In light of all the controversy about the lost iPhone prototype which was found and reportedly sold to the media, there was a brief loss of focus from Apple's iPad tablet yesterday.

Don't worry, it's back.

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Gizmodo was wrong to acquire a lost iPhone prototype -- quite likely a nearly finished version 4 design -- let alone pay to obtain it. Perhaps this marks the distinction between bloggers and journalists. I would have contacted Apple about returning a device so obviously stolen. There is grave difference between obtaining secret information for the public good and what Gizmodo did: Obtain property containing trade secrets belonging to a public company. Gizmodo has violated the public trust and broken the law. Free speech isn't a right to pay freely for something clearly stolen.

I typically reserve this kind of treatise on journalistic ethics for my Oddly Together blog, where in late March I posted "The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism." Betanews founder Nate Mook asked me to write something here about the journalistic and legalistic ethicacy of Gizmodo's actions. I simply couldn't refuse.

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Facebook's privacy policy, like its services, is an evolving organism. Recently, that evolution has been reactive rather than pro-active. Another reaction may be in the works after today's announcement of a new Facebook feature that enables users to subscribe to personal interests or "likes," officially called "Connections," the way they connect to other users.

The company said today there's a new way for a Facebook user to block others, including friends, from seeing one's "connections" -- the list of pages that represent things one likes to do (e.g., snowboarding) or to partake in (e.g., classical music), or people they may enjoy who may not be represented by their own Facebook pages (e.g., Bertrand Russell, Elvis Presley). But someone who's perusing the page for people or things that Facebook users vote that they "Like" (which replaces "Become a Fan Of" today) may still see the list of everyone who has voted she likes something, the company also said -- indicating that one's likes may never be completely private.

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In addition to its more traditional Mojo software development kit for WebOS, Palm introduced a novel browser-based development environment for webOS last December called Project Ares. Users can drag-and-drop to create apps in Ares, and then hit "launch" in the browser to package, upload and launch homemade apps on a USB-connected Pre or Pixi.

Today, Palm alerted developers that the first full version of Project Ares has launched.

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At about this time last year, we received some skeptical comments from folks who questioned whether it was wise for Betanews to declare Windows 7's automated troubleshooting system one of the new operating system's Top 10 features -- #8, to be specific. Saying a software publisher has improved its product by making it easier to find out what's wrong with it, is in one sense a bit ironic, and in another the sort of thing that typically smacks of the kind of messages brought to readers directly from the vendor without any filtering whatsoever.

The reason I declared what Microsoft is now calling its "Fix-It Center" (now with its own Support page) #8 is the same reason I declared Action Center #1: It has the potential for refashioning users' impressions of Windows, so that they come to understand that troubleshooting one's computer is as much a part of life as repairing little things in one's home.

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Apple's aloofness is world famous. The company doesn't exactly buddy up to the media like Microsoft does, and it doesn't keep a running dialogue with the public like Google does. It communicates directly with only a handful of reputable media outlets, and uses a predictable routine of product launches where it can address the public in measured doses.

One of these doses is Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) expected to take place on June 28, 2010. In 2007, this was the event that Apple used to debut the original iPhone and its availability on AT&T. Then in 2008, Apple used WWDC to unveil the iPhone 3G. In 2009, it was used to unveil the 3G S. It is essentially Apple's annual "iPhone event."

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On Friday night, I bought an iPad nearly three months after giving 12 reasons why I wouldn't. An unexpected reason came up: My wife's MacBook Pro died. I reckoned she could temporarily use the tablet (which cost way less than any new Mac laptop) and give me a chance to better test the device (than using the Apple Store display models). I'm not among Apple's inner circle of reviewers, nor on any of its other reviewers' lists. I'd have to buy an iPad to test one and pay the restocking fee should I decide not to keep it. The MacBook Pro failure presented reason to join the iPad Generation.

Before getting to those 10 questions to ask, first it's the story of the failed MacBook Pro. I bought the computer used -- somewhat scratched and nicked but in excellent operating condition -- in summer 2009. Early last week, the laptop started acting strangely, with scrolling display or pixelated frozen screen that required reboot. Thursday, the computer rebooted to kernel panic -- Apple's version of the Windows blue screen of death -- every other reboot before freezing up again. So I hauled the ailing laptop into the local Apple Store, expecting prognosis that the graphics chip had failed; I'd already read on the InterWeb that generation of nVidia graphics chip was defective.

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Even if Apple CEO Steve Jobs says nobody will be using Adobe Flash in the future, and that the world is moving to HTML5, there's still a place for Adobe's browser plug-in on Android, the fastest growing mobile platform out there.

