Families typically know what to do with the belongings of loved ones who've died, but what do you do with their Twitter accounts?

With 145 million users--and adding 300,000 new ones each day--a surprising number of families are left with this befuddling question, not only for Twitter but for other social networks.

Recently, Twitter took out the guess work and posted its policy for handling accounts of deceased users on its website.

"It's always been our policy internally that people could write in about deceased users. We made it more public-facing last week due to user inquiries," said Del Harvey, a Twitter spokeswoman, in an e-mail to The Times.

The San Francisco-based company requires that family members send their contact information, relationship to the deceased and a news article or obituary for proof of death either by e-mail, mail or fax, which is similar to Facebook Inc.'s policy on the matter.

Then, per their requests, Twitter says it will help family members obtain a backup of the deceased person's public Tweets, which are messages of 140 characters or less, or delete the account completely.

"If an account is removed from Twitter, it will no longer be publicly visible and will be automatically slated for complete removal from the Twitter system," Harvey said.

If family members decide not to delete it, the account will "exist in the same way" and people would still be able to follow it.

On Facebook, accounts of deceased users are identified as such. 

Those accounts also could show up in the "who to follow" suggestion box, which is something that Twitter may not have much control over since it is based on a variety of automated algorithms, including who you follow and who those people follow.

But both Twitter and Facebook, which added its 500-millionth user last month, are clear about one thing: No one, not even family members, can access a deceased person's account.

--Kristena Hansen

More overseas ripples from the Wi-Fi spying mess: Google Inc.’s Seoul office was raided by South Korean police who said they suspect the Internet giant of illegally collecting and storing data on users.

Officials confiscated computers and hard drives as they look into whether Google violated the country’s privacy and communications laws.

Google, already facing a 37-state probe in the U.S., an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and other investigations overseas, had been planning on rolling out its “Street View” service in South Korea, which is one of Asia’s most wired countries. Last May, the company began dispatching cars to roam South Korea to photograph neighborhoods for the mapping service.

Google has said that it inadvertently collected data from unsecured wireless networks while taking photos of city streets and has apologized. It maintains that it has done nothing illegal. Raids are not uncommon in South Korea and do not necessarily mean that Google will face charges.

"We can confirm that the police have visited Google Korea in conjunction with their investigation around data collection by Street View cars," a Google spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "We will cooperate with the investigation and answer any questions they have."

-- Jessica Guynn

For those of us who have dreamed of "The Force" and fallen short of levitating a spaceship (or anything, for that matter), there are products hitting the market that are designed to be operated by mental power. Below is a demonstration of a Mattel toy that uses brainwaves to move foam balls around an obstacle course. More consumer products -- including games, electronics, medical devices and smart-phone apps -- will hit the market in the future.

Read the full story here.

-- Shan Li

 

 

 

 

An executive who oversees hardware engineering for the iPhone is leaving Apple Inc., a company spokesman said Monday.

Apple did not say why the executive, Mark Papermaster, senior vice president of iPhone and iPod hardware engineering, was leaving the company. Papermaster couldn't be reached for comment.

But according to news reports citing unnamed sources, Papermaster apparently was being left out of the decision-making process and had lost the confidence of Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs.

Papermaster's departure adds to Apple's public relations woes related to its new iPhone 4. The controversy has been dubbed "antennagate" because of reception problems that have plagued the device since its launch in June.

Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said Papermaster's responsibilities will be assumed by Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh hardware engineering.

"Mr. Mansfield already manages groups that create many of the key technologies for the iPhone and the iPod touch, including the A4 chip, Retina display and touch screens," Dowling said in a statement.

Before joining Apple last year, Papermaster, 49, had worked for IBM for more than two decades. He was heavily recruited by Apple, which led IBM to file a lawsuit against Papermaster when he tried to leave. IBM accused Papermaster of violating a noncompetition agreement and said it feared he would divulge company secrets in his new position.

IBM settled with Papermaster, letting him join Apple in April 2009. At Apple, he replaced Tony Fadell, who had a major role in the development of the iPod.

