HTC Status Quick Review with Specs and Info

Jul 192011
 

Facebook Phone called HTC Status

Facebook, twice the juggernaut that Myspace once was, creator of fortunes, invader of privacy. The Social Networking website has continued to grow from its humble origins, a pissed off college kid’s method of taking revenge. Today, even smart phones have been outright designed for the ever addictive social networking site, with Android producer, HTC tapping into this lucrative market.

Platform Android™ 2.3 (Gingerbread) + HTC Sense™
Display HVGA 2.6-inch touch screen
with 480 x 320 resolution
Network Quad-band GSM/GPRS/
EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900
Memory 512 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
Processor MSM7227, 800 MHz
Battery Rechargeable lithium-ion battery, 1250 mAh
Camera 5 MP main camera with autofocus, VGA
front-facing camera

The HTC Status uses the Android 2.3 OS, Gingerbread. The relatively fast operating system is aided with excess proccessing power and memory to boot for a smartphone. A 2.6″ screen is a bit lacking however, with the smaller statuses and updates on sites such as Twitter and Facebook becoming near unreadable. On the plus side however, there are quite a few features which will advantage the typical Social Networking addict. Firstly, the QWERTY keyboard, while a slight curve in the device ensures that it can be held for longer periods, without causing hand or eyestrain.

While still being a solid phone, the limitations of the 2.6″ touchscreen really begin to show when playing touch dependent games, such as Fruit Slice, among others. This problem is exasperated with some applications being required to be used in portrait mode. Considering that the phone is permanently locked into a landscape orientation, it is likely that frustration will when trying to use certain applications that require a portrait orientation to be used. The phone features a tiny ‘F’ button, representing Facebook (obviously), and allows easy access to the application. Due to the convenient location of the button, generally users are more inclined to use this button, rather than actually tapping on the application, saving a few seconds here and there.

Two cameras, being front and back facing are slightly handy, when you need a new profile picture for example. However, unlike the iPhone 4, and not being an Apple product, the use of a front facing camera can’t be used to emulate Facetime yet. The last criticism is of the phone’s inability to play Facebook videos, something which hopefully should be rectified by Facebook themselves, or by HTC soon.

Being tiny, while featuring a maxi-keyboard favoring thumb-typers, and an ergonomic body that your artsy friends will appreciate, perhaps after the Facebook Video issue is fixed, the HTC Status might become a good secondary phone, or replacement for your aging iPhone.

 

Skype comes to Facebook – group chat, video chat and many more goodies to come!

Jul 072011
 

Finally, the moment some Facebook users were anxiously waiting for, the announcement of the “awesome” feature that the social network was going to make available to it’s over 750 million users.
If you haven’t yet noticed, log on to your Facebook account, click on one of your contact’s names’ on Facebook chat and you will notice that you are now able to start video calls straight from the comfort of your browser. If you want to know how this works, click here to visit Facebook’s video calling portal and click on the “Get started” button to find out more.

 Skype for Facebook

 

It all started as rumors

At first it was nothing more than rumors, the fact that Skype the world’s most notable VOIP client was going to become integrated with the world’s most notable social network. As with all rumors, the more they’re repeated they end up becoming true. We shouldn’t forget the fact that Google+ also made this possible (Thanks Google!), forcing Facebook to step up their game to be able to compete with Google’s social network, which is proving to be quite popular.

Furthermore, apart from the introduction of Skype-enabled video chat, Zuckerberg also unveiled “group chat”, which is a cool add-on that allows users to hold conversation with multiple users on one window instead of having to open many chats, goodbye long status/comments!

There have been some talks by both Facebook and Skype on introducing “paid products” but no further information has been leaked on this matter. We can safely say that this partnership between the two companies is not likely to fade away anytime soon.

Some of you may be wondering whether video chat is available on mobile devices. Unfortunately, it isn’t…at least for the moment. When asked during the press conference, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t spill out any details to when this might become available but personally I predict it could take a while since the technology behind this is pretty “tough” to figure out and manage. It will happen but we it’s difficult to say when.

What’s next Zuckerberg? That’s a question many web gurus and “geeks” have been trying to find or work out but there are endless possibilities, we never know what the geniuses behind Facebook could come up with. Nevertheless, we can say that they’re doing a hell of a job and 1 billion users isn’t that far away now, Mark!

PressReader Review: Mobile NewsPaper Reader

May 222011
 

pressreader front page from ipad

I just found the best newspaper app reader for iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices, called PressReader. What I like about this particular mobile newspaper application is that I can read newspaper from all around the world including my home country Slovenia and other 5 country (German, Russian, Bosnian*Croatian*, and USA/UK)  newspaper because I speak  5 languages.

