The IPO values Facebook at $104 billion, the largest-ever for a newly public company. The $18.4 billion that Facebook is expected to raise in the IPO itself would be the second-largest in U.S. history, trailing only the $19.65 billion of Visa Inc. in 2008.

The Facebook pricing comes at a jittery moment for the stock market, which suffered a deep drop Thursday in a continuation of the weakness that has gripped share prices this month.

The Dow Jones industrial average sank 156.06 points, or 1.2%, to 12,442.49. It has fallen 6.3% from its recent peak on May 1. The technology-laden Nasdaq composite, on which Facebook will begin trading Friday, slumped 60.35 points, or 2.1%, to 2,813.69.

Facebook’s debut has dominated Silicon Valley and Wall Street in recent weeks, as the company and the financial markets geared up for the most anticipated IPO since Google Inc. in 2004. >more

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The availability of Afaria 7.0 server on AWS gives enterprises a fast and simple way to buy and implement an enterprise-ready mobile management platform, according to SAP.

“We have a number of customers that don’t want to deal with and implement their own device management infrastructure in-house, because they view it as non-core, and instead they want a cloud-based offering,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, senior vice president, Ecosystem and Channels at SAP.

With the cloud version of Afaria 7.0, administrators can just go to Amazon’s Marketplace, enter their passcodes and start provisioning it. >more

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While a strong second place is not a bad position to be in, the problem for Barnes & Noble has been how much it cost to get there and how much it’s going to cost to pick up more market share from Amazon and Apple, which has steadily ramped up its iBooks digital reading platform and recently launched a major digital textbook initiative. Both Amazon and Apple, needless to say, have huge cash reserves to dip into for marketing, engineering, and R&D, while Barnes & Noble has appeared at times as if it’s simply battling for survival.

Enter Microsoft and its $300 million investment in what amounts to a spinoff of Barnes & Noble’s Nook digital media business, which includes e-books, textbooks, and all those digital newspapers and magazines its been selling on Nook devices. So far the new “subsidiary” of Barnes & Noble doesn’t have a name (it’s simply referred to as Newco) but you might as well call it Nooksoft (read more here about the announcement here).

Obviously, the cash injection is important because Barnes & Noble has been hemorrhaging money as it beefs up its Silicon Valley-based digital operation with expensive software engineers and hardware designers (a New York Times article noted that Barnes & Noble already has 300 employees in its Palo Alto, Calif., office). The new company also frees up additional cash for Barnes & Noble to compete with Amazon and Apple’s huge marketing machines and attract more talented engineers with potentially lucrative stock options. The other obvious benefit to the deal is it allows the bookseller to bring the Nook e-bookstore to Windows 8 devices, whether they be PCs, tablets, or smartphones, though Amazon’s Kindle app will be available for the Windows 8 platform as well.

Today’s announcement also marks the first time that Barnes & Noble has openly talked about going global, though it remains unclear when it will bring its Nook devices to overseas markets. In a conference call, CEO William Lynch said that few companies were “on more screens than Microsoft” and that the new partnership would allow Barnes & Noble to to extend the Nook digital bookstore to thousands of users in the U.S. and globally. Amazon is also making a big push into global markets and Apple, of course, is already selling millions of iPhones and iPads around the world.

Here in the U.S., in the wake of the government’s lawsuit against Apple and five of the “big six” publishers (and subsequent settlement with three of them), there’s talk of Amazon once again lower prices on e-books and selling certain titles at a loss. In the past, competitors had trouble matching Amazon’s prices, but Microsoft’s cash infusion would make it easier for Barnes & Noble to go toe-to-toe on pricing.

Ultimately, however, the biggest benefit of the deal may be a change in consumers’ psyche about Barnes & Noble. In the commodity world of e-books, branding is important, and many consumers fear that their purchases, which are stored in a “digital locker,” will vanish if a company goes out of business. When Borders went belly up, consumers were simply migrated over to Kobo because Kobo already powered Borders e-book store. But no one knows exactly what would happen if Barnes & Noble went down the tubes, and not a Nook story goes by on CNET without a commenter voicing some concern over Barnes & Noble’s longevity.

“I’ve always thought that the Nooks were a bit better designed than the Kindles,” said CNET reader tgibbs in a recent comment concerning the arrival of the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. “But I bought a Kindle because I’m more confident that Amazon will be still be around in the future.”

With a giant like Microsoft backstopping the Nook, consumers may now have more confidence that the Nook platform will indeed be here to stay. And that type of peace of mind is just as essential in helping Barnes & Noble gain market share than money alone.

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Windows group president Steven Sinofsky announced the Windows 8 Release Preview at a technology conference in Tokyo Tuesday. He said it would be freely available for download in June, but provided few other details. Sinofsky also Tweeted the news with a post that read, “Announce … Windows 8 Preview first week of June.”

