There have been rumors last month that Facebook is going to see some changes in regards to its app notifications. Talks have been made that the app notifications would soon turn into email notifications instead. But with the start of March, developer blog of facebook has made an announcement that as of March 1, 2010 app notifications will be discontinued – no one will be delivering app notifications to your profile anymore and Facebook will no longer support the sending of these app notifications.
This is good news for users who hate being bombarded by these app notifications every time they log in. However, you can not expect these notifications to disappear forever. What is being done is that instead of doing universal notifications these app developers can choose from several methods in order to communicate with its users.
Facebook recommends these app developers to send their notices and announcements to the dashboard of their apps or to send the users email messages – users will have to agree to the email opt ins first of course.
The counters that Facebook points out as an alternative for app notifications are just like the notifications except that they will be specific to each individual app. So this means that if an app is bookmarked in your Facebook page you will get notices from this app. This is called by Facebook as the Applications and Games dashboards.
Facebook also announced that later this year, they plan to change how the profiles and requests function are going to be displayed. They also plan to make some changes on the canvas pages design.
For all iPhone owners out there it is now possible for you to add someone you just met right on the spot as a Facebook friend. All you need is a single bump with the use of the Bump iPhone app.
If you are unfamiliar with this iPhone app, here’s a small refresher. Bump allows you to share contact information with people by simply bumping your iPhone once with another person’s iPhone. You have to take note that the iPhones must touch each other in order for the app to work – you can not just shake your iPhone in the air. After this Bump will then connect the iPhones together and transfer your contact information.
Now, the Bump iPhone app is being updated with the help of social media giant Facebook. All you have to do is link your Facebook account to Bump and if the person you want to swap information with does the same you can now initiate a friend request on the spot. After you have sent it, a prompt would appear on the other person’s iPhone and she or he can either accept or deny your request. It is as simple as that. This has got a lot of iPhone users talking.
Bump’s Facebook integration is considered to be the first iPhone app that is able to initiate and accept friend requests. Jake Mintz, the co-founder of Bump technologies had worked closely with Facebook to make this a possibility. He also boasted that this is just the first of many social media integrations that would be coming to Bump.
A lot of celebrities and well known public personalities are joining the Twitter bandwagon. Even religious leaders can not get away from the online craze. If you need proof, the Dalai Lama has joined the social media giant recently this week.
It can be recalled that there was a @Dalai Lama account before but it was proven to be faked. The said Dalai Lama account had fooled the media and this event had played a great role in Twitter’s verification of accounts especially for those who can have great influences to the public such as the Dalai Lama himself.
This time, Twitter was able to verify Dalai Lama and confirms that this is the real thing although the Dalai Lama has not posted any personal messages or tweets yet so far. If you check his account you would see that it is pulling out blog posts and albums from the official Dalai Lama website and are twitting them through the twitterfeed. But it can be assured that you would be seeing real engagement from the Dalai Lama later on.
Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, posted a message this week that he had just met the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles and had a talk with him about using Twitter. He said that the Dalai Lama used to laugh at the thought of using social media but now the Dalai Lama himself has his own official Twitter site set up by his office in India.
It is no doubt now that Twitter is now one of the best ways for you to get to know better well known personalities and get to hear their message right from the horse’s mouth.
A twitter phishing attack has been going on lately and the attack aims to obtain twitter logins through direct messages. If you have received a message that says “lol is this you”, “lol is this me?” or “lol this is funny” with a link to a site called bzpharma you are advised not to click on the link and forget about curiosity.
If you happen to click on the link and entertained the details that are being asked – spammers can already take over your account. Then they can use your account to spam the same direct message to all your friends.
The widespread attack tricked Twitter users to logging into a fake Twitter page which lets users give their account details over to the spammers. The links would vary and you are advised not to click on links that has reference to bzpharma.net as well.
Luckily, your account will not be compromised if you are merely receiving this message. However, if you find that your account is sending these messages then it is advised that you change your password as soon as possible.
The phishers are using the accounts they have taken over to send out spam and have also resulted to a lot of Viagra related messages on Twitter. One example of these messages are “Get bigger and have sex longer” then leading to a link that would send you to a sexual enhancement website.
If you see that you are seeing unusual messages similar to the example above being sent from your own Twitter account this means that it has been compromised. Stop the problem by changing your twitter password immediately.
Kikin is the newest browser plugin for Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer that adds some rich social media context to your web browsing experience as you search and surf the World Wide Web.
As the pioneer of user-centricity, Kikin is surely putting a change on how people are finding and using the information that they need in the internet.
There are different search engines available these days that are cramming more relevant information to the top of their search results. The thing is that they are getting their data from networks and places that are not consistent. Kikin can add to that lacking consistency.
All you have to do is to choose the sites that you want Kikin to hunt for in your searches when you search for a topic so that you can get them at the top of your results page. Let’s say you prefer to get data from Wikipedia or Bing or Hulu – then these sites would be at the top of your results page. This way you steer clear from web sites that have nothing to do with what you really want.
If you get connected to your Facebook or Twitter account you can see comments that would be related to the topic that you are searching for as well either from your friends or from other public comments in the site. When you view a video clip on YouTube or when you look at a movie on Amazon.com then a Kikin bar will show up at the top of the page that can show you the recent searches for that item and feedback from Facebook, Twitter or other options. You do not have to worry about this bar since you can easily close it as well.
