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Posts tagged with "facebook"

Facebook App Update: Improved Places & Chat, Bug Fixes

Among all the app updates that are coming out this week prior to the iTunes Connect shut down planned for December 23 (when developers won’t be able to submit new apps, updates or price changes until the 28th), the official Facebook app for iPhone was updated (to version 3.3.3) last night to include a variety of bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements.

The most notable improvements come in the chat and messages windows (which, at least for me, are not slow anymore), notifications and Places. Even if there aren’t many registered places in my town, the app seems now faster at retrieving local data information and distances. Crashes, group photos and memory usage have been addressed with bug fixes.

Other minor changes include the comeback of the ability to post on a page you administrate and the removal of the text field from walls you cannot post on.

The official Facebook app was updated in early November to include the new Groups UI and the Places functionality. The app is free, and available here.

Buddies for iPad Adds Facebook Chat

Buddies for Facebook is a neat app for the iPad we reviewed in November which provides a quick and easy way to check on your Facebook friends. With an interface based on a “split view” aimed at letting you navigate across all the sections of Facebook, there’s no doubt Buddies is one of the most curious and innovative way to use Facebook on the tablet.

The latest 1.15 update, released last night, improves the app’s integration with Facebook by adding support for Chat. To access the chat interface, you have to tap on an icon in the upper right corner in the main page. The app will “rotate” its UI to accomodate a new page with all your online friends. To start chatting, you tap on a contact and tap again to initiate the conversation. That’s it. The app allows you to switch back and forth between your friends lists and it’s pretty fast at switching between the main screen and the chat UI, too.

At $2.99 in the App Store, Buddies may not have all the features of Friendly (which happens to have a free version available now) but it’s got the feel of something new and specifically geared towards iPad users. It’s not just a webpage wrapped around an app, it’s a native version of Facebook that now comes with Facebook Chat integration.

Give it a try.

Pulse Starts Moving Out Of RSS, Embraces Facebook

Pulse, one of the most popular news reading apps for iPad, just introduced a new feature that marks an important milestone for Alphonso Labs’ creation: Facebook support. Pulse now lets you log in with your Facebook account through Connect, enabling you to check on links shared in your stream, your friends’ status updates and your own Wall. The update is available now, for free.

Pulse has come a long way since its first release in May: first the developers got into some sort of fight with the New York Times and saw their app pulled from the App Store a few days after Steve Jobs mentioned it in a keynote, then they got back in the Store and added support for Posterous built into the app to let users quickly “like” posts coming from RSS sources through Posterous’ infrastructure. Read more

Facebook Neue Safari & Chrome Extension Removes Ads, Makes Facebook Twitter-like

Developed by Milind Alvares of Smoking Apples (and Beautiful Pixels) Facebook Neue is an extension for Chrome and Safari 5 that does one thing very well: it makes Facebook simpler. The extension removes the ugly ads from Facebook (sorry Mark, I’m tired of Coca Cola ads) and resizes the main container to two columns, making it more Twitter-like. As Milind says it’s far from feeling exactly like Twitter, but I like this new layout. It makes everything readable and elegant.

Also in the extension:

I also selectively hid some of the settings in the sidebars, such as application links, or that language settings button next to the chat toolbar. I was happily using this until I realised I could very well just convert this into an extension and share it with everyone. Some more bug fixes, and a redesigned login page later, version 1.0 was ready.

I’m sure some of the changes, like the fixed masthead or the rounding of image avatars, are not going to be universally appreciated, and I’m okay with that.

I love it. Go download it here.

Buddies For iPad Provides A Better Way To Check On Your Facebook Contacts

At this point, I guess you’ve figured out there’s no official Facebook iPad app nor does Zuckerberg plan to tell his team to start developing one. Or perhaps we just have to wait a little bit more, as Facebook is currently focused on mobile devices and the iPad isn’t exactly a mobile device. No matter how you look at it, there is no Facebook for iPad and we have to rely on 3rd party offers when it comes to status updates and photo galleries on world’s most crowded social network running on the iPad.

Up until now, Friendly for Facebook has been the most successful unofficial app for iPad to land in the App Store, and sales of the app sky-rocketed with the recent release of a major update. A new 3rd party Facebook app was released yesterday, it’s called Buddies and simplifies the way you can check on your Facebook contacts on the iPad. All wrapped up in an interesting native interface with noteworthy features and curious navigation schemes. Let’s take a look at it. Read more

Zuckerberg Is Right, The iPad Isn’t Mobile

Mark Zuckerberg, at Facebook’s mobile event today in Palo Alto when asked if Facebook was building an iPad app:

“I don’t want to be rude to Apple – we all love Apple products – but this is a mobile event and we want to stay focused on that. The iPad isn’t mobile in the same way.”

This can mean quite a few things, so instead of opening Tweetie for Mac to write that the Zuck’s an asshole, let’s just think about the nature of the iPad as a device. We often refer to it as a “mobile device”; now I’m asking you to think of that 10-inch piece of aluminum and glass as a “device”.

Is it mobile? Read more

Facebook iPhone App Getting Updated with New Groups, Improved Places Tagging

At the mobile event at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the iPhone app – the app that, in his own words, it’s being used on the vast majority of iPhones –is getting an update with the new Groups interface they launched a few weeks ago, improved tagging in Places and easier photo attaching in check-ins.

The app update still isn’t live in iTunes, it’ll probably will be later today. Other new features Facebook is announcing today are single sign-on for mobile apps, new location APIs and a Deals platform.

[image via TechCrunch]

Facebook To Unveil Official iPad App on Wednesday?

Two hours ago Facebook sent out invitations to several tech blogs to invite them to a media event focused on “Mobile” on Wednesday at Facebook HQ.

Mobile could mean many things when it comes to Facebook. My first guess is the long-overdue official client for iPad, which Facebook has apparently been working on for months now but decided to not announce at the latest media event. With 8 million iPads now out in the wild, it would be about time to release an official iPad application.

Mobile could also refer to the much rumored Facebook Phone, more Places feature and the rumored “Deals” functionality, as Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch suggests.

Friendly Gets Huge 3.0 Update, Aims At Becoming Best Facebook App for iPad

Well, at least until Facebook comes out with its official app for iPad. Until then, Friendly for Facebook, an app that’s been around for a few months now, is seriously aiming at being the ultimate solution to access Facebook from your tablet.

Criticized in the past for being nothing more than a custom stylesheet for Facebook sold at full price, Friendly was updated earlier today to version 3.0, which brings a lot of new features and a new login system. Friendly 3.0 now uses Facebook Connect to access your wall and friend lists, so I guess that means the app is an actual app now. Also, the developers added multi-account support to easily switch between accounts from a single dashboard screen with big profile pictures. If your iPad has become a “family device”, your kids and wife must be happy about this. Read more