Facebook has added a new feature to the big ol' river of crap that is the homepage news feed. Previously you could tweak it a little bit, allowing you to display just status updates, or photos, but after a quick check of my Facebook account, there's now a wealth of options available.

Facebook stalkers everywhere will be delighted to learn that Electric Pocket has finally got around to releasing a client for FindMe, the Facebook stalking geo-location application, for s60 mobile phones (ie: most high-end Nokias).

FindMe has been available for Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices for ages, and can be used to "tag" locations ("home", "work", etc) and automatically update your Facebook profile with your location. Somewhat uniquely, it doesn't require your phone to have GPS to function - it works out your position based on nearby mobile phone masts alone. Whilst this is perhaps slightly less accurate than GPS, it does mean that more phones are compatible.

With Scrabulous (North America) pulled from Facebook this week, the creators have returned with Wordscraper, which bears a passing resemblance to the original tile-based word formation game.

According to creators Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, Wordscaper is "the only game on Facebook that allows you to play the game the way you want to! With Wordscraper you can build your own board and try out whacky combinations with special high value squares.

"Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice," reads a message from Scrabulous' makers to players on Facebook. The removal of the Scrabulous application follows the lawsuit from Hasbro, the company which own the distribution rights to the Scrabble board game, which Scrabulous very closely resembles.

Facebook has stated that it did not want to get involved in the case, and seems to have stood its ground. A Facebook spokesman stated that "We did not take the application down," which means it must have been the Scrabulous developers themselves, although we can only guess at what legal pressures they were under to do so.

However, there's nothing that the internet loves more than a big nasty corporation attempting to squash a cheeky but loveable young upstart with its mighty corporate boot. So it's of absolutely no surprise that within hours, hackers had already screwed up the official Scrabble application on Facebook.

Oh dear. It seems Facebook has got itself into trouble again. Some clever bod working on the Superpoke application decided to get cool with kids and add an option whereby you can knife your mates. Nice. Luckily they made it really easy for today's blade obsessed teens to catch onto by even using the term "shank". Good work.

Unfortunately, this all adds rather strong fuel to the Daily Mail-esque fire this year surrounding both the evils of Facebook and the skewed facts on the rise of knife crime.

To be fair though, it does rather look like the kind of thing to encourage kids to think stabbing is cool. The reality is that it's probably an ironic way of dealing with all the furor, even for them. "The papers say we're all going round stabbing each other, so let's all do it then," being the kind of lighter way to cope with the mess that's going on around them.

With depressing inevitability, we bring news that Hasbro Inc, owners of the distribution rights to popular board game Scrabble have sued the creators of Facebook's seemingly shameless rip-off, Scrabulous.

This news comes barely a couple of weeks following EA Hasbro's launch of a legitimate, fully licensed version of the board game on Facebook. At the time, one analyst explained that the launch of a legit edition might pave the way for a legal action and it looks he was spot on. I guess we don't call you the dark seer of the games world for nothing, Lord Pachter.

Research firm Cityware has hooked up thousands of Bluetooth scanners around the world and is using these to monitor how people move around the place - and dumping the data on Facebook.

The only problem is no one asked for the permission of some of the the scanees - so anyone with their phone's Bluetooth powers enabled risks having their movements tracked by the freely-available Cityware software. Not such a big deal, says Cityware, as no data linking individuals to their movements is recorded, so there's no way of telling who went from Starbucks to the library at 10.45am yesterday...

Facebook is suing a German social networking site by the name of StudiVZ for producing a site for central Europe that is more or less a direct rip off of the well-established international favourite. Well, that's what the German company hear but, since the news broke on Friday, they have yet to receive any legal contact whatsoever.

Late last night Facebook launched the beta phase of the much anticipated re-design for the No.1 social networking site. The only trouble is, I can't seem to get it.

Word is that if you go to www.new.facebook.com you can see the changes for yourself which centre around the profile page and how they've managed to stop it being an unmanageable pile of arse the minute you sign up for any applications. This is largely done by the use of tabs. Apparently.

This week, Electronic Arts and Hasbro announced plans to launch the first licensed Facebook Scrabble game in North America. The licensed version will become available in mid to late July and will be free and without adverts, at least for the start.

Facebook users will no doubt be aware that there's another profoundly Scrabble-like Facebook application that has proved somewhat popular in the past year, going by the name of Scrabulous. So far, despite sinister rumblings from official Scrabble distributors, Scrabulous continues to thrive on Facebook. But EA Hasbro's move to launch a legitimate, licensed version has put a new question mark on the future of the unauthorised version.

Facebook solves the problem of tracking down the friends you lost contact with but how about the ones you never even met? Personality testing science site, Signal Patterns, has launched a new Facebook application of the same name designed to suggest new people that you might like to get social networking with.

The idea is that you take the Signal Patterns personality test and, rather like a dating website, they match you up with people you'd like, without having to sleep them - unless of course you want to.

Dipping is, apparently, the HOT NEW TREND among spoilt rich kids who live in the sort of areas where the neighbours all have swimming pools.