PressReader saves your trip to Gas Station or place you are buying newspaper from, because you can download daily newspaper right onto your mobile device, not only you can read the newspaper you can copy, save it and also share it via social networking websites such as Facebook or Twitter.

As you can see in the picture above, you can read top stories for free, you can listen to them and search for particular topic, because it is all text based.

Features of PressReader:

  • 1800 FULL CONTENT newspapers
  • Read news from 94 Countries in 48 different languages
  • Daily updated newspaper such as US Today, NYTimes, The Herald, The Washington post etc…
  • Download newspaper automatically to your mobile device
  • Flipping through pages like your paper magazine
  • It’s Green! Save trees
  • Supports on-demand audio, so you can listen instead of read!

Those are just few features that press reader has, but  there are many more features that I would like you to find it for your self,  because this application is free to download on most popular devices such as Blackberry, iOS, Windows Mobile and Android. When you download press reader you get seven free newspaper issues and  if you decide to read more, then you can  subscribe to various subscription plans that start as low as $0.99! (Subscription Plans)

Where to download Press Reader

My best suggestion is that you go to your mobile app store and search for Press Reader or press on the links bellow.

PressReader for iPad – App Store

PressReader for iPhone – App Store

PressReader for Android – Android Market

PressReader for Blackberry – App World

For other PressReader application downloads such as Windows Mobile, PC and Mac visit their website PressDisplay

pressreader countriespressreader slovenian magazinepressreader washington post

 

Mark Zuckerberg’s Fan Page Hacked #hackercup2011

Jan 252011
 

Upsy! Looks like Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page was hacked just a while ago. Did not take long for Facebook team to take the whole page down but thanks to friends at techcrunch who took a snapshot of it.

hmf

It says:

Let the hacking begin. If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011

Facebook Might Share your Address and Mobile Phone Number With Other Apps

Jan 162011
 

Remember all the dilemma about the Facebook Privacy and stuff about half a year ago? Well it to quite after Facebook re-designed their code so you can straighten your privacy, but is your private information really private?

You have probably seen popup like the one in the picture below , when an application is requesting access to post stuff to your Facebook wall. Now you might see some extra text like:

“Current Address and Mobile Phone Number”

facebook app allow

That means that your address and mobile phone number will be shared with third party apps and some might not need that info but still can obtain if you click on “Allow” button.

So next time when you are about to hit Allow for some Facebook App consider reading the popup window bit more closely, and ask your self: Why does this app need my address and phone number?

Anyway, for more detailed info visit our friends at Naked Security.

RSS is Dead? Says Who?

Jan 042011
 

MG Siegler known as Paris Lemon on Twitter posted an article yesterday about RSS being dead, that article made lots of debate around the social media and blogosphere, but MG is known for writing such articles that’s why he is one of the top writers at TC.

Anyway, I left him a comment saying that RSS feeds can not be compared to Facebook and Twitter traffic and therefore RSS feeds are not dead.

Thing is that regular people that are not into technology  love to read two or three tech blogs and most likely don’t even know what RSS means or what the official Icon for RSS is, therefore they subscribe via

  • Email Newsletter
  • Facebook (Fan Page)
  • Twitter (follow accounts)

But then you have geeks like me who has over 300 tech blogs in RSS feeds (Google Reader) and they are all sub-categorized in folders  (Phone Blogs, Android Blogs, Windows Blogs, Apple Blogs …etc)

RSS feeds is never going to be dead unless Google shuts down Feedburner and even then, I could subscribe to blog.com/feed

To be honest, you can’t compare RSS feed to any social media website service because 140 or 350 characters for me at least is not enough to know exactly what am I about to click or read.

 Fred from AVC wrote also some good points which you can read here, he also put out some graphical information which you might like.

Anyway, what do you think? Is RSS dead? If so , why? (Leave your responses in the commenting section below)

Paul Allen Attempts Once More with suit against Google, Apple, Facebook

Dec 302010
 

Mercer Island billion owners Paul Allen in the present day renewed his attempt to sue Google, Apple, AOL, Facebook, eBay as well as other companies in favor of patent encroachment.

Allen’s case was discarded on Dec. 10 by the federal judge at Seattle who supposed it was too unclear. United States District Court Judge Mr. Marsha Pechman said Allen he had in anticipation of Dec. 28 to organizer an altered suit.

Just get-together the time limit, Allen filed a prolonged version of the unique suit with additional facts of how the corporation allegedly infringed. The organizer as well includes 40 exhibits, a lot of of which are screenshots of the Web sites by means of modules decorated.

The companies getting sued refused to remark on the allegations while the suit was initially filed in previous to August.

Specialists have supposed Allen’s case is the longshot other than the potential pay hush money to be large – possibly $500 million otherwise more if he be successful.

