Google should not be accused of “unfair” acts: lawmakers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two lawmakers urged the Federal Trade Commission on Monday to steer clear of expanding its authority as it investigates allegations search engine company Google violated antitrust law.

The two California Democrats in the House of Representatives, who count Google as a major campaign contributor, asked the FTC not to accuse the company of “unfair” acts if it believes it broke antitrust law.

Anna Eshoo, on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Zoe Lofgren, who is on the Judiciary Committee, said there were reports to suggest the FTC planned to use the unfair standard to avoid proving some elements required in an antitrust claim.

They said such a move could lead to over-broad authority for the FTC that could create legal uncertainties for firms and stifle economic growth.

“Such a massive expansion of FTC jurisdiction would be unwarranted, unwise, and likely have negative implications for our nation’s economy,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was dated November 19 and sent to the five FTC commissioners.

The FTC is looking into a long list of complaints brought by rivals of Google, which is also accused of using its dominance to squash competitors in vertical search areas such as shopping and travel.

The FTC staff has reportedly given the commission a report urging them to file a complaint against Google for suing competitors based on standard essential patents and asking for injunctions to stop the sales of their products. Standard essential patents are supposed to be broadly licensed at a fair rate.

Google is the seventh largest contributor to Eshoo, donating $ 13,000 during the 2012 election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. It is the third largest contributor to Lofgren, who got $ 14,500 from Google. The donations came from a Google political action committee and employees and lobbyists associated with Google.

Complaints about Google to the FTC over standard essential patents arise from a raft of litigation between Apple Inc, Google and Microsoft Corp, which have sued each other numerous times in various countries, each alleging that their respective patents are being infringed upon by rivals in the highly competitive smartphone market.

In many cases, the companies ask that their rivals’ products be banned from stores. Many antitrust enforcers believe it is inappropriate for companies to ask for sales bans based on the infringement of essential patents.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who is expected to leave the agency soon, said in mid-September that he expected a decision in the case by the end of the year. A decision could be in the form of a lawsuit or, more likely, a settlement.

Google has settled with U.S. law enforcement agencies in the past.

For example, it settled with the FTC following privacy gaffes during the botched roll-out of its social network, Buzz. Later, it paid $ 22.5 million to settle charges that it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple’s Safari browser.

Google also paid a $ 500 million settlement in 2011 to the Justice Department for knowingly accepting illegal advertisements from Canadian pharmacies selling in the United States.

FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan confirmed that the commission had received the letter but said the agency declined comment.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; editing by Andrew Hay)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Beckham says MLS Cup is his final game with Galaxy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — David Beckham says the MLS Cup next month will be his final game with the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Beckham and the Galaxy announced the superstar English midfielder's decision Monday, a day after the defending MLS champions advanced to their second straight league final. Los Angeles faces Houston for the MLS title on Dec. 1.

The 37-year-old Beckham isn't retiring, however.

"I've had an incredibly special time playing for the L.A. Galaxy," Beckham said in a statement. "However, I wanted to experience one last challenge before the end of my playing career. I don't see this as the end of my relationship with the league, as my ambition is to be part of the ownership structure in the future."

Beckham has played six years in Los Angeles since his groundbreaking move from Europe, reaching three league finals and winning one MLS title last year during his best season stateside. He agreed to a two-year contract extension with the Galaxy in January after playing out his initial five-year deal, turning down potential moves to Paris St. Germain and other clubs.

Beckham hadn't given any overt indications he was planning to leave the Galaxy after this season. Last week, Beckham pointedly denied rumors linking him to a short-term stint in Australia.

"Seldom does an athlete redefine a sport," said Tim Leiweke, the president of Galaxy owners AEG. "David not only took our franchise to another level, but he took our sport to another level It has been an honor and privilege to be a part of his world, and more importantly, to have him be a part of ours."

Los Angeles got off to a slow start to the year, but has played splendidly down the stretch, culminating in a two-game victory over the Seattle Sounders in the Western Conference finals. Beckham has been the star player on the league's glamour franchise during his tenure, which began with a handful of rocky seasons before the Galaxy became a power under coach Bruce Arena over the past few years.

