Facebook responds to feedback, adds sorting to your Wall
Posted Monday, November 14, 2011 at 7:33 pm by Jason Cartwright
If you head to Facebook right now, you may see a new feature on your Wall, sorting. After Facebook recently changed the way information on your Wall was ordered (Top stories / Highlighted stories at top), a large number of users were unhappy. This option for sorting solves that issue and essentially returns your Facebook Wall to it’s previous state.
Recent Stories First: Stories will appear in the order they were posted. Highlighted stories will be marked with a blue corner.
Highlighted Stories First: Highlighted stories you haven’t seen yet will appear at the top of your News Feed. (If you don’t see highlighted stories, it’s because there aren’t any new highlighted stories since your last visit.)
More @ Facebook.
Official Facebook iPad app now available
Posted Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 8:13 am by Jason Cartwright![Facebook iPad app[8]](http://www.techau.tv/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Facebook-iPad-app8.jpg "Facebook iPad app[8]")
Thanks for playing Friendly and MyPad, the real Facebook iPad app has arrived. It may not show up for you immediately on the device, as it’s being rolled out worldwide. As a work around, you can use the link below from your iPad to get the app now !
The app does provide the standard status update, photos upload, location Check In and Chat. Pages, Groups, Events and Friends are all among the functionality we expected and are included. Navigation in the app is done quite elegantly, with a press of the menu button in the top-left (or swipe front left to right), the content slides right, to reveal the menu options.
Photo galleries support the usual iPad swiping goodness, and Nearby shows your friend’s pictures on a map at the last location they checked in.
The Facebook iPad app has a few shortcomings, there’s no ability to edit profile information and you can’t see that sexy new profile Timeline. There’s no ticker in the top-right, although judging from the feedback when it launched, most users won’t be heart broken about that omission.
That aside, if your an iPad and Facebook user, you should at least try it out. The official Facebook iPad app is available free from the App Store. Facebook have posted an official page for the application at http://www.facebook.com/mobile/ipad
Facebook Developer site updated. Open Graph Beta available
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 4:46 am by Jason Cartwright
If you’re a developer and keen to take advantage of the newly updated Open Graph, then your should check out the Facebook Developer’s site. While the keynote is still going, the dev site has already been updated.
Open graph will also support ratings. This means that application interactions posted to user’s walls, will provide analytics back to developers about what is most engaging and most annoying. This information can inform future development decisions.
Those who aren’t developers may also want to check out the site, as it contains a lot of information and images about today’s F8 announcements.
More info @ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/
Discover music and movies through friends on Facebook. Maybe.
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 4:19 am by Jason Cartwright
Music service Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek took the stage to discuss the way Spotify are taking advantage of Facebook to allow users to discover new music. “Today is a big day for music” and “a big day for the music industry.”
Ek dropped a couple of bombshells without much reaction. He announced Facebook now has 800Million users, up from the previous 750 Million in July. He went on to say that Spotify will be available around the world. Currently Spotify only supports the US, UK, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, France and Finland.
We’ll need some further clarification on just what Ek meant by his statements, particularly if that includes Australia, lets hope so. Discovering new music via your Facebook friends is a neat idea, but the experience will be really broken if we end up seeing ‘I’m sorry your friend lives in a unsupported country’. In fact some of the best ways to discover new music is to watch the US or UK charts, so it makes sense this would be supported.
We’re all too familiar with how messed up media licensing is, something that seriously needs to be sorted for the innovation of tomorrow to take place. Facebook’s slide of initial media partners working on the new Open Graph, doesn’t showcase any Australian companies.. Alarm bells.
Facebook Timeline announced at F8, The story of your life.
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 3:39 am by Jason Cartwright
Facebook just revealed a brand new feature, read massive change, to how your profile is displayed. In a single long scrolling list, you can scroll back through your life. Facebook Timeline is ‘The story of your life’. The mobile users are also catered for with the same timeline demo’d on an iPhone.
Zuckerberg showed how users could insert photos from the past into your timeline. It seems Facebook is really happy with the data we’ve added over in recent years, but the historical data is also beneficial.
Naturally at a developer conference, developers are really keen to take advantage of the changes announced today. The Timeline is available for Applications and works by adding applications in the way we’re all used to. An important change is the accept button will become ‘Login and Add to Timeline’ which removes any confusion around what is about to happen.
Taking cues from the visual portfolio site – about.me, Zuckerberg says, “what better way to tell people who you are, than a big photo at the top of your profile’. Facebook Covers are updatable the same way you update your profile picture. Given the size of the image, it will be interesting to see how this effects low-bandwidth users.
Facebook Timeline beta starts now, and will roll out to the public over the next few weeks.
Facebook update now available, not that you had a choice
Posted Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 3:18 pm by Jason Cartwright
Facebook have just pulled the trigger on their latest UI refresh. Their continued persistence on marching forward wether users want or demand it is relentless. The changes include an change to the News Feed, It now distinguishes between the most recent stories and the Top Stories, depending on how long its been since your last login.
The dedicated update box is now gone, replaced with a set of streamlined update options – ‘Update Status, Add Photo and Ask Question. The Add Photo option seems miss-named as the options provided once you click it, also include video. Gone is the separate ‘Add Link’ option, instead this is just done by pasting the link in the status update.
Chat on the right is now split into two sections, the top being status updates from friends currently online, making it easier to engage with those are, or have recently been online. There’s no refreshing here, the top section is live and flows like a river with updates.
Photos have also been updated, with a gallery of photos now displaying in a tiled design.
The timing of the release is interesting, being a couple of days before the F8 developer conference on Friday. If they felt the need to push this change out prior to the conference, that only gives weight to the rumoured ‘big changes’ that are coming. Hold on tight people, could be a big FB week.
Judging from early reaction online people aren’t happy, not surprising, change is hard and with 750 Million users, you can’t please everyone. The change is jarring initially, but seriously isn’t that different, just live with it for a while people. At the end of the day you don’t have a choice of the old design. Live with it.
