5 Ways Facebook Should Improve User Privacy

Whenever Facebook introduces new services, especially those that expand into other parts of the Web, it doesn't take long before privacy advocates and users start complaining about the changes. This time, however, Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Al Franken (D-Minn.), and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have joined the fray.
The senators have taken issue with recent changes to Facebook's privacy policy, as well as the social network's new 'Instant Personalization' service that allows third-party Web sites to customize site features to an individual users' tastes. The senators have asked the FTC to recommend privacy guidelines for online social networks, and the lawmakers may even introduce legislation to govern privacy on social networks.
The thing is, Facebook has been relatively responsive to user concerns in the past, and could regain user trust if it would just change some of its behaviors. Here are five things that I think Facebook needs to do out right away.
Opt-out, not opt- in
The four senators were right to criticize Facebook over its opt-out process for the social network's Instant Personalization feature. The opt-out process is not as clear as it should be. It takes several clicks to find the opt-out check box for Instant Personalization; it's practically buried within the user's privacy settings, and Facebook did not provide a clear and unambiguous path to get to the setting when it recently started the program. Not to mention the fact that even if you opt-out for yourself, Instant Personalization sites can still obtain your information through interaction with your Facebook friends.
This is not a Facebook-specific problem, though, as many online services have this preference for opt-out instead of opt-in features. Google, for example, ran into a lot of trouble over Buzz, the search giant's Gmail-based social tool, because of its opt-out approach.
Be upfront about changes or rewrites
Did you know that Facebook changed the wording of its privacy policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities last Friday? I bet you didn't. It appears that just the wording of the policies has changed, and the policies themselves haven't been significantly affected. Nevertheless, Facebook should have been more upfront about these revisions, and announced them when they went live. Instead, Facebook closed a three month process of user review in early April, and then implemented the changes. It would have been better for Facebook to announce the revisions in a blog post, and clearly discuss the changes. As far as I can tell, that hasn't been done in the last week.
Stop being vague
Facebook's recently revised policies sometimes explain things with vague and ambiguous language. Here's a choice quote from section 3 of the latest Facebook Privacy Policy, called Sharing Information on Facebook:
"Connections. Facebook enables you to connect with virtually anyone or anything you want, from your friends and family to the city you live in to the restaurants you like to visit to the bands and movies you love. Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection."
It takes a close reading of this paragraph, as well as reading parts of Section 2 of the revised policy, to understand that connections means, at a minimum, your friends, likes, and interests. But your connections may also mean current city, hometown, family, relationships, networks, activities, interests, and places. It's also unclear about how, exactly, your connections are made public and to whom. You have to read several sections later to understand that your connections are made by public to third-parties by default.
Facebook should state specifically what they consider to be your profile connections, and they should also be unambiguous in section 3 about the fact that connections are made public by default.
Let me control information access
Facebook users interacting with a third-party Web site or application need to have more control over what information those third parties can get from their profiles. I'm not convinced, for example, that many sites really need access to things I've publicly posted to my Wall or even my friends list. I can understand wanting to know my name and gender for demographic purposes, but it would be better if I could decide on a case-by-case basis, which parts of my public profile the site would get to see.
In fact, this is one of the fixes recommended to Facebook last summer by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. In response, Facebook said it would "introduce a new permissions model that will require applications to specify the categories of information they wish to access and obtain express consent from the user before any data is shared ." At the time, Facebook said it would implement policy changes recommended by Canada's privacy watchdog by the end of August 2010. So the network has a few months yet to introduce its new approach to third-party access to user information.
Bring back the 24-hour user data storage policy
Facebook has made it very clear that the decision to allow third-party Web sites and applications to store Facebook user data indefinitely does not alter a user's privacy rights. Third parties you interact with are still forbidden to sell your Facebook data or do much more than use it in relation to Facebook. But it does make it easier, at least in theory, for a rogue site or application to start building a user database based on Facebook profile information.
Facebook should make just a few tweaks to how it does business to regain user trust. Because if they don't act now, it's possible that Congress will.

How to Fix Anything PCs, printers, smartphones, cameras, networks--your stuff will inevitably stop working. Here's how to troubleshoot and fix your most common tech issues.

our PC will crash, your camera will break, your network will fail, and your printer will chew up paper. Before you spend valuable time and money waiting for tech support or paying for a professional technician, read our handy guide to basic repairs for your PC, home network, printer, digital camera, and smartphone.

