Facebook’s initial public offering hasn’t generated the expected demand, so far. Analysts claim that institutional investors are concerned about the companies growth prospects.

Some investors expressed concerns after Facebook announced on May 9th that the advertising growth hasn’t held in line with the increase in the userbase. Bloomberg published a report today, quoting insiders who didn’t want to be identified with the matter.

Facebook are now telling analysts that they may not meet their projections. The company executives has another week to market the IPO, set to price May 17th. Underwriters are trying to ramp interest to get large shareholders interested. Facebook are said to be valued at $96 billion, however not everyone shares that view.

Bloomberg add “It’s overvalued at that price,” said Filippo Garbarino, who oversees $50 million at Frontwave Capital Ltd. in Chiasso, Switzerland. “Investors are becoming more selective and there are quite a few fallen angels around, like Netflix. Those who buy Facebook at these levels are more speculators than investors.”

Lackluster interest from institutional investors at this stage could compel the company to rely more on buying from retail investors, whose demand remains robust, people said. The company may still elicit enough demand to sell shares at or above the high end of a projected range, people said. Institutional investors tend to hold shares longer than retail investors, lessening a stock’s volatility.”

Facebook chief Zuckerberg is trying to raise $11.8 billion through the IPO, which is the biggest in history for an Internet company. Facebook will be offering 337.4 million shares at $28 to $35 each. They hope to sell 180 million shares. Existing owners such as Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies are offering 157.4 million shares. Zuckerberg will also offer 30.2 million of his 533.8 million shares.

Have you experienced the annoyance of booking into a hotel room only to find that it has one network socket in the corner of the room? Many people have probably already chosen their next hotel based on wireless internet connection support in all rooms. If you are one of these people then a portable wireless router device could be a good investment.

The Tenda W300M is a portable wireless router which can act as an access point allowing you to connect several wireless devices to the internet, or as a wireless repeater extending  the range of the weak hotel wireless signal.

There are also three other functions which are combinations and variations of the previous two. This allows you to make use of this device in many different environments, whether at school, university, work, or conference halls.

Specifications

When DARPA came up with the idea of an interlinked network of computers, the whole reasoning behind it was that a Soviet attack on one part of the system should not prevent communication. Now governments are putting themselves into the Soviet commander’s seats to play war games. Tecnobitsdeclares, we’ll be the Russians.

When an earthquake ruptured the main physical connection between Taiwan and the rest of the world, it was a bad day for BIOS downloaders. Any connection to Taiwan’s main technology companies dropped to a trickle almost instantly.

But there was a trickle.

Right now, the war against piracy over the web is at a critical stage, with governments press-ganging ISPs into the fight (often against their will, with court orders and the like) – determined to cut off the supply of TV shows, films and music that some people get for free.

But the internet, by its very nature, is all about ‘resilience’. It’s all about ‘OK, so there is a block here, no problem, I will route around it’.  And with modern networks/data transmission rates, it’s not like the Taiwan cable rupture – because the ‘fall back’ networks are also amazingly fast.

So what happens next?

Well, first up, it seems that Pirate Bay has declared itself to be some kind of political party, standing for various rights and freedoms. Tecnobitsis no legal expert, but that has to create some new challenges/tensions/difficulties for the governments that wish to battle the pirates.

The first of these is that, it seems, in most of these legal hearings in Holland, the loser would have some kind of right to lodge a statement. That looks to have been denied to Pirate Bay – but maybe as a political party, they would have more rights and it would be illegal to censure their speech in most countries outside of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and <insert name of your favourite dictatorship here>.

What also seems clear is that if Pirate Bay had been allowed to broadcast a message to the world, then it would have started with “Oh, by the way, here’s the fastest way around the block” and the court would have been obliged to print those instructions.

If we use a real world analogy, a government has decided that Scotland is an illegal place to visit – and it has shut the main motorway. However, there are several ‘A roads’ which allow you to drive to Scotland and back quite quickly. The court has decided that publishing an alternative map to Scotland is not legal. They have not managed to nuke Scotland, just trying to block people in England from knowing that you can drive there – in the hope that English people will, instead, visit Scottish stores (run by the UK government) and buy ‘approved’ Scottish products’.

The truth is that people who wanted to buy ‘Scottish goods’ would have already been getting them from the most conveniently located store – and those who were making the trip to Scotland and back had no intention of buying locally anyway – so it’s hard to know if this is a genuine win.

In fact, there is a strong argument to say that it was the constant influx of Scottish goods – from Scotland – that encouraged locals to buy more from the government-approved Scottish shops.

OK, we has stretched that analogy to breaking point – so we’ll leave it there.

Pirate Bay rebrands as a political party, Queen Elizabeth and her love of piracy – alongside a dubious graphic for the copyright defenders people (who 'borrowed' the design in the middle – ooops)

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One thing we never understood about the Xbox 360: it’s made by Microsoft, so why the heck doesn’t it have a web browser? Even the friggin’ Wii has a web browser. Xbox 360 owners who don’t feel like hooking a HTPC or laptop up to their TV to get their HDTV Amazon shopping on may have something to look forward in the future, however, as a new report claims that Microsoft is working hard to bring a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 to its home console.

The Verge’s sources don’t say much more than that, but they do say that the version of Internet Explorer being whipped up for the Xbox will include full Kinect integration, presumably similar to the Kinect integration built into the local Bing search capabilities that are already available. No word on availability, but the Verge says they’d expect an announcement at the upcoming E3 conference.

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While Google is certainly a monster in many ways, there is at least one ‘Sully in the closet’ for the search engine super champ – and that’s the idea of Facebook launching its own search engine.

While that prospect might make Google worried enough to look under the bed at night, it’s certainly more than enough to prevent Microsoft sleeping at all. Tecnobitsponders the numbers and decides if Microsoft needs a cup of warm milk.

The first time a market exploded without Microsoft, the subject was browsers and the Dark Lord of the Sith was Nutscrape. Nine generations of Internet Explorer later and Gates’ legacy can feel confident that they are here to stay – at least in the PC/laptop space.

Since then, search engines and social networking have exploded onto the scene and Microsoft has been left scrambling. Not only that, but it has taken multiple attempts to create a half-decent search engine product in Bing.

Actually, that’s not fair. Bing does a few things very well. It’s great for adult content and the video preview option is amazingly useful. Hmm. Would that be the kind of advantage that Microsoft was looking for?  Maybe not, but it will take any win it can.

Why?

Well, the numbers simply do not add up.

Despite the best efforts of man, beast, Bing and Co – Google still pwns two thirds of the world’s searches, while Bing struggles to maintain just 15%.

Microsoft owns almost 2% of Facebook and its keen to build bridges with the social networking giant. Part of that bridge building will be the interlinking of Bing with Facebook users/data.

This could be viewed as a chamois leather polishing of Orwell’s 1984 nightmare – or as something quite useful. As with all things, we’ll need to see the application and back-end gubbins to know what’s really what. For now, if we believe in the goodness of Microsoft, then we can see that a photographer looking for a great venue near Brighton, might benefit from knowing that Facebook users in East Sussex all recommend one spot for shooting birds with a dirty great lens.

As a nod to open standards etc, Microsoft promises that it will also do some linkages with Google, but we’d expect these to be as plentiful as steaks at a vegan wedding.

Ouch, that's got to hurt a company like Microsoft. Still, maybe it's share in Facebook can prevent the inevitable

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