Facebook launches major iPhone app update

Facebook Inc. updated its iPhone application yesterday, posting Version 2.0 on Apple Inc.'s App Store as a free download.

The second major version to be released since mid-July, when Apple opened the iPhone to third-party applications, Facebook for the iPhone now offers a full news feed, including story comments, rather than the truncated service available in the original version.

Also new in Facebook 2.0 are people and in-box search tools, photo tagging and captioning capability, and the ability to post photos to friends' Walls. Users can now send friend requests from the iPhone, and receive message attachments.

Facebook also claimed that Version 2.0 offers better stability and performance than its predecessor. "Above all, you'll find the app to be much faster and more stable, especially if you have a large number of friends," the company said in its App Store write-up.

User reviews on the App Store were almost unanimously upbeat. "This is the version I have been waiting for since they launched," said someone identified only as "Chase76" in a review today.

"This is how it should have been," echoed "TexasAg03."

A few, however, gave the update a thumbs-down. "I was very excited for the update, but am now quite disappointed," said "antitrust311" in another review. "Upon initial install, the app froze and wouldn't allow text entry, then once I logged in the app continues to display the date as one day in the future. I think they should have spent more time working the bugs out before they released this app."

Facebook can be downloaded free of charge directly to an iPhone or an iPod Touch running firmware 2.0 or later, or to a PC or Mac via iTunes for later syncing with a phone or music player.

In related news, millions of Facebook users are fighting the site's new design, and leaders of one recall effort are organizing a two-day boycott of the social networking service for next month.

Multicore systems dragged down by lagging software

Trying to boost the IT capabilities at his digital forensics company, Brian Dykstra invested in a server that uses quad-core processors. After all, he figured, more cores means a more-powerful machine that can do far more work than a single-core system.

However, after shelling out money for the new technology, Dykstra found three of the four cores were sitting idle, because the software he was running wasn't built to make use of multiple cores.

Dykstra isn't alone in his disappointment with the lack of software for multicore chips. As hardware firms increase the number of cores in single chips, most software simply isn't keeping pace, creating a huge drag on efforts to take advantage of the potentially significant hardware-based performance improvements.

In order for users to see those performance gains, software designed for use on multicore chips must be built to let different cores handle different tasks in an application at the same time.

Dykstra noted that while some server software from major vendors like Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. has been partially multithreaded, for the most part there is a dearth of such applications.

Once Dykstra, co-founder and a senior partner at Columbia-Md.-based Jones Dykstra & Associates, identified which applications were most important to his firm, then he compiled a list of vendors, picked up the phone and started haranguing them to add support for the chips. He didn't identify the vendors.

Despite the experiences of Dykstra and others, some IT managers have been able to cut costs and hardware needs by using multicore technology in virtualization projects.

For instance, when a company goes down the virtualization road with multicore systems, each core is assigned its own virtual machine, allowing each to run a separate application.

Virtualization on multicore chips is working out very well for Bruce McMillan, manager of emerging technologies at the U.S. division of Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Marietta, Ga., who has scaled up his virtual machine total by 50% while cutting the number of physical servers in his data center almost in half.

McMillan said he had been running 100 virtual machines on eight servers with single-core processors. He added two dual-core servers about a year ago and he was able to scale from 100 to 150 virtual machines.

About a month ago, Solvay installed a quad-core server, which enabled it to retire three single-core servers. The company is now in the process of adding two more quad-core servers, which will replace all of the remaining single-core systems, according to McMillan.

"It's saved me $500,000 just in hardware costs" so far, he said. "I can have much higher consolidation ratios than I had before. This is about server consolidation."

Panasonic unveils line of Toughbook laptops

Panasonic Computer Solutions Co. yesterday unveiled a slew of new portable computers, focusing on small but rugged models.

The PC maker took the covers off a lightweight rugged laptop, a tablet PC and an ultraportable computer. Panasonic said the new offerings, especially its Toughbook line of laptops, focuses on helping the business person on the move.

"The growing trend of portability in computers -- lighter weight, longer battery life, advanced wireless capabilities -- needs to be balanced by true durability," said Daniel Longfield, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, in a statement. "Highly mobile government, enterprise and small business users need reliable connectivity to drive continued productivity."

