Facebook will officially begin trading at $38 per share on Friday morning in what will be the biggest IPO ever from an internet company.

After months of speculation, and a week of last minute adjustments from Facebook, Friday's listing on the NASDAQ index will raise $16 billion for Mark Zuckerberg's company.

The CEO himself, who founded the company in his Harvard dorm, is expected to become an instant billionaire, selling over 30m shares to net over $1.1bn.

The $38 shares, which will be available to buy to the public, will see the company valued at a staggering $104 billion overall, with $81 market capitalisation.

Dwarfing Google

The $16 billion-valued IPO dwarfs the previous mark achieved by an internet company.

Google hit the stock market in 2004 in the years following the dotcom bust, and raised $1.67bn.

Facebook's offering, however, is in a completely different stratosphere.

Google has continued its quest make Google+ more visible across all of its services by further integrating it within Gmail.

The upgrade to Google's webmail client improves on the initial implementation of the social network back in December, which saw Circles appear within emails and on the sidebar.

Now, says Google on its company blog: "When you select a circle, you'll now see profile photos of people in that circle at the top right of the page.

"Plus, when you click on these images you'll be taken directly to search results with contact details."

Super search box

The company has also added a new feature which allows you to search for Circles conversations within the Gmail search bar.

Users can find messages by typing "circle:[circle name]" into the search box and you can find mails from anyone in your circles contacts by typing "has:circle".

Google has also added some useful functionality based around contacts. When you type a person's name into the search box all of their contact details will appear at the top of the page.

Google has taken its first tentative steps into the world of semantic search, with the launch of the Knowledge Graph.

The search giant constantly tweaks the way its service works but the addition of semantic search to its search engine is the biggest change yet for the search giant.

Instead of pushing people to other sites, it has begun adding information to its own site – something which could have implications for sites such as Wikipedia.

Google reckons it has 3.5 billion facts about 500 million objects, all of which users should start seeing if they search for things like a movie, a famous face or landmark.

Search me

"We've always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want," said Amit Singhal, SVP of engineering, at Google.

"And we can now sometimes help answer your next question before you've asked it, because the facts we show are informed by what other people have searched for."

Yahoo's claim that Facebook filed some of its patents fraudulently has come back to bite it as Facebook's lawyers not only prove that the patent is legit, but also that no one has ever thought to actually check the available records until now.

It's embarrassment all round, as Yahoo alleged that a sworn declaration that should have existed didn't exist. But it does exist.

As patent dispute expert Florian Mueller succinctly puts it, "Yahoo's lawyers alleged deception when they simply failed to do their job. Facebook obtained the record and provided it to the court, and in the process found out that nobody had even accessed (!) the record before."

This article probably doesn't exist

You may recall that Yahoo reckons it actually came up with the basic idea behind Facebook and patented it back when a face book was just a book full of portraits and not the multi-billion dollar social network we know and sometimes love today.

The patents in question today relate to systems for 'controlled distribution of user profiles over a network'. It was actually a guy named Chris Chea who invented the system – or at least filed the patent for it – and Yahoo says his patent is invalid because a second inventor, Joseph Liauw, was named in a first document but left out of a second.

Apparently Liauw was named in error, which Yahoo latched on to and said the only way he should have been dropped from that second document is with a signed affidavit saying he was erroneously included in the first place, otherwise the patent is invalid.

Unfortunately for some researcher at Yahoo's law firm, the affidavit was procured and included back in 2001 – a fact that didn't come to light until after Yahoo said that Facebook had been "false and deceptive because no Oath or Declaration by Mr Liauw was ever submitted."

And why didn't it come to light? Because no one at Yahoo ever thought to look; Facebook's lawyers note that no other request for access to the relevant file had been made when they went looking for the affidavit themselves.

So, basically, it's a storm in a teacup because Yahoo didn't do its research properly. What an embarrassing development in a patent dispute that many already saw as embarrassing for Yahoo in the first place.

