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Blogging declines among teens, young adults

As social-media sites like Facebook grow in popularity among teenagers and young adults, good ol' blogging has declined sharply over the past three years for this set, a new report shows.

In 2006, 28 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 and young adults ages 18 to 29 were bloggers, according to survey results released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. By the fall of 2009, however, these numbers dropped to 14 percent of teens and 15 percent of young adults. During the same period, the percentage of online adults over 30 who are blogging rose from 7 percent in … Read more

New Facebook craze can violate terms of service

If you're one of Facebook's 350-million-plus members, you've probably noticed a handful of people on your friends list changing their profile photos to pictures of celebrities, cartoon characters, Muppets, and other notable figures recently.

That's because an unofficial viral craze called "Doppelganger Week" has arisen on the social network. To participate, you change your profile picture to a celebrity or otherwise notable figure whom you resemble (or like to think you resemble).

Nobody's really sure where Doppelganger Week came from or who started it. It's particularly funny considering the recent emergence of more photos … Read more

New CNET comment system: Is it better?

We've been testing a new commenting system called Echo on my Deep Tech blog for a few weeks, and now we're looking for your thoughts about it.

What do you like or dislike about reading and posting comments using Echo? How do you think Echo could be improved?

One thing we like about Echo: it allows readers to comment on our stories by logging in through CNET or through various social networks of their choosing. For example, there may some readers who don't want to create a CNET account.

Also, Echo collects some conversation about our stories … Read more

Canadian official launches new probe into Facebook

New privacy controls launched by Facebook don't do enough--and might even make things worse--according to a new investigation launched by the Office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner (OPC). The OPC had launched an earlier investigation into Facebook's user controls last summer, citing "serious privacy gaps" that were part of the reason why the massive social network started making modifications.

The concern this time around, a release Wednesday explains, is that when Facebook turned on its new privacy settings, the default setting exposed more information than it had before. "Some Facebook users are disappointed by certain … Read more

How 'Avatar' may predict the future of virtual worlds

Update at 2:10 p.m. PDT: This story has been modified to reflect both Jon Landau and James Cameron's membership on the advisory board of virtual world platform developer Multiverse.

Since the release of his massive hit "Avatar," director James Cameron has gotten plenty of deserved attention for his filmmaking innovations, having invented a camera system that captured live footage of his actors and integrated it immediately into fleshed-out scenes from his fictional world of Pandora.

But movies may not be the only medium Cameron's innovation is pushing toward the future. In fact, the technology … Read more

The 404 Podcast 506: Where the Apple tablet is the most important thing we will ever do

It smells like Apples in here. The day of reckoning is finally upon us and CNET has all your Apple coverage including a live blog to track the news as it comes through the pipe.

CNET's The 404 Podcast is also on the job, so check out today's episode for our predictions on what Steve Jobs has in store for the world. It better be good, especially if Jobs stayed awake all night inventing it. Jeff and I are able to approach it with a level head, but Wilson G. Tang is in full-blown Apple fanboy mode with the T-shirt and the Apple lip gloss all ready to go.

Before we get into our predictions, Jeff shows us a surprising study that demonstrates pirates are the music industry's most valuable customers. We're a little suspicious that the story comes from TorrentFreak.com, but they bring up a legitimate point that music "sharers" (aka pirates) are actually likely to buy more digital music as opposed to physical media in a store. In either case, the best way to support your favorite bands, signed or unsigned, is to buy a ticket to their live show and spend money on merchandise while you're there. That way, your cash support goes directly into the pockets of the band, instead of the digital music service taking a cut of the profit. Stick local!

Next up we've got a story about the worst Facebook revenge, like, ever. It happens like this: teenage girl finds six-pack of beer in younger brother's closet. Brother searches through sister's closet and finds disturbingly detailed "hookup list" and publishes image of said list on Facebook.

Wait, it gets way worse: the ultimate fatality is that he also tags every single guy on the list and starts an epic three-way flame war between brother, sister, and a group of guys that all have one thing in common.

We end today's show by going around the table and seriously (OK, not seriously at all) dishing out our Apple tablet predictions for the day.

Spoiler alert: Jeff is hopeful for a game-centric device, Justin hopes you can connect a printer to it, and Wilson can't even talk with all the saliva pouring out of his mouth.

EPISODE 506 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Facebook investors: Seriously, no IPO this year

After years of Facebook executives and investors saying "not yet" to an initial public offering, 2010 finally looked like the year when it could happen.

Nope. Or at least that's what two major Facebook investors, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies, said during an onstage talk at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich on Tuesday.

A live-blog of rough notes from the talk reveals that both Breyer and Milner ruled out the possibility that Facebook will go public anytime soon. "I am happy to announce that there will be … Read more

Yfrog gets Facebook, MySpace cross-publishing

Yfrog, ImageShack's image- and video-hosting site for Twitter, has a new trick up its sleeve. It can now cross-post whatever you've just uploaded over to both MySpace and Facebook. Users will see the new option to post to one or both of these services if they're uploading directly through Yfrog.com. Once you've given either service authorization, Yfrog will then cross-post whatever you've uploaded, from anywhere--be it a desktop or mobile app.The system worked well enough in my testing. Though, out of the three social networks, it's the hardest to find your photo … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1151: NASA, park the shuttle on blocks

Amid the news of China picking a fight with the U.S. over Google, and Jammie Thomas-Rasset getting her fine reduced, we've got a goldmine idea for NASA. Gene wrote in to explain that instead of selling off the shuttles, NASA can just leave them parked at the space station. And we took it further with some suggestions of how and where to park them and what to do with them afterward.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1151

China denies involvement in Google cyber attacks http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10440208-83.html… Read more