"In my time here I have seen the popularity of the game grow every year," Beckham said. "I've been fortunate to win trophies, but more important to me has been the fantastic reception I've had from fans in L.A. and across the States. Soccer's potential has no limits in this wonderful country, and I want to always be part of growing it."

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Really?: The Claim: Eye Problems Can Cause Headaches in Children

Really?

Anahad O’Connor tackles health myths.

THE FACTS When a child complains of frequent headaches, many pediatricians order an eye exam. “In some pediatric ophthalmology practices, it’s a daily occurrence,” said Dr. Zachary Roth, a resident in ophthalmology at Albany Medical Center in New York.

Often, a child may experience headaches while reading or doing schoolwork, leading parents to think the child needs glasses. But are eye problems really a cause of childhood headaches?

In a recent study, Dr. Roth and his colleagues examined 158 children under age 18 who were referred to ophthalmologists for frequent headaches. Then, they evaluated the children’s medical records and looked at the results of earlier vision exams.

Ultimately, the researchers could not find any significant link between headaches and diagnoses of vision problems. In three-quarters of the subjects, the headaches went away over time, both in those who received new glasses and those who did not.

The study, which was presented at a recent American Academy of Ophthalmology conference, was not designed to look for causes of the headaches. But there were “quite a few” children with family histories of migraine, Dr. Roth said. Sinus problems and stress headaches also appeared to be common issues, he added.

“I think the take-away message is that it’s very unlikely for headaches to be caused by an eye problem,” he said. “The experience of all the ophthalmologists we talked to is that it almost never seems to be related to the eyes, so it’s probably more fruitful to investigate other causes.”

THE BOTTOM LINE Vision problems are often blamed for childhood headaches, but in reality, the two are rarely related.

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Solar Power as Solution for Storm-Darkened Homes

When Hurricane Sandy wiped out the power in areas like coastal Long Island and the Jersey Shore, what should have been beacons of hope — hundreds of solar panels glinting from residential rooftops — became symbols of frustration.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

R. David Gibbs of the nonprofit group Solar One directed volunteers in an installation at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.

A blog about energy and the environment.

Despite the popular perception that installing solar panels takes a home “off the grid,” most of those systems are actually part of it, sending excess power to the utility grid during the day and pulling electricity back to run the house at night. So when the storm took down power lines and substations across the Northeast, safety systems cut the power in solar homes just like everywhere else.

“Here’s a $70,000 system sitting idle,” said Ed Antonio, who lives in the Rockaways in Queens and has watched his 42 panels as well as those on several other houses in the area go unused since the power went out Oct. 29. “That’s a lot of power sitting. Just sitting.”

Yet there are ways to tap solar energy when the grid goes down, whether by adding batteries to a home system or using the kinds of independent solar generators that have been cropping up in areas hard-hit by the storm.

In the Rockaways, where nearly 14,000 customers still had no power as of Monday morning, volunteers set up a makeshift solar charging station between a car roof and a shopping cart. A multipanel, battery-tied system is helping fuel a relief center’s operations.

In the storm’s wake, solar companies have been donating equipment across New York and other stricken areas to function as emergency power systems now and backups in the longer term. It is important, executives say, to create smaller, more decentralized ways of generating and storing electricity to help ease strain on the grid in times of high demand or failure.

“The grid won’t evolve into something more distributed and fault-tolerant overnight — it’s still dependent upon a centralized system,” said Ben Tarbell, vice president for products at SolarCity, a leading installer that has donated generators after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and is developing a battery backup system for its customers. “But the components are starting to come together.”

Generally, home systems like Mr. Antonio’s are engineered to feed electricity from the roof array through an inverter and into the home’s electrical panel, sending the excess to the broader electric grid. But during a failure, the inverter automatically shuts down the system to guarantee that no electricity is flowing into equipment that workers will be trying to fix. The shutdown also ensures that the system’s current will sync with the grid when power is restored and guards against damaging the lines.

Certain systems allow solar panels to run a household directly during prolonged power failures, generally combined with battery storage to keep the power functioning around the clock. Those require installing a separate electrical panel and a more complicated inverter that would switch the flow of electricity entirely over to the house, perhaps to a few critical circuits to run, say, the refrigerator, some lights, television and minimal heat.

