Who would bet against Facebook today, as it readies for the largest initial public offering (IPO) in the United States in the coming months?

Yet, amid the excitement, one thing that investors will read about is this troubling reminder of the threat coming from rival social networking efforts from the likes of Google, which can take away key advertising dollars.

Even while Mark Zuckerberg and company are expected to raise an initial US$5 billion from a red hot IPO, there is worry that Google will expand its offerings to target the activities that make loads of money for Facebook now.

Facebook’s 845 million active users upload 250 million photos a day, make 2.7 billion comments or “likes” a day and are part of 100 billion friendships online, according to details released for the IPO. Together, they made the eight-year-old company a neat US$1 billion  profit last year – an achievement, since users don’t always equal dollars.

Facebook’s cash cow? Advertising, which contributes 88 per cent of the company’s revenues. Yes, those little tiles on the side of the page that your friends “like” or recommend. The rest of the revenue comes from Zynga, which creates those addictive – and sometimes annoying – social games for Facebook users.

The issues? The mobile version of Facebook does not display ads, so the company could conceivably lose a stream of revenue as more users go online with their smartphones. The question then becomes one of making mobile users view the ads without irritating them enough to force them to quit using Facebook altogether.

The other issue has to do with the company’s focus on advertising, say analysts. This means it is susceptible to the fortunes of the advertising market as well as moves from rivals like Google, which has been gaining traction with its Google+ efforts of late, said Ovum’s Jan Dawson.

He pointed out: “As Google seeks to ramp up Google+, it will eat into Facebook’s share of the social networking market and with it Facebook’s share of related advertising. In addition, since much of Facebook’s revenue comes from gaming apps, as Google expands the gaming platform it is building with Google+, it threatens to dilute Facebook’s relationships with Zynga, which accounts for 12% of its revenue, and other major partners.”

Indeed, Facebook admits the threat from rivals as much in its IPO documents to the US authorities. Besides Google, it includes Microsoft and Twitter on a long list of rivals going forward.

Most industry watchers say Google+, the closest competitor, still has some way to go to shake Facebook from its deeply-entrenched position, but the search and advertising king’s alternative is ramping up fast.

Google+ already has 100 million users today after just seven months, according to one analyst, and the figure is expected to go up to 400 million by the end of 2012.

Symantec has discovered over a dozen apps with malicious code that could cede control of your smartphone to perpetrators.

In a recent blog post, the security company said the apps, which are hosted on the Android Market, can be used to propagate a “bot-like threat that can receive commands to carry out certain actions, as well as steal information from the device”.

These threats are also known as botnets, where a collection of compromised computers can be controlled by a central server to launch denial-of-service attacks. Private information such as bank account numbers on compromised devices could also be stolen by cybercriminals.

According to Symantec, the malicious code is grafted onto the apps in a package called “apperhand”. Once launched, a service with the same name may be seen running on a compromised device. A search icon will also appear on the home screen

The malicious apps appear to be from three publishers: iApps7 Inc, Ogre Games and redmicapps. About half of the apps in question have been removed from the Android Market as of today.

Malware targeting mobile devices are expected to increase this year. The hardest hit are likely to be Android-based devices, given the operating system’s large market share and open innovation platform, said ICSA Labs, a division of Verizon Business that tests and certifies security products.

With the Evernote and Skitch add-ons, features that were once available through separate apps can now be accessed directly through the Dolphin browser.

That means you can quickly save text on a webpage to Evernote, or use Skitch’s drawing tools to annotate content without firing up the respective apps.

But here’s the catch: you’ll need to first install the apps, and the add-ons are only for the Android version of Dolphin HD.

While desktop browsers have been embracing add-ons for years, makers of mobile browsers are only starting to warm up to the idea.

Hopefully, this will be a sign of things to come as more app developers start to think about integrating their apps with others for a more seamless — rather than walled garden — user experience.

Launched in March 2010, Dolphin HD was one of the first browsers for Android devices to introduce gesture-based navigation.

The browser hit its 10 million-user milestone in November 2011, three months after it made its debut on the Apple iOS platform.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched DynamoDB, a cloud database service designed to meet the growing needs of demanding Web-based applications.

