It's been a good year for Facebook. Last fall, the social network opened its doors to everyone to make to grow beyond its stagnating user base of around 10 million. Then about 10 days ago, the company, now 25 million strong, gave developers the freedom to use Facebook's platform to either create applications for the social network or to develop their own networks using the company's free tools, a move that has been met with almost universal applause. Why? Because development and usage have already exploded beyond 300 apps. For example, music network iLike, a competitor to CBS' …

The video game industry is losing the attention war. The funny thing is, interactive entertainment is as popular as ever, but video games--as in the major consoles and their game publishers--are now a sliver in a much larger interactive pie. The industry is "on the road to irrelevance." Just look at the problems: Electronics Arts, the industry's biggest publisher, threw out its CEO, cut back its sales forecast, then admitted to picking the wrong winner in failing to develop enough titles for the Nintendo Wii. To that point, so did everyone else, as indicated by the resulting crisis …

Reuters takes a closer look at Google Gears, the new Google application programming interface. Gears will add and improve upon existing APIs so developers can make Google's tools better. The significant thing about this piece of software is that it runs Web applications offline, which would enable users to work on Web content on planes, trains or anywhere else in the world without Internet access. "The Web is great, but it doesn't work very well when you don't have a Web connection," Jeff Huber, Google's vice president of engineering, said. "Gears addresses a functional gap on the Web." …

The future of funny is online. Who needs standup comedy when the layman can easily produce something more polished and post it to the Web? Who needs network television and its censorship rules when a guy like Will Ferrell can reach 30 million people with a video clip that took 45 minutes to produce? Of course, it helps that Ferrell, who commands about $20 million a picture, is a huge celebrity, but video-sharing sites like YouTube and MySpace have shown that anyone who creates something generally appealing can have success. Web video production is easy to do, quick …

Perhaps it will later be known as "Google Day," as interviews with CEO Schmidt and YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen dominated the D5 conference in California. On Thursday, the video-sharing site, which is being sued for $1 billion by Viacom for copyright infringement, received the blessing of EMI Group, the latest major record company to let users watch and play with their music content. Like the other music deals, users can create their own music videos or dub uploaded video clips with songs from the record label. Ad revenues will be split between YouTube and EMI. As …

Artful dodger Eric Schmidt spoke publicly about Google's defense of the $1 billion lawsuit Viacom lobbed at the search giant in March. There were few revelations from the canny Google CEO, who repeatedly cited the Digital Millenium Copyright Act as the search giant's core defense against the allegations of copyright infringement. But there was more than a hint of condescension in Schmidt's assertion that the $1 billion suit "was probably just a mistake." Err, how do you mean? "Had they simply waited, the tools would have been available," he added, when a Wall Street Journal reporter asked, "Why should …

Why did CBS Corp. shell out a hefty $280 million for a small-time music social networking firm? Pitfalls abound. For one thing, social networking--even music social networking--is crowded. For another, the entire Web radio industry is facing a royalty rate hike of epic proportions. Many insiders believe the Last.fm deal is somehow linked to the fact that CBS owns 144 terrestrial radio stations in 50 major markets, a business that pulled in $397 million in the first three months of the year. That figure represents a 9% decline from last year. Indeed, tomorrow's adults are growing up …