Under Papermaster, Apple had its most successful product launch with the iPhone 4, which sold 1.7 million units in its first three days.

Despite the iPhone 4's immediate success, users complained of significant signal loss and dropped calls when held in a certain way. Many said the issue was due to a defective antenna, which is a steel frame that wraps around the device and is a design unique to the iPhone 4.

At first Apple instructed users on how to properly hold the phone or suggested they purchase a rubber "bumper," which retail at about $30 each. It then blamed the issue on a misconfiguration of how the signal bars are displayed and subsequently issued an update to the operating system, iOS 4.0.1, as a fix.

Jobs later held a news conference in response to Consumer Reports magazine's announcement that it could not recommend the iPhone 4 because of a design flaw in the antenna. Jobs said Apple would offer owners a free rubber bumper that would resolve the problem.

-- Kristena Hansen

Photo: Apple CEO Steve Jobs discusses the iPhone 4's reception problems at a news conference in July. Credit: Kimberly White / Reuters

Despite nearly a year's effort, negotiators for Google and Verizon have crafted a framework for net neutrality that fumbles one of the central issues involved in the debate: the principle of non-discrimination. That's why the proposal is more likely to be just another talking point than a major breakthrough in the debate among network operators, Web companies and consumer groups.

Proponents of net neutrality rules -- a category that ostensibly includes Google -- want to stop Internet service providers from picking winners and losers among content and service providers online. The theory is, there's not enough competition among broadband providers in many parts of the country to rely on market forces to prevent ISPs from abusing their position as potential gatekeepers.

The would-be rulemakers face a number of non-trivial challenges, including how to differentiate between "good" network-management activities (e.g. filtering out spam) and "bad" ones (e.g. blocking a competitor's Internet telephone service). Nor is it easy to craft rules that still allow ISPs to innovate and do not discourage Wall Street from investing in them.

The compromise struck by Google and Verizon ...

Google made another play for the social networking space Friday with its acquisition of Slide, which makes games, applications and widgets for websites such as Facebook and MySpace.

The San Francisco developer provides free apps that Facebook users can install on their profiles in order to play simple games with friends or to arrange photo slide shows.

Slide's SuperPoke application and its animal-centric variations, for example, are a family of popular social games with which players can virtually hug friends or raise a pet pig. A feature similar to Slide's Top Friends was eventually implemented by Facebook into every profile, allowing users to rank online buddies.

Google didn't immediately return a request for comment on the financial details of the deal, but a report on the website TechCrunch says Google has agreed to pay $182 million plus $46 million in employee bonuses. Google's stock fell 1.7% on Friday, exceeding the 0.4% drop of the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index.

Faced with the skyrocketing popularity of Facebook, Google has been searching for ways to make products that are more fun and collaborative.

Apple Inc.'s own online support forum is heavy with user complaints that their iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G models are slower, have a quickly drained battery life and overheat, among other glitches, after upgrading to the new iOS 4 operating software.

But on Wednesday, Apple said it was investigating iOS 4 issues only related to iPhone 3G user complaints, not the iPhone 3GS.

"We're not receiving any reports regarding it being an issue with the iPhone 3GS," said Natalie Harrison, an Apple spokeswoman. If customers are having problems, we advise them to contact Apple Care for assistance."

Chris Squires, of Bakersfield, said he called Apple immediately when his entire contact list was wiped out after upgrading his iPhone 3GS to the iOS 4, but the employee couldn't figure out what happened. And with all the other issues he's been having, he said he's been trying to find a way to revert back to his old operating system.

"It doesn't sync up to my Bluetooth anymore," Squires said. "If I'm in the middle of a text or e-mail or website, it'll freeze and then I'll have to power it down. I never really had to do that with the regular 3GS."

Users of both older models of the devices have been complaining on Apple's forum and various blogs since the iOS 4 rollout out in June, but the issue has been overshadowed by the "death grip" antenna saga that has plagued the new iPhone 4.

The new operating system, which is also compatible with the iPhone 4, has 100 new features for the iPhone 3GS, which came out last year, and the 2-year-old iPhone 3G.

