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Twitter Brings Out The Lists

Cory Bohon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:41:35 -0500

Twitter has officially released a new "lists" feature, allowing you to follow a group of twitter users.

This functionality has been hinted at before, but today they actually started slowly rolling it out to users.

The feature allows a Twitter user the ability to hand-pick a group of Twitter users and create a list based on that. Your list can then be found by going to twitter.com/#/username/listname and other Twitter users can follow a whole list.

In typical Internet beta testing releases, this feature is being slowly rolled out to Twitter users. If you have access, you should see a "new" badge at the top of your Twitter home page.

Twitter blog via LifeHacker. Image via Mashable.

Facebook Lite Launches, Speeds Up Site

Cory Bohon — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:08:19 -0500

If you ever experienced a slower than usual loading time on your Facebook page when all you wanted to do was post an update status, you're not alone. We've all experienced this problem, and now there's a fix.

Today Facebook launched their much requested "Lite" version of the social netowrking site, that strips away unnecessary items and only shows your new stories up front.

From the main page you can post a photo, video, or status update, see a short list of notifications. Through the lite interface you also have access to your profile, events, and your inbox. There's no chat, but that definitely cuts down on the page load times.

You can check out Facebook lite by going to lite.facebook.com.

Loopt To Enable Background Running On iPhone

Cory Bohon — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:18:37 -0500

Loopt is a useful tool for locating nearby friends, but due Apple's app restrictions for the iPhone, the application cannot run in the background to provide updates. But all of that might be changing.

According to BusinessInsider Loopt is working to strike a deal with AT&T to provide location updates without the application running on the iPhone.

This service, which would probably cost around $3.99 per month, works by contacting AT&T's servers, which always know where your phone is located. AT&T would then send the data to Loopt where they can process your GPS coordinates on their side and send out a push notification to your device to alert you about nearby friends, etc. Through this workaround, Loopt avoids Apples "no backgrounding apps" rule.

We would like to see other applications do this, but that price might be a bit high. Since the price of the service would appear on your AT&T bill, it would be nice to see AT&T open this up to other developers and offer a package deal so you pay one price and other apps can access the GPS data.

Facebook 3.0

Cory Bohon — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:53:00 -0500

Without any notice or fanfare, Facebook for iPhone [iTunes link] was updated to version 3.0. With a great new interface, Facebook has given their application a new look and feel.

When you launch the new version of the social networking client, you’ll see a new screen that mimics the home screen of the iPhone and displays the most important tasks up front. The recent notification section has been moved to the bottom of this main screen. Tap on notifications to have this pane slide up in a very Android OS-like way. Icons in this central portion of the app can be rearranged by tapping and holding on an icon, then dragging the icons around. When you are done, tap the done button in the top-left. You can add friend or page shortcuts to this main screen as well.

From the news feed or your profile section, you can easily take and upload photos and movies and update your status. One of the best upgrades to Facebook 3.0 is the ability to use the entire application in landscape mode. In the pictures section, you can now easily tag a photo, make a photo into a profile picture, or delete that a photo of you picking your nose. Creating a new album on-the-go is also a nifty thing to be able to do.

Another cool feature in this new version is the ability to call or SMS someone in your friends list. As you scroll up/down your list, you’ll see a new phone icon for friends who have inputted their numbers. When you tap this icon, you’ll get options for landline, mobile, or SMS.

Facebook did an excellent job updating their application, and while it has some nice new features, it still doesn’t have the push notification support that we would like to see. Facebook for iPhone does remain free, and that's a good deal when you think about the new features.

Probably a Fake -- But a Cool Idea

J Keirn-Swanson — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:02:45 -0500

Recently pictures showed up on the internet purporting to be leaked screenshots of the Address Book for Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6. These pictures appeared to show that, apart from the Groups we all know and love, you can separate your contacts into a secondary category called "Social Networks."

