Internet

A bug allowed Facebook users to view their friends' chat sessions on the site, prompting the social-networking company to disable its internal instant-messaging service. The bug also let people see their friends' pending friend requests.  read more »

Google will begin rolling out design changes to its search results pages on Wednesday, including permanently opening a panel on the left-hand column that contains result-refinement controls.  read more »

Privacy advocates' criticism over recent moves by Facebook and Google Buzz begs the question: Is privacy possible in a social network? And, if so, which social-network service does it the best? To answer this question, this month I donned my privacy goggles and pored over the two social networks that my professional peers seem to use the most: Facebook and LinkedIn. I also asked all my Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections to tell me which they thought did privacy better. (I didn't look at Buzz because I admittedly don't know anyone using it.) What did I find out?  read more »

Google engineer confirms Steve Jobs' pronouncement that HTML5 can be used for rich Web content  read more »

Google has explained how it might use its status as an energy-trading company to increase the use of renewable energy sources in its data centers.  read more »

Within a year of its introduction to the Sierra Leone market and with only two service providers in operation -- Splash Mobile Money and Zain -- mobile money is already being touted as the payment option of choice in the country.  read more »

A delay in repairing a fault on the Mediterranean section of the SEA-ME-WE 4 submarine cable system has caused major connectivity issues in eastern and southern Africa, raising concerns about an over-reliance on international connectivity.  read more »

Facebook has revamped its application development platform to make it possible for the social-networking site and other Web sites to mesh what they know about their end-users and automatically personalize the experience people have online.  read more »

A new Yankee Group study of enterprise cloud computing services finds cloud contracts full of disclaimers, ambiguous uptime guarantees, and uncertain privacy policies and compliance claims.  read more »

Facebook's F8 conference for external developers is expected to yield major announcements from the company regarding extended and new functionality for its application platform, likely in areas such as search, geolocation, payments and integration with other Web sites.  read more »