His name is Rio - The England team has been announced and while it may well be the most uninspiring line-up of humans since the reforming of Steps, the one bit of interest is a lack of Rio Ferdinand. If Hodgson had done his homework – and by homework, we mean contacting EA Sports and stealing its Player Performance Index (PPI) – then he would have kept Ferdinand in the squad and also called up the likes of Ryan Shawcross and Michael Carrick.

Unfortunately for us, he's a PES fan so all our players are from the likes of Man Blue, Man Red, Northluck City and Merseyside Red. [Mirror]

Max power - We have some good news if your name is Max or Maxine and like a bit of Payne. Videogame comparison site Playr2.com is offering you a chance to win Max Payne 3 – all you have to do is go to its Facebook page this Friday and write 'I am Max Payne' on their wall. You could probably try this on the high-street too but there's a massive chance you will get carted away to the funny farm. [Facebook]

Troll with it - A Brighton woman has decided to get her own back on internet trolls by going to the High Court to force Facebook to unmask the blighters that are sullying her name online. We are guessing this isn't going to be done in a Blind Date style scenario – which is a shame as we would pay good money to see a troll unmasked in this way, maybe under a bridge or something. [BBC]

Wee Jobby - A book on Steve Jobs has arrived which is meant to teach kids all about the history of Apple and explain just who the computing CEO was. We're not sure many will get past the front cover, though, as one look at that forehead and you are forever transfixed. But if you do, it's ready to buy on Amazon. [9to5Mac]

Toon town - If cartoon Jobs hasn't scared your children off tech forever, then they may want to take a look at MagicTown.com - a new destination for interactive picture books for kids that also doubles up as a virtual world.

The car's not the star - In what has got to be one of the most short-sighted moves ever in the history of online, General Motors has decided to pull its advertising on Facebook due to low sales. Now, advertising a car on Facebook may not offer a click to buy opportunity but just because you don't see immediate sales doesn't mean the idea of buying a GM car hasn't been baked into a user's conscience. Facebook will be hoping this isn't a trend, given its imminent IPO. [Telegraph]

Dino-sore - Dinosaurs, according to Stephen Spielberg, are a pesky bunch of beggars that will eat you up even when you are relaxing on the toilet. But the truth about these majestic animals is a little more sad: some dinos suffered from a form of arthritis – yes, the same as the condition your gran has and they didn't even have zimmerframes or copious amounts of tea to help them cope. [Telegraph]

3G gets a speed boost - We may not have 4G in the UK yet – and for your information Apple, we don't use the word cellular either – but O2 is hoping to combat this problem by introducing 3G plus wings, or DC-HSPA (dual-cell high speed packet access) to give it its hip-hop name. This does boost speed apparently and O2 reckons you may well be able to get 42Mbps out of the new service. But this could be akin to putting go-faster stripes on a Mini, depending on what your O2 coverage is like. [CNET UK]

Code to nowhere - The first-ever QR World Expo is set to take place at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London and will bring togm;M;M; #GE;RK – er, sorry, we fell asleep on our keyboard writing that. But if QR codes are your thing, then you may want to head over to www.qrworldexpo.com for more info. Yawn.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright - Intel has posted the strangest video ever on its site. We are guessing it is there to promote the Ultrabook brand but we have no idea what a dancing tiger has to do with superslim laptops. Bizarre but worth a watch. [YouTube]

Forget your plain-old fibre broadband connections – scientists in Japan have managed transfer rates of 3Gbps using T-ray technology.

Still in its infancy, T-rays use the terahertz frequency band that is tipped to be the future of data transfer because of the amount of space available for moving around large packets of data.

Due to the sheer volume of devices latching on to lower-frequency bands, scientists have been looking to higher frequencies – the T-ray band runs from 300GHz all the way up to 3THz – to accommodate future wireless data transmission.

Uncharted territory

At the moment, though, this area of bandwidth is completely unregulated and the technology needed to prod around at these frequencies is cumbersome and expensive.

