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Reuters – As it turns out, Justin Timberlake’s role as Napster founder Sean Parker in “The Social Network” was a wink and nod to the celebrity’s little publicized role in driving Silicon Valley start-ups.

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AP – New test results show that a proposed nationwide wireless broadband network would produce significant interference with GPS systems used for everything from aviation to high-precision timing networks to consumer navigation devices. Changes to the proposal could reduce interference, but wouldn’t eliminate it.

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Appolicious – Be warned: The title leading off this week’s Best Games list is a quality release, but it’s going to frustrate you. That’s because Street Fighter IV Volt is merely a slight update to Capcom’s high quality fighting game Street Fighter IV due to the addition of online multiplayer. If it sounds like fun, you’re right, it can be – until you take on some eight-year-old with an insane mastery of Ryu’s fireball move and some kind of supernatural ability to anticipate every time you’re even thinking about jumping. …

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AP – Federal regulators are looking into the interactions between Twitter and a company called Ubermedia, which develops applications that help users follow and communicate with each other on Twitter’s popular online messaging service, according to two published reports.

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Appolicious – Google is percolating something new, feeding us bit-by-bit the details of its latest social coup. The search engine is testing the waters of today’s social web culture, launching Google+ in private beta. The project comes with an Android app, syncing photos and other content with your socially-enhanced Google profile. Google+’s biggest adversary, Facebook, has updated its Android app too, finally adding video uploads.

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NewsFactor – Amazon.com is calling a new sales-tax law in California unconstitutional. Amazon appears ready to challenge the law, which states that having affiliates in the state is the same as online retailers having a physical presence there.

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AFP – Microsoft announced on Thursday it is pulling the plug on a free online home energy monitoring tool that allows consumers to gauge their usage and reduce consumption.

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NewsFactor – In one of the biggest fire sales of the Internet age, News Corp. has unloaded MySpace for $35 million. Just four years ago, the social-networking site had a valuation of $12 billion.

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Reuters – Internet telephone company 8×8 Inc said it entered into a partnership with Virtual Computing Environment Company (VCE) to speed up deployment of its cloud computing services on a new platform, sending its shares up to an eight-year high.

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Reuters – Amazon.com Inc warned its 10,000-plus California sales affiliates on Wednesday that it may be forced to sever ties with them should the state begin taxing their online sales.

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Reuters – Germans are increasingly afraid of becoming the target of cyber-criminals, with 85 percent fearing thieves will steal their credit card data or gain online access to bank accounts.

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Reuters – Online daily deal site LivingSocial is meeting with banks to discuss an initial public offering of about $1 billion, according to a source familiar the situation.

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Appolicious – For the first time since the Pew Internet Project began tracking e-reader use in spring 2009, ownership of the portable reading devices has reached double digits. The project found that e-reader growth has accelerated in the past six months, as tablet growth has stagnated slightly, following a steep rise in the number of users after last year’s iPad launch.

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Reuters – News Corp has sold Myspace for $35 million, a fraction of what it paid for the once-hot social media site even as a new generation of Web-based start-ups is enjoying sky-high valuations.

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AFP – News Corp. sold Myspace on Wednesday for a fraction of its purchase price, bringing the curtain down on Rupert Murdoch’s tie-up with a one-time social networking star that ended up being eclipsed by Facebook.

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PC Magazine – California Gov. Jerry Brown passed a portion of the state budget on Wednesday night that would require Internet retailers with affiliates in the state of California to collect sales taxes from customers living there.

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Reuters – Google Inc brags that computers running its recently released Chrome operating system are a lot safer than traditional PCs, partly because user data is stored in the Internet cloud and not on the machine.

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Mashable – Google+, the search giant’s answer to Facebook, is currently in a “limited field test.” However, it looks like Google has opened the floodgates to the masses.
The Google+ project is the company’s social initiative that brings friend streams, group video chat and group texting to Google’s millions of users. Check out our review of Google+ if you want to learn more.

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Reuters – Online social game company Zynga is expected to file paperwork for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday morning, a source familiar with the situation said.

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Reuters – They’re all a Twitter about the flotilla.

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AP – Microsoft Corp. has officially launched its Web-based email and Office services, part of its ongoing effort to keep Google at bay when it comes to business software.

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AFP – One of the largest online poker rooms, Full Tilt Poker, was ordered Wednesday to immediately halt operations by authorities on the Channel Island of Alderney, where it is registered, the regulator said.

