Webware

OpenTable was the special of the day on Wall Street on Thursday.

The restaurant-reservation company's stock soared on its first day of trading on Nasdaq, gaining nearly 60 percent to close at $31.89 after selling 3 million shares at $20 a share during its initial public offering Wednesday. Nearly 5 million shares changed hands, trading as high as $35.50.

OpenTable's stock performance is the biggest first-day gain for an IPO since energy-management systems firm Orion Energy Systems gained 65 percent in its debut in December 2007, according to IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.

OpenTable's revenue comes from monthly subscription fees charged to restaurants for access to the company's service, as well as a $1 fee paid by restaurants for each seated guest derived from reservations made on OpenTable's site.

The company earned 2 cents per share on nearly $16 million in revenue in the quarter ended March 31, 2009, and lost 10 cents per share on revenue of $13.2 million in 2008.

The San Francisco-based company says it has 10,000 restaurant customers around the world and has seated more 100 million diners since its inception in 1998.

Facebook plans to announce at a developer event Monday that it will open up user-contributed information to third-party developers, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.

The move would allow developers to build applications and services that--with users' permission--access user videos, photos, notes, and comments. The move would be a significant change for the social-networking site, which had previously retained tight control over the site and how developers interact with it.

To allow developers to take advantage of the free feature, Facebook users would have to give the companies access to their data, and users' privacy settings would extend to new services built, according to the report.

Allowing developers to track shared data would be another salvo in its assault on micro-blogging site Twitter, which allows third-party developers to build applications and services on top of its service.

The move seems a continuation of APIs (application programming interfaces) Facebook launched in February that let developers access content and methods for sharing in Facebook apps including Status, Notes, Links, and Video.

Of course, all this hinges on persuading Facebook's 200 million users to share their personal data, a topic that ruffled some feathers in February. Facebook users threatened to revolt after the company announced changes to its terms of service that had meant that its license on user content--a longstanding but little-publicized claim to an "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" for promotional efforts--would no longer expire if a member deleted his or her Facebook account.

But facing a rebellion from thousands of users and a possible federal complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the social-networking service returned to its previous terms.

Posts to CitizenQuasar Twitter page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)

An Oklahoma City man who allegedly threatened on Twitter to turn a tax protest into a massacre has been arrested on suspicion of making interstate threats in what is believed to be the first federal prosecution based on posts made to the micro-blogging site.

The FBI arrested Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, after agents identified him as Twitter user CitizenQuasar. Using the micro-blogging site, Hayden allegedly threatened to start a "war" against the government at the Oklahoma City Capitol where a "Tea Party" tax protest was planned.

"START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!," read a message posted at 8:01 p.m. on April 11, which was followed by, "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!" Another post said: "I really don' give a (expletive) anymore. Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the(m) on the State Capitol steps."

Hayden directed many of his tweets toward another Oklahoma City man he erroneously thought was an organizer of the protest. Wired tracked down Earl Shaffer, a 68-year-old retiree who Hayden allegedly tweeted about, including posts with his phone number.

"He seemed to know stuff about me, but I don't know how or why," Shaffer told Wired. "He called me a few days before that tea party and let me know somehow he got my name as one of the organizers. I don't have the energy."

Shaffer told CNET News that he has never met Hayden and is unnerved by the situation.

"I have no idea who this guy is," Shaffer said. "It is very much a concern that he mentions my being killed."

One of the last messages posted to the site on April 15 says CitizenQuasar is "Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol. Let's see what happens."

Hayden was arraigned on April 16 and released to an Oklahoma City halfway house, according to various media reports.

The U.S. intelligence community has expressed concern that terrorists might use Twitter to coordinate attacks. A draft Army intelligence report prepared by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and posted to the Federation of American Scientists Web site examined the possible ways terrorists could use mobile and Web technologies such as the Global Positioning System, digital maps, and Twitter mashups to plan and execute terrorist attacks.

In response to criticism that small business were largely powerless against negative reviews on Yelp, the community reviews site has rolled out a feature that allows business owners to respond to reviews of their establishments, whether good or bad.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote in a company blog Thursday that the free feature was rolled out Wednesday:

Last night we rolled out a highly anticipated feature that allows business owners to publicly comment on their reviews. Already we've seen a number of sharp-eyed businesses make good use of this new functionality to provide additional context around specific reviews for the benefit of consumers and yelpers alike.

The service was created to give business owners a way to provide constructive feedback in a public forum, instead of the previous system, which required businesses to correspond with users through private messages, Yelp told its " elite users" in an e-mail earlier this month. The feature is expected to help quell some business owners' biggest complaint about the social reviews site--that businesses had few avenues to respond to negative reviews or unfounded claims.

Business owner comments will be given a more stringent review than user comments, and Yelp promises to remove any owner-written comments deemed disparaging, attacking, or pandering with some sort of incentive. The company has put up a guide that clarifies what businesses should and should not do with the new system.

