中国深圳大学

By SARA LEPRO from Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street headed toward a higher open Tuesday, following a now-familiar pattern of snapping back after a huge selloff. Investors, while looking for bargains, are focusing on the health of retailers and automakers.

The stock market suffered one of its worst days since the start of the financial crisis on Monday as investors responded to a string of bad economic news by fleeing to the sidelines. Among the day’s events: confirmation that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007. While the news did not come as a surprise, it underscored the growing concerns about the impact of a severe and prolonged downturn.

Some bargain hunting is to be expected Tuesday after the slide that took the Dow Jones industrials down 679.95 points on Monday, but investors will also be watching for any clues about the economy.

“What we’ll probably see is a session where the market is going to try to stabilize after yesterday’s major declines,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners.

The market, worried about consumer spending that is crucial for an economic recovery, was again focusing on retailers, some of whom were reporting third-quarter earnings. Sears Holdings Corp., battered by hefty charges and weak results at its U.S. department stores and Kmart locations, reported that it swung to a loss in the quarter. The company has previously said it will close eight more underperforming stores this year.

Office supply chain Staples Inc., meanwhile, said its third-quarter profit dropped 43 percent because of hefty charges from restructuring and an acquisition. Excluding the charges, results topped Wall Street estimates. Revenue rose 35 percent, even though North American retail sales suffered.

Monday’s stock selling began on concerns about retail sales; investors were disappointed by reports of only modest sales gains during the Thanksgiving weekend. The crucial holiday shopping season looks to be one of the weakest in decades, a troubling sign for stores and the overall economy.

But Wall Street is hopeful for some sort of resolution for the nation’s top three automakers, who are scheduled to submit to Congress Tuesday their plans for remaking themselves with government money. General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC are seeking $25 billion in government support.

Major carmakers are also expected to report U.S. sales figures for the month of November Tuesday, with analysts expecting grim results as the recession curtails demand.

Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 120, or 1.47 percent, to 8,259 about 45 minutes before the market opening. Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures rose 14.20, or 1.74 percent, to 830.00, while Nasdaq 100 index futures gained 14.50, or 1.32 percent, to 1,109.00.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 2.77 percent from 2.76 percent late Monday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.11 percent from 0.03 percent late Monday.

The market’s steep drop on Monday ended a five-day rally — the first such winning streak for the Dow and the S&P 500 since July 2007. But it also fits a pattern that has become the norm on Wall Street, with the market making a big advance, only to quickly falter on the first sign of more bad news. And there was plenty of bleak news to be had on Monday.

In addition to mixed readings on retail sales and confirmation of a recession, investors grappled with a report showing manufacturing activity fell to a 26-year low in November. At the same time, the Commerce Department said construction spending fell by a larger-than-expected amount in October.

As further evidence that the housing sector remains under pressure, homebuilder Beazer Homes USA Inc. said Tuesday its fiscal fourth-quarter losses more than tripled as revenue plunged. The company said demand for new homes continues to be hurt by low consumer confidence, falling prices, extensive supply and less access to financing.

Financial stocks, which have been pummeled over concerns that losses tied to bad mortgage debt will continue to grow, are expected to remain in focus Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Monday the Bush administration is looking for more ways to tap the $700 billion financial rescue program and will consult with Congress and the incoming Obama administration.

Also Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he is prepared to lower interest rates once again. Many economists expect Bernanke and his colleagues to drop the Fed’s key interest rate — which now stands at 1 percent — at their next meeting on Dec. 15-16.

The dollar fell against other major currencies. Gold prices rose.

Light, sweet crude rose 46 cents to $49.74 a barrel in premarket electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 6.35 percent. In afternoon trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.81 percent, Germany’s DAX index was up 1.79 percent, and France’s CAC-40 was up 1.06 percent.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.

Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

For example, a person might alert his Facebook friends to the fact that he is watching a video on CBS.com and invite them to join him there to watch together and discuss the video as it plays.

“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.”

MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.

The effort is particularly important for Facebook, which once represented the seemingly boundless promise of the Web 2.0 boom. It desperately wants to make certain the other Web companies do not supplant it and become the most popular hub for online socializing.

Facebook, with 120 million members worldwide, has also been under extra pressure to get its revenue to match its media hype and membership growth. Responding to reports that Facebook was looking for more capital after raising $235 million last year, Ms. Sandberg said she would not rule that out. “There is a lot of interest in investing in us and we are always open to the right financing at the right price,” she said.

The most immediate challenge confronting Facebook is to create an enduring stream of advertising revenue.

A survey last week from the research firm IDC suggested that social networks were a miserable place for advertisers: just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. And it turns out that marketers are not so interested in advertising on pages filled with personal trivia and relationship updates.

“What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?” Ted McConnell, a general manager at Procter & Gamble, asked last month at an industry conference.This is where Facebook Connect could help. No money changes hands between Facebook and the sites using Connect, and executives are wary of discussing how it could bring in revenue. But there are some obvious possibilities.

Facebook has detailed information about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike and whom they associate with. With a member’s permission, it could use that data to help other Web sites deliver more personalized ads. Similarly, those sites could tell Facebook what its users are doing elsewhere, helping to make its own ads more targeted.

“It’s becoming very clear that advertisers don’t know how to advertise on Facebook,” said Charlene Li, an independent consultant and social media analyst. “But if you take a group of Facebook friends and put them on a travel site where they are spending more time and generating more ad dollars in a focused area like travel, that is an opportunity ripe for getting revenues back and sharing it.”

