Netcraft and Symantec’s Message Labs released several new interesting numbers about the Internet today. Apparently, the internet is still growing at a record pace, spam is on the rise again and more than 2700 websites hosting malware are going online every day.

On Saturday, in over 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries between the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in individual's respective time zones, the lights were turned out in observance of Earth Hour. The message: conserve energy and become more environmentally aware. The event, environmentalists say, was a great success.

One hour without any electricity. Do you think Earth is ready for it? Well that's the question that will be asked and answered as this year's Earth Hour is expected to draw global participation. Individuals and companies are urged to turn off their lights, PCs and cell phones for one hour on Saturday with major technology companies participating.

A Twitter user named kevinrose was able to post some apparently leaked photos of the all-electric Tesla Model S coupe. The white sports car is not quite finished yet, as is evidenced by slide #2 in our slideshow; however, the car is not without powerful merits. EXTRA: SLIDESHOWChicago (IL) - A Twitter user named kevinrose was able to post some apparently leaked photos of the all-electric Tesla Model S coupe. The white sports car is not quite finished yet, as is evidenced by slide #2 in our slideshow; however, the car is not without powerful merits.

Facebook recently underwent a major website and user interface redesign (its second within a year) and changed the layout and feature access significantly. The changes were dramatic enough to cause users to rise up with fury and frustration and a strong desire to bring the "Old Facebook" back. Finally achieving a victory of sorts, Facebook has announced that some of was changed will be reverted.

3D on the Internet is about as old as 3D graphics acceleration itself. But all those ideas often disappeared quickly after their release, because they always required a special browser plug-in. Now there is a new idea to enable 3D web graphics that do not need a plug-in, but are enabled via JavaScript acceleration. Conceivably, this could hand Firefox and Chrome yet another advantage, while Microsoft will feel even more pressure to work on JavaScript acceleration for its Internet Explorer.

Google is working hard to deliver the highest level of quality where their search results are concerned. The company is now employing a semantic search technology, altering the existing algorithm in an attempt to make Google's suggestions more relevant.

IBM and Volkswagen announced a plan yesterday to bring RFID technology to everything in Volkswagen's entire supply chain. Vendors will be required to tag every item they manufacture with RFID, or put every item manufactured in RFID-tagged containers. This process will allow inventories to be electronically tagged with far greater accuracy and speed.

Analyst Opinion – Yesterday I was walked through how OpenCL, a relatively new programming approach that leverages the CPU and GPU, could not have happened without Apple and it reminded just how many trends the company sets. Last week I wrote about the Dell Adamo, which has its roots in an Apple idea. And, of course, it is not hard to see how the iPhone is clearly the cell phone every other cell phone vendor seems to be chasing these days. But others are catching up in many ways and I am wondering whether Apple is losing its edge.

Recession? What recession? February brought the sixth best unit sales result for game console makers since November 2006. Nintendo and Microsoft posted substantial increases over February last year. PS3 sales dropped year-over year, but are also stronger than in recent months, according to market research firm NPD.

Earlier this week, the social networking site Twitter was rocked by a brief Tweet exchange which stirred up feelings all over the web. The widely reported on story is of a woman, Connor Riley, who Tweeted the following: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." Shortly thereafter a Cisco employee spotted the Tweet and responded with: "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." The exchange launched what really seemed to be the entire Internet into an uproar.

The recessions may soon be impacting cellphone usage as a new survey suggests that two out of five Americans with contract-based cellphones are thinking about cutting down on their cellphone expenses.

Google launched its often controversial Street View service in 25 cities in England today. The images were taken from Google cars driving around Britain's roads last summer. This makes England the 7th country to receive Street View maps.

Opinion - Technology is a beautiful thing, and I am one of the biggest advocates of free speech, open forums, blogging, social networking and the ability to utilize the Internet as a medium to deliver your work, your opinions and your views. Internet technology, however, is something that should be used carefully and treated with respect. At its best and worst it can bring individuals wealth, fame and popularity. Unfortunately it can also cause significant harm.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has had an amazing day on the stock market. Whereas the average volume of daily shares traded is three million, IBM's recent interest in the company has sent the trading volume to 162.1 million, up 5400% in one day. In addition, the stock price continues north, closing up $3.92 on the day at $8.89, which is 78.9% increase.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel Corporation are currently in a dispute regarding a potential x86 cross licensing agreement breach. Earlier in the month AMD and its partner Advanced Technology Investment Company established GlobalFoundries, a joint venture which would produce microprocessors for AMD among other chips utilizing equipment and technologies from AMD. Intel feels that the use of the equipment by GlobalFoundries for the production of x86 chips is a breach in a cross-licensing agreement between AMD and Intel.

Apple is apparently not outside the effects of the economic decline after all. The trend started last holiday season with a deceleration in Mac sales and has now spilled over into January and, according to the latest stats, February as well. It's causing watchers to ponder a question of Apple: How low can you go?

Journalism is changing. On Tuesday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos is planning to conduct an interview with the former presidential candidate, John McCain, for his show This Week. I would say that typically, even chatting on Twitter can be quite a pain due to its 140-character limit. However in this instance with such a limited form of communications and two players typically long-winded, it should be quite interesting to see how a full interview with the former presidential candidate plays out.

Cybersquatting is the act of registering a domain name like gogole.com or micrsofot.com, hoping to capitalize on the common misspellings of popular websites. According to the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in 2008 a record number of complaints were filed about this "abusive registration of trademarks on the Internet".