NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook made a much-anticipated status update Wednesday: The Internet social network is going public eight years after its computer-hacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University.

That means anyone with the right amount of cash will be able to own part of a Silicon Valley icon that quickly transformed from dorm-room startup to cultural touchstone.

If its initial public offering of stock makes enough friends on Wall Street, Facebook will probably make its stock-market debut in three or four months as one of the world’s most valuable companies. Facebook, which is now based in Menlo Park, Calif., hopes to list its stock under the ticker symbol, “FB,” on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Market.

In its regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook Inc. indicated it hopes to raise $5 billion in its IPO. That would be the most for an Internet IPO since Google Inc. and its early backers raised $1.9 billion in 2004. The final amount will likely change as Facebook’s bankers gauge the investor demand.

Joining corporate America’s elite would give Facebook newfound financial clout as it tries to make its service even more pervasive and expand its audience of 845 million users. It also could help Facebook fend off an intensifying challenge from Google, which is looking to solidify its status as the Internet’s most powerful company with a rival social network called Plus.

The intrigue surrounding Facebook’s IPO has increased in recent months, not only because the company has become a common conduit —for everyone from doting grandmas to sassy teenagers— to share information about their lives.

Zuckerberg, 27, has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. In Zuckerberg’s case, a lawsuit alleging that he stole the idea for Facebook from some Harvard classmates became the grist for a book and a movie that was nominated for an Academy Award last year.

Following the model of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Zuckerberg set up two classes of stock that will ensure he retains control as the sometimes conflicting demands of Wall Street exert new pressures on the company. He will have the final say on how nearly 57 percent of Facebook’s stock votes, according to the filing.

Even before the IPO was filed, Zuckerberg was shaping up as his generation’s Bill Gates — a geek who parlayed his love of computers into fame and fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Zuckerberg’s wealth at $17.5 billion in its most recent survey of the richest people in the U.S. A more precise measurement of Zuckerberg’s fortune will be available once the IPO is priced and provides a concrete benchmark for determining the value of his nearly 534 million Facebook shares

The IPO will also mint hundreds of Facebook employee as millionaires because they have accumulated stock at lower prices than what the shares are liked to be valued at on the open market. Facebook employed 3,200 people at the end of last year.

Depending on how long regulators take to review Facebook’s IPO documents, the company could be making its stock market debut around the time that Zuckerberg celebrates his next birthday in May.

The IPO filing casts a spotlight on some of Facebook’s inner workings for the first time. Among other things, the documents reveal the amount of Facebook’s revenue, its major shareholders, its growth opportunities and its concerns about its biggest competitive threats.

The documents show, as expected, that Facebook is thriving. The company earned $668 million on revenue of $3.7 billion last year, according to the filing. Both figures nearly doubled from 2010.

“The company is a lot more profitable than we thought,” said Kathleen Smith, principal of IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital.

Although she considered Facebook’s numbers “very impressive,” she said Facebook needs to talk more about where it sees its growth coming from.

“What new areas of business is it expecting to pursue beyond display ads?”

What’s not in the documents, yet, is Facebook’s market value. That figure could hit $100 billion, based on Facebook’s rapid growth and the appraisals that steered investors who bought stakes while the company was still private.

Facebook heads a class of Internet startups that have been going public during the past year.

The early crop has included Internet radio service Pandora Media Inc., professional networking service LinkedIn Corp. and daily deals company Groupon Inc. Most of those Internet IPOs haven’t lived up to their lofty expectations. The list of disappointments includes Zynga Inc., which has built a profitable business by creating a variety of games to play on Facebook. Zynga’s stock fell 5 percent below its IPO price on the first day of trading.

Facebook stands apart, though. As it rapidly expands, people from Silicon Valley to Brazil to India use it to keep up with news from friends and long-lost acquaintances, play mindless games tending virtual cities and farms and share big news or minute details about their days. Politicians, celebrities and businesses use Facebook to connect with fans and the general public.

It’s becoming more difficult to tell whether going to Facebook is a pastime or an addiction. In the U.S., Facebook visitors spend an average of seven hours per month on the website each month, more than doubling from an average of three hours per month in 2008, according to the research firm comScore Inc.

More than half of Facebook users log on to the site on any given day. Using software developed by outside parties — call it the Facebook economy — they share television shows they are watching, songs they are playing and photos of what they are wearing or eating. Facebook says 250 million photos alone are posted on its site each day.

