This may be old news for some of you who were upgraded to the new Facebook interface. Mine just went live a few days ago, and there is a fresh appearance when I share a link. If there’s an image, Facebook expands it and creates an appealing “card-like” post. Google+ does this too – just not as consistently.
Have you received an email that said it was from someone related to you, but upon closer examination you saw that it was from an unknown email address, and it contained a spam link in the email’s body? If so, you might have thought that either you or your friend had been hacked, but this is something sneakier: spear-phishing.
So what’s your verdict on Facebook’s newest “Game Changing” social application, Paper? While it’s an interesting attempt to paper over (get it) Facebook’s stale UI and stale content – the fact that a lot of the news from Paper is curated (aka picked for you by a human) makes me believe that this is a non-starter. Here’s why.
Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, and once again Facebook is getting on the action. Last year they introduced the option to change your language to ‘Pirate’ – and they have brought back the option this year! Go to Settings, then Account Settings, and Language. Once you’re done and ready to go back, access ‘Ye Ship’s Rigging’ to change!
“Just because you can include some technological advance in your consumer product, it doesn’t mean you should.” That’s really the thought that came to mind when reading about a pair of new, upcoming headphones. Muzik (while I’m on a rant… I hate it when companies intentionally spell words incorrectly) just announced their first product – a pair of “smart headphones”. As the company release notes the company is, “pioneering a new space called social smartware”. The term describes their goal of connecting consumer electronic devices to content and social media platforms with the goal of making “music instantly discoverable and…
A few weeks ago we got exclusive information that the HTC First was in big trouble. As we first reported, sales number for the first phone designed specifically for Facebook Home were close to nonexistent. Our inside information told us that the pre-order and first weekend sales numbers of the HTC First were less than 500 total units on the East Coast. In other words, the HTC First was all but dead on arrival. My conclusion at the time was that: I cannot begin to imagine what stock AT&T is currently holding of the device, but I have a pretty…
I watched the Facebook Press Conference during which Facebook Home and the HTC First Android Phone with Facebook Home launched two weeks ago with a bit of amusement. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but my amusement really wasn’t just about my lack of being a Facebook fanatic at play; the idea of Facebook being my welcome screen and launcher just didn’t seem like something I would ever want. Facebook Home takes one means of connection and makes it central to my entire mobile experience. Having it on a dedicated Facebook phone means that I would need to go THROUGH…
We have been hearing about Facebook Home since the Facebook event last Wednesday which we covered here. The general consensus was that Home was pretty much just another launcher – but a Facebook centric one. Now as the Facebook Home app arrives on Google Play, we have installed it and taken a quick look. The big question from the post we had about the event is ‘who cares’? In other words, exactly what market does this app serve? I always thought that was obvious but had two angles – it serves the Facebook crowd, and pretty much does NOT serve…
Facebook is kind enough to be streaming their media event today. That means we can follow along with the news as it is shared from the comfort of our own homes. You can check it out here or simply refresh your browser as we’ll be updating this post as the news is shared. “We’re going to talk about the Facebook phone or more accurately how you can turn your Android phone into a Facebook phone.” “We spend our lives sharing and connecting.” Instead of starting with apps and then connecting what happens it we flip that around and our phones…
Over the Christmas holiday, Randi Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg’s sister and former director of Marketing at Facebook) posted a picture of her family around the kitchen island having fun, and someone else shared the image on Twitter. This was picked up on Buzzfeed and more thoroughly explained on GigaOm amongst other places. Zuckerberg called the person out, saying that she had no idea how they got it, but that sharing the image to Twitter was ‘way uncool’. The thing that some pointed out was that Zuckerberg had very publicly taken the stance that “Anonymity Online ‘Has To Go Away’”. Personally I…
I have a coworker who often complains about our limited abilities to discuss work over social media. He claims it is a draconian and old-fashioned approach. Most of the time I let it roll past me, but more and more I think that it’s not strict or unreasonable, but in fact extremely smart. For some reason, Twitter seems to trigger the worst in public tweeters, from celebrities to companies. Don’t believe me? Lets look at some of the worst offenders. Just this week, there were two tweets that ignited a firestorm of criticism. First, KitchenAid tweeted this: Obamas gma even…