Sinofsky’s announcement of a Release Preview, or release candidate, as some are calling it, immediately sparked speculation that Microsoft may be preparing to ship a final version of Windows 8 to computer makers as soon as October, with Windows 8 devices on the market shortly thereafter.  >more

Percento Technologies is sponsoring and will have a booth at the 2012 Texas Credit Union League Annual Meeting and Expo.

The event will offer the latest review of best practices, state-of-the-art technology solutions and a look into the future.  If you plan to attend, feel free to stop by to talk and visit with us.  And don’t forget to throw your buisness card into the bowl for a chance to win an Scotty Cameron Scotty Cameron Studio Select.

Managed IT Support

Starting at a steep $649 and available June 10th, this is the largest Android  tablet yet, featuring a billboard-like 13-inch screen. What’s the point of being  3 inches bigger than the iPad?

Toshiba says this 2.2-pound device was designed primarily for home use,  whether you’re surfing the web, playing games, video chatting, or watching  movies. Here’s our first impressions of this Ice Cream Sandwich-powered  beast. Read more

The new iPad’s high-resolution screen provides the best detail and color accuracy of all tablets Consumer Reports has seen, the publication said today on its website. Consumer Reports also commended the device’s camera and faster connectivity. The new iPad costs $500 to $830.

Last month, Consumer Reports said the new iPad reached temperatures of 116 degrees (47 degrees Celsius) when handling processor-intensive tasks such as playing graphics-heavy games. While the iPad can reach 122 degrees in 90-degree weather, when playing a game at maximum brightness, the temperatures don’t pose a health hazard, the reviewers said.

The device’s temperature is close to the 121 degrees that a Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy Tab 10.1 can reach in the same conditions, Consumer Reports said. An Asustek Computer Inc. Asus Transformer Prime can reach 117 degrees.

“With use of a laptop, evidence suggests that temperature on the bottom of its case of 120 degrees risks damage to bare skin with prolonged contact,”  Consumer Reports said in a statement today. “But we think the same temperature on a tablet is more a potential inconvenience than a concern.”

Satisfaction Ratings

Many customers didn’t wait for the reviews before buying the new tablet. Apple sold more than 3 million iPads during the product’s debut weekend.

The sales enthusiasm carried through to satisfaction ratings, according to survey results released today by ChangeWave Research, a unit of 451 Research LLC. Of the new iPad owners surveyed, 82 percent said they were very satisfied with the device, compared to the 74 percent approval rating of the previous iPad.

The high-resolution “retina” display was ranked the best feature on the iPad by new owners. The biggest dislike of the iPad was the cost, according to the ChangeWave survey.

Consumer Reports ranked the new iPad above other new tablets including the Toshiba Corp. Excite 10LE, the Pantech Co. Element, the Sony Corp. Tablet P, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.7.

The magazine suggested that gamers turn down the brightness of the tablets if the heat bothers them.

When Cupertino, California-based Apple released the iPhone 4, Consumer Reports declined to recommend it, saying it dropped calls when gripped a certain way. After initially playing down the matter, which became known as “Antennagate,” Apple gave out free cases and issued a software update aimed at addressing the glitch.

Apple rose 3.2 percent to $618.63 at the close in New York. The shares have gained 53 percent this year.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the tablets will be manufactured by partners such as Samsung and Asus and bear the Google logo.

The report cites “people familiar with the matter.”

Neither Google nor Asus, one of the hardware makers reported to release a co-branded tablet later this year, offered comment.

If correct, the move by Google would put it on par with Apple and Amazon, both of which have online outlets to sell their iPad and Kindle Fire tablets, respectively.

Google has tried this before. In 2010, it launched the Nexus One, a co-branded smartphone built by HTC and sold through a Google website. But as the Journal points out, Google killed the endeavor after a few months.

The report also claims the next version of its Android software, code-named “Jelly Bean,” will arrive in the middle of the year.

Source

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Sales of the iPhone, first introduced in 2007 with the touch screen template now adopted by its rivals, account for around half Apple’s total sales.

Apple has decided on the bigger 4.6-inch display for its next iPhone and started placing orders to its suppliers, the Maeil Business Newspaper said, quoting an unnamed industry source.

Its major display suppliers LG Display and Samsung Electronics Co declined to comment.

Samsung, which is also the biggest challenger to Apple in smartphones, uses 4.6-inch OLED display for its flagship Galaxy S II smartphone, introduced in April last year.

The high-definition “retina” display–containing several times as many pixels within the same area– is used in the latest iPad released earlier this month.

The latest iPhone 4S was introduced in October last year.

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