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Twitter may have just 160 million users now, but co-founder Evan Williams is already eyeing a day when the service caters to a billion.

Williams, who recently gave up the reins as chief executive, made the comment Monday night during an appearance at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Joining him was co-founder Biz Stone as they chatted about Twitter's new design, its lack of censorship, Williams' job shift, and a myriad of other topics, as covered by ZDNet.

On Twitter's new look and feel, the two said they had been prepared for a backlash from users, but … Read more

Attention, all of you who want to learn a second language without leaving your home. Rosetta Stone recently rolled out the next generation of its highly regarded language-learning software, Rosetta Stone Version 4 TOTALe, and we've got a copy of the Level 1-3 package to give away to one lucky winner. And if you win, you get a choice of the Spanish or French package. Your pick.

What does Version 4 TOTALe inlcude? Well, the company says that on top of the Rosetta Stone software, there's now "an entirely new online experience that includes live, interactive coaching … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Twitter on Tuesday unveiled a major redesign of its home page, one its executives say will give users a better, easier, and faster experience.

Though site redesigns are often underwhelming, the new Twitter.com is tantamount to a fundamental relaunch of the popular microblogging service's Web-based interface, mainly because it introduces a new interface build around a second viewing pane in which users will be able to see all kinds of content--from photos and videos to user profiles to geolocation information and more.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams said that the new version of the site (see video below) … Read more

Silicon start-up Smooth-Stone has received $48 million from a syndicate of investors including ARM, Texas Instruments, and Highland Capital Ventures.

Smooth-Stone's goal is to bring the virtues of low-power cell phone technology to servers and, as a result, bring down the staggering power consumption at large data centers. Mega data centers can house tens of thousands of servers and the largest can use between 5 and 20 megawatts of power. One megawatt, equal to 1 million watts, can power about 1,000 homes.

Smooth-Stone joins other start-ups such as U.S. Department of Energy-backed SeaMicro, which is using Intel'… Read more

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--While entertainment is as old as cave paintings and singing around a fire, technology is radically changing the day-to-day lives of filmmakers, actors, musicians, and other entertainers as well as those who consume their work.

That was the takeaway from a panel of entertainers, speaking Tuesday night at the SoHo Lounge here. The panel was part of a Bing event, where Microsoft announced a bunch of new entertainment features for its search engine, including the ability to watch more TV shows and listen to full-length songs from within Bing.

Some participants were clearly more on their host'… Read more

Driving while high may not be as bad as once thought. A study conducted by Hartford Hospital and the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine found that smoking marijuana has little effect on driving skills.

The study was published in the March issue of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, according to an article in The Hartford Courant.

Using legal marijuana supplied by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the University of Mississippi, researchers tested 85 participants under the influence on their ability to avoid crash-causing traffic incidents, such as avoiding a driver entering an intersection illegally or deciding … Read more

The Rolling Stones' 1972 masterpiece "Exile on Main Street" is being re-released today in a new remastered version, complete with 10 outtakes or alternate versions that have never been released before. A friend posted the question on Facebook: "should I buy the remastered vinyl version?" The answer to this question is more complicated than you might expect: there are five different versions of the re-release available.

If you like rock music (or country or soul) and don't know "Exile," then I would start with the Original Recording Remastered. It's the original album … Read more

Another lawsuit challenging Google's policy of allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on keywords that are also trademarks has been dismissed.

Without comment, Judge Gerald Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia threw out a lawsuit Wednesday filed by language software company Rosetta Stone in a victory for Google before it ever came to trial. Rosetta Stone had originally filed suit hoping to stop Google from selling trademarked keywords to companies that did not hold the rights to those trademarks, a practice which Rosetta Stone argued has confused consumers and harmed its brand.

Similar cases have been filed … Read more

Yet more ways for the dearly departed to reach out from beyond the grave. We've seen memorializing on Facebook, even tombstones with video screens where the dead get to speak their piece in an endless loop. Now, there's yet another way to communicate with the dead, high-tech style, minus the abracadabra of seances and mediums.

A Phoenix-based company called Objecs has created the Memorial RosettaStone Tablet, which makes it possible for cemetery visitors to access text and images merely by touching a cell phone to a headstone.

Bearing the tagline "be discovered--3,200 years from today," the product is available as an iPod-size stone tablet or a coin-size stick-on polymer tag that adheres directly to the headstone. It's microchip-enabled and uses NFC (near-field communication, a subset of RFID) to stream personal information, photos, and even messages from the deceased lying beneath to any Internet-enabled mobile device. … Read more