“You size the battery system to go with that, and then the system will work just on those dedicated circuits,” said Tony Clifford, chief executive of Standard Solar, an installer based in Maryland.

The cost of adding battery storage to an existing system can range from $500 to $30,000, depending on how large the solar array is and how much the customer wants to be able to run.

Although demand for battery backup is not yet widespread, interest tends to go up after storms, said David Panico, senior vice president of the industrial power group at SunWize, a solar supplier that provided a low-cost mobile system to the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, a hub of that area’s relief effort.

But a drawback is that residents have to figure out where to put the batteries — a particular quandary for those with homes vulnerable to flooding.

So some are looking at electric vehicles as potential backup energy sources instead. In some cases, a car could fuel a house for days on a single charge.

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Gaza Violence Is Unabating as Other Nations Push for Truce

GAZA CITY — Israeli forces killed at least 11 people, including several children, in a single airstrike that destroyed a home here on Sunday, as Israel pressed its bombardment of the Gaza Strip for a fifth day, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave.

The airstrike, which the Israeli military said was meant to kill a Palestinian militant involved in the recent rocket attacks, was the deadliest operation to date and would no doubt weigh on negotiations for a possible cease-fire. Among the dead were five women and four small children, The Associated Press reported, citing a Palestinian health official.

Two media offices were also hit on Sunday, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned of a “significant” expansion in the onslaught, which has already killed over 50 people, many of them civilians.

Speaking on Sunday from Bangkok, President Obama condemned missile attacks by Palestinian fighters in Gaza and defended Israel’s right to protect itself.

“There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Mr. Obama said in his first public comments since the violence broke out. “We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

The president also said that efforts were under way to address Israel’s security concerns and end the violence. “We’re going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours,” Mr. Obama said.

Even as the diplomacy intensified on Sunday, the attacks continued in Gaza and Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu made his warning as militants in Gaza aimed at least one rocket at Tel Aviv, a day after Israeli forces broadened the attack beyond military targets, bombing centers of government infrastructure in Gaza, including the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister.

“We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations, and the Israel Defense Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu told his cabinet at its routine Sunday meeting, referring directly to the of thousands of reservists who have been called up and the massing of armor on the Gaza border that many analysts have interpreted as preparations for a possible invasion.

“I appreciate the rapid and impressive mobilization of the reservists who have come from all over the country and turned out for the mission at hand,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Reservist and conscript soldiers are ready for any order they might receive.”

His remarks were reported shortly after a battery of Israel’s Iron Dome defense shield, hastily deployed near Tel Aviv on Saturday in response to the threat of longer-range rockets, intercepted at least one aimed at the city on Sunday, Israeli officials said. It was the latest of several salvos that have illustrated Hamas’s ability to extend the reach of its rocket attacks.

Since Wednesday, when the escalation of the conflict began, Iron Dome has knocked 245 rockets out of the sky, the military said Saturday, while 500 have struck Israel.

The American-financed system is designed to intercept only rockets streaking toward towns and cities and to ignore those likely to strike open ground. But on Sunday a rocket fired from Gaza plowed through the roof of an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. There were no immediate reports of casualties there.

In Gaza City, the crash of explosions pierced the quiet several times throughout the early morning.

Before the latest deadly strike involving civilians on Sunday, Hamas health officials had said the Palestinian death toll had risen to 53. One of the latest victims was a 52-year-old woman whose house in the eastern part of Gaza City was bombed around lunchtime.

A few hours earlier, a Hamas militant was killed and seven people were wounded in an attack on the Beach Refugee Camp, where Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, has a home. Those killed on Sunday included three children ages 1 through 5, the health officials said.

In Israel, 3 civilians have died and 63 have been injured. Four soldiers were wounded on Saturday.

The onslaught continued despite talks in Cairo that President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt said Saturday night could soon result in a cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu said he would consider a comprehensive cease-fire if the launchings from Gaza stopped.

The attack on Mr. Haniya’s office, one of several on government installations, came a day after he hosted his Egyptian counterpart in the same building, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world.

Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram reported from Gaza City. Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner, Carol Sutherland and Iritz Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem; Tyler Hicks from Gaza, Peter Baker from Bangkok, Alan Cowell from London, Michael Schwirtz from New York and David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo.

