CEO says NBC set to 'break even' on Olympics

NEW YORK (AP) â€" Viewer excitement about the Olympics is translating into gold for NBC: The broadcaster now expects to break even on the London Games rather than taking a loss.

"We are way ahead of where we thought we'd be," NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said Wednesday.

Covering the Olympics was more challenging for NBC this year because of the time difference with Europe. With London five hours ahead of New York, NBC isn't able to show any events live in prime time. In Beijing four years ago, NBC was able to show morning events such as Michael Phelps' gold-medal swims live during its evening broadcasts.

But instead of the expected 20 percent ratings plunge compared with Beijing, Burke said, NBC is seeing audiences up 9 percent so far, five days into the event.

"We think that is because of the way we promoted the Olympics during the hundred days leading up to the Olympics," Burke said.

Tuesday's Olympics telecast, featuring Phelps' record-setting swim and the gold-medal performance of the U.S. women's gymnastics team, had the highest rating of any night so far, according to Nielsen's overnight measurement of the nation's largest cities. A broader viewership estimate was expected later Wednesday.

Combined with higher production costs in London, NBC had expected at one point to take a $200 million loss for the games. NBC paid $1.2 billion for the rights to show the games on TV and online in the U.S. Before the games opened, it said it sold more than $1 billion in ads, breaking the record of $850 million set during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Ahead of the London Games, NBC got 10 percent more for every minute of prime-time advertising compared with the Beijing Games. It also tripled its pre-sales of online ads to $60 million, as it's streaming all events live for the first time.

Better ratings could mean higher rates for ads sold at the last minute. They could also help the network, which is fourth overall in U.S. ratings, promote new shows in its fall lineup and boost viewership of non-sports programs such as "Today" and "NBC Nightly News" during the Olympics.

The Olympics run through Aug. 12.

Burke indicated that he expected to break even from a cash perspective, meaning the cost of the broadcast rights and the production will be balanced by ad sales and other direct revenue. He made the comments on a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss the second-quarter earnings report of Comcast Corp., NBCUniversal's parent company.

From a formal accounting perspective, the treatment of the Olympics is more complicated, as NBC made the deal with the International Olympic Committee before the Comcast bought the controlling stake in NBCUniversal early last year. Some of the loss was eliminated when Comcast absorbed NBCUniversal through what is known as purchase accounting. Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis said on the call that the end result would be that the company will post a small gain from the event in the current quarter.

NBC lost money on the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, but previous games were profitable, if not wildly so. It has broadcast every Summer Olympics since 1988.

Last year, NBC outbid Fox and ESPN to gain the rights for four more Olympics, paying $4.38 billion through 2020.

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Android Console Game Design Revealed Ouya

Ouya, a video game console Android platform, is excited about the return of abundant support for the console open source development projects are being developed.

After collecting $ 5.5 million, Ouya began to expose some technical detail, one of which the design of game controllers.

This is revealed in their Kickstarter page, Friday (27/7). Ouya enroll in Kickstarter crowdfunding site pages and has won 5.5 million dollars from donors 43 444 people. There are still 12 more days to collect donations before the opportunity is truly closed.


Through their sixth update, Ouya team finally unveiled the design of console controllers Ouya. At first glance, the Sony Playstation controller is similar to the shape of a winged but silver with black accents in the middle.

The difference is, the analog movement is sandwiched between two levers. While the four buttons on the right side for a while still using the color coded green, blue, orange, and red.

"We have not reached agreement on the key. In the interim, the color code used first," he wrote to comment on the four buttons.

In addition to controllers, also showcased designs Ouya their console or the main engine. In contrast to the two established players such as Playstation 3 or Xbox 360, Ouya tend cube design with a circular base. Silver color dominate the upper part is black and the main indicators of a purple circle.


OnLive

In addition to the design, Ouya also reveal opportunities of cooperation with OnLive, cloud gaming platform. OnLive is a gaming service through cloud technologies, or play without having to use expensive console device.

They just subscribe and have a fast internet connection to play on television while all processing is done on the server.

Currently, OnLive service can be enjoyed through various channels such as PC, Macintosh, Smartphone, Android tablet, until the TV is connected to the Internet. With this service, users can play the kind of PC game LA Noire on the television screen plus internet connection without having a console.

