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Facebook has, over the course of its existence gone on to become one of the most popular platforms that is there to help scores of people connect and share bits of their everyday lives, and its 800 million stronghold is just an extension of that thought.

However, pressing issues pertaining to user privacy and child safety on the social network have now led it to feature on The 15 Most Unliked Companies In America list, Business Insider now reports, painting a contrast picture.

Though social networking is an integral part of people's lives, developments over the past few months have drawn considerable ire and have triggered a lot of debate.

Another sore point has been Timeline. It presents your entire Facebook history, as well as any personal history you choose to put in, in a chronological order. However, according to a study done by IT security and data protection firm, Sophos, 51 per cent of Facebook users are concerned about the Timeline feature.

Sophos, in its study found that there are concerns that the additional information that other users have access to and the greater ease to access user information will make it easier for identity thieves and stalkers to get information, which they can then abuse.

Sophos conducted a poll of more than 4,100 random respondents from various parts of the world on their opinion of the new Timeline feature. The key findings of the study were:

- 51 per cent of users are worried about the new Facebook Timeline feature

- Only 8 per cent of users like the new Facebook Timeline feature

- 8 per cent of users say they will get used to it

- 32 per cent say they don't know why they are still on Facebook.

A 32-year-old woman from California has been sentenced to over four years in jail for being involved in a sex tape with her son with whom she was reunited after 15 years.

Mistie Rebecca Atkinson said the relationship with her son was not incest but a case of "genetic attraction", the 'Daily Mail' reported.

She was sentenced to four years and eight months behind bars by a court in Napa county.

The woman was reportedly found in a motel room in Ukiah, California, with her 16-year-old son who had recorded on his phone his mother giving him oral sex, as well as having sex with him.

Authorities also found nude photos Atkinson had sent her son, after they tracked him down through Facebook.

Atkinson told the court she did not consider it incest. "I don't feel like I should have the charge of incest because there is something called genetic attraction that is a very powerful that happens to 50 per cent of people becoming reunited with a long-lost relative," she said.

Atkinson reportedly had no contact with her son until last year, when she began sending him inappropriate messages on the social networking website, the daily said.

The boy was living with his father but was aware that Atkinson was his mother. She did not have custody rights for him.

The sexual contact began after there were reports of domestic violence between Atkinson and her live-in boyfriend in Nice, California.

Mathematician Turing led a team at Bletchley Park country House north of London which cracked the Nazis' Enigma code - regarded by the Germans as unbreakable - a move credited with helping to shorten the war and save countless lives.

However, five years after the war he was convicted of gross indecency under laws which banned homosexuality and was sentenced to chemical castration involving a series of injections of female hormones.

The conviction meant Alan Turing, a pioneer of modern computing, losing his security clearance and being unable to continue his work. In 1954 he killed himself at the age of 41.

The legislation used against the maths genius was the same as that used to prosecute and jail playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895 during a Victorian clampdown on homosexuality and it was only repealed in 2003.

In 2009 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised for the treatment meted to Alan Turing.

It was at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park that Turing and fellow scientists designed and developed Colossus, a truck-sized machine which was one of the world's first programmable electronic computers.

However the work was not widely known beyond academic circles as Britain kept their role in the war secret.

Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that the Colossus computers and 200 so-called Bombe machines, used to crack the Enigma code, be destroyed to keep them secret from the Soviet Union. Bletchley's existence only came to light in the 1970s when the veil of secrecy was lifted.

India's ambitious policy to provide free medicines to all patients attending a government health facility across the country will be rolled out from October.

Strongly backed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, the free-medicines-for-all scheme — being referred to as the "real game changer" — has received its first financial allocation of Rs 100 crore from the Planning Commission for 2012-13.

The ministry has sent the National List of Essential Medicines, 2011, (348 drugs which includes anti-AIDS, analgesics, anti-ulcers, anti psychotic, sedatives, anesthetic agents, lipid lowering agents, steroids and anti platelet drugs) to all the states to use as reference.

The states, however, have been asked to create their own Essential Drugs List (EDL), keeping in mind the diseases that worst affect them. Around 75% of the funds under the scheme will be borne by the Centre, while the rest will be the state's responsibility.

Around 5% of the district funds will be allowed to be used to purchase drugs outside the EDL. The Cabinet has approved the setting up of a Central Procurement Agency (CPA) for bulk procurement of drugs.

The PMO has asked the ministry to set up the CPA as early as possible. At present, 78% of the entire health expenditure in India is from out of pocket (OOP). Purchasing drugs alone accounts for 72% of this OOP expenditure.

Additional secretary in the ministry L C Goyal said a scientific committee will have to draw up the EDL list for the states.

They have also been asked to devise standard treatment protocols in order to avoid unnecessary and irrational treatments.

Tamil Nadu has been providing free medicines in its public health centres for the past 15 years, while Rajasthan introduced it last October. Both these states have a corporation that runs the show with complete functional autonomy.

Facebook Inc has begun showing ads on Zynga Inc's website, the first time the company has distributed ads beyond the borders of its own website and raising the possibility that Facebook could eventually launch an online advertising network.

"People may now see ads and sponsored stories from Facebook on Zynga.com," said Facebook spokesperson Tucker Bounds. He said that Facebook does not share information about people or advertisers with Zynga, and that Facebook's advertisers do not have any new "targeting criteria."

Asked if Facebook was planning to create a full-fledged online ad network that distributes ads on other sites, Bounds said "we are only showing ads on Zynga right now."

Zynga was not immediately available for comment.

Shares of Facebook, the world's No.1 social network, were up 4.4 percent to $33.25 in mid-afternoon trading on Friday.

Facebook's stock has been under pressure since its initial public offering last month, due in part to concerns about the company's slowing revenue growth.

Facebook made most of its $3.7 billion in revenue last year from ads that appear on its site.

An ad network could significantly increase the reach of Facebook ads, offering an important new source of revenue growth.

Monet’s Water Lilies collection is one of the few things in the universe that’s somehow unflappable in the face of extreme popularity. There’s some inherent beauty going on that you can’t be snobby about, one that’s basically exempt from parody
But the most marketable feature of the app is probably its Impressionist Lens filter. Imagine Instagram by Monet and you’ll get an idea of the effect. Unfortunately, you can’t just save these photos to your phone outright. You need to email them to yourself and friends, each time you take them. It’s obviously an email-farming trick, but it also means the Garden is missing out on the potential to go viral with hashtag sharing on Twitter.