Washington -- Two consumer groups requested the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday to bar the global online search and advertising giant Google's proposed acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob, a provider of advertising services for mobile phones, citing potential damage on antitrust grounds and to address privacy issues raised by the deal to users, advertisers and application developers.

In a joint letter, Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy organization, and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), an advocate of open access to the Internet urged the FTC to oppose Google's proposed acquisition of AdMob on anti-trust grounds and said that the planned deal would “substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile advertising market.”

San Francisco -- Famed open source web browser, Firefox, looks to have a bit of a change of plans. Mozilla's next outburst in the browser wars originally intended to be released before the end of 2009, but now it would not come quite as soon as the company previously promised. Mozilla has pushed back the release of future Firefox versions.

Mozilla is forcing back deadlines for new versions of Firefox, estimating that consuming a bit more time to deliver new software will be worth the risk.

Firefox 3.6, which was originally planned for release this month, would not be available until sometime during the first quarter of 2010, and the release of Firefox 4.0 has been pushed back, as well. More time for the Firefox releases will allow Mozilla to perfect features, but may also allow Microsoft to gain more market share for Internet Explorer 8.

Los Angeles -- Popular micro-blogging website Twitter is acquiring the location tracking start-up “Mixer Labs,” in an attempt to enable users to map their Twitter posts to specific locations on maps and other tools, for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition would facilitate the site to enhance the “contextual” relevance of location to tweets -- messages posted on the site which can have a maximum of 140 characters.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Mixer Labs, founded by two ex-Google employees, who have developed a location-tracking tool called GeoAPI. Twitter chief executive Evan Williams said the deal would allow Twitter users to indicate people where they are when they post updates to the site.

Los Angeles -- In a relentless race for market share, Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 has managed to overtake Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular single version web browser, at least according to one statistical snapshot of which browser versions Web surfers use.

Earlier, there was only few like Netscape and its Navigator. Then came the most famous one, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, announcing the first browser war. And for a long time, IE has retained the market dominance it gained by Netscape's downfall to the present day.

And just last weekend, Mozilla announced a fifth beta of Firefox 3.6 rather than move on to a release candidate, which offers some new improvements, including the HTML 5 API, automating some important tasks which previously required a plug-in, such as video, a decision that will push the final code ship date into early 2010, a company executive said.

San Francisco -- Privacy advocates are grousing about Facebook's recent privacy changes effected since the second week of December has had scores of users of the world's biggest online social network up in arms now calling on the US Federal Trade Commission to make Facebook undo the changes in an official complaint.

The subject of dispute is the default setting of the posts. The network, which has more than 350 million users, has kept the default settings to “visible to all” against keeping them private, thereby encouraging its users to share information with all.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, in association with eight other groups, filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last week urging the regulator to open an investigation into Facebook's new privacy settings.

San Francisco -- MySpace Music, a joint venture between MySpace and the major labels, on Tuesday announced that it has agreed to acquire “certain assets” of the cash-crunched popular social networking site Imeem and is weaving it into the social networking community to capitalize on the biggest one: users. imeem is now redirecting to MySpace Music.

According to reports from various sources that said the deal was completed over the weekend, but MySpace Music CEO Owen Van Natta announced that the two companies only finalized the deal today.

“MySpace Music and imeem share a common vision and dedication to further enabling the socialization of content across the Web,” says Van Natta. “This deal will allow us to leverage imeem's industry leading technology and over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience.”

New York -- After years of stalling efforts to offer music fans the power to “rent” music instead of buying downloads, finally Apple is joining the party. Apple, earlier this week confirmed the acquisition of popular online music service Lala into the streaming music business, adding to its arsenal the ways it could offer music to users.

The company declined to discuss plans on how it would integrate the service, neither offered any details on the price it paid to acquire Lala. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans,” an Apple spokeswoman said in an e-mail. Earlier reports said Apple had bought Lala, but neither company had confirmed the deal.

Lala makes it possible for U.S. users to listen a song once for free, as well as lets them purchase over 8 million songs for 10 cents each, for a version that can be played online continually or pay $0.79 or more for a copy that can be downloaded, and then listen to the tunes as many times as they like through a browser on their Windows PC or Mac. The first 25 songs are offered at no charge.