To make money, Facebook sells the promise of highly targeted advertisements based on the information its users share, including interests, hobbies, private thoughts and relationships. Though most of its revenue comes from ads, Facebook also takes a cut from the money that apps make through its site. For every dollar that “FarmVille” maker Zynga gets for the virtual cows and crops it sells, for example, Facebook gets 30 cents.

For all of Facebook’s success, the company has had its share of troubles. It went through a series of privacy missteps over the years as it pushed users to disclose more and more information about themselves. Most recently, the company settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it exposed details about people’s private lives without getting legally required consent. And the legal fights over Facebook’s origins have been embarrassing and sometimes distracting, though Zuckerberg has consistently denied allegations that have depicted him as a ruthless weasel.

Zuckerberg has made it clear he isn’t especially keen on leading a public company. He has said many times that he prefers to focus on developing Facebook’s products and growing the site’s user base, rather than trying to hit quarterly earnings targets in an effort to keep investors happy.

In a letter included in in Wednesday’s filing, Zuckerberg paints a rosy, idealistic picture of Facebook.

“Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries,” he wrote.

Zuckerberg also pledged to stay true to Facebook’s scrappy roots even on the road to becoming a multinational corporation.

“The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” he wrote. “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done.”

Lately, Zuckerberg has matured into the role, said Scott Kessler, a Standard & Poor’s equity analyst who follows Internet stocks.

“Clearly he is a very smart and shrewd person,” he said.

Zuckerberg has surrounded himself with other savvy executives, who are often more experienced. They include Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who helped build Google’s advertising business before Facebook lured her in 2008. Facebook’s finance chief is David Ebersman, a former executive at biotech firm Genentech.

Amid the buoyant optimism about Facebook’s prospects as a public company, some analysts see troubling parallels to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, which turned into a devastating bust in the early 2000s. The biggest fear is that some investors will become so enamored with Facebook’s brand and brawn that the will try to buy the IPO share with little financial analysis or recognition of the risks.

“It’s a one-day circus,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOscoop.com.

The IPOs of Zynga and LinkedIn showed that success isn’t guaranteed even for profitable companies with huge followings. Zynga’s stock is currently trading just slightly above its IPO price. LinkedIn is considerably higher, but still far below the $122.70 record that it hit on its first trading day.

U.S. stocks are trading at their cheapest levels since at least 1990,
according to such commonly used valuations as price-to-earnings and
price-to-book ratios as well as dividend yield, Bespoke Investment Group says.

This realization will lift the S&P 500 Index (INDEX: ^GSPC – News) by 11 percent
to 1,400 this year or maybe more, according to the research firm’s 2012 outlook
report.

“The S&P 500 is currently trading below its historical
average P/E and P/B ratios, and these ratios are also at their lowest levels in
the careers of a large percentage of money managers,” wrote strategists Paul
Hickey and Justin Walters.

“While the current level of earnings is by no
means guaranteed, the economic
backdrop in terms of the US economy remains stable to positive,” they added.
“There is no denying the fact that the recovery has been tepid, but the
manufacturing sector has been a pocket of strength, while the employment picture
is really beginning to show improvement.”

The S&P 500 is already on track to reach or exceed this forecast, up more
than four percent in 2012. Better-than-expected
economic data and an emerging
bailout solution in Europe are behind the gains.

To start 2012, the benchmark had an earnings multiple of 13, the lowest since
1990 and below the 80-year average of 15, according to Bespoke. It would take a
move back to 1,484 to get the benchmark back to this long-term mean P/E.

The price-to-book ratio is 2.05, below the average since the late 1970s of
2.43. To get back to that average P/B, the benchmark would need to increase to
1,491.

One more valuation-dividend yield-points to above 1,400, argue the two
strategists.

“At the end of 2011, the S&P 500 was yielding 13 percent more than the
10-Year US Treasury,” wrote Hickey and Walters. “Outside of the credit crisis,
the last time the S&P 500 yielded more than the 10-Year Treasury was before
1960.”

They added: “In order for the dividend yield to get back to its
historical average relative to US Treasuries, either the 10-Year yield would
have to rise back above 2 percent, the S&P 500 would have to rally to 1,410,
or you would have to see some combination of the two.”

For the best market insight, catch ‘Fast Money’ each night at 5pm ET, and
the ‘Halftime Report’ each afternoon at 12:00 ET on CNBC. Follow @CNBCMelloy
on Twitter.

