I know, I know.

It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of flipping on a television and seeing a commercial for anything Google-related seemed totally implausible. For many years, the company seemed to take a certain pride in not having to resort to traditional marketing channels, and it eschewed TV ads entirely for well over a decade of its existence. Then, in February 2010, the web giant made its TV commercial debut: with a Super Bowl Ad , no less (and a fantastic one at that)

Facebook hired a few engineers this week, according to its  LinkedIn  feed, but the company also brought on quite a few engineers, analysts, communications staff, account managers and client partners, according to listings removed from its  Careers  Page. Please see a complete list below.

It’s not always easy to tell when Chrome has been updated, and at any rate the changes aren’t always significant enough to even wonder about it. But a pair of features worth caring about are user-bound come early 2012, according to Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan , who spoke recently at the Develop conference in Liverpool. The conference is focused on game development, so it’s no surprise that the features are also game-centric

Facebook added quite a few engineering jobs to their Careers  Page this week, as well as positions in everything from recruiting to account management to human resources. This week there was just one job posting on the company’s  LinkedIn  feed. Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers  Page : Application Operations Engineer 1111005 (Menlo Park) Datacenter Optimization Engineer Product Manager, Insights and Measurement 3D Graphics / Visualization Engineer (Seattle) Data Scientist Network Deployment Manager Operations Acceptance Engineer Engagement Analyst Recruiting Lead – Engineering Front End Engineer Software Engineer 1111004 (Menlo Park) Recruiting Manager (Austin) Technical Recruiting Lead Network Engineer, Video Asset Manager: Analytics Commodity Manager Manager, APAC Platform Partnerships (Singapore) University, User Operations Analyst, Online Operations (Austin) HR Core Data Administration Lead HR Specialist – Contract Technical Sourcer (Seattle) Account Manager, Online Sales Operations for Australia (Singapore) Associate, Advertising Operations (Toronto) Business Development Manager 1111001 (Menlo Park) Account Manager – Online Sales Operations, Korea (Singapore) Manager, APAC Platform Partnerships (Singapore) Account Manager – Danish (Dublin) Account Manager – Norwegian (Dublin) Account Manager – UK and Ireland (Dublin) Account Manager – Czech (Dublin) Account Manager – Swedish (Dublin) Client Partner – Korea (Singapore) Client Partner Spain Client Partner UK (Agency) Jobs posted by Facebook on  LinkedIn : Senior Strategist, Global Customer Marketing (Hamburg), Facebook Who else is hiring?

When it comes to gift-giving, there are a few presents that siimply go above and beyond. Getting a first car on your sixteenth birthday (if you’re so lucky) is one of those moments, and some young couples are even lucky enough to get a house as a wedding present

HTC’s G1, the first Android phone, had a long and interesting life until it was retired last year , and although I loved the phone, I’ll be the first to admit that being limited to Android 1.6 was kind of a disappointment. Naturally modders had their way with it, but development slowed down long ago in favor of newer and more popular phones. But today, in a feat of nostalgia and hacking skills, XDA-Dev poster Jcarrz1 has made a working AOSP port of the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, for the venerable G1

Editor’s note :  James Altucher  is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing

I recently hit Bucharest in Romania to experience the rising star event of the Central and Eastern European scene, HowToWeb . This annual conference is doing an amazing job of bringing CEE entrepreneurs together, and Bucharest is gradually emerging as one of the key tech hubs in the region.

Would our society come crumbling down if Facebook suddenly disappeared? A hilarious new parody film trailer explores a ghastly future where “Zuckerberg deleted Facebook.