Facebook may control the social graph of 1.3 billion people, but now it has ambitions to stretch deeper into the workplace, according to the Financial Times’ report on plans for “Facebook at Work”.

This isn’t about getting around corporate firewalls to ensure you can see which Frozen character your friends are, though. It’s a proper move to compete with services from Google Drive and LinkedIn to Slack, and become a serious working tool.

“The Silicon Valley company is developing a new product designed to allow users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents,” claimed the FT.

“The new site will look very much like Facebook – with a newsfeed and groups – but will allow users to keep their personal profile with its holiday photos, political rants and silly videos separate from their work identity.”

It might be a sensible move for Facebook, but how will workers (and bosses) feel about their data being shared and stored on the social network? Workplace collaboration in the cloud isn’t an alien concept for many businesses now, but I wonder how Facebook providing this will be received.

What do you think? The comments section is open for your thoughts.

Also on the technology radar today:

Spotify and Uber team up for in-car music

Uber is holding a press call with a “special partner guest” later today, but their identity is out: streaming music service Spotify. You’ll apparently be able to control the music played in your Uber car from your smartphone, with the tunes delivered from Spotify to the driver’s handset.

Facebook to crack down on ‘overly promotional’ page posts

If you’ve liked Facebook pages that tend to pump out contests or “please buy our thing” posts, expect to see them less in your feed from January. “Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time,” explains the social network.

Accusations of Tor smearing campaign

A piece by Yasha Levine on PandoDaily, outlining the response from the Tor community to a previous article examining the relationship between the online anonymity tool and US intelligence agencies.

Google’s Project Tango tablet hits the Play store

Project Tango is one of Google’s most interesting initiatives around mobile: 3D sensors and all manner of other tech to understand the world around you. Now the first tablet can be bought, although seemingly only if you ordered it at Google’s I/O conference earlier in the year.

Kung Fu Robot crowdfunding campaign

Kung Fu Robot was one of the most characterful children’s apps I saw in the last couple of years. Now its makers are trying to raise $19,500 to turn it into a hardback comic anthology and a new app.

Porn stars explain net neutrality

From Funny Or Die, an alternative take on the debate that’s sparking up again in the US this month. Sort-of safe for work (SoSFW?) in that they’re nude, but the bits your boss might be cross at are safely masked out.

This year has seen plenty of debate about the portrayal of women in games, but now Swedish trade association Dataspelsbranchen is launching an intriguing new project to analyse the topic.

What’s more, the government-backed research could end in some kind of labelling scheme, although news site The Local stresses that it’s currently unclear whether this would be a rating for every game based on how well or poorly it portrays gender equality and diversity, or a badge for games that do it well.

“I do not know of any other project in the world asking this question and of course we want Sweden to be a beacon in this area,” said Dataspelsbranchen’s Anton Albiin, who also had an answer for questions about whether focusing on this area would inhibit developers’ creativity.

“Of course games can be about fantasy but they can be so much more than this. They can also be a form of cultural expression - reflecting society or the society we are hoping for. Games can help us to create more diverse workplaces and can even change the way we think about things.”

Swedish government-funded innovation agency Vinnova thinks the research is worth a 272,000-kronor grant: so note for accuracy’s sake, this is a project to explore how the idea of these ratings would work, not a firm commitment (yet) to introduce them.

What do you think about the idea of some kind of ratings system based on how games deal with issues of diversity? If it happens, should it be all games, or more a badge of quality? And what impact might it have if a game is given a negative rating in the former case? The comments section is open for your views.

What else is on the technology radar this morning?

Uber under fire for journalist ‘dirt digging’ claims

No, not journalists digging dirt on Uber: the other way around. Comments made by Uber’s Emil Michael at an event suggested the company might hire researchers to look into “your personal lives, your families” of critics in the media, including tech site PandoDaily’s boss Sarah Lacy. Here’s her blistering response.

Snapchat launches Snapcash payments feature

Disappearing-messages app Snapchat has a new feature called Snapcash, through a partnership with mobile payments firm Square. Users will store their debit card details, and then be able to send cash “directly to your friend’s bank account”. There are surely some uses for this that don’t involve paying for naked snaps. Aren’t there?

