I'm sure I've not included everything so if there's something I've missed please pop a URL in the comments and I'll update the article. Thanks!
Dec 20th - Facebook begins selling Inbox access
Facebook has launched a pilot scheme selling strangers access to users' inboxes.
The social networking website has introduced a fee, believed to be $1, to guarantee that messages are routed to a recipient's 'inbox' and not their 'other' folder, where they are likely to be ignored.
More on this story from (cough) The Daily Mail
Dec 24th - Instagram Slammed with Class Action Lawsuit
A class action lawsuit was filed against Instagram in San Francisco federal court Friday, following user outrage regarding the mobile photo sharing app's changed Terms of Service.
"In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us,'" the lawsuit says.
More on this story from Mashable.
Dec 25th - China begins further crackdown on internet anonymity
Senior members of China's National People's Congress [are] considering a bill that would require users to report their real names to Internet and telecom companies, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
"The recent measures appear to be steps taken in a bid to ensure the primacy of the party's messages to online audiences in the same way it has accomplished that with traditional media," said David Wolf, chief executive of consulting firm Wolf Group Asia.
More on this story from the Wall Street Journal
Dec 27th - Mashable predicts the iWatch (!)
OK.. so it's a typically Mashable prediction but still... they made a picture and everything so it must be about to happen :o)
Apple and Intel are working together to create a Bluetooth-equipped smartwatch in 2013, according to one Chinese technology news source.
Tech site TGbus says the watch would connect to the iPhone, allowing you to remotely operate the phone from your wrist. That means you could send out text messages, answer calls, or even update your Facebook status on the device while your iPhone is in a pocket or charging nearby.
More on this story at Mashable
Dec 28th - China votes to crack down on internet anonymity...
Same context as the item above, this time from globalnews.cn.
The top legislature on Friday approved rules to enhance the protection of personal information online and safeguard public interests, requiring Internet users to use real names to identify themselves to service providers when signing web access agreements.
The move is meant to "ensure Internet information security, safeguard the lawful rights and interests of citizens, legal entities or other organizations and safeguard national security and social public interests," according to the decision.
More on this story at Global News
Dec 31st - Amazon blames "Human Error" for clobbering Netflix
Amazon Web Services has issued a a postmortem of its Christmas Eve cloud computing outage that took many services — most notably Netflix — offline for a portion of the night.
The cause, according to AWS: A developer accidentally deleted Elastic Load Balancer state data in Amazon’s US-East region that the service’s control plane needs in order to manage load balancers in that region.
More on this story at Gigaom
Jan 1st - The internet turns 30!
Today is the 30th birthday of the modern-day Internet.
To mark the occasion Google invited Vint Cerf to blog about the beginnings of TCP/IP at DARPA in the US.
Vint is widely regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet for his contributions to shaping the Internet’s architecture, including co-designing the TCP/IP protocol.
Read Vint's Blog at Google
Jan 1st - iPhones stay silent into the New Year
Users are reporting that the latest Apple OS' Do Not Disturb feature remains engaged even after its scheduled period has ended, with the misstep linked to January 1st.
There doesn't appear to be an official fix available.
Read more on this story at Engaget
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