publications

Though it has successfully resisted pressure to install a mandatory "panic button" on users' home pages, Facebook has permitted the U.K.'s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to build an app for its platform that members of the social-networking site can use to report online abuse directly to CEOP or seek advice about potential dangers of the Web.

Called ClickCEOP, the app has been released following negotiations and eventually a partnership with Facebook. On Tuesday, U.K.-based Facebook members between the ages of 13 and 18 will see an ad on the site that … Read more

Facebook announced Thursday the hire of Marne Levine as its first-ever vice president of global public policy. She'll start at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech company next month, but will remain based in Washington, D.C.

Currently, Levine serves as chief of staff for the White House National Economic Counsel; previously, following a background in the online payments space, she worked in the Department of the Treasury's Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison, and was chief of staff to former Treasury head Larry Summers when he was president of Harvard University.

"I'm excited that … Read more

After federal lawmakers concluded that Affinion Group preyed on the public, the post-transaction marketer is now asking the public to become an investor. Last month, Stamford, Conn.,-based Affinion filed for an initial public offering.

Affinion said in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is seeking to raise $400 million. According to The Wall Street Journal, Affinion has yet to set a price range or date for its IPO.

Last year, U.S. lawmakers launched an extensive investigation and found that the practices employed by Affinion--as well as … Read more

Twitter acknowledged Tuesday that "from a site stability and service outage perspective, it's been Twitter's worst month since last October." It's a big embarrassment for a company that, over the past year or two, has managed to clean up its reputation for technical instability and that this spring one-upped critics by unveiling a business model that looks like it might actually work.

"Last Friday, we detailed on our engineering blog that this is going to be a rocky few weeks. We're working through tweaks to our system in order to provide greater stability … Read more

A new industry effort that bypasses Washington politicians and regulators indicates a cooling of hostilities over Net neutrality rules is underway.

Longtime political rivals including AT&T, Google, Comcast, Verizon, and Microsoft, announced Tuesday they had joined together to form a technical advisory group to "develop consensus on broadband network management practices or other related technical issues that can affect users' Internet experience," including applications and devices.

The formal name of the effort is the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG), which will be chaired by Dale Hatfield of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a former … Read more

This American Life lets you listen to episodes from the popular public radio show going all the way back to the show's launch in 1995. The first screen lets you select from the radio show archive; TV shows shown originally on Showtime; a favorites section so you can save ones you like; or you can listen to episodes based on popular contributors. The app also has buttons across the bottom to find the latest shows (new shows are automatically downloaded to the app), a listing of all shows, a section for live streams, and a link to the blog. … Read more

If you've been following tech news this week, you probably saw the story of how an Apple engineer accidentally left an iPhone 4G behind at a bar. The story has been written about all over the tech sites, so I'll let you read all the details they were able to uncover about the device from the linked story by Erica Ogg. But for a different take on what led up to the iPhone 4G being lost, check out this "shocking" video over at the Buzz Report...It's great having coworkers with a sense of humor.… Read more

Gartner has predicted that IT will spend more money on private cloud computing than the public cloud through 2012. And while I personally am a big supporter of private cloud, I've still been trying to figure what are the real issues that would make users avoid public cloud services, and what aspects of public clouds could be changed to make them more appealing to enterprise users.

It's no secret that security is a major concern, but companies' reluctance to adopt the public cloud seems to go beyond security. At its heart, it appears to be a matter of … Read more

According to some data, 80 percent of the population in the United States lives in urban areas. For those of you not counting (ahem...me), that's about 243 million people, give or take a million. These same people contributed to the 10.7 billion trips taken on public transportation in 2008 alone. In short: there are a lot of freakin' people who take municipal transit. If you are one of them, pay attention.

All too often, commuters forget one very important word in public transportation: public. There are innumerable ways in which this lack of consideration for one's fellow humans can become aggravating, offensive, or downright disturbing. I would take great pleasure in airing them all here*, but as this is CNET, I'll stick to tech-related grievances. What follows are some general guidelines for using your gadgets on transit (or in the general public, for that matter).

DON'T talk loudly on your cell phone when riding mass transit. In fact, if you can avoid it, don't talk on it at all. With the exception of some admittedly curious bystanders, most people don't want to be made privy to the ins and outs of your life...especially if the conversation is of a particularly private nature. No one wants to hear you berate your mom for calling too often (true story), and we certainly don't need to hear the words: "Yeah, so the doctor said you should probably get tested, too" (also a true story). OK, so maybe there's a bit of humor to that last one, but really, people? Have you no shame? Oh, and if it wasn't already clear from this, DON'T use your speakerphone, either.… Read more