Some grumpy Facebook users drafted to test a new feature on the social networking site aren’t happy about it.

Facebook says less than 1% of its users are testing a real-time feature called Happening Now that shows the commenting and liking activity of their friends as they take place.

A small number of those users are airing their displeasure. Their complaint: They should be able to opt out.

"I hate it!," said Melinda Gould, 61, of San Francisco in a comment on the Times' Technology blog. "I'm packing my bags and moving out. I don't twitter or tweet."

It’s almost a rule: If Facebook makes a change, someone has to protest it. The Happening Now feature is no exception.

A tiny band of protestors have formed the "Facebooks 'Happening Now' Haters" group. It has 480 members.

"I woke up the other morning, turned it on and said, 'What is this?'" Betsy Mentzer, 62, of Newark, Ohio, said. “We were lab rats."

Chief among complaints about the feature: It shows status updates from friends of friends. The feature also displaced event and birthday reminders, making those features harder to find. Others say the “Top News” and “Most Recent” buttons are missing.

Facebook declined to comment.

Not all the reviews are bad. At least one person testing the feature said he likes it.

"For me its a little more managable and when you click some thing on that news feed it doesnt have to send you to another page and you can just view it right there with no hassle," said Facebook user Mario Rodriguez in a comment on the Times' Technology blog.

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Image: A screenshot of the Facebook group "Facebooks 'Happening Now' Haters." Credit: Facebook

Educational toy maker LeapFrog is jumping into the tablet market.

With so many youngsters bypassing kid-oriented toys and hogging their parents' iPad instead, the Emeryville,Calif., company is scrambling to stay relevant by introducing a tablet for children called the LeapPad.

The 5-inch tablet will feature a camera, a video recorder, 2 GB of storage, a touch screen and big buttons designed for little hands. The $99 gadget will be released on Aug. 15; the company is taking preorders here beginning Wednesday.

LeapPad "is a multifunctional learning tablet that can ignite children's imaginations and learning, but also handle a little rough and tumble play," said Craig Hendrickson, LeapFrog chief product officer, in a statement announcing the tablet.

Young consumers can choose between green-and-white or pink-and-white versions, as well as more than 100 learning games and apps (for download or in separate game cartridges). Games auto-adjust the level of difficulty for kids; each book app comes with three versions for different reading levels.

One thing it lacks for the tech-savvy tyke: WiFi.

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Photo: LeapFrog's LeapPad tablet for kids. Credit: LeapFrog

Justin Timberlake, who played former Facebook President Sean Parker in "The Social Network," has a minority stake in Myspace through a deal Specific Media struck to buy the ailing website from News Corp. for $35 million.

And that could be the kind of game-changing move that could rescue Myspace, Bebo founder Michael Birch said in an interview Wednesday.

"They clearly need to do something quite radical," Birch said. "Clearly the new owners have to reinvent it. It can't go head to head with Facebook. They have to create something different."

As a part owner, Timberlake will play a major role in the creative direction of Myspace. The new buyers envision MySpace as a Web destination for original shows as well as videos and music.

"There's a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. MySpace has the potential to be that place," Timberlake said in a statement.

Tim Vanderhook, co-founder and CEO of Specific Media, said he pursued Timberlake because he has the star power to reinvigorate Myspace. Timberlake will have an office at Myspace and a staff of six reporting to him.

"Justin is a tremendously bright guy who is really passionate about the opportunity for artists to build a community with fans," Vanderhook said.

Birch, the entrepreneur who competed against Facebook and Myspace, said he thinks Myspace has a "strong but tarnished brand" that could regain its shine.

"Myspace was always a bit edgy. People identified it with edginess and music. It may be able to play to that characteristic. But they have got to do it and execute quite well," he said.

Myspace was never all it could be, Birch said. That's what convinced husband-and-wife team Michael and Xochi Birch to launch a rival social networking service, Bebo. They sold Bebo to AOL in March 2008 for an eye-popping $850 million.

Bebo, which launched in 2005 and gained millions of users, mostly in Europe, was supposed to be a game-changer for AOL, driving traffic to its other Web properties and fueling advertising sales. It didn't work out that way. A new executive team at AOL decided to scrap it instead. In June 2010, AOL sold Bebo to a private equity firm in Los Angeles for less than $10 million.

