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Once Governor Martin O'Malley signs the bill, Maryland will be the first state to ban employers from asking prospective employees for their Facebook login details.

The bill takes into account all other social media sites, as well, including Twitter.

State lawmakers passed the bill almost unanimously earlier in the month and the bill is now on the Governor's desk awaiting a signature.

Once the situation came to light earlier this year, Facebook made it clear that no one should ever give access to their Facebook page. Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan said at the time: "If you are a Facebook user you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends...As a user, you shouldn't be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job."

The social networking giant has been working with lawmakers since and has threatened legal action to protect its user's privacy.

Nine other states have proposed similar bills to Maryland's but none have passed yet. On a federal level, Senators have called upon the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to see if the employers are breaking any type of law.

Verizon has confirmed it will launch its shared data plans "by midsummer."

Announced last year, the offer will let subscribers with more than one device pay a single monthly fee to get access for all their gadgets.

"We believe that [the shared data] plan, the way we have it designed, will enable our customers to easily connect other devices to that plan," Executive Vice president and Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said.

A prime example of who could benefit from the service is iPhone and iPad owners, who currently have to pay twice for data for their two iDevices and may use one device more than the other, wasting bandwidth every month.

The company did not give a specific date or price on the plans.

The hacktivist group 'Anonymous' are currently developing a social music platform that promises to allow free and anonymous streaming.

Anontune, as the service has been dubbed, is about 20 percent completed.

The service will aggregate songs from YouTube, Soundcloud, Yahoo Music, Pandora and more and not host even one track on its own servers.

Additionally, the site will allow you to create playlists and share tracks while streaming anonymously using identity masking techniques.

For anyone worried about using an app coded by hackers known for stealing personal information, the group says: "Why would we harm our users? That would really be a little counter-intuitive to our cause."

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have made scientific discoveries that should allow future devices that are capable of seeing through objects.

Professor of Electrical Engineering Dr. Kenneth O and his graduate team made the discoveries.

"We've created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications," says Dr. O. "The terahertz range is full of unlimited potential that could benefit us all."

The terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum has wavelengths of energy that can go through objects, similar to X-ray machines. With the new discovery, images can be created in the terahertz band without using several lenses inside a device.

Explains the doctor: "CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips. The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects."

The team is working on a distance range of less than four inches, in order to avoid privacy concerns.

LG has announced this week the creation of "3D World," a premium content service available to owners of the LG Cinema 3D Smart TVs.

3G World will be available to TV owners in 70 nations and is an upgrade to the company's 3D Zone app launched last year.

The tech giant says the service will have a "diverse" range of 3D content including entertainment, sports, documentary and lifestyle programmes, along with kids' television. Search functionality is built-in for easier access to shows.

Says LG: "3D World is a critical part of LG's long-term strategy which includes controlling more of the 3D ecosystem that CINEMA 3D owners experience. With the global roll-out of 3D World, LG is demonstrating its commitment to providing diverse, high quality 3D content."

Furthermore, the company announced a partnership with digital sports media company Livesport.TV which will offer live and on-demand sports including football, snooker, tennis, rugby, pool, snooker and mixed martial arts.

HTC has announced this week that it has no more plans to create phones with QWERTY keypads.

While the company has been focusing on touchscreen designs for years now, there were the occasional devices with full keyboards for those who are fans of hitting actual buttons rather than simulated versions.

The company's last QWERTY-sporting design was the "Facebook phone," the ChaCha, which failed miserably despite its deep integration to the social network.

As a struggling smartphone maker, HTC recently released their quarterly earnings for the Q1 2012, and they were not pretty. For the quarter, revenues were NT$67,790 million (about $2.3 billion), a full 35 percent decrease year-over-year. Quarter-over-quarter, the company saw an equally bad fall, down from NT$101.42 billion ($3.43 billion) in the Q4 2011.

HTC recently launched their One line of smartphones, each of which has come with rock solid reviews. The new devices, along with the company's recent purchases of Beats Audio, SyncTV and MOG give hope the smartphone maker can regain some footing in the ever-competitive mobile phone market.

A 15-year-old Australian hacker has been arrested this week for allegedly attacking over 250 websites in just three months.

Starting in January, the unnamed suspect began hitting an average of 3 sites every day for 3 months until he was stopped.

The student scanned sites for vulnerabilities and software bugs that he then exploited to gain access.

Australian authorities have charged the youth with unlawful access to a computer system.

Outside of leaking stolen info, the student also defaced company websites and bragged of his use of anonymizing software to evade detection. The suspect's luck ran out when the software failed him and police tracked his IP address.

The Walmart-owned streaming service Vudu is looking to expand internationally, claim sources.

If accurate, Mexico will be the first stop in the expansion, starting in June. The bigger deployment will head across Latin America and will eventually reach over 30 countries. Vudu plans to expand to Europe and Asia later in the year, as well.

Wal-Mart declined comment except to say: "We're always looking at ways to expand our offerings but we have nothing new to share at this time."

A Vudu expansion would compete directly with Netflix, which is in the middle of its own 45 country expansion. Wal-Mart, however, has some advantages given it has 5,000 stores across 26 countries. In Mexico and Latin America, especially, there have been stores since the early 90s.

