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According to the latest figures from AppData, users of the Android Facebook app now use it more often than those using the iPhone app.

Comparing AppData's figures for the two platforms, the number of monthly users on both are steadly going up, but Android users are increasing more quickly than on the iPhone.

However, the number of Android users for any given day is already slightly higher than the number of iPhone users. This trend, and the ratio of daily to monthly users, are generally considered important indicators of whether an app is gaining in popularity.

An explosion Saturdy at a Shanghai factory preparing to begin supplying components for Apple left 61 injured, 23 of whom had to be hospitalized.

The factory, which had not yet begun operating, is believed to be slated to produce back panels for the iPad 2. This has raised speculation of shortages of the world's most popular tablet in the first quarter of next year.

According to Reuters, Apple is investigating the incident.

In recent years Apple has gotten a lot of bad publicity over stories of poor working conditions in the factories of their suppliers. In reality these issues aren't unique to their suppliers, but Apple's high profile and profit margins have made them an easy target for critics.

In 2010 Foxconn, who assembles components from around the world into iPhones, was in the news frequently because of a series of suicides.

A new Foxconn plant in Brazil has reportedly already begun producing the iPhone 4 at a rate of 1600 units a day and may be adding iPhone 4S production by the end of the year.

An initiative to standardize the way touch enabled devices interact with web content has had a wrench thrown into the works, at least temporarily, by Apple.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Events Working Group was created last year and tasked with standardizing the way touch devices, from smartphones and tablets to drawing pads and spatial sensors, interact with web applications. One of the specifications they have been working on is called 'Touch Events.'

As part of the standard development process, the working group sent out multiple requests for patent exclusions. In layman's terms, these are requests for disclosure of any existing or pending patents which might be required to implement a standard.

Responding to the third of three calls for exclusions this year, Apple provided the group with a list of four patents, one of which has already been approved, two which are pending approval, and a fourth which is in the early stage of application, which they say are related to the Touch Events specification.

A developer for the Opera browser who blogs under the name Haavard is crying foul on Apple's move, and says they are simply trying to impede the creation of the Touch Events spec. He points to similar occurences in 2009 and 2010, when Apple made exclusion claims with respect to the W3C Widgets specification.

Last week we reported that the ongoing antitrust dispute against Microsoft brought by Novell was in the hands of the presiding judge and jury.


That jury, however, has come back deadlocked, leading to a mistrial after three days of deliberation. 11 of the 12 jurors had reached a decision in favor of Novell but the last juror would not switch sides.

In 2004, the global enterprise software provider sued Microsoft, claiming the company violated anti-trust laws in 1994 by using its monopoly on personal computer operating systems to suppress WordPerfect, at the time the world's most popular word-processing program.

Eventually, WordPerfect's value cratered from $1.2 billion in 1994 to just $170 million when it purchased by Corel in 1996. As expected, Novell is suing for the difference in value, which would be tripled under US antitrust law to over $3 billion in damages.

Microsoft, in its arguments, said Novell lost the market share not because of Microsoft but because they did not make a compatible software for Windows 95 quick enough, allowing the company's own Word to gain traction. MSFT attorney David Tulchin added in the closing arguments: "Novell was late. It was always behind. It was playing catch-up. In the high-tech world where things can move quickly ... the market can kill you."

Shortly after the furor over Carrier IQ began, Senator Al Franken sent letters to several national mobile carriers and handset manufacturers asking for details of the program's operation.

Carrier IQ is a rootkit which comes preinstalled on various smartphones sold in the US. A rootkit is a program which runs secretly with privileged access. Carrier IQ sends diagnostic information, at the carrier's request, to servers operated by the software's developers, who then forward that information to the carrier.

Since the software was discovered in November, there has been a great deal of debate over what information it is capable of collecting, what information is actually being collected, and the legality of it.

The researcher who first announced its existence, Trevor Eckhart, claimed it could record and report every keystroke made on a smartphone. Later, another researcher reported that was not true.

