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Facebook shares will start trading on May 18.

The social networking giant has set the share price between $28 and $35 per share, which values the company at between $85 billion and $95 billion - the largest ever IPO for an Internet firm. In 2004, Google had made waves with its $23 billion valuation.

Facebook counts 900 million users around the world, and recorded a profit of $1 billion last year. More than 10 percent of the company is expected to be sold when it is listed on the Nasdaq, raising up to $12 billion. It will rival the market share of Amazon and Cisco Systems.

The social network is to invest heavily in mobile services over the coming years as it aims to secure its long-term growth, after recently reporting its first revenue drop between quarters for two years.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will own 31.5% of Facebook's outstanding stock, and will control 57.3 percent of the voting power through his shares and voting agreements with other stockholders.

Samsung has unveiled their latest, the Galaxy S III, today during an international event.

As expected, the flagship device will have a large 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display and be run by an extremely powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor.

On the design side, fans of the Galaxy S II should be familiar with the new device, which keeps a similar design and keeps the physical home button (although it has been hidden slightly). Overall, the device is light, as well, weighing in at 4.7 ounces whilst being just 8.6mm thick.

Unlike rumors, the device does not have a 12MP camera but has an 8MP sensor similar to the Galaxy Note. The new pre-installed camera app will include support for dual still/video capture and face tagging for existing contacts.

Like the Galaxy Nexus, the new screen is PenTile (which some will complain about) but it does have 306ppi density and a large 720p resolution. The panel itself is Gorilla Glass 2, which should protect the screen from most harm.

Toshiba has priced their massive 13-inch Excite tablet.

The device will go on sale next month with a large $650 base price tag, but the price does make sense given the extra display space.

For the base price, you get the 1600x900 resolution device, 1GB RAM, a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and 32GB internal storage. For $750, you get the 64 GB model. As expected, because of the size of the tablet, it is pretty heavy, as well, at 2.2 pounds. On the other end of the spectrum, Toshiba kept the tablet slim, at 0.4-inches thin.

On the port end, the Excite 13 has an SD slot, MicroHDMI and two USB ports.

A German court has ruled today that Microsoft has infringed on a number of Motorola Mobility patents.

The ruling also demands Microsoft remove their Xbox 360 console and Windows 7 OS from the entire German market.

Despite the ruling, the Redmond giant has been granted a preliminary injunction in the U.S. that will prevent Motorola from enforcing any court orders from other nations. This injunction will likely keep the products on shelves for the future.

Says Microsoft: "Motorola is prohibited from acting on today's decision, and our business in Germany will continue as usual while we appeal this decision and pursue the fundamental issue of Motorola's broken promise."

This week's decision was part of the much larger smartphone patent epic being fought by Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and others. German judge Holger Kircher noted today that Microsoft breached an agreement with Motorola Mobility in "using certain video-compression software in products including Windows 7 and Xbox."

Today's most interesting gaming world rumor is that of the $99 Xbox 360.

Supposedly, Microsoft is looking to begin offering the 4GB Arcade model of the popular console, along with the Kinect motion control system, for just $99 with one large catch.

That catch is buyers must sign up for a two-year Xbox Live Gold contract, at $15 per month. Besides access to the Live service, there may also be added content included, such as Xfinity TV on Demand, as part of the subscription.

If you decide to break the contract early, just like with a smartphone contract, there will be an early termination penalty.

The subsidized console will be something new for the industry, taking cues from the mobile phone world. The current 4GB Xbox 360 (with Kinect) bundle sells for $300, and Xbox Live Gold (two year's worth) can be found for anywhere between $100-$120. If you buy the subsidized console, with the contract, the final price ends up being more expensive at $460, but you have two years to pay off that money, which some people may find preferable.

Google has announced today that one of its "Google Labs" experiments has graduated to the real-world, "Automatic Message Translation."

The search giant will "leverage" Google's translations servers for all emails that may be received in a foreign language. As an example, the company says a business partner in Shanghai could write an email in Mandarin and that message will automatically come to your inbox translated (alongside the original version).

If you do not want auto-translation, Google leaves that option available as well to those that are bilingual (or multilingual). There is also the option for each language to select "do not translate."

Google says they got great positive feedback from their business users on the feature and has now extended it to all its 300 million Gmail users.

The rollout starts today.

The once-ultra popular community news sharing site Digg is expected to be sold to the Washington Post sometime in the near future.

Talks have gotten "serious" and Digg has been looking for a buyer for the last three months.

If the talks were to break down, however, the site has been shopping itself to other large news outlets including CNN. CNN is a good match, as well, as it recently purchased iPad mobile news magazine Zite.

Digg, which was once one of the most popular sites on the web for news aggregation and commentary, has recently lost favor to Reddit. In 2010, Digg redesigned its site, angering long time readers, and traffic has never recovered.

If the deal were to go through, the initial deal would only be for Digg's staff, say sources, not their technology.

Does everyone remember Flashback, the malware infecting hundreds of thousands of Macs? Well it appears the operators of the trojan are netting over $10,000 per day from its victims.