ROCHESTER, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

Kodak and Quality
Associates, Inc. (QAI) have helped The Fund for Johns Hopkins
Medicine (FJHM) process more than 45,000 donor checks from 15 different
development offices—using a remote deposit capture solution that
completes the task faster, more efficiently, and with fewer physical
processes than The Fund’s previous manual approach.

 
FJHM serves as the philanthropic branch for the primary research,
treatment and educational programs at Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM). The
new system enables FJHM to operate a more streamlined records management
process. Users can capture data, share information, make the deposit and
post their receipts—all within less than three business days.

 
QAI, an Authorized Reseller of KODAK Products and a customized services
and solutions provider for large-scale document management, worked with
FJHM to implement the solution. The new approach uses Kodak’s portfolio
of desktop scanners and Kodak’s check scanning platform, the KODAK
t6000 Transaction Software. The full solution is backed by KODAK
Care Kit packages offered by KODAK Service and Support.

 
Since the arrival of the remote deposit capture solution, the entire
FJHM development office has completely revamped its check-scanning
practices. Using the flexible, versatile desktop scanners from Kodak and
QAI’s software
configuration assistance, FJHM has fully transitioned into a
paperless office. The new streamlined process has also enabled a new
work group of dedicated personnel from each of the 15 donor offices to
meet weekly. The personnel collaborate and share best practices as a
team, all while enabling their fundraising counterparts to increase
their focus on individual development efforts.

 
Before the solution with Kodak and QAI, FJHM’s check processing required
a complicated, labor-intensive project. The final deposit of checks
could take as long as seven to 10 business days. Administrative
professionals from each of the 15 development offices were often
burdened by manual copying and paperwork tasks. They also had to spend
time transporting the physical paper checks to outside banking
institutions.

 
“A remote deposit capture solution can benefit any multi-departmental
organization processing a large range of checks,” said Scott Swidersky,
Executive Director and Partner, Quality Associates, Inc. “The small
technology investment yields a reasonable, affordable solution that can
be customized and integrated with other back-office systems. And, if we
reduce manual processing, we achieve savings in personnel time. Using
Kodak’s specialized check-scanning technology, QAI was able to create a
usable, affordable system that met the specific needs of the FJHM donor
offices.”

 
Multipurpose ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) A4 desktop scanners like
the KODAK i1220 Plus Scanner often give organizations a greater return
on investment for their office technology. In addition to check
scanning, the desktop scanners can easily process and convert many
documents into usable, electronic information. Examples include donor
letters, reply cards, gift and endowment agreements and similar
documents.

 
Kodak’s
check scanning software provides users many automated benefits. For
example, the software can sort and route by criteria such as ABA routing
numbers. It can also read multiple formats, including MICR, Courtesy
Amounts and Legal Amounts. The solution also enables easy integration
with third-party software systems, including remittance process,
customer information and content management repositories.

 
“Kodak continues to work with a broad range of industry-focused channel
resellers like QAI and independent software vendors to help
organizations meet their most basic needs: solving business problems,”
said Andy Bailey, Current and Future Product Manager, Imaging Capture
Systems, Kodak’s Document Imaging Group. “Professionals no longer have
to rely on manual processes or a single, dedicated check scanner for
their deposits. Working with Kodak’s full-range, remote deposit capture
solution, they can drastically cut the time between receiving and
depositing donors’ gifts. Businesses can spend less time on routing
paper and more time strengthening important customer relationships.”

For more information on KODAK Scanners, visit: http://graphics.kodak.com/docimaging/us/en/index.htm.

About Kodak

As the world’s foremost imaging innovator, Kodak helps consumers,
businesses, and creative professionals unleash the power of images,
information, and printing to enrich their lives.

(Kodak is a trademark of Eastman Kodak Company.)

Contact:

A group of about 300 employees at a Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China that makes Xbox 360s threatened to kill themselves last week after being denied compensation promised to them by the company, according to reports.

Foxconn, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry, makes computer and electronics products for such high-profile customers as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony, among others.

The mass suicide threat stemmed from an incident on Jan. 2, in which the workers asked for a raise and were told to either quit with compensation or keep their jobs and receive no pay increase, according to a report from WantChinaTines.com citing a story from China Jasmine Revolution, an anti-Chinese government site. Most decided to quit with compensation, but the company ultimately terminated the agreement and the workers never received their payments.

In response, the employees went to the top of a building at a Foxconn Technology Park and threatened to jump, according to the report. The mayor of the town eventually came and talked them out of it.

