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Facebook's revenue skyrocketed in the first half of 2011, according to a report from Reuters today.

Citing a source with "knowledge of its financials," the news service said Facebook doubled its first-half revenue this year, growing to $1.6 billion. In addition, Reuters said, the company was able to generate a profit of nearly $500 million.

Since it's a private company, Facebook does not divulge its financial performance. However, that hasn't stopped reports on its financials to continue to crop up.

Early last year, social blog Inside Facebook reported that the social network would generate about $1 billion in 2010, … Read more

Daily-deals provider Groupon has decided to postpone its initial public offering, The Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing anonymous sources.

The Journal's sources claim that Groupon's management has decided against an IPO anytime soon due to the stock market's continued "volatility." Initially, the Journal's sources claim, Groupon was planning to price its shares during the middle of September and go public soon thereafter.

Groupon filed for its IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June. The $750 million IPO could value the company at a reported $20 billion to $25 billion, … Read more

Amazon could have a 7-inch tablet ready for customers in a couple of months, according to a new report from DigiTimes.

Citing anonymous sources at component suppliers, DigiTimes said today that Amazon will start shipping a 7-inch tablet in October. The company will then follow that up with a 10.1-inch tablet that it will begin producing in the first quarter of 2012.

DigiTimes' report seems to fall in line with what the latest rumors on the possible Android-based Amazon tablet have been suggesting for months now. In July, for example, a few reports cropped up suggesting Amazon will either … Read more

With the wind and water damage that Hurricane Irene left behind, the roads today in your area might be blocked or flooded. Whether you are trying to get back to the office, go out to the grocery store, or return home, you can save a lot of time by taking a look at traffic conditions before you run into a road block or traffic jam. There are a number of free iOS apps that can help you avoid trouble spots and traffic on the roads.… Read more

Most people, when they see a hurricane coming, hunker down or move out of its path. Surfers, on the other hand, aren't like most people. To them, a hurricane is to be tracked for the swells it brings. And with an iPhone or Android phone, a surfer can keep tabs on local conditions, ready to grab his or her board and hit the water when the waves are just right.

Before we proceed any further, allow me a disclaimer, lest I be dubbed a poser by surfers reading this post. I am not a surfer. I live in New Hampshire--not exactly the world's hottest surf spot. There is, however, a small surf scene here. I live an hour from the NH seacoast and have a few friends who regularly make the trek to Hampton or Jenness to go surfing. I've tagged along with them a handful of times, and with their encouragement and large, foam board, I have successfully ridden embarrassingly small waves.

… Read more

When a program unexpectedly quits in OS X, the system will activate the crash reporter that will generate a report that includes the memory backtrace for each thread and other information about the crashed process. This can be used to help troubleshoot the situations or be submitted to developers so erroneous code can be tested and corrected. The crash reporter will by default show the full crash log on screen, but this can be changed to either show just a warning, or never show the crash reporter.

The setting to do this is hidden in the system, but it can … Read more

They vacuum our floors and help fight our wars, but robots always seem to be just over the horizon. They're never as commonplace as we expected.

Still, that hasn't stopped prognosticators from predicting that robots will be the automobile of the 21st century, or that robots makers are now where Microsoft was in the late 1970s. The markets for industrial and service robots are already worth billions of dollars each, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) data.

Robotkind certainly got a major boost this week when electronics giant Foxconn, which makes everything from iPads to LCD TVs, announced that it's replacing some of its human workers, which number more than 900,000, with more than a million robots.

Of course, we all wish we'd bought shares in Microsoft and Google early on. That's the kind of thinking that led Frank Tobe, author of The Robot Report blog, to look into the sector and try to identify publicly traded robot makers that have growth potential.

In a recent critique of a list of 10 robot makers that appeared on the Nasdaq Web site, the Report's sub-blog, Everything Robotic, noted that some of the world's biggest robot companies, such as Japanese industrial robot makers Yaskawa and Fanuc, were not included.

Tobe also pointed out that Nasdaq missed rising stars like Intuitive Surgical, which produces the da Vinci surgery system, and Adept Technology, which makes automation systems.

Intrigued, we asked Tobe, a former political consultant, why he thinks now might be a good time to invest in our robotic future. … Read more

Could window and insulation installation specialists be the next plumbers in terms of steady work and good pay?

It's a question triggered by "Opening the Thermal Envelope: Emerging Innovation in Dynamic Windows and Advanced Insulation," a recent report from Lux Research on the green tech construction sector.

Green tech is currently the largest growth sector in the construction industry, according to Lux research.

But the research analyst's latest report focuses on the fact that the emerging technologies involving smart glass and innovative insulation materials are now expected to see the largest growth within green construction.

As … Read more

Despite concerns over the major carriers switching to limited data plans, most smartphone users don't consume nearly as much data as expected, according to a Consumer Reports story yesterday.

Analyzing information obtained from 23,000 consumer cell phone bills, Consumer Reports found that the average bill from February 2010 to February 2011 did show a fair amount of data consumed per month--274 megabytes for T-Mobile subscribers, 360MB for AT&T users, and 449MB for those on Verizon.

But that average was pulled higher by a small percentage of heavy data users and so doesn't give a truly … Read more