You should also read:

• Google’s Holiday Gift Card Doodle
• Tech Week in Review 5-6-2011
• Protect Yourself from the Financial Hurricane

Hyper-Gate is a Brooklyn-based IT Services, Software Development, and Social Media Management company composed primarily of Latino and African-American shareholders. Their business is geared towards African-American and Latino brands.

Hyper-Gate does what they call an Optimized Business Branding process, registering businesses in 300+ Social Networks, 300+Business Listings, and search engines. Once the basics are done, Hyper-Gate maintains, manages, develops and distributes content for your brand on a daily basis. This allows small businesses to focus on their core products and services while Hyper-Gate keeps their brand competitive on the social media side.

Social media has transformed the way we do business today. The prizes have been huge for those businesses that have harnessed the power of social media. Successfully managing your social media presence can be very time-consuming and quite often requires the use of full-time staff, who in our experience are quite often not the most ‘trained’ Social Media Managers.

Hyper-Gate is the technical arm of Nuyorican Media Corp., combining Education, IT and Business Consultants to customize services for businesses. Founder of Nuyorican Media Corp. Miguel Algarin is known for his work as the Founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which has long stood as “a beacon for emerging poets, hip hop mavens, musicians, visual adventurists, and sonic/visual artists of virtually every other stripe.” Algarin is also the subject of the The Miguel Algarin Story. Executive Producer and Director Will Roberson, also President of Diggin 4 Brown Films says:

“The golden years of Algarin’s life are no Shakespearian sonnet. A better comparison would be a full-on slam (body, not poetry), as Algarin labors to get on the same page again with the landmark club he founded, keep his home, and manage his HIV+ status. The result is a documentary in progress that’s also a race against time.” — SonicScoop

Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets introduced the production team from Diggin4Brown to produce “The Miguel Algarin Story”. Hyper-Gate CTO Anton Prakash is a six sigma blackbelt and former General Electric IT manager. Robin Benton is the Hyper-Gate designer and Miguel’s business partner along with Mirta Serrano, Roy Skodnick, and John Howard Algarin Esq.

Designed to lend Social Media and IT support for Latino and African-American business (B2B), Hyper-Gate will work closely with business owners as Ambassadors for their Brand. Check out the video below for more info on Hyper-Tech. You can also connect with Hyper-Gate on Facebook.

MacRumors reports an interesting feature in Mac OS X Lion called Restart to Safari. This feature is reminiscent of Google’s Chromebook, which cuts away your operating system and puts all the focus on accessing the Internet via a web browser. In Apple’s case, though, the motivations are different. They are probably not planning to dump Mac OS X in favor of providing a lightweight, browser-only interface.

This feature seems to be part of the “Find My Mac” feature set which allows users to get access to the internet. Though the premise appears to be to give your Mac a chance to phone home, the feature seems very useful for day to day use.

Updates to Google Sync for iOS

Google Sync is the technology that keeps your phone’s native mail and calendar apps in sync with your Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. Google has released 3 updates for Google Sync that should make some iPhone and iPad users more productive:

• Now, you will be able to search all your emails in Gmail, not just the ones stored locally in your iOS Mail app.
• Accept, decline or edit calendar events from the iOS calendar app.
• Send email from the address you want. Many of us manage multiple addresses and Gmail’s “Send Mail as” feature was not available on your iOS device. Now, you can keep things more consistent as the iOS mail app will respect those settings.

Lady Gaga and 50 Cent All About Bre.ad

Bre.ad is a custom link shortener funded by Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter. There are many…many link shorteners already out there, but Bre.ad seems focused on big brands and those looking to promote themselves. Promoting online requires strategy. There is a delicate balance between promoting your own stuff and helping others to shine. Bre.ad sort of allows you to do both at the same time. Clicking a Bre.ad link takes you to a splash page where you spend five seconds reading a custom message and viewing a branded image before being forwarded to the actual destination. Sounds annoying as all get-out, but Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, and Pepsi have all already signed on. With most users not willing to wait any more than a few seconds for a site to load, it will be interesting to see how Bre.ad does.

via BetaBeat

Facebook Moves in Against Apple and Photo Sharing

Two major leaks from Facebook this week. The first is a photo sharing app which has the potential to completely change the game. Photo sharing is a hot area right now with apps like Instagram and PicPlz exploding. Facebook, still quite popular for sharing photos with friends, apparently has no plans to be left behind. Their leaked photo sharing app seems to do way more than just share photos, building on features from Color, Path, and even Path’s new side project, With. Check out TC for a healthy helping of screenshots from the mobile app.