Suicide at Foxconn has been a serious problem in the past. At least 14 Foxconn workers in plants in the Chinese cities of Shenzen and Chengdu have taken their own lives since a string of worker suicides began in early 2010. And this past May, a large  explosion at the Chengdu plant killed three people and  wounded more than a dozen.

Such incidents have shined the spotlight on harsh working conditions within the company. According to the watchdog group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, which traveled to two of Foxconn’s factories to interview workers, conditions at several of the company’s China facilities are unsafe, military-like, and drive workers to despair and suicide.

Foxconn has even forced employees to sign a pledge promising that they won’t commit suicide and installed nets outside factory dormitories to deter potential jumpers.

Read more at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398713,00.asp

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues to defend his past role at investment firm Bain Capital as a job creator rather than a job terminator despite his opponents’ allegations to the contrary.

So perhaps it’s a case of unfortunate timing that Bain’s consulting arm—where Romney also once worked—is advising a company that is looking to trim its labor costs as it reorganizes in bankruptcy.

AMR Corp.’s American Eagle regional airline subsidiary has hired Bain & Co. as its strategic consultant to assist it in “labor-cost assessment and negotiations,” court papers show. AMR, better known as the parent of American Airlines, turned to Chapter 11 last November with the goal of slashing labor costs that are significantly higher than its competitors. As the parent company, AMR employs about 88,000 people around the globe.

“American has stated in their papers that there will be layoffs,” Ray Neidl, Maxim Group’s senior aerospace and airlines analyst, told Bankruptcy Beat Tuesday. “Most of the shrinkage will be at the regional sector and low-margin leisure routes.”

For instance, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that American Eagle would return nearly two dozen aircraft and cancel several of its routes, a move “likely” resulting in layoffs of its workers at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The airline has said it will furlough pilots and flight attendants as a result of these streamlined operations.

Bain, which previously worked with American Eagle between October 2010 and September 2011, would evaluate the costs of associated with the regional airline’s various worker groups, from managers to pilots and flight attendants.

“As part of this process, Bain will also help Eagle identify and structure potential labor solutions as part of the restructuring process,” American Eagle said. “Bain will provide analytic support, strategic advice, and advice on best practices during labor negotiations, and will otherwise work with both management and union stakeholders as needed.”

Bankruptcy provides an impetus for unions to meet employers at the negotiating table at a time when a company’s very survival may be on the line. When negotiations aren’t successful, bankruptcy allows companies to move to reject the collective-bargaining agreements governing union workers’ employment. Still, companies must be careful not to steamroll the employees they depend on for their survival.

“You need definitely huge cost reductions, but it’s a service business and you have to keep employee goodwill high while they’re making sacrifices,” Neidl said.

Bain’s retention would only cover American Eagle employees, as they belong to different unions and have different collective-bargaining agreements than American Airlines employees.

Bain’s employment, for which it’s entitled to $525,000 per month and reimbursement of its expenses, remains subject to the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan at a hearing later this month.

An AMR spokesman emailed Bankruptcy Beat this statement Tuesday:

“This is a complex process and we recognize that a successful reorganization requires the assistance of a variety of professionals with specialized expertise. The costs of retaining these professionals are a usual and necessary part of the Chapter 11 process. We will be reviewing these costs carefully to ensure that they are monitored and managed appropriately.”

As of Nov. 1, American Eagle’s fleet consisted of about 300 aircraft—half the size of American’s fleet—that flew to more than 175 destinations in North America, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Read more at: http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2012/01/10/amr’s-american-eagle-hires-bain-to-review-labor-costs/?mod=google_news_blog

SEOUL (Reuters) – LG Electronics Inc said on Friday it would unveil its first Google TV next week, joining Sony Corp and Samsung Electronics Co in partnering with the search giant to get a foothold in the emerging Internet TV market.

Google hopes to replicate the success of its Android mobile software in the TV market, but its attempt to conquer the living room has seen limited success so far due to a lack of web content and support from hardware manufacturers.

Google TV allows consumers to access online videos and websites on their TVs, as well as specialized apps such as video games. Currently it comes built-in on certain Sony television models and Samsung is also working with the U.S. firm to launch Google TVs.

LG said on Friday it would introduce its first Google TV next week at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Google said on its blog that chipmaker Marvell Technology Group, chip designer MediaTek and TV manufacturer Vizio were also new partners for its Google TV service.

Grappling with slowing demand and cutthroat competition, TV manufacturers hope forays into the Internet TV market will help cushion squeezed margins.