Although Squires said the upgrade delivers the features it promises for the most part, there are so many new problems that he's now at a crossroads.

"I'm in a situation now where I don't even know if I want to keep the phone or not," he said.

-- Kristena Hansen

Ha-ha-ha, wipeout!

Google has halted development on its much-hyped  Wave platform, which promised to revolutionize document collaboration and potentially replace e-mail.

The Mountain View, Calif., company said it will keep the service online until at least the end of the year.

Google Wave rode a cyclone of publicity when it launched in May last year. The service lets users send digital correspondences, called "waves," and edit the text as the conversation progresses, creating their own personal Wikipedia-like entries. Technology's early adopters were tickled by the idea of seeing friends' messages show up instantly after each keystroke.

All of that technical magic took a toll on Google's servers, which hosted each wave and every edit that happened within those documents.

Former Internet giant AOL Inc. posted a $1.06-billion loss Wednesday resulting largely from an accounting charge triggered by its recent sale of social networking company Bebo Inc.

AOL, which was spun off by Time Warner Inc. last year, is struggling to remake itself as an information and media hub as its decade-old dial-up business continues to erode.

Its ad revenue was down 27% since the same quarter last year. But the decline might have stemmed from a set of decisions that Wall Street likes, said Clayton F. Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. AOL has been selling off weaker advertising units as it steps up its efforts in higher-margin display advertising.

“The feeling is they've taken a lot of the right steps to become more focused,” Moran said. “They’re beginning to show signs that a turnaround is possible.”

AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said company policies have made AOL stronger.

“The company is getting healthier every day,” Armstrong said in a statement. “Although we have much more significant goals for the future of AOL, we are pleased with this quarter’s internal and external trends.”

Investors seemed to agree, as AOL stock jumped $1.63, or 7.7%, to $22.75.

The loss stemmed from a one-time goodwill impairment charge the company had to take after its sale of Bebo for $10 million in June. It had bought the social network two years ago for $850 million.

In July, AOL also sold off ICQ, an online messaging service, for $188 million. It had acquired ICQ’s parent company in 1988 for $407 million.

-- David Sarno

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday agreed to allow Google Inc. to continue moving the city's 30,000 employees to its online e-mail system, despite a number of performance and security problems facing the implementation.

The $7.25-million project, which was supposed to be finished by the end of June, has been slowed as the city and Google have had trouble satisfying data security requirements to protect the e-mail accounts of the 13,000 Los Angeles Police Department personnel, among others. Other users have reported delays of many hours in the sending and receiving of e-mail.

Because of the delays, the city will be forced to continue paying for its 10-year-old e-mail system at the same time as it pays for the new system. But city officials announced Wednesday that Google had agreed to cover the cost of the old system until the switchover was complete. The costs could rise to $415,000 if the project is not finished by next June.

However, city technology officials and representatives from the LAPD and Google said they expected the implementation to be finished in November. Before that, Google will have to satisfy data security rules set out by the state Department of Justice as well as conduct a successful pilot program with LAPD personnel.

An earlier pilot of the Google system by city employees ran long this year after users complained that the system was slow and lacked many of the features they needed. City officials have said the slowness is a result of the need to run the old and new e-mail systems concurrently.

But it's the security concerns that have caused the most problems. The state requires that law enforcement data be encrypted and physically protected and that Google employees with access to the LAPD data have had background checks. Some of those requirements have presented challenges for Google.

Though some council members worried about the slow pace of the project, others expressed optimism that the project would be completed in the near term, with Council President Eric Garcetti praising the city and Google for sticking with what he said was a forward-thinking project.

"I want all folks out there to see L.A. as a laboratory where we can make things work," Garcetti said.

-- David Sarno

How appropriate: The day that Rdio goes live, Kazaa comes back from the dead.

Rdio is the new music streaming service from Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström, the entrepreneurs who brought the Kazaa file-sharing software to market as the music industry was suing the original Napster out of existence. Kazaa eventually ran into the same legal buzzsaw, ultimately settling the lawsuit brought by the major labels and studios for more than $115 million. (Friis and Zennström had already exited by then.) The current owners of the Kazaa brand -- Brilliant Digital Entertainment -- announced the launch of the beta version of the new, non-file-sharing Kazaa service Tuesday, about the same time that Rdio made its offering available to the public.