Facebook has made a commitment to support HTML5, which powered their recent upgrade of the mobile Facebook site and is likely behind the upcoming photo sharing app. Development using HTML5 also happens to be one of the ways to get around Apple’s lockdown. One could distribute apps across most mobile platforms using HTML5 web apps. Facebook’s Project Spartan is allegedly going to do just that, and more. Instead of simply using HTML5 support in the Safari mobile browser to bypass Apple’s App Store, they are rumored to be planning a full on attack by distributing mobile apps and games through the mobile browser. I have long been a supporter of HTML5 as a mobile development platform as it gives the developer full control, but I never thought Facebook would leverage it in this way.

Having this service available on Android is great, but it has also been a great disappointment for Android users. The fact that it is only compatible with a few devices is definitely a big issue in and of itself, but it seems like OS updates might be bringing issues as well. One does wonder if this problem will rise up every time a device receives an update. What do you guys think? EVO users, are you upset about this?

Am I upset? Nope. I’ve been running Gingerbread for quite a while using CyanogenMod 7. Rooting was painless and CyanogenMod with Gingerbread is a beautiful thing. Reminds me why I love using Android: Control. Not being controlled by a wireless carrier or a hardware manufacturer, but the ability to control my device and do whatever-the-hell I want with it.

via Android and Me

Also check out:

• How I Accidentally Upgraded to Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread
• Are Google And Amazon’s Cloud Music Services Dead in the Water?
• Why I Decided Against Apple From Jump

Apple filed suit against Samsung a while back, saying that Samsung is basically biting Apple’s style with their line of Android phones and tablets. As part of this suit, Apple demanded to see pre-production samples of the upcoming Droid Charge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy S II, and Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 so that they could evaluate any similarities. What does Samsung do in response? They demand access to the upcoming and unannounced iPhone 5 and iPad 3. A pretty ballsy move by Samsung, with the goal being to get Apple to move on and resolve this lawsuit. Are Samsung devices similar to iPhones? I’d say so, but so are all the other touchscreen smartphones out there. Apple was the innovator, but I doubt they can really stop other companies from leveraging that innovation. Check out the full rundown at This Is My Next.

Tupac and Biggie Alive and Living It Up in New Zealand?!

No, not really. Just a prank pulled by a group called LulzSec. They hacked into the PBS.org website and, among other defacements, posted this fake story about Tupac and Biggie staying in some unnamed town in New Zealand. Besides defacing the site, they also compromised network, server, and database details, and user login data for some PBS staff and contractors. In a statement, LulzSec sort of explains why they attacked PBS:

Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further… perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside… wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they’re sailing next time.

via BoingBoing

Twitter Launches Photos and Follow Button

Twitter had two interesting announcements this week. The first being a revamped search interface with tighter integration for photos and videos. This comes in part via a partnership with Photobucket, one of the first photo sharing sites in the game. See relevant photos and videos right alongside your searches at Twitter.com. We will also soon see the rollout of a feature that lets you add photos directly to your tweets. Yes, you could do this before with 3rd party services, but it’s a feature of the official Twitter.com interface now.

Next up is Twitter’s new Follow button. This makes it a snap to follow people and brands on Twitter instantly from their sites. It’s almost exactly the same as the Facebook Like button, except you’re actually subscribing to someone on Twitter. In addition to integration across sites like About.me and MTV.com, you can integrate the follow button into your own site.

Klout Introduces +K for Topical Influence

Speaking of buttons, the popular social media influence monitoring site Klout has announced a feature they call +K. This allows you to vouch for your peers on specific topics.

