Facebook has rolled our a new feature that allows users to upload images in the comments section. I saw this new feature on accessing Facebook from my browser a couple of days ago but it had disappeared yesterday. Then late at night I saw this option again available on my profile.
You will see a new camera icon at the comments field. We can upload images from our computer within the comments. Though this is a nice step by Facebook, I was a little disappointed that it does not allow you to first choose from your own photos you already have on Facebook but expects an upload.
Also these photos comments are not available on Facebook pages but are available on Facebook groups. I think this is rolled out to personal profiles mainly because it is easier to control who comments on your Facebook posts.
Facebook’s iPhone and Android apps do not have this new feature but comments with images can be seen on it. I guess a new app update will hopefully bring the option of adding images in comments from the phone itself.
Facebook has sent out invites to the Press for an event on March 7, 2013. The invite has a simple message, which is announcing a new look for the ‘news feed’.
One place where people spend most of their time on Facebook is looking through their news feeds. The design of the current News Feed is based on how it best looks on a desktop/laptop browser. But with Facebook being increasingly consumed on mobile and tablet screens, a new design was more or less expected.
Compared to say Google+ or even Flipboard (which is an app not a social network), the main news feed design of Facebook is boring, especially on mobile platforms.
News Feed design of Google+
Google+ image friendly design for news feeds
News Feed design of Facebook
Facebook ‘News Feed’ is better suited for PC browsers
‘News Feed’ is the Money Earner for Facebook
Though one might wonder what is the big deal about a redesigned ‘News Feed’ for Facebook. It is actually a very big deal because it is also where Facebook will be displaying some of its ads or sponsored updates.
It will be interesting to see whether Facebook gets it right or wrong.
Facebook might soon be turning its ‘events’ feature into a revenue stream. According to AllFacebook, the social networking website is testing out a new feature that will allow users to buy tickets to events directly from the site.
I could not find any events which had the option to buy tickets. But the option seems to be available for all brand page owners. I created an event for a page I am the admin of and saw the option to add a link to the “Buy Tickets” field.
It looks like Facebook might not be hosting a ticket selling interface as yet, but I am pretty sure Facebook might be considering that soon. Facebook events are used in a big way to promote concerts, meetups so it makes a good additions for page owners.
Events are Social, Ads are not
Facebook is a social hub for me. It is personal and last when it shows me advertisements to buy stuff, I find its like someone irritating salesperson visiting my home. While advertisements work great on Google, because people are always looking to buy something on it.
But Events on Facebook are social and I actually don’t mind buying tickets through Facebook.
Facebook is all set to introduce a new feature and completely change the way we search for people and stuff on it. It is the Facebook’s new “Graph Search”. Since Facebook is huge and there are more than a billion people and more than 240 billion photos on it, so “Graph Search” will allow users to find people with similar interests like music, places, food, sports e.t.c. According to Facebook “The first version of Graph Search focuses on four main areas — people, photos, places, and interests.” Let’s see how to search for something on it and how to get your beta version.
How to use Facebook’s Graph Search?
This Graph Search seems like (not exactly same) a text version of Apple’s Siri. You can search for people, photos, places, interests and make new connections. Once you start typing it automatically suggests relevant content in a drop down list. You can filter your results using tools on the right sidebar of search results page. Check out some example of searches below:
People who like tennis and live nearby.
Photos before 1990.
Photos of my friends in New York.
Sushi restaurants in Palo Alto my friends have liked.
Tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends.
How Graph Search works?
Graph Search looks for search results based on your friend’s posts shared with you or post from other people on Facebook who shared it publicly with everyone. That means search results will be different for different users. Facebook made it very clear that no private posts will be shown in the search results.
Also there will be no change in your current privacy settings. If you don’t want to share your posts like location, tags or posts you can change it on your Activity Log.
When you can start using it?
Currently beta version of “Graph Search” is out but it is available to a small number of people who are using Facebook in English (US). If you wish to use the beta version you can join the waiting list. Open this page and click “Join Waiting List” at the bottom of page.
The month of December, is one of those when many people take a look back at what happened in the year. Most media outlets often showcase important events that happened during the year. Facebook has personalized this by allowing users to look back at the top 20 moments on their profiles page. This is introduced as a feature called “Year in Review”.
If you are logged into your Facebook account today, you should see the link (see image below) to your “Year in Review”. Users can also share this link for others to take a look at the years events on your profile. Since Facebook has the Timeline feature for over a year, this sort of reviewing a year was expected.
Just click on that link and you will be able to look back at the whole year and 20 most important updates on your profile.
