Loaded: Facebook's about-face Video

Loaded: Facebook's about-face Video Transcript

>> Facebook reverts to its old privacy policy, we have plenty more news out of Barcelona from the Mobile World Congress and Google lets you change your mind on Android applications. It's Wednesday, February 18, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded. ^M00:00:14 [ Music ] ^M00:00:19

>> Facebook had an about-face regarding privacy rights on Tuesday night. The company had been facing a pretty big backlash about a change in their user rights. The new policy gave the company perpetual rights to all of their users content. This is not only unpopular in the present blogosphere it was subject to a Federal complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a blog on Tuesday night responding to the backlash saying that for now, the company has reverted to the old terms of service. You got to hand it to Facebook when they make a mistake the way that they did here or with Beacon last year they fixed it quickly, apologize and then go back to the drawing board, so good for them. Finally, all cell phone chargers will be created equal. The mobile industry is teaming up to standardize -- hallelujah. At the Mobile World Congress, GSMA CEO Rob Conway said that the industry has finally decided on the microUSB standard for all chargers. This change should take place by 2012 -- thank goodness. Although, it will make that old, "my cell phone battery died" excuse obsolete, so you have to come up with a new excuse for not returning your cell phone calls. Recovery.gov launched yesterday after President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act commonly known as the Economic Stimulus Bill. The site is supposed to track the spending of the massive $789 billion stimulus package.

>> The size and scale of this plan demand unprecedented efforts to root out waste in efficiency and unnecessary spending.

>> Currently there's only a basic breakdown of where the money is going, but the government promises to have initial reports available on March 3, a more detailed breakdown by May 15 and competitive grants and contracts available on May 28. The data will even be available in XML formats, so that Intrepid users can use it for Mac shops for analysis as they see fit. Vodafone managed to snag an Android phone and it's called the HTC Magic coming this spring to markets in the U.K., Spain, Germany, France and Italy. The HTC Magic features a 3.2-inch QVGA Touch screen, trackball, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, but no QWERTY keyboard like the T-Mobile G1. Pricing has not been announced just yet, but there's been mentioned of a free phone on certain plans. LG has announced more details of its up and coming 3G netbook. The X120 will feature a 160-gig hard drive, a "Smart On" quick boot interface, a 10-inch display and the standard 1.6 Gigahertz Intel Atom processor. As previously mentioned, its 3G through HSPA meaning GSM-based carriers will likely be compatible with the unit. If you're a Google Docs junkie and a control freak like me, you'll like the new validation feature on the spreadsheets app. It allows you to set certain cells in your spreadsheet to accept a specific kind of data like a date or an e-mail address. This is nifty if you're trying to keep all your data consistent and cannot stand it when people don't use the right date format. It will even offer the option to reject an entry if it doesn't meet your criteria and offer helpful tips. One more Google story, the company announced that the Gphone app store has a new return policy. This means if you buy an app and decide that it's stupid, you can return it if it's within the 24-hours of when you bought it. This is the first time we've heard of anything like this in the mobile application space. All app store should do something like this. I know I certainly have some apps that I wish I could return like one called Lady Biz -- don't ask. Those are all your headlines for today, but I will see you tomorrow. Thank you for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been Loaded. ^M00:03:46 [ Music ]