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Microsoft vient d’annoncer la disponibilité de la version 1.0 du SDK de Kinect pour Windows qui est offert en téléchargement sur le site de l’éditeur. Le capteur sera prochainement vendu en ligne en France à un prix qui devrait tourner autour de 249 €.

That's a question many people will ask today following Facebook's IPO filing. In March 2007, less than a year after opening to the public, the social network had 30 million users. The number is more than 800 million today. But neither number truly reveals Facebook's global impact.
Last summer, Pew Internet found that 92 percent of social network users are on Facebook -- just 17 percent on Twitter. Today, comScore released data on Facebook penetration across the globe, as measured as percentage of total Internet audience.
"Globally, Facebook reached 12 percent of the internet audience in December 2007 and as of December 2011 the social network reached over half of the internet audience, 55 percent (43 percentage point rise)", according to comScore.
Reach is greatest in Latin America (84.1 percent), followed by North America (82.9 percent). For more, see the chart above, which is fairly self explanatory.

So Facebook is set to go public today. It's the most anticipated initial public offering since Google in 2004, and may net the Menlo Park, Calif. social network between $5 billion and $10 billion, according to estimates. That said, I am still lost as to how Facebook's going to be able to wow Wall Street from quarter to quarter, and we all know that's what investors (and the tech press) are looking for.
The IPO will cause pandemonium on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, as investors attempt to cash in on one of the most successful Web companies in history. This type of market hysteria is prone to pitfalls: fellow social networking site LinkedIn saw its shares skyrocket to nearly $95 in the first day of trading from an IPO of $45, but it has since given back about half of those gains.
IPO or not, does it matter to Facebook? Not really -- as a private company Facebook is a huge success, and made CEO Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire. With an estimated net worth of $17.5 billion, he is the 14th richest person in the world according to Forbes as of 2011. An IPO only will greatly increase his wealth, and those around him.
That's the only guarantee here surrounding Facebook's debut on Wall Street.
Going public has its drawbacks. As a private company, Facebook is able to do as it pleases -- only having to answer to itself internally. This changes when you're dealing with investors. They demand results, and you may find yourself making decisions to keep them happy, and to pad the results you're now required by law to publicly release every quarter.
That in mind, here's a point to ponder: with Facebook now home to over 800 million users, how much bigger can the site really get? Facebook is going to hit that mythical "brick wall" sooner or later. There are quite a few people who aren't interested in sharing their life's details. The site's growth is finite.
This may not be more vividly illustrated than by the growth of its competitors. Google+ reached 100 million users in just six months, a feat that Facebook took four years to accomplish. That shows the fickleness of Web users: no Web properties' success is perpetually guaranteed.
One last issue, and that's revenues. While Facebook has a significant user base and has focused on generating a steady revenue stream through its growing advertising business, few options remain for additional sources of income.
A good deal of time has been spent on developing new methods of advertising, but as a rule of thumb social ads have poor click-through rates. Unless Facebook finds the holy grail of social advertising, it's unlikely that Facebook will grow revenues here dramatically.
Another possibility? The company could also move into the entertainment business, selling and/or renting content to users. Such a setup will keep users on the site even longer, however it requires a great deal of work and overhead to be done properly, with no guarantee of success. There's also the 800-lb. gorilla in the room -- iTunes -- which controls a good portion of the digital entertainment industry.
Are Zuckerberg and Co. willing to take such a risk for something that seemingly has a high chance for failure, and could cost more money than it's worth? That looks doubtful.
I'm curious: BetaNews readers are generally a thoughtful and opinionated bunch. Now that Facebook's headed for life as a publicly traded company, revenues are extremely important. What do you think the world's biggest social network can do to generate more revenue? Let us know in the comments.

That will be the number by end of today, according to FamilyLink founder and unofficial Google+ statistician Paul Allen. The number has grown from 90 million since Google CEO Larry Page's official statement just two weeks ago.
Allen's announcement comes as rival Facebook announces its public offering, and quite possibly the largest one ever. Not since Netscape's IPO at the dawn of the World Wide Web era has a tech company generated so much interest going public. But Facebook has a new rival that's growing fast and leveraging hard existing Google assets. By year's end, Google+ could have half as many users as Facebook does today.
"Google+ membership has grown more than 10 percent since January 19th when Larry Page announced 90 million users", Allen explains. "I have them at 100.8 million users by the end of the day".
Allen puts growth at 750,000 new users per day since January 19. He analyzes different surnames to calculate number of users. "If that rate holds steady, Google+ will end the year with 345 million users. But as I have said before, Google has many dials and levers to use this year to increase signups and usage, including its Android 4.0 rollout. I stand by my prediction of at least 400 million users by the end of 2012".
That's a big number likely to get a big boost just over the next few weeks. Last week, Google made two changes sure to open the floodgate of users: Allowing teens (rather than those 18 years or older) to join the service and permitting use of nicknames. Meanwhile, Google is connecting the social network to more of its services, including the new "Google Plus Your World".