WireLurker may have been closed down

iOS malware WireLurker has been sending ripples through the Apple community since being uncovered earlier in the month. Now Chinese authorities claim thatsites hosting it have been shut down, and three arrests made. But worrying aboutMasque Attack malware is the new worrying about WireLurker malware, by now.

Is Nokia ‘the new Polaroid’?

That doesn’t sound like a positive comparison, but Polaroid has been reinventing itself by licensing out its brand to other companies to make products. Now it seems Nokia – the Nokia left in Finland working on non-smartphone products, not the bit sold to Microsoft – is considering a similar strategy.

Fitbit data is being used in a court case

Could that fitness tracker attached to your pocket / worn on your wrist / sloshing around in your washing machine while you swear like a trooper be vital evidence? Forbes has a story on what appears to be the first court case relying on data from a Fitbit fitness tracker.

A manifesto for startup accelerators

Paul Smith runs the well-respected Ignite startup accelerator in Newcastle, and has published an interesting post on Medium outlining some of the ways companies can judge whether an accelerator is going to help them. “There’s a need amongst accelerators for accountability and transparency, so this is a first attempt at some basic terms that all programmes should feel confident agreeing to...”

What else have you been reading this morning? The comments section is open for your links and feedback on the stories above.

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The story that broke earlier in the week about an Uber executive threatening to investigate critical journalists’ private lives rumbles on, with the company providing a couple of official responses yesterday.

First, chief executive Travis Kalanick went on a tweetstorm with 13 tweets addressing the issue, although while it concluded with a direct apology to Sarah Lacy, the journalist targeted in the original comments, as Valleywag points out, there were several questions he didn’t answer.

As time has gone by, journalists have been focusing on another aspect of theoriginal BuzzFeed report that kicked off this debate – the claim that an Uber exec had “accessed the profile of a BuzzFeed News reporter, Johana Bhuiyan, to make points in the course of a discussion of Uber policies” without their permission.

Uber has now published a blog post which it says aims to “make very clear our policy on data privacy, which is fundamental to our commitment to both riders and drivers”. It refers to a “strict policy prohibiting all employees at every level from accessing a rider or driver’s data” except for “legitimate business purposes”.

Technology journalists are, unsurprisingly, questioning whether Uber’s radar for what constitutes “legitimate business” has been malfunctioning for some time. But how are you feeling about Uber and other companies of its type, in regards to privacy?

Do you worry about the way your data fits into the “sharing economy”, or do the benefits of services like Uber and Airbnb trump any concerns that your records will be used against you in the future? Is this a specific issue between journalists and Uber, or is this controversy going to put non-hacks off using the company too?

The comments section is open for your thoughts.

What else is worth discussing in tech today? Some links:

11 things revealed by the Apple Watch SDK

Apple launched its SDK for developers wanting to make apps for its first smartwatch, and The Verge has been filleting its documentation to learn more about the Apple Watch. For example, it’ll be closely tied to the iPhone; there’ll be two resolutions for the devices; seemingly no support for video; and a brand new font called San Francisco.

John Lydon spent £10k on freemium iPad games

The Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd frontman had a severe free-to-play habit. “I wasted – you’re the first to know this – 10,000 fucking pounds in the last two years on apps on my iPad,” he told the Telegraph. “I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing, and I just wanted to up the ante. And like an idiot I didn’t check myself...”

Twitter opens up its full archives

Twitter announced that it has now indexed every public tweet since 2006, using a search service that “efficiently indexes roughly half a trillion documents and serves queries with an average latency of under 100ms”. The blog post goes intolots of engineering detail, but it’ll be interesting to see what people do with the archive now.

Vainglory MOBA game launches for iOS

Hardcore gamers and free-to-play games are often pitched in opposition to one another, yet one of the most hardcore genres – multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games like League of Legends and Dota 2 – are freemium. Now developer Super Evil Megacorp is trying to make the genre work on iOS with its Vainglory game: shown off at Apple’s last iPhone launch, and now available.

