Hi, I'm Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the tech news
that everyone's talking about. This week, everybody hates Facebook, Internet
Explorer takes a dive, and the FCC grows a pair. But first, it's even more ... Breaking
News at Press Time.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indeed decided to go nuclear and re-regulate
Internet lines in order to enforce Net neutrality. BOOM. What did I tell you?
And now, for the Gadget of the Week.
The Gadget of the Week could be the iPad 3G, the Kins, which go on sale next week,
maybe the like, new A2DP Aliph Jawbone Icon. But no. It's not. It's my new
boyfriend, the HTC Incredible. See, I rudely ignored the Incredible when it was
announced a couple weeks ago, but now that we've had the review unit in to look at,
um. Have you SEEN this thing? It's thin, beautiful, it runs Android 2.1 on Android's
superfast 3G network, it has an 8 megapixel camera, 8 gigs of storage, the
SnapDragon processor, so it's actually FAST, and HTC's Sense UI, which makes
Android even prettier and nicer. In sum ... it's love. Although I'm not totally ready to
commit until I get a look at the Evo. But it's love for now.
What. Girls are like that.
And now for the news. The Facebook privacy backlash is growing. Quickly. Most
people have now seen the new "Connections" feature that turns everything you're
interested in into a link to a public Connections page -- it's either that or a blank
profile. You choose. Plus, the privacy settings got way more confusing and everyone
has kind of figured out that Facebook just wants you to make everything public and
if you don't, they'll just go ahead and do it for you. Without asking. We, the people,
are not that happy about this.
The backlash is getting so bad that Alley Insider posted a list of 10 reasons to DELETE
your Facebook account. Like, for example, it says, because Facebook is run by a ruthless
amoral Lex Luthory type, that they openly hate the idea of privacy, and that they're
technically incompetent. For example. So, you know. People are feeling kind of mad.
Uprising. Deleting the accounts.
But come on. Let's be honest. We all know that most people aren't going to get rid of
their Facebook accounts. It's just such a great way to keep track of friends and family and
maintain those invaluable personal connections.
*cough* Farmville *cough*
*cough* Scrabble *cough*
*cough* Fat high school friends *cough*
But even the government is getting involved now.
Senator Chuck Schumer called on the FTC to make new rules about privacy on social
networking sites. And two senators introduced a draft digital privacy bill that would, I
think, maybe just annoy everyone online with constant notifications about how your
information is going to be used. We'd probably all ignore that. I just ... I'm not sure the
government can help us that much here. It's like, I'm happy they're getting involved
and everything, but I can't help it ... I'm still haunted ...
Ok, lots of news this week, let's do some headlines.
Google will launch its digital bookstore in June or July. Weirdly, you can't download any
of the books you buy, just read them in a browser. So, they're not so much books as like,
"Web pages on computers." But whatever.
Google also released a new beta of the Chrome browser that's 30 to 35 percent faster than
the current version. So, all your Web pages move so fast you can't even SEE them.
And Internet Explorer's market share dipped below 60 percent for the first time since
about 1999. Wow. Pretty soon IE won't be worth the time to insert code that makes it
crash at random intervals and harvest your bank account data. Fingers crossed!
And finally, let's have a look at what's Clogging the Tubes. It's Ellen Degeneres poking a little fun at Apple.
�With the iPhone, I can do all kinds of thing, I can text, wait� hold on�no wait, that�s not� oh you can
do so much�
Yeah, not surprisingly, she got busted.
�Funny right? I thought it was funny, lot�s of people thought it was funny. You know who didn�t think it
was funny? The people at Apple didn�t think it was so funny. So Everybody at Apple, Steve Jobs, Mr.
Macintosh, I apologize, I�m sorry�
Wow. You know what you don't see there? The task force. Let's widen it out a little.
Yeah. There they are. Nice, Apple. Way to have a sense of humor. You guys are great.
And that's the Buzz Report for this week, everyone. I'm Molly Wood, and thanks for watching.