I haven't had much time to explore Kazaa, but my first impression is that the Web-based service is miles behind the competition. It's as if the company locked its technologists in a room four years ago and they've just now emerged, having missed the growth of social networks, the explosion in smartphone usage and the death of music DRM. The service costs $15 a month -- 50% more than Rdio, MOG or Rhapsody -- and doesn't have a mobile app. Instead, it offers unlimited streams and tethered downloads (that is, songs wrapped in electronic locks to deter copying) that can be played only by Kazaa's proprietary plugin for Windows Media Player. 

It also has only rudimentary social-media features, most notably the ability to play other users' playlists and to watch a continuously updated list of what other users are playing. And although there are a handful of "editor's picks," there's no preference engine to recommend tracks based on a user's tastes -- a major handicap when it comes to discovering music. Essentially, users are left to search for tracks or artists they already know, or take unguided tours through the library's eight genres.

There are some nice touches, such as the ability to find songs by searching through a database of lyrics. I also liked the ability to find user playlists containing particular songs or artists, which could be a useful form of crowd curation. On the whole, though, the service struck me as being very much a work in progress, with a much smaller library of tracks (1.8 million vs. 8 million on MOG).

The press release from Kazaa put the best possible spin on the offering, saying "Kazaa’s beta offering of our cloud based download music application and everything that comes with it signals our commitment to continue developing new product offerings and services at full speed." Judging by the beta, Kazaa needs to go even faster.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Fans of Wes Anderson will appreciate this clever riff on the head-of-the-class 1998 cult classic "Rushmore.”

Twitter originally set out to make a recruiting video that would show off the personality of Twitter and the people who work there.

"In typical Twitter fashion, along the way it became something way more fun,” spokesman Matt Graves said.

“Meet the Class of Twitter HQ” runs through a sequence similar to one in “Rushmore” showing Twitter employees with deadpan expressions engaged in various activities: “mobile,” “research,” “gardening,” (gardening?) and “twideokinetics” accompanied by the British Invasion band the Creation’s “Making Time.”

Twitter employees are the stars of the video and wrote, filmed and edited it. Oliver Ryan, who’s head of “recruiting stuff” at Twitter, even has a cameo dressed in an American flag outfit.

There are other pop-culture references including “The Finer Things Club” from NBC’s “The Office.”

Below is the original sequence from "Rushmore." Enjoy.

-- Jessica Guynn

While Spotify struggles to bring its free music-on-demand service to the U.S., a growing number of companies are filling the gap -- although not on the same terms. For example, Guvera offers a limited number of free downloads on demand to those who'll tolerate some targeted advertising (and who don't mind a less than comprehensive selection of tracks). MOG and Napster offer unlimited on-demand streams for $5 a month. Rhapsody does the same for $10 a month, with the added bonus of mobile streaming to smartphones (MOG does the same for $10 too, and Napster's mobile version is on its way).

Another subscription service joined the fray Tuesday: Rdio, the latest creation from Kazaa and Skype founders Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström. Its offering is closest to MOG's -- both incorporate elements of social media to yield better music discovery and a more entertaining service. It also offers a $5-a-month web-only service and a $10-a-month mobile version. I've played with and enjoyed Rdio and MOG, although they have different strengths and weaknesses.

Both services allow you to search for tracks or artists, browse new releases (although only MOG makes this easy on a mobile device) and play an unlimited number of songs on demand for a flat fee. Rdio also enables you to virtualize the digital tracks you have on your PC -- the "match collection" function on the downloadable Rdio desktop player looks at your iTunes or Windows Media Player library and adds those titles to your collection in Rdio (just the titles, not the tracks themselves). That's a great feature in concept...

After creating a few sparks in the touch-screen arena, Research in Motion is burning its old e-mail-centric formula and focusing on a more fully featured BlackBerry Torch smart phone.

