Business & Tech

TECH ROUNDUP: France Bans Mention of Facebook on Airwaves; Hewlett-Packard To Buy Back $3 Billion of Stock

A look at the top news stories of the week about Palo Alto technology companies.

As Palo Alto is swimming in a virtual sea of technology companies, here's a look at how some made the news this week.

•In an attempt to rid the airwaves of advertising mentions, French regulators have forbidden radio stations from directing their users to Facebook or Twitter. The statute derives from a 1992 law which bans what could be conceived as ad references on the air. Instead, broadcasters are supposed to tell their users to check them out on a “social network.”

Paul Ceglia claims he owns half of Facebook, after a contract with CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2003. Now the company is demanding proof. Through their local legal team, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, Facebook is making an expedited discovery that Ceglia fork over all the contract and email exchanges, and are intending to thoroughly vet his computers to find the validity of them.

•On Thursday, Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker announced that the company would buy back a (meager) $3 billion of its stock this quarter, boosting its return for shareholders. On March 14, the company raised its quarterly dividend by 50 percent.

•Wednesday was StartX Demo Day at AOL’s newly refurbished auditorium in Palo Alto. Put on by the group formerly dubbed as SSE Labs, the demo showcased the work of the nine Stanford start-ups in depth, ranging from 6Dot’s portable Braille labeling device to ear wax removal device company ClearEar.

•Today Appfluence announced their newest app: Priority Matrix for Mac. The organizational systen allows users to arrange their data in a limited screen space using tools such as drag-and-drop and a free cloud sync.

GlobalLogic! announced today that it will again host the popular INNOVATE! 2011 conference in Palo Alto. Held next Tuesday, June 7, the conference will discuss how new up-and-coming technogies such as the cloud, mobility and social developments can be harnessed.



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