It is expected that Facebook will announce that it has passed the 500 million user mark later this week. Just over a year ago the company announced that it had reached a 250 million user base meaning that it’s pretty much doubled in size over the last year.
The growth rate is incredible and when detailed along side their images section of the site and the numbers of pictures uploaded each day, it’s just mind blowing. Early on this month, Facebook face detection was added and with that announcement we were told that 100 million pictures a day were uploaded to the social networking site. [Read more…]
Apple [AAPL] held a press conference on Friday to discuss the 
Mixed in with the 
Apple [AAPL] held a press conference today to explain the problems of the iPhone 4 specifically relating to the antenna. The company has been running tests and comparisons for the last 22 days to get to the bottom of what’s actually happening. A few numbers were shown which included that the iPhone 4 drops slightly more calls than the iPhone 3GS (ie, less than 1 more call per 100) and that all smartphones have problems when holding them. When speaking about those who have called AppleCare the numbers were just 0.55% of iPhone 4 owners with AppleCare service. Returns wise the company has seen just 1.7% of iPhone 4’s returned which is lower than the 6% of the 3GS.
Brother has created a new battery sized generator that is capable of charging another AAA battery attached to it. The battery charged through vibration and when you shake the battery it creates enough power to charge the battery. The battery sized generator also comes in a AA battery size.
Apple [AAPL] could be updating the MacBook Air this year. We are hearing that Apple could be shrinking down the 13.3 inch screen down to 11.6 inches putting it closer to netbook territory. We also hear that a new low-voltage Core processor could be added along with a new GPU.
The Elonex 710EB eBook reader with colour screen is now available for pre-order in the UK. The device has an LED backlit screen measuring 7 inches which is a change from the usual e-ink we see on most eBook Readers. The LCD screen does drain battery life though from the usual “days or weeks” that we see with e-Ink down to 8 hours on a single charge.
We have heard quite a bit about an iPhone 4 jailbreak. We hear that one has successfully been made and that the team are just waiting for Apple [AAPL] to release the next firmware update due out any time now.
Canon has announced a new VIXIA flash memory based camcorder called the Canon VIXIA HF M32 that comes with 64GB of internal flash memory and supports 32GB to 2TB SDXC memory cards for additional storage.
When Apple [AAPL] announced iOS 4 they said a large number of enhancements had been included. These of course include multitasking as well as many other popular features that have been publicly known. Another one of the new features is called iPod Out which appears to have been overlooked somewhat. Thankfully, BMW has an all seeing eye and spotted the new feature allowing them to create quite a decent interface for their cars.
Microsoft [MSFT] and NASA have been working together to create an interactive Mars tour. The tour took three years of data crunching on 100 computers to create and is able to show Mars in the highest resolution images available of the planet.