This hasn't stopped scientists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology testing the bandwidth and managing to demo a 3Gbps transmission at 542GHz.

Compared this to the last demo, which squeezed out 1.5Gbps back in November, big steps are being made in this area.

Interestingly, the bandwidth has the potential to support data rates of 100Gbps – considering average broadband speeds in the UK are 4.9Mbps, these speeds are almost beyond comprehension.

All of this was made possible due to a 1mm square device called a resonant tunnelling diode.

While we can only dream about these speeds in the home – the technology only works within a 10 metre range – the future of Wi-Fi is getting closer with the new standard (802.11ac) expected in 2013 and will be the first Wi-Fi standard to break the GB barrier.

Netgear has just announced a bevy of new routers for the US market that will take advantage of these speeds – namely the R6200 router, and the A6200 adapter.

No word on whether or not the devices will pipe out the 56k dial-up tone for nostalgia's sake.

Look out! The browser wars are back! That's what analysts at Macquarie Capital reckon, anyway: in a note titled "The Browser Wars Part Deux" they suggest that "Google Chrome Browser for iOS is Coming".

It may well be. Will anyone bar a few Google fans care?

My guess is no.

Macquarie makes several arguments for Chrome on iOS, and I reckon one of them is right and the rest are wrong. I'll start with the right one first: a Chrome browser on iOS could reduce the amount of cash Google has to give Apple for all those Mobile Safari search queries. That's true, but the other arguments - that Chrome did well on PC so it can do well on iOS, and that Chrome ads really shifted copies on PC so they'll do the same on iOS, that reviews of Chrome on Android are quite positive - don't spell Safari Killer to me.

Macquarie rightly says that Chrome on the desktop has done very well and reduced the money Google pays out to other browser makers for searches, which is significant: Firefox only lives because of Google search money. However, iOS isn't the same as 1990s-era Windows, and when Macquarie says that "there are many parallels to the browser wars of the late 1990s" I think they're wrong.

That was then, this is now

People jumped from Netscape to Internet Explorer (and back again) for all kinds of reasons, but the main reason Internet Explorer triumphed in the first browser war was because Microsoft stuck it into every copy of Windows. If history's repeating, then Google is on the losing side here: it's trying to get a foothold on somebody else's OS, an OS that already ships with a perfectly good browser.

Even if you can get iOS users to download the app, it won't work properly. As Kevin Tofel rightly says on GigaOM, with rival browsers "none of them can be set as the default browser, meaning all links in emails, texts or other apps will always open in Safari, regardless of what other browsers are installed."

Unlike the late 1990s, we're also dealing with relatively mature web technologies nowadays. Firms aren't sticking new features into their browsers and letting a million "best viewed with" icons bloom; today's battlegrounds are standards support and JavaScript performance.

I'm not convinced Google can beat Apple in the speed stakes, and the features Chrome on Android has that Safari doesn't - bookmark and tab syncing, a combined address and search bar and easy private browsing - are hardly earth-shattering or hard to duplicate.

Browsers become popular because other browsers fall out of favour. Internet Explorer was overtaken by Firefox because Microsoft effectively stopped developing it, leaving plenty of room for a better browser; Firefox was overtaken by Chrome because it was getting slow and old while Chrome was blisteringly fast. For Chrome to do well on iOS it really needs Apple to really mess up Safari. How likely is that?

The BBC has unveiled its digital plans for the London 2012 Olympics and it's certainly not doing things by halves, with web, mobile, tablet, desktop, connected TV and regular TV all getting a look in.

Auntie has developed a seriously impressive new website which will be live on the bbc.co.uk/sport website that will give you the option of live streaming one of 24 events in HD at the height of the Games.

You'll also be able to pause, rewind, catch up on previous bouts or races or whatever, switch between live events and check out nifty facts and figures among a multitude of other things.

