Page: growth on Google+ has been great, over one billion items shared

Wondering why Google+ ran out of disk space? Looks like it might be a casualty of growth: in today’s earnings call , Google CEO Larry Page revealed that since its launch, more than ten million people have joined Google+, sharing some one billion items every day. Those numbers not big enough for you?

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Page: growth on Google+ has been great, over one billion items shared

Skype comes to Facebook, and Facebook comes to Skype

It ain’t the first time Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage to announce… something, but today’s shindig is resulting in “something” that’s a bit more exciting for the average user. As rumored, the world’s most notable VoIP service is set to become exceedingly integrated with the service.

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Skype comes to Facebook, and Facebook comes to Skype

HTC Desire tries to catch Gingerbread, can’t keep up

After months attempting to bring the Desire up to speed with Android 2.3 , HTC is throwing in the towel, and it doesn’t have much more than a comments section full of disappointed handset owners to show for it. The UK branch of the phone manufacturer announced via its Facebook page that attempts to upgrade the Nexus One-esque smartphone to Gingerbread have proven fruitless, due to a lack of internal memory on the device.

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HTC Desire tries to catch Gingerbread, can’t keep up

In Iceland, constitutions are written on Facebook

Ah, Iceland — home to the Blue Lagoon, Sigur R

Datamancer Steampunk Laptop now available for anacrhronistic pre-order

We really hope you’ve haven’t grown tired of Steampunk over the years. Over-saturated? Pass

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition gets Android 3.1 update, that much cooler

Nothing like a little software update to get the weekend started right… right?

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition gets Android 3.1 update, that much cooler

Xbox Live adds cloud saves, ‘beacons’ that tell friends what you want to play

These may not have made the cut to appear in Microsoft’s E3 keynote earlier today but gamers will probably appreciate two new features mentioned in a letter from Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten. “Cloud Storage for Game Saves and Live Profiles” is first up and provides access to ones profile and saves from any console, at any time with the option to save to XBL servers instead of a memory unit or hard drive. It all sounds very similar to the service offered for PlayStation Plus but as Joystiq notes, so far exact details are scant.

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Xbox Live adds cloud saves, ‘beacons’ that tell friends what you want to play

Samsung’s AF315 All-in-One 3D PC targets the sophisticated woman and those who aspire to be one

Say what you will about Samsung’s questionable chaebol business practices and KIRFy ways , at least the company’s got the stones to openly target a specific demographic with its marketing pitches. This time Sammy’s new AF315 All-in-One PC is targeting stylish and sophisticated women who’ve moved on from their pink peddle pusher ways . The most notable features are that big 23-inch LCD coupled with Samsung’s switchable active shutter 2D / 3D technology and narrow 11-mm bezel.

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Samsung’s AF315 All-in-One 3D PC targets the sophisticated woman and those who aspire to be one

T-Mobile’s Bobsled voice service returns to Facebook, relationship status now less complicated

We’re still waiting for some more news about its promised mobile apps , but T-Mobile’s new Bobsled sub-brand has now cleared one big hurdle that was thrust in front of it. The company’s initial offering, a VoIP service for Facebook, has returned to the social network a full month after it was “voluntarily and temporarily” pulled during its first week of operation.

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T-Mobile’s Bobsled voice service returns to Facebook, relationship status now less complicated

HTC HD7S coming to AT&T on June 5 for $200

Do we sense just a wee bit of jealousy here? Not to be outdone by Verizon’s Windows Phone darling , AT&T swiftly reacted to the Trophy’s official launch by whipping the long-expected HTC HD7S out on Facebook and stamping a seal of approval on it.

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HTC HD7S coming to AT&T on June 5 for $200

Facebook granted patent for tagging digital media

It’s taken the US Patent and Trademark Office four and half years to consider it, but Facebook now finally has a patent on one of its central features: photo tagging . Applied for in October 2006 and just granted this week, this legal doc gives Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of his buddies credit for designing a method for identifying users in “a selection of an item of digital media.” That could be photos, video, audio, or text — the main drive of the patent is that it lets people associate a given chunk of media with a person and inform others of this association.

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Facebook granted patent for tagging digital media

Bezos says ‘stay tuned’ on potential Amazon tablet

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t confirm a Samsung-built tablet today, but he’s not saying no — in fact, the tell-it-like-it-is founder of the massive e-tailer suggested quite the opposite in an interview with Consumer Reports . “Stay tuned” was the answer, and then Bezos reportedly told the publication that if such a device were on the way, it would be complimentary to Amazon’s existing Kindle e-reader, as Bezos doesn’t want anything to disturb the market for that “dedicated reading device.” If we were to read between the lines — which is often a bad idea — we’d say that could pave the way for an Amazon tablet to launch without a sunlight-readable screen , but it could just be that a tablet would be pricier, while the Kindle would remain relatively cheap.

