Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:

Forbidden Fruit: Microsoft Workers Hide Their iPhones  —  Steve Ballmer Sours on Apple Product; Work for Ford, Drive a Ford  —  REDMOND, Wash.—Microsoft Corp. employees are passionate users of the latest tech toys.  But there is one gadget love that many at the company dare not name: the iPhone.

Michael Calore / Underwire:

Gowalla Tops Foursquare at SXSW Web Awards (But Benson Smokes ‘em All)  —  Comedian Doug Benson, left, and a representative of TheyMakeApps, the winner of the Business category, discuss the finer points of being French during the SXSW Web Awards.  —  AUSTIN, Texas — Providing further proof …

Eyanir Chinea / Reuters:

Venezuela’s Chavez calls for internet controls  —  (Reuters) - Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who is criticized by media freedom groups, called on Saturday for regulation of the Internet and singled out a website that he said falsely reported the murder of one of his ministers.

Sharon LaFraniere / New York Times:

China Issues Warning to Google’s Partners  —  BEIJING — The Chinese authorities have warned major partners of Google’s China-based search engine that they must comply with censorship laws even if Google does not, an industry expert with knowledge of the notice said Sunday.

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Google May Start Pre-Testing New Buzz Features With Users  —  This afternoon at SXSW, a panel of Gmail and Google Buzz team members took part in a panel where they discussed what goes on behind the scenes at Gmail.  The panel covered a smattering of topics, covering everything from Gmail stickers …

danah boyd:

“Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity”  —  [This is a rough unedited crib of the actual talk]  —  Citation: boyd, danah.  2010. “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity.”  SXSW.  Austin, Texas, March 13.  —  Good afternoon!  —  Let me begin by saying that I’m tremendously honored to be here doing the welcoming keynote at SXSW.

Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:

OMGConan: The big Digg party Twitter hoax  —  On Saturday night, Twitter rang out with news that Conan O’Brien was joining Internet TV network Revision3.  The only problem?  It was a huge hoax.  —  AUSTIN, Texas—Did you hear that Conan O’Brien, fresh off his ugly divorce with NBC …

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook Firehose May Be Released at Developer Conference F8  —  Facebook plans to announce the availability of a firehose of user data at its F8 developers conference in April, we believe based on research.  Such an offering could be similar to the firehose that Twitter has shared …

Ben Parr / Mashable!:

New Version of Digg Revealed  —  At the “Bigg Digg Shindigg” event at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSWi), Digg CEO Jay Adelson revealed that the popular social bookmarking site is getting a major overhaul, teasing the audience about new features such as personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard.

Galen Gruman / PC World:

iPad Pre-Orders: For Idiots Only  —  Apple started taking early orders yesterday for its tablet, even though no one’s really sure what they’re buying.  —  Recommends  —  Friday morning, the fool’s parade started.  Apple is taking online “pre-orders” for its iPad tablet, which is supposed to begin shipping on April 3.