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The enterprise software behemoth noted that a preliminary review of its financial performance indicates that its third-quarter software and software-related service revenues are expected to range between 1.97 billion and 1.98 billion euros ($2.66 billion to $2.68 billion), a 13 percent to 14 percent increase over the same time last year.

However, Wall Street had been expecting the company to post revenues of 2.863 billion euros ($3.87 billion), according to Thomson Financial.

Throughout the third quarter, we felt quite positive about our ability to meet our expectations. Unfortunately, SAP was not immune from the economic and financial crisis that has enveloped the markets in the second half of September, causing us to report numbers below our expectations.

On the bright note, Kagermann noted that while revenues contracted, the business fundamentals of its operations remain intact.

The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter.

“SAP did report double-digit growth in software and software-related service revenues for the quarter, and we expect to have gained further market share,” he said.

Oracle fell as much as 10.5 percent to $17.43 a share in intraday trading, compared to Friday’s close.

Nonetheless, SAP shares fell 17.6 percent to $37.60 a share in intraday trading, as investors bailed on the stock.

Henning Kagermann, SAP’s co-chief executive, had this assessment in a statement:

SAP warned that its third-quarter revenues are expected to come in below Wall Street’s projections, driving its stock down by a whopping 17.6 percent in intraday trading.

SAP archrival Oracle, meanwhile, also saw its stock sink, as investors worried that SAP’s woes are an industry problem and not just SAP-specific.

The installed application is a great improvement over the previously released web based version, which does not offer as high a level of functionality or as fluid of an interface. While I was initially skeptical as to the benefits to a standalone Facebook application, as opposed to just using the web based one, features like photo uploading and chat justify its existence.

Facebook has built an extremely slick iPhone application. My first impressions are extremely positive and Facebook has definitely earned a spot on my first page of icons. Its navigation is very fluid and the feature set is complete and easy to use. It was important for Facebook to have an application at launch for the iPhone App Store, with competition coming from a variety of other social networks, MySpace included, so it’s good to see them bring such a solid offering to the table.

Facebook's iPhone app gives you access to Facebook Chat.

Viewing Facebook photos is really great in this app. They have implemented the same “flick” style of navigation that the
iPhone uses and photos flip over to reveal comments. Overall, the UI is pretty intuitive and uses a lot of the same conventions that Apple does. Taking photos and uploading them to Facebook could not be simpler. Just tap the camera icon, take the picture, and tap to upload.

Along with over five hundred other applications, Facebook’s
iPhone app made its debut today. The application gives you easy access to your friend’s updates and profiles, along with Facebook Chat and your inbox. Facebook’s app also lets you take and upload photos directly to Facebook.

Cisco expects to close the deal in the first half of 2009. Jabber’s 50 employees will join Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group.

In essence, Jabber’s technology allows multiple IM platforms to “talk” to each other. This means that it allows people using tools such as
Microsoft Office Communications Server, IBM Sametime, AOL AIM, and Google to send messages to each and get presence information about one another.

The deal will help Cisco compete even more aggressively against Microsoft in the unified communications market. And it will fit nicely with some of Cisco’s previous acquisitions including the purchase of Web conferencing company WebEx.

Cisco Systems is bolstering its unified communications and collaboration portfolio with the purchase of a corporate instant-messaging company.

On Friday, the networking giant announced it will purchase Jabber, which uses an open-source IM and presence protocol used by Google Talk and Gizmo. The company didn’t disclose financial details.

Jabber’s technology is already used by some large companies including AT&T, BT, EarthLink, FedEx, and JP Morgan.

According to the settlement agreement, about 1,400 of RIM’s 3,200 stock option grants were backdated (dated prior to the date of actual granting) or re-priced (dated later than the actual granting), both of which are done to increase the value of the option.

The company announced on Wednesday that the settlement had been reached.

“RIM is pleased that the parties have resolved matters with the OSC and looks forward to resolving matters with the SEC,” John Richardson, RIM’s lead director, said in the statement.

Co-Chief Executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, Chief Financial Officer Dennis Kavelman, and Finance Director Angelo Loberto have agreed to contribute $31 million to RIM for the benefit they received from the incorrectly priced stock options granted to all employees from 1996 to 2006. They will also pay $36.4 million to defray costs incurred by the company in the investigation and $7.4 million to the Ontario Securities Commission as an administrative penalty, according to the settlement.

The co-chief executives of Research in Motion and two other executives will pay more than $74.5 million ($92 million Canadian) to settle a stock options-backdating case, under an agreement approved on Thursday by Canada’s securities commission.

RIM said in a statement that the company and the executives, have also made settlement offers to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve that agency’s investigation into option granting practices at the company, which makes the BlackBerry handheld device. Those offers are subject to SEC approval. If they are approved RIM does not expect the settlements would have a material adverse effect on the company’s business, RIM said.