Finally, Vudu will allegedly "allow consumers to make purchases off of pre-paid cards," giving it a huge advantage over Netflix, which can only accept credit cards. Credit cards are not as popular in South America and Europe as they are in the U.S.

Multiple sources are claiming today that Facebook is aiming for a May 17th IPO.

The date should be accessible as long as the SEC signs off on all the papers, including anything related to the new $1 billion purchase of Instagram.

Facebook is expected to be valued at $100 billion, making it instantly one of the most valuable companies in the world, especially in the technology world. The company wants to raise $10 billion from investors but will likely raise less.

Says a source with TC: "Investors want as high a price as possible so that the secondary market won't look like a problem." The social networking site will have 2.51 billion fully-diluted shares outstanding after IPO.

Facebook has 800 million users worldwide.

A group led by Sony has been given EU approval to purchase EMI's music publishing business for $2.2 billion.

The one condition given is that the consortium must sell the worldwide publishing rights of some artists. Sony will have to sell four back catalogs that includes the works of 12 artists.

Besides Sony, the group includes Blackstone Group, Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development Co., Raine Group and music and film mogul David Geffen.

Says the European Commission (Reuters): "Sony and Mubadala have offered to divest valuable and attractive catalogues containing bestselling titles as well as works of successful and promising authors. I am therefore satisfied that the competitive dynamics in the online music publishing business will be maintained so as to ensure consumer choice and cultural diversity."

The catalogs that must be sold are Virgin UK, Virgin Europe, Virgin U.S. and Famous Music UK which include popular artists like Gary Barlow, Ozzy Osbourne, Ben Harper, Placebo, The Kooks, Lenny Kravitz and Robbie Williams.

After days of mystery, Sony revealed 'God of War: Ascension' early this morning with a teaser trailer.

The new game will be a prequel in the insanely popular franchise starring Greek warrior Kratos.

Sony Computer Entertainment America's trailer does not show any gameplay and offers little details or insight but a narrator states: "There was a time before Kratos became the ghost of Sparta ... a time when something other than rage consumed him. A time when Kratos would break his blood oath to an unjust god."

The game will be released for the PS3 although there was no timetable.

Sony will reveal more about the game, and possibly some gameplay footage during a live streaming event on April 30 at 11 a.m. EST.

Nokia warned two weeks ago that its quarterly earnings were going to be bad, and they certainly were today.

For the Q1, Nokia posted a net loss of $1.2 billion on revenue of $9.72 billion. Revenue fell 30 percent year-over-year and the company had a profit of $451 million in the same quarter last year.

Most harsh for the phone maker was smartphone sales, which dropped by 55 percent to $2.23 billion. Overall mobile phone device sales fell 40 percent to $5.5 billion.

Operating margins came in at a negative 3 percent, with no end in sight. Nokia says it will cut costs by another $1.31 billion by the end of 2013.

Says CEO Stephen Elop of the challenges faced by the company: "We exceeded expectations in markets including the United States but establishing momentum in certain markets ... has been more challenging. We are navigating through a significant company transition in an industry environment that continues to evolve and shift quickly."

Nokia has put all of its eggs in one basket, new Windows Phone 7 devices which are popular but will need a large push if they ever hope to take significant share from Apple and Android.

Microsoft will reportedly push 32 Windows 8 tablets to the market in 2012 in an effort to steal share away from Apple.

The iPad currently has 68 percent global market share, with Android accounting for the rest.

In a plan with Intel, Microsoft hopes to bring that Apple figure down to under 50 percent by the middle of 2013. A Digitimes source says they expect all these tablets to ship before the end of the year, even with Windows 8 only being released in September or October.

Perhaps more importantly more consumers is the price, which the site believes will start at $250 for entry-level devices.

At that price point, the devices will directly compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire and Google's rumored upcoming Nexus tablet. Apple, for its part, has been rumored to be releasing a $300 iPad "Mini" which will weigh in at around 8 inches.

More pictures and details have emerged on Ikea's recent Uppleva web-connected furniture set.

The four models will include 24, 36, 40 and 46 inch TV, all of which are LED backlit. Each will have Wi-Fi and come with the Opera browser installed. The TVs will also have three different benches to choose from and six different finishes.

Original article:

IKEA has announced the launch of the IKEA TV, a web-connected device that will be the centerpiece of their new UPPLEVA furniture range.

UPPLEVA, which means "experience" in Swedish, will integrate the LED TV, a sound system with wireless speakers and CD/DVD/Blu-ray players into an all-in-one self-assembly piece.

Most of the electronics will be made by Chinese manufacturer TCL while IKEA built all the furniture around it, aiming to hide all cables. Additionally, the companies have combined all the controls into a single remote. The furniture will allow the remote's signals through, thanks to its design, leaving the device hidden.

The LED TVs will be available in gray, black and blue and in four different sizes, 24", 32", 42" and 46".

AT&T has updated its pre-paid GoPhone plan to add more data.

For the same price, the carrier is doubling the data, for all tiers.

The 50MB plan costs $5 per month, the 200MB plan costs $15 per month and the 1GB plan will set you back $25 per month.

AT&T says the new data plans will take effect starting April 22.

All data plans require a GoPhone $50 per month Unlimited Talk and Text nationwide plan or a $25 per month Unlimited Text with 250 minutes nationwide plan. These plans are preferable to many because they do not require a long-term contract.