Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has discovered a way to make desalination 100 times more efficient. And that could have a big impact on bringing clean drinking water to the developing world. The process is called reverse osmosis, and the material used is graphene — a lot like the stuff you smudge across paper with your pencil. The new material could make for smaller, cheaper plants that turn salt water into drinking water, but it could also have uses in warzones. 

Google says it’s doing what it calls ‘spring cleaning’ and sending Google Reader out to the landfill on July 1. Netflix has a new system that lets customers connect to Facebook, so their friends can see what they’re watching. And where is the economic center of the earth?

Samsung is set to release its latest iPhone challenger tonight — the Galaxy S4. Is the Korean company starting to challenge Apple’s coolness? And, as the Interactive session of South by Southwest in Austin now gives way to the film and music folks, a lesson from the festival on shifting digital media to silliness, and to silliness plus real journalism. Jonah Peretti is founder and CEO of the popular online media website Buzzfeed. He says the change is part of the website’s natural evolution, along with the social web itself. 

South By Southwest might be a festival of rock, movie, and technology stars. But Austin, Texas also had a visit from a politician who wants to be a tech star. It’s the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker, who was at a hack-a-thon put together by some of Lady Gaga’s social media people. Why was Booker in Austin? To launch a start-up, of course. 

Forget about Al Gore for a second: Tim Berners-Lee actually made the Internet. And the guy who created the World Wide Web has some strong feelings about his legacy. We talked to this computer scientist (who happens to be a knight as well) about a variety of tech topics. Also, SXSW Interactive offers up an Aaron Swartz memorial, and a new hot gadget: Leap Motion’s gesture control device. 

One of the biggest names in tech in Texas has had a complicated few days. Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of computer and computer services giant Dell wants to buy back his company from shareholders. The idea is once the company is private, it will have room to rebuild itself for the longer term without the short-term demands of a publicly-traded stock. But a powerful Dell shareholder, Carl Icahn, is reportedly now pushing for more money than is on offer, a development that could upset the deal. Although we were told Michael Dell couldn’t address the buyout, it did come up during a rare interview at the Dell headquarters outside Austin.

Jessica Lawrence is the executive director of NY Tech Meetup. Along with helping to showcase some of the city’s most exciting new companies and digital projects every month, Lawrence is also helping to change the culture of the scene she is part of. Tech may not exactly be a boys club, but it does suffer from lopsided numbers when it comes to participation of the sexes. With women-only demo showcases, and a willingness to speak out against sexist remarks, Lawrence’s daily work is helping to make New York’s tech scene more diverse. 

New York City’s Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot began in the city’s startup world and rose to prominence quickly. Now, she’s a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s administration who is advocating for more private-public collaboration in making New York a tech mecca that rivals Silicon Valley. Marketplace Tech explores Haot’s latest efforts, including finding strong ideas for reinventing the city’s 11,000 payphones, drawing more talent to the city as well as growing it at home. 

Complaints are rampant that the video game industry treats female employees and female players as outsiders or worse. But it wasn’t always that way. And, remember MiniDiscs? Way better than cassettes, right? But as of this month, Sony says the format is no more. Though Minidiscs were engineered to make imperfect copies, some people clung to it deep into the iPod era.