One of the mobile computers that Panasonic is unveiling is the Toughbook F8, which the company puts in the lightweight but durable category. Weighing in at 3.7 pounds with a 14.1 in.-wide display, it uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and has up to 4GB of RAM. With an integrated handle for easier portability, the F8 also has a 160GB shock-mounted hard drive.

Panasonic is also coming out with the Toughbook W8, an ultraportable laptop with a 12.1-in. display and an integrated DVD multidrive. Weighing about 3 pounds, the laptop runs also runs a Core 2 Duo processor and has a 120GB hard disk. It also reportedly has a battery life of seven hours.

The company also brought out the Toughbook T8, a tablet PC. The 3.3-pound computer has a 12.1-in. touch screen, stylus and screen-rotating software. The T8 runs an ultralow voltage Core 2 Duo processor, has a 120GB hard drive and up to seven hours of battery life.

The 8 series of laptops is slated to be available in November.

The ultraportable market, in particular, is getting a lot of attention in recent months. Just this past August, Lenovo went ultraportable with a $399 laptop.

Ultraportables, or netbooks, are relatively inexpensive, small form-factor laptops that are designed for basic applications like Web surfing, e-mailing and word processing. They're designed to use less power than traditional PCs and laptops and aren't powerful enough for serious power users or gamers.

Industry powerhouse Intel Corp. is betting heavily on the emerging market, announcing this past June that its new Atom processors are aimed directly at netbook and net-top PCs. Chris Tulley, a spokesman for Intel, said in a previous interview that he expects netbook and net-top sales to outpace growth of traditional laptops and desktops.

Bentley Motors launches $19,800 'Ego' laptop

Get out your checkbook … or maybe take out a second mortgage.

Bentley Motors Ltd., manufacturer of the cars used by James Bond, announced plans this week to release a "luxury" laptop computer. Coming in at a whopping $19,800, only 250 of the systems, dubbed the Ego for Bentley, will be sold.

Running Microsoft Vista software, the laptop has a 64-bit processor and a 160GB hard drive. And the notebook is encircled with a white gold frame engraved with the limited edition number.

Looking more like an expensive handbag than a laptop when it's closed, the outside of the machine is trimmed with "Bentley leather" and styled with Bentley cross-over hand stitching.

The Ego laptop, of course, can be ordered to look like your Bentley automobile. According to the company, the color options of the lacquered inside matches the car's most popular exterior paint colors.

Bentley also notes that the laptop has an ergonomic, integrated handle designed to "remove the need for an unattractive bag or case."

"It perhaps isn't the value leader in the notebook market -- maybe $1,500 worth of technology, plus another $1,000 for the case, coupled with meager support, all for only $19,000," said Dan Olds, an analyst at the Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. "All this thing brings to the table is a cool handle, a durable outer case and some assignable keys. This thing is ostentatious enough to give Paris Hilton pause … Their brand name of "Ego" really sums everything up perfectly."

Bentley Motors teamed up with Ego Lifestyle BV on the ultra-high-end laptop project. Ego Lifestyle designs and sells high-end consumer electronics.

The Bentley laptop comes as organizations like One Laptop Per Child work to bring $100 laptops to the worldwide masses. Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to sell the OLPC organization's low-cost XO notebook computer in November.

Zoho launches online market for business apps

Online application company Zoho today unveiled a new marketplace it says will allow users to buy and sell business applications and resell its Zoho Creator tool for building online database applications.

The company said it is looking for the new Zoho Marketplace to create a community where buyers and sellers of applications built using Zoho Creator can find one another and negotiate prices, Zoho said.

Creator developers can build custom Web-based applications based on specifications submitted by marketplace members, or they can build ready-made applications and post them for broad distribution, the company added.

Zoho, which has made its name in online office productivity applications, also launched a new Zoho Creator Partner Program aimed at encouraging resellers, consultants, developers and other users to distribute end-user applications and resell Creator itself.

