Ed Oswald

50 million people downloaded OMGPOP's Draw Something over the past two months, and it's at the top of the App Store charts. But for those of us who connected our Facebook accounts to the app, there's an even bigger problem: it stores a Facebook access token in plain text.

Want that in plain English? A hacker gets this little file, and he's got access to your private data.

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The Justice Department is nearing a settlement with publishers over allegations of ebook pricing, but finalizing the deal is proving problematic as Apple and two publishers are balking at the terms of the deal. Amazon will be permitted to once again discount ebooks to its customers as a result.

Penguin Group and Macmillian have joined Apple in resisting the settlement, the Wall Street Journal reports. The deal voids the contracts Apple signed with publishers in 2010, and permits a return to "wholesale pricing", where the retailer determines the price.

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We have talked a lot about cloud computing recently here on the pages of BetaNews. That's not surprising since it is one of the fastest growing segments of the tech industry today. Missing, however: A more personal story on how we're using the cloud in our day-to-day business.

I run a small freelance writing and media consulting business out of my home, Oz Media Inc. While being my own boss is fun, it also requires me to be owner, CEO, CFO, IT administrator, and employee. It's a company of one. Cloud computing has definitely paid off and made running my business a lot easier, and here's why.

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Where can you get the iPhone other than AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint? Plenty of places, as long as you're not on T-Mobile.

A host of regional wireless carriers announced Wednesday that they will carry the iPhone in a move that may surprise some industry watchers. This includes Waynesboro, Va.-based nTelos, Green Bay, Wisc.-based Cellcom, and Anchorage, Alaska's Alaska Communications. The regionals will offer the iPhone 4 and 4S at a $50 discount to the major carriers, and join southern US regional carrier C Spire, who has offered the iPhone since October of last year.

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Citrix is making its mark on open-source cloud computing, following CloudStack software's release to the Apache Foundation. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based technology company acquired the rights to CloudStack with last year's Cloud.com acquisition. Citrix is a significant contributor to another open-source cloud computing platform called OpenStack, and one of the earliest members.

RackSpace and NASA jointly created OpenStack in 2010. Since that time, the project has amassed nearly 150 contributors including Dell, AMD, Intel, HP and AT&T. It aims to be an alternative to Amazon Web Services, which is a popular platform for IT deployments looking to embrace the cloud.

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Consumer Reports does it again. Lo and behold, after causing a media firestorm over its blatant attempt at whoring for pageviews, the supposedly impartial source for product reviews is now actually going to recommend the new iPad as the top tablet available.

You read that right. "Heatgate" was supposedly a big enough issue to cause the company to write several posts on it, without quantifying that the iPad is not hotter than other competing tablets or (basically) every laptop on the market. CR is doing an about face, now saying the device's heat generation is no longer a problem.

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Small and medium sized business are quickly moving to the cloud to reduce IT costs, a new study shows. The number of cloud services is expected to double over the next five years, and the number of small business using at least one cloud service will triple during that same period.

Cloud computing offers small business the opportunity to access the computing power of much larger corporations at a fraction of the cost. In fact, the survey shows that half of all SMBs see the cloud as becoming more important to their business.

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As Research in Motion begins to circle the drain, there is one last bright spot for the company that may prevent an all-out collapse: US President Barack Obama. While it may seem somewhat silly, Obama's continued use of his BlackBerry is indicative of a large group of core users that have not abandoned the platform by and large: government.

Obama came from a generation of politicians that found their BlackBerries indispensable tools in the day-to-day business of politics. The smartphone has become so commonplace in Washington that our President famously refused to give up his own device upon taking office in 2009.

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Shares of Red Hat rose 17 percent to $60.12 in heavy midday trading. Yesterday, after the bell, the company reported $1.13 billion revenues for fiscal 2012, ended February 29. Red Hat is the first open-source based company to post $1 billion in revenues

Quite a feat for a platform Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once called a "cancer" and has repeatedly questioned the security of. One has to wonder if Ballmer might be reconsidering the parnership Microsoft penned with Red Hat back in February 2009.

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While the buzzword in mobile in 2011 was LTE, consumers by and large did not respond to the hype. Only 6.8 million LTE devices sold worldwide -- a small drop in the bucket of annual phone sales. Strategy Analytics says that's about to change in a big way.

The firm predicts shipments will increase by a factor of ten to 67 million units in 2012. The firm expects markets in the United States, Japan and South Korea to spearhead this growth, with a broader range of devices from manufacturers including Apple, Samsung, HTC, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Pantech and Fujitsu giving consumers more options.

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Reports of prospective employers asking for Facebook passwords during the hiring process or as terms of employment has the social networking site upset. Facebook says asking for your password is a violation of privacy, and very well could set up the employer for legal action.

Criticism of the practice came to a head earlier this week following an Associated Press story detailing several individuals who had been subjected to disclosing their passwords to either obtain or to keep a job. Employers' attempts to peer into your social life has the attention of lawmakers too: in both Maryland and Illinois legislation is being considered to make the practice illegal.

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The US Justice Department accuses AT&T of defrauding the government, alleging the carrier improperly billed for services intended for the hard of hearing. The system has become a method through which scammers, many from Nigeria, make purchases using stolen credit cards and fraudulent checks.

Called IP Relay, the service allows the hard of hearing to place phone calls to a hearing individual relayed by messages sent over the Internet. A call center operator then relays the message to the called person. A former worker in one of AT&T's call centers had already filed a whistleblower suit over the matter.

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There are pageviews to be had when it's time to criticize Apple: probably as much if not more than writing about the latest iGadget. It is the same pattern over and over. First, Apple debuts its latest creation, and the press fawns. Next, a blogger or journo with an ax to grind finds some obscure problem affecting a small segment of users and makes it into a showstopping defect.

Without much thought, the rest of the media jumps on this report, and hundreds if not thousands of stories tell us how Apple's at the beginning of the end, lost its edge, blah blah blah. Same story every time -- from Antennagate, to Batterygate, and now Heatgate.

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The new iPad is a hot seller, according to Apple. It also may be a bit too hot to handle based on several tests of the device. At least two separate ones find that new iPad runs at least 10 degrees hotter than iPad 2. Not surprisingly, users are complaining on Apple support forums.

The first tests performed by Dutch tech site Tweakers.net earlier this week put new iPad's temperature at 92.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or 9.5 degrees hotter than the 83-degree Fahrenheit temperature measured on the iPad 2. Consumer Reports chimes in, today, finding new iPad reaches a temperature of 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and 116 degrees while plugged in. A lap burner for sure.

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Disgraced playwright Mike Daisey has support from a somewhat unexpected source: Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. In an interview with CNET on Monday, Wozniak says that he saw "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" last year and believes that Daisey is not anti-Apple. Woz also claims he said this to Steve Jobs before he passed away last October.

"A lot of performing arts...what actors do is to try to dramatize issues and events that are real", Woz says. "When you're watching Stephen Colbert and 'The Daily Show' not everything they say is factual but what they're presenting is real. It's a method of presentation that brings issues and ideas more to your awareness".

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