OnLive General Manager, Bruce Grove, as quoted Ouya in their Kickstarter page, stating that their services will be available in Ouya was later released. Thus, they could widen the reach to a wider consumer.

With this news, support for more Ouya lined and is expected to continue to rise ahead of its launch next year.

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"Charge" Laptop USB Cable Will Can Use

Soon, not just smartphones and gadgets whose batteries can be charged via USB cable.

A new USB 3.0 standard is being prepared reportedly will increase the amount of power that can be streamed through this data cable. Magnitude up to 100 watts, enough to charge large devices such as notebooks.

This was stated in the announcement USB 3.0 Promoter Group consisting of a Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Renesas, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments, dated July 18, 2012.

The number is far greater than the maximum power that can be transmitted via USB 3.0 cable that already exist, which is 4.5 Watt. The USB 2.0 cable is only capable of supplying power hinga 2.5 Watt. About the data transfer, USB 3.0 has a speed of 5 Gbps.

The new USB 3.0 standard cable will offer six different profiles based on the amount of power can be channeled. Magnitude from 12V to 5V/2A or 20V/5A (100 Watt).

USB 3.0 cable will be used to replace the laptop charger function. However, seen from the history of USB 3.0 which first introduced in 2008 and just beginning to be applied as a standard feature a few years later, it looks like the emergence of this new cable will still be delayed for some time.

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Marissa Mayer brings free food to Yahoo

(Mashable) -- How is new CEO Marissa Mayer going to revitalize Yahoo?

By making it more like Google, the company she just left.

According to AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, Mayer has instituted a few changes already at Yahoo's Sunnyvale, CA, headquarters. Among them: establishing a weekly all-hands meeting on Friday afternoons, and making all the food in its URLs Cafe, which previously priced egg white muffin sandwiches at $3.65 and teriyaki chicken paninis at $5.31, free.

Of course, it's easy to say that all of this has been borrowed directly from Google, but these kinds of offerings have become standard at many Silicon Valley offices â€" the fact that Yahoo has, until now, lacked them has likely been a sore point for some of its engineers. Both Facebook and Twitter, for instance, serve up free snacks and daily catered meals to employees.

They're small changes, yes, but they're likely to improve the morale of a company whose public image and internal image has deteriorated over the last seven years.

In addition to the new meeting and food policy, Swisher reports that Mayer is also planning "major changes" to workspaces "to make [them] more collaborative and cool," and improving the swag offered in its stores. She's also pushing to improve Yahoo's core products, including e-mail, Flickr and search.

Several of Swisher's sources said that "big splash tech or product deals... perhaps via an acquisition" may be announced "in the days ahead."

Yahoo could not be reached for comment.

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2 SKoreans arrested for mobile customer data theft

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) â€" South Korean police said they arrested two men who allegedly stole the personal details of about 8 million mobile phone subscribers and sold the data to marketing companies in one of the country's biggest hacking schemes.

Police said in a statement Sunday that the two men developed the hacking program that was used to steal the names, residential registration numbers and phone numbers of customers of KT, which is South Korea's largest fixed-line telephone company and No. 2 mobile operator. The program was uploaded to the company's computer systems and harvested personal data for months.

Police said the two made about $877,000 from the hacking scheme. They sold the program as well as mobile subscriber data to telemarketing companies which used the details to contact customers to solicit them to switch to other mobile operators.

Authorities said a former KT employee and six others were also charged for their roles in the scheme.

The data theft at KT took place over the span of five months from February and affected about half of KT's 16 million mobile customers.

KT apologized and said it will beef up its security system.

The incident is the latest in a series of large-scale hacking attacks that have affected millions in one of the world's most wired countries. Last year, hackers stole personal data of 13 million gamers at Nexon and private details of 35 million members at web portal Nate and Cyworld were leaked.

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Facebook's stock sinks, so who should buy it?

NEW YORK (AP) Investors are dumping Facebook's stock, spooked by slowing revenue growth, the lack of a financial outlook and plans to spend more money in the coming months.

