Facebook's privacy revamp gets mixed reviews

In today's podcast: Facebook's privacy revamp gets mixed reviews; Clearwire's network goes down; and Nokia closes US stores.

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Facebook's revamped privacy settings will push more user data onto the Internet and, in some cases, make privacy protection harder for Facebook users, digital civil liberties experts said. While acknowledging that many of the changes unveiled Wednesday will be good for privacy, Electronic Frontier Foundation Attorney Kevin Bankston said the social-networking giant is also removing some important privacy controls that it should have kept. Ari Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, offered a similarly mixed review. According to him, giving people more control over who sees their individual posts is a good thing, but the new default privacy settings will push a lot more information into the public realm. That "actually has a negative effect on privacy," he said.

Clearwire customers in a handful of locations were unable to get online for several hours due to a network outage late Tuesday. The problem affected Las Vegas; Portland and Salem, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; and Clearwire's West Texas markets. It lasted about five hours and happened as a result of software maintenance work the company was doing on some of its Motorola equipment, Clearwire said. Additionally, one cell site in Seattle and one in Chicago also failed, leaving customers within range of those sites without access as well. Those outages, which were due to specific equipment failures unrelated to the issues in the other markets, lasted a couple of hours, Clearwire said.

Nokia confirmed Wednesday that it will shut down its two flagship North American retail stores, in New York and Chicago, on the heels of a similar announcement that it will close its store in London. Since the bulk of consumer purchases in North America are made through wireless operators, Nokia will focus on working with those operators and with retailers like Amazon.com and Best Buy. Nokia didn't say when the U.S. stores will close, but the store on London's Regent Street reportedly will be closed in the first quarter.

Europe's top antitrust regulator agreed to end its investigation of memory chip maker Rambus Wednesday, after the firm agreed to change the way it licenses its industry-standard technology. The settlement lays down antitrust markers for technology companies whose inventions are recognized as industry-wide technologies. The Commission accused Rambus of charging abusive royalties for the use of some of its patents for DRAM chips.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.