Facebook governance results a few minutes before the voting closed. Credit: Facebook.com

By the time voting closed today at noon Pacific time, only 0.32% of Facebook's users had weighed in on the question of whether the site's lengthy new policy documents were better than the lengthy old ones.

About 75% of that 0.32% chose the newer policy, while the rest chose the old. But the election won't count anyway: Facebook said that for the results to be valid, 30% of its roughly 200 million users would have to weigh in. That's about 100 times more than the 0.32% of people who actually did.

Why did Facebook so grossly overestimate interest in its experiment with online government?

Start with the subject of the vote itself: New terms of service vs. old terms of service. Global warming, civil rights or nuclear disarmament this is not. The issue can't even rightly be said to be black and white. It doesn't help that the new terms -- though written in more concise and readable language -- substantially overlap with the old ones. Both new and old documents describe licensing terms, rules of user conduct, account termination and several other minor technical matters.

The documents are so similar that in order to figure out the differences, you've got to read both documents side to side, and/or refer to a confusing third document that tries to explicate some of the changes. Suffice it to say that even figuring out what you're voting on -- if anything -- takes an hour of eye-strain. Most of Facebook's high school and college-age users already have enough government homework to do, and its grown-up users are either trying to find jobs or keep their current ones, so voting on the future of a website's small print may not have been a priority.

There have been signs recently that Facbook has allowed its sense of self-importance to grow rather inflated. In a recent video, CEO Mark Zuckergberg grandiosely compared the site to a real nation, noting that, population-wise, it "would be the fifth-largest country in the world" and that it therefore merited "a more transparent and democratic approach to governing."

In its own eyes, Facebook has become more than merely a recreational website where users share photos and wish each other a happy birthday -- it is now a global body of citizens that should be united and protected under a popularly ratified constitution.

But it's hard to have a democracy, a constitution or a government if nobody shows up to participate.  Which means, presumably, that the pretense of democracy will be now abandoned and things will go back to normal. Facebook will make its own decisions about how it wants to run its business, and when users disagree, they'll scream bloody murder. It's the natural order of the Internet; why mess with it?

-- David Sarno

Apple, which hit 1 billion downloads from its App Store today, apologized for letting one app, Baby Shaker, slip through. Credit: Apple.

Apple today issued an apology for the controversial Baby Shaker app sold through its iTunes App Store.

Created by Sikalosoft, a third-party developer, Baby Shaker displayed a cartoon of a crying baby that can only be silenced by violently shaking the iPhone. It drew condemnation from child advocacy groups, including the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation and the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

In response, Apple pulled the app Wednesday morning and issued an apology today:

This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store. When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said the app, which sold for 99 cents, became available for downloading Monday. The Cupertino, Calif., company vets hundreds of new apps a day from independent developers for its App Store, which now features more than 35,000 applications.

Updated 4:32 p.m.: The Sarah Jane Brain Foundation is not satisfied with Apple's mea culpa. Late this afternoon, the New York foundation issued a statement demanding that an apology come directly from Randall Stephenson, AT&T Inc.'s chief executive, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is currently on medical leave until the end of June. AT&T has the exclusive contract with Apple to sell the iPhones on which apps such as Baby Shaker can be downloaded and used.

In a letter to Apple's and AT&T's boards, the advocacy group's founder, Patrick B. Donohue, said:

Apple displayed extreme recklessness in launching this application and the results were immediate and disturbing.... Go online and read the anonymous blog comments making fun of shaking a baby. The harm your organizations have caused in making light of harming and killing babies is enormous!

In an interview, foundation spokeswoman Jennipher Dickens said: "It was a completely generic apology. Speaking as a mother of a son who was shaken, it was not enough at all."

-- Alex Pham

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolf exits the social networking site Credit: Robert Scoblevia Flickr.

-- MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolf  is leaving the company before his contract is up, signaling News Corp.'s plans for a management overhaul. LAT

-- Microsoft is testing MSN homepages that are based on one topic, starting with entertainment. paidContent

-- Two guys in Philadelphia attempt to the break world record for most messages sent in a month. After 217,000 texts, one got an unexpected $26,000 bill. AP via Yahoo

-- Despite obvious economic difficulties, Apple posted a 15.2% rise in profit. Shares jumped this morning. LAT

-- In June, MSI will show off an Android-based netbook. Engaget

-- Apple's COO, Tim Cook (the guy who's in charge without Steve around), says netbooks are "not a good consumer experience." So don't expect them to release one. VentureBeat

-- The judge who found the Pirate Bay crew guilty is rumored to be a member of two different pro-copyright groups. Gizmodo

-- Facebook may offer vanity URLs(facebook.com/chris_is_king) to the highest bidder. AllFacebook

-- Chris Lesinski

In Tuesday's New York Times, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd launched a snarky assault on Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams. In addition to getting her every question shot down by the wit of San Francisco's darling Web entrepreneurs, she seemed to undermine her entire argument when bloggers found @maureendowd, what appears to be her own Twitter account.

"I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account," Dowd wrote in the last question of the Q&A.

Wait a minute, the collective Internet conscious seemed to say, but you are on Twitter.

Despite amassing more than 5,000 followers since starting the account in November, displaying her signature profile photo and having an accurate bio, @maureendowd may be the work of yet another celebrity impersonator -- using the term "celebrity" loosely in this case.

Was it the inconsistent style and extensive use of the word "cool" tipped off some skeptics? Or the fact that her first tweet was ...

Baby advocates weren't happy about the Baby Shaker iPhone App. Credit: boinger@gmail via Flickr.

It was an application bound to rattle. Baby Shaker, the $0.99 app that went on sale at the App store Monday, made iPhones emit the sound of a crying baby, while showing a charcoal drawing of a kid. The only way to make the noise stop was to shake the iPhone violently, until red X marks appeared over the baby's eyes. 

"On a plane, on the bus, in a theater. Babies are everywhere you don’t want them to be! They’re always distracting you from preparing for that big presentation at work with their incessant crying. Before Baby Shaker there was nothing you could do about it," the app's introduction read.

The app was developed by Sikalosoft, which has one more app available in the App store: a dice mosaic for $0.99.

That the Baby Shaker app made it to the Apple store is surprising: Apple has rejected a number of apps, including one that showed a picture of a knife and emitted screaming sounds, and a game that let people pretend to be drug dealers, according to developer Peter Hosey.

Needless to say, child advocates were not pleased that the shaking baby made it to the App store. They cried foul, putting out a news release today titled "Something Rotten at Apple," encouraging people to call and e-mail Steve Jobs and express their displeasure.

"This horrible iPhone app will undoubtedly be downloaded thousands of times by others in that same young male demographic -- the population group that is already statistically the most likely to shake babies," Jennipher Dickens, communications director for the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation, said in the release. " As a result of the child abuse my son endured in the form of shaken-baby syndrome, my son now has irreversible brain damage."

As of Wednesday afternoon, Apple appears to have pulled the app from the store. Clicking on an old link to the app generates a message that the app is "currently not available in the U.S. store."

It's unclear whether the controversy will shake up Apple's chances to reach its 1-billionth download from the App store sometime in the next day or so. The counter's now just above 995 million.

-- Alana Semuels

Actor Alec Baldwin in a TV commercial for Hulu. Credit: Nicole Rivelli / NBC.

For an online video company, Hulu believes in the power of television. Naturally it loves television content – putting those shows online is a big part of Hulu’s raison d’etre, and its founding investors include News Corp. and NBC Universal.

But Hulu loves TVads as well. “Television works really well,” Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar said in a speech at the ad:tech trade show in San Francisco this morning. “We are spending millions of dollars to be in your living room right now.”

Thanks to those ads, including a satirical Super Bowl spot in which Alec Baldwin called Hulu a way to "reduce your brains to a cottage-cheese-like mush,” Kilar said that “our business jumped 49%.”

