The teens said that the manager of the Apple store called police after finding the racing game, "Raging Thunder" had been downloaded to the phone. High school senior Daniel Fukuba was showing the iPhone’s features to his friends when he downloaded the game.

After the teens left the store a manager chased them down and ordered them to return the store and called police. Sgt. Sandra Brown of the Palo Alto Police said they were called to the Apple store but no arrests were made.

The teens say they were lectured by the manager about the dangers of hacking and photographed so their pictures could be shared with other Apple stores in the area. One teen said it was "so they’d be on the lookout for us," the Mercury News reported. The teens were detained for a total of two and a half hours.

The boys say they were told that they were banned from all Apple stores, but an Apple spokesman said that was not true. "They were not banned from that store or any other store," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.
 

Palo Alto Becomes Facebookplex?

First, to define Facebook’s unofficial campus.  “In addition to their main offices at 156 University Avenue and 164 Hamilton Ave, they recently opened up a third office across the street at 151 University, and will expand into another building on Hamilton sometime this fall,” reports Valleywag’s Megan McCarthy.

With Facebook’s (presumably) deep pockets, that’s driving up costs; McCarthy notes, “office rents on the Peninsula have jumped 13 percent last quarter and 39 percent over last year.”  And because “[e]very Facebook employee living within a mile of the offices receives a $600 monthly stipend,” it’s not just office buildings that may be growing more expensive.  After all, couldn’t you handle swapping your commute for a large sum of cash?

Still, it seems that Facebook’s presence is causing a lot of traffic issues.  “Parking has always been scarce in downtown Palo Alto and Facebook has not made that situation any easier,” writes McCarthy.  “There is a six-to-eight week waiting list for parking passes issued by the city government, and, until a new employee receives that pass, he or she either parks in surrounding residential areas or moves the car every two hours. . . .  Jim Merryman, Facebook’s director of real estate, recently joked that parking tickets from Facebook employees were a boon to [the] local economy.”

Hmmm.  I don’t think Facebook’s got anything quite like the Googleplex, but just as Google is synonymous with Mountain View, it appears that Facebook and Palo Alto are merging.

“The office building, which served as Agilent Technologies’ headquarters for six years, was the site of HP’s original 10,000-square-foot campus, built two years after founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard left the famous garage,” reports an article on MercuryNews.com.

“When Google plans to move in, or which division will leave Mountain View – where the company is headquartered – is unknown,” the piece continues.

It’s hard to guess, too – with the recent announcement that Google would lease another 310,000 square feet of office space in Mountain View, one can’t imagine that Googlers are lacking elbow room.  Whatever changes are in store, they’ll probably be big if this much area is required.

“Google has been on a leasing and building-buying tear, sucking up dozens of properties in the Shoreline area of Mountain View and along San Antonio and Embarcadero roads in Palo Alto,” notes Sharon Simonson for the San Francisco Business Times.  “Businesses in both Mountain View and Palo Alto have found lease rates and purchase prices are being bid up by Google’s activities.”

Google’s market cap is currently sitting just under $169 billion, however, so it’s unlikely that the company is creating any problems for itself.