How to Fix Your PC

Considering how many different software and hardware components need to work correctly for a modern PC to turn on, it's a small wonder that they work as well as they do. We can't give you a panacea for all of your computer ills, but we can provide a guide to getting out of the most common PC disasters. Here are some useful strategies.
If your PC won't turn on: Try plugging it into a different outlet or power strip; if it's a laptop, try a different battery and power adapter, if you have another one handy. For desktops, make sure that all your internal plugs and cards are properly seated--graphics card, RAM, everything.
If none of this helps, it's probably a problem with your motherboard or power supply, and unless you've got spare parts handy, you're probably best off calling the manufacturer's tech support line.
If your PC turns on, but won't successfully boot into Windows: First, start booting up, and press F8 repeatedly during the boot process. This may allow you to access a menu that lets you select different boot options with your keyboard, one of which is "Safe Mode".
Select Safe Mode, uninstall the last thing you installed, update all your drivers (if you need to download new ones, you may need to select the "Safe Mode With Networking" option instead), and open up the System Restore app (Start Menu, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore) to roll back to an earlier point when your PC could successfully start up.
If you hear a series of beeps on startup, you might have a motherboard-level problem. Safe Mode not working? Your hard drive might be failing. Get your rescue drive or manufacturer recovery discs, boot up from it, and save whatever data you haven't backed up.
Then run your disk diagnostic app--you can always run Check Disk, which is built into Windows, by right-clicking your hard drive, selecting Properties, clicking the Tools tab and selecting Check now... under the "Error Checking" tab. There's no cure for bad sectors--you'll have to replace the drive.
If you hear your PC emitting a set of beeps during the startup process, it's most likely your BIOS trying to tell you that you have a motherboard-level problem with your PC--your processor fan might be unplugged, for example, or your power supply might not be working.
The beep patterns aren't standard, so you'll have to get on a different PC and check out your BIOS manufacturer's Web site to figure out what's wrong.
If Windows successfully boots, then crashes soon afterwards: Start by updating all your drivers--first, the essential drivers provided by your PC manufacturer, then the drivers for your peripherals and extra devices. Don't forget to update your BIOS, too.
If your PC is crashing soon after startup, try uninstalling anything you recently downloaded and checking your startup apps and background processes to see if something is going wrong.
You can view the processes in the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc and clicking the Processes tab--and you can use ProcessLibrary.com as a reference for figuring out the obscure ones. For startup items, search for msconfig and click on the Startup tab to see what's going on. If something you recently installed shows up in there, it might be your culprit.
If your crashes aren't so easy to reproduce, try running a scan for viruses and malware with your preferred security suite (or pick one from our Top 10 Internet Security Suites chart).
On the other hand, if you recently installed a new security suite and started seeing problems, try uninstalling it and then use a different one. Security apps typically get deeper into the guts of your system than other apps, meaning they're more prone to incompatibilities.
Still can't figure it out? Google can be your best friend when it comes to troubleshooting, especially if you have an error message handy--even if the official support sites haven't covered your specific problem, odds are that someone has posted on a tech forum about it (such as our own Answer Line forum).
Search for the specific error message--in quotes--for best results, and if you can't find an immediately obvious error message, try looking in Control Panel, Problem Reports and Solutions (Vista); or, for Windows 7, open Control Panel, Action Center, Maintenance, View reliability history, and click on View all problem reports at the bottom of the window.
If you can't find any leads, you might have to do a clean Windows reinstall. Back up your data, reformat, and install from scratch. For more troubleshooting tips, check out our "Top Free Troubleshooting Tools for Windows."

How To Fix Your Network

Troubleshooting networking and Internet-related problems can be tricky and time-consuming, especially if your ISP is prone to network outages. Read on for some quick networking fixes.
If you can't find your shared PCs or devices on your local network: There are several reasons why you might not be able to see a certain PC on your network, but checking your firewall, your sharing, and your workgroup settings should be a good place to start. For more details, check out "How to Troubleshoot Your Home Network."
Networks with Macs and PCs, or PCs running different versions of Windows (or Linux builds), have their own difficulties--features such as Windows 7's HomeGroups, for example, make networking much easier among Windows 7 PCs but are not quite as easy for other OSs to play along with.
If you can't update all your PCs to run the same version of Windows, read "Set Up Your Home Network: Windows 7 Edition" to see how you can get Windows 7 to play nicely with your network.
If none of your PCs can access the Internet: Turn off your modem and router, and then turn them back on. If that doesn't work, try plugging your PC directly into the modem via ethernet.
If it doesn't work, either, you may have a router problem. If not, your connection is down, and you probably need to call your ISP's tech support line.
If only some of the computers on your network can access the Internet: You're dealing with an issue on your network, and the connection to your ISP is working fine.
First, open the command line (Start Menu, Accessories, Run, then type in cmd); type in ipconfig /renew. This will tell your PC to get a new IP address, a step that can clear up several network issues.
If that doesn't work, try checking the networking settings on each of your PCs by going to Control Panel, Network and Sharing Center, Change Adapter Settings and opening up the panel for the networking device (Local Area Connection for wired networks, or Wireless Network Connection for Wi-Fi, usually) that you're trying to use, and click Details.
From here, you should find clues to what might be going on.
If it says "No" under "DHCP Enabled," then your PC is trying to use a preexisting IP address, subnet mask, and DNS server information to connect to your network.
Normally, most home networks use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) to automatically assign addresses to new PCs on the network, so all you have to do is plug in (or connect via Wi-Fi), and you're good to go.
Close the Details window and click Properties; click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), then Properties. From here, just switch the radio buttons from "Use the following IP address" and "Use the following DNS server addresses" to "Obtain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server address automatically."
If your IPv4 address starts with "169.254.", your PC is trying to use DHCP to get an IP address and Domain Name Server information for that network automatically.
However, an IP address starting with those two numbers means either that the DHCP server on the network (typically the router, in small home networks) isn't working, or that it's not enabled, and you'll need to manually enter the IP address, subnet mask, and DNS server information on your own.
You can do this by going into the Network Connections window, right-clicking on the network interface you're trying to use, and selecting Properties.
From here, you should select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4); click Properties, and then both the Use the following IP address radio button and the Use the following DNS server addresses radio button to enter them in.
However, you'll probably need to get that information from whoever set up your home network; most home networks use DHCP to cut down the hassle.