Windows Phone 7 may not be the hottest mobile platform out right now, but at least Microsoft can make some change off Android. Wait…What?! According to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, this is exactly what’s happening. Microsoft makes 5 bucks for every Android device sold by HTC. This is due to a patent settlement with HTC over intellectual property infringement. They aren’t stopping there, though. Microsoft is seeking anywhere from $7.50 to $12.50 per device against other handset manufacturers. Why not go directly after Google? Probably because the actual manufacturers are easier to pick on. There is also the fact that Google isn’t actually selling the phones, just providing the OS.

via TNW source BI

Twitter Officially Buys Tweetdeck

In a deal finalized on Tuesday, Tweetdeck has officially been acquired by Twitter. It’s both exciting and scary, kind of like when Microsoft acquired Skype. It means that TweetDeck will now have abundant resources to do what they do, but there is really no telling what Twitter will do with it. They haven’t exactly been to keen on third-party clients and developers. TweetDeck could very well be scrapped for parts to bolster the #1 Twitter interface: Twitter.com. Remember, TweetDeck has already created a multi-column HTML5 version of the popular TweetDeck client that works in Chrome.

Quora Launches SMS Support

You can now search and add questions to Quora via SMS on your mobile device. No fancy iPhone or Android app. No fancy HTML5 mobile website. This is straight up text messaging. Might sound archaic, but the fact is that most people still do not have a smartphone. Most of those people can text and they probably have questions they want answered. Holden Page says this move is pure genius, citing chat only 17% of Gen X and Y folks have a smartphone and pointing to Twitter’s rise being powered by initial SMS support. This now puts Quora in competition with services like ChaCha. If you are not already using Quora, will this make a difference?

HTC to Unlock Bootloaders

Due to consumer feedback, HTC will soon make it much easier to install custom ROMS on their Android phones. You know, the ones they pay Microsoft $5 a piece to sell (see above). ROM creators like @Cyanogen, who develop the popular (and totally awesome) CyanogenMod, had to resort to hackery and other mischief to get their product onto HTC devices. Now, this process will be much easier. After outcry from the HTC community, HTC CEO Peter Chou’s released the following statement:

There has been overwhelmingly customer feedback that people want access to open bootloaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we’ve listened. Today, I’m confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience.

via MobileLuv source GDGT

Square Moves Towards Mobile Wallet

The app that lets anyone accept credit card payments using their mobile device has taken things to the next level. Their Card Case feature turns your mobile into a virtual wallet, eliminating the need to actually pull out a physical card to pay for anything when you visit a trusted business.

Card Case is a new venture by Square that essentially puts a mobile wallet on a consumer’s iPhone or Android smartphone that they can use at any Square-enabled business. Users can store credit card information for each business they frequent. Upon entering the business, users can enter their name, select their virtual card from the Card Case app, order their stuff, and Card Case takes care of the rest.

Lady Gaga Fan? Cop the album here and store it for free in the cloud. Play it on your mobile device or from your browser without ever having to actually download it.

Check out the details at AllThingsD, where they Peter Kafka goes into detail about the love-hate relationship between Amazon’s Cloud Player and the music industry.

Also check out:

• Did You Get Your 20GB of Free Music Storage on Amazon Yet?
• Are Google And Amazon’s Cloud Music Services Dead in the Water?

“3 Dreams of Black” is Chris Milk’s new interactive film, created in WebGL with Google for Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi’s ROME, featuring Jack White & Norah Jones. The project is a Chrome Experiment which pushes the boundaries of HTML5 and showcases the potential of video on on modern browsers. Watch the “Creation Of” video:

via hypebot.

Also check out:

• Android Market Gets Home On The Web, But Can Anyone Login?
• Google’s Movie Rentals for Android Blocked for Rooted Devices
• Are Google And Amazon’s Cloud Music Services Dead in the Water?

So now people who root their phones, whether to get rid of the crap “open” that’s forced down their throats, or to have a current version of Android, are punished and lumped in with folks who steal movies. Nice move, Google. That makes me want to buy more of your products and use more of your services, so I can be treated like a criminal just because I’m smart enough to get rid of CityID, or want a safe version of Android on my phone.