Before business owners can use the comment feature, they must claim ownership of the business at biz.yelp.com, Stoppelman wrote.

The new feature is being introduced in the wake of some business owners resorting to libel lawsuits against former clients. In January, a San Francisco chiropractor filed a lawsuit against a patient who wrote a negative review of him on Yelp, but that suit was quickly settled.

A similar lawsuit soon followed in which a California dentist sued a couple, claiming libel over a negative review posted to Yelp's site. Yelp was named as a defendant in that case, but the plaintiff's attorney indicated at the time that the reviews site would likely be dismissed as a defendant because Web sites are protected against liability for content their users post.

An example of a business owner responding to a negative review on Yelp.

(Credit: Yelp)

Updated at 11:32 a.m. PST with a summary of the bug fixes.

Mozilla released an update to Firefox 3 on Tuesday that patches 12 security vulnerabilities, four of which it rated as critical.

Firefox 3.0.9, the Web browser's third update this year, fixes two critical vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser engine and two in its JavaScript engine, according to a security advisory posted Tuesday:

Mozilla developers identified and fixed several stability bugs in the browser engine used in Firefox and other Mozilla-based products. Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances, and we presume that with enough effort, at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code.

One critical security bug fixed crashes caused by memory corruption, which the developers felt could have been used at some point to run arbitrary code.

Two other high-profile bugs involved a misinterpretation of a particular Adobe Flash code that could have been exploited, and a URI mismatch that also could have led to arbitrary JavaScript executions. However, there's no evidence in the bugs that these security holes had been exploited.

AOL.com and AIM.com Web mail users should once again be able to view attached images inline and without hiccups. A bug created in Firefox 3.0.7 caused images to break where they had loaded properly in Firefox 3.0.6. Also, users who noticed previously stored cookies mysteriously disappearing should find that bug repaired.

The release comes as Mozilla prepares to release the fourth beta test of Firefox 3.5--the next version of the open-source browser. Mozilla had originally planned to release its new "Shiretoko" version of Firefox in early 2009. But after releasing Firefox 3.1 beta 3 last month, the organization behind the browser said a fourth beta is planned--and with the new version number, 3.5.

Expected changes in Firefox 3.5 include faster execution of Web-based JavaScript programs, a private-browsing mode, native support for the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) technology for exchanging data between servers and browsers, and built-in audio and video abilities for bypassing Flash or other multimedia technologies.

In March, security-testing company Secunia reported that Mozilla had more vulnerabilities in its Web browser last year than Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera combined, but that Mozilla dealt with those flaws more quickly than Microsoft did.

Meanwhile, Firefox continues to chip away at Internet Explorer's market dominance. Mozilla now has 22.05 percent of the global browser market share, compared with IE's 66.82 percent, a drop of more than seven percentage points in a year, according to figures from Web metrics company Net Applications.

Updates for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available at the Mozilla site. (Downloads in all languages are available here.) Firefox 3 users will receive an update notification within 48 hours, or they can download the update manually by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu.

CNET's Seth Rosenblatt contributed to this report.

CNN gained nearly a million Twitter followers on Wednesday when it acquired the @cnnbrk Twitter account.

The account, the largest on Twitter with more than 947,000 followers, had been maintained and nurtured by James Cox. CNN did not disclose financial details of the acquisition, probably because rules at the microblogging site prohibit the selling of Twitter accounts.

The acquisition comes as the race to 1 million Twitter followers heats up. As of Wednesday afternoon, Ashton Kutcher was in second place with 917,000 followers, followed closely by Britney Spears, who has about 913,000 followers.

Kutcher publicly challenged CNN to a race to 1 million users on Tuesday in a video posted to Qik.com.

"I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter," Kutcher said. "And so I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner--because I don't think it's gonna happen."

CNN accepted Kutcher's challenge Tuesday on the "Larry King Show."

Kutcher, who is best known as star of TV's "That '70s Show" and husband of actress Demi Moore, has said he will donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day if he is first to 1 million followers.

Meanwhile, game publisher Electronic Arts is getting in on the action, promising to put Kutcher's 1 millionth follower in a future EA game and give that person a copy of every game EA produces in 2009--but only if Kutcher beats CNN to the million-follower mark.

Ashton Kutcher campaigns for 1 million followers on his Twitter page.

(Credit: CNET)

Updated March 5 at 10 a.m. to clarify link policy, and at 12:20 p.m. to address privacy concerns.

Google Health has introduced a new feature that lets people share their online health records with designated doctors, friends, and family members.

Google said the move is in response to people's concerns that caregivers and loved ones might not be up-to-date on all the details of a patient's health situation, especially in the event of an emergency.

Google Health now lets people share medical information online with caregivers and loved ones.

