I wrote a column about the newest feature in Facebook called “Instant personalization” and how the mob-like mentality user base is already protesting the newest features.

And as we’ve seen from past fumbles of new features on Facebook, like Beacon, it didn’t take long for a privacy scandal to break the blogosphere.

Users posted instructions on how to turn off ‘Instant personalization’ and some are considering leaving Facebook altogether.

There are reports that the code that developer use in Facebook can reveal every detail about their profile; Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s schedule was revealed by this security lapse. The New York Times even reports that Zuckerberg doesn’t care about the privacy issues facing his company.

Now the U.S. government is getting involved as Sen. Chuck Schumer is in talks with the company and asking the FTC to get involved as well.

What Facebook doesn’t understand is that people do care about their privacy online – the ones that don’t post their drunken-party photos in their profile. And navigating the privacy features on the website is not an easy task; it’s almost impossible to be 100% private on Facebook. Even if you set your profile to private, anyone can see your profile – through a network you joined or through friends that are friends with the private profile.

Facebook needs to understand that people still value their privacy and the company should listen to those demands or the company will be another social networking site where people leave in droves – like MySpace and Friendster.

The sale is expected to close in the third quarter of 2010.

Some are complex about this sale: Why would one almost non-existing semi-phone manufacture (see iPaqs) buy a dying phone manufacture with hopes to compete against Andriod and Apple?

HP made very clear during this afternoon’s conference call to investors that the webOS would be featured in several of HP’s products: including netbooks, phones and the Slate.

Analyses predict that the mobile computing market is the fastest growing market, worldwide and HP wants in on the action after being burned by crappy Windows Mobile 6 phones.

What will happen to Microsoft, as HP is a Windows phone reseller? Company executives stated that they still have good relations with Microsoft and will continue to support Microsoft but you have to wonder if the writing is on the wall for HP leaving Microsoft.

I’m some-what buying the excuse that Palm’s WebOS is a great mobile operating system; I’ve never played with the phone but people I know that use the Palm Pre on a regular basis tell me that the operating system is a lot better than the iPhone. WebOS would be a better choice than Windows 7 on the Slate PC but as Apple has shown us, mobile applications make the phone. Don’t have them, phone goes nowhere.

The real reason – I believe – why HP bought Palm is not for the mobile OS but for their patent portfolio. Palm was the leader in mobile computer market as the Palm pilot became the device for syncing appointments, emails and maintaining your calendar while on the go. The company holds 1600 patents and don’t be surprised if the HP legal department is looking over the portfolio to see if Apple, HTC, Blackberry and Nokia are violating those any one of those patents.

HP will try again in the mobile computing market with WebOS touted on many devices and they might gain some grounds. But with an App store with 10,000 applications, HP only bought Palm for the patents and not for advancing in mobile computing.

Why was this raid executed?

Under California law, which Gizmodo editor Jason Chen resides, California Penal code section 485 states that “One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.”

Translation: The law says that Jason Chen bought the phone from a person that did not attempt to return the phone to the original owner. Chen then went ahead and uses the phone as if it was his property (I.E. publish exclusive photos of and take apart the next iPhone). Under this law, Chen is guilty of theft and that is why a search warrant was executed on Chen’s house; looking for evidence to support the crime was committed.

Also consider this in question: Did Gizmodo violate trade secrets law? Gizmodo had a prototype of the next iPhone 4G and told the world what Apple was going to do next. Apple claims that revealing the protype to the world puts the company at harm as competitors know what Apple will do next and try to compete against the iPhone. Apple also claims that the story could hamper sales as people will wait until the phone is release this summer.

As I said in yesterday’s episode, Apple believes that Jason Chen bought stolen property. Even Gizmodo’s Editorial director Brian Lam said in a response to Apple’s letter that they “didn’t know this was stolen when we bought it.”

What are shield laws?

A shield law is legislation designed to protect journalists from revealing their sources to courts and offer protection from search warrants on employee’s workplace. 36 states, including the District of Columbia have shield laws in the books. A federal shield law is in the works but has stalled in the Senate. Depending on your state, new media outlets may or may not be included in these laws.

California does include bloggers in their shield laws.

Is Gizmodo’s iPhone 4G story protected from shield laws?

Shield laws are meant to protect journalists from revealing their sources but the shield laws do not protect journalists if you committed a crime. And that is why Gizmodo’s Jason Chen is under investigation.

As of now, the case has been suspended as the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office reviews the legal proceedings to verify if this story falls under the protections of California’s shield laws. But it is widely believed by many media analysits that the shield laws do not apply to the Gizmodo story; as they bought stolen property.

What’s next in this case?

Investigators will search through what was collected in the raid and San Mateo County District Attorney James P. Fox will decide to proceed with the case. What are they looking for? It’s Widely believe that they are looking for the person that sold the phone to Gizmodo but investigators tell the New York Times that Jason Chen may be charged in the case as well.

Will this have a chilling effect on bloggers?

It’s too early to say if this will have an impact on the reporting community but several cases before this had a bigger effect on online reporting than this will. But what I hope will come from this experience is that bloggers are, indeed journalists and they should ably by the same rules that apply to journalists.

Just when you thought the Gizmodo/iPhone 4G exclusive story was dying down, the legal side of the story is emerging. While writing the script for today’s show, news broke that a search warrant was executed on Gizmodo’s editor-in-chief Jason Chen’s house in San Mateo, California.

Seized in the raid were several computers, thumb drives, hard drives, a checkbook and cell phones.

[Click here to read the search warrant and what was taken from Chen’s house]

Speculation has surfaced that authorities are looking for the person that sold the phone to Gizmodo as many Apple insiders believe that Gizmodo bought stolen property from Apple.

Anybody that follows Apple closely will tell you that this was inevitable. Apple is an absolute control-freak when dealing with the company. Talk negative about the company or product; get shut out from all Apple events. Which is why many main-stream companies addressed the Gizmodo iPhone 4G story as a fake, even leaving out details like how the gadget blog bought the phone for five grand?

Even the rumor-mill sites are not immune from the fangs of Apple legal. Apple successfully shut down the Apple-rumor site thinksecrets in 2006 and has blocked applications that obtain words from Apple products; like Pod or Pad. Bloggers and reporters who work for online news sites were added to California shield laws after the thinksecret incident.

Now Gizmodo is dealing with the dark side of Apple and nobody knows where it will go next. This case could be the turning point for online news sites to be included in the same protection that reporters who work for TV stations, newspapers and radio get when reporting on a story.

Or nothing could happen for this event.

Either way, Gizmodo is dealing with the dark side of Apple. Hope the exclusive story was worth the trouble.

The story begins last year when Blake Robbins – a student at Harriton High School in the Lower Merion School District – was called into the assistance principal’s office and confronted the teen with an image that showed him allegedly popping pills.

It turned out be candy and the photo was taken at the student’s home.

Fast-forward to now and more allegations have emerged in a lawsuit filed by the parents to indicate that school administrators knew about the secret photos taking from the webcam and more than 400 photos were snapped, including some of Robbins in his underwear. The district’s own investigation concluded that more than 56,000 images of screen captures, web history and pictures from the webcam were recorded; including some instances when the webcam kept recording photos after a signal was sent to stop capturing photos.

District authorities stop short of connecting this case to the ones where the webcam kept capturing photos.

This story also brings up another instance when the PBS’s news series, Frontline, aired a segment showing school administrators logging into kids’ notebooks and monitoring every move they made on the notebook; sometimes even messing with them if they have the webcam software open.

I was in high school and we were told that school administrators can monitor our web activity anytime while on school property but let’s be honest; there is a difference between monitoring web activity than having a web cam taking photos of the child without notice, especially when not on school property.

Allegations will made – if not already – to place the blame on Robbins but the damage is done and it reveals that school administrators have abused their surveillance power. If these allegations are true about photos showing the child in his underwear; federal charges can – and should – be filed, including child pornography.

The FBI has joined the investigation as well.

In the meantime, if your child gets to take home a school-issues notebook, don’t use it at home. And if kids are allowed to bring their notebooks home, put black tape on the webcam.

Think of it as a nice way of saying “Thank you for making us popular and getting us millions in venture capitol.” NOW LEAVE!

Developers have every right to be nervous but keep in mind, it’s their product. If Twitter wants to get into third party development, they can; especially if some third-party apps are generating revenue.

But fear not developers, you can stay in game by find ways to make the Twitter experience popular. 75% of all traffic going to Twitter comes from third-party applications like Hoot Suite, Tweetdeck and Twirl. And people aren’t going to switch to the official Twitter app overnight if your product does the same thing as Tweetdeck does.

So instead of whining of how Twitter will kill us all, shut up and innovate. Whining is not going to get you anywhere. Nobody is going to feel sorry of you when your product dies, especially if you’ve done nothing but complaining.

And if your app does just that, it’s best to find a new alternative. I hear this service called foursquare is gaining ground.

• Inspect all computers, MP3 players and personal drives entering the country for illegally-obtained software, music and movies.
• Install spyware on every computer and detects and deletes infringing materials
• Censor all Internet connections to detect transfers of infringing material
• Force all countries to agree on the above terms
• Use federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to enforce copyright laws

These terms probably won’t pass as they definitely infringe on privacy and maybe the first amendment of the Constitution but this shows that the MPAA and RIAA are despite to stay alive. Five days earlier, the Government Accountability Office released a study stating that it would be “difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts (of piracy that the MPAA and RIAA have stated).”

Numerous studies have been released stating the over-estimate of these figures from the MPAA and RIAA and both organizations have tried – with some success – to pass laws to hamper piracy and they have failed as piracy is still rampant.

If these organizations want to hamper piracy, they need to go to the source and off the head – China and the rest of Asia where piracy is rampant.

Both organizations should be aware that piracy will not go away and need to get ahead of illegal downloads; like moving home movie release dates earlier.

If they want to defeat piracy, creativity will win; fighting piracy will not.

Both Engadget and Gizmodo are reporting that they have the exclusive on what the next version of Apple’s iPhone will look like.

How did they get the source: They found it on a floor of a bar disguised as an iPhone 3GS.

Some details that will supposedly be in the next iPhone: a front-facing camera, flash for the camera, bigger display, and the phone will adapt the new mico-sim as used in the iPad.

The new micro-sim slot may have deleted all hopes that this phone will be heading to Verizon, if indeed true.

The internal schematics may be legit on the iPhone 4G but the design is not. The buttons on the side look more like elevator buttons instead of volume controls and the phone is horribly big; not thin, sexy and no buttons as Steve Jobs prefers his devices.

Now that the specs and possibly design of the new iPhone 4G are out, one has to wonder if the employee who dropped the phone has been terminated by Apple, especially since the company has a tight grip on controlling information.

But this isn’t the first time a product has been demoed at a bar; the Google Nexus One phone was demoed to several people at bars as well.

So if you want to see the latest gadget trends, head to the nearest bar near the campus of Apple and Google.

Gives new meaning to the joke, A Rabbi, a priest and a minister walk into a bar . . . .

A 7.0 earthquake struck densely populated capital Port-Au-Prince in Haiti. Those that have access to the Internet are telling the world what the devastated city looks. What do the mainstream news networks do? Asking for eyewitness accounts and the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien feud.