It’s been 17 long months since the Facebook application launched for BlackBerry, and not much has changed since. A stability update here, bug fix there – but that’s about it.
The BoyGeniusReport got their hands on the upcoming 1.5 release of the BlackBerry application, and it’s bringing a few new features to the table. Nothing earth-shatteringly huge and they’re saying the UI desperately needs an overhaul, but hey – new stuff! Read on for a quick look at what’s to come.
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up.
They’ve begun talks with pretty much everyone in the business, and are hoping to bring more Facebook to more handsets, including Palm’s much-anticipated Pre and hopefully a whole bunch of Nokias.
In the late 1990s, when I used to watch Fox Sports News in the morning before school, there used to me a commercial for the Wall Street Journal. Something about two kids, both alike in dignity, but one who was raised by a Wall Street Journal-reading family, and the other, ostensibly, by a pack of wolves; wolves don’t read too well. Naturally, the kid from the WSJ-reading family went on to become a wealthy middle class type, while the other, I don’t know, died a savage death while fighting for scraps of food underneath Veterans Stadium. The point is, there’s two ways to look at any given topic, like, say, the Internet. Is the Internet, in Recession America, the new nickelodeon, an outlet for the freshly jobless to waste their hours away? (That’s what the Wall Street Journal says.) Or, more sinisterly, is it the cause of needless panic and stress, causing us to freak out over things we have no control over? (That’s what the Financial Times says.)
It’s just about lunchtime here in the Aamoth household and for some reason, I really feel like a delicious cheeseburger today. I can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with this delicious-looking cheeseburger bed that my wife would never go for.
Sony’s DSC-G3 point-and-shoot digital camera not only has built-in Wi-Fi, but it also has its own Web browser. Guess that makes uploading your photos to the Internet a little easier.
Australia looks to be moving ahead with its plan to censor Internet content on a country-wide level, and will test its array of filters later this month. To refresh your memory, the Australian government wants to block access to illegal material on the Internet, be it genuinely awful material like child pornography or something more controversial like terrorist Web sites. (Who’s a terrorist?, when is a site advocating terrorism?, etc.)
How annoying is the “random vowel deletion” phenomenon in Web 2.0? This annoying, as a matter of fact.
Facebook is stll arnd fr sme resn, as is MySpace. Gvn tht MySpace lnchd MySpace Music lst mnth—whtevr tht is!—ppl are clamoring for sme srt of Facebook rspns to MySpace’s call. A Facebook Music, if u wll. Is it in the crds? The New York Post seems to thnk so, and it put its art dptmnt into ovrdrv cmng up with tht piece of wrk. To thnk, someone is paid to do tht.
Suppsdly the cmpny is in tlks with the likes of iLike, iMeem and Rhapsody to bttr intgrt their srvice on the site. It seems Facebook doesn’t wnt to play hrdball with the rcord labls, so it’ll outsrc its effrts to one of those companies. That’s the spculation, at least.
While none of the lbls chose to commnt on the story, Facebook said tht it’s alwys looking to xpnd its music offerings.
Then the Post cautions that Facebook hgher-ups are all, “We’re not planning anythng like this, what are you tlking about?”
Which brngs us bck to squar one. Trmndous.
Doug Beaver over at a Facebook Engineering blog casually mentions that they have just had their ten billionth photo uploaded. Not only that, but since they keep 4 copies of each in different sizes, that’s 40 billion files just for the photos. Then he drops these little nuggets:
Kind of puts things into perspective, right? I remember I was pumped when I got my 100,000th visitor to my mp3 blog, Robosexual. A year of my own traffic, tripled in a single second by Facebook. Nick at Roughtype notes,
“I did a quick scan of the 10 billion photos and found that 3 billion of them included an image of beer, in keg, can, bottle, or pitcher form, 1.5 billion included an image of a bra, and 675 million included both beer and a bra.”
I’m… I’m just so proud!
Proporta, maker of iPod and other cases, is offering a discount to their favoritest Facebook friends on the Facebook. Do you have a profile? Then add Proporta and get 10% and keep up to date on the latest Alu-Crystal cases for the Nokia N95.
