6 Years Old...Facebook Surges To 400 Million Users

It’s been six years to the day that Facebook launched, and the company’s massive growth is showing no signs of slowing down. Minutes ago, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a note to the site’s blog celebrating the milestone. In it, he says that Facebook will cross the 400 million user mark this week. And it’s been less than five months since the social network hit 300 million.

To celebrate, the company is holding its own version of a party — it’s Hackathon time. That means all of the company’s engineers are about to embark on all night coding seessions. Previous Hackathons have given birth to things like Facebook Video and its new HipHop PHP converter. Zuckerberg also says that we’ll be seeing some new product launches tonight.

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Myspace Changes it's Music Label

Myspace Records, the indie record label that’s a joint venture between the social network and Interscope Records, is going through some changes. Not to be confused with MySpace’s popular MySpace Music free streaming portal, MySpace Records is a small record label designed to help promising new artists get early exposure. Earlier this evening, LA-based radio station KROQ that MySpace Records may have been disbanded. We’re hearing from multiple sources that that isn’t entirely accurate: A handful of people were let go from the label’s small team, and the label’s GM Jay Scavo has to Hollywood Records. But all artists currently signed to MySpace Records will remain on the label, and the partnership with Interscope remains.

That’s sure to be good news for the label’s artists, which include Pennywise and Nico Vega. The label has also previously featured a handful of artists who were eventually promoted to the main Interscope label, including Kate Voegele and Mickey Avalon. However, while the current artists are safe, we’re hearing that the direction of the label and its future structure are still up in the air.

When MySpace Records launched, MySpace planned to leverage its then-recent acquisition by News Corp to turn the label into a jumping off point for hot new bands (former CEO Chris DeWolfe was as saying they’d get the bands into Fox movies and TV shows). Obviously it hasn’t performed as well as everyone hoped, but MySpace has still managed to help kickstart the careers of quite a few well known bands. Likewise, its site continues to perform well despite MySpace’s slowdown in other areas.

Google phone coming

Apple iPhone will have a big competition on their hands as Google is set to launch its much discussed smart phone next week.

The new smart phone, Nexus One, may be unveiled Jan 5 when the internet search engine giant holds a media briefing about its smart phone business at its Mountainview headquarters in California.

The Google-branded device will use its latest Android operating system called Anrdoid 2.1.

Android is already being used in more than a dozen smart phones by many vendors, including Motorola and Samsung.

The Google smart phone will compete directly with Apple's popular iPhones in Internet browsing as well as playing video games.

Though the world's second biggest company, valued at more than $196 billion, has mentioned the upcoming briefing as "an Android press gathering," it has not confirmed whether the rumoured smart phone will actually be unveiled that day.

The Nexus One is likely to have a 3.7-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) touch screen. AMOLED, which is a bright display technology, needs no backlighting for the device to function. Since there is no backlight, touch screen looks brighter.

The Google GSM smart phone will also have a 5-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi connectivity. According to mobile industry bloggers, Google may sell the smart phone unlocked, thus not locking buyers in long-term contracts with carriers.

The Google briefing is being held just two days ahead of the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas where global giants like Sony and Microsoft unveil their products for the next year.

New OnStar tech keeps stolen vehicles from starting

OnStar's suite of Stolen Vehicle Assistance services currently includes GPS technology that pinpoints a stolen vehicle's exact location, and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, which can remotely slow a stolen vehicle to idle speed. Today, OnStar announces Remote Ignition Block, a new tool that will help law enforcement to safely and quickly recover stolen vehicles.

Remote Ignition Block lets an OnStar adviser send a remote signal to a subscriber's stolen vehicle to prevent the vehicle from being restarted once the ignition is turned off. By killing the ignition, OnStar can make sure that the stolen vehicle remains stationary so police can recover it without the need for a dangerous high-speed chase.

The process works like this: First, the OnStar subscriber reports his or her vehicle as stolen to the police and requests stolen vehicle assistance from OnStar. The police confirm to the OnStar adviser that the vehicle is in fact stolen, most likely using a police report number.

Next, the OnStar adviser locates the vehicle using its onboard GPS antenna and sends the Remote Ignition Block to the vehicle. The next time the vehicle is stopped, it will be unable to restart, and the authorities can then pick it up.