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Keselowski wins Sprint Cup title

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) — Here's a tweet for Brad Keselowski: NASCAR champion.

Roger Penske must like the sound of that, too.

The kid who stole the show at the season-opening Daytona 500 ended the year under the biggest spotlight of them all Sunday, beating five-time champion Jimmie Johnson to deliver the first Sprint Cup championship to Penske Racing.

His first act as champion? Sending a tweet, of course, from inside his car: "We did it!" with a picture of the celebration waiting for him.

"Always, throughout my whole life I've been told I'm not big enough, not fast enough, not strong enough and I don't have what it takes," Keselowski said from the championship stage. "I've used that as a chip on my shoulder to carry me through my whole career. It took until this year for me to realize that that was right, man, they were right.

"I'm not big enough, fast enough, strong enough. No person is. Only a team can do that."

So, with the Penske organization behind him, he delivered a trophy that had eluded "The Captain" since his 1972 NASCAR debut. Although his motorsports organization is considered the gold standard of open-wheel racing — 15 Indianapolis 500 wins — and his empire has made Penske one of the most successful businessmen in America, his NASCAR team has always been just average.

Then came Keselowski, the blue collar, Twitter-loving, Michigan native who visited Penske in 2008 convinced the NASCAR team could win, too.

Three years later, they hoisted the Sprint Cup trophy together at Homestead-Miami Speedway following Keselowski's 15th-place finish Sunday night.

"It's all about the people in our organization and obviously Brad coming on our board three years ago, and we set a plan and we stuck to it," the 75-year-old Penske said. "To win this championship is amazing."

Keselowski needed 125 starts to win his first championship, the fewest starts since four-time champion Jeff Gordon won his first title in 93 starts in 1995. Keselowski also won a second-tier Nationwide title in 2010, his first season with Penske and the owner's first official NASCAR championship.

Gordon, who avoided suspension this week but was fined $100,000 by NASCAR for intentionally wrecking Clint Bowyer last week at Phoenix, overcame the controversy to win the race in a 20th anniversary celebration for sponsor Dupont and Hendrick Motorsports.

It was Gordon's first victory at Homestead, which leaves Kentucky as the only active NASCAR track where he's yet to win.

Who did Gordon beat? Bowyer, of course.

And Bowyer's second-place finish moved him to a career-best second in the final standings. Third-place went to Ryan Newman, who got his break in NASCAR with Penske and spent seven seasons driving for the owner.

"He deserves this probably as much as anybody else, if not more because of what he's done for motor racing in general, NASCAR, his dedication to all forms of race cars is probably more than anybody else in the history of auto racing," Newman said. "I know this is probably one of the sweetest moments in his racing career."

Keselowski started the race up 20 points on Johnson, who blew a tire and crashed last week at Phoenix to give Keselowski a nice cushion and needing only to finish 15th or higher in the finale to wrap up his first championship. But the Penske team took nothing for granted — not after Will Power crashed in the IndyCar finale to blow a 17-point lead and lose the championship.

And this one got tight, too, especially when Keselowski ran out of gas on pit road during green flag pit stops. It put him a lap down with Johnson leading, and Keselowski and crew chief Paul Wolfe frantically tried to figure out how dire the situation had become.

Wolfe crunched the numbers, figuring the No. 2 Dodge would cycle out in the mid-20s, a lap down from the leaders.

"I know the scenario, and it's not good," Keselowski said.

But minutes later, Johnson went to pit road for his own stop and pulled away with a missing lug nut. NASCAR flagged the Hendrick Motorsports team and Johnson was forced back to pit road for another stop.

The Penske team was unsure if Keselowski wanted to know what was going on with Johnson.

"I've got a big picture story if you want to hear it," a team member radioed, then informed Keselowski that Johnson had to pit again.

"Ten-four. Thank you for telling me. We're back in the game. I got it," he said.

It got worse for Johnson from there. He broke a rear end gear in his Chevrolet and went to the garage with 40 laps to go, essentially clinching the championship for Keselowski.

"It all unraveled pretty quick," Johnson conceded.

No longer needing to save fuel, and no longer needing to play it conservatively, he waived off Wolfe's playbook.

"If he's in the garage, let's race," Keselowski said.

