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Facebook's favorite music service, iLike, has officially launched its developer platform. The company first hinted at this several months ago and CNET News reported last week that it was nearing its debut. With the platform, approved developers will be able to access the iLike API and work it into their own sites.

"We've always adopted a strategy of syndication, of going where the consumers are instead of trying to bring them to us," CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News on Tuesday. Indeed, iLike launched first an iTunes plugin and then a Facebook application to spread its … Read more

Facebook has filled a hole that allowed strangers to view members' photos through the mobile version of the site, a spokesman said Tuesday after being alerted to the problem by CNET News Monday night.

"Today, we learned that certain photos could be viewed by unauthorized users who employed a complicated hack," a spokesman wrote in an e-mail. "Once we were notified of the issue, it was resolved within hours. These photos are no longer available to unauthorized users. We encourage security researchers examining Facebook to practice responsible disclosure."

Basically, someone who knew the serial number of … Read more

It's the M&A deal of the century: FluffFriends got bought!

The virtual-pet application built on Facebook's platform, which once permitted me to display a penguin named Bill Gates on my profile and invite friends to give him a nice hug, has officially been acquired by the Social Gaming Network. A price was not disclosed.

FluffFriends makes money through a virtual currency that translates to real cash, with which members purchase items to spruce up their pets. A release from the Social Gaming Network said that since January, the game makes an average of 192 percent more … Read more

Facebook is one of the most popular photo hosts on the Web, but when it comes time to get your shots off the service it's also one of the worst at providing tools to do the job.

A solution called simply "Get my tagged pics" does the heavy lifting for at least some of your shots, or rather shots of you. Any pictures that are tagged with your name gets grouped together into sets of 10, which you can pull down to your hard drive as a zip file.

The system is not entirely perfect. For instance, … Read more

Don Reisinger joins the cast today for a rousing discussion that goes something like this: "Best Buy bought Napster." "Really?" "Yeah, I know, right? Weird." "Huh. Yeah. Wonder why they did that." "Dunno." It's a great show. You'll love it. (No, seriously! Don rants more than I do!)

Best Buy nabs Napster for $121 million http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10041431-93.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080915-best-buy-eyes-apple-microsoft-with-napster-purchase.html

In-flight Internet: Web sites, but not phone calls http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=353… Read more

A game on Facebook's platform called "PackRat" has been causing some issues for the site, according to a thread in the game's discussion forum.

The aim of PackRat appears to involve amassing graphical "cards" to chalk up points--sort of like the original Pokemon game, some cards are easy and common while others are rare. One of the ways to get new cards is by "stealing" them from friends, so having a huge network of friends who are also playing the game gives PackRat players a big advantage. Reading on in the forum, … Read more

After booting applications from Facebook this summer for violating user privacy, the social-networking company is gearing up to vet apps for trustworthiness as part of a voluntary validation program.

The validation badge will give Facebook members a gauge to use in deciding whether to add a particular app or not. Experts praise Facebook's effort, but say apps posing security risks will still be around despite that, partly because of the popularity of the network.

Facebook gives a tremendous level of access to its APIs, which has enabled developers to create more than 24,000 apps for the platform since … Read more

With the launch of the much-anticipated MySpace Music expected within the week, tech industry wags are already asking if MySpace's archrival Facebook has its own "social music" strategy.

Now Facebook, despite bouts of indecision, may be leaning toward a plan: The social music service iLike announced Monday that Radio Retaliation, the forthcoming album from electronica duo Thievery Corporation will make its exclusive debut Thursday on its site. (It probably wasn't a coincidence that Thievery Corporation was the headlining musical act at Facebook's F8 conference in July.)

iLike became a runaway success on Facebook's platform … Read more

With little clarity on what constitutes "duplicate functionality", Apple rejected the iPhone podcast client Podcaster on the grounds that "since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes".

No one should expect Apple to include competitive applications in it's walled garden. That would be the equivalent to Salesforce.com putting other CRM apps on the AppExchange. It's bad business for them. And it's just not realistic.

Nonetheless, this calls into question just how you can have a "platform" when the platfrom vendor … Read more