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For the most part, the updates are geared toward two things: letting users keep tabs on spammy apps, and giving developers and app creators more insight into the people who are using their products.

Facebook has made a number of changes to the behind-the-scenes workings of its developer platform, according to a blog post Monday by engineer Pete Bratach.

This is a much bigger deal for the people creating and operating Facebook applications than for average users, but members will notice a few differences. Rather than “adding” applications, Facebook users will “log in” to them and will have an option to “remain logged in.” It’s the social network’s answer to users who want a “try before you buy” option. Once they’ve logged in, they can opt to put the applications in their profiles. They’ll also be able to choose from the get-go whether they want the application to send them e-mail notifications.

Even though Facebook says it will likely make users less hesitant to play with applications they aren’t sure they’ll want to keep around, it’s bound to irritate a few developers who will say it makes it tougher for them to “go viral” and get the word out about their applications. Users, however, will likely appreciate the fact that they’ll have fewer unwanted e-mails and undesirable applications cluttering their online lives.

Also down the road for Facebook: open-source code on the platform, and redesigned profile pages. The social network, which started the developer platform craze shortly over a year ago, has to keep both users and developers pleased; its team has a tough rival in OpenSocial, which is backed by the likes of Google, MySpace, and Yahoo.

On the flip side, developers get a few new perks. Bratach’s post also announced that Facebook will be releasing new analytics for application owners so that they can know more about who’s installing and using their code. They will find out many people have used an app in the past week, how many people have “bookmarked” the app or subscribed to e-mail notifications, and how many times the home (or “canvas”) page for the application has been viewed.

Another tech-related issue Congress acted on Thursday was the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 14-4 vote earlier this month.

The two sides need the government’s OK to reach an agreement because they’re after a statutory license. Such a license gives Web radio stations the right to stream any copyright songs they want, but also requires them to pay a negotiated rate.

The bill would give the two sides until mid-December to cut a deal. Pandora and other Webcasters fiercely object to a decision by the Copyright Royalty Board–a three-judge panel that sets rates for copyright statutory licenses–to double the current $.0008 price per stream by 2010.

President George Bush indicated he might veto the proposed legislation on Tuesday. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, the Bush administration said it would oppose authorizing the U.S. Department of Justice to bring civil suits against file sharers. Since then, that part of the bill has been removed and it is once again working its way through the Senate.

With Congress due to adjourn Friday, lawmakers worked late Thursday evening to resolve a couple of high profile digital-entertainment issues.

SoundExchange and DiMA, which represents Web radio stations such as Pandora, have been at odds over the fees charged to stream music. Sources close to the talks say the introduction of the bill signals the two sides are close to cutting a deal. “They wouldn’t be seeking the government’s blessing unless they were close,” said one person with knowledge of the talks.

Earlier this week, DiMA and the recording industry agreed to a deal that called for interactive music and limited download sites to pay 10.5 percent of annual revenue as a royalty rate. Interactive music sites are those that enable users to choose the music they want to listen to (such as iMeem). Limited downloads sites are those that deliver music to users as long as they continue to pay a fee. Music subscription services such as Napster and Rhapsody offer limited downloads.

Music insiders say they are confident the bill will pass the Senate by early Friday and return to the House where it already passed once by a wide margin.

The board also set a $500-a-year fee for each channel a Webcaster broadcasts.

A “Webcasting” bill was introduced in Congress on Thursday that would allow SoundExchange, the body that collects royalties on behalf of the music industry, to reach a settlement on royalty rates with the Digital Media Association (DiMA) after Congress adjourns.

However, such an attitude isn’t universal–especially among those vendors who are in the business of designing datacenters as well as selling servers and other gear. For example, in June, IBM added a Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) offering within the context of a variety of modular form factors for different customer types and requirements.

The idea of shipping-container-as-datacenter was floated early and loudly by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. It’s easy to see how he got enamored with the whole shipping container theme. For a boring steel box, the history of the shipping container is a fascinating story about labor relations, standards, and globalization. (I highly recommend Marc Levinson’s book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.)

Interestingly, a lot of the “sexy” container scenarios are secondary or missing in HP’s plans. Extreme-density scale-out is a POD target, but one that HP sees as a smaller opportunity than use cases like capacity expansion or disaster recovery. And HP isn’t especially going after military and telecommunications use cases. It says that density isn’t a big deal in these segments that, instead, emphasize customization and robustness. In other words, not a good match with an HP strategy that is fundamentally about leveraging its strengths in volume server design and supply chains.