I mean you don’t have to do it since I posted the screenshot above but these guys are actually nice and I’d recommend popping over to see what’s up.
The new Facebook design goes live, what, this week or next, and plenty of kids—you know, the original demographic before the site was overrun by social media wonks—are none too pleased. As one of the early users of the site (I joined in June, 2004) I couldn’t give a damn what they do to it at this point. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all dumb zombie apps and other such nonsense.
Here’s a sampling of some of the fun anti-new design comments:
“EFF NEW FACEBOOK!!! i hate it!”
“the new design of facebook reminds me of myspace in a way because its so full of shit – i joined facebook because it was neat and clean and now they’re changing it to something thats annoying and confusing???? how stupid. at least give us the choice…”
“The new Facebook is messy, slow to get to the applications, when you set the applications you want them to be shown, they don’t show. I’m sorry, instead to looking forward to a new face it has been a step backwards.”
And so on.
But who cares what the users think, the Valley demands new hot FACEBOOK.
Well, it seems Facebook is wildly insecure and none of those third-party applications should ever be trusted. Who would have guessed it?
Specifically, there’s an app out there called Photo of the Day that ostensibly displays photos of the day ::cough:: from National Geographic. It does more than that, though, and sends unwanted traffic to a chosen Web site. Then that chosen Web site is dealing with a denial of service attack.
Photo of the Day is merely a proof of concept and doesn’t actually target any Web sites. Developed by a team of researchers (“hackers!” in CNN talk), its main purpose is to demonstrate how easy it easy to wreak havoc by using Facebook.
As I’ve said time and time again, Internet security is largely a myth, and pretty much the only way to keep your data safe is to never interact with anyone ever. Failing that, be alert.
Photo from Wired
Vanity Fair, the fanciest trashy magazine there is, has publishedwhat is calls “The New Establishment,” a list of 100 of the top movers and shakers across all industries. It’s essentially a “who’s hot now” list, but since it’s Vanity Fair, all the Manhattan media types will be fawning over the ranking.
Drudge has the full list in an easy-to-digest format. Are you surprised that so many tech folks are in the list?
Names you might recognize include Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt (2 on the list, Google); Steve Jobs (4, he runs some sort of computer and media company); Jeff Bezos (6, Amazon); Roman Abramovich (8, he owns Chelsea FC); Mark Zuckerberg (25, Facebook); Howard Stringer (39, Sony); Shigeru Miyamoto (73, Nintendo); Walt Mossberg (100, Wall Street Journal).
Never thought I’d see the day when a Nintendo guy (OK, *the* Nintendo guy) would be in the same list as Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch.
As long as we’re talking about certain people who should be kicked in the balls for making bad movies about technology products, let’s add Aaron Sorkin to the mix. He’s thinking of making a movie about, you guessed it, Facebook.
If Sorkin goes through with this wonderful (eye-roll) idea, I’m sure it’ll be a really great movie (double eye-roll). He sounds like he’s just the guy to make the film, too (triple eye-roll) as he says on his own Facebook group “I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she’s been dead for 33 years.” In other news, I’ll be writing a movie about break dancing after I learn what “popping and locking” means.
To be fair, Sorkin has been behind some pretty dynamite shows; The West Wing and Sports Night, to name a couple. And the movie will apparently be about the story behind Facebook, which I guess could be kind of interesting. Hopefully they’ll tap Dustin Diamond (Screech on Saved by the Bell) to play Mark Zuckerberg.
[via PC World]
Most of us here are pretty much “done” with Facebook, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the upcoming release of Facebook for iPhone 2.0, which is scheduled to come out next month. As these few screenshots show, the application looks a lot more like the recently redesigned Web site itself.
Users are pretty much able to replicate their whole Facebook experience using the iPhone application. There’s the full News Feed, Wall, Notifications, etc. You can also now search for and add new friends.
Be excited!