The Torch marries RIM's thumb-loving keyboards with a 3.2-inch touch screen -- smaller than the iPhone's 3.5-inch and the Droid Incredible's 3.7-inch displays.

It's the first BlackBerry with both a touch screen and a keyboard. With a slide-out keyboard, the hardware looks (and, according to some earlier testimonies, feels) like Palm's Pre, the portable hardware veteran's own touch-screen-driven reinvention.

During RIM's announcement Tuesday, the Canadian phone maker left no ambiguity about the Torch's importance to its product lineup -- "It is the best BlackBerry, ever," RIM says in its marketing materials.

Apparently, Apple's iOS 4 issues aren't limited to the 2-year-old iPhone 3G.

Apple Inc.'s support forum is piling up with user complaints that their iPhone 3GS, which rolled out last year, is also experiencing slowness, drained battery life, intermittent crashes, rebooting during phone calls and other odd glitches after updating to the new operating system.

"My phone will freeze and I have to reboot and it takes a long time (4-5 min) for the Apple logo to disappear and the phone start to work," wrote one iPhone 3GS user on the forum on Monday. "Apparently a lot of users have the same problem after updating the software."

Apple has not returned phone calls or e-mails for comment.

Similar complaints from iPhone 3G users have been reported in Apple's discussion forums and various blogs since the iOS 4 debuted in June.

The iOS 4 is compatible with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G models and boasts more than 100 new features as well as improved battery life. Some of the features, however, are not compatible with the 3G model, including multitasking, which allows multiple applications to run at the same time.

Issues regarding updates to the iPhone 3G have already gotten the attention of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company, which said Monday that it was investigating the problem. It has not said anything about the iPhone 3GS.

Although it's apparently impossible to revert back to the older operating system, some users are wishing on the forums that they could do so.

-- Kristena Hansen

There aren’t that many clean-tech deals being made in the U.S., but the ones that are making it through just came off a mighty fine quarter.

Electric car manufacturers and support companies especially. The big winner of the quarter was Palo Alto EV infrastructure firm Better Place, which landed $350 million in funding.

The Golden State also dominated, according to analysis of data from Dow Jones VentureSource.

“This might as well be a California report,” said Mark Sogomian, a partner and Los Angeles clean-tech leader at Ernst & Young. “Almost all of the companies are California-based. This just highlights how much activity there is in the state.”

Venture capital investment in clean-tech companies for the second quarter hit $1.5 billion -- a 63.8% increase from the same quarter in 2009 and the highest amount since the third quarter of 2008, according to Ernst & Young.

All that funding was spread among just 68 financing rounds, up three deals from the second quarter of 2009. The top 10 deals alone drew two-thirds of the capital.

Besides the electric vehicle sector, which is poised to release a slew of models later this year and next year, the solar and biofuels industries also scored major investments.

Solar companies ended the quarter with 182.6% more funding than in the same period in 2009. Of that $438.8 million pot, Brightsource Energy Inc. of Oakland tucked away $180 million.

And with $265.7 million, biofuel firms saw a 517.2% boom compared to last year.

Apple Inc. said it's investigating complaints by some iPhone 3G users of bogged down speed, drained battery life and excessive heat when their device is updated to the new iOS 4 software.

The operating system, which debuted in June, boasts more than 100 new features for the new iPhone 4 and the prior model iPhone 3GS, but some of the features are not compatible with the iPhone 3G.

Since the software's rollout, iPhone 3G users have complained about various problems on blogs and on the Apple's support forum. The complaints have been overshadowed by the "death grip" antenna issues that have plagued the iPhone 4 since it was launched June 24.

"Launching something as basic as text messaging takes about four times as long -- up to nearly 20 seconds for something that should be instantaneous," Don Weiner, an iPhone 3G user, wrote in an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times. "Also, simply typing there is often a delay in characters appearing on the screen."

Tina Teng, an analyst with iSuppli, said the difference between an iPhone 3G and the most recent iPhone 4 is a big one.

“It’s like you’re running a 5- or 10-year-old computer and you want to run a really fancy program on it and that’s just going to exhaust your system," Teng said.