DynamoDB will allow developers to launch new database tables and moderate their database capacity without downtime and performance overheads. All data is housed on solid state drives and replicated across multiple AWS availability zones to ensure high availability and durability of data.

The service is built on SimpleDB, Amazon’s other cloud database service that launched in December 2007.

According to Amazon, traditional databases are not designed to meet the performance needs of modern applications, especially popular ones that can cause a single database to reach its maximum capacity quickly.

While the problem can be fixed by distributing database workloads across multiple servers, the process is complex and requires significant time and engineering effort.

With DynamoDB, developers can focus on improving their apps, while AWS will take care of hardware provisioning, software patching and partitioning, among other administrative tasks.

Additionally, Amazon’s pay-as-you-go pricing means you only pay for the resources you need.

“Dynamo was born out of our need for a highly reliable, ultra-scalable key/value database,” said Werner Vogels, AWS’ chief technology officer, in a blog post.

“This non-relational, or NoSQL, database was targeted at use cases that were core to the Amazon e-commerce operation, such as the shopping cart and session service,” he added.

Besides Amazon, early adopters of DynamoDB include IMDB and science information provider Elsevier, which publishes thousands of books, nearly 2,000 journals and over 250,000 articles housed on rapidly changing datasets.

Darren Person, Elsevier’s chief architect, said: “Operating a distributed data store on our own is orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive to manage than traditional databases. DynamoDB delivers a high-performance service that can be easily scaled up or down to meet our needs, helping us eliminate complexity and lower costs.”

You can get started with Amazon DynamoDB using a free tier that provides 100MB of storage, and five writes and 10 reads per second (up to 40 million requests per month) at no cost.

Additional capacity is priced at hourly rates as low as US$0.01 per hour for 10 units of write capacity or 50 strongly consistent units of read capacity, while replicated SSD storage is priced at US$1 per GB per month.

Enterprises using Equinix’s data centres in Singapore and Tokyo can now connect directly to Amazon’s public cloud service.

Through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect, Equinix customers in the Asia-Pacific region can establish private network connections with Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, paying only for the network ports used and data transferred out of AWS. Data transfer into AWS is free.

Equinix, a global data centre operator, said the connectivity option will help companies cut network costs into and out of AWS, by lowering bandwidth commitments to ISPs and taking advantage of reduced data transfer rates.

Since the initial roll out to its Virginia data centre campus last year, Equinix has been extending AWS Direct Connect to other locations such as Silicon Valley to meet growing customer demand for hybrid environments.

Carpathia Hosting, a provider of managed hosting services, is using AWS Direct Connect in Equinix data centres to allow customers such as mobile app provider Urban Airship to use a mix of Amazon cloud infrastructure, along with Carpathia’s managed hosting services.

“More and more of our enterprise customers are demanding hybrid hosting solutions that combine the benefits of both dedicated infrastructure and cloud infrastructure,” said Jon Greaves, chief technology officer at Carpathia in a media statement Friday.

“For existing AWS customers, Carpathia Hosting uses AWS Direct Connect to deliver the benefits of having their dedicated infrastructure and AWS’s cloud services managed by a single provider,” he added.

Lydia Leong, research vice president at Gartner’s technology and service providers group, said the partnership between Equinix and Amazon is good for “obvious reasons”.

“For quite some time now, I’ve been evangelising the importance of carrier-neutral co-location as a ‘cloud hub’, envisioning a future where these providers facilitate cross-connect infrastructures between cloud users and cloud providers,” she said in a blog post last year.

Leong noted that widespread adoption of this model would allow an enterprise to say, get a single rack of network equipment at Equinix, and then cross-connect directly to all of their important cloud suppliers.

“It would drive cross-connect density, differentiation and stickiness at the carrier-neutral co-location providers who succeed in being the draw for these ecosystems,” she added.

eBay has partnered with SingPost and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to offer a new shipping service for eBay Singapore sellers.

Dubbed ePAC, the service lets sellers track the delivery of lightweight goods sold to American customers within six to eight working days. This service is part of eBay and SingPost’s ongoing efforts to boost trade from Singapore to the United States.

