Protecting Your Passwords and Your Privacy  —  In recent months, we've seen a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people's Facebook profiles or private information.  This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user's friends.

FCC Fires Back at AT&T Over T-Mobile Job Cuts  —  The Federal Communications Commission rejected the idea, put forth by AT&T earlier on Friday, that job cuts at T-Mobile are a sign that regulators should have allowed its megadeal to proceed.  —  “In a short period of time …

Bats Global IPO Turns Ugly After Bad Apple Trade, Quote Error  —  Bats Global Markets Inc.'s debut as a public company didn't go as planned, as a system glitch just as its own stock was to begin trading caused erroneous price quotes and Apple Inc. (AAPL) was halted due to a trade on its platform.

Microsoft Store swapping rival smartphones for Windows Phones in latest ‘Smoked’ challenge  —  Microsoft is turning its $100 “Smoked by Windows Phone” campaign into a $1,000 challenge at its retail stores across the US this weekend.  Visitors can walk into a Microsoft Store between noon …

Report: Nokia paying AT&T for exclusive employee use of the Lumia 900  —  We've heard numerous times that the Nokia Lumia 900 will be a “hero” device for AT&T, a term that is unfamiliar for many who are not in the business of smartphones.  Here, the usage refers to AT&T promoting the Lumia 900 …

New iPhone (iPhone 5,1) coming fall 2012 with LTE, similar sized screen  —  While Apple has only just released the new iPad, iMore has already started to hear more about the next generation iPhone (iPhone 5,1).  We previously reported that Apple was working to reduce the size …

Box.Net became a .Com for just shy of a million bucks  —  CEO Aaron Levie got lucky: The company that owned the .com of his company name wanted a lot, but not as much as they could have got.  —  Just Box.  —  I just had a nice talk with Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box.net.  I mean, Box.

Pinterest revises terms of service, gives up right to sell your content  —  The providers of an inspiration service turned inward for some much-needed inspiration of their own, and have updated their terms of service following feedback from community members.

RIM to Give Developers Prototypes of New BlackBerry in May  —  Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) plans to give software developers prototypes of a new BlackBerry in early May, signaling RIM is a step closer to the debut of a handset it's betting on to revive slumping sales.

Facebook Sets High Asking Price for Log-Out Ads: $700K a Day  —  Seeks to Tap Big Display Dollars on Eve of IPO  —  Facebook's new log-out ads are big, splashy and the closest thing to a traditional banner ad the social network has ever produced.  They're also pricey …

US Army debuts app marketplace prototype: iOS first, Android coming soon  —  The promise of an Army app store has been bandied about for quite a while now, but it looks like it's slowly becoming a reality.  The US Army has today officially announced a prototype of the Army Software Marketplace …

What Google Hasn't Done: Explained Why We as Users Would Want a Unified Online Identity  —  After years of providing us with many very good products — search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome — Google is now on a mission to turn itself into one big product that understands each of us as one unified person.

Best Buy Is Selling Nearly as Many iPhones as Apple Itself  —  Apple's move to make Best Buy an outlet for the iPhone back in 2008 is proving a wise one — lucrative, too.  —  Over the past few years, the retail chain has become an increasingly important outlet for Apple, extending its reach and distribution via its 1,100 stores.

Thanks to Google Voice, you can now make phone calls from within Google+ Hangouts  —  The Google+ team continues to graduate features from its sandbox into prime time for its Hangouts product.  Last week, the company announced the addition of Google Docs into Hangouts, and today the service …

To Tweet From 30,000 Feet: Picking Planes Wired for Wi-Fi  —  More passengers are downloading books, sending Tweets and updating their Facebook pages in the middle of a flight—even as they complain about steep prices.  —  Currently, about 1,700 planes in the U.S. have Internet access …

Signs in Mountain Lion point to “retina” display MacBooks sooner than later  —  A new clue found within in the latest developer release of OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) suggests that 2012 may bring us the “summer of retina display Macs.”  A source with access to the latest Mountain Lion preview alerted Ars …

6waves Lolapps' CTO and Chief Product Officer Rue And Sethi Step Down  —  Just a few days after social gaming company 6waves Lolapps said it was laying off most of its development staff to focus on publishing, its chief product officer Arjun Sethi and chief technology officer Brian Rue have stepped down.