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Facebook announced Tuesday that it will be introducing a handful of privacy changes to their 750 million users. AllthingsD reports that the new privacy features will go into effect on August 25, initially to only one percent of all Facebook users.

Exactly how much the new settings are a response to longstanding user criticism or new competition in the form of Google+ is hard to discern. It does seem clear however, that without the new threat to Facebook, the company would have had little incentive to change its historically lax approach to user privacy.

All those pictures you’ve been posting to Twitter using third-party apps, such as Instagram or TwitPic, will appear on your Twitter profile starting Monday.

According to the announcement, the galleries will automatically display the 100 most recent images that a given user has shared through Twitter, pulling images from as far back as January 2010.

Skype, which Microsoft bought in May, said Monday it will buy the group messaging service GroupMe. GroupMe, created last year at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon, went for a rumored $85 million, according to AllthingsD. For now, GroupMe will remain a standalone application, according to the company, but expect changes.

GroupMe messaging works by associating a number with each group. Users can text or push messages to that number, communicating with the whole group. You can use GroupMe as either a data or text-based service, and switch between the two. If you are at a concert or sports event where bandwidth is inaccessible, GroupMe will automatically prompt you to switch to the SMS version. Pretty nifty.

AT&T released a tool on Tuesday to help you measure the money and greenhouse gas emissions your business could save by taking actions such as cutting down on business trips. The Carbon Impact Assessment Tool takes into consideration the overall size of a given company including its number of employees, as well as travel plans. It then lets you know what you can expect to save by utilizing digital collaboration and communication tools.

Of course, AT&T is hoping you'll use their tools, which is why they built the carbon calculator. But you can always use this to figure out what solutions work best for you and your business.

A study from digital security company viaForensics paints a stark picture of the vulnerability of smartphone user data. viaForensics evaluated 100 popular consumer apps running on Android and iOS, and found that 76 percent store usernames, while 10 percent store passwords as plain text. Those 10 percent included popular sites such as LinkedIn, Skype, and Hushmail.

And while only 10 percent of applications store both username and passwords as plain text, leaving them vulnerable to hacks, even the 76 percent who store only usernames that way are vulnerable.

LivingSocial, the largest daily deal site behind Groupon, has rolled out an interesting way to purchase your next burrito, yoga class, or massage appointment. It’s called LivingSocial Instant, modeled after Groupon’s Now coupons, which are served to mobile users for short periods of time. If you’re walking by an ice cream shop, for example, a LivingSocial Instant coupon could ping your mobile phone, via an app, that you have an hour to get 50 percent off a banana split.

For the time being, it seems LivingSocial is using its new Instant deals to unload deals from its regular service. This is bound to change however, as you can bet that both LivingSocial and Groupon understand that the instant deal is the future of mass coupons. Why?

In anticipation of the fall release of iCloud, Apple this week set icloud.com live for developers. iCloud represents a revamped version of Apple's existing Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, and integrates the document sharing features of iWork.com.

With 5GB of space, the service is free. Upgrade packages are priced at $20 for an additional 10GB (15GB total) per year, $40 for an additional 20GB and $100 for an additional 50GB (55 GB total) per year.

Facebook on Tuesday acquired iPad book maker Push Pop Press for an undisclosed amount. The purchase set off rumors about whether Facebook was trying to get into the publishing business, though official statements from both companies suggest otherwise.

Push Pop Press, founded by Apple veterans, is known for publishing an innovative iPad ebook by Al Gore. The official blog post from Push Pop Press said, "Although Facebook isn't planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook."

Intuit announced Brainstorm today, new collaborative software meant to harness all those good ideas your employees have, but rarely have the opportunity to act on.

Intuit employees Tad Milbourn and Vlad Magdalin created Brainstorm as an internal tool during the company’s free time, when engineers are encouraged to work on pet projects. After launching Brainstorm internally, participation jumped 500 percent and ideas created jumped 1000 percent, according to Milbourn. The company reported that its business grew by a factor of six and that the amount of time it took to deliver a product to market sped up by 60 percent.

Adwords Express is a new, simplified version of Adwords. Understanding that many small and medium sized business (SMBs) owners don’t have the time to learn how to manage a full fledged Adwords campaign, Google has stripped the service down to its bare essentials.

Google has removed third party review sites from Google Places. Previously, Places pulled reviews from Yelp, TripAdvisor, Urban Spoon and CitySearch, as well as their own Google Places reviews. When the service initially launched about a year ago, these third party sites griped that their content was unfairly being used by Google, and that the Places reviews were appearing above their content.

And now that Google has decided to remove their content and instead offer only reviews given from Google Places, these companies again feel shut out of the action.

Isis, a mobile payment provider established by AT&A, T-Mobile and Verizon in 2010, announced a deal with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express Tuesday. Isis offers mobile payment options based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which allows users to "swipe" their phones in front of a scanner to make a payment.

The deal will allow mobile phone users running Isis to use their handsets at any existing Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express machines. According to Isis, the partnership will expand the payment options available to mobile subscribers by leveraging existing payment credit card infrastructure across the United States.