No escape

The nifty new website is just the beginning though – if you don't happen to be in front of a desktop or laptop computer, there's a new mobile website that will also be streaming live HD video (over Wi-Fi and 3G) for your phone or tablet, and mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Now that it's the future, the BBC has also built an HTML5 connected TV app that will be available on Sony smart TVs and the Sony PlayStation 3 which will provide the 24 live HD video streams as well.

No word on Xbox getting a similar app though – you'll have to rely on the catch up services provided by iPlayer.

And, of course, if you're old school then you can just turn on the television and check out BBC One which will be running Olympics coverage with breaks only for the news (when the Games action will switch to BBC Two) and BBC Three, as well as the alternative red button services and two specially-created Freeview channels.

That's not to mention the BBC One HD coverage which will include some events broadcast in 3D. A dedicated digital radio station, Radio 5 Live Olympics Extra, rounds off the options nicely.

What this amounts to is 2,500 hours of content being broadcast across the platforms - that's 1,000 more hours than we saw coming out of Beijing 2008.

And if you don't like the Olympics then there is a bit of stuff for you on BBC 2 but, to be honest, you're best off getting a movie streaming account or emigrating.

An ex-Microsoft exec has spoken out about the company's Xbox success and relative Zune failings, saying part of the blame lies with the music industry.

Robbie Bach, who headed up Microsoft's entertainment division during the early days of Xbox and Zune, was speaking at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network event in Seattle.

Talking about how the Zune team tried to replicate the Xbox's success by working with retail and game publishing partners, Bach said, "It's not like we didn't try but — I don't know how to say this politely — the music industry just didn't get it."

The day the music died

"They just didn't figure out that being dependent on Apple was bad for them," he continued.

"And they were so hooked on the drug of what Apple was supplying them that they couldn't see past that to realize that they needed something else to actually drive their business.

"The label business, the music industry, has never recovered from that."

But he does admit that it wasn't all down to the music biz being unable to see past the big shiny iPod in front of them:

"The portable music market is gone and it was already leaving when we started.

"We just weren't brave enough, honestly, and we ended up chasing Apple with a product that actually wasn't a bad product, but it was still a chasing product, and there wasn't a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get that thing."

Apple iTV rumours: what you need to know

We love our new Full HD Apple TV, but we're not sure Apple does: the firm's more interested in getting iPads into your living room than Apple TVs under your flat screen.

Apple says the Apple TV is a hobby, but it turns out the company is thinking bigger. Much, much bigger: it wants to sell you the entire TV set, not a little box beneath it.

In a 15 February 2012 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted again at the release of something bigger and better than the current Apple TV (credit CNN Money).

"With Apple TV, however, despite the barriers in [the TV set top box] market, for those of us who use it, we've always thought there was something there. And that if we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, then we might find something that was larger.

"For those people that have it right now, the customer satisfaction is off the charts. But we need something that could go more main market for it to be a serious category."

Here's all the rumours and speculation surrounding the Apple iTV, which some have also claimed may end up with the surely unlikely name of the Apple iPanel.

The latest reports point at a late 2012 Apple iTV release date.

Apple iTV design

Forget the current hockey-puck form factor: the rumour mill is unanimous that the next Apple TV will be a proper TV.

The Telegraph says that "sources within the company" say that Jeff Robbin, the man who helped create the iPod, is leading the team. Apple has seemingly denied rumours that it is working with French designer Philippe Starck. Remember when he worked with Microsoft on a mouse?

However, it appears that Starck was actually working on another project, a yacht, with Steve Jobs before his death.

On 13 May 2011, we reported that Apple is rumoured to be in talks to buy TV manufacturer Loewe. AppleInsider wrote that talks have entered the advanced stages and Loewe is expected to make a decision on Apple's offer within the next week.

Apple iTV specifications and display

Engadget predicts an A5 processor and 1080p video - neither of which are a huge surprise, granted.

Australian tech site Smarthouse says that the Apple iTV will come in three sizes, including 32-inch and 55-inch models.