OnStar will make Remote Ignition Block available on select GM 2009 and 2010 model year vehicles in the U.S. and Canada.

iPhone OS 3.1 Beta And SDK Already Rolling Out To Developers

It looks like Apple has already started sending out the beta version and SDK for the next iteration of the iPhone OS, 3.1, to developers. The iPhone 3.0 software was released just about two weeks ago, ahead of the iPhone 3GS launch. By most accounts it’s pretty stable, though some users have been having battery issues. That’s why it’s a bit odd that Apple would iterate up to version 3.1 already, instead of something like 3.0.1, which it tends to do for minor updates and bug fixes. Could we be seeing a larger update to the OS already? I’m told that there’s nothing much of interest in the release notes to indicate anything major that is new or changed.

Moblin: A Netbook OS to Watch

Intel's Linux-based netbook operating system gives Windows a run for its money.

The emergence of ultracheap netbook computers has been one of a few bright spots for the PC industry over recent months. Last year, some 14 million netbooks were sold against forecasts of 5.3 million, according to research company Gartner. And at this week's Computex industry conference in Taipei, Taiwan, computer makers and hardware manufacturers will demonstrate a host of new models and netbook-specific hardware.

But the battle to provide the software that runs these streamlined computer systems is becoming increasingly interesting. The first netbooks, released in 2007, provided a rare opportunity for the Linux operating system to reach a wider audience. Since then, however, Microsoft has reasserted its dominance, pushing Windows XP and its next major operating-system release, Windows 7, for netbook computers.

The latest version of a Linux-based netbook OS called Moblin could be set to challenge this dominance. Originally developed by Intel and optimized to run on its Atom netbook processors, Moblin version 2 beta was released last month.

Several lightweight Linux OSes exist already. One is Fluxbuntu, which features just a Web browser, media player, and word processor and runs efficiently even on older PCs. Another is Google's Android, a smart-phone OS that has already been ported to some netbooks.

The difference with Moblin is that it taps into the Atom processor used in many netbooks. It provides support for chip features including Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (for smoother video playback), multithreading (for more-efficient programming), and power-management features.

In April, Intel handed over Moblin to the Linux Foundation, a careful move designed to boost the operating system's potential without souring Intel's relationship with Microsoft.

According to Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, Intel does not want to be so stringently tied to using Windows. "Intel wants to free itself from the Microsoft monopoly," says Gottheil. "With most Intel processors coupled with the OS, Microsoft implicitly controls the total cost of the processor; as a result, the entry price for Intel-based systems is higher than it otherwise would be, and the market is therefore smaller."

So how does Moblin measure up?

We installed and tested Moblin on three netbooks: a Lenovo S10, an Acer AspireOne, and an Asus Eee 901. All three worked well and were snappy for most tasks.

The Lenovo S10 and Asus Eee 901 both ship with Windows XP preinstalled, while the Acer AspireOne comes preloaded with Windows Vista. Installing Moblin was, however, relatively simple: just download the latest image file and copy it to a USB key. All current netbooks support booting from a USB drive.

The Moblin V2 user interface is built on Clutter, an open-source software library that provides easy access to several Web services. This means that it's possible to update your Twitter status or send instant messages directly from the desktop. Moblin also has a browser built on Google Chrome, plus a rudimentary music, photo, and video player.

The user interface still needs some work, though. One glitch is that, whenever a tool with a data-entry field was started, the cursor did not automatically move to that field--the user had to click it first. The Web browser also crashed repeatedly on all three systems and could not process a script in Gmail, which would sometimes cause an all-out system failure. On the Acer AspireOne, there was another problem: the netbook just could not resume after going into a sleep state. The screen would flash and appear for a moment but then go blank again.

The desktop shows a network icon in a drop-down task bar so that a user can select between a wired or wireless network connection. For some reason, Moblin did not support Wi-Fi on the Lenovo S10. (Intel says that the company is investigating the matter.) None of the Moblin installs on the three systems could recognize its built-in webcam, but audio, photo, and video playback worked flawlessly on all three systems.

Moblin supports a data-sync service; you can use Funambol, Memotoo, ScheduleWorld, or Synthesis to back up data, sync your calendar, and store contacts. Moblin V2 beta also includes three simple games (none of which use 3-D graphics), a calculator, a file browser, a terminal app, and a text editor.

There are a few oddities that might surprise Windows users. For example, in Moblin you can't just minimize a window. Instead, a user has to move apps to "zones" and switch between them.

But despite a few quirks and issues, the beta shows great promise. It's extremely fast, and it's one of the most up-to-date Linux distributions out there. It's certainly a good match for the netbook market, and it could yet become a popular OS.