Daily News : Internet & Websites

Screenshots found hidden on Sony's European Playstation website suggest a few changes coming in an upcoming PS3 firmware update. One of those changes includes Facebook access through the console. While nothing has been announced, a PS3 Facebook application makes sense; the Xbox 360 is launching the functionality next week, and it seems as if every smart phone released in 2009 already has a native Facebook application.

The US Government plans to start testing the use of OpenID to let users interact with government agencies through a single login account. The program will be supported by ten organizations that will act as digital identity providers. The goal of the program is to make government websites more interactive. Users will be able to securely access a whole slew of government resources, register for programs, and even be able to customize library searches.

Who would have predicted say, 5 years ago, that you would some day be able to use commercial identities on government websites? Evidently, this raises questions about privacy and security but if these initiatives can garner enough public support, government validation of open identity frameworks could be a boon for the ecosystem of the open, distributed web.

Apparently Google has patented the graphical user interface of its homepage. It is a design patent, so nothing related to the idea of search has been patented, but that still doesn't answer the question of what Google plans to do with this patent that was initially filed in March 2004.

In early 2004, Google's lawyers didn't have nearly enough to do. A patent on the design of Google's homepage (AKA its "[g]raphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal") that they applied for at that time was granted Tuesday.

I always feel like I fail at being a technology geek since my cell phone is three years old and I have no way to connect with the internet unless I'm sitting at a computer. Is it 2009 or 2006? The rest of the world, or at least 65 million people, have the luxury of using Facebook through their mobile devices. That figure is up over 200% since the beginning of the year. I wonder if Mowia Mobile will let me grow this site 1000000% by next year. I better get started on that.

Mobile access is becoming increasingly important for Facebook because most of its users are outside of the United States, and may be in markets where the cell phone is the primary computer.

Earlier in the summer Amazon caused a stink when they remotely deleted the digital copies of George Orwell books from customers' Kindle devices. The company apologized for the incident back in July, and is now offering to restore the books to affected customers' Kindles or offer a $30 compensation. While that's great, it's still a bit unnerving that companies create products that can be remotely manipulated to modify the device's data without user consent.

The troubles began when the novels were added to the Kindle’s online store by an outside company that did not have rights to them. After the rights holder alerted Amazon, it removed the unauthorized versions from its systems and from customers’ devices, distributing refunds.