Auto-lacing shoe technology is on Kickstarter

I’ve been finding out that teaching another human being – my seven year-old son – to tie shoelaces is a harder task than I thought. Maybe by the time he’s an adult, shoelaces will tie themselves though. Witness this Kickstarter campaign that’s trying to raise $650k for “the very first auto-lacing shoe technology”. Do they do children’s sizes?

LittleBits launches a $249 Smart Home Kit

One of the most interesting companies around at the moment is littleBits, with its electronics kits. The latest is the Smart Home Kit, which costs $249 and promises to “turn any household object into an internet-connected device: instead of buying a bajillion different smart products, you can reinvent the things you already have.”

What else? The comments section is open for your own links, thoughts on the stories above, and (especially) for your advice on tempting surly seven year-olds away from velcro.

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It’s the end of free apps for iOS! Well, sort of. Apple quietly made a design tweak to its App Store yesterday, replacing the “Free” button for apps that are free to download with “Get”.

So, no change to the actual price, but the new wording is one way of sidestepping the debate around “free” apps not actually being free if they use in-app purchases – an issue that regulators in various parts of the world have been looking into.

Now, freemium apps will have the new “Get” button, as well as a prominent “In-App Purchases” notification, to ensure that people know they’re downloading something that will, in some way, be hoping for some of their money at a later point.

Is “Get” a good choice of wording in this case? You might argue that it makes it harder to tell that an app is free to download, although iOS users will surely pick that up by noticing other apps still have prices on their download buttons.

The comments section is open for your thoughts on Apple’s change, and the rise of freemium apps in general.

What else is bubbling in the technology world this morning? Some links:

Senator Al Franken has some questions for Uber

Uber’s bad week just stepped up a notch: US senator Al Franken has written to its chief executive Travis Kalanick with some pointed questions about the company’s privacy policy, statements by senior executive Emil Michael about using private information to target journalists, and its “God View” tool for tracking users. “I would appreciate responses to these questions by December 15...”

Chrome now has 400m monthly active mobile users

Google has announced new stats for mobile usage of its Chrome web browser: 400 million monthly active users. That’s impressive growth given that it was on 300 million as recently as the company’s I/O conference in June.

DOJ: children will die due to Apple encryption

As arguments why technology companies shouldn’t introduce new encryption features go, this is pretty startling, from the US Department of Justice: “Mr. Cole offered the Apple team a gruesome prediction: At some future date, a child will die, and police will say they would have been able to rescue the child, or capture the killer, if only they could have looked inside a certain phone...”

Jolla tablet crowdfunding campaign is soaring

Finnish firm Jolla is pitching its tablet as “the world’s first crowdsourced tablet”, and there are plenty of people rushing to pledge their money for one. The company launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign earlier this week with a target of $380k, and is already past $878k in pledges.

Firefox switches Google for Yahoo as search supplier

Mozilla has signed a five-year deal to make Yahoo the default search engine for its Firefox web browser in the US – a big win for the latter company, given the 100bn+ annual searches by Firefox users. Meanwhile, Yandex is now its default in Russia, although users can of course still switch to an alternative if they prefer.

Family makes $7k a month from Disney covers on YouTube

The Bagley family in Utah are proving quite the hit on YouTube with their cover versions of Disney songs: 86m views of their Do You Want To Build A Snowman? cover alone so far. Tubefilter notes that their income is more than $7k a month from an average of 18m views a month.

Barbie Computer Engineer book causes a stir

A book that sees Barbie turning computer engineer hasn’t gone down well. “Barbie is featured in the book as a stylishly pink-clad computer engineer that somehow breaks everything and doesn’t know how to code. She does draw puppies though...” Mattel has pulled it from Amazon and apologised.

Dive in below the line with your own link recommendations and comments on the stories above.

And, yes, Guardian Tech has switched to the new website design: if you’re having trouble finding the daily post, the Technology Blog tag homepage is the quickest route – the latest open thread should be at the top left every day.