You can also check it directly with by entering the URL in this format.
https://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/[username]
This way I can actually check the review the year of any Facebook user, as long as I know their username ID. The privacy options remain intact and that means not everyone sees the same year in review. For example your top photos for you might not show to others who you have not shared the photos with.
I tired to check if the same can be used for Facebook Pages but it does not work.
I actually do not use Facebook for a lot of check-ins or share too many personal photos. I also do not add Life Events, so that might be a reason my year in review is not as interesting. But I am sure a lot of very active Facebook users will enjoy looking back at the year’s memories.
Once again Facebook changed the way we see photos on it and this time the change is pretty good. They have changed the theme of photos and its album. Now Facebook shows much bigger photo thumbnails with a cleaner design. Also there are some newly added features like featured photo, direct likes and comments e.t.c. Let’s have a look at these newly added features.
Design:
A clean four column design for photos and three column for albums look way better than the previous one. You can also browse tagged, and recent photos/albums easily just with a single click. Check out the screenshots below:
Slideshow:
Now you can rollover your mouse cursor on an album to see slideshow of the pics in that album. It’s definitely a useful and interesting feature.
Highlight your photo:
Love a particular picture? Now you can highlight a picture easily with a single click. Highlighting a pic will show a bigger thumbnail of that picture in photos.
Easily Add Location and Details:
Now you don’t have to open every single picture to edit it or add a location. You can do it without opening it as well.
Liking and Commenting:
Loved someone else’s pic? Now you can like or comment on the thumbnail itself without opening it.
Facebook also started showing faces using face detection for tagging friends. Personally I love these features a lot mainly because it’s not confusing and easy to use with a clean interface. Don’t forget to share your views with us.
Facebook has today revamped the UI of Messages, introducing a two-pane view, something you generally see in desktop E-mail clients. The’ve also brought minor updates to the search feature in it.
One thing that’s evident is, Facebook wants more people to use Facebook Messages for E-mail, which was then rumored as ‘Gmail killer’. You can also see that they’re trying to isolate Messages from default Facebook layout (see the screenshot, there’s no sidebar on the left).
I don’t think this will in anyway help them in getting more users, honestly, I don’t know anyone who uses Facebook for E-mail. Heck, I’m not sure if Outlook can actually convince considerable number of Gmail users, even with a good product.
Regardless, the new UI looks good with the ability to add multiple photos.
On the other hand, they’ve made search a little better, as you can now search by sender’s name or keyword in conversation. For keyboard junkies, Facebook Messages will now support a full list of keyboard shortcuts – hit Alt (or Control if you’re on a Mac) + Q key combo to get access to the shortcuts.
Only if they had fixed those long persistent bugs, I’d use Messages more. The updates seem to be rolling out, I still don’t have access to it.
Samsung electronics unveiled its iPad killer tablet Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 N8000 in United States. Samsung launched its latest tablet in United States, Britain and South Korea while they started pre-booking it in India. They will be launching the new tablet few days before the launch of its new smartphone line-\up i.e. Samsung Note 2 which is expected to be launched on August 29th. But before that let’s have a look at Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 full specifications and review.
Features and Specifications:
Dimensions:
262 x 180 x 8.9 mm with 580g weight.
Network:
2G Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900
3G Network: HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100
Processor:
ARM cortex A9, 1.4 GHz clocking frequency with Quad Core processor.
Display:
Split Screen, 25.66 cm (10.1″) WXGA TFT Technology and 1280×800 Resolution.
Connectivity:
Bluetooth: 4.0 LE
USB: 2.0
WiFi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
HDMI, PC Sync and 3.5mm jack
Camera:
Primary: 5.0 MP, autofocus, flash, 4X zoom and geo-tagging
Secondary: 1.9MP
Video: 720p@30 fps
Memory:
Internal: 16GB
External: Up to 32GB
RAM: 2 GB
Battery:
7,000 mAh battery, standby time up to 2230 Hours
Software/Apps:
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Android Browser, Adobe Photoshop Touch, Document editor/viewer, Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration, Voice Recognition, ChatON, GTalk, Google Play Apps.
Review:
Well the features of the tablet seems good including the screen size, split screen technology, processor and memory but the camera pixels could have been better. At the moment I think it’s too early to judge this tablet so the big question is still pending that whether it will be an iPad killer or not. We will post a full review about the tablet after its launch; check this space for more updates.