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Bezos says ‘stay tuned’ on potential Amazon tablet

Screen Grabs: Cisco Cius plays bad cop on NCIS: Los Angeles (video)

Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dot com. Cisco may be aiming for the business crowd , but if we hold to NCIS: Los Angeles ‘ golden standard of real-world gadget application, the Cius tabletphone is going to revolutionize interrogation.

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Screen Grabs: Cisco Cius plays bad cop on NCIS: Los Angeles (video)

Acoustic Alarm ditches the snooze button for strings

There’s a long history of alarm clocks that promise a better way of waking you up in the morning, but few quite like this Acoustic Alarm built by designer Jamie McMahon. As you can see, it’s not technically an alarm clock , but it does have an alarm of sorts: four tunable strings that are plucked using a spinning guitar pick. Unfortuntunately, this one’s stictly one of a kind for the time being, but it does actually exist in prototype form — made of birch plywood, walnut and stainless steel, no less — and you can check it out in action in the video after the break

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Acoustic Alarm ditches the snooze button for strings

BlackBerry PlayBook to get Video Chat and Facebook apps in May

Who’s going to get the very first “tablet-optimized” Facebook app ? Why, it’s RIM and the PlayBook ! The Canadian company has today revealed it’s bringing a native Facebook app to its 7-inch, QNX-based slate, which will also be joined by a new Video Chat application

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BlackBerry PlayBook to get Video Chat and Facebook apps in May

Royal wedding livestream breaks hearts, records

No frogs transformed into princes and no wicked stepmothers were vanquished — not on camera, at least — but today’s royal wedding managed to capture the world’s imagination. Thanks to partnerships with CBS, the Associated Press, UK Press Association, and Entertainment Tonight , the marriage between Prince William and Kate Middleton broke viewing records on Livestream.com, maxing out at 300,000 simultaneous viewers and a total of “at least 2 million” unique users, according to Max Haot, the site’s CEO. We reached out to YouTube and Facebook to see how they did on the streaming front, but neither site has a finally tally — though a Facebook spokesperson did tell us that 6,819,072 people have commented on the wedding in the past 24 hours.

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Royal wedding livestream breaks hearts, records

Visualized: ring around the world of data center power usage

Facebook may have recently boasted about how energy efficient its data centers are, but it is still Facebook, and that means it consumes plenty of power regardless — more than anyone else, in fact, according to Peer1′s recent survey of the world’s most visited websites. As you can see above, that bit of data has also been conveniently visualized by the company in a colorful chart (with a noticeable lack of green), and there’s plenty more details where that came from for you to dive into in the infographic linked below

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Visualized: ring around the world of data center power usage

Facebook’s Open Compute Project shares plans for energy-efficient data center

We know, you’ve seen an awful lot of Zuckerberg and crew here lately, and the Facebook news just keeps rolling in. This time the social networking giant is doing some sharing of a different sort by offering public access to the specifications and best practices behind its new, more efficient data center in Prineville, Oregon.

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Facebook’s Open Compute Project shares plans for energy-efficient data center

US Homeland Security Department planning to use Facebook, Twitter for terrorism alerts

It looks like we finally know what the US Department of Homeland Security plans to use instead of the now infamous color-coded terrorism alert system. According to a draft document obtained by the Associated Press , the department’s new system will simply have two levels of alerts — “elevated” and “imminent” — and it seems those warnings will even be published online using Facebook and Twitter “when appropriate.” There’s no word as to exactly how those alerts will be published, however, or any indication that the two companies have actually committed to aiding the department in any way, for that matter. We should know more soon enough, though — the new system is expected to be in place by April 27th.

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US Homeland Security Department planning to use Facebook, Twitter for terrorism alerts

Weekly Wrap-up: Goodbye Data.gov, Hating Bieber’s ‘Baby’, Facebook Depression? and More…

It was two short, short years ago that the Obama administration thrilled data and transparency wonks by launching Data.gov , USASpending.gov and a number of other ambitious sites. But as Marshall Kirkpatrick reported in our top story this week, Congress is now planning to eliminate the sites’ funding. There’s a push to save them ( check the story for the updates), but I have a sinking feeling that it was just too good to last

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Weekly Wrap-up: Goodbye Data.gov, Hating Bieber’s ‘Baby’, Facebook Depression? and More…