Pinboard

According to social media statistics service Famecount.com, Gaga recorded 5,635,460 followers earlier today, while Spears had 5,646,028.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California cited concerns over the new product, saying Facebook neglected to include several crucial privacy features.

Foursquare execs seemed positive at last night's event, but Facebook's entry into location-based services will leave little room for competition. Facebook's entrance to into location-based services "validates the market." I didn't say that. Instead it was, of all people, Holger Luedorf, the vice president of mobile products for Foursquare. Yup, the location-based service that's likely becoming the Mayor of Irrelevant-ville stepped up last night and gave a not-so-hearty endorsement of Facebook's new Places feature.

with its deal to buy McAfee Inc. for $7.68 billion, the world's No. 1 semiconductor company now wants to sell you security software as well — in all those places. The all-cash deal announced Thursday marks the biggest acquisition in Intel's 42-year history, an expensive example of Intel's commitment to sell more than chips for personal computers and servers. It is the sixth biggest deal globally between two technology companies over the past 3½ years, according to Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

North Korea appears to have added Facebook to other social networking sites it recently joined to ramp up its propaganda war against South Korea and the U.S. The account opened late Thursday under the Korean username "uriminzokkiri," meaning "on our own as a nation," an official at South Korea's Communications Standards Commission said Friday.

The movie stars top the latest list of the most dangerous celebrities to search for online, according to new research by computer-security software maker McAfee Inc.

The compromise under discussion by radio broadcasters, recording labels and recording artists could include a federal mandate that all new cell phones come with a built-in FM radio chip. While a deal is far from final, the prospect that the government could dictate a key design decision for such a ubiquitous consumer device has alarmed electronics manufacturers and wireless providers.

Bank of America, the largest U.S. consumer bank, and Visa, the world's largest payment processor, plan to begin a test program next month that lets customers use smart phones to pay for purchases in stores.

On a company earnings call yesterday, Hewlett Packard's Todd Bradley made it official that we can expect both Microsoft tablets and webOS (Palm's mobile operating system) tablets to hit the market. "You'll see us with a Microsoft product out in the near future, and a webOS-based product in early 2011," remarked Bradley when asked about his company's tablet plans.

The Official DisLike Button, created by FaceMod Inc., is an extension that can be added to FireFox, Chrome and Internet Explorer Web browsers (Opera and Safari options are on the way). Once downloaded, the program places a "dislike" button right next to the "like" button in Facebook. "For those who are wondering, the Dislike Button is not for the haters! It was made to be the 'yang' to facebook's 'yin,'" the site says.

Not to be outdone by Yahoo Mail's new iPad-friendly layout released earlier in the week, Google too is making a few improvements to its Webmail interface for the iPad. PEOPLE WHO READ THIS ALSO READ: Verizon Bringing Live TV to the iPad How Apple's iPad Fits into the Office Dell Streak Likely to Hit Asia in Early 2011 Google Docs On the Go With the iPhone and iPad Rumored Google Tablet: Doom and Gloom for Apple's iPad? Verizon iPad App: A Closer Look The Google Mobile Team announced Wednesday the implementation of a new "stacked cards" interface to make managing multiple messages easier.

Here's a sample of the kinds of information Apple plans to collect: The system can take a picture of the user's face, "without a flash, any noise, or any indication that a picture is being taken to prevent the current user from knowing he is being photographed"; The system can record the user's voice, whether or not a phone call is even being made; The system can determine the user's unique individual heartbeat "signature"; To determine if the device has been hacked, the device can watch for "a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device"; The user's "Internet activity can be monitored or any communication packets that are served to the electronic device can be recorded"; and The device can take a photograph of the surrounding location to determine where it is being used.

Today, Google announced that they would bring their Goggles application to Apple’s iOS. Speaking at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, Goggles’ project lead David Petrou noted that the application would come to the iPhone before the end of 2010. Petrou also detailed the possibility of an open API for the image search application and potential opening of Goggles up to third-party applications. Any Goggles users out there?

Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut. In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

But competitors certainly aren't ready to raise the white flag. Most notable is Google, whose Android Marketplace now boasts more than 70,000 apps. And with Android becoming the top-selling smartphone platform in the U.S. in the second quarter, downloads from Google app storefront are bound to accelerate as more users buy Android devices.

Leo's tool for 8/25