It must be a perplexing time for the company, as The New York Times reports, in deciding whether to ignore the movie and hope that it dusts into oblivion, or to fight back — legally or otherwise — to prevent it from misrepresenting the company and its CEO as it sets out to become the cultural sensation that it promises.

But with names like David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin attached, a trailer that’s received a fairly positive response, and a marketing campaign that makes it clear that the movie is no made-for-TV HBO documentary, the bets are against the former.

So far, the talks between the producers of the movie and Facebook have been glum. As a part of its privacy policy which prevents advertisers from using the Facebook brand name, the movie is barred from advertising on its platform, though it has been permitted a low-profile fan page. On the flipside, the producer of the movie, Scott Rudin, has shown it to top executives Elliot Schrage and Sheryl Sandberg, and admits candidly that “they did not like it.”

Zuckerberg himself has been open about his distaste for the movie. In a recent onstage interview at the Computer History Museum, he wrote it off as being fiction, and admitted that he wasn’t planning to see it, just like he hasn’t read “The Accidental Billionaires”, the book on which its screenplay is based on.

“They had two choices of books to base it on, and they chose to base it on a fiction book,” he stated in the interview. “I wish that when people try to do journalism or write stuff about Facebook, that they at least try to get it right.”

David Kirkpatrick, the author of “The Facebook Effect”, thinks that there is a chance, given how many details in the movie are distorted, that the company might be “forced to deliver a forceful rebuttal once the film has its premiere, especially if it turned out to be a hit,” according to the New York Times article.

The idea of this is obviously appealing to Kirkpatrick, who is behind the ‘other’ non-fiction book Zuckerberg cited in the statement and has been open about backing — he permitted Kirkpatrick to interview him for the book and has given joint interviews with Kirkpatrick himself, such as the one at the Computer History Museum, to promote the book.

If there is ever another ‘Facebook movie,’ there is little question that it would be based on Kirkpatrick’s non-fictional and heavily researched account of the story; one he has crafted based on actual interviews with the people involved rather than legendary folktales and fictional fillers.

So, one wonders: If “The Social Network” turns out to be a “Wall Street” — and not just a “Pirates of Silicon Valley” — could the company want to clear the air and make its own version of the tale?

Beware the trappings of liquidation preference – If you’re working on your initial round of funding and don’t know much about liquidation preference, look out. It’s the second most important deal term you’ll negotiate and it could have big implications on what you earn if your company is sold. Attorney Scott Edward Walker explains the term and its importance.

5 business apps every entrepreneur should have – There are a ton of apps out there, but figuring out which are best for startup owners can be tricky. Writer Shannon Suetos runs down five you can’t live without.

Why getting 10 customers is all that matters – While there’s no shortage of people ready to launch startups, only a miniscule percentage of those have found people willing to pay for their product or service. Angel investor Jason Cohen takes aim at entrepreneurs’ lame excuses for not doing this.

8 things I wish I knew before starting a business – Startups are great adventures, but they’re also rife with opportunities for mistakes and failure. Don Rainey, general partner at Grotech Ventures, lists the eight most important things he has learned through his career.

EC Book Review: “Wired for War,” by P.W. Singer – A book on the advances in warfare might seem an odd choice for entrepreneurs, but Javier Rojas notes that this look at robotics can give startups insight into one of the fastest growing market opportunities out there.

Clearly, this man is a marketing genius. What better way is there to get the word out about its device — which we initially caught word of in early July — than saying it’ll be better than a highly successful Apple product.

Surely none of the other hardware manufacturers preparing Android tablets — which at this point includes Asus, Acer, Dell, and many others — actually think their devices stand a chance against the iPad. LG, through its complex oratory jiujitsu, has declared itself the next king of tablets — despite the fact that we know practically nothing about the Optimus tablet.

All we have to go on now is nothing more than vague promises. “It’s going to be surprisingly productive,” Ma said. Users will be able to write documents, edit video, and it will have some “high-end features and new benefits” with a productivity bent.

He reiterated the sentiment of many iPad critics who deride the device as something primarily meant for content consumption, rather than productivity. But while I would agree that the iPad isn’t an ideal productivity device, nothing about LG’s Optimus tablet seems to be any more productive. iPad users can already create documents, and there are existing apps like ReelDirector for video editing (Apple will certainly release an iMovie app for the iPad as well).