There are some new features on the iOS 4, such as multitasking, which allows multiple applications to run at one time, that aren't compatible with the 3G.

As Apple looks for a solution, some blogs and various websites have come up with their own concoctions and instructions to solve speed issues.

"Wouldn't it have made sense for Apple to notify customers about the problem and how to fix it rather than have them think they were stuck with a useless outdated iPhone that was no longer being supported?" Weiner said.

-- Kristena Hansen

For Chase bank customers on the go, there’s one less reason to stop by an ATM.

Chase last month added a feature to its banking iPhone application enabling customers to virtually deposit a check using the smart phone’s built-in camera.

Called Quick Deposit, it requires a snapped picture of the front and back of an endorsed check, which is then submitted to Chase via the app. The amount is deposited directly into your account; Chase encourages customers to destroy the physical check as soon as it clears.

Chase isn’t the first American bank to offer mobile check deposit services, but it is the biggest thus far. Last August, USAA, a privately held bank and insurance company, added a feature on its iPhone application that works much the same way as the Chase version.

The app requires an iPhone 3 or higher and is free for customers enrolled in online banking, with no cap on the number of deposits made with the feature. Customers can deposit up to $1,000 in an account in a single day, with a $3,000 monthly limit per account for deposits made using Quick Deposit.

“We know that people who use the iPhone want to use them for as many tasks as possible,” said spokesman Tom Kelly. Since the feature became available in mid-July “thousands and thousands” of existing Chase customers have downloaded the app, motivated in large part by the added deposit function, he said.

--Shan Li

Social networking is snowballing.

That’s the message from the latest Nielsen research -- which shows that Americans devote six hours a month, or almost a quarter of the time they spend on the Internet via their personal computer -- on social networking sites and blogs. That’s up from 16% a year ago.

Driving this trend is the social networking juggernaut Facebook, which recently celebrated reaching half a billion users worldwide. It claimed an 85% share of social networking use; News Corp.’s MySpace came in a distant second with a 5% share; and Twitter with just 1%.

For the first time, games beat out e-mail as the No. 2 online time killer, accounting for 10% of time spent. Nielsen found that half of all Americans online spend time playing games like online-gaming Zynga’s explosively popular FarmVille. It was unclear if time spent playing games like FarmVille on Facebook significantly influenced how much time people spend on Facebook.

It’s not that people are not e-mailing or using instant messaging. They are engaged in those activities on services such as Facebook. And they are still heavily involved in those activities while online. E-mail was the third most popular activity at 8%, and instant messaging came in fifth at 4%. It remained dominant on mobile devices, up to 42% from 37%.

“We are not going online and doing anything fundamentally different,” said Dave Martin, vice president of primary research at Nielsen. “We are going online to communicate, get information, do research, stay abreast of the news and be entertained. We’re doing the same things we have always been doing online. The way we are getting to that content is shifting. It has become word-of-mouth. The power and recommendation platform of social networks like Facebook and Twitter are now driving that personalization of content consumption. Social networking is not just about connecting people. It’s a new way to distribute all types of content.”

The other activity on the rise is watching videos and movies on YouTube, Hulu and Netflix, which jumped 12% to account for nearly 4% of all time spent online, or an average of three hours and 15 minutes.

-- Jessica Guynn

Twitter’s 20-billionth message was sent by a user in Japan, where usage has soared over the last year, providing a glimpse into the service's exploding popularity around the world.

The giddy graphic designer -- with a passion for baseball and the handle "GGGGGGo_Lets_Go" -- who sent the tweet was flooded with congratulatory tweets. (Check out the Guardian for the translation).

The San Francisco company estimates Japanese send nearly 8 million tweets a day, about 12% of all tweets worldwide. About 16% of Internet users in Japan use the service, eclipsing the number of Internet users in the United States. Twitter users in Japan set their own world record when Japan beat Denmark in the World Cup, sending 3,283 tweets per second. Twitter launched a Japanese-language version in 2008 and a mobile website in October.

It took four years for Twitter to log 10 billion messages; that milestone was reached in March. It took less than five months to double that.

-- Jessica Guynn