There is one important point we have to remember here: Google did not create these movies. In order for Google to distribute them, they need permission from the movie industry. We’ve already learned from the Netflix launch on Android that this industry forces those distributing their content to be very careful. This is one of the reasons Netflix isn’t available on all handsets yet.

Let’s also take a peak at the new Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player services. Both operate as simple cloud storage lockers which just so happen to be geared towards playing music. Without the music industry behind it, you are forced to simply upload all your junk instead of having these services recognize and match your library as Lala has done in the past. More than likely, Apple’s cloud-based music service will have this ability. Remember? Apple bought Lala and later shut it down.

Let’s not go blaming Google and try to realize that, without these restrictions, there probably wouldn’t be any movies at all for any Androids.

Also check out:

• Are Google And Amazon’s Cloud Music Services Dead in the Water?
• Android Market Gets Home On The Web, But Can Anyone Login?
• Amazing Danger Mouse, Jack White, Norah Jones HTML5 Experience

Due to an insecurity in Google’s ClientLogin Protocol, it seems any Android user running 2.3.3 or earlier could unknowingly give away access to personal data. Researchers at uulm claim that authToken information, stored for 14 days any time you login to sites like Facebook and Twitter, can be easily obtained by hackers:

“To collect such authTokens on a large scale an adversary could setup a wifi access point with a common SSID evil twin of an unencrypted wireless network, e.g., T-Mobile, attwifi, starbucks…With default settings, Android phones automatically connect to a previously known network and many apps will attempt syncing immediately. While syncing would fail unless the adversary forwards the requests, the adversary would capture authTokens for each service that attempted syncing.”

Today, Google announced a fix for the problem, which will be completely transparent to users. You won’t have to do an update or install anything. Picasa synchronization, introduced in Android 2.3, will remain unencrypted. If you think you already got got, you will still need to change your Google password.

Keep in mind that, in order for the attack to work, you would have had to connect to a “fake” unencrypted WiFi network at some point.

via Gizmodo

AT&T Sees the Light. Removes App Restrictions.

It’s been a long time coming for AT&T Android smartphone customers, but you will FINALLY be able to install 3rd-party applications on your devices (sideloading). This means you will also now get access to Amazon’s Android Appstore, which is still giving away a free app on the daily. The Samsung Infuse, which just launched recently, will be the first phone to get this functionality.

“Over the next few weeks, we will also roll out this capability to existing devices in our base for which an upgrade is possible,” an AT&T spokesman said.

It appears those free daily apps from Amazon were a huge factor in AT&T changing their position. Customers were very vocal and AT&T had no choice.

via Wired

Netflix Single Largest Source of Interenet Traffic in the US

According to a report by Sandyvine, Netflix now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic in North America. This puts it ahead of Bittorrent, YouTube, and all HTTP websites by a pretty big margin. Bittorrent still dominates upstream traffic, though. The reasons for Netflix dominating our downloads? Video streaming eats up a lot of bandwidth, so it doesn’t take much actual usage to post big numbers. Still, this report highlights the major changes in how we consume visual content.

via TechCrunch

Google Teaches Developers How To Turn Apps Into Businesses

Apps are where it’s at right now, but there is more to success than just developing an app. Just like any other creative pursuit, there is work to be done once you have a finished product. It’s highly likely that, just like your average musician, developers need a little direction when it comes to the business end of things. This is where Google’s Guide to the App Galaxy comes in:

App Galaxy isn’t an eBook, PDF, or subscription you have to pay for to take advantage. You don’t have to specifically be an Android (Powered by Google) developer either. App Galaxy is pretty awesome website (no sign-up required) that’s designed as a spaceship taking off that carries you through the many aspects of the app business, regardless of what platform you choose to develop for, as it blasts off into the app success stars.

via BrothaTech

Google Places just announced a new feature that lets you import the places you’ve checked-in to on Foursquare into Google to rate and review. It’s as simple as finding the feed from your Foursquare profile, copying its link and pasting it into the search box in Places. It’s really easy! via ReadWriteWeb

Well, it’s not that hard, but if you haven’t a clue about RSS and all that jazz, I don’t think “really easy” covers it. Especially not with an exclamation point (Marshall, you’re still my dude).