Facebook executives argue that Connect will naturally increase traffic on the site and increase ad revenue as a result. Ms. Sandberg said the company had no plans to explore any other advertising potential with Connect.

That reluctance is partly born of experience. Last year, Facebook was lambasted for its Beacon advertising program, which some thought failed to properly warn users that their actions on other sites were being shared on Facebook. Some users’ purchases on e-commerce sites, for example, were broadcast to their friends, in some cases spoiling gift plans.

As a result, Facebook executives have been exceedingly circumspect with Connect, introducing it slowly and pitching it as a privacy tool. They argue that it allows users to set their privacy settings once on Facebook and then apply them on other sites.

Facebook has also taken other precautions. According to staff members at the political advocacy group MoveOn.org, which led the charge against Beacon, Facebook executives gave them an early briefing this summer about Connect.

For now, Facebook is also carefully authorizing each partner in the Connect program and reviewing how it will use data on Facebook members and discuss the feature publicly. It plans to allow Web sites to register themselves for Connect, without having to seek approval, in the next few weeks.

“They so desperately want to avoid another Beacon,” said an executive with a company that plans to use Connect but has been waiting for a green light from Facebook for months. This person did not want to be quoted by name criticizing Facebook.

When asked about the potential promises and pitfalls of Connect, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said: “We want to make the experience as lightweight and easy to use as possible. But we also have to make sure that people understand what’s going on and have control over it.”

Executives at the social network MySpace, which has similar goals, are more outspoken in discussing their identification system.

“There are so many important issues to get right,” said Jason Oberfest, a vice president at MySpace. “Consumers need to understand where their data is going and how it’s being used.”

“Then, if we can get the privacy issues right, if it’s totally clear to the user what is happening, there is potential for advertising,” Mr. Oberfest added. “But certainly not without a lot of testing and consideration.”

The two brightest planets visible from Earth drew close Monday night in a dance that won’t be replicated for decades.

Jupiter and Venus aligned in the southwestern sky with a crescent moon, completing an approach that began last summer, said Hartnell planetarium educator Andy Kreyche – although fog obscured the view for much of the Salinas region.

“You don’t need much except a clear sky to see (the show),” Kreyche said.

The planets have appeared as brilliant lights hanging above the horizon at sunset for the past few nights. They’ve begun to migrate away from each other, but Kreyche said the planets will remain visible until Jupiter dips below the horizon, moving closer to Mercury.

* New N97 handset to be a flagship model
* Launch is “kicking off the next wave” of the N-series
* Key features include touch screen, full qwerty keyboard
* To hit markets by end-June at latest

(Recasts, adds CEO, analyst quotes; updates share price)

By Tarmo Virki

BARCELONA, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE), the world’s largest cellphone maker, unveiled its flagship N97 model smartphone on Tuesday, which drew a lukewarm response from analysts.

Nokia expects the handset — with a large touch screen, retailing for 550 euros ($693) before taxes and subsidies and due to reach market in the first half of 2009 — will bolster its N-Series smartphone offering.

It has promised to introduce touch screen models across its portfolio. Nokia was the last major handset maker to introduce touch screen phones after the runaway success of Apple Inc’s iPhone, and last month started to sell its first such model.

Its ailing position in the high end of the cellphone market worries investors and analysts as this is expected to weigh on the Finnish group’s profit margins.

“Without a doubt Nokia needed a high-end touch screen phone,” said Martti Larjo, analyst at Nordea.

The new N97 is a direct rival to Sony Ericsson’s X1 and HTC’s Touch Pro — both of which use Microsoft’s Windows software — and analysts said by the time it goes on sale more direct rivals will likely have appeared.

“It might give Nokia a little edge, but it’s six months until this reaches the market,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

CCS Insight’s Research Director, Ben Wood, said Nokia had faced difficult choices with the N97.

“It tried to cram in lots of different technologies such as a touch screen, full qwerty keyboard and plenty of memory, but it had to make trade-offs in its size and features,” he said.

“It has ended up with a relatively thick device that lacks some of the benchmark features expected in flagship products in mid-2009,” he said.

Nokia shares were up 2.46 percent at 10.82 euros by 1144 GMT, compared with a 1.44 percent rise in the Dow Jones Stoxx European technology index .

HIGH HOPES

Nokia said at 550 euros, the new phone will retail at a price similar to the previous flagship models N95 and N96 when these were first came to market.

It introduced its last major N-series hit, the N95, in 2006 and started its sales early last year. To date it has sold more than 15 million N95s, creating revenues of several billion.

Nokia continues to dominate the global market for smartphones — handsets with computer-like features such as e-mail — but it sold less of them in the third quarter than a year ago, losing market share to Apple and Blackberry-maker RIM .

The Vice President of Nokia’s Devices unit, Jonas Geust, told Reuters of the N97: “This is really the start of the new N-series … really kicking off the next wave.”

Geust said touch screens and full-qwerty keyboards will be key features in the new wave of products.

“What would there be these days without touch … Touch for this category of devices is going to be important. Qwerty is also going to be important,” he said.

The battle for a bigger share of the smartphone business has heated up since Apple introduced its iPhone last year, and all vendors are after a bigger slice of the market, which is set to continue growing despite gloom in the wider markets.

“It’s clear no-one can escape the current economic situation,” Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told a news conference, but declined to elaborate further as the company is set to update analysts on its market outlook on Dec. 4.

Meanwhile, the company also said it closed its acquisition of mobile software maker Symbian on Tuesday.