From a marketing and positioning perspective, HP is positioning this product most of all for capacity expansion of existing facilities when more computing horsepower is needed in a hurry; it says that one of these PODs can be delivered in about six weeks. Closely related is what HP describes as “transitional” use–that is, capacity needed for certain window of time; appropriate financial terms and conditions, such as leases, are important in this case. Leasing also plays into “generational” deployments where customers may want to swap out a computer infrastructure en masse for a technology refresh.

Technology first. Most of the other such products on the market introduce various clever schemes to cram lots of computer, storage, networking, power, and cooling gear into the tight confines of a shipping container without compromising the ability to service and reconfigure that equipment. Not easy, and definitely not in keeping with the way access is handled in a regular bricks and mortar datacenter.

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The latest announcement comes from HP, which has now introduced a Performance Optimized Data Center (POD). It, perhaps most of all, emphasizes the practical and evolutionary from a technology perspective, and alignment with the needs of specific customer segments in the marketing.

The catch is that accessing the rear of the racks requires opening doors built into the side of the shipping container. That’s another door to be properly sealed and a more involved procedure to get at the back of the racks. Nonetheless, it seems a reasonable tradeoff for a lot of uses–especially as it helps contribute to a very high density design as well.

And that’s the reason HP’s likely to be as successful with this type of product as anyone–if not more than most. It has the datacenter design expertise, sure. EYP Mission Critical Facilities, which HP bought in 2007, brought with it truly premiere capabilities in this regard. However, it’s the IT gear within the container, how it’s delivered, how it’s serviced, and how it’s upgraded that matter most to potential customers. Those are all things HP does well. And even if HP puts great stock in its ability to integrate just about any third-party equipment, it clearly hopes that its own systems will be a major part of the mix. The rest is just a box. Even if the box did “make the world smaller and the world economy bigger.”

However, it’s always been a bit unclear to what degree Sun viewed its “Project Blackbox” initiative as a serious business opportunity, as opposed to just a visionary idea or an opportunity to argue that Sun uniquely gets the future of computing. A variety of other vendors have adopted a similar concept. Some of them are likewise treating it as much as a showcase as a practical solution.

HP takes a different approach. It uses 19″-wide, full-depth racks in a 50U height. In other words, standard width, standard depth, and just a bit higher than the 42U racks that are standard in most datacenters. This should make it straightforward to install most standard IT gear–whether from HP or someone else.

For people setting up meetings, Tungle is Outlook-only so far. But as I said, it sends confirmation e-mails to attendees that many calendar applications can read.

It appears easy to use and mostly straightforward. I’m looking forward to giving it a shot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the desktop application to run on my system. Outlook is a “finicky platform” Tungle CEO Marc Gingras told me before I fired up the demo on my own PC. Prophetic words. My cursed laptop also rejects TimeBridge, by the way. I don’t know what it is that keeps scheduling helpers from running well on my computers.

Tungle lets you give some of your contacts access to your free/busy information so they can more easily initiate a meeting request with you. For people you’d rather keep at a more professional distance, you don’t have to share anything about your schedule except episodically, when you want to set up a meeting with them.

Tungle is free. Premium services (such as scheduling meeting rooms) will be available eventually. The company also plans to make money by linking to third parties such as conference bridges.

Tungle, launching today, may be the meeting coordination utility to beat. Like TimeBridge, Jiffle, and other products in this new category, it lets you block off a bunch of times for a meeting you want to have with a person or group of people, and then it handles all the back-and-forth while your attendees figure out which of the available times they want to grab. Once the meeting is booked, it enters the appointment into your Outlook calendar and sends the recipients calendar entries, too.

Once we can get these applications stable on a PC, we’ll compare them.

Tungle lets you create big blocks of potential times for meetings, but it won't double-book you.

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Another unique feature: The capability to schedule two people into a meeting but not yourself–great for administrators. And you still get a confirmation when the meeting is set up.

When a meeting is finally locked in, the person or people you’ve scheduled get confirmation e-mails, and in the e-mails come calendar entries that auto-populate Outlook, Google Calendar, Entourage, and other scheduling systems.