The first thing you want to do is grab your Foursquare RSS feed. For your privacy, these feeds are available using private token URLs. This means you have to be logged into Foursquare to even see them.

1. Login to Foursquare.
2. Go to Foursquare.com/feeds.
3. Copy the link to the RSS feed for your check-in history (right-click on PC, control-click on Mac).
4. Fire up Google Places.
5. Paste the URL you just grabbed from Foursquare into the search box and hit Search button.

Now, this will pull in some of your recent check-ins and give you the option to rate them. Here is where things get a little funky. You’re only going to get the last 10 or 20 check-ins, not much if you actually use Foursquare.

To increase the number of results you see, you have to add a parameter to the end of the URL. Try adding “?count=1000″ to the end (no spaces) before you hit Search and you should see more results as you hit Load More at the bottom of the page.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Google Places is all about Ratings. If you don’t actually go through and rate the places that show up from Foursquare, you haven’t actually imported them into Google Places.

Again, if all you do is paste the feed from Foursquare and hit Search, you haven’t imported any info into Google Places. You must go through and rate the places you’ve been.

via Google Places Now Imports Your Foursquare Check-Ins.

Also check out:

• Getting Started with TweetDeck for Android
• WeReward Pays Your for Check Ins and Tasks
• How to Connect Google Reader Shares to Facebook via Hootsuite

As you may have noticed, Amazon and Google have both launched cloud music services. These work as storage lockers, where you can upload music from your computer and play that music, streamed directly from the cloud, to just about any computer or mobile device.

iTunes Dominates

Apple’s iTunes, the king when it comes to buying music online, has been rumored to be launching a similar service. The main difference being that Apple will launch with support from record labels while Amazon and Google are going it alone.

Why is this important?

It all comes down to how you get started on these services. With Amazon and Google, you have to upload all of your music to the cloud. As I can personally attest, this takes for-freaking-ever even for a modest amount of music.

It’s hard to overstate how critical this is. Right now, Amazon makes you upload your own library for any song you haven’t purchased from them since their service launched those you purchase from them can automatically be added to your locker. Google doesn’t even have a music purchase option at all yet, so you have to upload music.

As Jason and I talked about on OMG/JK this week, that means hours or days of uploading — that’s what he had to go through. How many people are realistically going to do that? Not a lot.

via TechCrunch

Look Mom! No Uploading!

You see, Apple could get around the uploading by scanning your music library and simply unlocking those tracks for you in their online library. You won’t have to upload, but you’ll still have access to your music in the cloud. This is exactly what LaLa used to do.

Why This is Dangerous

We have to remember that the gate keepers are gone. The music industry is desperately trying to hold onto a revenue model that consumers and artists are just not feeling anymore. They tried to lock us down with DRM, which failed miserably, so how else could they possibly limit our music?

Oh! I know. Get direct access to all the music on your local drive. Scan it and compare it with watermarks (yes, they can do that), hashes, or whatever from “official” services like iTunes and Amazon. Maybe they even compare your library to an extensive library of pirated music they snagged from torrents.

Bottom line for me is that I don’t think I want a cloud music service that has anything to do with the record labels. A dying beast is always the most dangerous. Of course, I’ve never bought anything from iTunes anyway and never plan to start.

Back to the Technical Side

You only have to upload your music once. After that, uploading an album here and there isn’t going to be a big deal. With Amazon, you don’t even have to upload anything because they’ll automatically dump your purchases into your cloud storage. Purchases made in their store don’t count against your storage limit.

What Do You Think?

I’m not down for an industry-backed cloud player, but what about you? Why? Which company will you roll with?

Also check out:

• Google’s Movie Rentals for Android Blocked for Rooted Devices
• Amazon Giving Away Lady Gaga’s New Album to Promote Cloud Player
• Did You Get Your 20GB of Free Music Storage on Amazon Yet?

Amazon’s Cloud Player service is a ballsy move by Amazon that lets users stream music from the cloud directly to their mobile devices or web browsers. The service does not have the blessing of the music industry and launched with only an Android app. This is understandable given Apple’s relationship with the recording industry. To bad, so sad, for iOS device owners…until now. MG Siegler explains how it works:

If you visit Amazon’s Cloud Player through the Safari web browser on an iOS device, you’ll see that it does in fact now work. You’ll first hit a warning page telling you that your browser is not supported, but just ignore that. Click into the music in your drive and it will begin playing. It works flawlessly — even to the point where if you get a Push Notification or incoming call, the music will be paused.