Are they right?
Only if they are thinking in the short term. Investors can expect Facebook's stock to be volatile for a few years. But analysts say those willing to wait will likely be rewarded — someday.
"I view it as a tomorrow stock," says Christian Bertelsen, chief investment officer at wealth management firm Global Financial Private Capital.
"The whole thing on Facebook is, look, if your time horizon is hourly, weekly or even monthly, this is not the stock for you," he adds. "You need to take a much longer-term view on it."
That's about three or four years, he says.
Founded in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook was a product of the PC era. Now, in the age of mobile computing, a growing number of people are accessing Facebook through their iPhones, Android gadgets and tablet computers. Yet Facebook is only now starting to figure out how to make money from its mobile audience.
"The company is going through an almost painful transition from desktop to mobile," Baird analyst Colin Sebastian says.
He calls Facebook "a speculative investment," but one with plenty of potential.
"With almost one billion users, Facebook is amassing the most comprehensive user profile database in existence," Sebastian says. This, he adds, offers a "significant opportunity" to reap a big chunk of the global advertising market, which is currently at $500 billion a year.
"Amazon comes to mind immediately," Bertelsen says.
After that company went public in 1997, at the time mainly just an online bookstore, critics were quick to cry dot-com bust, call its business a broken, and so on. Today, it is the world's biggest online retailer, selling everything from DVDs to vacuum cleaners to Web storage.
"Now they are the retailer to the world," he adds.
Amazon.com Inc.'s stock price grew to more than $200 a share, from less than $2. Of course, Facebook has started out much higher, at $38.
Facebook's first earnings report since its rocky initial public offering on May 18 was the second coming that didn't quite materialize. So investors sent Facebook's stock to its lowest level ever on Friday. Shares fell $3.14, or nearly 12 percent, to close at $23.71 after hitting $22.28 in the morning. The previous low was $25.52, reached on June 6.
The stock dropped despite the fact that Facebook's second-quarter results met Wall Street's expectations, with revenue one-third higher than last year.
Given the rocky economy and investors' heightened sensitivity to a stock's value, betting on a company becomes a "show-me story" for many of them, Sebastian says. That means investors want proof rather than Facebook's word that it can grow its revenue and make a profit.
Facebook, for now, is more of a tell-me story, one whose success or failure will play out in the coming quarters, or even years. The company hasn't shown all it can do. Its revenue growth slowed. The company's revenue nearly tripled in 2010, compared with 2009.
In the first quarter of this year, revenue climbed 44 percent, higher than the 32 percent increase in the second quarter. Following in Google's footsteps, it did not offer financial guidance for the coming quarters, which makes it a riskier bet for investors.
Facebook also said it plans to increase its investments in the coming quarters. Higher expenses could mean lower profits.
Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., was valued at $104 billion when it went public two months ago. That means investors placed a higher value on its stock than established companies such as McDonald's, Pepsi and even Amazon.
With Facebook's stock hitting a new low on Friday, the company lost as much as 39 percent of its value. It's now around $66 billion, a little more than 3M, the company that makes Scotch tapes, stethoscopes and sandpaper. It's also in the same range as American Express.
Despite the doubts, Mike Magan of Carmel, Ind., plans to keep the 10 shares he bought at $34.25 each a few days after Facebook went public.
"I bought this thinking it was going to be something I was going to pass down to my kids," said Magan, who works for an industrial marketing firm. "I see this as a company that will be an Apple."
Other stocks he owns include Apple, naturally, which he bought a decade ago. Back then, it was trading at around $8 to $10. Now, it's pushing $600 as the world's most valuable company, thanks to successes with the iPhone and the iPad — the same devices confounding Facebook.
"My purchase of Facebook was a vote of confidence," Magan says, adding that he buys stock about every three to four years.
Analysts are generally positive on Facebook. Of the 27 analyst ratings available from FactSet, 15 are "Buy" or equivalent, while just three are a "Sell." Analysts tend to have longer-term views of stocks than many day-to-day investors.
"We don't view these results as dramatically good or bad," Citi analyst Mark Mahaney says. "Key questions remain: the future of Facebook mobile monetization and the future of Facebook user engagement."

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Facebook's stock sinks, so who should buy it?

NEW YORK (AP) â€" Investors are dumping Facebook's stock, spooked by slowing revenue growth, the lack of a financial outlook and plans to spend more money in the coming months.