How To Fix Your Printer

Printers can break, jam, and drop print quality suddenly. Here's what you can do about these common printing headaches.
If your printer jams: You're going to need to get that paper out of your printer before you do anything else. It pays to check your printer's documentation to make sure you extricate the paper in a way that does not damage your printer's internal mechanics.
Specifically, check the manual for advice on how to get to where the paper is stuck (an access door or release lever), and how to remove the sheet--ideally, in one piece, as removing smaller bits can be a real pain.
If you can't find your manual, the basic rule of thumb is to pull gently on the paper in the direction that it would be exiting--i.e., forward, not backward, in the paper path. If you can't get the whole piece of paper, look carefully for the stray scraps and extract them with tweezers, as they could cause another jam.
When it comes to paper jams, they're easier to prevent than to fix. Start by taking good care of your paper--make sure it is stored smooth, dry, and flat. Do not feed folded, dogeared, torn, or otherwise less-than-perfect paper into your printer.
Also, don't let paper sit for more than a day in vertical-feed trays, as the pages can bend slightly (affecting their ability to feed smoothly) and the pressure of the paper on the rollers might affect the rollers' functionality.
Finally, adjust your paper tray to fit the paper you're using. A carelessly set width or length guide can affect how the paper feeds and possibly cause a jam.
If you're having problems with print quality: Start by checking your printer drivers for the following settings:

• Paper type: Make sure your paper type matches what you're using. Paper weight, for instance, can affect how a printer adjusts its rollers to pull the paper through, and also how long a laser or LED printer "bakes" the page. Using "plain" vs. "photo" paper will affect how much ink an inkjet uses to create an image.
• Quality level: the different levels of print quality, from "best" to "normal" to "draft," affect the speed, precision, and ink usage of the printer. Using draft mode would be reasonable (and economical) if you're just printing something casually for brief or internal use--such as a map, or a document you wish to proofread. Print using the "best" setting for documents you plan to show to the public, or for a formal letter or nice photo.
• Document type: Some printers let you specify whether you are printing a memo, a newsletter, or a photo, and automatically adjust settings to fit.

Also, most printers these days have their own maintenance functions that will realign and clean the printer heads. Run through those once or twice and see if that helps.
If your printer is printing slowly: A handful of different factors could be slowing down your print speed. Here's what to look for.
First off, check to make sure you're not printing in a high-quality or "best" mode, which will take longer than a default or draft mode.
Depending on what you're printing, your connection to your printer might be bottlenecking the print rate. Wireless connections can be affected by distance from the printer, airwave interference, and physical barriers, and USB connections have narrower bandwidth than ethernet connections.
If you print run-of-the mill documents, largely text and some photos, than a wireless or USB connection should be adequate. If you print complex or high-res graphics or have a lot of people trying to use the printer, ethernet is better suited for bigger or busier traffic.
Also, most consumer printers rely on your PC to process the print job, so if your PC's memory and processor are already heavily taxed your jobs will take longer to process.
If a printer does have its own memory (usually one designed to work in an office), check to make sure there is enough memory to handle the complexity and quantity of jobs you are sending to it.
Did problems begin after you started to print a lot more than usual? Check the printer's monthly duty cycle to see how much it's designed to push out.
If you started off with a consumer-level printer designed to print perhaps up to a few dozen pages a day, but you are now printing a hundred or more pages a day, your old printer is probably struggling to keep up. If you are printing 25 percent or more of the monthly duty cycle spec, then you should probably get a printer with a higher monthly duty cycle.

