General Motors, the world’s biggest car maker, no longer wants to advertise on Facebook, as the social network prepares for an initial public offering. GM said this week that while it will continue to use the free Facebook services but not use of paid advertising on the site. GM executives thought Facebook ads had little effect on consumers’ car purchases.

One of the main problems advertising on Facebook and other social media platforms is that there are no clear set of tools that show return on investment. If GM is doing this, others might be thinking the same thing too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6twFHqJ03_k

This is a new single shot image of Earth taken 22,369 miles away by the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1. This Earth photo is very different to any you have seen before as the satellite uses visible and infrared wavelengths of light to gather the colours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1PzYi8jmuo

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working on technology that will be able to harness that power to generate electricity from viruses.

From press releaase:
The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.

Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division said, “More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics”.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference will be on June 11 in San Francisco. And it is now rumoured that Apple will be revealing a new thinner MacBook Pro running Intel Ivy Bridge chipset and also announce the release date for Mac OS X Mountain Lion, iCloud services and new IOS features.

Over in Australia, due to complaints and legal actions, Apple has removed 4G advertising for iPads. Apple website is now renaming 4G to “cellular”.

Apple’s iPad 3 has 4G onboard, but this is designed to work only with 4G networks in North America. It is incompatible with 4G networks in other parts of the world, including Asia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT2GVm087Fs

Apple might be removing Google Maps from iOS 6 and this will be revealed in Apple WDDC 2012 in June 2012. There will be a new 3-D mapping mode exclusively powered by C3 Technologies, and would provide beautiful, realistic 3-D graphics. This would replace Google Maps’ Street View or satellite view feature. Check out the video about this.

Microsoft is boosting Bing Search with more social networking features to truly take on Google’s dominant search engine. Bing will drill deeper into Facebook’s social network and Twitter’s messaging service but leave out Google+.

Here are the new features of Bing Search:

• Core Search loses many of the social annotations that Bing has added over the years
• Snapshot provides additional information about a particular search listing, without having to leave Bing
• Sidebar serves as a new home for social integration with search

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySwn_1o8zfs

Google has just updated its Google+ iPhone app that features crisper fonts, larger profile pics and a friendlier home-screen. In addition, Google make the stream easier to scan and easier on the eyes, with overlays, gradients and other visual elements.

Features:
- Turn on Instant Upload to sync photos from your phone to a private Google+ album
- Video chat with up to 9 friends with mobile Hangouts in Messenger
- Chat with a friend or all your friends at once with Messenger
- Check out the What’s Hot stream to see trending topics
- View the Nearby stream to see what people near your location are saying

Download the app from iTunes here.

Apple has released an update for OS X Lion to 10.7.4. One of the major bug fixed is for  the FileVault bug where it allows for the creation of a system-wide debug file that displays user credentials including passwords in plain text. Luckily it only affects user  who carried over their FileVault settings from OS X Snow Leopard to Lion.

From Apple:

The 10.7.4 update is recommended for all OS X Lion users and includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac including fixes that:

• Resolve an issue where the “Reopen windows when logging back in” setting is always enabled
• Improve compatibility with certain British third-party USB keyboards
• Address an issue that may prevent files from being saved to a server
• Improve the reliability of copying files to an SMB server

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEBwKO4RFOU

The most anticipated video game for 2012, Bioshock Infinite has been postponed to February 26, 2013. Take-Two Interactive Software said “BioShock Infinite is a very big game, and we’re doing things that no one has ever done in a first-person shooter. Need to allow developers at Take-Two studio Irrational Games time to make improvements and refinements.”

Bioshock Infinite game will allow user to play in a floating steampunk metropolis which is different from the underwater utopian setting of BioShock and BioShock 2.