(Credit: Google)

Sameer Samat, director of product management at Google, explained his personal impetus behind the new feature in a company blog post on Wednesday:

Just a few years ago, my father suffered a minor heart attack and was sent to the ER. I arrived on the scene in a panic, and was asked what medications he was taking. To my surprise, I had no clue. If my father had a Google Health account, and had shared his profile with me, I would have been up-to-date on his current medications.

Along with the sharing feature, Google added a graphing feature that lets people enter lab results and visually track trends in their medical test results, such as their cholesterol levels.

Google Health also lets people create graphs to track trends in their medical test results.

(Credit: Google)

Recognizing the sensitive nature of sharing health records, Google said it has built in several security measures to preserve privacy. Users choose who can view their histories, and the link to the patient's profile will work only in connection with those people's e-mail addresses--meaning the link won't work if it is forwarded to a third party. Users can also decide what information they want to share, and those allowed to view the profile will not have the ability to edit the data. Users will also be able to see exactly who has reviewed the profile.

However, one security measure that is a bit confusing is a feature that restricts the usability lifespan of the e-mailed link to only 30 days. Unless the user is diligent about regularly sending links to loved ones, this protection could negate the feature's value in the event of an emergency. While this was initially interpreted by some to refer to a continuous process of sending e-mail links to partners, it apparently applies only to the initial invitation.

Google also announced a feature that lets users print wallet- and letter-size hard copies of their profile, including medications, allergies, conditions, and treatments. But the value of these printouts may be questionable if they are not updated regularly.

Users concerned with privacy should also note that Google Health isn't regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law designed to protect patients' privacy. Google also admits that some employees will have access to users' records.

"Within Google, only the people who are operating and improving Google Health have access to user information, and they are bound by strict policies to not disclose this information to others, either within Google or to the outside world," Google said in a help page.

Google Health, which is dedicated to the digitization of health records, launched in May 2007. Microsoft has also planned a medical records service called HealthVault. President Obama, meanwhile, has made it clear that he plans to make digital health records part of his health care reform agenda.

Mozilla on Wednesday released an update to the Firefox Web browser that its developers said fixes eight security issues found in Firefox 3.0.6, six of which were rated critical.

The most serious of the vulnerabilities fixed in version 3.0.7 for Windows, Mac, and Linux could allow attackers to run arbitrary code on a victim's computer, Mozilla warned in security advisories Wednesday.

The six critical flaws affect the browser's garbage collection--which monitors how Firefox modules use the computer's memory--as well as the browser's PNG libraries and in the layout and JavaScript engines.

Mozilla developers said they weren't sure the layout and JavaScript flaws could be exploited.

"Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," Mozilla said in an advisory.

Updates for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available at the Mozilla site. Firefox 3 users will receive an update notification within 48 hours, or they can download the update manually by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu.

The update--Mozilla's second this year--comes as Firefox continues to chip away at Internet Explorer's market dominance. Mozilla now has 21.77 percent of the global browser market share, compared with IE's 67.44 percent, a drop of more than 7 percentage points in a year, according to figures from Web metrics company Net Applications.

Apple gave up a sliver of Internet market share last month, according to preliminary figures released Sunday by Web metrics company Net Applications.

February figures from Net Applications on operating system share amid Internet use.

(Credit: Net Applications)

The Mac OS had been hovering around the 10 percent mark among operating systems accessing the Web. But in its Operating System Market Share report for February, Net Applications showed the Mac OS at 9.71 percent, down from 9.93 percent in January. Meanwhile, Microsoft Windows' Internet share increased to 89.37 percent from 88.26 percent in January.

February figures from Net Applications on Windows 7 beta usage.

(Credit: Net Applications)

In a separate report, Net Applications reported spikes in usage share of Windows 7--the follow-on to Windows Vista potentially due out later this year--after Microsoft released the public beta of the operating system in January. In the report, Net Applications attributed these spikes to weekend users:

Similar to Windows Vista, Windows 7 usage share is showing a pattern of being much higher on weekends than on weekdays. In contrast, Windows XP has an inverse trendline. XP's share is higher on weekdays due to Microsoft's relatively high business vs. residential share of Windows XP.

This is an indication of strong interest in Windows 7, since it does not come pre-installed on a computer like Vista. Beta users are taking the time and effort to install it on their home computers, since corporations generally prohibit beta operating systems to be used in production environments.

February figures from Net Applications on mobile browsing market share.

(Credit: Net Applications)

In the mobile browsing arena, Net Applications reported that it had taken its first detailed look at market share and pronounced Apple's iPhone as having a "commanding lead" with 66.61 percent of the market. But, Net Applications noted, "Android and BlackBerry are rapidly gaining market share. This does not mean that iPhone web browsing is shrinking, because the overall market is growing rapidly."

Upstart Android, which Google released in October, came in fourth with 6.15 percent, following No. 2 Java ME's 9.06 percent and No. 3 Windows Mobile's 6.91 percent.