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NewsFactor – When Apple launched its iPad, many observers speculated that it was only a matter of time before e-readers, with their more limited functionality, would be replaced by the more versatile tablets. But a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that e-reader ownership has recently been growing faster than tablets.

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AFP – Key players in the Internet world stressed that the “light touch” approach to regulation, along with a free flow of information remained vital to life on the web, the OECD said on Wednesday after a two-day meeting.

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AFP – The Indian subsidiary of online deals giant Groupon has accidentally published email addresses and passwords from its subscriber database, the company and reports said Wednesday.

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PC Magazine – Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 2 launches with faster performance and some unique HTML5 standard support.

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Reuters – Gaikai, a privately-held cloud gaming firm whose backers include Electronic Arts and Intel Capital, expects to sign deals with major publishers and video game makers, as the market shifts from console-based games to online titles.

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Reuters – Baidu Inc, China’s top search engine, wants to be one of the first companies to list on Shanghai’s international board when it is launched, a business daily quoted the firm’s chief financial officer as saying.

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Appolicious – The Federal Trade Commission is pushing for stricter privacy protections for Internet users when surfing the web, and if some of those protections go into effect online, the mobile app sphere could be next.

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PC Magazine – Former Facebook president and Napster co-founder Sean Parker gave TV host Jimmy Fallon some insight as to why MySpace tanked.

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AFP – After setting up its own cyber-warfare team, China’s military has now developed its first online war game aimed at improving combat skills and battle awareness, state press said Wednesday.

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AP – Lady Gaga’s spokeswoman says a lawsuit accusing the music star of misleading fans with an online pitch for donations to victims of the Japan earthquake is meritless.

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Reuters – Groupon Inc’s Indian subsidiary SoSasta inadvertently published its users’ passwords on the Internet, but the sensitive information was quickly removed after the security breach was discovered last week.

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AP – WHAT IS IT? Google is taking yet another stab at social networking with Google+. The service unveiled Tuesday aims to make online sharing more like real life. For example, it lets users share things with small groups of people, such as college buddies or coworkers.

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AFP – Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced Tuesday he was scaling back his involvement in the micro-blogging company to concentrate on a new venture.

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AFP – Online game creator Zynga plans to file for an initial public offering shortly, in a new test of US investors’ appetites for Internet companies, media reports said on Tuesday.

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AP – Online search leader Google Inc. is taking yet another stab at social networking, as it tries to go up against Facebook in this wildly popular and lucrative segment of the Internet. This time the project is called Google+ and it aims to make online sharing more like real life.

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Reuters – As Google tries to fend off a U.S. probe of its multibillion-dollar search business, it has been quietly adding to its stable of antitrust advisers, which, Reuters has learned, includes a former Microsoft prosecutor.

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Reuters – Google Inc is making its boldest move to take on Facebook in the fast-growing social networking market and to maintain its dominance on the Web.

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AP – iTunes’ top 10 selling singles and albums of the week ending June 27, 2011:

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Reuters – Online social game company Zynga plans to raise $1.5 billion to $2 billion in an initial public offering and could file paperwork with U.S. regulators as soon as Wednesday, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

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AFP – Hollywood film studios launched legal action Tuesday against Britain’s biggest Internet service provider in a fight against online piracy, thought to be the first case of its kind in the country.

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NewsFactor – Google just threw down the gauntlet in Facebook’s social backyard. The search giant has finally done what many were betting on: Launched a social network.

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AP – Lady Gaga’s spokeswoman says a lawsuit accusing the music star of misleading fans with an online pitch for donations to victims of the Japan earthquake is meritless.

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Reuters – EBay Inc. announced two corporate governance changes on Tuesday that could give shareholders more of a say in the way the e-commerce company is run.

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Appolicious – We’re continually hearing about how the mobile app market keeps growing, with the iTunes App Store leading the charge and pulling down a whole lot of money.

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Reuters – Microsoft Corp made its biggest move into the mobile, Internet-accessible world of “cloud” computing on Tuesday, taking the wraps off a revamped online version of its hugely profitable Office software suite.

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AFP – Internet search giant Google launched its rival to Facebook on Tuesday, a new social networking service called Google+.

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Reuters – Toys R Us, the world’s largest toy retailer, sees online sales at least doubling in the next five years, its chief executive said.

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Appolicious – The size of the Google’s Android Market may be increasing to keep pace with Apple’s iTunes App Store, but that doesn’t mean that users are necessarily buying more apps.

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