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Conference attendance may be in a recession-fueled funk, but this week's South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas, seems primed for a steep boost in turnout, one that will dwarf even last year's record numbers and challenge the throngs who stream into packed keynotes, panels, and parties.

If you were among the 9,000 people who crammed into the 2008 SXSWi, which had grown a rumored 80 percent over the 2007 edition, there's a good chance your experience included a series of over-capacity talks, endless lines for parties, and sardine-can hallways.

The 2009 edition of SXSWi may … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Facebook has a Web-based instant-messaging application, but Yahoo wants to one-up the social networking site with an application called Pingbox that lets Facebook users chat with widely used Yahoo Messenger technology instead.

In 2008, Yahoo released a version of Pingbox that would let people put an IM widget on their pages at Friendster, Xanga, hi5, LiveJournal, MySpace, and Google's Blogger sites. It was harder work to build the Pingbox application for Facebook but now that's available too.

With Pingbox set up, anyone who visits your Facebook page sees a chat window that invites them to send … Read more

How many contracts have you signed without even checking to see whether you've agreed to donate your spleen and other entrails to a Bulgarian vulgarian who lives in Krk, Croatia?

Well, those clever professors at DePaul University thought that "hundreds" might be your answer, because they did something very strange. Yes, they brought about an interesting piece of research.

It was not inspired by the raising of voices and emotions about Facebook's terms of service. But it might now be dedicated to it.

They dragged 91 students in from various interesting corners of the campus and … Read more

Corrected at 9 p.m. PDT: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized Nick O'Neill's relationship with Facebook. O'Neill works for AllFacebook.com, which has no official relationship with the social network.

Facebook has announced new ad-targeting features that allow advertisers to expand their target location radius.

Facebook told advertisers Wednesday that they will be allowed to expand the radius of their target audience by a specific number of miles. Whereas advertisers could target Washington, D.C., now they will be able to expand their sphere by adding 10, 25, or 50 miles to their target radius. … Read more

The new Facebook design we covered last week began rolling out to users today. And yes, it looks a lot like Twitter. An awful lot like Twitter. The home page displays updates from your friends top center, with a "What's on your mind?" box above the stream. All the photos and apps in Facebook are still there, but the new design really puts the friend stream in your face.

App-driven updates from your friends also show up in the stream, so it is a very good way to keep up with what's going on in your … Read more

A while back we predicted that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was in danger of losing his title as the world's youngest billionaire due to the maddening ascent of teen diva Miley Cyrus. But, Forbes magazine says, Mark Zuckerberg, who's just shy of his 25th birthday, has indeed lost his title as the world's youngest billionaire--simply because he's not a billionaire anymore.

He's still fabulously wealthy, obviously, and clearly stands a chance of making it back onto the list. But his fortune is tied closely to Facebook's valuation, and with the worldwide recession in effect, … Read more

Justin Yu is not a virgin, but he plays one on this podcast. And that's just the kind of thing you get when you have a member of the 404 on the podcast. We also evaluate the new nearly-buttonless iPod Shuffle, some online gaming stats, and Google's new ad-targeting system.

New talking shuffle http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/03/11ipod.html?sr=hotnews http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10193443-37.html

iPod touch 2G finally jailbroken with NitroKey http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/10/ipod-touch-2g-finally-jailbroken-with-nitrokey/

Speaking of hacking…Chinese … Read more

Facebook loses your uploaded photos temporarily. Wilson knows this due to his vigilant Facebook stalking. We're still running our motto contest, and right now it's split between "The nerdy dirty" and "Full frontal nerdity." If you can come up with something better, please send a voice mail to 1-866-404-CNET (2638). Please! We're an audio show, e-mails only go so far.

More on today's show, we've got some news about the rise of pay-per-view porn on cable. We can't figure out why you don't just download it, but hey there's still a whole population out there that still watches movies from VHS. Speaking of watching stuff, our parent company CBS is going to be streaming March Madness online this year. Expect productivity to drop to nothing--as if the economy isn't bad enough.

Also, the economy has hit Google as well. They're announcing that they'll have to close two caf?s. They still get to keep their free laundry, massages, lunches, dinners, snacks, stock options, etc. I know it's rough being a Googler. We're worried they're going to take away our Flavia machine. Finally, did you know that you pay an average of $3 per minute with your cell phone plan? Yeah, shocker right there. Wilson had to give AT&T his first-born child when he went over.

You don't normally associate negative emotions with Philadelphia sports.

In the City of Brotherly Love, they believe in affection, even when the circumstances don't warrant it. Criticism knows no place in Philadelphian hearts and bars.

So perhaps it was odd to the management of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles that one of their stadium operations workers, Dan Leone, seemed a little upset when the Eagles allowed defensive back Brian Dawkins to sign for the depressingly hapless Denver Broncos.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. Leone posted this on his Facebook page: "Dan is ******* devastated about Dawkins signing … Read more