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Hulu has borrowed some retro ideas from television while updating them with the interactivity of the Internet. For instance, he said, in 1959, the TV show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (which can be seen on Hulu) featured 26 minutes and four seconds of content; by 2009, “The Office” (also on Hulu) had 21 minutes and 49 seconds, with commercials continually encroaching.

“Year over year over year, another ad unit was added and the amount of content was dialed down,” Kilar said. “Advertisers had to work harder to cut through the clutter. We decided it would be more appropriate to go old school” and run shorter ads on its shows.

“You can make money with this strategy,” he said. “We charge a healthy, healthy premium to living-room pricing on a CPM (cost per thousand viewers) basis.”

The difference is that Hulu allows its viewers to choose what ads they want to see, and sometimes to decide if they want three minutes of ads spread throughout the show or shown up front as a movie trailer.

Kilar said Hulu obsesses over making sure its viewers, advertisers and content providers are happy. He did not address the most noteworthy controversy the company has faced in that regard -- its request that the service Boxee pull Hulu content. That dispute pitted customers, who loved using Boxee to watch Hulu shows on their TV sets, versus networks who did not want their shows available through Boxee. In a blog post announcing the decision in February, Kilar acknowledged the difficulty of the decision, but said that without network content, “none of what Hulu does would be possible.”

In a question-and-answer session, Kilar also declined to discuss any Hulu rumors (including, presumably, a hot one that Hulu will soon offer an application for watching its videos on the iPhone), and refused to discuss what other content providers may be joining Hulu (including, presumably, the reports that Walt Disney Co. was ready to sign up).

He did say Hulu intended to eventually expand internationally. “We have every intention to be a global service,” he said. “But right now, we are focused on the U.S.”

-- Dan Fost

Dancers perform in front of art installations using recycled products during an Earth Day celebration in Manila. Credit: Francis Malasig / EPA

Happy Earth Day, Appiphiliacs.

Earth Day was born in the era of Pintos, IBMs and recession. Today, 39 years later, we have Priuses, iPods and recession.

Though some things have changed -- and others have just been recycled -- the day gives us a chance to celebrate, create and accelerate environmental progress in protecting our planet, according to EarthDay.gov.

We focused earlier on "green"-specific apps here and here, so let's check out a few apps to help us integrate enviro-friendlier habits.

Gavin Newsom wants to be governor. Credit: Josh Thompson via Flickr.

-- AT&T first-quarter profit slips, but it activates 1.6 million iPhones and beats analyst expectations. AppleInsider

-- Photo-sharing site Flickr introduces a facial recognition service. CNet

-- Yahoo posts a drop in profit and plans to cut jobs. Again. LAT

-- Wouldn’t opera be better if it was compressed into 140 characters? A Twitter contest to sum up great works takes the idea and runs with it. Culture Monster

-- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom throws his hat into the gubernatorial ring. LAT

-- Why Hollywood doesn’t have an iTunes for its own movies. Big Picture

-- Weak AMD earnings indicate the company still needs to turn itself around. Ars Technica

-- Google's new profiles tool gives you a wee bit of control over what people see when they search for you. USA Today

-- A video portal for PBS lets you watch its shows online. "Antiques Roadshow," meet the Internet? LAT

-- Broadcom makes an unsolicited bidfor nearby chip-maker Emulex. LAT

-- Anti-gay marriage and spoof anti-gay marriage videosare gathering on YouTube like, well, a storm. AllThingsD

-- The Kindle costs $189 to build, says iSuppli. So why does it cost more than $300? Engadget

-- Alana Semuels

The news that a House committee was reopening its investigation into security risks posed by file-sharing software reminded me of something one of my pals in the computer-security field once told me. The biggest vulnerabilities aren't caused by deficiencies in machines or their software; they're caused by the humans who use them. It's a point that seems lost on the committee.