After putting Flash 10 on the HTC Hero last year, Adobe is ready to test the next iteration of Flash on all Android devices. Over the weekend, the company began accepting beta testers for the Android versions of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0.

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The first volume licensing arrangements for Microsoft Office 2010 will be made through company partners on May 1, almost two weeks earlier than expected. This news today from the company's Office Engineering team, which released the final build of all versions of the company's principal applications suite today.

"Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we've had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version -- that's more than 3 times the number of 2007 beta downloads!" reads this afternoon's post by the Engineering team. "The feedback that we've received from all these programs has shaped the set of products we're excited about, and that I'm sure will delight our customers."

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SCOTT FULTON, Betanews: If you don't have to revert to old-style, 1994 telephone regulations, what does one do instead? It seems like you're implying that reclassification is a first step, and that there are several steps thereafter.

MARKHAM ERICKSON, Executive Director, Open Internet Coalition: Yes, I think there's at least another step after that. First, you'd have to reclassify. You would then have to forebear from some of the Title II provisions that you wouldn't want to see applied to today's Internet access providers, that may have applied to old-style telephone carriers. And then you'd have to develop rules that would interpret the provisions in Title II, or use those sections of Title II, and maybe parts of Title I under ancillary authority, to address the things that are in the Broadband Plan, whether it's network neutrality or USF reform, or the privacy issues, the truth in billing provisions, the things that [FCC] Chairman Julius Genachowski [Wednesday] in his Senate testimony talked about wanting to move forward on.

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Sorry, Apple, but your decision to delay introducing iPads internationally doesn't wash. Your excuse -- that US demand was unexpectedly high and, as a result, you had to prioritize customers stateside until production could catch up -- is about as shallow and transparent as a Petri Dish full of Joost's good ideas.

I don't believe Apple's flimsy excuse and I don't believe anyone else should, either. If you think that Apple, master of the consumer electronics zeitgeist, was unable to accurately predict epic interest in a tablet whose existence was first speculated upon prior to the Battle of Hastings, I've got a bridge to sell you. (It's in Saskatoon, but it's a nice one.) And if you think Apple was somehow precluded from filling its global supply chain with as many iPads as its magic wand could conjure, I suggest you chuck the Kool-Aid and find yourself a tall glass of juice. Prune juice, maybe.

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In a news release today from Wellington, New Zealand, the site of the latest round of worldwide negotiations over terms for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the European Union announced it has gotten its wish: Negotiators have unanimously agreed to reveal the terms of their latest draft to the general public, not necessarily for comments but certainly for general inspection, in an official release next Wednesday.

That draft, the EU said, should contain no trace of a controversial provision compelling governments to impose "three strikes" legislation (also known as graduated response) for accused intellectual property infringers, similar to legislation still being tried in France even after courts there declared them unconstitutional.

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Pundits are chattering about some, ah, aggressive moves by Apple with customers and partners over the last couple of weeks. Rather than opine on the subject, I'd like to ask you to do so. I'm looking to write a future post with Betanews reader reactions about Apple's recent actions and to a surprisingly active CEO Steve Jobs -- he sure sent out lots of email responses lately; from iPad, perhaps, :).

I'm most interested in responses from developers and content creators, which are two groups most affected by Apple's action. I ask anyone who wants to comment anonymously but to be taken seriously -- or those people wanting to open a larger dialog -- to contact me by email: joewilcox at gmail dot com. Everyone else, please feel free to comment below.

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In what may have, by now, become an exercise in the airing of corporate dirty laundry (or, in some cases, not even dirty), Viacom yesterday released more evidentiary documents from its court battle with Google. This second round of what was promised to be three public releases (though there could be more to come) includes confidential Google executive presentations from the period prior to its acquisition of YouTube, when the company was considering instead bolstering Google Video to become more competitive.

Rather than being incriminating, the documents paint Google executives to be cunning, shrewd, and eager to assume the mantle of the moral high ground. But they also reveal instances where the company considered pressing its high-ground position to its advantage, with prospective PR campaigns and likely incentives to the press that would encourage the viewpoint that media companies such as Viacom (parent of Paramount Pictures and MTV Networks) were behind the times, inflexible, and unwilling to open up their content vaults for fair use.

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Download Silverlight 4 RTM for Windows from Fileforum now.

In recent years, most Web applications in widespread use have been developed with Web browsers as their platform. Here, one imagines Java advocates are already composing their complaint letters. But with Web resources bound to URLs, for most developers, it's made sense to utilize the functionality most commonly associated with URL-bound resources: HTML, JavaScript, and now its rapidly maturing derivative, AJAX.

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