San Francisco -- If a French court has its way, online auction giant eBay Inc. will soon have to pay dearly around $2.6 million for marketing a French Perfume. The fine stems from a ban on the sale (or purchase) of LVMH goods, by the Commercial Court in Paris for failing to meet the terms of an earlier ruling, which prevented sales of certain perfume brands to French consumers on its website. The company said the ruling “hurts consumers” and effectively enforces restrictive distribution contracts “which are anti-competitive”.

The ruling is corresponding to one of three lawsuits brought by LVMH, which is the brand owner of luxury products such as: Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tag Heuer, Givenchy, and De Beers, won a major case against eBay in June of last year. The suits accused eBay with illegal marketing of perfume brands that included Christian Dior, Kenzo and Givenchy as well as the sale of counterfeit items on eBay.

Beijing, China -- The ever growing high-tech industry have agreed that the mobile market is key in China. Baidu, which is trying to fend off a challenge from Google, which is playing greater role in introducing its web experience into phones in the Chinese mobile search market, is rolling out a new mobile service application that it will pre-install on handsets, which it describes as the “most important product in its mobile strategy,” into the fastest growing China's mobile search market.

Unlike the web search market, which it continues to command, Baidu is laced-up with Google for the lead in the country's mobile search market. Although, China Mobile, the biggest carrier in the country, which has unhesitatingly adopted Android with one hand, but then altered almost every aspect of it to create its own branded user experience and store.

New Delhi, India -- Much has been written about the young generation joining Facebook. And undoubtedly, today it is the fastest growing social networking site online. But a unique social networking website for older Indians is becoming popular among baby boomers. Verdurez.com caters to senior internet savvy people to combat loneliness and make new friends with the click of a mouse and in the comfort of their own homes.

According to the brain behind Verdurez.com, it is India's first unique social networking website for elderly Indians. Members can blog, chat, read articles, play puzzles online, make friends, reminisce about the past, look ahead to the future, debate in Senior Indian forums and enjoy life among a community of like-minded people.

Los Angeles -- Adobe Systems Incorporated, this weekend announced the unveiling of a slightly smoother version of its Acrobat.com, which includes several major hosted-application system that includes 35 new features, designed to make working together across organizations even easier than before and its first mobile application.

Incorporating more than 35 customer-suggested features, all of which have been suggested by Acrobat.com's 6 million-plus registered users, access word processing and take advantage of a handy PDF converter application, which allows anyone vote up or down user-generated suggestions. The most notable addition is a new organizer, which consolidates all of the user's files and projects saved on Adobe's servers.

This release modifies the way people work when communicating and collaborating over the Web. In addition, Acrobat.com has included smartphone access, empowering people to get their work done from anywhere.

Redmond, Washington -- After cannibalizing Live Search and additional brands attached to the moniker utilized for Microsoft's former search engine, Bing now swallowed MSN Video. Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled Bing Video, a re-launch of MSN Video that derives content from sites like Hulu, MSN, and YouTube. The site features news, entertainment shows, sports, music, comedy and clips and trailers from movies.

San Francisco -- Twitter continues to spread its wings across the Web. Twitter's spree of associations is not ending anytime soon. Late last month, Microsoft and Twitter made an alliance to integrate Twitter within Bing. On Tuesday, Twitter and LinkedIn announced a new partnership to bring tweets to LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals. Starting immediately, users of LinkedIn and Twitter can cross-file to each other's services, by checking a box on either Twitter or LinkedIn.

The is move aimed at the growing base of business users who take advantage of social networking sites. LinkedIn, with more than 50 million members, is the largest network of professionals around the globe who post information about themselves, such as resumes, to help find jobs or employees, and to stay in touch with each other.

San Francisco -- Just in time with the availability of the Motorola Droid and the HTC Eris at Verizon Wireless stores today, Adobe Systems on Friday launched a new Photoshop app for Android users that enables them to edit photos from their phone, as well as access their online photo collection on Photoshop.com and Slacker Radio for music fans that powers for Android lovers.

Adobe just last month in the US released Photoshop.com apps for Apple's iPhone and iPod, which quickly became the top free application in the App Store and seized a million downloads within a week of its release, and now the company has rolled out the “Free” app on the Google OS.