Ever since successors to Napster's song-swapping program made it possible for users to share any file stored on their PC, people have been unwittingly sharing address books, financial records, resumes and other personal items. They did this because they didn't bother to check which folders the software was offering to the public, or they put items into shared folders that didn't belong there. And they continued to do it even as the programs changed their default modes to force users to be more selective about their sharing. When the file-sharers are using office or government computers, the leaks can be even more damaging. The problem can be mitigated with better software design, but it can't be eliminated -- just as the government can't stop defense contractors from carelessly losing their laptops.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee had conducted hearings in 2007 into the inadvertent sharing of sensitive and personal information over LimeWire and other peer-to-peer networks. At the time, they extracted a promise from the Lime Group (the company that makes and distributes LimeWire software) to change the program to deter such leaks. But the trade group representing file-sharing companies, the Distributed Computing Industry Assn., had already been working with the Federal Trade Commission on this problem, and it offered to work with the committee as well. In fact, the association had been active on the issue since at least 2004.

Lime Group spokeswoman Linda Lipman told the Associated Press that the latest version of LimeWire software was designed not to share the file types associated with spreadsheets and documents. "In fact, the software does not share any file or directory without explicit permission from the user,” she said. Nevertheless, the chairman and the top Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee -- Reps. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) and Darrell Issa (R-Vista) -- declared in a letter to the Lime Group, "[I]t appears that nearly two years after your commitment to make significant changes in the software, LimeWire and other P2P (peer-to-peer) providers have not taken adequate steps to address this critical problem."

Perhaps the real motive here is to find grounds to ban the software outright, which would please Hollywood but wouldn't solve the problem. Their letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. suggests as much -- it asks whether federal law enforcement efforts can protect people, businesses and the government "from the security risks posed by P2P networks such as LimeWire." They sent a similar inquiry to the FTC. If they were really trying to solve the problem, they would conduct an investigation into what the Pentagon and government agencies were doing to keep file-sharing software off of computers used by their employees and contractors. The right approach here isn't to browbeat Lime Group, it's to demand better security practices by the people who work on the government dime.

Update, 11:40 a.m. Wednesday: Marty Lafferty, the CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry Assn., sent me an e-mail elaborating on the trade group's efforts to deter inadvertent sharing. According to Lafferty, the DCIA's Inadvertent Sharing Protection Working Group, formed two years ago, has worked with federal regulators, the Lime Group and other P2P software providers to develop voluntary best practices.

"Since publishing these in 2008," Lafferty wrote, "we have also completed a compliance report that can be reviewed here. As you will see, our industry takes the safety of consumers very seriously. Once this concern was recognized, we responded proactively. Our best advice now – to parents and children alike – is similar to that given by other Internet software distributors: Please upgrade to the latest version for the best performance and the safest experience."

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Sensio Technologies showed off live 3D video streaming through the Internet at the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas today, providing yet another illustration of how 3D technology is moving from the theater to the home -- albeit with some nontrivial hurdles yet to cross.

In the demo, a high-definition video feed from a stereoscopic camera in NAB's International Datacasting Booth streamed to a computer in the booth, which compressed it into Sensio's format and again into MPEG-4. It then traveled via Internet Protocol to another computer in the booth, which displayed the video on a 3D-ready high-def screen. Viewers who donned a pair of special glasses saw the video in clear and convincing digital 3D; without the glasses, the images were blurred to the point where they were barely recognizable.

Felician Farcutiu, an audiovisual technician for Sensio, said the transmissions require about 5 Mbps of bandwidth at most -- no more than a 2D high-def stream of similar quality. That's at the upper edge of many home DSL connections, but those speeds are likely to increase as consumers tune in more high-def video online. And the technique can work with any type of screen -- Sensio's software on the computer can convert the signal to match the screen and the glasses worn by the user. Polarized screens require polarized glasses, checkerboard screens work with shutterglass lenses, and conventional screens work with colored lenses (e.g, one lens red, the other blue).

The limiting factor is the computer software required to view the 3D streams. Sensio has but one licensee today -- Arcsoft -- which sells the 3D video player as part of a photo and video software suite. There's the usual chicken-and-egg problem; content providers won't be interested in delivering 3D streams until there are lots of people who can view them, but software makers won't be interested in distributing the technology until there's plenty of content to be consumed. But Farcutiu suggested that online games would be an important driver, given the obvious appeal of 3D to gamers. Beyond that, the computer screen seems a more natural first stop for 3D in the home. Online video is more of a lean-in experience, and consumers can obtain a 3D-ready computer screen for a much smaller investment than a 3D-ready TV.

