Facebook’s finally decided to take a head-first dive into the mountain of cash it’s been standing on for years. Following several days of heated rumors and years of speculation about when CEO Mark Zuckerberg was finally going to cash in his chips, the company filed an S-1 statement with the SEC, paving the way for an IPO as early as this May. Facebook has its sights set on hauling in $5 billion, making it the biggest Internet IPO in history. The move will likely make hundreds of Facebook staffers millionaires overnight.

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An in-depth look at Facebook user behavior reveals some interesting trends among this more than 800- million constituency: One, Facebook users tend to receive more from the Facebook friends than they give out; two, there is a solid core of users that are very active on the site. The Pew Research Center’s report on the subject is based on data mined from the server logs of Facebook activity and survey data that explores the structure of Facebook friendship networks and measures of social well-being.

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Microsoft is overhauling Windows Phone 8, which is still in development, to make it more competitive with market leaders iOS and Android, according to leaked information. The mobile OS will add support for multicore processors, up to four new screen resolutions, and removable microSD card storage. It will also support near-field communications, the technology that enables mobile wallets. “This builds upon what Mango has,” Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst at IDC, told TechNewsWorld, referring to Windows Phone 7.5.

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The hacker community Anonymous on Friday landed another blow in its war with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. It posted an internal memo from the law enforcement agency about an upcoming international call to discuss hackers. Anonymous also put up a recording of the call itself on YouTube. “The information was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained,” the FBI said in a statement provided by spokesperson Jenny Shearer.

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Google announced a new layer of security for its Android Market on Thursday, unveiling a program called “Bouncer” that will automatically scan apps and developer accounts for malware. Bouncer works by analyzing each app as it’s uploaded to the Market, scanning for threats, spyware and trojans. It also takes a look at developer accounts to make sure they don’t have a malicious history. If they do, Bouncer will discourage them from returning. The program will do repeated scans on existing apps to keep tabs on the entire marketplace.

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The recently announced Spark tablet might prove to be the first Linux-running open source tablet fully capable of being modded by users. It has an open Linux stack on unlocked hardware, and it will come with an open content and services market. The Spark will come under the Gnu General Public License from its inception. Pricing will be about US$265, according to KDE developer Aaron Seigo. The Spark will be offered as a device made for customization and project-specific integration.

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Avid is well-known for its chops as a maker of professional video editing suites, but on Thursday it grabbed some notice in consumer circles with a new offering for Apple’s iPad 2. Avid Studio, available from Apple’s App Store for a limited time at $4.99, brings a solid set of video editing tools to the iPad. For instance, clips can be quickly arranged along a storyboard. Frames can be precisely trimmed in the app’s timeline. Cuts can be made on the fly with the software’s razor tool.

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Vizio has unveiled a 58-inch 3D widescreen HDTV with a 21:9 aspect ratio — far more than the standard 16:9 ratio HDTVs use. Users can set the TV to upscale 16:9 content to fill the screen. The sale price for this set will start at US$3,500 — that includes four pairs of 3D glasses. Vizio did not indicate when it will be available on the market, but it may be as soon as March, in time for the NCAA March Madness basketball tournaments. This 58-inch TV is the first in a line of CinemaWide TVs that will have screens up to 71 inches wide, which Vizio announced at CES 2012.

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A change to the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act recently sailed through the House of Representatives without a hitch. The bill would allow a provider of rental DVDs or videos to get consent to share their customers’ title selections, as long as users were provided with an opportunity to withdraw that consent. That smooth ride ended in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, when opponents of the measure took the opportunity to grill Netflix, which has been pushing hard for the change.

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When HP announced late last year that it would open source webOS, it was hard not to be skeptical. After all, it would be all too easy for a company to whitewash its own abandonment of a project by grandly “donating it to the community.” However, that pessimistic view is beginning to fade, thanks to HP’s publication last month of an official road map for its webOS plans, including the inclusion of a mainline kernel by March and ongoing involvement from HP itself. Are webOS’s prospects looking a little brighter now? That’s what Linux bloggers have been trying to figure out.

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Twilio’s cloud-based communications platform allows anyone with rudimentary Web-development knowledge to build a voice and SMS text application. An API, client, and various XML and other helper code is available that lets you build in PHP, C# and more. The basic concept behind all Twilio cloud telephony applications is that a user calls or texts a Twilio-provided number; Twilio then sends a request based on that call to your developed application; your application receives the request and sends XML to Twilio; Twilio then runs the instructions and interfaces with the caller.

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Someday, people whose ability to speak has been damaged by illness or injury may be able to vocalize anyway with the help of technology. Researchers at UC Berkeley have made strides toward translating the words a person thinks into real speech. The researchers used 15 patients undergoing neurosurgery as subjects. They placed electrodes on the subjects’ brains, then recorded the activity detected as the subjects listened to a conversation. This recorded data was reconstructed and played back. Algorithms were used to process the data.

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