There aren’t any hardware details for LG’s Optimus tablet yet, but you can expect a screen around 10 inches, and enough power under the hood to run Android 3.0 (to be released later this year). LG expects to launch the tablet worldwide by the fourth quarter.

In other news, the company is also revamping its smartphone line in September with the release of the Android-powered Optimus One. The phone won’t be a hardware powerhouse, but LG expects it to be a “gateway smartphone” for new users. Eventually, it will release more powerful Android devices. The company has plans to use Nvidia’s dual-core CPU in the fourth quarter, and it’s also gearing up for 4G phones running LTE technology in 2011.

Now, thanks to yet another infamous email from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, it appears that the issue will soon be resolved with a new software update, according to MacRumors.

The email came in response to a customer who called their iPhone 3G experience “dog slow” and said they were having trouble with zooming, typing, and scrolling. “I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again,” they wrote. “I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.”

Jobs’ response was typical: “Software update coming soon.”

MacRumors figures he’s referring to iOS 4.1, which in preliminary testing seems to resolve the performance issues.

While it’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long for Apple to say that a fix was coming, at least now iPhone 3G users know there’s help on the way. I’ve also heard complaints from iPhone 3G S users who’ve also been experiencing slowdown issues with iOS 4, despite the fact that it’s more powerful than the iPhone 3G. Hopefully iOS 4.1 will fix those issues as well, while also bumping up the performance even more for iPhone 4 users.

Wi-Fi hotspot advertising network JiWire has raised $2.1 million of a planned $6.3 million in debt, options, warrants and other securities. Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Panorama Capital and Comcast Interactive Capital participated in the round, according to a filing with the SEC.

Based in San Francisco, JiWire delivers ads to users of hotspots in locations like Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, hotels and airports. Because JiWire knows the location of each hotspot, it is able to target ads toward expected users, such as business travelers in airports. This week, JiWire released a report saying coupons and discounts are the most appealing location-based ads for Wi-Fi users. JiWire also reported that 55% of public Wi-FI locations in the U.S. are now free.

JiWire last raised $11 million from the same investors in April 2009.

Tags: location based services

Companies: Barnes & Noble, Comcast Interactive Capital, DFJ, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, JiWire, Panorama Capital, Starbucks

Tags: LBS, location based services

Companies: Cardinal Venture Capital, DeCarta, Facebook, Facebook Places, Hot Potato, Mobius Venture Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, T Mobile Venture Fund, Translink Capital

Hewlett Packard is working on a display with a really wide screen. Phil McKinney, chief technology officer at the Personal Systems Group at HP, showed off the concept for the screen at the DisplaySearch Emerging Technologies conference this week in San Jose, Calif.

The screen is so wide that you can see an entire pro basketball court at the same time. McKinney (pictured right) referred to the screen as a “triple wide high-definition” screen that is created by stitching together images from lots of different cameras pointed at slightly different parts of the same scene. The company is working with the National Basketball League to develop truly immersive screens that make you feel like you’re there on the sidelines.

“We can literally create the Jack Nicholson seat,” McKinney said, referring to the courtside seat that actor Nicholson has had for more than three decades at Lakers games. “You get a fresh, seamless experience. You can see end to end, the entire width of the court.”

Those tickets cost Nicholson an estimated $2,500 per game. Right now, Nicholson probably gets a better deal, since HP surely can’t sell a triple-wide screen for less than $2,500. (You can, however, use it for more than just one basketball game viewing.) Clearly, it’s going to look better than our picture above, which was taken from McKinney’s slide presentation at the conference.

The screen is just one of a number of screen technologies HP is working on. The company was initially making big screens for demonstration purposes, but customers began asking to buy them, and so now HP is a big player in the interactive displays market.

You can’t, obviously, control a triple wide screen using touch controls. You’d have to walk from one end of a long screen to another to do so. That’s why HP is also working on gesture-control or voice-control technology. HP’s current Touchsmart PCs have hidden “easter egg” controls in them, developed by coders in India, where you can do combination voice-touch commands. These multi-modal controls are a new way to control an immersive screen.

McKinney also showed off a concept of a Dick Tracy-style video screen watch. The watch is an experimental “convergence” device with messages and a video screen so you can see who you are talking to. It also synchronizes with devices that you walk up to. HP created it a few years ago as a prototype, but McKinney said he was surprised when a manufacturer came back to him a few months ago and showed it could manufacture the device as described.

