Facebook IPO poised to be America's biggest ever

Yesterday Facebook estimated it would sell shares of the company for between $28 to $35 ? enough for a valuation of between $77 billion and $96 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. To put that in perspective, Facebook is about to be the most valuable US company ever to go public: United Parcel Service, by comparison, heretofore the record holder,?went public in 1999 with a valuation of $60.2 billion.?

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"Many people want to own this unique company, and it has the momentum,"?Kathy Smith of?Renaissance Capital told USA Today. She's right: Facebook has grown at an astonishingly rapid clip since it launched in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room ? first to a quarter million users, then a half million, and now, in 2012, to 900 million. Smart money is on the site cresting a billion users before the year is out.?

So is it all smooth sailing for Facebook? Well, not necessarily. As the Wall Street Journal points out, there is some reason to be skeptical about the IPO: revenue at Facebook is down six percent from the past quarter. And CEO Mark Zuckerberg must demonstrate that his business model will be effective in the longterm.?"There's still no good understanding for what advertisers are paying for,"?Morningstar analyst Rick Summer told the Journal today.?

In order to help gin up excitement, and to convince investors that Facebook deserves the high valuation, Facebook exec are meeting with analysts and bankers at institutions such as JP Morgan, which is helping to underwrite the IPO, MSNBC reports. Facebook has also released a long pitch video, featuring a litany of Facebook execs, including Zuckerberg.?In the video, COO Sheryl Sandberg stresses the reach of Facebook.?

Every day on Facebook is like the season finale of American Idol, "times two," Sandberg trumpets in the video.?

For more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.?

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InFocus IN1124

The InFocus IN1124 ($975 direct) is a compact, super-light, yet bright data projector geared to business travelers who need to frequently present to small groups. It?s highly portable, although you do need to run presentations from a computer as there?s no port for a USB thumb drive. Image quality is middling, though it?s up to the task of typical business presentations.

The IN1124?s brightness is rated at 3,000 lumens. The projector has a native XGA (1,024 by 768) resolution, a 4:3 aspect ratio typical of data projectors. ?At 2.8 by 8.6 by 7 inches (HWD) and 3.4 pounds, it?s very compact and lightweight. The Editors? Choice Epson PowerLite 93+ ($549 direct, 4 stars) isn?t quite as bright (at 2,600 lumens), while the NEC NP-V300X ($779 direct, 3.5 stars) matches the IN1124?s brightness. Though portable, they?re both larger and heavier than the InFocus. The 2,500-lumen Boxlight TraveLight3 ($999 list, 3.5 stars), another XGA projector, is roughly the same dimensions as the IN1124.

This projector is black and boxy. The front can be tilted upwards using an extendible riser. There are both zoom and focus wheels; I had no problem in bringing the IN1124 to a reasonably sharp focus.

The IN1124 packs a typical selection of ports for an ultraportable projector: an HDMI port (which we?re frequently seeing these days, even on XGA projectors); S-Video; an RCA jack for composite video; audio-in; VGA; and a USB mini-B port that you can plug into your computer for remote mouse support, allowing you to use the projector?s remote control in lieu of the mouse to advance slides and the like.

One port that would have been a useful addition is a USB type A to let you run a presentation computer free off of a USB thumb drive. Without it, you still have to lug a laptop with you. The projector does come with a soft carrying case for protection.

Data and Video Testing

I tested the IN1124 from about 10 feet away, where it threw a 6-feet diagonal image on our test screen that stood up well to ambient light. In testing with the DisplayMate suite (www.displaymate.com), data image quality was typical of a DLP data projector. There was some tinting, most often in the form of fringing, in which the boundary between a bright and dark area (for example, the edges of the image, would appear colored?yellow if at the top or right edge, blue if at the bottom. Areas of actual yellow, though, looked muddy and slightly green at times.

All DLP projectors are potentially subject to a rainbow effect in which white areas break up into their component colors when one shifts one?s gaze (or, in the case of video, when something moves onscreen). This effect was obvious to me in images that tended to bring it out. White-on-black text was readable though fuzzy at the smallest two sizes, and was subject to mild tinting. Image quality should be fine for typical data presentations, unless you require exacting color.

Video quality is adequate for short video clips as part of a presentation. The projector did well in resolving detail in both dark and bright areas. Colors seemed reasonably true, except for two issues. The rainbow effect was more obvious than in typical DLP projectors, and people who are sensitive to it would likely not want to watch this projector?s video for any length of time.

The other problem is color fringing. The intersections where bright areas met dark backgrounds (including the edges of the screen when the part of the image near them was bright) frequently showed as colored lines, yellow if at the top (or right edge) of the bright area, and blue if at the bottom. The yellow edge was most notable, and the fringing was visible often enough to be distracting?it really stood out in the type in the film credits.

Another drawback to showing video with the IN1124 is that its sound system, which employs a 1-watt speaker, is feeble. You?d have to be very close to the projector for it to be audible.