The news comes via Symantec, the security firm behind Norton.

At its peak, over 600,000 Macs were infected with Flashback but after a media push and Apple's release of a patch for a certain vulnerability, that number has been cut in half, at least.

Despite Apple's proactive stance, there was still a six-week delay before a patch was released, giving the malware ample time to infect more devices. "This window of opportunity helped the Flashback Trojan to infect Macs on a large scale. The Flashback authors took advantage of the gap between Oracle and Apple's patches by exploiting vulnerable websites using WordPress and Joomla to add malicious code snippets," adds Symantec.

Because the malware redirects users to websites created by the operators, who receive money from advertisers, the scheme is bringing in about $10,000 a day in revenue, notes Symantec.

For more information on the malware, check our previous reports here and here.

LG will stop producing Windows Phone devices for the time being, instead using that extra capital and focus on more Android phones.

The company will "continue research and development efforts" on the mobile OS, however.

Among the handful of WP7 devices it makes, the recent Optimus 7 has caught a bit of popularity. However, the company notes that WP7 only controls 2 percent of the global smartphone market, not enough to warrant the capital outlay.

Says a spokesperson: "The total unit[s] of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure."

In 2009, LG made a strong commitment to the platform, setting a roadmap with 26 WP7 phones for 2012, alone. That has clearly changed in a short period as the OS has not yet reached critical mass adoption.

'Angry Birds Space' has hit another milestone, 50 million downloads in just 35 days.

That number has broken the old record for mobile games, which was set earlier in the year by "Draw Something." Draw hit 50 million downloads in 48 days.

Rovio announced last month the game hit 10 million downloads in just 72 hours, shattering previous records. Most importantly for the developer, the game remains popular, sitting at #2 on Google Play and #1 on iTunes.

The game features "zero-gravity," adding a new twist to the game which many believe had begun to go stale despite new levels and scenes being released regularly. 'Space's' levels include floating rocks, planets, birds with new powers and gravity fields that are ever-changing.

Angry Birds Space is available for iOS, Android, Mac OS, and Windows, with a Windows Phone version coming in the future.

Crysis developer's director of creative development Rasmus Hojengaard has backtracked from his infamous comments made last week.

At the time, the exec said he was all for the gaming industry moving towards blocking used games, as it would be "awesome" from a business perspective.

Today, in an interview with CVG, the exec did a complete about-face:

"My comment made in the interview released on the 24th of April, touching upon 'blocking sales of used games,' was not intended to be taken seriously nor representative of the opinion of Crytek."

Original post:

Over the past few months, it has been rumored that the upcoming generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft will block used games from playing, a move that would kill the entire second market and likely bankrupt retail companies like GameStop.

The High Court has ruled today that UK ISPs must block The Pirate Bay.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media most now block all access to the Swedish file sharing site. The BPI praised the move, as expected: "Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists."

BT, the last ISP in the region, said it needs a "few more weeks" to consider their position on blocking the torrent tracker.

Adds the BPI CEO Geoff Taylor: "The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them. This is wrong - musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."

Microsoft has announced a $300 million investment in Barnes & Noble's digital and college businesses.

As part of the deal, the companies will likely spin-off the businesses to create a completely new subsidiary. Additionally, the companies will have a Nook application available for Windows 8 at launch.

"Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We're on the cusp of a revolution in reading," said Andy Lees, president at Microsoft.

Barnes & Noble, which has been struggling, will get the cash it needs to survive thanks to the deep pockets of the Redmond giant. For its $300 million investment, Microsoft will get a 17.6 percent stake in the new subsidiary with Barnes & Noble keeping the rest of the share.

Struggling mobile phone maker Nokia is allegedly in "advanced talks" to sell its luxury unit Vertu.

The buyer would be private equity group Permira, says the Financial Times.

Nokia will likely raise over 200 million euros from the sale, although the potential deal is not set in stone set.

Vertu makes the most expensive phones in the world, with some costing over 100,000 euro due to their crystal displays, diamond trim and keys made of sapphire.

Check some of Vertu's devices in action here: Vertu

Former Apple executive Tony Fadell has revealed this week that the company considered adding a physical keyboard to the original iPhone.

Of course, the company ultimately decided on the multitouch design that changed the entire smartphone market.

Fadell, who was dubbed an "iPod guru" during his time at the company, says in 2007 the company narrowed down designs to three prototypes. He eventually left the company in 2010 to start Nest, a company building smart thermostats.

The three designs were one of an iPod/Phone hybrid, an iPhone with keyboard and then the final model. Before the iPhone, the general market trend was full QWERTY keyboards, with BlackBerry dominating America. The iPhone was also one of the first with a capacitive touchscreen, moving away from the resistive touchscreens on previous devices that required a stylus and made virtual keyboards almost useless.

It is clear the company made the right decision, as the market is now entirely dominated by touchscreen phones, with some majors, like HTC, announcing they will be retiring QWERTY keyboards for good.