For media searches like music, movies and TV shows, Kikin has a menu that is very easy to navigate and has a nice context. You will find this to be more convenient compared to going through the individual sites.
One more thing that you will love about Kikin is that you are able to share content that you find in your web browsing easily on your Twitter, Facebook or e-mail account.
After reaching a dead end on its attempt to get Flash on the iPhone, Adobe unveiled Flash 10.1 and AIR for Android is going to be part of the Open Screen Project that is expected to come around at the first half of 2010. This means that Flash and AIR developers are able to install content to all devices of Android.
This means that flash games and AIR apps are now going mobile and this starts with the Android platform. This can be an advantage for game developers since they will no longer need to create different versions of their applications and games for different devices. One version can do the job.
The announcement was made at Mobile world Congress in Barcelona. The said Open Screen Project is a consortium of about 70 companies ranging from Nokia to AOL. Through this project, Adobe is hoping that Flash and AIR would be able to be consistent part of mobile devices worldwide and they also aim to target netbooks, tablets and other devices that can support the Flash platform.
Adobe AIR gives the ability to create mobile apps for Android and this allows developers to port their creations into mobile and make use of information like GPS in their apps. This initiative is more of like a response to the one platform that does not make use of flash which is the iPhone OS. For now Adobe faces a challenge from the forthcoming web standard HTML 5 which Apple preferred over Flash.
Most mobile app developers would find that the benefits of having Flash on Android and other mobile platforms are much better than the costs it presents. By the end of this year, it is predicted that Adobe and AIR would be consistently used among numerous mobile and computer platforms. This would give a lot of reasons for developers to create new and richer media within Adobe’s framework.
So for those of you who are into games and videos or even browsing the web for other media and would want outstanding graphics and performance you can get yourself an Android phone and be amazed at what Adobe Flash and AIR has in store for you.
With FirstFollower.com any Twitter can now identify who their first followers are. The site allows its users to see not only their own first follower but the first followers of other twitter users as well. The program is designed by Victor Babichev, a Russian developer.
The site is very easy to use. All you have to do is enter the desired Twitter handle. Take note that you should eliminate the” @ “sign and that you should capitalize if it is needed since the site is case sensitive. After that, click on the “wanna know” button. After this, you will be given the name of your first follower along with a pre-generated message from Twitter that states their praise of allegiance to you as a user.
lightweight Twitter app is just a small sample of the kinds of social graph analysis that can be made possible by Twitter’s open user data. However, given the fact that Twitter has change the way they listed their followers in the beginning of this year, there are some doubts as to whether the program is indeed accurate.
Think about it – who was the first person to follow you on Twitter and are you following them too? Chances are, you probably would not exactly remember who first took notice of your existence in the micro blogging site and followed you first in the world of Twitter and it would not hurt to find out. Sometimes the results can be pretty interesting and fun. Take for example
If you are into online shopping then you must know the value of comparison sites which helps you find the best deals that are available in the market. If you want to have the best deals then you should check out Giddi – a product rating engine that caters to a wide range of categories from house hold items to apparel and accessories. Giddi sorts out the products and ranks them in terms of popularity, age, price, brand and their overall rating which is gathered from user reviews.
Giddi gets product information from numerous ecommerce sites and then they sort the products on the different factors that have been stated above. You can also use Giddi to check the prices that different shopping sites on a particular product that you want to have. Although you might also want to consider making a separate search for price comparison since their price comparison tool is not that exhaustive.
One great thing about Giddi is that the sight does not focus on electronics which almost every product comparison sites usually revolve around. They have different categories which include health and beauty products and home appliances – products that you do not usually find on other comparison sites. This fact alone helps Giddi have a potential edge over the other sites.
Giddi is also easy to navigate and there are more specific options which make the sorting process easier and manageable. The site has an index of over 600,000 products and 1.6 million reviews making Giddi a solid product comparison database that you can use for your online shopping needs.
WordPress 2.9 has been recently released to WordPress users. The latest version is called “Carmen” and includes a lot of notable additions which include a image editing tool so that you can scale, crop and rotate your pictures, simpler video embeds and to save you a lot of time, there is now batch plugin updating.
WordPress 2.9 focuses on making publishing and the managing of your blog content easier. Since WordPress holds plugins in high regards, it just makes sense that WordPress made the plugin compatibility and update process as easy as possible so that they can be compatible with the current version as well.
There is also a new Trash feature. Instead of seeing the word “delete” you will be seeing the word “trash” instead. Every time you trash a post, page or comment it gets moved to the WordPress trashcan where it will stay for 30 days. So if you change your mind and you want to retrieve something, you are able to get it back as long as a month has not passed. All you have to do is to go to the new Trash tab and you can restore or permanently delete the content.
WordPress 2.9 can also automatically repair database tables in order to keep things more optimized so you can now have custom fields in the contact area, comment metadata and other features as well.
By default you will find that the new version supports Flickr, YouTube, Google Video, Photobucket, WordPress TV, Blip TV, Daily Motion, Scribd, Poll Daddy and many more.