Sensio spokeswoman Magali Valence said the goal is to enable live programming to be presented in 3D simultaneously online and over the air. The company has already participated in one such event: a performance by the British band Keane, which was carried live to viewers in a London theater, to homes with satellite TV and via the Internet. It's not clear that many people actually watched the concert in full 3D glory -- setting aside the fact that the band was Keane, the transmission required a special set-top box or PC software. Yet it's easy to imagine what might happen if the software found its way into wide distribution -- say, if a popular tech company started building 3D capabilities into its media player. Studios might suddenly have a reason to make their 3D blockbusters available for streaming on demand with all their dimensions intact.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Foreign Cyber-attacks in the U.S. are on the rise -- or at least the Pentagon's detection of them. Credit: randomduck via Flickr

-- Google has two new creations: a similar-images finder and a time-line version of Google News. BBC

-- Adobe is developing a new version of Flash in HD that would work on Internet-capable TVs -- without a browser. Comcast, Disney and Netflix have already signed on to support it. ArsTechnica

-- Using Facebook Connect to harvest users' information, Facebook is rumored to have plans for an ad network. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Spies have hacked the Pentagon's Joint Strike Program, the Defense Department's  most expensive weapons program in history. Now, Web wars are a serious threat. WSJ

-- A law in South Korea would force Google to hand over personal information about YouTube uploaders to the government. Rather than comply, Google shut off uploads and comments on the YouTube Korea site. paidContent

-- A study shows that people who download music illegally buy 10 times as much legal music than people who don't. ArsTechnica

-- The New York Times reported a 28.4% drop in ad sales and a 6.1% drop in Internet ad sales. In this economy, the Web is certainly not filling the void left by print advertising. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Like the new iPod Shuffle, iPhone 3.0 is rumored to be rich with voice control and synthesis technologies. ArsTechnica

-- Chris Lesinski

Many local advertisers are moving online from the Yellow Pages. Credit: frankh via Flickr.

Looking at the likes of L.A. companies such as SpotRunner, which is cutting staff and changing its business model to focus less on local businesses, you might think that businesses that deal in local advertising have a pretty bleak future. But Woodland Hills advertising juggernaut ReachLocal says that business is just beginning to heat up in the local online advertising marketplace.

The company today announced the ReachLocal Xchange, a platform that allows small business to advertise on a host of sitesrather than just major sites such as MSN, Yahoo and Google. As a result, different publishers will be able to compete for the $1,000 a month or so that ReachLocal's thousands of advertisers each spend on average buying ad space online.

"There's a flood of dollars moving online," said Zorik Gordon, co-founder and CEO of ReachLocal. "This will cause an explosion of more ad opportunities for small businesses."

He estimates that billions of dollars of local advertising are currently moving from the Yellow Pages and print publications to the online marketplace. ReachLocal will be able to help those advertise buy spots on sites such as Fox Audience Network and Ask Sponsored Listings, among 100 others.

"ReachLocal has done something potentially quite significant here, making local inventory more accessible to more marketers," wrote Greg Sterling, founder of Sterling Market Intelligence, on his blog.

ReachLocal was launched in Encino of 2004 with the goal of making it easier for small businesses such as dentists, plumbers and car dealers to advertise online. Advertisers liked the idea -- the business added 34 offices globally in 30 months. Venture capitalists liked it too: The company raised $55 million in a Series D round in 2007.

-- Alana Semuels

The search bar that sits atop the Google Torrent Search page.

Is Google hosting a piracy search engine?

That's the question that's been on the minds of Internet users today, when a link to a Google page called Torrent Search made the rounds.

Punching in the name of the latest record, movie or computer software instantly returns a Google search page that lists where to find bootlegged downloads using popular piracy websites.

While hosted on Google.com, the product doesn't appear to be the work of a Google employee. The search engine uses Google's Custom Search platform, which allows anyone to manufacture a page that can scan a defined set of sites. This one just happens to be limited to some of the most-used piracy portals.