How to Fix Your Digital Camera

While you can't open up a camera or camcorder and fix it quite as you can with a PC, you still have a number of ways to prevent camera or camcorder issues from ruining your perfect shot or cinematic masterpiece.
If your memory card isn't reading or writing properly: Some memory cards--usually SD cards--have a small notch that can lock the card in "write-protected mode."
If your card has that switch, try flipping it back and forth--it might be stuck. If the switch is broken, however, you can't do much besides buying a new card.
Sometimes cameras have problems using memory cards that have been formatted for use in other cameras. In that case, back up your data on the card and reformat it in the new camera; you should then be good to go.
If you're having image-quality problems: Repairing a point-and-shoot camera's lens or image sensor typically isn't worth the time, effort, or technical expertise needed, so if yours was damaged you're probably looking at getting a new camera. However, you can try a few other things before buying a new camera.
First off, wipe the lens with a soft dry rag (don't do that thing where you breathe on it first--the moisture can fog the lens over time) to clean it.
If you're seeing a lot of "noise" in your images, see how a few shots at a lower resolution come out; if your camera has a smaller lens and a high-megapixel image sensor, you might be better off shooting at a lower resolution unless you absolutely need high-res images for large prints. Also, check your ISO settings (if your camera lets you tweak them)--read "Eliminate Noise From Your Photos" for more tips.
If your audio feed is crackling: Your external mic connector might be loose. Secure the connection, and try again.

How To Fix Your Smartphone

Lots of things can go wrong with a phone. We can't fix your network reception or your billing complaints, but we can help you get the most out of your smartphone.
If your phone won't turn on: Pop out the battery and try another one, if possible, or try connecting it to a power adapter or powered USB port. It's not always a power-related problem; if you unlocked your phone or flashed it with custom firmware, that can interfere with the normal boot process, but not with its "PC mode" functions, which might let you restore the original firmware.
If you can't connect to your service network: You might just be in a dead zone--and you can't do anything about that. However, if your voice service is working just fine but your data service won't connect, try switching your phone into Airplane Mode (for Android phones, you can usually just press the power button once to bring up a menu and select Airplane Mode), and then back into regular mode to reset your data connection.
If your phone is slow or crashing: More apps and more data on your phone mean more problems. Both BlackBerry and Android users will want to grab a process viewer/task manager app and a file manager app to help keep your phone as clear as possible.
Android users can check out ASTRO File Manager (it's both a task manager and file manager), while BlackBerry users might want to try PB TaskManager ($5) and File Manager Pro ($5).
If your battery is draining too quickly: Batteries don't live forever, and if you're using your smartphone to play music, keep up on Twitter, and give you driving directions while you're taking a call, it's not going to last long at all.
However, it might also be running down prematurely because you have unused apps and processes running in the background, so a task manager app will help you eke a little more juice out of your phone.
Also, turning off services like GPS and Wi-Fi when you're not using them will help, as will sticking to Wi-Fi for Web browsing when you have a usable network.

Google: Adobe Flash Support Coming to Android 2.2

Adobe's Flash platform will get official support on Android phones later this year, when Google releases version 2.2 of its mobile operating system, according to the company's VP of engineering quoted in a New York Times interview.

Almost a year ago, Adobe bragged about the first demos of Flash on Android. Fast-forward to today, and Flash on Android phones is still MIA. Perhaps the whole Apple and Adobe Flash clash made us forget that other phones were no better at supporting Flash, either--at least not yet.

Sometime later this year though, the situation should change. Google's Andy Rubin, the lead engineer behind the Android OS, said that "full support" for Flash is coming in Froyo, the code-name for version 2.2 of Android. Note that this statement, as reported in the NYT interview, was paraphrasing Rubin, rather than a direct quote.

Rubin didn't give away any details as to which Android phones will be upgradable to version 2.2, or when exactly Froyo will arrive, so many older models could be left in the dust, without proper Flash support. Hopefully, the implementation of Flash on Android 2.2 will be a better experience than the Adobe/HTC Flash partnership on the Hero model, which is slow and unreliable at times.

Through this partnership with Google, Adobe is putting its mobile future in the hands of Google. When Apple effectively banned Flash from the iPhone OS earlier this month, Adobe vouched to concentrate its efforts on developing for Android devices.

Rubin also took a covert stab at Apple's reluctance to support Flash on its mobile platform and closed eco-system, saying that being open "means not being militant about the things consumer are actually enjoying."

"When they can't have something, people do care. Look at the way politics work. I just don't want to live in North Korea," Rubin said in the interview.

GPS Options: Many Ways to Find Your Way We compared five best-of-breed navigation systems--in your phone, on your dash, or built right into your car--to see which ones do the best job of pointing you in the right direction.