Zoho today also announced Creator 3.0, with added support for custom HTML pages and mashups, Zoho said. The new version will allow users to build custom HTML pages by embedding code in HTML to create dynamic HTML pages; users can also embed forms, views and other widgets, Zoho said. The new version will also let users combine data from external Web sites via Web APIs to build mashups, Zoho said.

"Zoho Creator 3.0 epitomizes our mission on the Web -- give our customers powerful applications that are simple to use," said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist, in a statement. "Zoho Creator is an ideal solution for people who are not developers, but who still want to create their own 'situated applications.' These small, situation-specific applications are often needed immediately, on the fly, and Zoho Creator eliminates lengthy development cycles to deliver solutions in minutes."

Michael Arrington, a blogger at TechCrunch, noted that while Zoho's online office productivity tools have long competed head-on with Google Inc., its new offerings also compete with Salesforce.com Inc.'s AppExchange marketplace for third-party applications.

He added that Zoho claims that more than 100,000 applications have already been built on its Creator platform, most of which are available to all users. "Those applications are not being moved over to the marketplace automatically, but developers will have the option to do so, and either charge for the apps or give them away for free. Zoho is giving 100% of the fees to developers," Arrington said.

He also noted that General Electric announced at the Office 2.0 conference earlier this month that it will use Zoho applications on its 400,000 desktops. Zoho was selected over rival Google, he added.

Zoho Creator 3.0 is available now and offers a variety of pricing plans, including personal and business editions that are free for an unlimited number of users (personal edition) or for the first five users (business edition). Additional business plans provide bolstered security through SSL scripting, rebranding, data backup, nonbranded embedding and additional storage.

PC Video Cards With Toshiba's SpursEngine Coming Soon

The first add-in video cards based on Toshiba's SpursEngine video chip will soon hit the market, as the company looks to tap growing user interest in high-definition video.

Based on the same Cell processor architecture as the chip used in Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3 console, the SpursEngine was released earlier this year. Designed to process high-definition video, the SpursEngine chip has four Cell cores. The first computers to include the chip, Toshiba's Qosmio G50 and F40 laptops, were unveiled in June.

Leadtek and Thomson both plan to introduce add-in video cards based on SpursEngine in the coming weeks. Leadtek's card will arrive later this month, and will cost around ¥30,000 (US$286). Thomson's cards will arrive in November, and are expected to cost from ¥40,000 to ¥50,000.

SpursEngine is capable of encoding or decoding high-definition video thanks to hardware MPEG2 and H.264 codecs and can upscale standard-definition video to high-definition on the fly, without tying up the computer's microprocessor.

Card makers hope SpursEngine cards will find a home in PCs based on low-cost processors, such as Intel's Celeron line, to offer high-end video capabilities.

Leadtek showed off its card, the Winfast PxVC 1100, at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan. The PCI Express card, which has 128M bytes of high-performance XDR memory, fit easily into a small form-factor desktop and needed only a small heatsink and fan to keep it cool.

A Leadtek representative manning the booth said the company hopes to use passive cooling for the cards instead of a fan when they are released, but that has yet to be finalized.

DoCoMo's Separate Phone: Some Assembly Required

NTT DoCoMo's Separate Phone prototype dramatically rethinks what a cellular phone can be like, but the handset isn't for the absent minded.

The Separate Phone comes in two parts, one with a touch-sensitive display and another with a keypad, that are linked using Bluetooth. The parts can be attached magnetically, allowing the phone to take the shape of a standard clamshell handset. They can also be connected with the screen in landscape mode, or used separately, depending on a user's whim.

The Separate Phone aims to eliminate the phone juggling that happens when users are talking to friends and need to access data stored on the handset. With the Separate Phone, a user can talk on the keypad half of the phone, while using the display to look up phone numbers or access e-mail.

While that capability may come in handy for some users, others could struggle with having to keep track of the two phone parts, especially those already prone to losing their cell phone.

A working prototype of the Separate Phone was on display at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan. The phone was a hit among Ceatec attendees, with visitors lining up for the chance to play with one of several prototypes on display.

Unlike many of the concept phones shown at Ceatec this year, the Separate Phone actually works. But the handset is still under development and DoCoMo has not revealed when the phone will be available commercially.