Communications Technology

A California man was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to opening tens of thousands of bogus online brokerage accounts and then pocketing the tiny test deposits made by companies like E-Trade Financial and Charles Schwab.

Michael Largent, 22, of Plumas Lake, California, had pleaded guilty to two computer fraud charges in May. He had been facing a possible five-year prison sentence.

He will also pay US$200,000 in restitution to the banks and will be restricted from using computers and the Internet for three years following his release.

According to prosecutors, Largent wrote a program that opened more than 58,000 brokerage accounts. The goal was to steal the micro-deposits made by financial institutions when they link a new account to an existing bank account.

He set up the accounts using fake names, including Hank Hill and Rusty Shackelford, taken from Fox Broadcasting’s TV series “King of the Hill.” “When the deposits occurred, he would transfer the funds into his own bank accounts or onto prepaid debit cards,” the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday in a press release.

Typically these deposits were between $0.01 and $2, but they added up. In total, Largent tried to make more than $50,000 in the scam, the Department of Justice said.

Largent’s arrest was widely covered on the Internet last year, where it was likened to so-called “salami-slicing” scams depicted in movies such as “Superman III” and “Office Space.” Salami slicing refers to stealing large amounts of money in many small, undetectable amounts.

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Pity that busy monster, gamers-unkind…to Nintendo’s extraordinarily successful pint-sized hexahedral Gamecube-with-motion-control. Who knew the Wii would become the sales darling of the current generation? The Nintendo ditto-heads, sure, but they thought the Virtual Boy would usher in head-mounted gaming long before the Wachowskis were jamming knitting needles upside the backs of pasty-faced heads.

No one got it logically right then, analysts included. We’ve all had our arms twisted round behind our backs since, as the Wii’s stampeded over Sony and Microsoft in worldwide unit sales and put the lie to cries of “gimmick” and “fad.” The numbers tell the story: 53 million units worldwide, against Microsoft’s 32m and Sony’s 24m.

Or do they? If you like the sort of games I do–stuff like BioShock, Fallout 3 (PCW Score: 90%), and Fable 2 (PCW Score: 100%) or wargames like HPS’s Napoleonic Campaigns and SSG’s Decisive Battles series–you’ve probably flicked through Nintendo’s holiday bill with disappointment verging on disdain. This year’s no different. Wii Fit Plus? New Super Mario Bros? That’s it. (Of the nearly 400 total titles queued for release, those were the only two Nintendo saw fit to highlight.) Smart as those two may turn out to be, they’re basically updates to safe and friendly franchises. When a publisher like Electronic Arts does this, it’s the devil. When Nintendo does it? We’re supposed to call it “innovating.”

Now there’s rumor of a price cut for the Wii from $250 to $200, a 20% slice that’d be the first since Nintendo introduced the system three years ago. Nintendo’s been turning a tidy profit on the Wii hardware for some time. By comparison, Microsoft and Sony have had to absorb massive cost-of-manufacturing shortfalls. Developing for the Wii is dramatically simpler and cheaper, too. The result: Developer and publishers flocking to the Wii to grab a piece of the action.

Would a Nintendo price cut be enough to counter recent ones from Sony and Microsoft? Propel the Wii back to comfortable monthly victory margins after dramatic monthly sales drops?

Maybe. If you’re a Wii buff, I can say “I hope so” vicariously and for your sake. But if I’m being honest and openly selfish about it, I hope not. Speaking as a guy who only reaches for his Wii remote these days to play stuff like the Metroid Prime trilogy, Zelda, Mario Galaxy, and World of Goo, I want the kinds of games I like to play (and the systems they’ve hewed to) getting the sort of developer attention they deserve. Games more like Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and Assassin’s Creed 2, and less like Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 or Barbie and The Three Musketeers.

Nintendo’s predicament? Mediocrity fatigue. A manically massive library of depressingly prosaic Wii games. Xbox and PS2 gamers ready to update and finally enticed by Microsoft and Sony’s price drops. Full-kitted cutting-edge media centers that let you stream audio/video from the web, media-laden storage hubs, or external USB hard drives entirely free. Microsoft and Sony’s impressive “casual” entertainment libraries and advanced motion-control interfaces incoming next spring. The arrival of Windows 7 alongside cheap computing kit from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD. And bottom line, a breadth of gaming experiences you just can’t get on the Wii.

Call me antediluvian, call me shortsighted. Sometimes trends are forward-looking. Then again, sometimes they’re not.

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Adobe Systems Inc. said Tuesday it will buy Web analytic software company Omniture Inc. for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers measure the effectiveness of such content.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe, which makes Flash, Acrobat and Photoshop software, said it will buy Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash, a premium of 24 percent to Omniture’s closing stock price Tuesday. Omniture shares jumped nearly 26 percent in extended trading.

The announcement came as Adobe said it earned $136 million, or 26 cents per share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended in August, down 29 percent from the same time a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, Adobe earned 35 cents per share, a penny above what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting.

Revenue fell 21 percent to $697.5 million, inching past analyst expectations of $686.2 million.

The recession has slowed demand for Creative Suite 4, the most recent version of the software package that brings in the bulk of the company’s revenue. But analysts say this will likely mean more pent-up demand for Creative Suite 5 when it launches.

For the current quarter, Adobe forecast earnings of 23 cents to 29 cents per share and adjusted earnings of 33 cents to 39 cents per share. The latter compares with analyst expectations of 37 cents per share.

Adobe expects sales of $690 million to $740 million for the quarter, bracketing Wall Street’s estimates of $719.2 million.

Omniture, based in Orem, Utah, offers a variety of Web traffic analysis and other products for companies to improve their marketing over the Internet. Its customers include Apple Inc., Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co.

The acquisition would marry Omniture’s services for figuring how to best deliver messages with Flash and other Adobe tools for creating Web sites and ads. Omniture services could then be used to monitor how effective the messages are.

“Adobe’s Creative Suite products and Flash platform help customers create and deliver engaging experiences. The addition of Omniture’s online marketing suite will help customers measure, analyze and optimize the impact and value of those experiences,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen in a conference call with analysts.

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, said the deal would allow Adobe to create new streams of revenue even as its existing businesses face a decline. The recession and the corresponding decline in technology spending has hurt Adobe’s profit and revenue, as many companies have put off upgrading costly software packages.

Though he called the deal “very timely,” Chowdhry believes Adobe is overpaying for Omniture, especially because that company’s paid products have been losing market share to Google’s analytics service, which is free. He said $12 to $13 per share — rather than $21.50 — would have been a fair value for the company.

Adobe expects the Omniture deal to close by November. The company will operate separately under Adobe as a new business unit, with Omniture CEO Josh James working as senior vice president reporting to Narayen.

Adobe’s shares took a hit in after-hours trading, falling $1.64, or 4.6 percent, to $33.98. The stock had closed regular trading up 43 cents at $35.62 before the report.

Omniture’s shares, meanwhile, soared $4.47, or 25.8 percent, to $21.79 after-hours. The stock closed earlier at $17.33, up 33 cents.

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