Facebook on Wednesday came one step closer to opening its site to outsiders by introducing more options for user privacy settings. The changes are designed to make it easier for Facebook's more than 350 million users to control who sees their uploaded content and personal information, as well as to expose -- intentionally or not -- such information to a broader Internet audience. Reuters puts the move in the context of a growing demand, from both search engines and users, for more open and searchable networks. However, the top social network has faced membership opposition, and the threat …

Regardless of one's philosophical inclinations, here's a story that's likely to heat the blood. Wikileaks has published Yahoo's "compliance guide for law enforcement," which details what information the Web portal will provide to authorities with the proper legal clearance. Upon request, authorities can gain access to subscriber info, including IP addresses connected to logins -- which they keep for up to a year; registration IP address data for Yahoo "nicks" registered since 1999; "any email available in the user's mail account, including IP address of computer used to send email"; virtually all your Chat or Messenger information; Yahoo Groups info, …

Two new reports suggest that consumers can plan on purchasing their precious Apple tablets by next spring. Apple will begin its manufacturing "ramp" on the tablet product in February, which or early April, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner writes in a research note out Wednesday. Reiner is also confident that the highly-anticipated device's display will be 10.1-inches long, and based on LCD technology -- not OLED technology as previously thought. Corroborating Reiner's claims, Vijay Rakesh at ThinkEquity is saying checks of Apple's supply chain suggest that company is …

While 2009 was no bowl of roses for the ad industry, it wasn't all bad for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which says it was able to sell-out several events, release what it considers "groundbreaking" research and "mission-critical" standards and guidelines, as well as fend off adverse legislation through active lobbying efforts in Washington. According to the organization, it also led the call for a "renaissance in interactive advertising creativity." What's in store for 2010? A "substantive agenda we believe will reinforce interactive advertising's centrality to marketers' needs," it says. "We're devoting our efforts to shifting an increasing share …

Boxee, which creates open source software that brings on-demand content from the Web and home networks to TVs, just debuted a private beta and is enlisting hardware partners to embed it on their devices. New content providers on the software include Clicker, The Escapist, and Suicide Girls, while NYU students at a launch event the other night demonstrated a program called Trend Lines, which filters content based upon what topics are trending online. To date, it's been available for OS X, Windows, Linux, and apparently as a hack for Apple TV. The $200 Boxee Box is the company's first branded …

Google Wave is rolling out to 1 million users, while Gmail's offline capability has apparently graduated from Gmail Labs. Wave was sent to only 100,000 users in its initial public preview in late September. According to eWeek, that made Wave pretty boring, if not ineffective, because the platform thrives when multiple users are collaborating on documents or projects, "despite the fact that all of the users' editing cursors can be fairly noisy and overwhelming for the uninitiated." In response, the Wave team agreed to send out invites to anyone who requested one through Google's online form. Separately, nearly …

Over a couple of years, computer maker Dell says it used Twitter to generate over $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories, and software. The third-largest maker of PCs started using Twitter two years ago to reach new customers, while the $6.5 million represents the total amount generated through direct customer interactions on Twitter over that time. While those sales are a fraction of Dell's $61.1 billion in annual revenue last year, the company sees Twitter as one of its most significant ways of interacting with customers. The number of users signing up to get Dell's tweets has …

Google Chrome is open for business, and, contrary to early criticism, ReadWriteWeb says the highly-anticipated product may be the best browser on the market. "It's faster and more stable than Firefox and today began opening up to user modification with the availability of more than 300 browser extensions." Official Mac and Linux versions were just made available on Tuesday, as well. Still, the publication asks whether Chrome will remain so much stronger than Firefox once it's weighed down with a pile of extensions and add-ons. Also, neither the official Mac version nor the developer version that ReadWriteWeb has …

To prevent Apple or some other platform provider from controlling their future digital distribution, four media industry titans have joined forces to develop open standards for a new "digital storefront" and "related technology." The founding equity partners include Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc., though the venture is welcoming other publishers to the table in exchange for greater exposure and a share of ad sales. Calling the venture "Hulu for Magazines," MediaMemo reminds us that "all of this is conceptual at this stage; the companies now need to go about the business …

According to Danny Sullivan, "the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines" just went down, and was all but overlooked. Embarrassed to ask what he's talking about? It has to do with Google's introduction of personalizing search results. "Until now, search engines have largely delivered the same results to everyone," he writes. Yet, "The days of 'normal' search results that everyone sees are now over ... Personalized results are the 'new normal,' and the change is going to shift the search world and society in general in unpredictable ways." Does this mean SEO is dead? No, Sullivan assures. …