App

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

Yahoo's latest entry into mobile search hopes to find the Axis of easy with its new iPhone and iPad app plus a desktop plug-in. Yahoo's Axis aims to make search easier, director of product Ethan Batraski told The Times. Search is an inefficient process that has remain unchanged, involving the same three-step process it always has for the last 15 years: Launch a query, get results and then explore results, he said. Axis removes the middle step of a returning search results page of links, instead returning a snapshot of the actual Web page and "turns search into a companion, not a destination," Batraski said.

Forget Angry Birds. Your smartphone can be a powerful tool for improving your overall fitness if you give it half a chance. Whether you're a couch potato looking to start an exercise routine or a veteran runner looking to cross-train, there's an app for that. Our picks of some of the best downloads to get you moving, measure your progress and keep you motivated: Yoga With Janet Stone ($4.99 iPhone and iPad) There are a lot of yoga apps out there, but few are as sophisticated as this new release.

TiVo, the popular TV recording service, will be making its way onto Apple's mobile devices sometime this summer. The service, which is called TiVo Stream, was announced earlier this week by the company, and it will allow users to stream their shows as well as download them, according to a release from TiVo.

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

A year ago, South By Southwest Interactive wasn't even on JJ Aguhob's radar. He was hard at work developing a mobile app idea -- a sort of Instagram for videos -- but was still a month away from launch. A lot has changed. On Monday, Aguhob, Viddy's founder, and his chief marketing officer, Evan White, rolled through the streets of downtown Austin, where thousands of attendees have descended on the city for the annual tech fest, and he heard shouts of recognition along the way. “We were literally driving the pedicab over and people were like, 'Viddy!

Want to say happy birthday to the Golden Gate Bridge ? There's an app for that. OK, not quite, but the National Parks Conservancy had a free GoGGBridge app created to help celebrate the big day. (An Android version is to be released before the bridge's birthday on Sunday.) Here are some of its fine points and some of its lesser points. --A tap of the finger can make you a GG Bridge expert. The Nuts & Bolts facts include the bridge's length (1.7 miles long), weight (887,000 tons)

The Mega Millions jackpot is still up for grabs at $290 million and counting, one of the biggest jackpots ever . You may have the numbers you're loyal to, but some of us are fairly random about it. As with everything, there's an app for that. If you're in one of the 42 states -- yes, California is one -- then you can take a chance. The game is simple, as Rene Lynch at the Nation Now blog explains : "Players pick six numbers from two different pools: The first five are numbers from 1 to 56, and the sixth is chosen from numbers 1 to 46. You win by matching all six numbers.

Amazon.com Inc. and the nation's bricks-and-mortar retailers are in combat again, this time over the online giant's price-comparison tool that enables shoppers to quickly check out prices at rival merchants. An uproar over the Price Check shopping app, used on mobile devices, erupted after Amazon launched a promotion for Saturday that gives customers 5% off (up to $5) on up to three qualifying items on its site if they check the prices of those goods on the app while browsing at a physical store.

Smartphones equipped with GPS-enabled location tracking technology have made it easier to let friends and family know where you're eating or shopping. The technology can also be a handy tool for parents on Halloween. Although it might seem spooky for kids, a handful of apps will allow parents to receive timely data on where their children are, and possibly deter the youngsters from wandering too far away. Google Latitude: Offered as both a separate app and as an opt-in feature that's part of the free Google Maps app, Latitude enables users to share their location with friends or family members.

Want to say happy birthday to the Golden Gate Bridge ? There's an app for that. OK, not quite, but the National Parks Conservancy had a free GoGGBridge app created to help celebrate the big day. (An Android version is to be released before the bridge's birthday on Sunday.) Here are some of its fine points and some of its lesser points. --A tap of the finger can make you a GG Bridge expert. The Nuts & Bolts facts include the bridge's length (1.7 miles long), weight (887,000 tons)

Forget Angry Birds. Your smartphone can be a powerful tool for improving your overall fitness if you give it half a chance. Whether you're a couch potato looking to start an exercise routine or a veteran runner looking to cross-train, there's an app for that. Our picks of some of the best downloads to get you moving, measure your progress and keep you motivated: Yoga With Janet Stone ($4.99 iPhone and iPad) There are a lot of yoga apps out there, but few are as sophisticated as this new release.