Research firm DisplaySearch expects the global TV market to grow only 2 percent this year after no growth in 2011 due to soft consumer demand amid a weak global economy.

(Reuters) – Apple’s new iPhone 4S consumes on average twice as much data as the previous iPhone model and even more than iPad tablets due to increasing use of online services like the virtual personal assistant Siri, an industry study showed.

When Apple rolled out the iPhone 4S in October, its small improvements disappointed many analysts and reviewers, but consumer demand for the device has been strong, and buyers have extensively used their devices.

IPhone 4S users transfer on average three times more data than users of the older iPhone 3G model which was used as the benchmark in a study by telecom network technology firm Arieso.

Data usage of the previous model, the iPhone 4, was only 1.6 times higher than the iPhone 3G, while iPad2 tablets consumed 2.5 times more data than the iPhone 3G, the study showed.

Today’s generation of smartphones is placing increasing demands on available carrier bandwidth as applications become slicker and average personal usage of videos intensifies.

That sharp rise in data consumption puts more pressure on wireless operators to speed up capacity investments, as they are struggling already with clogged telecom networks to keep up with growing demand for data services on the go.

A smartphone’s consumption of data depends upon what the user asks it to do.

The iPhone 4S is perceived by some as a data hog because of Siri, a well-reviewed virtual personal-assistant and search app. It is integrated into the iPhone 4S and responds to voice commands.

“I use the iPhone 4 myself and when I first heard of the iPhone 4S features I was not compelled to rush out and get one. However, the data usage numbers I am seeing make me wonder what I am missing,” said Arieso’s chief technology officer, Michael Flanagan.

He said as tablets use smartphone-like user interfaces and software platforms, their data usage was similar to top-end smartphones.

“A tablet still looks like a big smartphone,” he said.

Mobile data usage has skyrocketed since the introduction of Apple’s original iPhone in 2007, with usage of data networks seen roughly doubling each year. Emerging mobile cloud services such as Siri are expected to further boost growth.

Wireless operators are keen on raising revenue from Internet browsing and the social networking boom as revenue from traditional voice calls declines, but they are facing increasingly congested networks.

Fearful of losing customers, only a few operators have publicly admitted to the problem of keeping pace with data traffic, but the majority are experiencing difficulties.

“There is no silver bullet,” Flanagan said, adding that the introduction of new, more efficient LTE networks will help. But he said operators should also identify heavy users of data and distribute small cellsites to them to offload traffic from mobile networks.

New, so-called small cell technologies enable operators to use tiny, almost personal base stations which cost around $100 to remove mobile data traffic from the big base stations which serve hundreds or thousands of clients around them.

Telecoms gear makers Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent — which have had to battle aggressive pricing by Asian rivals — hope rising data traffic will lead to new orders.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki in Helsinki, editing by Matthew Lewis)

GILLETTE, Wyo., Nov. 23, 2011 —      /PRNewswire/ — High Plains Gas, Inc. (OTC: HPGS) announced that terms of an  agreement to acquire Miller Fabrication, LLC, a Douglas, WY-based facility  construction company have been satisfied and the transaction is complete.   The transaction, finalized on November 18, 2011, calls for the complete purchase  of Miller Fabrication by HPGS, in exchange for cash and common stock.

Ty Miller, President of Miller Fabrication, said, “We are genuinely thrilled  about the opportunity to be a part of High Plains Gas.  We can reasonably  expect to achieve significantly accelerated and sustainable  growth by combining the companies and focusing on our strengths.  I’m  confident that the synergies created by this merger will continue to move us  closer to our goal of being a regional leader in the energy construction  industry.”

Brandon Hargett, CEO of HPGS, commented, “We are excited to welcome the  Miller Fabrication team into High Plains Gas.  This acquisition immediately  broadens our rapidly burgeoning position in the energy construction industry,  while also diversifying our revenue streams.  High Plains currently  possesses and operates the facilities and infrastructure that will augment  Miller Fabrication’s ability to continue its growth well into 2012 and beyond by  allowing us to take on larger projects.”

http://www.highplainsgas.com/.

Safe Harbor

Statements made about our future expectations are forward-looking  statements and subject to risks and uncertainties as described in our most  recent filings made with the US Securities and Exchange commission, and are  subject to change at any time. Our actual results could differ materially from  these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update publicly  any forward-looking statement.

Contact: Tim Ondrak, 307-686-5030

SOURCE  High Plains Gas, Inc.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/23/4075535/high-plains-gas-announces-completed.html#ixzz1eXJhhhyD