Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s youngest multi billionaires has turned 28 today. He is exactly half the age of the average S&P 500 CEO, according to reports from executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

Even though he is only 28 years old, he has been the leader for Facebook now for the last 8 years, which is a year longer than the ‘average’ CEO, according to the same report.

Facebook are expected to start selling stock to the public for the first time and then being trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday. The company could be valued at close to $100 billion, meaning it would already be worth more than Ford, Disney and Kraft Foods. Some of the largest companies in the world.

Zuckerberg has been hugely successful since forming the company in 2004. It was known as “Thefacebook.com” back then and helped college students connect connect with each other online. A new concept at the time. It has grown in the last 9 years to support 900 million people worldwide. It is the leading social networking site.

Mark Zuckerberg: a very wealthy young man

Zuckerberg may be young, but he has proven good under pressure and has refused takeover deals from the likes of Yahoo Inc and Google Inc. He wrote a letter to prospective shareholders saying “Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services, and we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.”

The geek community at large seems to be pretty loyal to the Google brand, however, out what seems like nowhere, Bing is finally picking up steam. According to a Hitwise report, Bing now accounts for 30% of all U.S. web searches, and most of their gains seem to have come at the expense of Google. 

Bing has managed to grow its US search quarries by an impressive 11% over the last twelve months, while Google in contrast has dropped by the exact same amount. They are still a distant second at this point, however it’s hard to argue with this type of growth.  

Bing just recently started rolling out its new social search design to compete with Google’s “Search Plus Your World”, however it remains to be seen if this will accelerate their growth, or drive everyone off.

Dropbox may have taken a temporary dip in the popularity polls with both Skydrive and Google Drive offering a better value proposition, so how do you keep your customers? Easy, change the subject. Yesterday the company took the lid off Dropquest 2012, its annual virtual scavenger hunt which awards those who manage to make it all the way to the end with an extra 1GB bump in their storage quota.

Dropquest is a series of puzzles that the company claims were inspired by MIT’s mystery hunt, and it turns out to be more than a little challenging. It’s by no means impossible, but it certainly will eat up more than a few hours. Asking for help on the company support forums will lead to instant disqualification, however if you find yourself stumped I don’t think they can do much about the tons of great Google Doc answer sheets popping up.  

If you find yourself in desperate need of an extra gigabyte of online storage may we suggest you check out Skydrive or Google Drive? If on the otherhand you just get a kick out of puzzles, as least this one comes with a reward.  

Members of the case modding community have long looked up to John Hanlon, aka JohnHanlon303, as more than just a friendly face; many consider him a full-fledged mentor. Earlier this year, the community learned that Hanlon suffers from incurable asbestos poisoning that leaves him with 40 percent lung capacity and recently, left him permanently unable to work. Rather than simply sending social media condolences, the modderati, with the help of several sponsors, leaped into action to try and raise funds for Hanlon. The result — the John Hanlon Fundraiser PC — went up for auction on eBay this afternoon and looks amazing.

Several of the modders whose work was highlighted in our recent case mod gallery had a hand in the John Hanlon Fundraiser PC, and members of the Bit-Tech modding forums contributed gear — including water pumps, fan grills and the Windows 7 OS — to the build. Zotac, Steel Series, Star Trek PC fame) donated several other items and actually built the John Hanlon Fundraiser PC, complete with custom airbrush work by modding maestro Brad Galvin (whose work was highlighted in our eye-popping case mods feature). Richard “DarthBeavis” Surroz of Out of the Box Mods helped with the water cooling installation.

This one-of-a-kind beaut’s stacked with care, love, and all kinds of powerful components, so don’t expect it to sell cheap. (In fact, it’s already up at $1,025.) If the eBay auction’s a bit too rich for your blood, Alex Ftoulis (aka AnGEL) and Masbuskado Modding have also set up a Paypal donation fund for Hanlon’s benefit. If it isn’t, you have 10 days (until May 21) to place a bid.

Thirsting for more? Mnpctech’s Bill Owen gives a walkthrough of the finished build in the video below, and you can find the worklog here. I won’t spam you with stuff like this too often but this one’s for a good cause, folks.

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Changes are a-coming to chkdsk and NTFS health in Windows 8, and unlike the controversial Metro interface, these tweaks should make everyone happy. As hard drives get bigger, the Windows 7 chkdsk times get longer (and longer, and longer…) when hard disk errors occur, as infrequent as they are. In a worse-case scenario, attempting to boot a corrupt drive can take hours. The new system changes all that.

The Windows 8 improvements will let NTFS try to identify corruptions on-the-fly and make an instant fix in the background, no usage interruptions required. If that doesn’t work, Windows 8 will conduct a “spot verification scan” to determine if the corruption is genuine or just a brief memory glitch.

Genuine errors will be reported to the user and the OS will start scan the system during idle CPU/storage times and log the location of the problems. When the scan is done, Windows 8 will prompt the user to reboot the PC at his convenience. Chkdsk will then use the information NTFS logged about the errors to fix the corruptions quickly.

“The restart is quick (adding just a few additional seconds) and the PC is returned to a healthy state,” core manager Kim Bangalore writes on the Building Windows 8 blog. Hopefully it really is that quick and simple! For all the nitty gritty details and a helpful FAQ, hit the link.

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