"The problem with Myspace was always that it was never as strong a product as it needed to be. It left itself vulnerable to competition. It was only a matter of time before someone created something better," Birch said. "Because we didn't think Myspace was as good as it could be is the reason we launched Bebo in the first place. We were self confident that we could create a better social network, a better user experience and a better product than Myspace. We set out to do that. We achieved it, but not to the extent we needed to achieve it."

Who did? Facebook, of course.

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Photo: Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, right, and Justin Timberlake as Napster co-founder Sean Parker in "The Social Network." Photo credit: Merrick Morton / Columbia TriStar

Justin Timberlake is looking once again to a social network for a career hit, and this time its MySpace.

Last year, the pop-singer won critical acclaim for his portrayal of Sean Parker, one of Facebook's early leaders and a co-founder of the former file-sharing service Napster.

As noted on our sister-blog Company Town on Wednesday, Irvine-based Specific Media announced that it had bought MySpace from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $35 million in cash and equity -- a far cry from the $580 million that News Corp. paid for it just six years ago, when Facebook wasn't seen as much of a threat.

Facebook has since dethroned MySpace as the most popular social networking site in the world and Timberlake, known more for pop songs than tech investing, is taking on an ownership stake in MySpace as a member of Specific Media, which specializes in online advertising.

He will also drive the creative strategy at Myspace, said Specific Media co-founder Tim Vanderhook. With Timberlake's help, Vanderhook said Specific Media would bring together one of the most famous brands on the Internet with Specific Media's advertising savvy to create the kind of business that will draw marketers and consumers alike.

 "Regardless of the current perception of the Myspace brand, it's one of the small group of brands that has international prominence and a global traffic base of almost 100 million people going to it every month," Vanderhook said. "We are very focused on reinvigorating the brand. Our vision is to bring it back to what it was supposed to be originally."

Timberlake declined an interview request through his publicist. But the company and the crooner left no doubt that media is where they are shifting MySpace's focus.

"There's a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect," Timberlake said in a statement. "Myspace has the potential to be that place ... art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there's a natural social component to entertainment. I'm excited to help revitalize Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community."

As a part of Specific Media's takeover deal, News Corp. will take a minority stake in the Irvine firm, the company said.

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Photo: Justin Timberlake at the premiere of the movie "Bad Teacher," which he stars in, in New York on June 20, 2011. Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Hewlett-Packard Co. wants its HP WebOS platform to be the next big smartphone and tablet operating system to rival Google's Android and Apple's iOS systems. And HP could end up licensing the software out to other hardware makers such as Samsung to try and make that happen.

"We are talking to a number of companies," HP's CEO, Leo Apotheker, told Bloomberg in a recent interview in Beijing.

One of the companies that HP has been in talks with about taking on WebOS is Samsung, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

Samsung currently makes phones and the Galaxy Tab line of tablets that run on Google's Android operating system, as well as laptops running Google's stripped-down ChromeOS.

Getting other consumer electronics makers on board with WebOS could help HP's chances of succeeding with the operating system it bought when it paid $1.2 billion in 2010 to take over the financially struggling Palm.

Palm now runs as a division of HP, working on WebOS products. But Apotheker and other HP execs didn't think enough of the brand they bought to keep Palm's name and logos around when designing its line of HP-built WebOS devices.

Apotheker was vague about HP's plans and didn't offer much detail on whom the company was talking to or what types of devices it is looking to get WebOS running on from outside manufacturers.

But Apotheker and HP have said in the past that the plan is to sell PCs with WebOS running alongside Microsoft's Windows, as well as its line of WebOS phones and tablets -- such as the Pre smartphones and the HP TouchPad, which debuts in stores Friday.

"I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest," Apotheker told Bloomberg. "We are continuing our conversations."

Apotheker refused to disclose any timeframes on getting WebOS on non-HP hardware, telling Bloomberg that "there is no time pressure to do this."

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Photo: Leo Apotheker, Hewlett-Packard's CEO, attends a media event Wednesday in Beijing. Credit: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg

AntiSec -- a group of hackers made up of members from the Anonymous and the disbanded LulzSec -- published online files that it says contain personal information and documentation of racism in the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

The group says it broke into the state police agency's email servers to get the data, which is made up of "names, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, social security numbers, online dating account info, voicemails, chat logs, and seductive girlfriend pictures belonging to a dozen Arizona police officers" as a follow up to LulzSec's Web attack on Arizona DPS last week.