From today, eBay Singapore sellers can start using ePAC on a fully integrated platform, allowing them take orders, print labels and track the status of shipments. U.S.-based customers can also track the status of their purchased goods through their eBay account.

Oliver Hua, chief operating officer at eBay Marketplaces in the Greater China region, Southeast Asia and Japan, said Singapore sellers are highly regarded for combining good quality products at great value, and command the second highest sales in Southeast Asia, behind Thailand.

“We foresee ePAC playing a vital role in driving Singapore’s online exports to the United States as demonstrated by a similar shipping service launched with China Post and the U.S. Postal Service in September 2010, which is already processing more than 90,000 parcels a day,” he added.

The e-commerce giant has also been offering a similar service for sellers in Thailand and Hong Kong through partnerships with local postal services.

eBay’s export business is largely led by exporters in China and Hong Kong, according to the company’s Asian Exporter Index published last August.

Large exporters with annual turnovers of more than US$100,000 have experienced year-on-year growth of 26 percent across the region, with 200 exporters – predominantly based in China and Hong Kong – recording annual turnovers of over US$1 million.

The top-selling products sold by Asian exporters on eBay include clothing, jewellery, watches, computers, cellphones and auto parts.

If IBM researchers get their way, remembering passwords will soon be a thing of the past. Big Blue has recently published a video of what it thinks will become reality by 2016, such as mind reading and generating electricity from human activities, among other predictions:

Generate your own electricity
Anything that moves generates kinetic energy, which can be converted to electricity. We can tap this energy from running water, or the rotating wheels of a bicycle to power our homes and offices. IBM scientists in Ireland are already looking at ways to understand and minimise the environmental impact of converting ocean wave energy into electricity.

Biometrics
Your biological make-up could be used more extensively to authenticate access to secured systems and safeguard your identity. According to IBM, biometric data such as retina scans and voice can be combined through software to build your unique DNA-based password. The same biodata could also be used to authenticate ATM transactions, eliminating the use of magnetic strip cards, which are prone to card skimming as we’ve found out this week.

Mind reading
Mind reading has been wishful thinking among science fiction fans for decades. But their wish may soon come true. Within five years, we’ll begin to see the applications of mind reading technology. Doctors could use it to test brain patterns, assist with rehabilitation of patients and understand brain disorders such as autism. IBM researchers are now figuring out ways to link our brains to devices so you can just call someone on a smartphone by thinking about it. In the further future, you could also type on a computer by thinking about the words to say!

No more digital divide
The digital divide will cease to exist in a global society where the wealth of economies is determined by the level of access to information. In five years, the gap between information haves and have-nots will be eliminated, thanks to the adoption of mobile technology. Eighty percent of the global population of seven billion will have a mobile device, IBM predicts. It’ll be cheaper to own a cellphone than open a bank account or buy a laptop. And because of this, rural communities are able to achieve much more than before, such as checking weather reports on their cellphones to determine the best time to fertilise their crops.

Death to junk mail
Too often, we’re flooded with irrelevant information including junk mail. In five years, spam e-mail will become personal notes. Through analytics technology, computers will be able to filter data that’s important and relevant, and bring you information that you would have asked for. Imagine your phone knowing that your favourite band is coming to town and putting tickets on hold for you to purchase.

Do IBM’s predictions sound too far fetched to you? Let us know in the comments.

As technology users welcome 2012 everywhere, it’s clear the year that had just passed was filled with no little controversy and memorable incidents.

From Steve Jobs’ death to the delay of the much-awaited iPhone 5, from the rise of Android devices to Nokia’s return with its Windows Phone devices, and finally, with the potent mix of mobile devices and social media that  helped ignite protests in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, but also encouraged the thuggery of the London riots, 2011 was a big year in technology.

The next 12 months look to be just as interesting, as existing technologies mature and grow, while other new trends emerge. Here are five things to look out for in 2012:

1. The arrival of the “transform” device
Just a few years ago, it was unfathomable that people would junk their desktop PCs for laptops. Because the portable device had a smaller screen and usually lesser computing prowess, the portable device never matched up to the silent giant under the desk.

These days, however, with power-efficient yet advanced CPUs and graphics chips, laptops can do the job just as well, plus they can be hooked up with a monitor, keyboard and mouse easily to transform into a desktop PC in a jiffy.