Senator Franken has received and published responses to his letter from Sprint, AT&T, Samsung, and HTC. He is still waiting for responses from T-Mobile and Motorola, which he has requested no later than December 20.

Just over a week ago a video created by file locker provider Megaupload was taken down from YouTube at the request of Universal Music (UMG). In the aftermath of that incident, YouTube finds itself answering questions about how that happened thanks to UMG's refusal to provide details.

Based on UMG's filings in response to the resulting lawsuit in which Megaupload sought to have them punished for improper use of the DMCA's takedown provision, one thing we know for sure is that no actual DMCA takedown request was issued.

Instead, UMG used YouTube's content management (ie digitial fingerprinting) system to have the content removed. That means Megaupload's primary claim is pretty much dead in the water.

We also know UMG says they never made a copyright claim on the video because of a letter they submitted to the court in which a company representative explained to YouTube that was not the only grounds under which their contract allows a takedown.

Beyond that, they have avoided addressing the issue of what happened, providing just enough information to show any DMCA related penalties (and really that's not much anyway) don't apply.

The WSJ has a full report today out on Apple's plans to dominate the TV market, even after the death of its leader Steve Jobs.

Over the past few weeks, "Apple executives have discussed their vision for the future of TV with media executives at several large companies," reads the report. It also appears that Apple's Eddy Cue is highly involved in the plans.

The Apple television will be able to recognize users across phones, tablets and TVs, and will completely rely on powerful wireless streaming for streaming content of music, movies and TV shows. It seems the TVs will also be able to respond to user's voices and movements (like Siri meets Kinect) sometime in the future, although it seems the first generation of the devices will not include the tech.

One specific of the software used on the future TVs is the fact that streaming content can be watched on the TV then paused and resumed on an iPhone or iPad.

Western Digital has said today that they will be cutting down the warranty period for their Caviar Blue, Scorpio Blue and Caviar Green hard drives.

The drives will have 2-year warranties for now on, down from 3. Caviar Black and Scorpio Black drives will continue with five-year warranties.

WD's AV drives and all of its external drives have unchanged warranty periods, as well.

Reads the letter from SelectWD:

This new warranty policy will be effective for drives shipped from January 2nd, 2012. It is important that you take a moment to update your website(s) and collateral to reflect this change for effected drives shipped after January 1st, 2012.

All drives shipped to distributors prior to Jan. 2nd 2012 will retain the current warranty terms. Because of existing inventory in the distribution channel there will be a short period of time when some drives with a 3-year warranty will be sold at the same time as drives with a 2-year warranty.

Police officials are looking into the theft of $1.7 million worth of BlackBerry PlayBooks from a semi trailer.

The theft took place at the Pilot Travel Center of State Road 67 in Chesterfield, Indiana. The driver had stopped to take a shower and get some dinner.

When the driver returned, his truck was missing. He says he was gone for about an hour.

The truck had 22 pallets of PlayBooks, which is equal to about 5000 units. The tablets were coming from a distribution center in Ontario, Canada.

Police say the shipment did not have any tracking devices.

The authorities have contacted the FBI for assistance.

Apple has launched the iPhone 4S in 20 new nations.

According to the company, the popular smartphone is now available in Bahrain, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.

The pricing for the devices is ridiculous in some of the nations, as expected, topping out at $1400 USD in Brazil for the starter 16GB models. In Russia, the 16GB models start at $1100 and top out at $1350 for the 64GB models. These are, of course, currency conversions and subject to some fluctuation.

In most of the other nations, prices were just about $50 more than in the U.S., where unsubsidized devices sell for $649/$749/$849.

Fusion Garage, the makers of the Grid10 and Grid4 devices, have vanished off the face of the earth, leaving customers empty-handed for devices they were supposed to receive in October.

The company was behind the epic fail JooJoo/CrunchPad but tried to re-invent itself this year with the Grid10 tablet, which featured their own Android-based OS, "Grid."