Officials from Arizona DPS were unavailable to confirm AntiSec's latest claims on Wednesday. Last week, the Arizona Highway Patrol Assn. said online attacks and data leaks, such as the LulzSec action, could compromise the safety of law enforcement officers.

AntiSec announced its hack against the state's safety department on Wednesday on Twitter and various "torrent" file-sharing websites such as the Pirate Bay.

"We found more internal police reports, cops forwarding racist chain emails, K9 drug unit cops who use percocets, and a convicted sex offender who was part of FOP Maricopa Lodge Five," a police fraternity, AntiSec said in its data leak.

The group said it hacked into the personal email, Facebook and Match.com accounts of a spokesman for Arizona DPS who has "been bragging to the news about how they are upgrading their security and how they will catch the evil hackers who exposed them." AntiSec also promised to do the same to "anyone else who tries to paint us as terrorists in an Orwellian attempt to pass more pro-censorship or racial-profiling police state laws."

Racism and corruption in the Arizona Department of Public Safety is what AntiSec says it is trying to expose and the group accuses the state police agency of "illegally issuing tickets to Navajos in AZ state court jurisdiction instead of tribal courts" and pushing out officers who spoke up against such civil rights concerns.

The group also acknowledged that its hacking could pose harm to police, but said it's not close to the harm police have brought on the state of Arizona.

"Yes we're aware that putting the pigs on blast puts risks their safety, those poor defenseless police officers who lock people up for decades, who get away with brutality and torture, who discriminate against people of color, who make and break their own laws as they see fit," AntiSec said. "We are making sure they experience just a taste of the same kind of violence and terror they dish out on an every day basis. Our advice to you is to quit while you still can and turn on your commanding officers before you end up in our cross hairs next, because we're not stopping until every prisoner is freed and every prison is burned to the ground."

The group also encouraged other hackers to "set aside our differences and join the antisec popular front against the corrupt governments, corporations, militaries, and law enforcement of the world. We promise you much more bounty to come guaranteed to bring smiles to the faces of all those who have hated the police. Unite and fight, for the flames of revolution burn bright!"

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Image: A screenshot of a portion of the document the hacker group AntiSec says is a leak of personal information from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, with words we can't publish blacked out. Credit: AntiSec / Pirate Bay

Google has redesigned its homepage, simplifying an already minimalist webpage, and adding a sleek black bar across the top that rolled out with the Google+ social network on Tuesday.

The new look popped up for a small numbers of users Tuesday and was being pushed to a wider but still limited audience Wednesday. Over the next few days more and more Google users will see the black-bar design when they visit Google.com, as well as across other Google products -- Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Picasa and others.

"We're working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll continue to see more updates to our look and feel," said Chris Wiggins, Google's digital creative director, in a blog post.

The Google logo, or Google Doodle as its sometimes called, on the search giant's homepage is now a little smaller and links that had appeared near the search box have been pushed to the top or bottom of the page for what Wiggins described as a cleaner look.

"The way people use and experience the Web is evolving, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and consistent online experience -- one that works no matter which Google product you're using or what device you're using it on," he said.

Other upcoming changes for Google products will mark an attempt at streamlining the look of things like maps and email by "using bolder colors for actionable buttons or hiding navigation buttons until they're actually needed" so users can focus "on only what you need at the moment," Wiggins said.

The redesign also makes use of new Web technologies such as HTML5 and WebGL, he said.

Wiggins said that constantly evolving design was part of what Google was all about, and to back up his claim he offered an example of the Mountain View, Calif., company's first Google.com homepage -- from 1997.

One interesting design detail the company dumped along the way -- the Yahoo-like exclamation point at the end of the original Google Doodle.

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Images: Google's June 2011 redesign and original 1997 homepage. Credit: Google

Payments start-up Square has landed a $100-million round of funding from an investor group led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.The round values Square, a hot new player in the nascent market for mobile payments, at more than $1 billion.

Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker will join the Square board.

"Square has a great product with extensibility which we believe has the potential to have a lasting impact on how people make payments," she said in a statement.

Earlier this month Square added former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to its board. In January, Square raised $27.5 million in a second round of funding.

Jack Dorsey, Square's CEO and the chairman of Twitter said: “We are on course to accelerate our growth in a meaningful way.”

