Mercedes-Benz Mbrace2 adds Facebook

While drivers continue to rely on smartphones to check services like Facebook and Yelp while driving, Mercedes-Benz is looking to move that behavior to the dash of the car with the second version of Mbrace technology.

Announced during the Consumer Electronics Show this week, the new version of Mbrace developed by Mercedes-Benz will support several new Web applications including Facebook profiles, Google search and Street View, Morningstar Finance,

Android Apps for x86: Things you should know

Intel has been all but absent from the mobile revolution of the last few years, but the chip giant is hoping to change that in 2012. It's betting big on Windows 8, hoping its range of CPUs will power both tablets and desktops running the new pan-device version of Windows and give it an edge over ARM chips that will -- at this point-- run only tablet-style, aka Metro, apps. (Intel-based tablets would run both Metro and "legacy" Windows 7 apps.)

But Intel also wants a presence in smartphones and non-Windows tablets, and to get there, it convinced Google to make the new Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" work on Intel x86-based devices in addition to their ARM-equipped counterparts supported by all versions of Android. By the way, Intel says we'll see those first x86 Android devices this spring, after device makers get their hands on sufficient quantities of Intel's new "Medfield" Atom CPU, now entering production.

Now that Google's Android 4 SDK is out, what do developers need to know to create Android apps that wil run on the future Intel-based smartphones and tablets?

The good news is that Android developers don't have to worry about maintaining and distributing separate x86 and ARM versions of their apps. "Dalvik" Android apps -- those created via the Android SDK operating on Android's Java-derived Dalvik virtual machine -- will run as is on both ARM- and x86-based devices. That's because the virtual machine insulates the apps from the underlying processor, and with Android 4.0, Google is supplying Dalvik VMs to manufacturers for both chip architectures.

Microsoft releases Xbox apps for Windows and iOS devices

Microsoft releases not only a Windows Phone Xbox app but iOS along with its Xbox Live dashboard update this week.

Coinciding with the Xbox Live dashboard update, Microsoft has released two new apps for smartphone users. While we knew about the Windows Phone’s Xbox Companion App, the iOS app was a bit of a surprise.The official Xbox Live iOS app, dubbed My Xbox Live, is free and designed for both the iPhone and iPad. Not surprisingly, My Xbox Live is a slimmed down version of the Windows phone Companion app. Apple device owners will have a limited ability to modify your 3D avatar’s appearance, read and send messages to friends, edit profile, add new friends to the list and view achievements.

Interestingly, the iOS app has an interface similar to the Windows Phone Xbox Companion app, replicating that horizontal bar populated with circular icons at the bottom of the screen. Microsoft probably wouldn’t feel bad if it lured defectors over to its OS.

Will Windows 8 go perfect ?

A new rumor suggests that Windows 8 may not have a classic desktop when run on ARM tablets and notebooks. Is this a good idea?

Microsoft’s decision to mix and mash the classic Windows 7 desktop with the brand new Windows Phone-like Metro-style UI of Windows 8 has been controversial since we first saw it. In our tests, we found that while the OS worked well enough, the styles and design of the new and old desktops clashed.