Tungle’s success is in its design. If you’re setting up a meeting, you can select whole swaths of potential times, even if you just want the person on the other end to pick a 30 minute slot. You can also do cool things such as drag blocks across days (for example, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday through Friday) for open times. Tungle will excise times that you’ve already got booked (including times booked by other attendees on your Exchange server), and will make sure that your contact never gets the option to select times that are taken, even if they’re scheduled after you send out the initial meeting request.

“After exploring various locations throughout the region, we decided Ireland was the best place to establish our new headquarters,” Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, said in a statement to the Times. “The talent pool in Dublin is world-class, and recruiting local talent will help us better understand the needs of local users and the regional dynamics that, in turn, can give us better insight into what features matter most,” she added.

The Dublin office will be the center of Facebook’s operations for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, from ad sales to technical support.

It’s also home to the iconic Guinness brewery. That might’ve sealed the deal for Facebook–which now has 308,000 users in Ireland, according to the Times.

As it expands across the globe, social network Facebook will establish its official international headquarters in the Irish capital of Dublin, the Irish Times reported Thursday. The announcement was made by Mary Coughlan, Ireland’s minister for enterprise, trade, and employment, and the Times hinted that the company is already recruiting to build up a local workforce.

The Irish government has been extremely friendly to technology companies, providing appealing tax incentives. Yahoo, Google, and eBay all have offices in Dublin as well, and Dell has chosen another Irish city, Limerick, for its European headquarters.

Dublin is slightly more affordable than that other European anglophone metropolis: Consulting firm Mercer named London the world’s third most expensive city in this year’s edition of its annual rankings; Dublin came in 16th.

The analysts cut Google’s earnings estimates to $19.37 a share from $20.20 a share for 2008, while also trimming back 2009 to $23.51 a share from $26.01 a share.

While the valuation is getting interesting, we still have several concerns. First, one industry source suggested to us that 4Q could see “a big drop” in orders compared to prior fourth quarters. We think it is important to get a read on how the 4Q business is building and how 2009 might look. Second, our due diligence suggests that 2Q and 3Q may have each included license revenue in the tens of millions from a deal with a major food company–possibly setting up a more difficult sequential comp in 4Q. Third, as we discussed last week, another industry source suggested that one of SAP’s customers may have stalled a deal as it saw its own customers beginning to delay payments. This behavior may well intensify in 4Q. Last, we note that it may be more difficult for SAP to reduce expenses than might be the case for Oracle given the high concentration of SAP employees in German and Europe.

Google is scheduled to report its third quarter financial results on October 16, while SAP is scheduled to report its earnings on October 28.

SAP, an enterprise software behemoth, had its price target reduced to $35 a share from $45 a share by Patrick Walravens, a JMP Securities analyst. He also reduced his SAP earnings estimates to 1.81 euros ($2.47) per share from 1.90 euros ($2.59) per share for 2008, and his 2009 forecast to 2.14 euros ($2.92) from 2.18 euros ($2.97) per share.

On the Google front, analyst George Askew and Reed Meyer of Stifel Nicolaus lowered their Google price target to $525 a share from $600 a share, as well as cut the earnings estimates for 2008 and 2009.

Click here for ongoing coverage from CNET News, ‘Tough times for tech’

Shares of SAP and Google continued their downward trek, as Wall Street weighed in Tuesday with earnings cuts.

We are reducing our financial projections for Google to reflect a more cautious global economic outlook. Our belief is based on 1) the apparent sharp slowdown in business activity late in 3Q08 for companies globally as the ongoing credit crisis depressed business and consumer confidence, and 2) the negative revenue impact of foreign currency moves relative to the stronger U.S. dollar. We conservatively project the economic slowdown to continue through 2009.

Walravens noted in his SAP research note:

Askew and Meyer noted in their research note:

Google’s shares dropped as low as 5.6 percent in intra-day trading to $350.26 a share, following a 2008 and 2009 estimated earnings cut and lowered price target offered by Stifel Nicolaus analysts. And SAP, which saw its shares pummeled Monday after issuing a warning its third quarter was not shaping up as anticipated, suffered a further decline as analysts cut their earnings estimates.

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The delay is the latest in a string of restart dates CERN has announced. CERN had originally expected to have the LHC back online at the beginning of April, following CERN’s annual maintenance period. But that target was revised last November to June. Later that month, CERN’s head of communications, James Gillies, told ZDNet UK that the new plan was to restart the LHC in late summer.