Mint, the elegant personal financial management app owned by financial software company Intuit has finally released a version of its application specifically for Android tablets. Mint's app has been available on Android-based smartphones for over a year, but with the growing prevalence of tablets, and Ice Cream Sandwich promising to unify Android's smartphone and tablet interfaces, the time was right for a Mint tablet app.
Because Mint is so UI-centric, the tablet app doesn't try to cram more information into the larger screen real estate, but instead provides a clearer, easier-to-navigate interface.
Like its smaller-screen counterparts, Mint for tablets allows users to view all of their linked accounts at a high level, with graphs that illustrate the flow of finances over time, to set personal budgets and account alerts, bill reminders, to search history of transactions, and to enter cash transactions as they happen.
“In the next few months, Android tablets are expected to hold more than 40 percent of the market share,” Aaron Forth, general manager of Intuit's Personal Finance Group said in a statement on Wednesday. “As tablet use rises, more mobile-savvy people will look for ways to manage their lives across multiple devices, so we developed our Android tablet app to bring simple money management tools to their fingertips.”

Mint for Android Tablets is available for free in the Android Market now.

Google Books is a gigantic and ever-expanding online library of books and magazines that can be used to read classic titles free of charge as well as to purchase new releases in all manner of categories. But you may be one of the many people who have found that the interface for the website and the way you interact with books leaves a little to be desired. Enter GooReader, a desktop app that enables you to browse your books both on and offline.
You can take advantage of a handy interface that makes it easy to navigate through the pages of your books and you can also zoom in and out, which is great if you are using a laptop with a smaller screen, and perform searches. All of the books you have purchased can be accessed from within the app and organization of your library is delightfully simple. When it comes to lengthy tomes or even an average sized novel, bookmarks can be used to quickly jump the place you left off.
But probably the most useful feature of GooReader is the ability to create a local library of books. This means that you can choose a selection of books and they will be downloaded so they can be accessed offline. This is a great option if you want to take books on the road with you, and the overall look and feel of the application means that the reading of ebooks is made an immensely pleasurable experience.
Should you feel that the ability to convert your books into PDF format would be useful, there is also a paid for version of the app available. In additional to this PDF conversion option, providing you are not working with DRM protected books, you can also take advantage of an interface that is not adorned with advertisements. Other than these two features, the paid-for and free versions of the software are identical, but the extra options will set you back $19.95.
You can find out more and downloads a free copy of the app by paying a visit to the GooReader review page.
Photo Credit: Tischenko Irina/Shutterstock
Creating a website is something that many people feel an urge to do but, as with many things, the perceived steep learning curve is enough to put most folks off the idea. In reality, it is actually quite simple to create web site -- obviously, the greater your knowledge the more impressive site you can create -- and there are a number of WYSIWYG editors to choose from that mean you do not need to know HTML, CSS or any other form of coding.
Coming from the team behind WYSIWYG Web Builder, Quick ‘n’ Easy Web Builder is a cross-platform website creation tool that shows great signs of promise.
The WYSIWYG Web Builder application was original written for Windows, leaving Mac and Linux users out in the cold. Rather than setting about the somewhat arduous task of porting the existing product from one platform to another, Quick ‘n’ Easy Web Builder took inspiration from WYSIWYG Web Builder and built a new app from the ground up -- this time compatible with not only Windows but also Mac and Linux.
Despite the somewhat cutesy name, this is a powerful tool. The cross-platform nature of the app means that it is ideal for collaborative teams working in environments where not everyone is necessarily using the same type of system. There are decent numbers of templates to choose from if you’re stuck for ideas, but you can also start from scratch, using the toolbox to drop page elements into place and the Property Inspector to customize objects and settings.
Sites can be published from within the app so there’s no need for a separate FTP client, and the interface is a tidy affair that provides access to all of the tools you need while leaving a decent working area visible. As this is only a release candidate rather than a completed product, there are a few aspects of the app that need a little fine-tuning. There is currently no option to zoom in and out of pages nor is it possible to work in full screen mode. Options such as importing HTML and fairly standard tools such as spell checker are still to be added, but hopefully these will make into the completed software.
You can find out more and download a free version of the app by paying a visit to the Quick ‘n’ Easy Web Builder review page.