Pre Order Details:
If you want to order this Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 N8000 tablet in India then all you have to do is to go to Samsung Electronics Official e-Store. Click here to access the tablet directly on their e-Store. You have to pay Rs. 2000 in advance to prebook it. You will get a free bookcover worth Rs. 3249 with every pre-booking. The only available color at the moment is White and there no Black option for this tablet yet.
This tablet is expected to be launched on August 24th 2012 so you just have to wait for a week and after that Samsung will start delivering it on first come first serve basis. The US the price of this tablet starts at $499. In case you are pre-booking this tablet then please read following official pre-booking details very carefully:
Samsung Galaxy Note 8000 Pre-booking T&C
Pre-book Galaxy Note 8000 by paying an advance of Rs. 2000 only & be among the 1st few proud owners of the Galaxy Note 8000. You will also get a free Book cover worth Rs. 3249 along with your Galaxy Note 8000.
An electronic coupon will be issued against the advance payment made by you for pre-book of Galaxy Note 8000. In order to adjust the advance payment in the final price, you need to use this coupon code at the time of buying your Galaxy Note 8000 from estore.
Free Book cover will be send along with your Galaxy Note 8000. hence, In order to avail this offer, you need to make payment of balance amount within 3 days of launch. Customers, who don’t redeem their coupon within specified time, will not get free Book cover.
COD payment option is not be available on Galaxy Note 8000 during prebooking
At the time of launch, an email will be exclusively sent to customers who have pre-booked their Galaxy Note 8000 on the eStore, informing them of the availability of the Galaxy Note 8000.
The product will be dispatched, on a first-come first-served basis to the customers who complete the purchase of the product
The pre-booking coupon will be valid only on the user id from which the pre-booking is done.
The Galaxy Note 8000 pre-booking coupon will be valid only for completing your purchase of the Galaxy Note 8000 and will not work with any other product.
This coupon will be valid for 15 days from the date of the product launch. You should use this coupon before the expiry date. The amount will not be refunded to the customer upon coupon expiry.
Samsungindiasetore reserves the right to revoke, amend or modify the offer & its terms, at its discretion at any point.
This offer cannot be combined with any other ongoing or future promotion(s).
A pre-booking order cannot be cancelled once placed.
(via www.samsungindiaestore.com)
Let’s see how this tablet is going to do in the Indian markets and what Apple is planning for its September event. What do you feel about this tablet? Please share your views with us.
As Adobe has confirmed last year, Flash is being discontinued on mobile platforms, and from tomorrow, you can no longer download the app from Playstore.
Steve Jobs has made his views public on Flash, long ago and Android has been the only big mobile platform for Adobe, since then.
Flash is not all that bad, but Adobe has failed at making it more secure and stable, especially on low powered devices. HTML5 on the other hand, is very light, stable and is based on open standards.
Even Adobe has been pushing HTML5 a lot lately, with tools like TypeKit, Dreamweaver etc., which is a good thing.
Apparently, if Adobe doesn’t do something with Flash on desktops, we’ll definitely see a day even that getting replaced with HTML5. But, that’s not going to happen so fast, with lot of content on the web being flash-based (videos, ads, etc.).
It’s already a big task for Google to update Chrome every week or so just to fix Flash security issues – because Flash is bundled with Chrome.
If you already have Flash installed on your Android, you will still get regular (and annoying) updates, and if you can’t live without Flash, you can get the .apk easily from XDA or similar Android forums.
When the whole web is going crazy over technologies like HTML5, CSS3 etc., one can say that Wikipedia is still stuck at their messy look, which is actually true.
Over at Signpost, Wikipedia’s senior designer Brandon Harris, proposes a new and modern look for the site.
Possible look of Wikipedia after redesign
Possible changes to Wikipedia
Design language – Wikipedia calls their new design language as Agora, which will set common icons, patterns, palettes which the community will use here after.
Mobile-focused – The official Wikipedia app for Android has never pleased me, and their mobile site is no different. Hopefully, this is going to change with mobile site optimized for all screens, including tablets.
Better Profiles – Your skills, contributions and participation in various projects will be shown in a neat way in the profile page.
Real-time notifications – This can be a great feature for people constantly engaging in projects.
By ‘modern’, if you’re thinking that Wikipedia will become something like Facebook, then you got it completely wrong. Brandon mentions that Wikipedia will never become Facebook or even Quora, for that matter.
Hopefully, the new Wikipedia will make it easy for people to concentrate on the main thing, i.e. content, and collaboration for projects.
A designing agency has even come forward to create Wikipedia Redefined, a site hinting at how one can make Wikipedia modern.
Do you think there’s need for a redesign of Wikipedia? Tell us in the comments.
