A day before it was set to go under the gavel, the sale of Sex.com stalled. The domain name was set to be auction, but an involuntary Chapter 11 filing by three of the company's creditors has put the brakes on the bidding. Escom LLC, which owns Sex.com, his on the hook, it seems, for an eight-figure tab.

The creditors' petition, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court shortly after noon yesterday by Washington Technology Associates, iEntertainment, Inc. and AccountingMatters.com LLC, claims that Sex.com owes them $10,092,118.68, according to a report by adult entertainment industry trade publication AVN (NSFW).

Palm (PALM) got hit in yesterday's after-hours session after announcing its third-quarter earnings report to Wall Street. According to BusinessWeek, an adjusted loss of 61 cents per diluted share was recorded on the bottom line. Analysts thought the loss wouldn't be so severe; they projected red ink of 42 cents per share.

Shares of Palm were down over 15% in extended trading. That's enough to scare any shareholder into rethinking the investment thesis with this business.

Nobody's naming names right now, but Social Times reports from SXSW that "a number" of companies are paying Twitter hefty fees for unrestricted access to the "firehose." While some Twitter data is accessible free through the company's developer program, the full data set is only available to those willing to write a check – and, it turns out, a substantial one.

Back in October, Twitter inked high-profile data-licensing deals with Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT), which brought in $25 million and put the social media service on the revenue map. Since then, it has brought more clients into the fold through its data-licensing program, including Kosmix and Scoopler, by opening up what it calls the "firehose"; i.e., unfettered access to the Twitter data stream.

Dividend Yield: 14.2%
Market Cap: $850 million

You would never expect a small-cap biotech firm to have a monster dividend yield, but PDL Biopharma (PDLI) is a delightful exception.

The company engages in the management of "antibody humanization patents," as well as royalty assets and license agreements with various biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms. In a nutshell, the process of "humanization" helps makes medications compatible with the biology of men and women so that they work properly.

Google has had an ongoing dispute with Chinese censors over Google's search engine content. China maintains strict censorship of the Internet sites that appear on Chinese search engines. Google (GOOG) on the other hand wants complete freedom of content on its site -- Google.cn.

Both sides have reached an impasse. Google has all but decided to close its Chinese search engine.

National Semiconductor (NSM), a chip maker operating in the same sector as Texas Instruments (TXN), reported increases in both the top and bottom lines for the third quarter in a press release posted yesterday after the bell. Revenues jumped over 20%. Net income was 22 cents per share, much better than the comparable period's 9 cents per share.

That was certainly a large gain in profit. Now, let's check out what the analysts were thinking. According to Reuters, Wall Street was projecting only 18 cents per share. Management scores again.

It's the Internet and it's all about speed. On Tuesday Cisco Systems (CSCO) will unveil new tools that will enable its internet service providers to build their own high-speed networks.

Cisco says its plan will "forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and government."

While details of the new tools are yet to be presented, the idea would open up the whole area of high-speed networks to anyone willing to set them up.

It's not just Digital Sky Technologies that is in "no rush" for Facebook to go public -- Facebook's founder says he's happy to take his time, too. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to the Wall Street Journal is putting his head together with those of Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel (INTC) and Charles Phillips, president of Oracle (ORCL) to gain insights on running his company, over which he'll have more control as a result of Facebook's dual-class share structure. If Zuckerberg gets his way, he'll run Facebook for a while before taking the dive into public capital markets.

Zuckerberg tells the Wall Street Journal(subscription required), "We're going to go public eventually, because that's the contract that we have with or investors and our employees." Doubtless, these two parties are eager to experience a liquidity event, particularly those from the company's earliest days and preliminary financing rounds.

The U.S. Postal Service plans to eliminate Saturday mail. This is part of a cost cutting program being spawned by the Service.

USPS lost $3.8 billion in 2009. One reason for the sharp increase was a drop off in mail volume of 12.7%. Factors such as online mail payments and message delivery have cut deeply into the Service's volume. And the trend is likely to continue.

Last year, Twitter got a taste of significant revenue when it inked data-licensing deals with Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG). The multi-year deals were worth a total of $25 million, but Yahoo! (YHOO) found an alternative way to access the social media site's data – free – which made it seem like the licensed data business model was on the brink of a short life. Well, it looks like some new deals have breathed a bit more life into this approach, though the details remain unclear.

In a blog post Monday, Twitter announced that it was opening its data "Firehose" to a number of companies: Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, Crowdeye and Chainn. According to the post, this step makes it "possible to move far beyond the Twitter experiences we know today."

There may be one positive thing that came out of the recent cyberattack on Google (GOOG). That good thing would be a very timely spotlight on the issue of computer network security. When we consider the almost instantaneous carnage that one talented hacker or code writer could inflict upon almost any data system, the prudent investor might do well to investigate the opportunities presented by such a scenario.

Are you still suspicious of the $6.5 billion Facebook valuation that resulted from Digital Sky's $100 million investment last July? And doubtless, the $15 billion valuation implied by Microsoft's (MSFT) 2007 investment in the company was, to say the least, aspirational. Well, the insanity is continuing to mount – throughout the Facebook ecosystem. A recent report by Global Silicon Valley Partner's NeXt Up Research organization puts the price tag of Zinga, the Facebook application developer, at a whopping $3.3 billion ... half of Facebook's!

Granted, Zynga has done a few things to wow social media market-wachers and investors. NeXt Up Research forecasts 35% growth for this company over the next four years and just upped its 2014 revenue projection to $1.1 billion. The previous estimate was only $460 million. What could possibly justify these numbers? Well, Zynga has grown from 30 million users to 230 million in only 10 months, largely as a result of the strength shown by Facebook over this period. Farmville has been the company's engine, with close to 80 million monthly active users.

U.S. and European regulators have finally cleared the way for a concentrated search partnership between Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo! (YHOO). The tandem effort, which involves making Microsoft's Bing the search engine for MS and Yahoo sites, is said to give the team 30% market share of U.S. search traffic. The intention, of course, is to throw some credible competition at search giant Google (GOOG).

Personal computer giant Dell Inc. (DELL) traded sharply lower in after hours trading following Thursday's fourth quarter earnings report.

Going into the earnings announcement, Wall Street was expecting to see the company show earnings of 27 cents per share. Excluding special items the company posted earnings of 28 cents per share for the quarter.

During the same period last year the company earned 29 cents per share.

Shares of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) are up nicely in after hours trading this afternoon following a better than expected report for the company's fiscal first quarter.

Going into this afternoon's earnings report Wall Street was expecting to see the company show earnings of $1.06 a share. The actual figure came in above analyst estimates at $1.10 a share.

During the same period last year the company had earnings of 93 cents per share.