RIM employees made about $53.6 million as a result of the incorrect options dating practices, but only half of that has been repaid, the settlement agreement said.

Every network on Ning will be able to be an Open Social origin social network — pushing out Open Social gadgets to anywhere else on the web that carry with them the social context and friends data from their origin Ning network. So, for example, the members of a backpacking social network on Ning can still interact as friends on any third-party backpacking web site, by publishing an Open Social gadget out from their Ning network onto that third-party web site. In short, people will be able to flow more easily from Ning to many other web sites without losing the social context of their Ning networks.

Marc Andreessen

Ning announced support for Google’s OpenSocial APIs, and could support Friend Connect, which would allow users of Ning sites to connect with friends on other social networks.

Ning was founded in 2004 and has raised $104 million so far, including $60 million last month, giving the start-up a market value of about $500 million. Andreessen said he raised the large amount of money to support the accelerating growth of the company and to have the funding to survive what he called the “oncoming nuclear winter.” In addition to a skittish economy that could go nuclear, Andreessen now has to worry about Friend Connect slowing his growth.

We will support Friend Connect in two ways:

Friend Connect glues together some emerging Web standards to make it easy for any Web site to add social features. Andreessen is co-founder and chairman of Ning, which allows people to easily and freely create their own social networks. Ning’s platform currently hosts more than 260,000 social networks of varying sizes.

In the following excerpt, Andreessen explains how Ning will support Google Friend Connect:

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

Instead of using Ning or an alternative service to create a companion social network for a Web site, savvy users could roll their own with Friend Connect. It might not be as full featured as what Ning delivers today, but if Friend Connect gains traction, it will gain features and thousands of applications.

“…I think a lot of companies have what I call ’strategitis.’ Instead of launching a product, which would apparently make too much sense, they come up with a ’strategy,’” he says. “There’s a strong temptation for companies that don’t have strong social networking franchises to roll out social networking ‘features’ instead of products, and in reality, consumers like to have products.”

They are complementary approaches, but Google’s strategy appears to rankle Andreessen, even though he said that he would “support anything that creates interactivity or feeds” in the social space.

For Ning, Friend Connect is simply a new and better way to do the same thing with Open Social gadgets — in both directions: out and in.

Marc Andreessen sees a number of companies suffering from the same disease.

Andreessen is referring to the launch of Google’s Friend Connect, as reported by Betsy Schiffman of Wired.

Every network on Ning will of course be able to contain Open Social gadgets published out from other social networks on the Internet via Friend Connect. So, for example, a group of friends on MySpace who all enjoy cooking will be able to travel from MySpace to a cooking-specific social network on Ning, via any Friend Connect-enabled Open Social gadget published from MySpace into that Ning network. In short, people will be able to flow more easily from other social networks and walled gardens into Ning social networks without losing the social context from those other networks.

Update: In a blog post published on May 14, titled “Friend Connect, Open Social, Ning, and the Web,” Andreessen offered his opinion of Friend Connect. He doesn’t address his strategy-vs.-product remarks quoted in the Wired story.

Andreessen is accurate in his categorization of Ning and Friend Connect. Ning is a finished product for end users, and Friend Connect is code that Web masters can apply to add a social dimension to their sites. It’s also a way for Google to extend its reach into the social Web without having a leading social network.

Update at 5 a.m. PDT Wed., May 14: Andreessen’s analysis of Google Friend Connect has been added.

Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

One thing is likely, though–reductions won’t surpass the 3,000-plus range prescribed by Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodgett and forecast on Valleywag. The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported an expectation of cuts exceeding 1,000.

“The value of Asian assets has fallen to $4.68 per share (versus $7 in July) due to global market volatility, and the window to effectively monetize these assets may have closed for the near term,” Canaccord Adams analyst Colin Gillis said in a report Monday. “An acquisition of AOL is interesting, but consolidates Yahoo’s strength into display advertising–a segment that is weak.”

And economic troubles have made it harder for Yahoo to benefit from other avenues such as selling off its Japanese business unit or acquiring AOL’s online properties from Time Warner.

Time is of the essence here, and investors aren’t patient. Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Yahoo pushed its stock close to $30 per share, but it sunk down to the pre-Microsoft offer price of $19.18 after the deal fell apart. With the economic problems that blossomed afterward, though, Yahoo has suffered even more, and its stock on Monday closed at $12.86 per share.

Yahoo declined to comment for this story.

The company isn’t likely to disclose much detailed information, for example, about whether it plans to cut specific programs or to cut across the board. So investors eager to know just how much faith to put in Yahoo’s grim stock price in light of the measures might have to keep on waiting. Yahoo, which has pinned the layoffs on the prevailing economic troubles, hired Bain & Co. to help it come up with a plan.

Yahoo’s best possibilities right now are the search-ad deal with Google, delayed some to allow further antitrust review, and an acquisition, Gillis said.

