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Facebook grew more popular than Myspace just about two years ago, and has been been enjoying steady growth while MySpace flounders trying to reinvent itself. But the recent attention brought to Facebook’s privacy issues -specifically the complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission by EPIC pointing out that Facebook data isn’t as private as it once was- has opened a door for MySpace to jam its foot into. The New York Times last week called Facebook’s privacy settings “A bewildering tangle of options,” with 50 settings menus with more than 170 options, and a privacy statement more than 1,200 words longer than the U.S. Constitution. ...

It seems like anyone who wants to be anybody is whacking Facebook over its loose — or rather loosening — privacy policies. Earlier this month, with disregard to the grammer momma taught me, Even I whacked CEO Mark Zuckerberg aside the head about Facebook privacy. As bad as pundits make out Facebook privacy to be, people can, and do, reveal plenty of information on the Web, too. Which place do they reveal more? I set out to find out in a non-scientific experiment, looking for publicly available information about one of my sisters. ...

I’m constantly reminded how slow email actually is. On the homescreen of one of my smartphones, I’ve got the official Twitter widget and the official Facebook widget which are pretty much constantly refreshing. Likewise, my email inbox is set to refresh just as frequently. Every day, when someone sends me a message in Facebook or replies to a Tweet, the widgets tell me first, and then five minutes later I get the email alerting me again. Because of this, I have an email account just for social network updates that is overflowing with unread messages. ...

Kindle is, without a doubt, the highest profile e-reader platform running. With applications on iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows, and OS X as well as its own line of e-paper Kindle devices, Amazon had an estimated 90% share of the e-book sales market last year. Today, Amazon announced that a Kindle app will be launched on the Android mobile operating system this summer. Like the BlackBerry app, Android users will be able to purchase Amazon e-books inside the mobile app. That functionality is noticeably absent on the iPhone and iPad versions, where users must go to the browser to download new books. ...

Last Friday, Google announced that its Street View cars had accidentally collected private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks while making their rounds, and the international response began in full force. The same day, the Irish Data Protection Authority asked Google to delete all of that payload that was collected in Ireland. Yesterday, Google wrote, “We can confirm that all data identified as being from Ireland was deleted over the weekend in the presence of an independent third party. We are reaching out to Data Protection Authorities in the other relevant countries about how to dispose of the remaining data as quickly as possible.” ...

Thirty-two days ago, I purchased Apple’s iPad, after proclaiming that I wouldn’t. A gadget like this one should be tested if repeatedly blogged about. I would have used a for-reviews loaner, but I’m on the same fraked list as Gizmodo. I bought my own. A month-or-so usage later, I agree with Tumblr and Instapaper developer Marco Arment, who asked about iPad yesterday: “What’s it for, really? Logically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for most computer owners…most people will have trouble justifying the $500 entry price.” ...

Three words sum up Microsoft’s patent infringement suit against Salesforce.com: Competition by litigation. Microsoft knows plenty about competition by litigation, having been its victim through major antitrust cases on two continents. It’s simply shameful action from a company which executies rightly wagged accusing fingers at litigating competitors over the years. Microsoft’s “do unto them like they did unto us” approach cheapens the company. The proof is in the patents, which are hugely broad scope. ...

Hey Admins…. It’s that time again. The second Tuesday is upon us and May so far hasn’t been demanding as far as patching goes. So far …. this month Microsoft has only issued two security announcements. MS10-030 and MS10-031. Microsoft has rated both as critical – and both could result in remote code being executed. MS10-030 resolves an integer overflow in POP3 & IMAP mail responses to Outlook Express and Windows Mail…. MS10-031 addresses a stack memory corruption related to the way that “Visual Basic for Applications” searches for ActiveX components, when host applications provide specially crafted files to the Visual Basic runtime. ...

A variety of sources are reporting that blog hosting sites with WordPress-created sites and php-based management systems such as Zen Care eCommerce are being infected with malicious scripts. Websites hosted by ISP DreamHost, GoDaddy, Bluehost and Media Temple have been found with the malcode, according to H-Online.com. The malicious scripts download malcode and block Google’s Safe Browsing API from alerting users. Story here: “Large-scale attack on WordPress” The Sucuri Security blog has offered clean-up instructions for those with infected pages here.

With competition in the Web browser field having transitioned from cold to boiling in less than a year’s time, Mozilla suddenly finds itself playing catch-up against not only Apple and Google, but Microsoft as well. In March, the organization realized it needed to completely make over Firefox 4 if it wanted to remain feature competitive against a fast-rising Google Chrome. In a live presentation yesterday, Mozilla Firefox director Mike Beltzner admitted that his group’s March roadmap, which involved an interim release of Firefox 3.7, had too many steps. Now the group has decided to straighten out its path by grafting version 3.7’s main additions onto a point release Firefox 3.6.4, and shifting gears to focus on version 4.0. ...