Just days ago, Palm revealed a bunch of details surrounding webOS 2.0, which, as the name implies, is an upcoming major update to their webOS platform. Shortly thereafter, they released a big chunk of webOS 2.0 to a small section of their development community as part of a Beta program. Almost immediately, one of these developers unearthed one little bit that Palm didn't intend anyone to find: a lingering mention of a virtual keyboard -- something which webOS doesn't have, and that Palm has yet to confirm as a feature. So, what do you think Palm did? Did they pull the stone-face routine, and say they don't comment on rumors and speculation? Did they send out an e-mail saying "Hey guys, we gotta be more careful!" and move on? Nope. They freaked the hell out.

Offerpal Media has just announced that Mihir Shah has been named president and CEO, while chairman and former CEO George Garrick has been named executive chairman. This is Offerpal's third CEO in a year; Anu Shukla left the company last November following the Scamville drama and was replaced with former Mochi Media CEO George Garrick. Shah was the company's chief revenue officer and joined Offerpal in December of 2009. Prior to Offerpal, Shah was VP of ad networks for RockYou. And he previously served as VP and general manager of direct selling services at QuinStreet.

Is Google serving up ads targeted at sites which categorize themselves as "extreme porn," bestiality," and "child porn"? Rest assured, it is not. But if you are a website publisher using DoubleClick's Ad Planner to select categories to match your site to advertiser's interests, you might think so. The screenshot at right and below shows what one publisher found when choosing self-descriptive categories. Under "Adult" and "Porn" are those three categories. The issue was first brought to Google's attention in this help forum, and subsequently by TechCrunch. It turns out this is a software bug, but what a doozy. DoubleClick, which is part of Google, maintains a blacklist of categories and keywords it will not serve ads against. Those include "extreme porn," "bestiality," and "child porn." Somehow categories from the blacklist started appearing as regular options within Ad Planner. Google is removing those now and says no ads were actually served against those categories even if somebody selected them.

It was only a year ago that Tweetmeme declared their intention to be the king of retweets. And for most of the past year, that was the case. Their retweet button was everywhere. Of course, that was before Twitter launched its own button last month. The result of that introduction? An immediate 20 percent drop off in button impressions per day, Tweetmeme found Nick Halstead noted today. Luckily for Halstead, Twitter let him know their button-killer was coming and gave Tweetmeme a chance to get out of the way. Twitter even agreed to license some of Tweetmeme's technology and enter into a business agreement with them about the button. The phrase, "killing me softly" comes to mind.

Apple has been granted nine new patents, and I thought I'd take a look at the claims therein and see whether they match up to the descriptions, and whether they seem (to this humble blogger) like realistic items for which to gain exclusive rights. I've included links to all the patents, but the USPTO office is behaving strangely, and often returned an error when I tried to pull up documents. Those guys ought to claim a method to buy some new servers, whereby I don't have to submit the patent number five times before it comes up. I'm not going to get in the habit of analyzing in detail every patent that comes our way, but in light of recent lawsuits and all the noise being made about software patents specifically, it seems worthwhile to take a closer peek now and then.

First we had the Google vs China debacle, then came Saudi Arabia's tussle with RIM. And now it's India's turn: threatening to block RIM, Google and Skype unless the companies agree to set up localised servers, all the better for state monitoring of communications. Curiously, compared to the outrage levelled at the Saudi and Chinese governments, American reaction to India's move has been pretty muted. Could it be that India is somehow perceived as "less evil" than the Muslim/Communist nations? Also: to what extent is India simply doing what every government - including the US government - tries to do: demanding the ability to monitor digital chatter in the hope of foiling criminal and terrorist plots? After all, if Big Brother can't read your BBMs, haven't the terrorists already won? In this week's episode of Why Is This News, we talk to Harvard Law professor Jon Zittrain, who explains the differences between governments who obey the rule of law, and those who don't - and why Sarah's right to criticize the government by email is totally protected, unless she should happen to email it to Paul. Video below.