Microsoft buys Jellyfish.com comparative shopping site

Microsoft Corp. has bought comparative shopping Web site Jellyfish.com, which gives its customers a cut of advertising revenue from retailers, offering a rebate on purchases made through the site.

Microsoft sees Jellyfish.com as a way to augment its e-commerce and search offerings, although no details were immediately available on how the company may transform the site or wrap it into other offerings. Microsoft revealed the acquisition in a blog posting Tuesday, but did not say how much it paid for the site.

"We think the technology has some interesting potential applications as we continue to invest heavily in shopping and commerce as a key component of Live Search,"Microsoft's search engine blog announced.

Advertisers choose the level of commission they will pay to Jellyfish.com for sales made, at least half of which Jellyfish.com says it will give back to purchasers as a rebate. Jellyfish.com ranks products according to the price including that rebate.

While the discount the consumer will receive appears in the search results, Jellyfish.com doesn't immediately apply the discount to the product. Instead, the money is kept in an account for 30 to 60 days to account for product returns, refunds and to guard against fraud. After the waiting period, a check can be mailed when the accumulated rebates exceed $10.

Jellyfish.com is not the only company to sell adverts based on "pay per action," rather than pay per click.

In June, Google Inc. expanded its beta trial of a pay-per-action program, opening it to worldwide users of its AdWords service. The pay-per-action ads can appear in Google's regular contextual ads results that Web site publishers put on their page, or publishers can choose which pay-per-action ads go on their page based on content.

Jellyfish.com tells merchants that its cost-per-sale advertising model is risk-free and not subject to e-commerce problems such as click fraud, where advertisers overpay for fraudulent clicks on their ads. So far, Jellyfish.com says it lists at least five million products.

Jellyfish.com, started in mid-2005, is based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hackers post techniques for reversing iPhone upgrade

Owners of hacker iPhoneshave begun posting instructions on how to roll back a recent Apple firmware upgrade that rendered their mobile phones unusable.

The instructions were available Monday on the iPhone Dev Wiki, a Web site devoted to iPhone software hacks and tools.

Since the iPhone's launch, enthusiasts have been developing ways to allow the devices to run unauthorized software and to unlock them so that they can be run on any mobile network. Late last week, however, Apple cracked down on these efforts by releasing a software upgrade that made hacked iPhones unusable.

Since that release, however, hackers have been working on techniques that reverse the effects of this upgrade.

These latest instructions allow users to roll back their firmware upgrades and use some functions like the phone's iPod and Wi-Fi capabilities, but they do not necessarily restore the phone's ability to make calls, according to the iPhone Dev Wiki. That's because hackers have not yet found a way to roll back the firmware used by the iPhone's baseband chip, which is used to make calls.

"So far all attempts to downgrade the baseband have been unsuccessful," the Wiki said. "There have been several reports of successful baseband downgrades online, but these haven't been confirmed. "

Another major area of research has been into techniques that can unlock iPhones that are running the latest 1.1.1 firmware.

But because Apple has now done a much better job of encrypting its iPhone firmware, this will be a much harder job than it was the first time around, said Tom Ferris, a security researcher who works on hacking the iPhone.

That's what everybody's working on right now is trying to get into the firmware," he said. "Just like Steve Jobs said, it's a cat and mouse game."

Samsung Unveils Its iPhone Rival

Samsung Electornics Co. Ltd. and audio product maker Bang & Olufsen on Tuesday unveiled their latest joint music-mobile phone, Serenata, which holds 4G bytes of songs and has a number of other music features similar to the iPhone.

The handsets will go on sale in Europe by the end of the month, said Anthony Lee , a spokesman at Samsung. Pricing has not yet been determined.

The handset doesn't look much like a mobile phone: the top half is dominated by a navigation wheel, the designers having dispensed with buttons. The 2.26-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) touch screen is below the navigation wheel, in the place where the buttons are found on conventional mobile phones.

The navigation wheel is intended to be used one-handed. All primary functions on the phone are controlled by the navigation wheel, including searching menus, dialing, writing and accessing music lists, the companies said. The touch screen is secondary.

A button on the handset switches it quickly from music to phone mode, and the screen changes from red to blue to make sure the user knows exactly what mode the handset is in.

The handset has a built-in speaker and bass system, and can play amplified music for up to five hours through the speaker or for around 13 hours through a headset before requiring a battery charge, the companies said in a news release.

The amount of song storage space is a major difference between Serenata and the iPhone.Apple Inc. has already said it will only sell 8G-byte iPhones in the future, once it sells out of the 4G byte version.

Samsung believes the 4G bytes on Serenata, capacity for about 1,000 songs, is enough for most users, said Lee. There is no way to increase the memory capacity of the handset, he added.

The phone will work with GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks in the 900,1800 and 1900 MHz bands, and with HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) services on 3G (third-generation) networks. Users can send e-mail SMS (Short Message Service) text messages from the handset, and store up to 1,000 phone numbers in its address book. The phone allows users to create to-do lists, write in calendars, and has enough battery power for three hours of talk time.

Serenata is an update to the Serene music-mobile phone the two companies put out two years ago.

Palm suffers from PDA downturn

Handhold-device maker Palm has posted quarterly net losses of $840,000 (£412,000) compared with profits of $16.5m (£8.1m) for the same period last year.

The firm is blaming dropping demand for personal digital assistants (PDAs), its core product, and the effect of restructuring costs.

The introduction of new smartphone products will revive the company's fortunes, said Ed Colligan, Palm chief executive officer.

"Two product launches in September demonstrate our commitment to delivering competitive, high-quality solutions and expanding our reach to a broader market and range of customers," he said.

Palm sold 689,000 smartphones during the quarter, up 21 percent compared with last year. Revenues from the division were $302m (£148m), a 12 percent increase over last year.

Revenue for the period was $361m (£177m), up from $356m (£175m) in the same quarter last year.