That's been Keselowski's attitude since he burst onto the NASCAR scene. He first caught attention as a brash driver for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Nationwide Series team, and he was unapologetic for his aggressive driving and his refusal to back down in long-running feuds with established stars Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards.

But he's been calmer and focused since teaming with Penske in 2009, and his mission has been to give Penske a title. Still, his fame has been for the tweeting, which drew him worldwide attention when he took to Twitter from the cockpit of his car during the red flag in the season-opening Daytona 500.

NASCAR loved the attention it received, but quietly admonished him later for having a phone in his car, which is banned because it can manipulate electronic fuel injection systems. So when he tweeted again last week under red at Phoenix, NASCAR fined him $25,000 — which angered fans who felt a mixed message had been sent.

But Keselowski, who was tweeting into the early morning hours Sunday, handed his phone over with no resistance right before he climbed into the car at Homestead.

The win is the first for Dodge since Richard Petty's Cup title in 1975, and comes as the manufacturer is leaving NASCAR. Penske announced days after the Daytona 500 it will move to Ford next year, and it led to Dodge's decision to pull out of NASCAR.

"Not one failure all year long in that Dodge engine, so I want to thank Dodge for what they've done for us," Penske said after Keselowski secured the title.

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News Analysis: Steroids and Back Pain: An Uneasy Match

RANDALL KINNAIRD’S legal clients had steroids injected into their backs last summer for a wide range of reasons. Of the 25, one got three shots in a two-month period when pain never totally disappeared. Another got one as a preventive measure because she was going on a trip to Europe and was worried that cobblestones would aggravate an old injury.

Now the 25 — or their survivors — have engaged Mr. Kinnaird, one of Nashville’s leading lawyers, to sue the New England Compounding Center. Three have died, one is paralyzed, several more are still hospitalized and all suffer blinding headaches — victims of the meningitis that resulted from vials of steroid medicine contaminated by fungus.

The New England Compounding Center certainly seems deserving of its current status as the prime culprit in a tragic outbreak that has killed 32 and sickened 438. The bottles of supposedly sterile steroid medication it shipped were reportedly so tainted that white fuzz could be seen floating in some vials.

But, experts say, the now notorious Compounding Center has a nationwide network of unwitting enablers and accomplices: There are the doctors who overprescribe an invasive back-pain therapy that, in studies, has not proved useful for many of the patients who get it. And there are the patients, living in an increasingly medicalized society, who want a quick fix for life’s aches and pains.

The use of steroid injections to treat back pain has skyrocketed in the past 15 years — out of proportion to growth in the number of patients with back pain, or the aging of the population. The frequency of steroid injections dispensed to Medicare patients rose 121 percent from 1997 to 2006. Washington State found that the use of back injections grew 12.6 percent between 2006 and 2009, at a cost to the state of $56 million. Some people received more than 10 shots a year.

The increase in treatment has not led to less pain over all, researchers say, and is a huge expense at a time of runaway health costs. “There are lots of places doing lots of injections for conditions that haven’t been shown to benefit,” says Dr. Janna Friedly, a researcher at the University of Washington, who added, “Sadly, some of the patients who got meningitis were probably in that category — they did not have conditions where steroid injections were indicated.”

Studies are at best inconclusive about exactly which groups of back-pain patients are likely to benefit from steroid shots. Though some patients clearly get much-needed relief, health researchers are nearly unanimous that the treatment is vastly overused in the United States.

But Dr. Laxmaiah Manchikanti, head of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, said the increasing number of spine injections was just part of “an exponential increase in all interventional techniques” and is a good thing, reflecting a better understanding of chronic pain and patients’ demands for improved pain relief.

Though doctors are still arguing, most academic researchers say there is no evidence that steroid injections are useful in easing straightforward chronic low back pain. Professional guidelines say such shots should generally not be used for back pain that is less than four to six weeks old, which studies show almost always gets better with noninvasive treatments. Although many Medicare patients get spinal injections to treat a condition called spinal stenosis, a narrowing of spaces between bones of the spine, Dr. Friedly said, shots are not used for that condition in many European countries.

Spinal injections, which can cost between $600 and $2,500, including the fees for treatment rooms, have been fostered and promoted by the rising number of pain clinics and pain specialists — mostly anesthesiologists and rehab doctors — who invest in extra training to learn procedures like spinal injections.