But those who support piracy websites are pointing to the search page in defense of the four creators of the Pirate Bay. On Friday, they were sentenced to a year in jail and ...

In addition to print, the Web and Amazon's Kindle, the L.A. Times adds another medium to its arsenal. You can now get your daily dose of L.A. Times news on your iPhone and iPod Touch, thanks to two new applications.

Once downloaded through Apple's App Store, the L.A. Times News Reader (iTunes link) provides news stories from LATimes.com, formatted for mobile reading.

The default view lets users scroll through headlines by flicking left or right on the top half of the screen and browse sections on the lower half. To quickly browse headlines, users can switch to a list view using the button on the top right of the app.

The story reader includes the full text of the article and the ability to view the accompanying photos by flicking to the right of the headline. Users can also reposition the viewing area by dragging the center-right portion of the screen -- the space that looks like metallic emboss -- to provide more room for reading.

A separate app, called the L.A. Times Sports Reader (iTunes link) is very similar, but replaces the section's browser with a sports scoreboard. Users can select individual games to get a more detailed breakdown of the action. Sports news is displayed in the same way as News Reader.

The premiere versions of the apps don't currently offer online viewing for places where WiFi or wireless Internet access may not be available -- like on the subway or airplane. Both apps can be downloaded through iTunes or directly on the devices for free. There's also an iPhone-formatted version of the website at latimes.com/iphone.

-- Mark Milian

Genius Product's game, Scratch: The Ultimate DJ, is at the center of a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. Credit: Genius Products.

The publishers of Scratch: the Ultimate DJ, an upcoming video game, said today that it had won a temporary restraining order that forces Activision Blizzard Inc. to return software code and custom-made DJ controllers.  

Genius Products, the Santa Monica distributor of movies and television shows on DVD, filed a lawsuit last week alleging that Activision, which is developing its own title called DJ Hero, conspired to "sabotage" Genius by, among other things, withholding code and other assets Genius needed to complete its game. 

Activision, based in Santa Monica, ended up with the assets when it acquired California 7 Studios, the developer that Genius contracted to make its game.

According to Genius spokesman Dean Bender, Activision had until 5 p.m. today to return the software and controllers in dispute. Activision declined to comment, but the company last week in a statement denied any wrongdoing.

In his ruling last Wednesday, Superior Court Judge James Chalfant said the software code belonged to Genius. "They paid $6 million for it," he concluded.

But because Chalfant ruled off the bench, the court did not issue a written ruling, leaving the door open for both Genius and Activision last week to declare victory. Genius said it was satisfied with the judge's order to have its code returned. And Activision said, "L.A. Superior Court found that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by Activision and refused to grant any restraining order against Activision."

Who won? We'll keep you updated when we hear more.

 -- Alex Pham

Many iPhone users complain about AT&T's service -- or lack thereof. Credit: dbrulz123 at Flickr.

It's a common complaint among iPhone users: The device is great, but the much-heralded 3G network, provided by AT&T, needs work. Now, it seems AT&T may be listening.

AT&T is testing increased download speeds on its 3G network, according to spokesman Geoff Mordock. The news first emerged in an interview with Scott McElroy, AT&T Mobility vice president of technology realization, in Telephony Online. The tests, if implemented, would bring the theoretical maximum speed to 7.2 megabits per second -- double the current maximum speed.

AT&T is also increasing network capacity by adding new cell sites and nearly doubling the total network capacity in most markets via an additional spectrum at 850 MHz, according to Mordock. That frequency makes it easier to get coverage inside buildings. Network capacity determines how much information can be sent over the network, including calls and data connections. 

AT&T has come under fire lately for its sluggish 3G speeds. It was sued in March for promising faster 3G speeds than were available, the latest in a long line of quibbles over 3G speed. The plaintiff in the March lawsuit said he could connect to the 3G network only periodically.

The news about the increased speeds comes at a strategically beneficial time to AT&T: last week, reports emerged that the wireless company was trying to extend its exclusive relationship with Apple until 2011.

