F8

In one of the more intriguing tech tales of late, a blog site ended up in possession of what is believed to be a prototype iPhone 4G that was either left, lost, or stolen in a Silicon Valley bar.

Last weekend, Engadget posted photos of what appeared to be a yet-to-be-announced, next-generation Apple device that was allegedly found on the floor of a bar in San Jose, Calif. A tipster had apparently sent the photos to the gadget blog for posting.

Come Monday morning, Engadget rival Gizmodo upped the ante and said it was actually in possession of what appeared … Read more

Facebook made several important announcements on Wednesday. I'll leave the details to others--this is a music-focused blog, after all--but I think that Facebook's leaders have positioned it as the infrastructure provider of the emerging social Web and potentially as the first Internet company to challenge Google's dominance in online advertising.

Basically, now that everybody (400 million users) is on Facebook, the company is trying to extend itself to the rest of the Web, allowing you to broadcast your likes and dislikes from other sites back to your Facebook friends, and allowing your Facebook social graph to extend … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--It can't be explained as succinctly as "a widget platform" or "a universal log-in," but Facebook's panoply of announcements on Wednesday at the company's F8 developers conference reveal some of the social network's most audacious moves yet.

Facebook has now built deeper, stronger pipes that will pull in more information from partner sites and push more social-media capabilities out to them in turn--Open Graph, which integrates third-party data into Facebook in a far more complex way than its Facebook Connect predecessor; Social Plugins, which add a smattering of social features to … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Nestled inside the badges that were handed to attendees at Facebook's F8 developer conference here on Wednesday were what looked like little paper dog tags emblazoned with Facebook's logo. These are part of something calls "Facebook Presence," which at this point is little more than a gimmick for the hordes of techies here.

But it calls up the possibility that when Facebook finally makes a concrete move into the hot "geolocation" space, it may look something like this.

Here's how the RFID-enabled "Presence" works. The tokens contains a number, which … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--As part of its unveiling of its "Open Graph" product suite at the F8 developer conference here, Facebook is getting rid of the standalone "Facebook Connect" product that it unveiled at the last F8 two years ago.

"We are actually eliminating the Facebook Connect brand," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a press conference following his keynote address. "We figured that 'Connect' is not descriptive for users."

Facebook director of platform product Bret Taylor chimed in. "Facebook Connect was just an initiative to have [the] Facebook log-in work on external Web … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the company's F8 developer conference on Wednesday to unveil what he said is "the most transformative thing we've ever done for the Web." It's called the Open Graph.

There was no introduction: Zuckerberg just walked onstage in jeans, sneakers, and a black hoodie and started talking about Facebook's past F8 launches. In 2007, it was the original Facebook Platform. In 2008, it was Facebook Connect.

There are now more than 400 million people on Facebook, four times as many as there were the last time … Read more

I once got into a debate with someone over the proper pronunciation of "F8," the name of Facebook's sort-of-annual developer conference.

I pronounced F8 as the letter F followed by the number 8, saying I believed the name referred to the fact that the event involved an eight-hour "hackathon" right after the original debut of Facebook's groundbreaking developer platform. My partner in conversation, himself a developer, said he'd assumed it was pronounced "fate." Correct or not, he had the right idea. The logo for F8 2010, appropriately enough, depicts a tiny F next to a massive 8 in a black circle that evokes the fortune-telling billiard ball of yore sitting atop a complex map of what appear to be random points and connections.

This year, more than ever, F8 is going to be Facebook's pitch to developers, advertisers, and the world: You are destined to be part of our Web, and our universe.

Though the company's formal libretto of announcements has yet to be released, all signs point to F8 2010 as a place where Facebook will chart its next great land grab, asserting its impending dominance over online niches the company does not yet control. There may be an announcement about geolocation, the GPS-fueled craze that's currently owned by start-up Foursquare. There will likely be more news about "Credits," Facebook's gaming-focused virtual currency system.

There is expected to be further detail about the "universal 'like' button" or toolbar that Facebook plans to release to third-party publishers, and probably more about "Community Pages," a curious new feature that Facebook announced earlier this week.

Facebook wants to be everywhere. The "like" button announcement signifies that Facebook Connect, the big product release from F8 2008 (there wasn't one in '09--no reason given), just wasn't enough when it comes to Facebook's presence across the Web. It's also got fresh competition from Twitter, which may prove to be Facebook's strongest competitor since it tasked itself with unseating MySpace in market share. At one point, everyone expected Facebook's eventual big rival to be Google, which instead has tallied a history of social-media missteps.

Last week, Twitter held its first-ever developer conference, called Chirp, and all signs point to the microblogging company evolving far beyond a parade of 140-character messages from tech pundits, celebrities, and news outlets. Twitter plans to launch metadata annotations, a geolocation directory, its own URL shortener, and potentially more internal applications like the mobile clients it announced for iPhone and BlackBerry.

Facebook's response to Twitter's growth: Grow bigger. That's what we'll be seeing at F8.… Read more

Looks like Facebook will be throwing another big "F8" developer conference in the spring, after taking 2009 off. According to a sparse post on the company's developer blog, the event will be held April 21 and 22 in San Francisco. No more details are currently available.

"F8 has always been about empowering a community of developers to hack, to build and to delight users," the post reads. "We're looking forward to continuing this tradition at our third F8 in San Francisco on April 21-22, 2010. Please save the date!"

This is a … Read more

Panasonic's fabled Toughbook line of rugged laptops gets a new addition Thursday, with the Toughbook F8, a 14.1-inch system that Panasonic calls the world's lightest 3G-ready notebook. The F8 has a built-in carry handle and weighs 3.7 pounds, and includes a standard Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, up to 4GB of RAM, and a 160GB shock-mounted hard drive.

The new F8 has the same semirugged features the Toughbook line is known for, such as a magnesium alloy chassis, spill-resistant keyboard, and flexible internal connectors. It also boasts wireless options, including 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Gobi 3G technology, which should let the system stay connected on different mobile broadband carriers around the world.

Besides the new F8 system, Panasonic's existing 12-inch W7 and tablet T7 Toughbooks are getting upgraded to the W8 and T8. All three new Toughbooks are designed to survive drops of 12 inches for the laptop itself and 30 inches for the shock-mounted hard drive, as well as 6-ounce spills and up to 220 pounds of pressure on the lid.

All three new systems will be available in November 2008, and we've got specs of each model after the break: … Read more