“There used to be only a small number of people who did this, but that’s gone way up, and reimbursement has gone up, too,” says Scott Forseen, a doctor who studies the treatment of back pain at the Georgia Health Sciences University. The number of spinal injections given in any geographical area correlates better with the number of local specialists trained in the procedure rather than the amount of back pain, Dr. Friedly says. There is an old saying in medicine: “When you go to Midas, you get a muffler.”

The shots — which may include a steroid and an anesthetic — are often dispensed at for-profit pain clinics owned by the physicians holding the needle. “There’s a lot of concern about perverse financial incentive,” Dr. Friedly added.

Mr. Kinnaird’s clients got their injections at the St. Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Clinic, a limited-liability corporation half owned by doctors, which occupied a floor of one of Nashville’s major hospitals. It gave 5,000 injections a year, or about 20 each business day, and epidural steroid injections are listed on its Web site as its “top procedure.”

Since guidelines for injections are being disputed among doctors’ groups, it is hard in most cases to say if a particular patient should or should not have been offered an injection, says Marc Lipton, a Michigan attorney who is representing more that 20 patients with fungal meningitis. Though he believes that steroid shots are overused, he says many of the patients he represents were treated appropriately, for example, receiving an injection for pain from a herniated disc in an attempt to stave off back surgery. He and other lawyers are, for now, targeting the Compounding Center in product liability lawsuits.

But, says Dr. Forseen: “You have to use injections selectively, and selectivity has gone way down. In some places, people get injections because they’ve walked in the door.”

Patients have proved eager consumers of the new medical offering, desirous of a quick cure rather than waiting the weeks or months for the normal healing process to occur.

Mr. Kinnaird, the lawyer, says: “If I hurt my back in the ’70s, my doctor would say, go to the beach, get a few beers, relax, you’ll be fine. Now if you hurt your back, you go to the doctor and right away there’s an M.R.I., and they need to fix something. Maybe you should take an injection.”

And steroid shots are not a cure-all, even for the conditions for which doctors agree an attempt is worthwhile: low back pain accompanied by signs of nerve injury like tingling or weakness in a leg. One-third of such patients will get better, one-third will show some improvement and some will show no improvement at all, Dr. Forseen said.

When Oregon’s Health Evidence Review Commission earlier this year explored narrowing reimbursement for injections to certain conditions, it got an earful of public comment from groups like the International Spine Intervention Society.

“Obviously they are not utilizing the literature correctly,” said Dr. Manchikanti, adding that attempts to limit the shots were motivated in part by an effort to control costs and by competition from other medical specialties.

Private insurers vary considerably in coverage for the procedure, though some will pay after two weeks of back pain.

Back pain is, of course, a debilitating condition. And modern medicine has produced some miraculous cures. But from now on when doctors and patients are tempted to say “what’s the harm in trying an injection” to dispense with a nagging back — they will be more aware of just how big the risk can be.

A physician and a reporter for The New York Times.

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Machinima Using Game-Themed Videos to Lure Young Men

LOS ANGELES — Big Media’s hunt for young male viewers is not going so well.

News Corporation is holding a fire sale for IGN, its online network aimed at guys. Disney XD, a cable channel for boys, is growing in popularity — among girls. Comcast’s game-focused G4 channel is retooling its entire programming strategy.

Where are all the “lost boys,” as analysts sometimes call them? Increasingly, the answer involves Machinima.

Intensely focused on 18- to 34-year-old men, Machinima (pronounced ma-SHIN-i-ma) is a Web and mobile distribution network that delivers free game-oriented shows, trailers and news reports. The company, founded in 2000, generates more than 2.2 billion video views a month, according to comScore data. Machinima Prime, a YouTube channel that arrived in August and is dedicated to highly polished episodic series, ranked as the video hub’s No. 1 destination this month.

Despite their escalating reluctance to watch television or go to the movies, young men continue to flock to traditional outlets like Disney’s ESPN or Viacom’s Comedy Central.

And Machinima is certainly not the only online network where young men congregate; Break Media operates testosterone-heavy sites like ManMade.com and HolyTaco.com.

