Path CEO Dave Morin

Path, the mobile app for cataloging your daily activities and sharing them with a relatively small circle of contacts, came under serious fire on Tuesday when it was discovered that Path’s iPhone app imports all of its users’ address book data onto Path’s own servers without notification or asking permission. Not surprisingly, many people saw this as a major breach of user trust.

Path CEO Dave Morin quickly responded to the fallout, telling app developer Arun Thampi, the blogger who first discovered the address book upload activity, that the data was only used to help users find their friends and “nothing more.” Even so, he also said that the Android app has the address book upload as an opt-in feature, and released a new version of Path for iPhone that does the same. The question still remained, though: What about all the address book data that has is already in Path’s hands?

According to Path, you can now consider it completely gone. In a company blog post Wednesday, Morin explicitly apologized for Path ever having such a feature and said that all the address book data that has already been uploaded will be erased from Path’s servers. The blog post, entitled “We are sorry,” reads in part:

“Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.

…We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.”

It’s a very smart move by Morin and the Path team. Perceived privacy breaches can be hugely damaging to web companies, and especially so for a company like Path, which bills itself as a more private version of Facebook. Path is already on its second life of sorts (its first iteration as a pure photo sharing app did not take off so well) so its important for the company to value the users it has attracted. Path has not behaved perfectly, but its response to the outcry has been quick, sensitive and strong. The big test now is whether that will be enough from the users’ perspective.

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Via its Research Blog, Google has announced the donation of the Sky Map project to the open source community. Originally developed by Googlers during their “20% time,” the stellar application was launched in 2009 to showcase the sensors in first generation Android handsets. Four years and over 20 million downloads later, Sky Map’s code will be donated to the people — with Carnegie Mellon University taking the reins on further development through “a series of student projects.” Hit the source link for the official announcement and a bit of nostalgia from Google.

Google Sky Map boldly explores open source galaxy originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not quite as big as some previous patent transactions between the two companies, but it looks like Google did a fair bit more shopping from IBM’s vast portfolio at the tail-end of 2011. As noted by the SEO by the Sea blog, IBM transferred 188 granted patents and 28 published patent applications to Google during the last week of the year, including a number of patents related to phones and web browsers. Unfortunately, other key details like an acquisition price remain a mystery, but you can peruse some of the patents themselves at the source link below.

Google buoys its patent portfolio with 217 more filings acquired from IBM originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Boxee has always had a difficult relationship with PC users – the platform originated on Mac computers, but Boxee moved towards CE devices with the release of its Boxee Box more than a year ago. The company promised back then that it would release an updated version for PCs as well, but this took longer than expected, which led to some disgruntled reactions from users.

Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen explained to me today that today’s release is a way to make good on this promise. But the accompanying blog post is also making it very clear that the company won’t be supporting this platform going forward: The new 1.5 release for PCs will only be available for download until the end of January.

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Espoo isn’t making it any easier to say goodbye to MeeGo’s last dance with polycarbonate. Nokia’s alluring and elusive N9 in-snow-white-dress appears to now be on sale… in Finland. Web retailer Verkkokauppa has the handset listed on its site for 630€ — that’s 0 for you import types. Memento hunters throughout Europe can buy what this Finnish site’s selling or just sit tight and wait for the color variant to hit their respective markets this December. But if patience isn’t at the top of your priority list, we’d suggest you hit up the source below with some plastic in hand.

White Nokia N9 descends from Lintukoto, goes on sale in Finland originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s second generation Extended Depth of Field (EDoF) camera was recently put through the wringer by the folks at All About Symbian, and for a technology that traditionally fails at macro shots, we’re happy to see that the engineers in Espoo have made dramatic advances with this second go-around. Using the same lens and sensor as before, we’re told the improvements come from a refined image processor alone. In a side-by-side comparison, this business was card snapped from 12-inches (30cm) away, first with a C7 and then a 701. While the new setup isn’t perfect, the difference is certainly appreciable. Of course, Nokia has all but ditched EDoF in its high end smartphones — as evidenced by our reviews of the N9 and Lumia 800 — but the technology remains very much alive within its lower-end affairs, and really, who doesn’t like to see improvement? For a complete breakdown of the new technology, be sure to hit up the source link below.

Nokia’s latest EDoF camera demonstrates improvement with macro shots originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After weathering some less than enthusiastic receptions to Gmail and Google Reader revamps, not to mention the long awaited launch of a Gmail app for the iPhone, the Google upgrade train just keeps on rolling along. This time out, Mountain View is targeting its real bread and butter: search. Google is harnessing its Caffeine indexing system to offer up fresher results — a change that will apparently affect around 35 percent of the site’s searches. The new results include more up to the minute results, prioritization for recent happenings and more frequent updates.

Google search promises to get fresh with you originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mum’s been the word from the Jolicloud camp over the past few months — summer vacation, we get it — but the company has apparently been working quite diligently on what’s next: the “new Jolicloud platform.” According to a mildly vague blog post from the outfit, the next edition of the OS will introduce “the personal cloud,” enabling users to access the information stored there from “your iPhone, your Android phone, your tablet, your computer and pretty much any connected device with its API.” In related news, Joli OS has been open sourced and is now available to the community, and if you’re interested in finding out more about the whole ordeal, sign up for the private beta in the source links below. Invites are going out soon, or so we’re told.

Jolicloud heads to the actual cloud, Joli OS gets open-sourced originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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