Adobe's Photoshop.com, which offers simple image editing tools and photo-sharing capabilities, seems similar to the iPhone version which was introduced earlier in October.

Los Angeles -- A U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, on Thursday awarded Facebook $711 million in civil damages against Sanford Wallace, the infamous self proclaimed “spam king” who is also famed by the disrespectful nickname “Spamford.” The court found Wallace guilty of violating the CAN-SPAM act, and he could face time in prison if convicted.

Facebook on Friday said that though it has been awarded $711 million against spam king Wallace, which the social-networking site says is unlikely to pay the money but declared the ruling to create a blow in an ongoing battle against spam at the leading online social-networking service, besides the judge has recommended criminal prosecution of Wallace.

Los Angeles -- Facebook head of communications Elliot Schrage posted a company blog entry on Thursday requesting users to examine the proposed revision to its privacy policy, and asked for feedback from the social network's more than 300 million users until November 5, 2009, these changes that were made, in part, are to appease Canadian privacy officials.

“This is the renewed step in our ongoing effort to run Facebook in an open and transparent way,” Schrage said. “After the comment period is over, we will review your feedback and update you on our next steps.”

The revamped policy describes the social networking site's privacy rules in a “clearer and more comprehensive” manner, Facebook said in a blog post. As part of its promise back in April to operate in a more democratic manner, Facebook will accept comments on the proposal until noon Pacific time on November 5.

San Jose, California -- Last month, desktop-publishing and graphic software maker Adobe Systems Inc. agreed to acquire web analytics specialist Omniture, for approximately $US1.8 billion in cash. Today the company declared the successful completion of the tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Omniture, Inc. at a price of $21.50 per share, net to the seller in cash, without interest. The offer was completed by its direct wholly owned subsidiary, Snowbird Acquisition Corp. and expired yesterday at 12:00 midnight, New York City, New York time.

In early October, Adobe announced that it has been allowed early termination of the the waiting period according to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, enabling the acquisition to progress at faster pace than we usually see.

San Francisco -- On the heels of one fake Facebook pishing scam, a new computer virus gangs are bombarding Facebook members with targeted fake emails, using the popular social-networking websites brand to trick unsuspecting users into downloading potentially vicious malware hoping to get control of members' Facebook and other accounts -- a rising type of cybercrime. “Bredolab” Trojan lets cyber criminals control personal computers, reaches at least 735,000 users.

The attack, which started Monday afternoon, according to e-mail security vendor Cloudmark, targets Facebook users with a spoofed message that claims recipients' Facebook passwords have been reset as a security measure. In the latest pishing attack is being fired to e-mail in-boxes, a legitimate-looking Facebook notice asks people to provide information to help the social network update its log-in system, said Fred Touchette, a senior security analyst at AppRiver. The messages, which come bearing subject lines such as “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation,” include a file attachment that supposedly contains the new password.

Mumbai, India -- Following a huge surge in Twitter traffic since the start of this year, Twitter is teaming up with Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom service provider is launching tweetSMS, that will allow its subscribers to send Tweets at standard rates and receive Tweets directly to your phone for free, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a blog post.

“In many parts of the world people do not have Internet access but they can text -- and that means they can access Twitter,” Stone, said in a blog post.

Customers need only send a text with the word START to 53000 to begin.

“Bharti Airtel is providing people in every city, every village, every remote taluk and even the smallest panchayat the opportunity to connect to Twitter and enjoy the open exchange of information with no added fees,” Stone wrote.

San Francisco -- Adobe Systems last week surprised the some of the experts in designing industry when it rolled out its popular Photoshop app for iPhone and iPod Touch users that enables them to edit photos from both their phone and their online library on Photoshop.com.

The new Photoshop app for iPhone, which is FREE, offers tools such as cropping, image rotation, color controls, and simple one-touch filter effects among a lot of other basic functionality for those looking to share, edit or tweak up photos taken on an iPhone that can change the look and feel of shots all at once.

The app also allows iPhone users to adjust the pictures on their camera roll with relative ease. It also features undo and redo controls so that if users make a mistake, or want to revert back to the original, it takes just a few taps.