Social networking

I have a thing about busybodies. They never seem all that busy to me. Unless stooping to snoop into other people's lives can be called busy work.

Now I am not entirely sure that the town criers of Riverhead, Long Island, New York, can be classified as busybodies, but I still feel a little shiver at their reported behavior.

You see, according to MyFox New York, the town's official representatives are most fascinated with whether the wily and sometimes dubious residents of Long Island have installed swimming pools in their backyards without necessarily securing all the appropriate permits. … Read more

Updated at 11:54 a.m. PDT with comment from Apple.

Perhaps you remember the videos in which Apple proved beyond an unreasonable doubt that all cell phones have the same antenna issues of which the iPhone 4 is accused.

Hold, say, a Droid X just so, and, well, the signal bars go down like an Englishman after 11 p.m.

Strangely, these videos appear to have made something of a sudden disappearance from Apple's own site. Their disappearance seems first to have been noted by Noah Hendrix, a computer science student at Kansas University.

His observational skills were … Read more

Zynga, the fast-growing social-gaming site, said it had hired Allen & Co. investment banker David Wehner as its new CFO.

He replaces Mark Vranesh, who becomes Chief Accounting Officer, reporting to Wehner.

The move is yet another indication that the San Francisco-based start-up is prepping for an initial public offering, rounding out its executive team, which is headed by founder and CEO Mark Pincus.

Pincus and Zynga have been quite busy of late, landing hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding and striking deals with Yahoo, Google, and international partners such as SoftBank, as the company seeks to expand … Read more

Strange things can happen when you call tech support.

But perhaps not quite as strange as what allegedly happened to Tara Fitzgerald. According to News10 in Sacramento, Calif., Fitzgerald wanted to send some pictures of herself to her boyfriend, but she couldn't find them on her Dell computer.

Her urgent need to find these pictures drove her, quite naturally, to call Dell tech support. Her call was answered, she said, by a gentleman in Mumbai, India, named Riyaz Shaikh.

Shaikh, who, by the time you finish this tale, might not turn out to be a gentleman, after all, offered … Read more

It seems like only yesterday that Apple decided it must show Motorola's new Droid X phone as having more signal problems than the average British railway line.

Would Motorola stand by and let Apple suggest the Droid X had just the same antenna issues as any other cell phone?

Well, a previous Droid X ad had already offered these words: "And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls."

So who could … Read more

Looking for the right gift for your favorite Facebook friend? A new service from the team of Amazon and Facebook can recommend the right products for shoppers by peeking at their Facebook profiles.

Launched as a beta on Monday, the new opt-in service will suggest gifts for your friends by checking out their favorite movies, music, books, and other items derived from their Facebook accounts. And if you're in the mood to buy something for yourself, Amazon also looks at your own Facebook profile to suggest products that might interest you.

You can try out the service by browsing … Read more

After six months worth of allegations of privacy invasions involving some of the largest Internet companies, it should come as no surprise that politicians are calling for new laws. The fact that it's an election year probably made it inevitable.

But an unusually lengthy Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Tuesday, titled "Consumer Online Privacy," made it clear that there was zero consensus on what approach to take.

Politicians fretted about everything from retailer Amazon keeping records of what customers purchased, unsubscribing from spammers' lists, peer-to-peer software vulnerabilities, the now-defunct NebuAd, cancer patients whose sensitive e-mail is redistributed, … Read more

So what does your iPad say about you?

Does it say you are forward-thinking, future-forward, for change, for progress and for a better world? Or does it say that you are a slightly putzish character who will blow $800 just to boost your lowly levels of self-esteem to around a +0.2?

I know you have been torturing yourself about this for some time. So, please say thank you to a company called MyType that took it upon itself to profile iPad owners.

MyType, which claims to help you "discover your personality type," examined the feelings of 20,… Read more

Rumors that The Walt Disney Company would acquire social-gaming conglomerate Playdom have turned out to be true: Disney issued a statement on Tuesday, after the market closed, announcing its intent to acquire Playdom for $563.2 million, plus potential earnouts of up to $200 million.

"We see strong growth potential in bringing together Playdom's talented team and capabilities with our great creative properties, people, and world-renowned brands like Disney, ABC, ESPN, and Marvel," President and CEO Robert Iger said in the statement.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Playdom is the manufacturer of popular social games such as … Read more