Ed Oswald

When Facebook rolled out its new layout late Tuesday, like past redesigns it was met with a good deal of acrimony from users.

However, for some like Regina Shade, a self-described "Facebook challenged" mother of two, they had been dealing with the reworked popular social networking site for at least three months if not longer.

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In what could only be considered a full rebuke of Léo Apotheker's leadership, HP's board of directors announced late Thursday that it had appointed former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as president and CEO of the company, and Ray Lane as executive chairman of the board.

Apotheker would be pushed completely out of the company, including giving up his seat on the board. The news confirms reports that first surfaced on Wednesday from several sources indicating a rumored executive shakeup.

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AT&T and Deutsche Telekom are busy scrambling to save their $39 billion dollar merger, assembling a top-tier legal team and getting support from an unlikely ally: Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam publicly voiced his support for AT&T's plans, although the company planned to "stay on the sidelines" while the Justice Department and AT&T negotiate a settlement. If regulators cannot provide the carriers with adequate spectrum to operate in a timely fashion, then these mergers must be permitted to occur, he argued.

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The man behind the change in strategy at Hewlett Packard may be on his way out. Kara Swisher of All Things Digital reported on Wednesday that sources indicated that HP's board was considering replacing current CEO Leo Apotheker with former eBay chief Meg Whitman.

If true, the move could signal deep divisions within HP over its future. Apotheker was behind the company's move out of the consumer business and WebOS. The simple fact that the board now is looking for new leadership may indicate that abandoning the consumer market was not an opinion shared by all of HP's executives.

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On the same day that Google+ opened itself up to the masses, Facebook launched its latest redesign. The change seems almost ironic considering the opposite trajectories these two social networks are on: Google+ on the way up, Facebook on the way down.

Forget the hit piece that journalism professor Dan Reimold wrote earlier this week for PBS calling Google+ a "ghost town." Even if Reimold's premise was even remotely correct (he needs to remember that up until now, Google was invite-only so of course usage is sparse), that's about to be blown out of the water.

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A two-year old security issue in Mac OS X has reared its ugly head once again in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, allowing users of a computer to easily modify the passwords of other users.

Mac OS X stores encrypted passwords in what are called "shadow files." These files are placed in secure locations on the drive, which are intended to be only alterable by the user himself or the administrator, provided they authenticate themselves.

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Sony sure has some gall to attempt to prevent you or me from suing them, especially for its own stupidity. Late last week, the company made some key changes to its terms of service which effectively takes away your right to sue.

After accepting the new ToS, arbitration through a Sony-selected arbitrator is your only recourse. Worse yet, you give up the right to launch or join class action suits against the company.

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The Justice Department's move to block AT&T's planned merger with T-Mobile gathered steam today with attorneys general from seven states signing on to the effort. An amended complaint was filed Friday, adding California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington as co-plaintiffs.

California was one of the first states to voice its concerns with the deal, and began an investigation in May. Officials in other states have expressed their unease with the combination of the nation's second and fourth biggest wireless carriers, all but ensuring that the deal will need serious alterations if it has any hope of being approved.

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Nintendo made it clear that despite investor pressure to develop game titles for smartphone platforms, it had no intention to even consider the idea. The smack down came in the form of a bluntly worded response to questions from Japanese news outlet Nikkei.

"This is absolutely not under consideration," president Satoru Iwata told reporters. "If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength."

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Android's recent success in the tablet market seems to have hit a minor roadblock, as increased competition from RIM's PlayBook and now HP's fire-saled TouchPad chip away at its slice of the pie. Apple seems unaffected for the time being, with its market share increasing quarter-to-quarter.

Apple took a 68.3 percent share in the second quarter, up about 3 percent from the previous period, according to research firm IDC. Android tablet share on the other hand dropped significantly, falling to 26.8 percent from 34 percent in the first quarter.

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AT&T said Monday that it will begin selling the 10.1-inch Acer Iconia Tab A501, becoming the latest 4G-capable device on the carrier's network. Running Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," the tablet will be available in stores beginning on September 18.

As if Android fragmentation wasn't enough already, Android 3.0 puts Iconia behind the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (with v3.1) and Motorola XOOM (with v3.2), for example. Potential buyers must ask: Which matters more? 4G, or newer Honeycomb?

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If you’re a data-heavy smartphone user, you belong on Sprint. That’s the findings of Validas, a company that specializes in tools to analyze cellular plan usage and spending. The average Sprint user spends about eight cents per megabyte, Validays says, which equals 12.5 megabytes for every $1 of data.

Sprint's numbers may be skewed though: its customers enjoy unlimited data plans, and a larger number are on its 4G network. Both factors likely contribute to higher data usage overall.

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It has been a year since Bing began powering search results for Yahoo. That pairing has done little to increase the overall market share of Microsoft's search engine entrant, increasing only four percent during the period.

In an even starker example of Bing's troubles, it still lags behind Yahoo in terms of searches launched directly from bing.com. A larger portion of Bing's overall share still comes from Yahoo, Experian Hitwise has found.

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Fresh off its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility -- which by the way, was about both its patents and the hardware too -- the company is now said to be the high bidder in the race to acquire Hulu.

After being shut out in the bidding for Nortel patents, Google is suddenly willing to spend what's needed to get hot products/services or perhaps, with Hulu, end bidding altogether.

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Ed Oswald argues that TechCrunch embodies some of the worst ethics in journalism today. In counterpoint "AOL will ruin TechCrunch," Joe Wilcox argues that under Huffington Post management the tech site's good original reporting will greatly diminish.

I have been thinking about writing a story on the sorry state of tech journalism for a good part of my seven years in this business. Why's that? All too often objectivity, ethics and accuracy seem to have taken a backseat 'round these parts.

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