Facebook is adding subscription billing which should allow app developers to make even more money from their most loyal users. Starting next month, app developers will be able to create special plans or content that is available with a monthly fee. The lowest monthly fee that can be offered by a developer is a mere $1.

Kixeye is a perfect example of how developers can take advantage of the new system. Kixeye is planning on having a $9.95 per month subscription plan that will give subscribers access to exclusive in-game items. They are focusing on a smaller subset of players that are more inclined to pay which should yield an interesting revenue stream.

In other news, Facebook is backing away from Facebook Credits as the main currency. Just a few years ago, Facebook was pushing Credits so that Facebook and online shopping would become linked in people's minds. This, unfortunately, prevented developers from using their in-game currency for purchases.

Google seems pretty committed to strengthening its developer ecosystem around Android. So much so that they are now offering live support during office hours with a new program called "Developers Live." The new program allows developers to talk directly to Googlers who are the ones creating the APIs the developer is currently working with.

Louis Gray from the Developer Relations team:

We think connecting you with Google's experts and your fellow developers can inspire incredible app creation. So today, we're introducing Google Developers Live, a destination for developers around the world that will feature live, interactive broadcasts ranging from developer-focused game shows to Office Hours where you can connect with the engineers who created and work on your favorite Google product.

Google doesn't appear to be happy with a website that is converting YouTube videos into MP3s and allowing visitors to convert YouTube videos into MP3 files for download. It turns out that they are so unhappy with the website, which pulls in 1.3m visitors a day, that they have sent a letter threatening legal action.

Apparently, this service that the site is providing is against YouTube's Terms of Service and, as such, YouTube has blocked the websites servers from accessing YouTube. Google has only provided the site with 7 days to comply with Google's request or they could face possible legal action for break the Terms of Service.

"We would estimate that there are roughly 200 million people across the world that make use of services like ours and Google doesn't just ignore all those people, they are about to criminalize them. With the way they are interpreting and creating their ToS every one of those 200 million users is threatened to be sued by Google," the converter spokesman said.

HTC is suffering a bit of a problem that is similar to Apple's notorious 'Antennagate' scandal. That is, the design of the phone is physically not perfect and users are finding poor performance and are having to squeeze the phone to restore proper functioning. let's just hope HTC doesn't tell users to just hold the phone differently.

It sounds as thought it is a loose hardware connection, so this means no quick fix for HTC through software. HTC as done the proper thing, as opposed to Apple, and come out an dadmitted that there is a problem on some One X international versions. The problem does not affect the US One X or One XL. HTC:

After investigating isolated reports of WiFi connectivity issues in the HTC One X, we have identified a fix that strengthens the area of the phone around the WiFi antennae connection points. While many customers have not experienced any problems with signal strength, we have taken immediate steps to implement a solution in our production process to prevent this issue from happening in the future

HTC's One X looks to be soon receiving an update that should include the latest build of Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0.4. This should definitely close that nasty gap between HTC's One X and Samsung's GALAXY S III.

As usual in this world of Internet craziness we have, ROM developer and XDA member 'Football' has received the leaked ROM and has stirred up a ROM based on the firmware. The new update will be 2.05.401.2, and should be a noticeable update over the current 1.29.401.11.

Android version number gets an update up to Android 4.0.4, which includes some default stability improvements, also baked in are updated kernels, radios and software drivers, too. Early adopters of the new ROM have been happy, with some reporting a better web browsing experience, tweaked auto brightness settings, a smoother user interface and faster unlock speeds - can't complain at that!

If BlackBerry makers Research in Motion weren't already in enough trouble, it seems that the U.S. military could switch over most of their mobile devices from BlackBerry's to those running Apple's iOS or Google's Android mobile operating systems.

BlackBerry's are, as it stands right now, the device of choice for Pentagon among other U.S. military branches. It's also worth noting that RIM's biggest customer is... the U.S. military, but officials within the military have already voiced their opinion on RIM's BlackBerry platform not being able to keep up with the iOS and Android technology.

Teri Takai, the Pentagon's chief of information officer has said that flexibility provided by non-BlackBerry platforms to develop custom applications is what makes the move to the iOS and Android platforms so attractive. The current BlackBerry devices that DoD use are also not portable enough, with Dennis Moran, vice president for Harris Corp stating:

We often forget just how incredible the technology in a spinning drive is. We just take for granted that the size and speed of said drives will just keep increasing without thinking of the incredible speeds already present in the drives. Take for example the actuator arm in the video: it moved back and forth 22 times in just a mere 0.25 seconds.

That works out to just over 0.01 seconds per movement. Incredible. It's not recommended that you try this at home as opening the case of an HDD will allow dust in and will kill the drive extremely quickly. Additionally, most people don't have cameras capable of 1000fps just laying around in their homes.

That said, the video shows just how incredibly nimble and beautiful the inner workings of a disk drive are. That said, a solid state drive is faster and still one of the best upgrades you can do for a computer.

Take a quick stroll down memory lane and find Larrabee. Larrabee was Intel's failed discrete graphics creation designed to go head-to-head with the likes of NVIDIA and AMD. The Larrabee project was canned but Intel decided to continue the work with a change of focus. Instead of being a discrete GPU, Intel decided to target the HPC and supercomputing markets.

This new chip is an in-development chip known as Knight's Corner and is designed to be massively parallel. The product has clearly made significant progress as Intel has officially attached a brand name to the product. That brand name is Xeon Phi and will also be attached to future many-integrated-core (MIC) products.

Intel chose Xeon Phi as they wanted it to be part of the Xeon family. As for the Phi part, Intel says it's because it "evokes many concepts in science & nature including the 'golden ratio' in mathematics." Along with the brand name, Intel has released some technical details of the upcoming MIC chip.

Intel has agreed to buy 1,700 patents relating to Wi-Fi, 3G, and LTE from InterDigital. Last year, there were murmurs about a treasure chest of patents relating to those technologies being up for sale by InterDigital. The cost for these key patents? Only a cool $375 million in cash. Apparently, Intel has been after these patents for a while.

Intel's Senior Vice President, Doug Melamed, had this to say about the transaction: "These patents will support Intel's strategic investments in the mobile segment. The addition of these patents expands our already large, strong and diverse portfolio of intellectual property."

Interestingly enough, InterDigital refers to these as only a small portion of its overall collection of patents. How much more value is included in the other patents that they have? Senior Executive Vice President at InterDigital, Scott McQuilkin, had this to say about the upcoming transaction:

Let's face it, Apple has more money than they know what to do with. Before their stock buy-back program, they had right around $100 billion in cash. Apple already has the record for most profitable quarter among technology companies, so what is next for the giant? One analyst believes they could become the most profitable publicly traded companies.

"In CY12, we believe Apple is poised to generate the highest annual net income of any publicly traded company ever," White wrote. "On average, we estimate Apple's net income in CY12 will be over 6x higher than the three tech companies on an individual basis (when at a $500 billion market cap) or 1.9x the aggregate profit of these three companies combined. When including all five companies, we estimate Apple's net income in CY12 will be 4x higher than the average."

So why the huge increase in value? White is citing a new iPhone with a 4" screen launching in the third quarter, an "iPad mini" that is set to launch sometime in September, and an upcoming HDTV made by Apple. White has confirmed his buy recommendation along with a price target $1,111, which is about double the current price of $572 (as of opening bell Monday).