Netflix Finally Available on (some) Android Devices

For all you Androids at there, rejoice. You can now watch Netflix on select Android devices. Watching shows and movies instantly over 3G or WiFi. Resume right where you left off on your computer or TV. Search and browse titles with ease. There are currently 5 officially supported devices:

Facebook Responds on Smear Campaign

Facebook was recently caught trying to pull a fast one against competitor Google, by hiring a PR Firm to basically drag Google’s name through the mud. In true Facebook style, their response to getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar doesn’t say much at all. They’ve repeatedly escaped reprisals from users by sticking their collective heads in the sand until everything boils over. This latest event seems no different.

No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles — just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.

TechCrunch attempted to reach out to Facebook for a less sterile response, but got none. Since Facebook doesn’t want to speak up for what they’ve done, MG Siegler breaks it down for us without their input.

With an Internet penetration rate of only 0.5 percent, the state-owned Ethiopian networking infrastructure blocks a wide range of political opposition and independent news sites which report on the country.

Ethiopian officials recently hijacked an event sponsored by UNESCO, replacing independent journalists with government-approved reporters. They also unblocked a number of sites, probably temporarily, due to the event’s theme of new media and the Internet.

Ethiopia continues to be one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s worst offenders when it comes to Internet freedom. –Al Jazeera

A new method of Internet Censorship, Just-in-Time blocking, has become popular due to protests spreading across the Middle East and North Africa. In this case, sites are blocked temporarily in direct response to protests and other gatherings. On April 14, Uganda’s Communications Commission (UCC) allegedly used this method to block Twitter and Facebook for 24 hours as citizens protested against rising food and fuel prices.

Ugandan Commissioner of Police Andrew Kaweesi has called cyberactivism a Western phenomenon, stating that “governments need to come up with an enabling law that guards against misuse of communication networks to protect social values and national identity,” and called for regulation of online publications.

With only 5.6 per cent of the total global online population, Africa lags behind the rest of the world. Even with efforts to get more Africans online, they run the risk of increased Internet filtering and incarceration. While countries like Egypt and Sudan have mostly open access to the Internet, dozens of bloggers have been arrested in Egypt and the Sudanese government is known to use social networking to track down protesters.

Will the cost that citizens will have to pay be worth having widespread Internet access?

via Al Jazeera English.

While this firm, Burson-Marsteller, has “represented lots of blue-chip corporate clients in its 58-year history,” has consulted for Bill Clinton, and strategized for Hillary in 2008, their approach here was quite amateur. The Daily Beast says it best: “here were two guys from one of the biggest and best-known PR agencies in the world, blustering around Silicon Valley like a pair of Keystone Kops.”

They approached Privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian, hoping to use his name for Facebook’s vendetta against Google. He told BetaBeat that they even offered to ghost-write the piece. Instead of simple refusing their request, he posted the email exchange online, much to Facebook’s embarrassment.

Why should Facebook be embarrassed? Their have no privacy concerns, right? It’s not as if Facebook’s API has ever leaked private information. They’ve never forced users to opt-out of sharing their information with third-parties. They didn’t have to have a meeting specifically about privacy since users had become so upset they were flocking to Facebook alternatives. There wasn’t even an unofficial Quit Facebook Day as users attempted to rebel against the popular social networking site. Kidding aside, even after changing their privacy policies, Facebook apps still leaked data. It was only a couple of days ago that Symantec discovered Facebook applications accidentally leaking data to third parties, again. This last leak caused Facebook to overhaul their security protocols and implement OAuth 2.0, HTTPS and SSL Certificates.

I’ll refrain from making references to black pots and kettles, but Facebook definitely loses face here. As far as many are concerned, Facebook’s integrity was already in question when it came to privacy, and this backstabbing and desperate move doesn’t help any. One has to wonder, though. How scared of Google is Facebook to pull a stunt like this?