Defendants named within this suit are Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL, eBay, Netflix, Google’s YouTube, Yahoo, OfficeMax, Office Depot as well as Staples.

Patents at subject in this case were created by means of a Palo Alto, Interval Research, Calif.-based research undertaking that Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, as well as Xerox experienced person David Liddle in progress in 1992. Allen stopped up it down in the year 2000.

Allen’s suit claims that his patents wrap, among other belongings, systems which automatically call up as well as display related substance. The approach is extensively used by online sellers as well as other sites crossways the Web.

Facebook Profile Maker Makes Your FB Profile Pretty

Dec 292010
 

Facebook profile maker I think it’s really cool Facebook application just because you can do so many things with it. Well this morning I tested it and I must say that it was very easy to use and only took me few minutes to make my Facebook Profile pretty.

Here is the outcome:

JoeHobot FB Profile

 

You can do this only with the new Facebook profile, which you can read more about it here.To make your Facebook profile pretty head over to Profile Maker it will take you probably under one second to setup your new FB profile.

Facebook launched Facebook Auto Tagging Feature

Dec 162010
 

Facebook today released new feature that will make your Facebook Tagging feature much easier. In their blog today Facebook announced face recognition tagging which basically will try to tag you or your friends in photos that were published.

This isn’t really something new , Facebook back in October launched pretty much similar feature that allowed you to tag person in group of photos instead of just one by one, this time Facebook tagging recognition software will try to recognize your face in photos that your friends posted and let’s hope that it will do good job. Some of my friends told me I look like James Dean so if somebody adds picture of James Dean am I going to get tagged? Weird huh?

facebook recognition tagging software picture

Currently this Facebook tagging recognition software is only distributed to 5% of the Facebook accounts but if all turns out to be good, many will get it by end of this year.

We’ll be debuting tag suggestions to users in the United States over the next few weeks. Look for tags suggestions when you upload groups of photos that feature the same friends, and see how they can help you share life’s occasions—large and small—every day.

Well if you are interested more about this feature I would suggest to head over to Facebook Blog and read more about it, and don’t forget to share this article on Facebook with the blue button above. (Thanks)

We’re Not Throwing Wikileaks Out Our Site -Facebook

Dec 072010
 

Confidential document publishing site the Wikileak has at present been kicked out of Paypal, Amazon, its DNS server as well as the Swiss bank account – however it lives on, counting cross-ways hundreds of reflected sites as well as is the topic for widespread conversation on Facebook as well as Twitter.

Site head Julian Assange is beating on the run however said to be in front of pending arrest in many states. “US Republican” leaders have allegedly called for Julian Assange to be arrested down similar to the Taliban chief as well as executed. He might very fit be published TIME Magazine’s individual of the time for approaching the cover on issue of technology interruption of media as well as diplomatic confidentiality. Senator Joe Lieberman named on US business for stopping to deal with Wikileaks however tonight Facebook has subjected a statement concerning its posture: for at present at least, the Wikileaks may carry on publishing informations to followers on the world’s biggest social group.

ReadWriteWeb’s query, by message: “Did Facebook have the declaration on Wikileaks relation there? Would it be permitted to carry on publishing, in spite of administration calls to impede doing trade with the group? Is Facebook allowing for shutting down this account?”

Facebook’s reply, by Andrew Noyes, this company’s D.C. foundation director of Public plan infrastructure: “Wikileak’s Facebook Page neither violates the content values nor have we met any content submitted on the page which disobeys our rules.”

That’s particularly dissimilar from that Twitter informs us at present. Twitter passed about a press declaration this dawn conditioning what it is not expurgated Wikileaks from the “trending topics” part, however while we inquired point blank concerning whether it will allow Wikileaks report for remaining online otherwise if it would be close up, Twitter’s Matt Graves informed ReadWriteWeb, “no extra remark was got by us outside the declaration.”

Skype for Facebook Coming Soon?

Nov 292010
 

Wouldn’t it be fun to video chat with your Facebook buddy instead of just send instant chat messages on Facebook. Skype as it looks like is soon coming to Facebook, a code change that recently was reported by Tel Ater indicated that Facebook already had Skype Video chat integrated but just not turned on.

Tel Alter image Screenshot of Skype Code in Facebook recovered with Firebug:

Facebook Skype

Thing is that the screenshot could be fake, but according to Mashable article written by Vadim Lavrusik yesterday Skype already reveled some great Facebook integration already. For an example, now you can import all your Facebook friend into Skype. Well for now we can just sit and wait until more news is reveled by Skype or Facebook. Who knows maybe George W. Bush today will reveal that news on live Facebook Stream?

