Facebook wasn’t the first social network to exist on the Web, nor was it the first site to allow users to set up a personal page containing details about themselves. But it is the biggest social networking site in the world, and consequently is the one that seems destined to fight off lawsuits left, right, and center for the next few years.

In preparation of the continuation of the legal battle between Microsoft and i4i next month, the Redmond-based company released a list of reasons why the injunction against Word must be lifted. One of the reasons revolves around the public’s dependency on Word. Other reasons blame the court for ruling in favor of i4i.

Information about the security of presidential motorcades and the location of the first family’s safe house were leaked via a peer-to-peer network Limewire in recent days. Who knew Limewire was still around?

Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50. He reportedly died after suffering from a cardiac arrest and falling into a coma on the way to hospital. The news was broken on a celebrity Web site, and spread via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook before traditional media would even touch the story.

Government transparency is all well and good, but on some occasions it goes too far. A U.S. government agency has mistakenly published details of civilian nuclear facilities, including the locations of uranium supplies, on its Web site.

The television company Fox is outraged over the latest piracy incident. The highly anticipated movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was illegally leaked onto the Internet a whole month before its release date. Fox has called for the FBI to investigate the incident. However, some feel that Fox may be taking things a bit too far.

Rumors have been floating around the blogosphere for a few weeks about something called the Google GDrive. Further reports are making the Google device in the sky hard to ignore.

Microsoft has been steadily plugging away at its little Zune media player for some time now, and critics and consumers alike have wondered when or if Microsoft intended to make the Zune directly competitive to the iPhone by making it a fully-functional mobile handset. Finally, it looks like Microsoft might take the big leap of creating a media mobile phone out of the Zune, and if it is, the software giant-turned hardware designer could be showing a Zune phone as early as January.

One of Britain’s local councils published details of a highly sensitive spy center online. The premise, a covert MI5 operations center, now has potentially dangerous information about it available in the public domain.

A 12,000-strong list of members of the British National Party was leaked on Nov. 18, revealing teachers, police officers, and soldiers who were members of the far-right party. If this leak wasn’t controversy-causing enough, a Google Maps mash-up was then created using the information.

Just when you thought that most of the bad economic news for the week was over, Verizon Wireless has announced that it may increase the per-message fee it charges companies to send customer alerts via text message.

Having “always on” geolocation functionality in our portable devices has always given me a bit of the creeps. Sure, I enjoy having a GPS system in my car that helps me find my way around, but I’m not one to leave the location based programs in my cell phone or laptop set to “always on”. You never know who’s got better, more invasive tools than you do.

Is that it? Seriously? I have to say I’m slightly disappointed, and that’s coming from someone who isn’t a fan of Apple and has never bought an Apple product, though the iPhone does have some appeal. It seems the Apple ‘Brick’ that has been the subject of intense speculation for the past few weeks is actually a new manufacturing process.

The Amazon Kindle is doing phenomenally well in terms of sales and consumer knowledge of the product. So what better time than now to launch its successor, the Amazon Kindle 2.

A message board poster claiming to be the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account says the attack involved nothing more technical than a nose around Wikipedia. But details posted in the screenshots of Palin’s account may lead the FBI straight to the offender – who may have political links.

Google definitely knows how to release a product for maximum news impact. I’m sure you all remember Gmail being introduced to the world on April Fool’s day and getting boatloads of attention on such a slow tech news day. Google has done it again with the leak of its new browser Chrome.

How bad is it to stream music online before it has been released? If it’s material from the new Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy, then it’s bad enough to get you arrested by the FBI and face three years in prison.