Along with the iPhone, Apple computers are clearly shedding their stigma as non-business friendly devices. At 49.8%, the Mac's growth in the business sector was three times higher than the broader PC market's 15.7%, according to a note issued Monday by Needham's Charlie Wolf -- citing IDC's numbers for the second quarter of the year. What's more, Mac shipments in government grew 200%, sixteen times faster than the market's 12.1%. Still, as Fortune points out, "Given the Mac's tiny share of the worldwide PC market -- roughly 3.5% as of June -- Apple has a lot of room to …

"Things are starting to look up at Ning" -- the once high-flying social network platform provider, which recently buckled under the weight of its no-fee business model. That's according to a headline over at Forbes.com, anyway. The story itself questions whether Ning will even be around in five months. Five months ago, Ning chief executive Gina Bianchini abruptly left the company, the company admitted that it couldn't survive with charging some users a fee, and laid-off about 40% of its workforce. According to Jason Rosenthal, Ning's chief operator-cum-chief executive, the company's 300,000 free communities brought in only 20% of …

Are Apple and Facebook destined to be BFFs? So suggests The Motley Fool, citing comments earlier in the week by Fortune reporter and "The Facebook Effect" author David Kirkpatrick. As the Motley Fool's Chris Hill notes during a recorded radio show, Kirkpatrick writes in his book that Zuckerberg has been spending an increasing amount of time with Steve Jobs, who is someone that he admires. Speaking with Hill, Kirkpatrick said: "There are parallels [between Apple and Facebook] in terms of the scope of their vision, and in the obsessiveness of their commitment to their companies. I think …

From Foursquare's rewritten future to Google's likely response, the analysis surrounding Facebook's new location-based Places initiative continues to roll in. According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook Places represents a serious threat to Google's pursuit of local ad dollars. "It paves the way for [Facebook] to become a player in the growing Web business of supplying local information and advertising," writes The Journal. "Now they are both after local-ad dollars." In April, the search giant actually launched its own "Places" service, which builds on prior Google business listings, and offers up Web pages …

At a rally on Thursday, a member of the Federal Communications Commission denounced the net-neutrality framework proposed by Google and Verizon, saying it would create "gated communities for the affluent" online, reports The Hill. "FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said the plan proposed by the companies would protect the firms' interests at the expense of consumers," writes The Hill's Hillicon Valley technology blog. "The Verizon-Google gaggle wants to build a world of private Internets that would vastly diminish the centrality of the Internet that you and I know," Copps said Thursday. "They want a tiered Internet ... 'Managed services' …

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan suggests in new a report - cited by paidContent -- that Yahoo should buy Hulu, or at least take a "significant stake" in the video site. "Enough with Yahoo's spate of small-scale deal making," is how paidContent interprets Rohan's remarks. "While an investment in Hulu doesn't solve Yahoo's long term relevancy problems single-handedly, it could reinforce Yahoo's position as a core entertainment destination," writes Rohan himself. Meanwhile, he criticizes Yahoo's recent deal-making, including its purchase of Associated Content (and interest in CafeMom), as being "not large enough to change how Yahoo is perceived by …

Here's a new achievement for Cameron Diaz's resume: The celeb most likely to give your computer a virus. That's according to security firm McAfee, which published a yearly list of those stars and starlets that boast the most dangerous page results. The list, according to Daily Tech, relies on stats from the McAfee's free software SiteAdvisor, which advises consumers about whether websites pose a threat to their computers or not. Last year, Jessica Biel topped the list. This year, however, users searching for "Cameron Diaz" apparently face a whopping 19% chance of landing on a dangerous site. …

Confirming month-old rumors, location-based startup Hot Potato said Friday that it's been acquired by Facebook. In an official blog post, the startup didn't share any details about the deal. TechCrunch first reported that a deal was in the works, after which Silicon Alley Insider and All Things Digital pegged a purchase price of $10 million to $15 million. To date, Hot Potato has raised $1.42 million from RRE Ventures and other angels, including longtime Facebook senior platform manager Dave Morin. As Social Beat notes, "Hot Potato was also vague about what this deal might mean …

Putting aside (at least, directly) the vast economic opportunities associated with Foursquare, The New York Times investigates the most basic human instincts driving its 2.5 million users. "While Foursquare has been talked about in corporate boardrooms as the next big thing in social media... it has also spawned a more trivial pursuit: a petty and vicious battle over virtual pieces of turf," writes The Times. Regarding the first time one 21-year-old user was anointed the "mayor" of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, she tells The Times: "Being the mayor of a major bridge -- how cool is that?" …

Madhu Yarlagadd, Skype's Chief Development Officer of just one month, has left the company, TechCrunch reports. The New York Times attributes Yarlagadd's hasty departure to scathing personal comments in TechCrunch's comment section. "The post they're referring to has dozens of extremely detailed negative comments about Yarlagadda, although we've deleted the worst of them," writes TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington. "That level of uniform negativity was unprecedented in our experience." Yarlagadda was previously a VP Engineering, Messenger, at Yahoo. Yarlagadda apparently made a bad situation worse when he reached out to former colleagues, and pleaded with them …