The InFocus In1124 is a lightweight, highly portable projector fitting for its intended audience: businesspeople that need to make frequent presentations to small groups while traveling. It?s brighter?and lighter?than the Editors? Choice XGA-resolution Epson PowerLite 93+. However, the InFocus?s image quality was middling while the Epson?s data and video image quality were both excellent. The 93+ has the loud and clear audio that the IN1124 lacks. However, it?s not as wieldy, as the InFocus, so for frequent presenters who need a small and bright projector to get the job done while on the road the IN1124 may be preferable. The InFocus is brighter than the equally portable Boxlight TraveLight3, with about the same image quality and sound.

More Projector Reviews:

??? InFocus IN1124
??? Severtson GP4360
??? Volfoni SmartCrystal Pro
??? Severtson GP169923D
??? Hitachi BZ-1
?? more

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Sprint CEO cuts his bonus by $3.5 million after shareholders complain about iPhone costs

According to P.T. Barnum, no one ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of the American public. Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, however, is going to lose $3.5 million for underestimating the stupidity of his shareholders. This, after Sprint was rumored to have broken their piggy bank wide open by agreeing to buy 30.5 million iPhones from Apple for a whopping $15 billion over the next four years.

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Cinco De Mayo 2012: How Mexico Feels About America's Cinco De Mayo

About the Author: Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web. Follow on Twitter @boraz.

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The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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Opening day for Occupy Wall Street: Act 2

Occupy Wall Street protesters plan demonstrations in more than 100 cities, hoping to rekindle the movement after months in relative hibernation.

The Occupy Season is kicking off.

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Starting Tuesday morning, May Day, the Occupy Movement in 100 cities will begin what it is terming ?spring awakening,? with marches, rhetoric, and probably some old-fashioned civil disobedience. The organizers are calling for a general strike although union support for a work moratorium appears low. And after a day of unpermitted, pop-up protests, educational picket lines, ?free university" teach-ins, and other events there will be an ?after party,? with bands and speeches.

Many of the issues will seem familiar from last fall when the protests began: income inequality (think 99 percent vs. 1 percent), high levels of student debt, and anger at foreclosures. But this spring the disparate groups that make up Occupy are ?zeroing in? on some specific issues, such as breaking up the Bank of America, campaigning against right-wing groups, and a new focus on the issues facing people of color.

?I think it was inevitable, various groups are focusing on issues they feel they can have impact on,? says Karanja Gacuca, a spokesman for Occupy. ?Income inequality is still our focus but now we are drumming down on specific issues that solidify the 1 percent.?

Among the new issues, according to Mr. Gacuca:?

• Breaking up the Bank of America. ?Every month there will be actions targeting both the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (owned by B of A),? he says. ?We think it ought to be broken up into smaller, more manageable banks.?

• A campaign against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group that drafts research and policy papers as well as local laws. ?As we make the public more aware of them, they are losing some of their corporate support,? says Gacuca.

• A campaign against the major spending by companies for the presidential campaign. ?We will be targeting super PACs and presidential candidates and following both candidates at fundraisers in New York and other big cities,? says Gacuca.

Narrowing the focus is a good plan, says Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. ?It?s good if you can get reforms even if the goal is more radical,? he says. ?Having short-term goals that are achievable is good.?

However, political scientist Edward Morgan of Lehigh University says to transition into actual legislative actions ?requires lots of outreach to the rest of America as well as sharpening the critique.?

Making contact with the public has been increasingly difficult for the Occupy movement, since police departments have cracked down on their encampments in most cities.

For example, on Monday in downtown Manhattan, only one Occupy Wall Street protester, Christopher Guerra, was sitting in Zuccotti Park, where protestors started the movement Sept. 17. Seated behind a sign that says, ?Prosecute the Fraud,? referring to the 2008 bank bailouts, he says the Occupy protesters are now spread out around the city, not just in one location.

One of those new locations is on the steps outside of Federal Hall National Memorial, which is across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. The protesters are on the stairs to the left of a statute of George Washington ? the site where he took his oath of office as first president. However, even in that location, there are limits: the police are limiting the protests to 25 people at any given time. A sign on the steps reads, ?NYPD created these barricades to mentally and physically separate us. Let?s be one ? talk to me.?

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Samsung Galaxy S III gets benchmarked, shows plenty of promise

We're here on the floor at the Samsung Galaxy S III launch and we've just managed to get some alone time with the unit to get some benchmarks. Now, let's stress that the handset is a pre-production model, so we can't take these as gospel truth, but it's a good indication of how powerful that Quad-Core Exynos really is. The only thing that isn't working is SunSpider, since our results just didn't tally with the other tests available, so hopefully it's just a quirk. Head on past the break for a dose of nitty and a sprinkling of gritty.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S III gets benchmarked, shows plenty of promise

Samsung Galaxy S III gets benchmarked, shows plenty of promise originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 17:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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