I think it is accurate to say that I have shown Electronic Arts VERY little kindness in my posts about them. I think they are greedy, petty, and petulant megalomaniacs as a corporate personality, and have a well-established history of buying properties, destroying studios, and running game franchises into the ground while extracting maximum financial gain from the ashes of former greatness. That said, they are not always wrong. They have stood up for marriage equality, have corrected many of the worker issues to the point where they are now a good place to work, and they put out loads…
You would think that with a name like DrawSomething, you would need artistic talent to play. But that is simply not so. All you need to get addicted to this evil, rotten game is one friend who will play you, a sense of humor, and a bit of patience. I first found out about this game last week while I was getting my nails done. Tracy, my nail tech, said she was playing and was addicted. I’d never heard of it, so I downloaded the free version and said I would check it out later. I put it off for a…
Now that Facebook’s new Timeline feature has rolled out to the general public, companies are looking to find innovative ways to use it to provide services to users. Today at SXSW, Viddy in conjunction with Facebook’s launch of the Timeline App Platform is bringing their popular video app to Facebook. With Viddy for Facebook, users can share video content directly to Facebook, and Viddy videos can now appear on a person’s timeline, News Feed and ticker. As noted in the press release: “Watching videos with friends is inherently social,” said Justin Osofsky, Director of Platform Partnerships at Facebook. Viddy is…
With the new Facebook Timeline it is possible to discover who has unfriended you, which might cause some distress in general. Add to that last week’s ‘National Unfriend Day’ on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and you add to the possibility of being unfriended. But on a holiday weekend there is even more cause for concern: I got a notice that my high school graduating class is having an informal mini-reunion, and my brother is going to his 30th high school reunion, meaning there are more opportunities than ever to come face to face with someone who has unfriended you. Source: Buzzfeed
Last night my son came to me with a message some of his Facebook friends had been circulating. He knew that there was a big Facebook announcement last week, but didn’t know if it involved instituting paid service levels. I told him ‘no’ and thought no more. Until this morning, when a post at the Consumerist told me that this message was much more widespread than a bunch of eighth graders. The image above is from the IT security blog at Sophos, and you can see it refers to ‘this summer’, as this message already got passed around earlier this…
One of the annoying things about tablets is lack of support for smartphone apps. For iPad users the ‘1x/2x’ screen doubling for iPhone apps is the bane of their existence, and for Android tablet users they often find that their favorite apps simply aren’t available on the Android Market. Facebook is one of the worst offenders of this – though they ironically have one of their best versions for the now defunct webOS platform! Today brings a fresh update for Facebok for Android solves one of those issues by restoring it to the tablet market for Android devices! AndroidPolice notes…
Facebook is great in many ways. You can communicate with friends, share pictures, and vent your feelings. But be careful what you say if your rant is about your employer! As more cases appear where people are fired for complaining about work on social media, there’s more precedent for what is and is not ok! Forbes has two scenarios, along with explanations of what has and has not been protected in past legal battles. Scenario one: Pop quiz, hotshot. You’re a manager at a BMW dealership. One day, someone drives one of your luxury cars into a pond. One of…
Are you one of the millions of fans of The Sims franchise? Do you like Facebook games? If so … rejoice, because The Sims Social has arrived! The game will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever played a Sims game: you set up your character, then start doing some basic tasks, and slowly built a life for your Sim including interactions with others. The image below shows the basic starting point for a character. As with the other games in the franchise you have extensive tools to alter your appearance to your liking – or just to match…
Three requests I encountered this summer: Scenario 1: Parents make a big purchase, and need to specifically instruct their children not to talk about it on Facebook. Scenario 2: A baby is born, and the new parents ask that no one posts pictures of the baby before they do. Scenario 3: A very private couple gets married, and guests are instructed not to tag or add photos on Facebook. What’s the theme here? If you guessed Facebook, you win! In each of these scenarios, it had to be explicitly stated that being present at someone else’s event, or tangentially related…
I’m not one of those parents who is totally panicked by the idea of all the kinds of scary things that are made available by new tech like cell phones, social media, and the like. Yes, there are a lot of scary things kids can access or be sucked into via new technology. But as a guy who spent his childhood in the late 60s and 70s, it’s not like it was a non-stop, safe party for us, either. Yup, you can get talked into stuff by strangers over your cell phone, or via Facebook, or Yahoo IM, or…