Facebook Reveals A New Plan For User IDs Handling

Nov 252010
 

Facebook has announced an updated plan for the way of handling the user IDs transmission. It would not need the use of the encryption. After talking to the community, an engineer of Facebook, Mike Vernal, has written in one of his blog posts that they have updated the planned solution of using a different system which would provide a better security for the Facebook users whilst reducing the impact on the existing applications along with the elimination of the need for using the encryption libraries.

The proposed solution would be embedding a user ID in the body of HTTP POST. Thus, encrypted or unencrypted, it would not be showed in any of the header of the HTTP referrer.

When the browser is loading information, sometimes it sends HTTP header that recognizes the Uniform Resource Locator of the certain page containing the information. When the user of Facebook authorizes an application, apps named iframe-based canvas, which contains the user ID of the user, are written on the Platform of Facebook.

As per what Vernal wrote in his blog, the User ID is integrated with the purpose of enabling the application for building a modified experience for the Facebook user.

It was published in an article of the Wall Street Journal of the October issue that the apps of Facebook have been sharing the information of User ID with the networks of advertising and other companies of internet tracking. According to Facebook, it would not overlook such actions and would certainly begin encrypting the strictures it has been sending to the iframe-based apps.

Vernal also mentioned that the new proposed solution would not need the encryption and would only need nominal effort for the developers and the addresses from where they have been receiving the feedback till now. They do it by making a targeted form element at the Canvas URL of application.

Facebook Grabs 1/4th of Online Page Views – Is it a threatening news to Google?

Nov 232010
 

Who is the king of all search engines? People of all over the world know the answer. Do you want to know something?  People just say you “Google it.” Now, people use the word Google as the synonym of Search/Find. There is no doubt that Google is definitely the king among the entire available search engine.

Google makes the searching system speedy and easier. Google is actually a business of multi-billion dollar. Google makes its money through its advertising business, which is actually search-driven. But the disappointing thing is that people are now inclined to leave the properties of Google. The main point is that when people need to find any website, Google is present there to help them in searching that and the tools of Google are available to make the searching system easier and faster. That’s why people need not more time to be with Google and use the vast time for spending on Facebook, the greatest social networking system.

Facebook is favorable to all over the world as the social networking system. It does not have a lot of traffic as well as extraordinary revenue just like king Google. But Facebook is actually plain sticky and it is becoming stickier day by day.  It will be clear if we give a look on the online intelligence service named Experian Hitwise. According to its statistics, Facebook now grabs the 1/4th of all the page views and grabs 10% of all the internet visits. On the other hand, Google is in second place having 7% market share. Facebook is now completely active and people are prompted to set Facebook as the homepage.

While the Search Engines like Google are very important to navigate an apparently infinitive internet, Facebook is effectively one of the biggest social networking systems. So, the question is, “Is the rapid populartity threatens Google? Or, Is Facebook becoming more functional than Google?” the answer is obviously no. Reason is that Google is specializing and constructing enterprise tools, with which Facebook will never match. But, the thing is that Google should be stickier or just owns Facebook.

Apps for Social Networking on iPhone

Nov 212010
 

iPhone is not just a phone but a strong medium that can aid you in almost every sphere of life. The sphere of social networking and marketing is nothing different. In the Apple Store, a different section is there for Networking Apps. Here I present some of the popular social marketing apps for iPhone:

LinkedIn: You can synchronize iPhone address book with LinkedIn connections and find the information you want to achieve business objectives. Construct business outline by LinkedIn apps.

Happening:  Observe what measures are happening near you with this application. Occurrence operates approaching events of Yahoo!; connect with Google Maps and iPhone position ability to keep learned with the newest business events at their exact locations. You can easily make sure attendee records and mail record of business contacts with occurrence. It applies petite charge and general first-class appraisals.

Facebook: Maybe maximum social app than business apps set-up is still networking and no stone should be missed unturned. This app lets you to visit Facebook with one or two rapid spouts, verify status renew, modify your own position, have a chat online and read out the new posts with relax.

MeetMe: If you are trying to meet someone for business lunch, MeetMe will help you. It uses your present objective; where the individual you meet is listed and jointly with Yelp’s categories permits you to choose a middle point. One time you choose a conference point for example a restaurant, you can verify appraisals and send an email of driving instructions to yourself and your business contact. There are some accounts that are free from small charges. The small fee edition has the finest appraisals.

Gist: Maintain all your business contacts in a single place for simple allusion. Gist draws all of your updates, inboxes, and social networks, and blogs, address books and just regarding something else, you have collected for you to get. You’ll get connections you didn’t even identify you had.

Whatever apparatus you choose to apply to be connected, consider that business networking is a continuing process which can offer you with limitless chance for personal enlargement and profession progression.



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