But Machinima has rapidly evolved into a must-visit site for young men by improving the quality of its programming. The company’s mission is not dissimilar to that of cable channels: gain a foothold with inexpensive content (in Machinima’s case it was user-generated videos) and then use that perch to attract higher-quality programs, as AMC did with “Mad Men.”

Ultimately, Machinima intends to produce its own long-form episodic series.

First, Machinima must prove that YouTube can indeed become the new television — that consumers will watch long videos and come back the next week for another episode. In many ways, Machinima just pulled that off with “Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn,” a five-part live-action series.

“Forward Unto Dawn,” which cost Microsoft $10 million to make and was meant to promote the release of the game Halo 4 on Xbox, has been viewed about 27 million times; four related videos delivered 9.2 million additional views. Machinima also said it experienced very little viewer “fall off,” an industry term for people leaving after watching only a couple of minutes.

Fans understand that this kind of programming is really marketing masquerading as entertainment, said Allen DeBevoise, Machinima’s chief executive. But he contended that “high-quality content is better marketing than traditional advertising; if it’s the equivalent of what people would watch on their own anyway, fans really appreciate that.”

Halo 4 had $220 million in global sales in its first 24 hours in stores.

“If you’re a marketer and not paying serious attention to Machinima, you’re really behind the curve,” said Matt Britton, a founder of MRY, a youth-focused New York marketing firm. “College kids may not be bringing TVs to their dorm rooms anymore, but Machinima, because it has smartly built itself around YouTube, is right there on their laptops.”

NBCUniversal recently decided Machinima was the best way to bring one of its TV movies to consumers. “Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome,” a prequel to the Syfy channel’s 2004 “Battlestar Galactica” series, was cut into 10 episodes and is rolling out on Machinima Prime. “Blood and Chrome” will then run on Syfy next year as a two-hour movie.

Warner Brothers is completing a programming deal with Machinima for a new series tied to its Mortal Kombat game franchise. “Mortal Kombat: Legacy,” a nine-part series, ran on Machinima last year, and at least one installment captured over 10 million views — on par with viewership for some fantasy programs on television.

Machinima, which is based in Los Angeles and makes money by selling advertising, got its start in 2000 as a Web site dedicated to a genre of digital filmmaking that uses video game graphics to create original animated movies.

In 2005, Mr. DeBevoise and his brother, Philip, bought the Web site and set about turning it into a global entertainment network. It has about 200 employees and secured a $35 million round of financing in May; the company declined to discuss revenue or profitability.

Mr. DeBevoise said about 50 percent of Machinima’s total traffic now came from overseas. The company — with backing from MK Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Google, which owns YouTube — also has a significant presence on mobile devices.

Machinima Prime is part of YouTube’s strategy, started a year ago, to lure television viewers and advertisers with higher-quality videos, even if aimed at niche interests.

YouTube invested about $100 million in the overall effort — Machinima received an undisclosed portion — and in recent weeks YouTube began evaluating which channels had done well enough to receive a second round of financing.

In addition to Machinima Prime, YouTube successes include AwesomenessTV, aimed at 12- to 17-year-olds, and Vice, which also courts young men. In an e-mail, Malik Ducard, YouTube’s director of content strategy, called Machinima “a great example of how a Web brand with a laserlike focus on serving a single audience can drive massive eyeballs.”

Mr. Ducard added that YouTube partners like Machinima, sometimes dismissed as niche players, were adding subscribers at a rate “four times faster” than they did just a couple of years ago.

“Niche may not be the right word because that may sound small,” he said. “Billions of views is not small.”

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Israel Steps Up Aerial Strikes in Gaza

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A man injured by bombing in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday that also killed one person. More Photos »

GAZA CITY — Israel broadened its assault on the Gaza Strip on Saturday from mostly military targets to centers of government infrastructure, obliterating the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister with a barrage of five bombs before dawn.

The attack came a day after the prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, hosted his Egyptian counterpart in that very building, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world. That stature was underscored Saturday by a visit to Gaza from the Tunisian foreign minister and the rapid convergence in Cairo of two Hamas allies, the prime minister of Turkey and the crown prince of Qatar, for talks with the Egyptian president and the chairman of Hamas on a possible cease-fire.

