alternative to update_option() in wp-admin

Question

I know this is a fairly recent feature in wordpress (version is 2.8.6 at the time of writing). There are some functions that allow you to easily create panels in the wp-admin. You're supposed to be able to just define a function and a from, and wordpress will handle the update_option() calls. I haven't had much success in hunting it down though.

Could someone enlighten me?

Answer 1

Ok, finally tracked it down:

http://digwp.com/2009/09/global-custom-fields-take-two/