Need to find your way?
You probably have a cell phone in your pocket that can help you with navigation. But will your cell phone do the job clearly and conveniently, or should you still consider using a dedicated GPS device?
I ran five navigation alternatives through the day-to-day challenges of guiding me along my way: smartphone navigation apps for the Apple iPhone and the Google Nexus One, variations of the TeleNav server-based navigation service for smartphones and standard phones, the Garmin Nuvi 265WT GPS device, and the two-way connected TomTom XL 340S Live GPS device (two-way connected devices provide access to live traffic info and to up-to-date local fuel prices, weather, and Google local search).
Illustration by Istvan BanyaiMy conclusion: If you use any of these methods, you don't have to put up with getting lost anymore. Excellent turn-by-turn navigation with spoken street names is available via products and services ranging from simple cell phones to expensive dedicated devices. All of the devices I tried gave me very similar routes, and all of them successfully directed me to my test destinations. (That's hardly surprising, since the various devices rely on mapping databases supplied by either Navteq or TeleAtlas.)
So how do you choose the right GPS device?
Which approach is best for you depends on your circumstances and your tolerance for compromise. Dedicated GPS devices have several advantages, including larger screens, no monthly fee, and continuous availability. Moreover, a dedicated GPS product is better for people who conduct calls and navigate at the same time; most smartphones interrupt navigation to handle a phone call. Today you can get an acceptable dedicated device for less than $200, but that's still more than you'd pay to use your existing smartphone.
If you have a smartphone already and you rarely need help finding your way, buying a navigation app for the phone makes a lot of sense. But you'll lose the use of your phone for most other purposes while you use it for navigation, and you'll have to cope with a smaller screen.
If you're allergic to monthly bills, you won't be thrilled by server-based navigation systems or by two-way connected devices, both of which charge $10 a month for data services. Server-based navigation doesn't impose any up-front costs, but the service is limited and can be a hassle to use with a no-frills phone. Two-way connected GPS devices cost $200 or more, but offer many more features than server-based systems.

Motorola Droid Still Leading the Android Pack

It may no longer be the hot phone du jour, but Motorola's Droid appears to still be leading the way when it comes to Android devices.
A new report by mobile ad company AdMob measures the amount of ad traffic sent from different smartphones in March -- and the Droid's blinking red eye is going to be very pleased with what it found.

AdMob and the Android Lineup

First up, let's be clear about what exactly we're discussing here: AdMob measures the number of ad impressions served by applications and mobile Web sites using its platform. In nondipstick speak, that means it's counting the number of times its little ads show up on apps -- you know, the ones that are free and thus ad-supported -- as well the number of times they pop up on smartphone-specific versions of Web pages.
That said, here's what AdMob discovered: The Motorola Droid accounted for nearly a third of all the company's Android-oriented traffic during the month of March. No other handset even came close to matching the Droid's 32 percent stronghold: The HTC Hero came in second place, with 19 percent of the traffic. The HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) and HTC Magic (myTouch 3G) tied for third, with 11 percent each.
Next came the Motorola Cliq, with 10 percent of the total March traffic. Then you have the Samsung Moment, at 6 percent; the Samsung Behold 2, at 2 percent, and the Nexus One, also accounting for only 2 percent of all Android-based AdMob traffic.

Android's Expanding Options

What's interesting about this data is how it shows the increasing spread of popular options within the Android ecosystem. Just seven months ago, two handsets were responsible for nearly all of AdMob's Android-based traffic. Now that same traffic is divided among nearly a dozen different options.
This is truly the key to Android's inevitable mobile market dominance: choice. I'm not talking about the choice to customize a device and use it the way you see fit (though that's certainly relevant, too). What I'm talking about here is choice in hardware: Whereas certain unnamed platforms present you with only one basic form, Android devices come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors; there's something to meet practically any desire.
Case in point: keyboards. Turns out more than half of AdMob's March Android traffic came from devices with physical QWERTY keyboards -- namely the Motorola Droid, Motorola Cliq, and T-Mobile G1. The physical QWERTY keyboard is one reason why I personally prefer using the Droid over newer and more technically impressive handsets such as the HTC Incredible. It's all about the options.

The Android-iPhone Comparisons

Now, I like a good Android-iPhone smackdown as much as the next guy -- but one thing AdMob's data doesn't do, contrary to what some reports floating around the blogosphere suggest, is imply that Android has now surpassed the iPhone in overall Web traffic.
In addition to the Android-specific data, you see, the AdMob report breaks down March ad impressions based on mobile operating systems. For the first time, Android does come out ahead of the iPhone, with 46 percent of all U.S.-based traffic compared to the iPhone's 39 percent. But let's consider what that really means.
AdMob, as I pointed out early on, measures the number of ad impressions served by applications and mobile Web sites using its platform. The important phrase to take away from that: "using its platform." When you're looking within a single operating system like Android, you can draw some general conclusions by treating the data as a broad sample. But when you're looking from one platform to another, it's just not a consistent comparison.
AdMob, after all, very well could serve far more apps on Android than it does on iPhone. Developers have options as to whether to include ads and -- if they do go the ad-supported route -- which mobile ad provider they want to use. Differences in the number of and popularity of AdMob-using apps on each platform would clearly skew any meaning a cross-platform comparison would have.
So, sorry to disappoint, but there'll be no crown-changing bragging rights awarded here today. That doesn't mean Android and Apple fanboys can't still call each other names, though, and mock each others' platform limitations. Just don't do it in Apple's App Store; I hear uttering the word "Android" there can get you banned.

Urbanspoon free iPad app helps explore local restaurants

CULVER CITY, Calif. — A spinning, slot-machine tour of local restaurants put Ethan Lowry's Urbanspoon on the map in 2008, thanks to a feature spot in an advertisement for Apple's iPhone.