-- Alana Semuels

 

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images.

-- Oracle's Larry Ellison steals Sun-shine from IBM. LAT

-- Online video website Metacafe renovates, separates the pros from the amateurs. paidContent

-- Fox teams up with MySpace to launch citizen journalism website, uReport. TechCrunch

-- Physicist Stephen Hawking "very ill." Reuters

-- Hulu rumored to hit iPhone. SiliconAlleyInsider

-- How to make (or collect) money from social networking. LightspeedVentures

-- Opposition to Google's book settlement grows as the Internet Archives files to intervene. NYT

-- Alex Pham

Developers have been using the iPhone's location-tagging features for a while now.

The camera tags photos you snap on the phone so that they can later be mapped in iPhoto or together with other people's photos on Flickr. Evernote tags where you jot down notes so you can search by location later. And GPS-aware social networks like Loopt and Foursquare allow users to keep track of each other's whereabouts as they visit different places around the city.

But a couple of new apps prove that there are plenty of fresh ideas to stretch that little GPS chip even further.

NIN: Access (Free)

What it is: The app gives you access to news and multimedia relating to the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.

The group isn't the first musical act to offer an iPhone app. Most of them are little more than a glorified version of their band websites -- yes, I'm looking at you, Death Cab for Cutie. Sure, the NIN: Access app is that, too. It presents news, photos, videos and streaming music from the website.

But its main attraction is the "nearby" feature. The service, which shows you short messages from other fans in your general vicinity, is like a locational Twitter. While it requires you to register for a free account with the band, unlike Twitter, there's no friend feature. It's all about location, location, location.

Users set the distance cutoff -- 1 mile, 5 miles, 50 miles or the entire stream. If you're in a big city, you might ...

 

From left, Gottfrid Svartholm Varg and Peter Sunde, two of the men behind the Pirate Bay. Credit: Fredrik Persson / AFP/Getty Images

In a victory – preliminarily, at least – for Hollywood, a Swedish court today handed down prison sentences for four men behind the Pirate Bay, a popular file-sharing search engine, and ordered them to pay $3.6 million in damages to such entertainment giants as Warner Bros. and EMI.

The four defendants were convicted of facilitating copyright violations and given one-year prison terms for their role in setting up and bankrolling the website, which allows users to find movies and songs to download for free.

But putting a damper on any Hollywood boardroom cheer, the men vowed to appeal their conviction, a process that could keep the dispute going for years, and the offending website remained up and running even after the verdict was delivered.

Moreover, one of the defendants, Peter Sunde, responded with an insouciant online video press conference in which he dismissed the verdict as “bizarre” and “stupid” and scoffed at the idea of handing over a cent.

“That’s the closest they’re going to get to any money from us,” he said, holding up a piece of paper in front of the camera with the handwritten words “I OWE U 31,000,000” Swedish kroners, or about $3.6 million. “They could’ve gotten 1 billion, and it wouldn’t matter, because we can’t pay, and we wouldn’t pay.”

The case has been closely watched by the entertainment industry, which has ...

Ashton Kutcher became the first Twitter user to hit 1 million followers. He streamed the run-up to a million live on UStream. Credit: Sweet One via Flickr

-- Four members of the Pirate Bay torrent search engine were found guilty of sharing copyrighted files in Sweden. A judge sentenced them to a year in prison and hit them with big fines. CNet

-- Ashton Kutcher squeaked past CNN to become the first Twitter user with 1 million followers. TechCrunch

-- He'll do his victory lap on Oprah Winfrey's show, where he'll presumably show her how to tweet. NYT 

-- Maybe he'll tell her not to tweet in all-caps? Silicon Alley Insider

-- Unimpressed by the line-up on YouTube's new TV and movie site? You're not alone. Valleywag and PaidContent

-- What does Omid Kordestani's changing role mean for Google? VentureBeat

-- Apple's strategy of premium pricing despite the recession may be catching up. Its share of the computer market slipped in the first quarter, IDC says. Macrumors

-- Chris Gaither