EBay Announces Skype Spin-off Plan

Online auction house eBay said Tuesday that it plans to spin off its online telephony business Skype via an initial public offering by the middle of next year.
The announcement was seen as an admission by the auction powerhouse that its $2.6-billion purchase of Skype in 2005 had not worked out as expected. Though Skype has grown to annual revenues of more than $500 million, it has failed to help eBay shore up its maturing auction business.
"It’s clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal," eBay chief executive John Donahue said in a statement. "Operating Skype as a stand-alone, publicly traded company is the best path for maximizing its potential."
Donahue said that the exact timing of the offering would depend on market conditions.

Twitter Tormented by Nettlesome Worm

An obnoxious computer program that barged into Twitter Inc.’s mishmash of Internet chatter served as another reminder of the challenges facing the rapidly growing service.
The nettlesome program, known as a worm, targeted Twitter’s network with four different attacks starting early Saturday and ending early Monday, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
The worm was set up to promote a Twitter knockoff, StalkDaily.com. It displayed unwanted messages on infected Twitter accounts, urging people to visit the Web site.
The worm was designed to automatically reproduce itself once its links were clicked on, but it didn’t filch any personal information from the more than 6 million people with Twitter accounts, Stone wrote in a posting about the incident. Nearly 10,000 Twitter messages, known as "tweets," had to be deleted to contain the potential damage.
"We are still reviewing all the details, cleaning up and we remain alert," Stone reassured Twitter’s audience.
Michael "Mikeyy" Mooney, a 17-year-old high school student who created StalkDaily, acknowledged unleashing the worm in a Monday interview with The Associated Press. Besides wanting to promote his Web site, Mooney said he wanted to expose Twitter’s weaknesses.
"I really didn’t think it was going to get that much attention, but then I started to see all these stories about it and thought, ‘Oh my God,’ " said Mooney, who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He first confessed his responsibility for the worm to BNONews.com.
Mooney began having second thoughts about what he had done after reading a part of Stone’s posting indicating that Twitter might pursue legal action against its tormenter. In a Monday e-mail sent to the AP, Stone said he didn’t know whether Twitter will go after Mooney.
"If I get hit with a lawsuit, I am going to have major regrets and a big brick on my back," Mooney said. "I am backing off now. Twitter ignored its vulnerability (to worms) so I am hoping they can just ignore me now."
In the mean time, Mooney is retooling StalkDaily.com to accommodate more users. He has temporarily closed the site after getting swamped by the traffic triggered by his worm.
The trouble with Mooney represents another rite of passage for San Francisco-based Twitter, which has emerged a popular way to communicate on the Web and mobile phones since its debut three years ago.
Twitter’s system, which limits messages to 140 characters, is used to broadcast both mundane and tantalizing information by a diverse group of users that include teenagers, celebrities, news agencies, politicians, police departments and companies.
Twitter’s broadening reach makes it an inviting target for mischief makers and scam artists. Two of the Internet’s biggest online hangouts, Facebook and MySpace, both have had to grapple with similar threats.
The widening usage also occasionally overwhelms the free service, whose 30 employees have been subsisting on about $55 million in venture capital until Stone and fellow co-founder Evan Williams come up with a way to generate revenue.
Although it doesn’t break down as frequently as it did in its early days, Twitter periodically remains inaccessible because its computer servers can’t handle all the traffic.
Such challenges have spurred speculation that Twitter eventually will be sold to a larger Internet company. Twitter already spurned a $500 million buyout offer from Facebook Inc. There also have been unsubstantiated reports that Internet search leader Google Inc. is eyeing a possible bid for Twitter.
Both Williams and Stone have said they intend to build Twitter into a profitable, independent company.

Rumor of New Touchscreen XpressMusic Handset Breaks

Rumors are out that Nokia is planning on bringing us a slightly lower end version of their all touchscreen handset the 5800 XpressMusic. According to the reports, the handset is being called the 5530 XpressMusic and leaked information on the specs indicate that the handset will be equipped with –

• a 2.9 inch touchscreen
• 3.2 megapixel camera,
• 3.5mm headphone socket,
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS,
• Wi-Fi,
• support for microSD

It does seem like the handset is just a smaller version of the 5800 and will reportedly run on the same Symbian S60 5th Edition Operating System and may not feature GPS so it could be slimmer. There’s no confirmation on any of these details just yet so stay tuned.

HD Alienware Wallpaper

Nintendo “hoping to do a better job at E3

This comes once again from Reggie, on the latest episode of Game Trailers TV…

“We haven’t announced a launch date, maybe we’ll do that at E3 [The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks]. You know, everyone wants to know what we’re going to announce at E3 and my answer is, come to E3 and you’ll see…From Nintendo’s perspective, we always go into E3 with a very high bar wanting to satisfy not only the core fans but also ourselves. We’re hoping to do a much better job this year. You’ll have to see for yourself.”

Towards the end of the show, Reggie also added in this comment:

“And all of your fans will love it [E3]. We can guarantee that.”