News Update Place

AFP - Facebook has changed its three-week-old advertising platform to soothe members outraged by what they saw as an assault on their privacy at the popular social networking website.

FT.com - BYD, a Chinese battery maker, plans to list its mobile phone manufacturing unit in Hong Kong in an initial public offering that will raise up to $987m. The IPO comes as investors watch for signs of weaknesses in new listings after Hong Kong's benchmark index suffered its worst monthly drop in more than three years.

AP - A former executive at chip maker Broadcom Corp. will plead guilty to obstruction of justice and cooperate in a federal probe of company stock option grants, the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday.

AP - Facebook pushed the boundaries of ad targeting when the online hangout presumed users would want the site to mine their Internet activity.

AP - Google Inc. confirmed its plans to bid for a prized piece of the airwaves in an upcoming government auction, further underscoring the Internet search leader’s determination to shake up the wireless market and plumb more profits from mobile phones.

InfoWorld - Serena Software will ship its enterprise business mashup software Monday with the goal of enabling quick deployment of simple applications that solve everyday business problems.

InfoWorld - A new company, Cloudsmith, has created a Web-based service meant to let developers access and exchange "virtual distros," or custom configurations, of open-source software.

NewsFactor - It's 10:00 p.m. Do you know what your teen is doing online? Hopefully, the answer is not "attracting the unwelcome interest of the FBI for operating an international botnet ring that infected millions of computers and stole approximately $25 million from the bank accounts of unsuspecting victims."

AP - Monthly sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 in Japan topped the Nintendo Wii for the first time since the gaming consoles debuted late last year, according to a November survey.