Now, with free downloads of Urbanspoon's iPhone app still at "hundreds of thousands" monthly, Urbanspoon co-founder Lowry has a challenge many Apple developers are facing: what to do for an encore for the new Apple iPad.

Urbanspoon's free iPad app will be out this week, but there won't be a new gimmick like the iPhone app's shakable slot machine that suggests restaurant choices. Instead, he's playing it straight, using the extra real estate of the big, 9.7-inch iPad screen to offer maps showcasing restaurants, with information about local eateries that can be viewed either online or offline.

"We wanted to make it easy to play along and explore without ever having to type a word," says Lowry, interviewed over lunch (naturally) at a local dining spot here.

Lowry doesn't expect consumers to take the iPad around town with them and shake it up to find restaurant choices, as they do with the iPhone. But with maps, "You can really explore your neighborhood," he says. The app shows some 25,000 restaurants in Los Angeles, for instance. "It's lightning fast," he says, "and that would be very hard to do on a Web page."

The app can store basic data about all the restaurants so that even if you are offline you can read about local establishments. The first-edition iPad works with Wi-Fi, so it needs to be near a hot spot to pick up an Internet signal. A version capable of connecting to AT&T's 3G cellular signal goes on sale Friday.

Urbanspoon is one of nearly 200,000 apps that have been created specifically for the iPhone, helping to build what investment firm Piper Jaffray says is a $1 billion yearly business.

Unless they are optimized for the iPad, most iPhone apps appear fuzzy on the bigger screen, because they were created for a small screen. Some 4,000 apps so far have been created specifically for the iPad.

The irony for Urbanspoon is that even though it is best known for its iPhone app, most of its traffic comes from its website, which offers reviews of 800,000 restaurants in the United States and Canada, Lowry says.

On the Web, Urbanspoon offers much of what you find on the iPhone app, but in larger and easier-to-read type — reviews, menus (from the restaurant websites) and photos of restaurants submitted by users.

The foodie competition

Seattle-based Urbanspoon is now a unit of Internet giant IAC, which bought it for an undisclosed sum a year ago.

Lowry, formerly a top executive at Jobster in Seattle, started the company with friend Adam Doppelt, because they shared an intense interest in local restaurants.

The site brought in revenue from ads placed by Google, Citysearch and The Village Voice. The relationship with IAC's Citysearch persuaded IAC to buy Urbanspoon.

Citysearch — well known as a repository of local reviews — competes with Urbanspoon, but that's OK with Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti.

"Citysearch is a broader local site," he says. "We cover all categories, so it's only a partial overlap."

Besides Citysearch, Urbanspoon competes with other local sites, such as Yelp and Local.com, and restaurant sites such as Zagat.

Lowry says the company hasn't changed much since the acquisition. His team has grown to seven from three, but it's still based in Seattle. It has taken advantage of the Citysearch sales force by introducing a new feature to Urbanspoon: reservations.

Surf for a restaurant on Urbanspoon, and you can see which of your choices has tables available. Click a button, and you're confirmed, eliminating the need to make a phone call.

For that feature, available just in Seattle and Los Angeles, the restaurant pays Urbanspoon $1 a person. Lowry hopes to expand across the country this year.

TALKING TECH: Urbanspoon's new iPad app

Like Yelp, Urbanspoon offers local advertisers the opportunity to sponsor its listings, but that doesn't affect their rankings, Lowry insists.

"They can't buy placement," he says. There is a spot for businesses to offer a welcome message.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, says Urbanspoon wasn't hurt by not having its app out when the iPad went on sale on April 3. "You don't have to be the first," he says. "You can rise to the top as long as you find a way to stand out."

He says Urbanspoon's use of social features and mapping will help it find an audience on the iPad.

GameCenter: Apple looks to emulate Microsoft’s success with Xbox Live-like video game community for iPhone

I guess Apple is serious about gaming now. It just announced, as one of its many iPhone “pillars,” the development of GameCenter, which our man on the scene, Greg Kumparak, described as “Xbox Live for the iPhone.” Match-making, leaderboards, achievement points, the works.
Developers will be able to mess around with GameCenter as soon as the iPhone OS 4.0 developer preview goes live later today, but won’t be available to the general public till the operating system’s release later this year.
The idea is to leverage the many, many games currently available on the App Store—more than 50,000 by Apple’s count—and build a veritable gaming community, just like what Microsoft has done with its Xbox Live service (even though Microsoft has been focusing on non-gaming enhancement to Xbox Live for some time now).
Given that this was just announced seconds ago, it would probably be wise to slow down before championing the idea that Apple is ready to push Nintendo and Sony, makers of the DS and PSP, respectively, out of the market.

