[Sony Bravia V1]

In order to preserve energy, a new line of Sony Bravia televisions will automatically turn off when no one is in the room.  The Bravia V5 line of TVs will have a small sensor under the display screen that is able to tell whether there are people in the room.  If someone leaves, then the LCD screen will cut off power.  When someone returns, the TV will turn back on.  This will reduce energy consumption by 50% during the time that display switches off.

Friendster Inc., a top social network that saw Facebook take away a lot of their market share in the U.S. has announced that they have expanded offices and partnerships.  Friendster opened a new office in Singapore and in Sydney, Australia.

In terms of growing teams and expanding, Friendster is doing so on a global scale.  The CEO of Friendster, Richard Kimber and newly added hires for the social network’s marketing, sales, and business development teams are all based in Sydney.  The Singapore office will bring on additional sales, marketing, and business development teams.  Friendster opened up a new office in Mountain View, California where the executive staff and employees in all other departments will run their operations.  Later this year, the office in Manila, Phillipines will be expanding.

In Singapore, Friendster receives 1 million monthly unique visitors so Pixel Media will serve as their advertising broker in that region.  Pixel will also broker ads for Friendster’s traffic in Malaysia which comes out to be 3.6 million monthly unique visitors.

“The expansion of our team, offices and sales partnerships in Asia not only sets 2009 up to be an exciting year, but helps us pursue the necessary monetization opportunities available to Friendster in our core Asian markets,” stated Kimber. “As we move deeper into 2009, we will continue to build upon our direct sales, product, engineering, operations, marketing and finance teams to execute on our strategy and unwavering focus on Asia Pacific.”

Kimber joined Friendster in August 2008.  Before this position, he was Google’s Managing Director of Sales and Operations for South East Asia.  He was managing 1,000 people around the time he departed.  Friendster has about $45 million in funding since they started in 2002.  Investors include Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, DAG Ventures, and IDG Ventures.

Social media will be in full effect during Inauguration day.  Tweets will be sent back-and-forth, Flickr enthusiasts will be snapping pictures away, live streams of the event will be all over the Internet, and people will be able to watch the event from their mobile phones.

Twitter: Tweet tweet!  The amount of tweets being sent back-and-forth on Twitter tomorrow will be so substantial that the company is doubling their capacity.  Current TV and Twitter have partnered to showcase interesting tweets throughout the day tomorrow.

Live Streaming: The New York Times, Hulu, Joost, and UStream.tv will be live streaming the inauguration event.   Anyone that owns an iPhone can watch the inauguration on their phone using UStream’s iPhone application.

Flickr: Flickr will is hosting an event at a bar nearby the inauguration in Washington D.C.  Photo enthusiasts will be able to see images pulled from the election and from the induction ceremony.

Microsoft and CNN are working on a way to release a digital panorama of the event using Microsoft’s Photosynth software.  Microsoft is looking for professional photographs and user-generated photos to put together a final panorama of the event.

Facebook and CNN have put together an event that will publish status messages of users on CNN.com Live.  The event is available at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=56799103571

iPhone Application: There is a free 2009 Presidential Inauguration Guide iPhone application available for those who are travelling to D.C.  The application lets iPhone users look up public transit information, find Wi-Fi hot spots, and includes a Zagat guide for the city.

Geni.com is a place to build your family tree in private or in public.  This website is also useful for those who don’t want to share their family pictures on Facebook.  Over 40 million profiles have been created thus far.  Geni.com was co-founded by David Sacks and have just raised a third round of funding.  The third round of $5 million was supplied by Charles River Ventures and The Founders Fund.

Geni’s first round of funding was $1.5 million and their second round of funding was $10 million.  This brings them to $16.5 million in total funding.  Geni’s uses advertising as one of their primary revenue sources.

[via PEHub]

As most of you know by now, a U.S. Airways Group plane number 1549 had two engines lose power simultaneously when several birds were sucked into them.  The plane had to make an emergency splashdown a few days ago in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.  Fortunately ferries on the river responded immediately and helped everyone safely escape the river and the sinking plane.  Although several people were injured, everyone made it out alive.

The way that the accident was handled is mainly credited to U.S. Airways pilot Captain C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger III.  He knew that the passengers would have a better chance at surviving if he turned the plane to head towards the river.  Now people on Facebook are showing their appreciation by joining a Fan page created in honor of the airlines pilot.

Over 300,000 people have joined at a rate of more than 1,000 new fans per minute.  Over 279 items have been posted and the wall has been signed over 14,000 times.

The role that social media played regarding the entire emergency as a while is impressive. Janis Krums used Twitter and his iPhone to show the first picture of the plane accident.  He also wrote a tweet saying that he was on his way to help the passengers escaping from the sinking plane from the ferry that he was on.

[via ZDNet]

Stay classy Digg.

Circuit City Stores, Inc. (OTC:CCTYQ) announced today that they are asking a bankruptcy court to allow them to close all their stores and sell off all their assets.  What cause Circuit City to go downhill?  Circuit City staff struggled to provide technical advice to customers.  They stopped investing in hiring and training programs.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Silverlight will be used for the Presidential Inaugural Committee website to steam President-elect Barack Obama’s and Vice President elect Joe Biden’s swearing-in event this Tuesday.  Microsoft Silverlight is the software giant’s response to Adobe Flash.  Flash was originally developed by Macromedia, a company that Adobe bought out several years ago.

Silverlight will also be powering the video for Obama and Biden’s “Whistle Stop Tour” today.  The tour will be taking place between Philadelphia and Washington D.C. for celebrations.  ISteamPlanet, a content-delivery company based in Las Vegas, Nevada is working with Microsoft on streaming the event.

Silverlight 1.0 was first launched in April 2007, but it was quite ambiguous about what the capabilities were.  Silverlight 2 was released last October and it was the first time it could be seen as a Flash replacement.  The Democratic National Convention Committee used Silverlight 2 to power the proceedings from the convention.  This included Obama’s acceptance speech to over 80,000 in Denver.

[via PCWorld]