Sources at "a major Japanese company who are involved in manufacturing the TV" reckon the sets will have the same processor as the forthcoming iPad 3, which presumably means an Apple A6.

Smarthouse isn't usually the go-to site for Apple rumours, but its report echoes similar claims by respected Apple analyst Gene Munster, who told the recent Future of Media conference that Apple will make its TV in a range of sizes.

The supply chain for the iTV is set to get going during the first quarter of 2012. That's according to Digitimes on 27 December 2011.

March 2012 rumours pointed at Sharp being the manufacturing partner and that production would start in May. SlashGear says work on components is already under way. In mid April, Sharp announced it had begun production of 32-inch HI-DPI LCD panels at its Kameyama Plant No. 2 - could these be the panels destined for the Apple iTV?

Apple contractor Foxconn's parent company has made a rather large investment in Sharp - does this indicate something we wonder?

Apple iTV operating system

As with the Apple TV, any iTV is likely to run iOS, albeit in slightly disguised form. Compatibility with other iOS devices is a given: current Apple TVs already accept video streamed via AirPlay and access shared iTunes libraries. We'll be amazed if the iTV doesn't get apps.

Apple iTV and iCloud

Steve Jobs told his biographer: "I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

Apple iTV remote control

Munster says the iTV will come with an ordinary remote control, and will be controllable with iPhones, iPod touches and iPads, but the real remote control will be Siri.

Apple's voice recognition system will be the heart of the new Apple TV, enabling you to choose channels and control the TV's functions with voice alone. That means " the simplest user interface you could imagine" is voice.

However, according to a new patent filed in March 2012, Apple has come up with the design for an advanced universal remote that would also be compatible with your iPhone and iPad.

Apple iTV AirPlay mirroring

After AirPlay mirroring from Mac to Apple TV was present in the developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, it's not a great leap to suggest that the Apple iTV could mirror the display of your Mac or iPad wirelessly too. AirPlay mirroring is now 1080p with the new iPad and new Apple TV.

Apple iTV programmes

While the iTV will get content from iTunes and iCloud, it's not going to be completely separate from current TV broadcasters: Munster says that you'll still need a cable TV subscription and decoder because Apple doesn't have enough content.

We're not sure whether it would play nicely with Freeview and Freeview HD here in the UK, but perhaps a DVB-T compatible unit will arrive as part of a second generation.

As of 6 March 2012, rumours were continually doing the rounds that, as the New York Post reports, Apple is planning to launch a music streaming service this side of Christmas.

On 13 March, Les Moonves, who is CEO at CBS, says he was the recipient of a pitch from Steve Jobs regarding his network's participation in a subscription-based service, but turned him down.

His reasoning? Moonves says he was worried about damaging the network's existing revenue streams through broadcast and cable television.

Apple iTV price

Gene Munster reckons that the iTV will be twice the price of a similarly sized TV. Ouch. However, new March 2012 rumours point at a subsidised launch - courtesy of various partners.

Apple iTV picture quality

If the iTV does appear, it won't leave manufacturers quaking in their boots. That's according to Samsung's Chris Moseley who told Pocket-Lint in early February 2012 that the firm isn't overly concerned with what Apple launches if it decides to enter the TV market

"We've not seen what they've done but what we can say is that they don't have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category," he says.

"They don't have the best scaling engine in the world and they don't have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else."

Apple iTV gaming and apps

Although most of the rumours so far have been about the hardware involved in the iTV, gaming may be a major focus of the new device. Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted in mid-April at the HQ of Valve Software, the company behind gaming platform Steam. Some rumours are drawing more from this meeting, saying the Apple could be producing a Kinect-style gesture-based console. But this is likely to be part and parcel of the iTV.

Apple iTV release date

Most rumours predict a 2013 Apple iTV release date, but the more optimistic observers think Apple won't want to miss 2012's Christmas shopping season. The New York Times says that price, not technology, is the problem: Apple is waiting for the cost of large LCD panels to fall further before building iTVs.