Android 2.2 Features Wi-Fi Tethering

I can’t wait until every smartphone doubles as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. (It’s one of the best features on Verizon’s version of the Palm Pre Plus, where it doesn’t cost anything extra–but I’d happily pay for it.) This sounds like a step in the right direction.

Check Up on Your Congressman… On Facebook

These days, everybody’s on Facebook, including your local Congressman. To highlight the increasing usage in Congress of the social networking site, Facebook has launched a special page listing the more than 300 members that use the site in an official capacity. The site’s hope is this promotion will encourage others to start using the site.

In addition to listing the pages of these members, the page’s wall is filled with stories on how members are using Facebook, as well as highlighting technology legislation that is passing through Congress.

So you may ask, who are the most popular members of Congress? Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota leads the House with 29,000 fans, while in the Senate Democrats Mark Udall of Colorado and Claire McCaskill of Missouri lead with about 4,000 fans apiece.

Longer Than the Constitution

The New York Times comes through with a brilliant infographic on Facebook’s privacy policies and options. (Can anyone explain to me why Facebook hasn’t implemented some sort of higher-level privacy slider–Totally Private, Somewhat Private, Somewhat Social, Totally Social–on top of all this complexity?)

Adobe Strikes Back, Sort of

Two weeks ago, Steve Jobs published a withering memo explaining why Apple has prevented Adobe’s Flash technology from arriving on the iPhone in any form. Today, Adobe is responding in a big way. The company has launched an ad campaign in print and on the Web with an accompanying Web portal addressing Jobs’ points about Flash’s openness, security, performance, and compatibility.

Adobe’s response doesn’t match the blunt specificity of Jobs’ piece. The ads say that Adobe loves Apple (sadly, it seems to be unrequited–but it’s an improvement over “Go screw yourself, Apple“).  And for the most part, its defense of Flash doesn’t address Apple’s stance head on. Except at the end of an open letter from Adobe cofounders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke:

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3 Ways Google Can Fast-Track Android Gaming

Google’s not making a big deal of it yet, but there are signs the company is interested in video games. Last month, Google hired games industry veteran Mark DeLoura to be its “Developer Advocate” for games, and acquired game and widget developer LabPixies. On Tuesday, TechCrunch spotted a Google job posting for “Product Management Leader, Games.”

I can only speculate what Google is planning, but a push to make Android a more prominent gaming platform is long overdue. Here are a few ways Google can make it happen:

Copy Apple, straight-up: Games are the dominant type of app on the iPhone and iPad, and Apple has taken the hint. Come OS 4, the iPhone will unify its games with Game Center, a layer of social networking and matchmaking features akin to Xbox Live. That’s a good step for any games platform to take, so why not Google?

Forget “Developer Advocate,” hire a “Gamer Advocate”: As long as Google’s mimicking Apple, one way the folks in Mountain View can do better is to hire a community manager, someone who can put a public face on Google’s gaming efforts and organize special events and giveaways. These gamer-developer liaisons are all the rage among the big publishers and console makers, and given the culture in Cupertino, there’s no way Apple’s going to do this.

Make Flash Gaming a Priority: Whether you loved or hated Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash,” there’s no denying that Flash was not designed for the touch screen. That’s not such a problem for video or other content that uses simple clicking, but gamers are going to want access to Kongregate, Miniclip and other Flash game sites. Keyboard and rollover input figure prominently into Flash games, so Google would be wise to find a solution.

All-Hands Facebook Privacy Confab?

All Facebook’s Nick O’Neill is reporting that Facebook has called an all-hands staff meeting tomorrow at 4pM PT to discuss matters relating to privacy. He’s speculating that it’ll involve news of further changes to the site’s controversial recent changes.

While we wait for the upshot (if any), let’s conduct a silly little poll:

HP Slate: So Long Windows 7, Hiya WebOS?

I started out thinking that the rumor that HP was canceling its much-hyped Windows 7 “Slate PC” strained credulity. But it’s been a couple of weeks since the idea surfaced, and HP isn’t denying it. Which isn’t a good sign–if everything was fine, wouldn’t the company say so?

Now GottaBeMobile is reporting that an allegedly excellent source says that HP is ditching Windows 7 and replacing it with the operating system it just bought: Palm’s WebOS, on a slate code-named “Hurricane.” You’d think it would take awhile to reengineer WebOS to work well on a larger device, making a release in the next few months unlikely–or has Palm been secretly tackling that challenge all along?

HTC Sues Apple

This isn’t even slightly surprising: HTC is suing Apple. The Taiwanese phone giant says that the iPhone maker has violated five HTC patents, and it’s therefore asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to prevent the iPhone, iPad, and iPod from being imported into the U.S. and sold.

Last month, Apple sued HTC, seeking to ban that company from selling phones in the U.S. Apple is also suing Nokia, which is itself suing Apple. Twice.

