The Khosla-backed biofuel company LS9 is opening up the kimono a bit today. Grist and the Wall Street Journal say the company has developed a biofuel that use traditional feedstocks used for ethanol, but will contain “50% more energetic content and is made via a process that uses 65% less energy.” The WSJ says the biofuel lacks oxygen and is similar to petroleum, so it could be distributed through the existing petroleum infrastructure.

So basically they’re producing a biofuel that is much closer to the properties of petroleum than ethanol. The San Carlos, California-based startup even calls its biofuel “renewable petroleum.” That’s a big plus for the fuel, since one of the biggest barriers to ethanol adoption is the need for a flex fuel car as well as the use of a separate distribution system.

The articles say that LS9 will be releasing more details of the science it’s using to produce the biofuel at the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial Microbiology. The company also issued a press release that says that Royal Dutch Shell veteran Robert Walsh is the company’s new President.

In March the company said it had raised $5 million in Series A funding from Flagship Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Khosla Ventures also backed Pasadena, California-based startup Gevo, which converts biomass into next-gen biofuels like butanol.

How long till your Prius is sold with a plug? Toyota says that it has developed a plug-in hybrid car, which it will test on roads in Japan. Like the Prius, the “Toyota Plug-in HV” has a gas-powered engine and an electric motor, but can also be charged in a standard electrical outlet.

There has been a lot of talk about the possibility of Toyota announcing a plug-in over the past weeks and months, and now it’s official. The release says that Toyota will become the first manufacturer to have a plug-in hybrid car certified for use on public roads in Japan.

Because plug-ins can be charged through an electrical outlet, in theory they can use less gasoline power to charge batteries and can get even better mileage. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) recently released a report that said that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by more than 450 million metric tons annually in 2050, significantly improve air quality over the next few decades, and reduce petroleum consumption by 3 million to 4 million barrels per day in 2050.

Other car manufacturers, GM and Ford, have have indicated that they are considering plug-in hybrids options too. There are several companies that offer conversions of hybrids into plug-ins, but mostly manufacturers warn against DIY options.

Update: The LA Times says that Toyota will also partner with two California universities — UC Irvine and UC Berkeley — to test plug-in versions of its Prius hybrid for the schools’ sustainable transportation studies.

I met with a few people who work at Facebook today (my first meetings).

Learned some stuff:

1. Facebook’s first office was above Jing Jing in downtown Palo Alto, which Dave Winer made famous for Spicy Noodles. Of course we ate there and had Spicy Noodles.
2. The Facebook platform is getting a small update tonight (it’s updated once a week, I learned). Tonight’s update that developers will notice? That you can put different things into messages on the wall. If you haven’t visited my Facebook Profile yet, the wall is an area where you can leave messages for me and anyone else who visits my profile. Expected to come onto this? Music (iLike, last week, already added music choices to messages sent inside Facebook). Video. And other media types. The wall will be open to third-party developers to plug different media into and integrate into. This makes the platform integrate better into common pieces on the profile page. End users might not see a difference tonight, but developers will see new APIs. Developers should add the Developers Application to their Facebook Profile, which would bring you to the news about new APIs coming. To add the app, visit the Facebook Developers page and click “getting started.”
3. They are seeing a lot of growth. Both in usage, as well as employees. If you’re a hot computer scientist they are hiring.
4. They are continuing to move to a wider demographic than just college students, which should have been obvious to anyone who is following their moves over the past year. I told them that I have already seen that, most of my 3856 friends aren’t in college anymore. They are also taking over quite a few buildings in downtown Palo Alto near the Stanford University Campus (more than three buildings already, with more needed).
5. There is a limit to the number of friends you can have: 5,000. This is there because of technical limitations. After you reach 5,000 you have to remove someone before you can add someone else as a friend.
6. People with thousands of friends are called “whales” by Facebook employees. Only a small percentage of their user base has more than 1,000 friends.
7. They expect many more “useful” apps in the next few months. Apps aimed at just getting spread around (one I don’t accept is the Ninja app) are probably not going to be as successful as a new wave of apps that actually provide some value come on board (my favorite example there is the Google Shared Items App).
8. For employees who live within a mile of Facebook’s headquarters they subsidize your housing. Translation: if you hang around in Palo Alto chances are pretty high that you’ll meet someone who works at Facebook.
9. They are pretty careful about discussing future capabilities. I asked about new advertising platforms and other questions about the platform (like whether a new API would come out that would allow applications to talk with each other) and got “we can’t discuss future directions.”
10. The leadership at Facebook is young. I knew that since I remember listening to Chris Putnam’s music when he was 16 (he’s now one of Facebook’s best developers — his team built the video app, which is really awesome — and he just turned 21).

Anyway, I’ve come away even more impressed with the team here. This is definitely the most interesting company that I’ve met in the past few years and can’t wait to bring you more news from inside Facebook.

UPDATE: Some people are misunderstanding me here. The update will let users add new datatypes to their messages on Facebook walls. It doesn’t mean that apps will be able to write their own messages to walls.