Network

Apple, famous for customer friendliness, says it does not give refunds on iPhone app purchases. Regardless of reason, save technical issues with the download itself. Mere buyer's remorse does not count.

Facebook is the number one social network in the United States, according to metrics firm Experian Hitwise. Mark Zuckerberg and company captured almost 59 percent of all U.S.-based Web traffic among the top social networks. Are you shocked? I know I'm not.

YouTube is celebrating the third anniversary of its acquisition by Google by showing off an awful lot of O's. The little video site that could announced on Friday it was now streaming a full billion video views a day -- the majority of which, I have to assume, consist of cats playing music and teens doing awkward dances.

Upgrade from the break-room bulletin board and one-way customer e-mail lists--your business can take advantage of its own Facebook-like social network. You might try Facebook itself, of course, but the clash of business and personal communications could leave your vacation photos mingling with company news, and could lead to a lot of goofing off on company time. Instead, turn to a social network platform to make your own distinct site. Many services, including Grou.ps and SocialGO, offer functionality similar to that of Facebook; but in this tutorial I'll focus on Ning, which has been established for a few years and offers customization tools that can make your site behave almost any way you want.

AT&T announced a change in policy to allow VoIP calls on the iPhone from its 3G cellular network. The decision may be spurred in part by a motivation to avoid proposed FCC net neutrality rules, but the move actually proves why net neutrality is necessary.

As of December 1, the Federal Trade Commission is going to require bloggers, and prominent tweeters and Facebook types to disclose any paid endorsements to their followers, online friends and readers. These new rules have the potential to change everyone's online habits. Here's what you need to know:

It won't be clear for some time whether Bing's attempt to grab search engine market share from Google has stalled, or even gone into reverse. The September numbers from Web metrics firm Net Applications show a slight drop in Bing's global market share, although Google's whopping share of the pie -- still north of 80 percent -- dipped a bit too.

What is it about airlines that attract so much online angst? Every other week there seems to be a new Facebook group or YouTube video protesting some policy change or service snafu. Over the summer, a musician posted a video protest on YouTube after his guitar was trashed by baggage handlers working for United Airlines. The video quickly went viral and has been viewed 5,626,168 times as of this writing. More recently, a travel agent in London set up a "pressure group" on Facebook targeting British Airways and its expensive fees to reserve seats in advance. Twitter has become a favorite place to rant about airline indignities, thanks in large part to the ability to do so with a mobile phone in the terminal right after a flight has been cancelled or airline staff have behaved rudely.

Don't look now, but Microsoft's search engine may be starting to lose its momentum. Following a few months of modest growth, the search-engine-formerly-known-as-Live seems to be reverting toward its pre-Bing levels. According to some new data, Bing's market share slipped downward in September, marking the first blip in what had been a very slow but consistent climb for the recently rebranded site.

Despite strained relationships between Apple and ex-BFF Google, the Web giant's presence has continued to be felt, thanks to built-in iPhone services like YouTube and Google Maps. However, as Computerworld's Seth Weintraub has pieced together, the latter may under threat from one of Apple's strategic acquisitions.