In another move to beef up its mobile offering, Facebook has hired the entire staff of Lightbox, a tiny start-up known for its popular photo sharing app for Android smartphones. The hiring of the seven-person team at Lightbox comes as the social network nears what is expected to be the largest ever Internet initial public offering. Investors have been weighing the value of Facebook and have questioned how well it will be able to generate ad revenue from mobile devices. Facebook made more than $3 billion off of ads seen on its laptop and desktop website in 2011 but has not yet figured out how to monetize its 500 million mobile app users.

All you need in your pocket or purse to find a hot restaurant. Name: Chef's Feed Available for: iPhone, iPod touch and iPad; Android coming soon. What it does: Profiles award-winning chefs and their favorite dishes at specific restaurants in certain cities. From there, you can map the restaurant, add it to your profile and itinerary, rate the dish and tell your friends about it using Twitter or Facebook. Cost: Free. What's hot: This app is becoming a better tool for business travelers.

You absolutely have, have, have to get up at 6 a.m. - for a meeting at work, a flight to Paris, a casting call for your dog to be in a Fido's Faves commercial. But you worry. You don't trust yourself. You've snored through alarms before. Fear not. There are gadgeteers out there who've got your back. Some examples: Math Alarm Clock: An Android app that plays music you've chosen to wake up to. That might sound a tad sleep-through-able for a hard-core zzz-ster, except that it plays and plays and plays the music until you come up with the right answer to a math problem.

SAN FRANCISCO - Dustin Moskovitz, at 27 the world's youngest billionaire, gained fame and fortune after founding Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg. He also gained the "Facebook 15. " He packed on the extra pounds while chowing down on free snacks and guzzling four sodas a day at the social networking giant. Today, Moskovitz is a svelte version of his former self. He runs Asana, a start-up named after the Sanskrit word for traditional yoga sitting positions. That's fitting since the company holds twice weekly group yoga classes at its San Francisco offices.

See what the view out your hotel room will look like before you slap down your credit card. Name: Room77.com What it does: Illuminates how much difference exists between rooms in the same hotel. By using image-search technology to find longitude, latitude and altitude for each room, the website creates an image of the view from the room. It covers about 2,500 hotels in more than a dozen U.S. cities, plus London. You can also reserve the room from Room 77, which sends you to Orbitz.

SAN FRANCISCO - In its biggest acquisition, Facebook is paying $1 billion for the hugely popular Instagram mobile photo-sharing app maker in a move that broadens its business and absorbs a potential rival. The tiny San Francisco startup has just 13 employees and no significant revenue. But its acquisition helps ensure that Facebook - on the verge of staging the most hotly anticipated initial public stock offering in years - will be on the forefront of how people share photos with friends on their smartphones.

If you're one of those people who says, "There should be an app for that!" every time you're confronted with one of life's little quandaries (recent entrepreneurial brainstorms in my household include What's the Dog Thinking? and some form of gaydar), you've probably already imagined this: an app that will tell you how ugly you are. Too late. The Ugly Meter has been around for more than a year, but thanks to a recent mention by Howard Stern on his satellite radio show, it's suddenly become a sensation, with upward of 5 million purchases.

Plan a private event, ask a friend to lunch or gather a large gaggle of people for a public meet-up - all from your smartphone or device. Great for business or leisure. Name: GiddyUp Available for: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android What it does: Lets you organize events by inviting contacts on your iPhone, iPad, Android, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. Cost: Free What's hot: It's liberating to skip the back-and-forth email chains when planning a lunch or party.