The same is happening with tablets and smartphones. In 2012, there will be more devices like the Motorola Atrix, first unveiled in early 2011, that basically turns into a laptop once it is docked with a laptop dock. The Atrix taps on its dual-core chip to run Webtop, which is based on Ubuntu Linux, to give users a regular desktop OS look and feel. It runs the OS you prefer at any time, all in one device.

Essentially, you only need one smart device – your phone or tablet – to do everything you need in future. What you will have are many docks or keyboards and screens to hook up to this increasingly powerful (expect quad core gizmos in 2012, starting with the Asus Transformer Prime) yet portable device in your hands.

Desktops and laptops will definitely still be around, but the mobile gadget is set to be the central device in your life.

2.  Windows 8 brings “touch” on everyday PCs
Related to this portable device rush is Windows 8. The upcoming Microsoft OS, expected this year, is being billed as the biggest upgrade in years for one reason – it is going to unify both mobile devices and PCs with one OS.

It works with touch, and features a Windows Phone-like tile system, where users will be given a panel of information and the ability to go into the nitty gritty only if they wish to. The big icons and friendlier interface also mean that this is the first time the Start button and taskbar – at least in their present forms – will be out of the picture.

Along with Windows 8′s arrival, expect computing of all types – from smartphones to laptops to desktops – to tap on the novel OS.

What to expect? Look to something like the Samsung Slate PC, which crams a powerful Intel dual-core CPU into a thin, portable tablet that can be hooked up with a keyboard and screen to become a full-fledged desktop. It runs Windows 7 now, but come next year, devices like these will sport the even more touch-friendly Windows 8.

3. Tougher times for Apple
It’s not just Steve Jobs’ passing that will affect Apple for the coming year, but also the fact that it is a company that wins big because of the very sharp innovation curve that it sets out each year.

When the iPod was commoditised, the iPhone became the next big thing; when Android smartphones managed to grab huge chunks of market share in 2010, the iPad became the market-conquering portable gizmo in a class of its own.

The question in 2012 is: what next? Surely, there’d be new versions of the iPhone (after the disappointing iPhone 4S) and iPad (which still has a good lead over all over Android rivals). But can these upgrades keep Apple at the top of the pile, or will it see its innovation and design lead cut short in 2012?

The emergence of the Windows-based Ultrabooks in 2011 from Asus, in particular, is a clear answer to how fast the competition is catching up, in this case, with the MacBook Air.

In the next 12 months, Apple will find the going even tougher. Users are often willing to accept Apple’s closed “my way or the highway” approach because of the perceived better design and innovation from the company, but it has to keep coming up with new winners to redefine the field. In 2012, it needs another big winner to pull away.

4. Say hi again to a smart TV
It’s been prophecised several times before, but 2012 could finally see the arrival of smart TVs that do more than just show your cable TV programmes or Blu-ray movies in all their 60-inch Full HD glory. These TVs could be the conduit to many services and apps that were just becoming common in 2011.

Yes, Facebook will be there, as will Twitter and other PC-based services and apps that you had seen on your 2011 Samsung or LG TV when you were free enough to venture into some of its sub menus. But what about YouTube, or rather, a YouTube-type service – on steroids?

Think of an app that is smart enough to offer the same multi-tasking you’d expect on a PC screen, say, talk to a friend on a chat window while watching a live football match, or checking out background information from Wikipedia on the JFK assassination, if you are watching a documentary on it on a National Geographic app, for example.

Not so new, I hear you say? The main difference this time is that the intelligence is built into the TV and possibly delivered straight to the screen – over the TV’s Net link – instead of via a third-party set-top box and third party broadcaster.

Sure, it’d be a leap of faith for content executives who have always preferred to work with their favoured “platform partners”, i.e. broadcasters like StarHub and SingTel.

But for indie channels and content owners looking to jumpstart their work by showing their programmes direct to viewers, they can now create their own content and app and reach out to viewers – in the same way cellphone app developers sell their apps direct to users.

