Is Apple about to acquire TomTom?

Apple’s now infamous attempt at designing its own maps and navigation application has some analysts predicting they may need outside help to stop the bleeding.

Dutch-based GPS navigation company TomTom is considered the most likely candidate, and as a result TomTom stock has jumped by 5.65% in anticipation of the takeover.

Hans Slob, a Netherlands-based analyst for Rabobank, predicted there is a 30% chance that the merger would happen, with TomTom founders needing the cash, and Apple needing their know-how. Apple already confirmed that it’s using TomTom data for Apple Maps on iOS, but it might need more of its partner’s expertise to fix its app.

TomTom is considered one of the premier mapping and navigation companies, and has gained a 33% increase in stock this year, being currently valued at just under $1.2 billion. This can almost be considered a bargain in light of Apple’s capital and what they’d be getting in return.

Facebook for Android to get a lot faster with an upcoming major update [UPDATE: It's live]

Well, it looks like the policy of stimulating its employees to adopt Android smartphones has yielded results for Facebook. An update for the social network’s Android app scheduled for later today, is bound to significantly increase its speed and overall performance.

In order to achieve the above result, Facebook’s app developers have done away with HTML 5 coding.Instead, they have used native code to speed up loading of images and browsing through the News Feed.

The update will also bring to Facebook for Android some features, which were previously available only on the iOS app. The most notable among those is the “new story” banner. Naturally, a slew of other, not so visible, improvements such as improved memory efficiency and a new custom scrolling engine have also been added to the popular app.

Update: So the new updated Facebook app for Android has hit the Play Store. Must say, It’s not the barnstormer we expected it to be. Scrolling still doesn’t feel as smooth as it should be and the new animations just feel superfluous. The only thing that’s noticeably faster now is opening images, which is instantaneous.

Perhaps, the fault wasn’t with HTML5. Perhaps, Facebook just can’t make good apps.