware
manufacturers and carriers this summer.

Facebook issued a long denial. According to
reports, the idea is in the early stages and
Facebook has not determined if they want to
proceed.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20100920074756writ.nb/topstory.html

Beware of "Here You Have" E-mail Virus

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will return.

The virus, called "Here You Have,"
is a simple Trojan Horse that
security companies are calling by
different names.

An e-mail arrives in your in-box with
the subject line "Here You Have." The
body reads: "This is The Document I told
you about, you can find it Here." Or,
"This is The Free Download Sex Movies,
you can find it Here."

It pounded corporate America Thursday,
took down servers at ABC, NASA, Comcast
and Google. It was in Google's top five
searches Friday.

The Internet Storm Center, a free
analysis and warning service that tracks
malicious Internet activity reported that
the application responsible for the spam
choking the servers had been taken down,
but the Web wasn't out of danger.

"New variants may well follow," the Storm
Center warned.

Click on the link and the download will
launch a program that spams the same Trojan
Horse to everyone in your address book.

"It looks like multiple variants may be
spreading and it may take some time to work
through them all to paint a clearer picture,"
Craig Schmugar on McAfee's Threat Response page.

The "Here You Have" worm doesn't attack Norton/
Symantec products, according to Norton. Norton
recommends their Norton Internet Security 2011.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20100913052452writ.nb/topstory.html

Microsoft's Halo Reach Game Exposed Too Early

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will return.

Halo Reach is scheduled for the
world's eyes on the 14th of
September, but showed-up on file
sharing sites.

The game is about players in the
role of an elite solider battling
for control of planet Reach.

This is the final chapter of the
series, which was developed by
Bungie for Xbox 360.

It's reported that the game was
exposed, leaked, after it was
opened to select journalists/
reviewers through Microsoft's
online Xbox store.

Videos of the game popped-up on
YouTube within hours of being
available.

"We are still investigating details
surrounding a claimed leak of Halo
Reach, and have nothing further to
share," Microsoft remarked.

People attempting to play unauthorized
copies of Halo Reach could face
sanctions, Stephen Toulouse cautioned
on Twitter- Director of Policy and
Enforcement for Xbox Live.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20100824084009writ.nb/topstory.html

The End of Google's Wave

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will return.

The Wave has not seen the adoption we
would have liked, and elements of Wave's
technology- including drag/drop and
character-by-character live typing are an
open source. Users can "liberate their
content from Wave", Google explained in a
post last night.

Google stated it will stop development on
the Wave cross platform tool that was launched
in May of 2009.

The Wave design appeared to replace e-mail,
and other tools.

The problem was it didn't appeal to many, or
people didn't know about the Wave.

"Remember, we celebrate our failures. This
is a company where it's absolutely okay to
try something that's very hard, have it not
be successful, and learn from that," Eric
Schmidt, Chief Executive.

Unfortunately, The Wave was one of those
failures.

Source: http://newsblaze.com/story/20100805090512writ.nb/topstory.html