Creating a smart TV programme would thus involve skills needed to develop an app for, say, the mobile phone or tablet. Will this model work for TV? Well, it’s already proven already by Apple and Google in their respective app marketplaces, and what’s there to stop you paying S$2 for a movie on a smart TV, just like you’d buy an app on your phone?

If rumours hold true and Apple decides to create its own TV set in 2012 or if Google takes YouTube to the big screen by signing up more content creators as it has done in 2011, then the next 12 months could see big changes in the way video content is created, delivered and consumed in the big screen in the living room.

5. Fibre broadband takes off in Singapore
This is a banker of a trend, because we know that 95 per cent of the city will be covered by the fibre optic network this year. Going by the long waitlist to turn on a fibre broadband service now – up to a month with M1, we are told by users – the demand for light-speed downloads is going to be even higher in 2012.

It helps, of course, that the network has finally forced open a market that once was dominated by SingTel and StarHub.

Take M1, for example. It used to have to rent the network from the two telcos, but now it can get wholesale access at the same price as its bigger rivals, and it can price its services competitively, as a result. Its S$39-a-month 100Mbps fibre plan sold at computer expos in 2011, for one, has become the benchmark to follow in 2012.

In a statement to the stock exchange hours ago, SPH said the United States Internet company had plagiarised its articles by “substantially reproducing the words and expressions used in SPH’s articles without permission”. 

SPH alleged that Yahoo! had reproduced ”identical paragraphs, sentences, phrases and/or words of SPH’s articles and the paraphrasing of sentences, phrases and/or words in SPH’s articles by merely replacing them with synonyms”.

The Singapore publisher also said that it could bring up more evidence of further copyright infringements, beyond the 23 instances it had raised earlier, after it filed its defence in the High Court on Wednesday to a Yahoo! counter-suit.

The legal dispute first broke out in November, when SPH sued Yahoo’s Southeast Asia outfit and claimed that the online group had reproduced 23 of its newspaper articles without permission. Yahoo! swiftly denied this and counter-sued SPH for copyright infringement, alleging that SPH’s Stomp citizen journalism site had infringed on its copyright on at least two occasions.

To this, SPH claimed on Wednesday that Yahoo! had only acquired the copyright to the content a day before it counter-sued, and thus did not own the content when they were first posted by third parties on the SPH site.

As the two media giants lock horns, the tussle is being closely watched as the first such challenge between old and new media here.

The dispute is also played out against a backdrop of increasingly tight competition for Internet “eyeballs”, as more of Singapore’s well-connected news consumers head online for the latest breaking stories and commentaries.

The new service will be available at Singapore’s central financial district at launch, along with other high traffic areas like Orchard, City Hall, Marina Bay and Novena. By end 2012, SingTel expects to provide coverage for 80 per cent of users, and 95 per cent by end 2013.

Rival telco M1 had launched a limited LTE service earlier this year, but it offered this only to business customers. SingTel’s service is open to consumers as well.

The “red” telco predicts typical day-to-day speeds of between 3.4Mbps to 21Mbps, which will be good enough for video conferencing, whether users are at home or on the go.

For now, the limited service will only be available first on USB dongles that plug into laptops, though LTE phones and tablets have already been available in the US for close to a year now, and Samsung is said to be among the first to unveil an LTE version of the popular Galaxy S II here in Singapore in Q1, 2012.

The big problem for the telco would be the price. At S$69.90 a month, the LTE service can seem expensive to most users of its current 3.5G services, which cost from S$29.90 (up to 3.6Mbps) to S$59.90 (up to 21Mbps). M1′s service, by the way, costs S$59.40.

SingTel’s price is strangely structured as well. For S$69.90, users get 50GB of regular 3G data (up to 21Mbps) and 10GB of LTE data, according to the new Mobile Prestige 75 plan.

But do users know when they are using 3G and when they hop over to LTE? Fortunately, there is a cap of S$94.16 in terms of cost, so at least you won’t get a bill shock of a few thousand dollars.

Also to SingTel’s credit, it’s not calling the LTE service “4G”, as many American telcos have. 4G is defined, at least by the folks who work out wireless standards at the International Telecommunications Union, as a technology that offers 100Mbps downloads. LTE is what many would call pre-4G.

Here are SingTel’s prices, if you are thinking of hooking up to LTE: