TechCrunch's Michael Arrington said advertisers should be keeping their eyes peeled for Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg's Katalyst Media, as it prepares to launch new interactive Web content. Arrington got a special visit from the Hollywood players and says we are in for "entertaining stuff" that "advertisers in particular are likely to flock" toward. Katalyst Media has been involved in a Web venture with AOL since 2006 that recently dissolved because the content was deemed too racy for Time Warner's taste, Kutcher and Goldberg decided to go at it on their own. They recently hired developers and a chief technology …

Social networking is at a huge crossroads, said Read Write Web's Bernard Lunn. Sites like Facebook and MySpace will either become gigantic Internets unto themselves (the so-called walled garden approach) or they will disappear completely as social networking services emerge as more of a utility like email, most likely offered by one of the Web services giants, Google, Yahoo or MSN. "Deciding which path to take is a real decision," Lunn said. "A botched choice will likely end in failure, albeit via a long, slow decline." Ultimately, revenue will decide the winners and losers. The current assumption is advertising is …

Canada's Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic accused Facebook of 22 separate breaches of privacy law late last week, claiming that the company collects and then shares information about its users without first gaining their permission or clearly explaining how it will be used. In an interview with BBC, Clinic Director Philipa Lawson said, "Facebook needs to be held publicly accountable." The 35-page complaint was filed following an analysis in which students at the clinic studied Facebook's policies and practices as part of their coursework. They found that several of the company's practices violate the Canadian Personal Information Protection and …

Silicon Alley Insider's Hank Williams calls Yahoo's BrowserPlus "the plug-in to end all plug-ins" because once it's installed, you can add new plug-ins as needed without needing to restart your browser. Currently, you have to close and restart your Web browser for new plug-ins to take effect. And while it may not be a serious pain, Williams points out that installing plug-ins "is enough of a speed bump that, outside (of Adobe's) Flash Player, getting people to install them is fairly hard." Here's how it works: when a BrowserPlus feature is ready to be installed, a dialog box pops up …

The new 3G iPhone doesn't have an official release date yet, but we do know that GPS will be one of its features, thanks to a new legal requirement from the Federal Communications Commission. GigaOm's Om Malik said that whosoever locks down that GPS contract is going to be a big winner. Indeed, just think for a moment about how extensively GPS based applications will be used on next generation cell phones. Sources tell Malik that chipmaker Broadcom has nailed down the lucrative contract. Broadcom is a relatively new entrant into the GPS market, having just acquired Global Locate for …