The Telegraph reports that youths - no doubt off their heads on alcopops and Skittles - have taken to tracking down nearby swimming pools on Google Earth, then organising midnight swim-meets in them with friends through crime-enabler Facebook.

Basically, some residents have reported finding their swimming pools full of beer cans in the morning and decided to blame the internet for it.

"We are advising owners of swimming pools to be on their guard and extra vigilant," said A Man From The Police. "We would also warn prospective swimmers that using someone else's pool is trespassing and therefore illegal."

(Via The Telegraph)

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Who has the biggest brain? Playfish apparently, as all three of their Facebook application game titles have made it into the top 10 most played on the social networking website.

Who Has The Biggest Brain comes in at No.6, Bowling Buddies at No.8, Word Challenge at No.10 and if you need me to tell you what these games are about, then the answer to the one at No.6 is, not you. All of that totals over 700,000 unique players who spend, on average, 35 minutes each day on the games.

Brilliant news. We doubt anyone noticed, but brilliant news all the same.

The no-doubt popular-on-the-internet band RedBoxBlue has made the claim, reckoning that its series of streaming video performances currently being shown on Facebook are indeed a world first.

It's not 100% live, though - they're only beaming taped shows through the social network, so there's still room for a totally live and LIVE performance yet. If you want to witness a very small and rather uninteresting part of internet history unfolding before your eyes, you can still do so now on the band's Facebook page.

RedBoxBlue currently has 147 fans. It's unlikely to "cross over" into the mainstream any time soon.

(Via Wired)

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Barclaycard has announced the launch of its "Green-O-Meter" Facebook application, which tests how environmentally friendly your life is by answering a range of questions on household, shopping, food, and travel.

The application also offers suggestions for greener living, and users can compare their scores with friends much as per other Facebook applications. In the future, additional quizzes will be added to the application.

Microsoft has added a new service to its Live Messenger software, allowing users to access a number of Facebook functions directly from their IM client.

It's all ready to go, and available to all UK users, without needing to download software or switch anything on. Users can update their Facebook status, poke, write on walls, browse photos. and send private messages, without having the hassle of opening up a web browser window, which of course is so difficult and irritating to have to do.

Social networking site, Facebook, is coming under more pressure to change its policies protecting users' personal information after a Canadian privacy group has called for the organisation's practises to be investigated.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic claims that the website violates 22 of Canada's privacy laws. It is specifically concerned with how Facebook passes on personal information to advertisers and other companies without direct consent.

Students at the clinic lodged the official complaint after analysing the company's policies and practises as part of a course last year. The 35 page action has been filed with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. "Given the advent of cyberstalking and cyberharassment, the sharing of this information without express consent is especially problematic," the complaint states.

Facebook has confirmed that it is preparing to open up its platform to make life easier on third-party developers creating applications. Its announcement follows a flood of similar ones from other companies, including rival MySpace, which joined the Google-founded OpenSocial open source standards initiative.

Obviously, it's not opening up the entire machinations of its site for anyone to poke around in, but it's fair to assume that this will include many of the tools used on the Facebook Platform, which just celebrated its first birthday.

"We're working on an open-source initiative that is meant to help application developers better understand Facebook Platform and more easily build applications, whether it's by running their own test servers, building tools, or optimizing their applications. As Facebook Platform continues to mature, open-sourcing the infrastructure behind it is a natural step so developers can build richer social applications and share what they've learned with the ecosystem. Additional details will be released soon," a spokesperson said.

Wayfinder has just updated its Wayfinder Navigator software to include a simplified user interface, fully vectorised maps and, most interestingly of all, social network integration with Facebook.

Wayfinder Navigator stands out from the many other GPS products because it eliminates the need for actual GPS hardware by working on your mobile phone. As long as you have a Bluetooth GPS receiver, you can use the application to find your way. It works on a pretty healthy selection of handsets too.

The cheaper option is the Navigator Online, but be warned that although you pay less initially (£40 for the UK region), you'll be working your mobile's data connection instead.

The new version of the software has a number of new highlights: Powersearch for picking out local services, points of interest; better quality maps; extended handset compatibility... All the usual stuff really. However, if you have a Facebook account then you can download the LocateMate application and let your friends know your whereabouts on the map. Neat, huh?

Police in Greater Manchester are using social networking site Facebook to raise awareness of unsolved crimes. The Greater Manchester Police updates application gives you news feeds about unsolved crimes and appeals for witnesses in other cases. If you do have information on one of the crimes, you send them a tip directly using the sinisterly named 'Submit Intelligence' button.

It also has a neat little YouTube section, but be warned, it makes for some pretty bleak viewing at ten past eight on a Monday morning.

Although it's probably not the first time Facebook has been involved in crime fighting, the GMP Application stands out for being the first law enforcement based Facebook tool. Internet opinion is split on whether this is a excellent example of the police modernising to reach more people and keep us safer, or whether it's just a new way of invading your privacy.