No Multitasking for iPhone 3G and Early iPod Touch Models

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One of the finer points Steve Jobs let loose at the end of the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement today is that only the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch third generation (the most recent iteration from fall 2009) will have the capacity to support the iPhone OS 4.0’s new multitasking features.
In other words, owners of the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G, and first or second generation iPod touch models will not be able to multitask.
The current generation of devices “will run pretty much everything” in the new mobile operating system. The earlier iterations of iPhone and iPod touch, however, “will run many things, but not everything.” Jobs says they won’t be able to support multitasking because “the hardware just can’t do it.”
That’s bad news for owners of those products, who won’t be able to take advantage of one of the major updates coming in the new OS. This is certainly not unprecedented in the fast-paced world of technology development, but we’re sure there are a number of users of earlier iPhone and iPod touch models who are a wee bit miffed at this point.

HOW TO: Clean Up Your Facebook Profile

As the number of your Facebook friends and apps you (and them) are using increases, your Facebook news feed and wall can turn into one big mess. It’s nice to communicate with your friends, but if you can’t find useful posts amidst all those silly apps or your real friends amongst all the unknown people you’ve befriended, it’s time to clean up your Facebook profile.
Facebook offers extensive options for fine tuning what individual applications and people can see or do on your Facebook profile, but if you haven’t been following all the changes (and Facebook likes to change often), you might feel lost in all the options. We’re offering a rundown of the most efficient ways to make more sense of your Facebook experience.

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Hide Them From the Feed!

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The simplest way to control what shows up in your News Feed is to click “Hide” on an item you don’t want to see. Facebook will ask you whether you want to hide that person or page, once you confirm it, you won’t see anything from them again.
If you want to bring some of the hidden stuff back, don’t worry. Once you hide something, Facebook will warn you with the message “XXX has been hidden from your News Feed. To manage who appears in News Feed, Edit Options.”
Now, click on Edit Options and you’ll see a list of all the people and Pages you’ve hidden. From there, you can restore the visibility of the items you’ve hidden, and set some additional options, such as the maximum number of friends shown in Live Feed.

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Friends & Lists

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Just like MySpace, Facebook is a place for friends. But let’s face it: In most cases, only a small number of your friends on Facebook are good, real-life friends. You’ve also got acquaintances, business partners, coworkers, and if you’re really trigger happy when it comes to friending, a bunch of people you don’t know at all.
Luckily, you can organize them into Friend Lists, which will let you filter your news feed and the chat box. The process can be a little tedious, but trust us, it can make a huge difference.
We’ve got a detailed article explaining how to create and manage friend lists on Facebook, and for the most part, it’s still accurate. However, Facebook changed its layout after the article was written, and some details about how lists are displayed and managed have changed, too.

Lists are now displayed under Friends in the Facebook homepage; click on it to see all the lists you’ve created. Furthermore, to edit lists, click on Account – Edit Friends. From there, you can add or remove friends from your lists, delete lists or create new ones.
To use lists, simply go to your homepage, and click on a list; you’ll only see news items created by the people you’ve added to that list. Perhaps even more importantly, the lists extend to the chat box. Once you’ve created one or more lists, you’ll see that the chat box now displays them separately. Click on Friend Lists; from there you can choose which lists do you want to see in the chat box. Fantastic if you have a lot of friends, but you only chat with a handful.

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Apps

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Dividing your friends into lists should help you organize and clean up your profile tremendously, but it still doesn’t rid you of all the apps your friends are using, some of which keep popping up on your wall. For example, if you’re not interested in Farmville, you probably don’t want to see how your friends’ crops are doing.
Again, it’s possible to fine tune which apps can do what to your profile, and we recommend doing this not only for the sake of clarity, but also for the sake of privacy and security. Click on Account – Application Settings, and choose Show – Authorized from the drop down menu. You’ll probably be amazed at how many apps you’ve authorized; the list can become huge over time.

There’s a couple of ways to deal with these apps. If you see an app you really don’t need, you can simply remove it by clicking the x next to it. This is a bit drastic, however, as you can also change the settings for each individual application. Click on Edit Settings; from there, you can deny the app to “publish recent activity (one line stories)” to your wall (under Additional Permissions). You can also choose whether you want the app to be located in your Bookmarks, and you can limit the visibility of that app’s tab on your profile.

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What Now?

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After you’ve cleaned up your apps, you’ll see a lot less clutter on your Facebook profile; however, bear in mind that this is an ongoing process. After a while, you’ll likely authorize new apps, and your profile will once again become cluttered with stuff you don’t really need to see on a daily basis. The best way to deal with it is to do regular maintenance of your Facebook profile every couple of months.
Still, if you’ve followed the instructions in this article, your Facebook is now a different place — more organized, less cluttered and generally more enjoyable. We hope it helped! If you’ve got any additional tips on how to clean up your Facebook profile, let us know in the comments!