There’s some big Facebook developers meeting going on right now (TechCrunch is all over it, by the way), but while most of it doesn’t really concern CrunchGear per se, the company did announce that Facebook Connect will be coming to the iPhone this fall. Facebook Connect lets developers tap into Facebook from within their own applications. For example, a Twitter program that, when you choose to get info from someone, takes you to their Facebook profile. I think “neat” is just the word to describe that: not too impressive, not too boring, just sorta in the middle there.
I’ll leave it to our resident iPhone owners Peter and John to pontificate on how big a deal this is for iPhone users generally.
It’s been about a month since we last teased Facebook and the like, so we’re about due for a post.
Many of you who log into your Facebook accounts today will be greeted with a band new user interface, one that Arrington points out looks a lot like Friendfeed, the social news aggregator created by a couple of ex-Google guys. (Credit crunch, saber-rattling, high gas prices…) Of course, when I logged in I still got the old interface, and that’s after I tried several different proxies, so it’s either a network or account-based transition, but not location-dependent. In other words, no fancy screenshots from me. Frown.
So yeah, just a heads up to the new page design that will annoy you in the coming days.
It’s been far too long since we last hated on Facebook, maybe like a day. So here’s to another!
A footballer in England has created genuine controversy by announcing a potential transfer from Crystal Palace to Fulham on his Facebook profile. The young lad, one Ashley-Paul Robinson, wrote at the weekend, “Ashley-Paul is goin fulham on monday. If i pull dis off im on dis ting,” followed up with “Ashley-Paul is travling 2 Bath With Fulham Fingers Crossed.”
Needless to say, his club isn’t too happy, and has said that he should probably look for a new one. So if that Fulham deal doesn’t go through, this 18-year-old could be SOL.
See how Facebook ruins your life?
MoDaCo is reporting a new standalone Windows Mobile application that brings Facebook to the small screen.
While it’s no secret that you can access a mobile version of Facebook from just about mobile browser, FriendMobilizer cuts away a bunch of the fluff and loading times, with the added bonus of sending status updates and friend requests to your Windows Mobile Home Screen every thirty minutes.
I easily downloaded and installed the app, which required that I log in to Facebook and grant permission for the FriendMobilizer software to access all of my innermost secrets. I then remembered that I only log into Facebook about once a month to agree to friend requests from all the people I haven’t seen or heard from in ten years.
If you’re a Facebook junkie and a Windows Mobile user, have at it.
FriendMobilizer [FaceofMobile.com]
Oh man, the Last Man Standing match, the nail-biting drama that is the ConnectU v. Facebook showdown is over, and Facebook won! Let freedom ring!
Right. Well, the highly publicized legal brouhaha between ConnectU and Facebook—the former accused the later of ripping it off (hoo hoo, Robin!)—should be done and done. A Federal judge in California yesterday enforced a previous settlement, casting aside ConnectU’s complaint.
Probably the only thing of note, the only thing even remotely interesting here is that, unlike forwarded previous news reports (which were mere extrapolations anyway), Facebook isn’t worth $15 billion. Apparently Facebook’s board of directors told the judge a different number, presumably one (slightly?) less than the phony $15 billion.
And then the economy crashed and no one gave a damn about who poked whom.
Some no-good kids in the UK have been harnessing the power of Google Earth to find houses with nice pools. Once a suitable house has been found, the kids use Facebook to send out some sort of “Crash This Pool” app or whatever the hell it is that you kids do on Facebook these days. Everyone shows up at the pool, beer and cigarettes in tow, and starts doing “the bump” or whatever the hell it is that you kids do at pool parties these days. Sounds fun, except for the part about how the pool and the house it’s attached to don’t belong to the kids. According to the Register…
“Owners of several plush poolside properties have already returned home to find teenagers taking a dip in their man-made lakes or their spoor: beer cans, dog-ends and vomit floating atop their once crystal-clear pools.”
If I had a pool and some kids showed up in the middle of the night. I’d sneak out into the yard and pretend I was one of them, drinking all their beer and smoking all their cigs. At the end of the night, I’d be like "Hey! Let’s rake this guy’s leaves, clean up after ourselves, and leave him some money! He’s probably pretty cool!"
Ah, sweet revenge.