Yahoo will shed some light Tuesday on a coming layoff and cost-containment plan as the company details third-quarter financial results, but likely only the broad elements of the plan, according to a source familiar with Yahoo’s plans.

Some of the improvements are no-brainers, but it’s good to know that they’ve been addressed.

The latest update, version 0.6 for Windows, Power PC Macs, Intel Macs, and Linux, includes the ability to handle turkey-size music collections greater than 10,000 songs, improved memory management, a metadata editor, improved portable player syncing, support for SHOUTcast, and more.

(Credit:
Songbird)

The code improvements have allowed for smoother scrolling, faster filtering, and just overall better management of music collections of any size. Songbird is well on its way to being a serious jukebox. Other fixes include the previously nonfunctional edit menu joining the land of the living and the introduction of in-page text searching.

As the Songbird-produced cartoon to the left shows, even though the browser is still in beta it’s getting stronger all the time.

With all the hoopla over Opera and the upcoming
Firefox 3 final release, there’s a good chance that Songbird’s baby beta steps will get ignored, but this has been one of the most promising programs being developed, and v0.6 will only whet your appetite.

There’s also reportedly more in store for Blogrunner, a Techmeme-like start-up that the Times acquired and has worked into its technology coverage to pull in headlines from around the Web. And the Times will be developing
iPhone applications for the new app store that Apple will be unveiling with the new iPhone 3G.

A look at the NYT's forthcoming widget generator.

But that’s not all for the Gray Lady’s digital makeover, Silicon Alley Insider reported Wednesday. Also on the way is a set of application program interfaces (APIs) to get Times data to third-party sites, a custom widget generator that bloggers can use to embed news on their sites, and an expansion of TimesPeople so that it’s on the Web site rather than in the form of a
Firefox plug-in.

What wasn’t revealed was a timeline, for the most part. So these remain projects in the works, and we’ll likely see gradual beta launches before they’re readily available.

(Credit:
Silicon Alley Insider)

Last month, we reported that The New York Times would be expanding its online-media reach with TimesPeople, a sharing and bookmarking feature on the site.

Ringback tones, those songs that play on the line while you wait for someone to pick up, are music to the ears wireless operators. And the tune is only going to get sweeter, according to a new report out Tuesday.

“Ringback tones are quickly becoming the ‘golden child’ of the mobile music market, due to a winning combination of consumer popularity, and minimal impact from DRM or piracy,” Frank Dickson, chief research officer with MultiMedia Intelligence said in a press release.

Ringback tones have proven to be a goldmine for mobile operators, but it’s also an important component to the music industry’s overall digital music strategy. The music industry, is in dire straits with sales of CDs plummeting over recent years. Digital distribution and mobile in particular can help boost sales, especially when consumers are willing to pay separately for full track songs, ringback tones and ringtones.

But ringback tones and ringtones, in particular, provide wireless operators and the music industry multiple opportunities for monetizing the same piece of content.

For example, Verizon Wireless sells standard ringtones for $2.99, ringback tones for $1.99 and full music tracks for 99 cents if they’re downloaded onto a computer. (Verizon also offers a 20 percent discount for subscribers buying the song as both a ringtone and ringback tone.)

By 2012, ringback tones are expected to generate $4.7 billion in revenue for mobile companies, according to the research firm MultiMedia Intelligence. That’s triple the revenue that this service generates today. The research group said that ringback tones are on track to becoming the most attractive premium mobile content category for wireless operators, falling just short of revenue generated from mobile games.

The report also called out four other areas of concern: greater prevalence of social-networking malware such as a recent botnet risk reported on Facebook, user-specific VoIP attacks such as the one presented recently at Toorcon, cyber-warfare such as the recent denial-of-service attacks against the nation of Georgia, and a maturing cybercrime economy like that in recent reports of “crimeware-as-a-service” packages for sale on the Internet.

“The short life cycle of mobile devices gives manufacturers, developers, and the security community an opportunity to learn what works from a security standpoint and apply it to devices and applications more quickly,” wrote Traynor.

About 15 percent of all online computers are infected with bots, says a new report (PDF) on emerging threats for 2009 from Georgia Tech Information Security Center. And according to Patrick Traynor, assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Computer Science, “We’ll start to see the botnet problem infiltrate the mobile world in 2009.”

“Because the mobile communications field is evolving so quickly, it presents
a unique opportunity to design security properly–an
opportunity we missed with the PC,” he wrote in the report.

In Traynor’s view, if botnets, or large networks of infected computing devices, gain a foothold on mobile devices, they could be used to create a distributed denial of service attack on the cellular network itself, inconveniencing thousands of cell-phone customers.

According to the report, researchers like Traynor expect standards for handset security to emerge within the next 12 months.

Most people keep their PCs and operating system for years, up to 10 years in some cases. Most people buy a new mobile phone every 2 years, on average.

But the future need not be so dire.