Are they right?

Only if they are thinking in the short term. Investors can expect Facebook's stock to be volatile for a few years. But analysts say those willing to wait will likely be rewarded â€" someday.

"I view it as a tomorrow stock," says Christian Bertelsen, chief investment officer at wealth management firm Global Financial Private Capital.

"The whole thing on Facebook is, look, if your time horizon is hourly, weekly or even monthly, this is not the stock for you," he adds. "You need to take a much longer-term view on it."

That's about three or four years, he says.

Founded in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook was a product of the PC era. Now, in the age of mobile computing, a growing number of people are accessing Facebook through their iPhones, Android gadgets and tablet computers. Yet Facebook is only now starting to figure out how to make money from its mobile audience.

"The company is going through an almost painful transition from desktop to mobile," Baird analyst Colin Sebastian says.

He calls Facebook "a speculative investment," but one with plenty of potential.

"With almost one billion users, Facebook is amassing the most comprehensive user profile database in existence," Sebastian says. This, he adds, offers a "significant opportunity" to reap a big chunk of the global advertising market, which is currently at $500 billion a year.

"Amazon comes to mind immediately," Bertelsen says.

After that company went public in 1997, at the time mainly just an online bookstore, critics were quick to cry dot-com bust, call its business a broken, and so on. Today, it is the world's biggest online retailer, selling everything from DVDs to vacuum cleaners to Web storage.

"Now they are the retailer to the world," he adds.

Amazon.com Inc.'s stock price grew to more than $200 a share, from less than $2. Of course, Facebook has started out much higher, at $38.

Facebook's first earnings report since its rocky initial public offering on May 18 was the second coming that didn't quite materialize. So investors sent Facebook's stock to its lowest level ever on Friday. Shares fell $3.14, or nearly 12 percent, to close at $23.71 after hitting $22.28 in the morning. The previous low was $25.52, reached on June 6.

The stock dropped despite the fact that Facebook's second-quarter results met Wall Street's expectations, with revenue one-third higher than last year.

Given the rocky economy and investors' heightened sensitivity to a stock's value, betting on a company becomes a "show-me story" for many of them, Sebastian says. That means investors want proof rather than Facebook's word that it can grow its revenue and make a profit.

Facebook, for now, is more of a tell-me story, one whose success or failure will play out in the coming quarters, or even years. The company hasn't shown all it can do. Its revenue growth slowed. The company's revenue nearly tripled in 2010, compared with 2009.

In the first quarter of this year, revenue climbed 44 percent, higher than the 32 percent increase in the second quarter. Following in Google's footsteps, it did not offer financial guidance for the coming quarters, which makes it a riskier bet for investors.

Facebook also said it plans to increase its investments in the coming quarters. Higher expenses could mean lower profits.

Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., was valued at $104 billion when it went public two months ago. That means investors placed a higher value on its stock than established companies such as McDonald's, Pepsi and even Amazon.

With Facebook's stock hitting a new low on Friday, the company lost as much as 39 percent of its value. It's now around $66 billion, a little more than 3M, the company that makes Scotch tapes, stethoscopes and sandpaper. It's also in the same range as American Express.

Despite the doubts, Mike Magan of Carmel, Ind., plans to keep the 10 shares he bought at $34.25 each a few days after Facebook went public.

"I bought this thinking it was going to be something I was going to pass down to my kids," said Magan, who works for an industrial marketing firm. "I see this as a company that will be an Apple."

Other stocks he owns include Apple, naturally, which he bought a decade ago. Back then, it was trading at around $8 to $10. Now, it's pushing $600 as the world's most valuable company, thanks to successes with the iPhone and the iPad â€" the same devices confounding Facebook.

"My purchase of Facebook was a vote of confidence," Magan says, adding that he buys stock about every three to four years.

Analysts are generally positive on Facebook. Of the 27 analyst ratings available from FactSet, 15 are "Buy" or equivalent, while just three are a "Sell." Analysts tend to have longer-term views of stocks than many day-to-day investors.

"We don't view these results as dramatically good or bad," Citi analyst Mark Mahaney says. "Key questions remain: the future of Facebook mobile monetization and the future of Facebook user engagement."

Read More