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Oracle Corp. is claiming $2.6 billion in damages from Google Inc., alleging that it infringed Oracle patents on the Java programming language and its use in the Android operating system.

In the latest filing in the case between the two California tech giants, Oracle revealed it was seeking  $0.9 billion to $1.4 billion upfront from Google for infringing its patents. The Redwood Shores, Calif., tech firm is also seeking 15% of the revenue Google receives from advertising on its mobile operating system.

Oracle filed its suit in August, claiming that Google's use of Java in its OS infringes a patent acquired from Sun Microsystems when Oracle purchased the company in 2009.

"Google repeatedly rejected the reasonable licensing terms that Sun offered and ultimately chose to willfully infringe Oracle’s intellectual property and release the Java-based Android platform," Oracle said in its filing.

Android has been used on more than 310 devices and now has the largest share of the smartphone market.

Google did not respond to a message seeking comment. Earlier this month, a spokeswoman for the company had said Oracle's damage claim was out of line.

"Oracle's 'methodology' for calculating damages is based on fundamental legal errors and improperly inflates their estimates," she said.

Oracle also did not respond to requests for comment.

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Photo: Models pose with HTC's Android smartphone EVO 4G Plus, center, and tablet Flyer 4G during a news conference in Seoul on June 23. Credit: Lee Jin-man / Associated Press

Investors are betting big on a Web browser built by Netscape veterans for the Facebook generation.

Even though RockMelt only has a minuscule share of the browser market, some of Silicon Valley's top venture capitalists are throwing their weight and money behind it.

New investors Accel Partners and Khosla Ventures teamed up with Andreessen Horowitz to lead a $30-million funding round in the start-up. They were joined by Intuit chairman Bill Campbell, First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman and angel investor Ron Conway.

Jim Breyer, famous for leading Accel's investment in Facebook, and Vinod Khosla, the clean-tech investor making his first major Web investment in years, have joined RockMelt's board as observers.

That deepens RockMelt's connection to Facebook. Marc Andreessen and Breyer both sit on the board of the world's most popular social networking site.

The new funding comes on the heels of a product partnership with Facebook. "Facebook is the people-centric Internet and we are the people-centric browser," said Eric Vishria, RockMelt's co-founder and chief executive. "It's a natural fit working with them."

The Facebook partnership will be a model for others, he said. "Our goal is to build services right into the browser," Vishria said. Those services will include commerce, gaming and music, he added.

RockMelt, which launched to the public in November, incorporates popular social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter so users can take their friends with them as they wander the Web.

Reinventing the browser in such a highly competitive market is not for the faint of heart. 

Andreessen, who developed the Netscape browser that ushered millions onto the Internet, said RockMelt is ready for prime time. "The product is good and ready for broader exposure," he said.

Had his generation known how people would use the Web, they would have built the browser for killer apps such as Facebook, Groupon and Twitter, Andreessen said. With such a fundamental shift on the Web, "the browser is going to get much smarter," he said.

Breyer concurred. "It's a fundamental belief on our part that social and mobile apps are so fundamentally different from the first- and second-generation Internet that there are opportunities to build new technologies from the ground up," he said.

Vishria and Tim Howes, RockMelt's co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer, say they are going to use the cash to spread the word about RockMelt, expand their 40-person team and build new features.

More than 1 million users have tried RockMelt, and several hundred thousand use it an average of 6.5 hours a day. Still, its stats lag behind the leaders in the browser market, which has seen the failure of another start-up building a social Web browser, Flock.

RockMelt has relied on word of mouth, which can spread quickly among Facebook friends. "RockMelt has a unique distribution opportunity. It’s the first browser with friends built in," Vishria said. "100% of our growth comes from people telling each other about the product."

But it may need something more if it wants to gain traction. Apple and Microsoft built powerful bases of users through their own computers. Google promotes its browser on its home page, one of the most visited sites on the Web. Mozilla's Firefox rekindled the browser wars in 2004. The innovative product was embraced by a passionate grass-roots community, prompting Internet Explorer and Apple to roll out improved versions of their browsers and Google to introduce Chrome. 

The renewed focus on the browser not only gave consumers speedier, more secure browsers, but it also reflected a broader shift in computer use from the desktop to the Web.

"We expect that over the next few years all browsers will have social aspects built in. They will have to to stay relevant," Vishria said.

In all, RockMelt has raised $40 million from investors. More here from Ben Horowitz on why the browser matters.

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