But as the fighting ended its fourth day, with Israel continuing preparations for a ground invasion, the conflict showed no sign of abating. Gaza militants again fired long-range missiles at Tel Aviv, among nearly 60 that soared into Israel on Saturday. Israel said it hit more than 200 targets overnight in Gaza, and continued with afternoon strikes on the home of a Hamas commander and on a motorcycle-riding militant.

The White House reiterated its strong support for Israel, with Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, describing rocket fire from Gaza as “the precipitating factor for the conflict.”

“We believe Israel has a right to defend itself and they’ll make their own decisions about the tactics that they use in that regard,” Mr. Rhodes told reporters on Air Force One en route to Asia.

Hamas health officials said 45 Palestinians had been killed and 385 wounded since Wednesday’s escalation in the cross-border battle. In Israel, 3 Israeli civilians have died and 63 have been injured. Four soldiers were also wounded on Saturday.

Two rockets were fired at Tel Aviv on Saturday. One landed harmlessly, probably at sea. The other was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system in the sky above the city. An Iron Dome anti-missile battery had been hastily deployed near the city on Saturday in response to the threat of longer-range rockets.

Since Wednesday, Iron Dome has knocked 245 rockets out of the sky, the military said, while another 500 have struck Israel. The American-financed system is designed to intercept only rockets streaking toward towns and cities and ignore those likely to strike open ground.

There have been failures — on Saturday a rocket crashed into an apartment block in the southern port city of Ashdod, wounding five people —   but officials have put its success rate at 90 percent.

Analysts said there is no clear endgame to the conflict, since Israel neither wants to re-engage in Gaza nor to eliminate Hamas and leave the territory to the chaos of more militant factions.

“Ultimately,” said Efraim Halevy, a former chief of Israel’s intelligence service, “both sides want Hamas to remain in control, strange as it sounds.”

But Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Al Azhar University here, cautioned that “there is no military solution to the Gaza problem.”

“There has to be a political settlement at the end of this,” he said. “Without that, this conflict is just going to go on and on.”

President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt said late Saturday night that “there could be a cease-fire soon,” after he and other members of his government spent the day in meetings with the Turkish premiere, the Qatari prince, and the political leaders of Hamas and other Gaza factions. But Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, denied reports that a truce was imminent.

It is unclear whether the deal under discussion would solely suspend the fighting or include other issues. Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 but is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, wants to turn its Rafah crossing with Egypt into an open, free-trade zone, and for Israel to withdraw from the 1,000-foot buffer it patrols on Gaza’s northern and eastern borders.

Mr. Rhodes said the Turkish and Egyptian leaders “have the ability to play a constructive role in engaging Hamas and encouraging a process of de-escalation.”

Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, spoke Saturday with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, according to a statement from his office.

Jodi Rudoren reported from Gaza City and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram and Tyler Hicks from the Gaza Strip, Carol Sutherland and Iritz Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo.

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Google Considering Wireless Network [REPORT]

Google is looking to cut out the middleman for its Android mobile devices and begin offering wireless service itself, according to a report.

The search giant met with reps from Dish Network to partner on a wireless service “that would rival” wireless networks like AT&T and Verizon, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited “people familiar with the discussions.” The talks, however, could amount to nothing, the article notes.

[More from Mashable: Google Updates Blogger Mobile Apps to Version 2.0]

Dish bought wireless spectrum in 2008 that it plans to build out into such a network. The company has met with other, unnamed companies aside from Google, according to the report. In an interview this week, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said potential partners include companies “who would like to be in the industry” and don’t offer wireless service. He did not name Google or any other of the companies. Despite the talk, there’s speculation that AT&T might partner with Dish on the spectrum offering.

Google bid on wireless spectrum in 2008, but lost to Verizon and AT&T. Google also took a $ 500 million stake in mobile broadband firm Clearwire, which it sold this year for $ 66.5 million.

[More from Mashable: Google Launches Mobile Game You Play in Real Life]

Despite being shut out of wireless for now, Google is offering wired broadband service in Kansas City. The company also diversified into the wireless handset business last year with its $ 12.5 billion purchase of Motorola.

Bonus Gallery: Hands-On: Verizon’s Droid DNA Wows With High-Def Display

Verizon’s Droid DNA

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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