bank

Online games phenom Zynga and Japanese Internet and telecom giant SoftBank have announced a joint venture to develop and distribute social games across Japan.

The new Tokyo-based service will be called Zynga Japan and is Zynga's first foray into that country.

The companies also said SoftBank had completed a $150 million investment in Zynga, which has been previously reported.

It's Zynga's second major move into Asia. In May, the start-up acquired China-based social gaming developer XPD Media.

San Francisco-based Zynga, of course, has been on a tear of late too, striking deals with Yahoo and Google, as … Read more

Citibank has fixed a flaw in its iPhone app that was inadvertently storing customer account data on the mobile devices, the company said on Monday.

"During a recent review, we discovered that our U.S. Citi Mobile iPhone banking app was accidentally saving information related to customer accounts in a hidden file on their iPhones," the company said in a statement. "This information may also have been saved on their computer if they had been synchronizing their iPhone with their computer via iTunes."

Citi has released an update to its iPhone app that corrects the problem … Read more

NEW YORK--When my friend told me he thought there was a chance he could help me get to see the largest deposit of gold on the planet, you might say I was a little excited.

It's not that I hadn't seen the visceral representation of massive wealth up close and personal, and even recently. After all, only last month, I got a behind-the-scenes tour of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving & Printing's production line of the brand-new, next-generation $100 bills, and found myself staring at $38.4 million in cash.

And not long after that, I … Read more

The massive earthquake in Haiti in January destroyed a third or more of the country's banks and ATMs, but even before the quake fewer than 1 in 10 Haitians had ever used a traditional bank.

Aiming to broaden access to financial institutions and aid in the recovery, the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Tuesday a plan to back up to $10 million in funding to spur the use of cell phone banking, an approach that has worked elsewhere to bring financing to the poor.

"Out of the ruins of Haiti's tragic … Read more

People with Web-browsing phones are spending a lot more of their minutes accessing social networks these days, according to a new study from ComScore.

The study, released Wednesday, pegs social networking as the fastest growing activity among people with smartphones and other advanced phones that offer Web browsing, which are also known as feature phones.

Among the 69.6 million phone users who tapped mobile apps over the three-month period ending in April, 14.5 million of them accessed social networks--a 240 percent jump from the same period in 2009.

Among the nearly 73 million who used mobile browsers, 30 … Read more

A series of gaffes at Blippy, Google, and a Midwest bank exposed the credit card numbers of four individuals within Google search results for more than two months.

Friday was easily the worst day in the history of Blippy, a young start-up that enables people to create social networks around sharing information on goods and services they buy. VentureBeat discovered that credit card numbers of four Blippy users could be found in Google's search index, and it published its findings in a story, forcing the start-up's three founders to scramble to repair the damage and get the numbers … Read more

Even if your PC is equipped with up-to-date anti-malware software, hardware and software firewalls, and other security measures, it can still become infected. The weak link in computer security is the wetware: the human beings who use the machine. And there's simply no fool-proof defense against operator error.

That's why any PC security plan has to assume that eventually, some piece of malware will breach the defenses. And these days, infections can do considerable damage without being detected. Here are five ways — some more practical than others — to reduce the risk of someone stealing the sensitive data on … Read more

Quicken Essentials offers numerous useful tools to track your finances on the Mac, but it falls short by leaving out some important features found in Windows versions. The interface has been rebuilt from the ground up to make Mac users feel at home by following the design and navigation schemes of other Mac programs like iTunes. All of your accounts, transactions, credit cards, reports, and program tools are easily accessible from the left sidebar (what they call the Source List), showing all the information for each in the main register window. Like iTunes, you can click and drag to expand … Read more

CNET Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg joins The 404 for an extra long and extra random episode that includes an exciting contest--listen to hear your chance to win a pair of Monster Turbine Pro In-Ear Speakers!

We're never entirely sure what will happen when CNET Audiophiliac Steven Guttenberg gets on the mic, but Lil Saint Steve always brings toys when he comes to town, and today he drops knowledge on vacuum-tube amplifiers and how a certain Panasonic Blu-ray player uses a Digital Tube Sound Simulator to enhance its audio qualities.

All this home theater talk gives us the perfect outlet for our rage against NBC's tape-delay of the 2010 Olympics. In our digital age of Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, and a million other gadgets that quench our thirst for instant gratification, everyone already knows the Olympic results before the network finally airs them on television! As a result, the sports tickers on ESPN continue to spoil ratings for browsers who just want to find out what time the events are on, which does not make Jeff a happy guy. Could Twitter, aka the world's collective unconscious, be the source to blame?

Steve is also on the show to give us a preview of a new contest in collaboration with The 404! It won't officially start until next week, but The Audiophillie Music Awards For Excellence In Recorded Sound will ask for high-quality demo recordings of you or your unsigned band, which Steve will judge and choose six winners based on what he thinks sounds the best from a technical standpoint.

Each winner will receive a pair of high-end Monster Turbine Pro In-Ear Speakers valued at $300-$400! Keep in mind that this won't be a judgment on the songwriting or composition, but rather an analysis of the recording itself. Check out more details after the break, and we'll officially announce the contest a week from today with all the information on how you can enter--so stay tuned!