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• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Roger Ebert could be tough on filmmakers, but unlike many critics, he earned their respect.
• So much so that they claimed him as one of their own when the Directors Guild of America made Ebert an honorary lifetime member at the group's awards ceremony four years ago.
• What better testimony for a life's work in a profession that typically draws sneers from filmmakers and fans alike? But then Ebert, who died Thursday at age 70, was not just any critic. He was THE critic.
• At the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967 and through decades as a pioneering film reviewer on television, Ebert championed tiny gems that he scouted out at film festivals and took Hollywood's biggest names to task when they missed the mark.
• Ebert drew his own criticism that the thumbs-up, thumbs-down trademark of his TV shows over-simplified the way we look at films. Yet with his chubby frame and thick-rimmed glasses, he popularized the notion of the dweebish critic as arbiter of cultural taste, inspiring a generation of TV and online reviewers much as Woodward and Bernstein inspired a generation of investigative journalists.
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• NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook Home, the new application that takes over the front screen of a smartphone, is a bit of a corporate home invasion. Facebook is essentially moving into Google's turf, taking advantage of software the search giant and competitor created.
• Facebook Home will operate on phones running Google Inc.'s Android software and present Facebook status updates, messages and other content on the home screen, rather than making the user fire up Facebook's app. The software will be available for users to download on April 12 and will come preloaded on a new phone from HTC Corp., sold by AT&T Inc. in the U.S.
• Google gives away Android, the most popular smartphone software in the world, in the hope that it will steer phone users toward Google services, such as Maps and

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