Apple Introduces iAds: “Mobile Ads with Emotion”

Apple has officially unveiled its new mobile advertising platform, iAds, the “seventh pillar” of the new iPhone OS 4.0.
The new iAd platform, which we learned about just two weeks ago, will be built directly into the iPhone OS interface. During today’s iPhone OS 4.0 unveiling event at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA, Steve Jobs stated that the company is looking to change the face of advertising. Jobs wants to conduct the ad experience within apps rather than search — a dig at Google — and is looking “to change the quality of the advertising as well.”
How will that work, you ask? Apple’s CEO pointed to what he believes is a flaw of both standard online advertising and TV advertising — the combination of interaction and emotion. The key is that ads will keep users within an app, rather than redirecting users to a browser window.
When you click on an iAd advertisement, it will take up the screen using HTML5. Once it is open, you can explore the ad. Apple demoed an advertisement for Toy Story 3, demonstrating the ability to not only see information about the movie, but to watch trailers, play games and more — all within the same application from which you launched the ad. You will even be able to buy products within ads.
Just like the iPhone app store, there will be a simple revenue split. Developers will keep 60% of revenues, however, rather than the 70% they are awarded for iPhone apps. In return, Apple will host and deliver all of the iAds.

Everything you need to know about iPhone OS 4.0

The iPhone OS 4.0 event just wrapped up and the faithful are filing out of the Apple venue with a slightly shell-shocked look. What happened? Oh nothing, just multi-tasking, iAd, a huge Mail update and a bunch of other stuff. Yes, the long-awaited OS update for the iPhone has just been run down and we’ve got all the details.
Here, in handy bullet point form, are all the things you need to know about iPhone OS 4.0…

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• There have been 50 million iPhones sold so far (along with 450,000 iPads)
• OS 4.0 will be going out to them this summer, but a developer preview will be available today
• Thousands of new APIs, including many “accelerate” APIs which allow developers to add hardware acceleration
• Multi-tasking is coming. They admit they are a bit late to the party. Details below:
  -double tap of home button shows running applications. Invoke at any time, it’ll pause games and so on.
  -the app-switching tray pushes up the other home icons and has a sort of metallic background.
  -it’s a bit disappointing, actually: it’s more the ability to switch quickly between “active” apps. Nice, though.
  -iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen will not get multitasking. No mention of iPad.
• There are seven background services that will be allowed, and which shouldn’t significantly affect the performance of other apps:
  -Background audio: i.e. Pandora can play in the background and popup controls can control it.
  -Background VoIP: Skype calls will continue if you need to switch apps; a “return to call” button will show, and you can also receive Skype calls on a locked phone.
  -Background location: turn-by-turn directions can continue when you leave the app. Music can run at the same time and will quiet down when directions need to be said. Very slick. Uses cell-tower-enhanced AGPS. A notification will show in the status bar if an app is transmitting your location. You can also turn off location app-by-app.
  -Push notifications: the same push notifications you know and love.
  -Local notifications: in-phone notifications for, say, pop-up alarms and such. Local app stuff.
  -Fast app switching: this is the service by which apps can store their state when you switch to and from them.
• Folders. These are basically stacks of apps. Drag one app onto another to create a folder. This will really help un-clutter some iPhone screens (makes room for people to buy more apps). Makes for a maximum of 2160 apps. Is there an app for taking it easy on app downloading?
• Homescreen wallpapers. Yes, very nice.
• Enhanced mail. Several changes here:
  -Unified inbox. Web mail, MobileMe, multiple exchange accounts – thank god. This is nice.
  -Thread organization. Handy for such a powerful inbox.
  -Attachments for third-party email. Get your Gmail attachments right in Mail now.
• iBooks: I think we all expected this. It looks just like the iPad version, though somewhat smaller, obviously. Sync bookmarks and such between devices. Comes with Winnie the Pooh!
• Better email encryption, and some sort of in-app encryption is in the works.
• SSL VPN support
• Social gaming features: challenge friends to games, compare high scores on leaderboards and so on. Matchmaking and achievements. Nice, looking forward to this on the iPad. Hot seat Civ 4 with someone I’ve never met? Why not?
• iAd: In Steve’s words, somewhat paraphrased: “Developers [of free apps] need to find a way to start making their money. A lot of developers turn to advertising – and we think these current advertisements really suck. If you look at advertisements on a phone, it’s not like on a desktop. On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasnt happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps. The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’d be 10 ads per device per day — about the same as a TV show. We’re going to soon have 100m devices. That’s a billion ad opportunities per day! “This is a pretty serious opportunity, and it’s an incredible demographic. But we want to do more than that. We want to change the quality of the advertising. We’re all familiar with interactive ads on the web. They’re interactive, but they’re not capable of delivering emotion. We have figured out how to do interactive and video content without ever taking you out of the app.”
  -Apple will sell and host the ads; the revenue will be split 60/40, with devs getting the 60. Anybody can make them, just like apps.
  -Ads are done in HTML5 (a little dig in there for Adobe)
  -Fully interactive; the Toy Story ad he showed looks like a native app, includes a game, graphical interface and everything. They can call out for showing times, current prices, and so on. It’s essentially a commercial break app.
  -Access to APIs: somewhat scarily, ads will have access to location, accelerometer, and a lot of other stuff.

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That’s all! Pretty crazy update, actually. We’ll be filling out coverage throughout the day with more careful examinations of the new features.