“The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said in a statement. “It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start-up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year.”

Click image for gallery on the Large Hadron Collider.

LHC operations were suspended last September after a transformer malfunction in its cooling system allowed a helium leak–just nine days after the controversial project became operational. An investigation concluded that the malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets.

(Credit:
Maximilien Brice for CERN)

As a result, the 53 magnets used to accelerate sub-atomic particles around the machine’s 17-mile underground tunnel had to be cleaned or repaired. At the time, the repair costs for the $5 billion LHC were expected to top $16 million.

The Large Hadron Collider could be restarted at the end of September–a year after the world’s largest particle accelerator was knocked off line by an electrical malfunction.

The LHC, located along the French-Swiss border, is designed to smash beams of protons into each other, test fundamental physics theories, and help understand the nature of matter.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, the organization that built the LHC, announced Monday that it expects the first beams to begin in September, with the first collisions expected by late October.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes confirmed last month that the company will split up AOL’s media and Internet access groups. And there has been wide speculation that the company may just ditch the ailing business unit altogether.

Earlier this year, talks between Yahoo and Time Warner heated up as Yahoo looked for ways to thwart Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid. At that time, reports suggested that Yahoo might buy AOL or that Time Warner might invest in Yahoo.

Yahoo’s shiny new board has decided to move forward with talks with Time Warner about the future of its AOL division, according to the Financial Times.

The decision came at Yahoo’s first board meeting since Carl Icahn and a few of his posse took seats at the board table.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with the company, the report says active negotiations are not taking place yet–just that Yahoo could sit down to the table over the matter.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

To make your own creation you can upload any old photo from your computer. There are just a few options to add the captions or bubbles to your photo, including small knobs to control the borders, shape and size. Each button pops with a little animation that’s very fluid and organic, making it an experience on it own just to click on something. Kids will love it.

One nice thing about the tool is that it lets you go well outside of the photo if you’ve got a caption or bubble that needs to stick out. It will automatically add more space around the photo and save it with the additional border.

SuperLame is completely free to use, however it adds a small watermark to the bottom right hand corner of your images with a link back. There’s no way to get it off without using additional photo editing soft or Webware, so if you’re not keen on watermarking an image then use a similar tool like Fotoflexer, Picnik or Picbite (review).

Here’s a fun tool for play around with over the long weekend. It’s called SuperLame, and it’s a simple tool for adding speech bubbles over photos. It’s missing out on some of the special effects found in other similar tools like Comeeko, but what it lacks in versatility it makes up for in flash and user experience. It’s simply a joy to tag up a photo with captions, speech and thought bubbles. Best of all, the end result is total eye candy.

SuperLame's image editor does only one thing (comicbook like speech bubbles), but does it well.

The nonprofit was kick-started earlier this year by four existing organizations: City Year, Be the Change, Civic Enterprises, and Points Of Light. Its inaugural “summit” is set for September 11 and 12 in New York with a keynote by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The social network will provide the organization with advertising deals, technical help, and support for ServiceNation campaigns on Facebook. In return, ServiceNation has selected Facebook as a primary tool for online organization and communication.

“Facebook is already a place where people are acting on their interests and ideals, connecting with each other, and sharing information that can lead to meaningful change,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of global communications and public policy, said in a joint release. “Through this partnership with ServiceNation, we can be part of an historic effort to inspire Americans to act together to get more directly involved in and connected to their real-life communities.”

ServiceNation, a relatively new nonprofit that hopes to engage more Americans in volunteer and service work, has earned the seal of approval from Facebook.

But Zuckerberg said at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March that the company was not yet mature enough to undertake its own philanthropic projects. That would take up financial resources that the young company simply doesn’t have yet.

Given Facebook’s global reach, influential status among young people, and reputation as an effective tool for group communication and organization–as well as founder Mark Zuckerberg’s more-than-occasional comparisons with a young Bill Gates–the company has been increasingly asked about philanthropy and the general concept of “doing good.” In both speeches and private conversations, the company’s executives frequently talk about changing the world.

“I think at this point, because we’re not incredibly profitable, we’re not at that stage of the company–hopefully we get there–that’s not really something that we can do a lot of,” the CEO, then just 23 years old, told CNET News at the time. “But I’d like to think that just what the company is trying to do in general, just helping people communicate, is actually making the world better.”