As of this week, the company's site is down and its PR firm has left them, citing that the company has been uncommunicative for weeks, leaving them in the dark, as well.

McGrath Power, the firm, says: "Unfortunately, none of our efforts have resulted in any communication from the company to the customers. Given all of this, we don't have any other choice but to cease working with Fusion Garage effective tomorrow."

Launched in August after an extensive marketing campaign, the Grid10 was supposed to sell for $499 and ship on October 1st, but the as October rolled around, the company delayed the product and slashed the price to $299, even before it shipped. No customers have ever received a Grid10, or the Grid4 smartphone. Additionally, Fusion Garage had promised anyone who purchased the JooJoo in 2009 a free Grid10, but it appears that was a lie, also.

Last week we reported on the launch of Russian-based YouHaveDownloaded.com, which logs public torrent downloads. This week, it appears someone in the home of French President Nicholas Sarkozy is a pirate.

Youhavedownloaded.com is a website setup to show what files have been downloaded using BitTorrent trackers by a specific IP address. The site claims to have almost 53 million "users" in its database, from 113,200 tracked torrents containing almost 2 million files.

When you visit the website, it will check you IP address automatically and present you with files it knows you downloaded. If it doesn't have your IP address in its database, then it will simply say, "Hi. We have no records on you." You can search any IP address, torrent hash or filename for results, or you can snoop on randomly-presented IP addresses that are in the database.

Sarkozy is a notable proponent of anti-piracy legislation and notably wanted to begin the infamous "three strikes" policy in France where 3-time pirates get banned from the Internet.

Google has announced this week it is donating $11.5 million to associations that are fighting human trafficking and slavery around the world.

The search giant says the money will go towards "the creation of a coalition between various advocacy groups, led by International Justice Mission (IJM)." The IJM rescues people from forced labor and trafficking and the group says starting in 2012 they will join with other groups like the Polaris Project and Slavery Footprint for the new project.

IJM says the new funds will be used to push for new laws in countries, promote awareness in the U.S., and "improve the infrastructure and resources that enforce anti-slavery legislation overseas."

Google's director of charitable giving and advocacy says there are 27 million men, women, and children currently held as slaves around the world, and adds, "many people are surprised to learn that there are more people trapped in slavery today than any time in history. The good news is there are solutions."

Most of the money will go to campaigns in India, where forced labor is rampant.

Since its launch, iPhone 4S owners have had multiple problems to work through, including excessive battery drain, a non-working Siri and SIM card issues.

Today, Apple has said that the iOS 5.0.1 incremental build will deal with the SIM card issues.

Users, at some point during the day, were receiving an error message that says the SIM card is not valid or a message that says there is no SIM card inside, at all. The error was leaving users without a way to make phone calls through cellular service, or receive texts.

Apple will be pushing the update to all iOS 5 users who haven't yet updated, and the build is 5.0.1 9A406.

The support page says the update should fix the issues that an '"iPhone 4S may have difficulty recognizing a micro-SIM card," and will subsequently display "Invalid SIM" and "No SIM Card installed" alerts or "No Service" and "Searching" status bar messages.'

Time Warner has announced a deal that will give its subscibers access to the massively popular HBO GO service.

Additionally, the cable company says Cinemax subscribers will have access to MAX GO, as well. Time Warner will start beta testing both services this week and have the services launched to all subscribers that pay for HBO or Cinemax next month.

Time Warner Cable added: "We are working with HBO and our internal tech teams right now to determine the parameters of that beta trial, and will absolutely announce more specific details as soon as we can. Once started, that beta trial should be overwith very quickly, and our customers will be streaming all of their favorite HBO shows shortly thereafter."

Both services, which give users access to streaming TV on-demand as long as you are a subscriber, are available on iOS and Android devices as well as in-browser or through Roku set-top boxes. HBO says they have 1400 titles available right now, including all seasons of original programs like Game of Thrones, True Blood, and Boardwalk Empire. Furthermore, HBO GO also streams full-length features, docus and sporting events.