Tags: triple wide high definition screen, TV

Companies: Hewlett Packard, Hp

People: Phil McKinney

“We were the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build an automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more,” Shah wrote. “We didn’t stop there, and we don’t have plans to stop now. We see joining Google as a way to supercharge our vision and supercharge our passion.”

Google has been experimenting with improving the capabilities in Image Search, for example by adding a “similar images” feature last year. It also offers a product search tool for retailers. Like’s technology could be useful in both areas, especially as Google tries to fend off Microsoft Bing, which includes the ability to search products based on visual characteristics (similar to Like).

The news confirms rumors that Google and Like were in acquisition talks earlier this week, which first surfaced on TechCrunch.

Tags: Google Image Search, visual search

Companies: Google, Like.com

People: Munjal Shah

The hackers win again. A group of game “modders” have reportedly been able to download Halo: Reach a month before its Sept. 14 release date. The game is the most important exclusive that Microsoft has coming for the Xbox 360 video game console. If pirates are able to get their hands on the game, the monetary damage for Microsoft could be big.

Microsoft recently loaded the game on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace store for game reviewers to download. The group of Game-Tut.com modders (who hack into game discs and game machines) broke through Microsoft’s security and was able to play the game. However, the modders say they will not distribute the game. The title is expected to be one of the hot sellers this holiday season. Earlier this year, a two-week beta test drew more than 2.7 million players, a strong indication of its expected popularity. I named it one of the top anticipated games of the year.

“So after a lot of .xex cracking etc.. Me and my team finally did it, we got Halo: Reach!,” the modders said. “This is not released for public, and we are not really planning on releasing either.”

One video shows an unreleased scene in the game. Last year, Activision Blizzard had to deal with pirates getting their hands on early copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Despite record levels of piracy, however, the game went on to be the best-selling game of all time.

Moderators on the Bungie.net site have posted a request for gamers to not post about spoilers of the game’s story on forums, though Bungie itself noted that the moderators do not work for the company itself.

Microsoft said it is looking into the leak and is “aggressively investigating” the matter.

Tags: Halo: Reach

Companies: Bungie, microsoft

Shiply offers two main advantages: price and CO2 reductions. Participating haulage companies transport Shiply deliveries in trucks that are already scheduled to travel on the given route. So they can afford to offer a reduction of up to 75% on the shipping cost of each new item. Haulage companies pay a transaction-based fee, which varies between 3.9% and 9.9% depending on the size of the quote. Shiply is also an eBay delivery partner in the UK.

25% of the haulage trucks on British roads run empty because they are on return trips. According to Shiply, this results in an additional 36 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, an enormous 7.2% of the UK’s total carbon footprint. Shiply claims to have already saved over 10 million road miles. In recognition of the environmental contribution of the business, Shiply won 100,000 euros in the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s Green Challenge competition last year. Its young founder, Robert Matthams, also received the Shell LiveWIRE and BT Young entrepreneur of the year awards in 2010.

While it was always possible to move goods from the UK to Europe with Shiply, only UK and German haulage companies participated in the marketplace. The new launches mean that local Dutch, Spanish, French and Italian companies can also offer quotes in their native territories, and web sites in the local language have also gone live. 10% of Shiply’s business already comes from its German site which launched in October 2009. Matthams told me that local knowledge has proved to be very important. Germans, for example, are not fond of giving their credit card details online and don’t use PayPal very much. So the payment options on the German web site had to be updated accordingly.

Shiply’s main competitor is the US-based company UShip, which expanded into Europe late last year with a German site. When I spoke to Matthams in September of last year, he told me that the company broke even in its first six months of trading, was experiencing growth of over 100% per month and was on course to surpass a £500,000 turnover in 2010.

He’s declined to give me precise updates on those figures but did say that Shiply’s performance has already exceeded the projections. According to the web site, Shiply has 160,000 registered users, 16,500 registered haulage companies and receives 1,200 quote requests per day. Shiply was founded in Manchester in June 2008 and is self-funded.

[image via Flickr/Ryan Holst]

Tags: delivery, Europe, Green Challenge, haulage

Companies: eBay, Green Challenge, Shiply, UShip

People: eBay, Green Challenge, Shiply, UShip