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Dell and Facebook prepping 'significant' announcement

Two of the biggest names in tech are teaming up on a cloud computing project that they plan to announce at a special event next week.

Facebook amasses billions of photos, friend connections, and status updates and stores them up in "the cloud," and Dell is working on being one of the main providers of the infrastructure--servers--that makes the cloud possible.

So what, exactly, are they doing together? Well, we already know Dell provides servers for Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, but what other plans the two have hatched together beyond that is unclear. The event is scheduled … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: The MIT three free to speak

Three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who have been barred by a court order from discussing subway card vulnerabilities are now free to say what they want.

The University of Michigan released its annual ACSI scores for the PC industry, and Apple took top honors for the fifth straight year.

Plus, it isn't your usual Nokia jingle, but a campaign to promote condom use in India sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is off to a strong start.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Today's stories:

U.S. mobile-phone sales take a hit

Android security team appeals to bug huntersRead more

Facebook's latest geographic expansion: New offices

Facebook has simply gotten too big for downtown Palo Alto, Calif., where it has been headquartered since founder Mark Zuckerberg uprooted the company from dorm rooms at Harvard. With over 600 employees now on its payroll, Facebook will be moving to a bigger facility at the Stanford Research Park outside town--a former Hewlett-Packard building.

"This new space is the next step in our growth and positions us well to continue looking for a long term campus solution while also allowing employees to work together as much as possible," a statement from Facebook read. The company plans to complete … Read more

More security holes plague MySpace, possibly Facebook

Updated 6:50 p.m. PT with Facebook saying no hole in Free Gifts app.

MySpace was working to fix a security hole on Monday that allows people to see private comments friends have written on members' pages.

"MySpace is committed to keeping all users as safe and secure as possible. Today, MySpace was alerted to an issue within the MySpace Mobile WAP site and is working to roll out an immediate fix," a MySpace spokesperson wrote in an e-mail.

With the MySpace hole, people have to go through the company's mobile page and know the user … Read more

Sixth place in Beijing for twin ConnectU founders

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing are over for Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the founders of would-be Facebook rival ConnectU who earned spots on the U.S. rowing team. The identical twins ended up placing sixth overall in the men's pair event; they don't take home any medals, but it's still a more than respectable finish. To get there, the pair had to make it through two rounds of heats, a semifinal, and then the grand final; just making it to the last round is a big accomplishment.

The Winklevosses placed sixth out of the six boats in … Read more

Firm evidence that Facebook makes you fat

The world is swelling and it appears to be Facebook's fault.

A far-reaching survey in the UK has shown quite conclusively that Prince Charles's subjects are stuffing themselves with 'chocolate and crisps' (the latter might be known to you as potato chips) while eagerly following their friends online.

According to these figures, 33% of those surveyed said they had put on seven pounds in the last three months.

But here is the real kick in the gut for the social networking industry. Almost half of those surveyed claimed that they would rather eat the leftover grease from the … Read more

Google takes top Web spot in July

It should come as no surprise, but Google sites officially continued to dominate the Web landscape in July, drawing more than 141 million unique visitors and placing Yahoo and Microsoft at second and third place, according to analyst group ComScore Media Metrix.

AOL took fourth behind the top sites, all of which were enveloped in discussions about acquisitions or partnerships this summer.

Fox Interactive Media, parent company of MySpace, was the fifth most visited group of sites, with a registered 88 million unique visitors. Facebook, on the other hand, landed at No. 16 with 39 million visitors. However, ComScore reported … Read more

Still no official Facebook app for Windows Mobile

This past July, Facebook's excellent iPhone application joined similar apps for BlackBerry and Palm to bring core Facebook features to mobile socializers in a distinctive Facebook wrapper. Curiously, there's no official software for the Windows Mobile platform, and no word that a program is in the works. In fact, Facebook has kept mum to my inquiries, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile team responded with evasive PR nonsense.

That doesn't mean social butterflies of the Windows Mobile breed are left in a lurch. Two software companies have stepped up to bring their own freeware versions of Facebook to … Read more

Report: Ben Ling's going back to the Googleplex

Benjamin Ling, the former Googler who was hired by Facebook last year and sparked a barrage of blog speculation about Google employees moving on to the next cool company, may be going back to Mountain View. Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed that he was indeed leaving the company.

Valleywag reported on Thursday that Ling had been spotted at the Googleplex, and the Gossip Girl-ish nature of that post was backed up by a report from Kara Swisher that she'd heard he'd be returning to Google to work on YouTube. More specifically, he was re-hired to help monetize the … Read more

Class action suit means Facebook's Beacon just won't go away

A class action lawsuit filed earlier this week targets Facebook and eight of the participants in Beacon, its ill-fated advertising product that shared information about third-party site activity with the social network. The set of 20 plaintiffs, mostly residents of Texas, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. Named as defendants are Facebook, as well as current or former Beacon participants Blockbuster, Fandango (owned by Comcast), Overstock.com, STA Travel, Zappos, Hotwire (owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp), and GameFly.

A Facebook representative told CNET News on Thursday that the company had … Read more