(Extremely unlikely but perversely satisfying potential scenario: All three companies win all their lawsuits, preventing all of them from selling any products whatsoever and driving them all out of business. At least it might dissuade other businesses from doing battle in the courtroom rather than the marketplace…)

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Fourth-Generation iPhone Found in Vietnam

What, another iPhone prototype found in the wild?

AT&T Upgrades: Business as Usual

MobileCrunch posted a story about apparent improvements in AT&T customers’ eligibility for phone upgrades yesterday–prompting me to wonder what policies would be in place for the next iPhone. AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom wrote me with more info: Despite what MobileCrunch noticed, there has been no change in the company’s policies, which give each customer his or her own upgrade date based on factors such as length of contract and payment history. The date is constantly updated, which is why a customer might notice it change over time.

Of course, this doesn’t reveal all about how much existing customers will pay for the next iPhone–that’s something Bloom wouldn’t address now. But no, the company isn’t fiddling with dates in preparation for its release.

Win a 500GB Seagate Hard Drive

Today’s the last chance to get a shot at one of the five Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro hard drives we’re giving away. Here’s how to enter.

Office 2010: Desktop Heavyweight, Online Weakling

At an event this morning in New York, Microsoft is formally launching Office 2010, its accompanying Office Web Apps, and the SharePoint 2010 collaborative platform. The hoopla today is aimed at business customers–consumers won’t be able to buy Office in retail stores or get it preinstalled on PCs until June 15th, and while Microsoft hasn’t guaranteed a timetable for the consumer versions of the Web Apps, it says it expects them to arrive at the same time as the desktop suite.

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Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Demos

On Friday, Adobe evangelist Ryan Stewart demoed FlashPlayer 10.1 for Android at a Seattle conference. It crashed repeatedly and couldn’t deal with one site (Hulu) that an audience member asked to see. Given Flash’s already-shaky reputation at the moment, it wasn’t surprising that this led to some withering comments.

Stewart has published a sheepish blog post saying he was using an interim build of the software that wasn’t up to the stress test of a public demo. The post includes an embedded video of Stewart demoing several Flash sites on a Nexus One phone. And it…works. Quite well.

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Facebook Privacy Fodder

In the wake of ongoing controversy (some of it intense) over Facebook’s privacy policies, I’m overdue to return to the topic. (One-sentence summary of my take: Facebook has a history of asking for forgiveness rather than permission, and now says the default for everything is “social”–so the best way to keep things private is to keep them off the service, period.)

For now, here are a couple of worthwhile reads:

The New York Times got Facebook VP for Public Policy Elliot Schrage to respond to a bunch of reader questions. Schrage prefaces his answers with a humble, apologetic overview, but most of the specific answers seem to boil down to two somewhat testy points: 1)  everybody has the option not to use Facebook, and/or 2) the question mischaracterizes Facebook positions or practices. My main takeaway: Facebook needs to do a heck of a better job at explaining what it does with our information, and how we can exert control over it. Schrage’s comments do give me some hope that the company gets that.

Eric Eldon of Inside Facebook has a clarifying, level-headed walkthrough of what Facebook’s recent changes (and a security glitch or two) mean for privacy on the service.  It’s an exceptionally long post, but there’s so much to talk about that it’s hard to do it justice in a few hundred words.

And how are you feeling about Facebook these days?

Google/Verizon Tablet: A Quick Wish List

Google and Verizon Wireless are working on an tablet together. That bit of scuttlebutt comes from a pretty well-connected source: Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, who spilled the beans to the Wall Street Journal today. The device will run the Android OS, and that’s about all we know about it so far–but Verizon says it’ll have more details later this week. (And maybe Google will have something to say at its I|O conference next week.)

This gizmo will, of course, compete with Apple’s iPad. It joins the land rush of  would-be iPad killers that don’t actually exist yet (and, in some cases, may never exist). I’d like to see something emerge as the iPad’s most formidable archival–and here are a few features that would help Google and Verizon’s tablet get there.

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How Much are iPhone 3GS Owners Going to Pay For the Next iPhone?

(Update: AT&T wrote to tell me that the eligibility date shifts MobileCrunch wrote about are nothing unusual.)

When the iPhone 3GS went on sale last June, AT&T told folks who’d bought subsidized iPhone 3Gs a year previously that they didn’t qualify to buy a 3GS at the full subsidy. Seemed reasonable enough to me. But after lots of vocal complaints from iPhone 3G owners who wanted to be iPhone 3GS early adopters, the company decided to let some of them buy the 3GS model on contract at the same price as new customers and those who had fulfilled earlier contracts.

When the next iPhone comes around–I don’t know anyone who’s predicting a release date later than this July–AT&T presumably wants to avoid the confusion, bad publicity, and need for backpedaling that accompanied the 3G release. And Greg Kumparak of MobileCrunch has an interesting post noting that some AT&T customers are seeing their upgrade eligibility dates moved to June 21st, as if AT&T is prepping to let them buy new iPhones at full discount from day one.

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