Facebook today released a new standalone iPhone app dedicated to posting and sharing photos on the 900-million strong social network.

In line with today's claims of taller iPhone prototypes with 3.95-inch displays, one of our sources has provided us with images of what are claimed to be new next-generation iOS device parts being carried by a supplier. The most significant of these parts is a claimed front panel from the next-generation iPod touch, with the supplier claiming that the display would be taller than the current model and that the opening in the front panel measures 4.1 inches diagonally.

Bloomberg reports that Steve Jobs was intimately involved in the design work for the next-generation iPhone scheduled for release later this year, reiterating claims that the device will be a substantial change from previous designs in part because of a larger display. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has placed orders from suppliers in Asia for screens that are bigger than the 3.5- inch size now on the smartphone, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had worked closely on the redesigned phone before his death in October, one person said

Amid swirling rumors of an imminent update for the 15-inch MacBook Pro driven by a claimed April 29 launch date for Intel's quad-core mobile Ivy Bridge processors, CPU World reports that benchmarking of one of the chips likely to appear in the new MacBook Pro shows fairly significant improvements in performance, particularly in graphics.

Spirits is a really amazing title that original came out on iOS last year: It's sort of a Lemmings clone, though the art style and the game's floaty physics mechanics really add a lot of great new elements to that old classic. Now, Spaces of Play has brought the game to the Mac App Store, so if you haven't gotten to play it yet, you can see it on the big screen with full audio running. Unfortunately, there's no new content available, but Spaces of Play has of course tweaked the game's graphics and interface to work on the desktop rather than on a touchscreen

We briefly mentioned WDC's press release that they would be showing their new MyBook Thunderbolt Duo at Macworld. Here are photos from the show floor of the unit

With Apple announcing its iBooks Textbooks initiative yesterday, the company has been pushing its view that the iPad can help revolutionize education by keeping students engaged with unprecedented levels of interactivity. In an attempt to assess the effect of iPad textbooks on student performance, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) performed a year-long pilot program using an iPad version of the company's Algebra 1 textbook for middle school students. The study, conducted at Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside, California, saw 78% students taking the course using the iPad textbook rank as "Proficient" or "Advanced" in the subject, compared to only 58% of students using the traditional print textbook.

At CERN today, home of the Large Hadron Collider , particle physicists announced the most recent (and most tantalizing) results in their search for the Higgs Boson. They haven't nailed down the elusive particle quite yet, but they're closer than ever before, and they may now know just exactly where it's hiding.