While this would prove a handy little feature, commenters on recent blogs discussing the "screenshots" quickly moved to debunk the entire premise. Some chose to analyze the fonts, while others checked for developer updates to confirm or deny.

As of this writing, there has been no secondary confirmation of the "new feature," but that doesn't stop hope from springing eternal. While we lean toward the fake interpretation of the pics, here's to hoping someone at Apple is paying attention and working on something similar for an update.

Facebook Now Allows Username Changing

Cory Bohon — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:39:05 -0500

Remember when Facebook announced that its users would be able to choose a URL shortname? If you messed up, Facebook is now allowing a do-over.

By navigating to the Settings area in your account, you can click the Change button for the Username setting. This will give you the ability to check the availability of another name. You should note that you can only change this once.

Via Mashable

Made on Many Macs, Kontain Takes on Facebook and MySpace

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:41:03 -0600

Fantasy interactive (Fi), a creative services firm based in New York and Stockholm that boasts a client list full of big names like Porsche, Nintendo, Nordstrom, and National Geographic, today flipped the switch on the alpha version of Kontain, a media-sharing site aimed at people who don't have the patience or time to cut through the clutter of MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, or YouTube merely to share photos, videos, or other media--and otherwise "contain" their lives online (get it?). Kontain's target audience is not made up of hard-core bloggers or HTML jockeys who have built their personal websites using open-source tools such as Drupal or others, say Fi execs. " We're after my parents," says Fi founder, CEO, and Creative Director David Martin, a jetski-addicted Irishman who first conceived the idea for a site like Kontain back in 2000.

You can "heart" something, email it, or view it in full-screen mode.

Although he's quick to commend MySpace and Facebook for the impact they've made on the Web and popular culture, Martin says, "it makes us sick that the world has to put up with [both sites' unsophisticated design]. It takes us back to 1986."

Martin's goal with Kontain is more sweeping than just launching a site that allows anyone to post and share photos and videos easily and create good-looking photo and video blogs.

"I'm a designer," Martin says, adding that, like any product, service, or even an interactive campaign, a media-sharing site "should be beautiful from the beginning, or it shouldn't be released." Before he really used the Internet back in the mid-90s, Martin says, he had a vision of what it should be like -- a well-designed, easy-to-use virtual space to share and find information. When he discovered the reality of the early World Wide Web, though, that fantasy came crashing to Earth.

Viewing videos in full-screen mode on Kontain is a bit more satisfying than the tiny video window you get on YouTube. This shot is from one of David Martin's own videos chronicling his adventures on one of two Seadoo jetskis, which he records with a digital videocam mounted to a pole behind him.

Martin's disappointment with the way the Internet looked back then might seem a bit cynical considering its breakthrough nature at the time. But where would we be today if Apple decided not to perfect personal computing with OS X and the Mac -- or mobile communications with the iPhone, for that matter?

Although many if not most of the creative folks at Fi use Macs, Martin says, " I was never an Apple fan until the iPhone and MacBook Air came out."

But having been won over by his Apple gear's perfect combination of good looks and ease of use, he says, he wouldn't part with his MacBook or iPhone except under extreme duress.

As of this posting, the content on Kontain seems mostly limited to photo and video blogs created by folks clearly employed by or friends of Fi. But there's interesting stuff here, like stills from an open-source digital film created under the Creative Commons license called an Elephant's Dream.

"We've invested millions of dollars out of our own pocket and out of passion," Martin says of Kontain, which is staffed by 18 New York employees of Fi, but will also become its own venture as Kontain LLC. "We don't care initially if it doesn't make any money," Martin says when asked about the site's business model. Bold words for the CEO of a tech-oriented creative services firm in a tight business climate, to be sure, but Martin does not hesitate to talk in broad strokes.

"We're trying to change the Internet," he says.

While cautious about jinxing Kontain's alpha launch or saying something on the record that might haunt him later, Martin posits that if Apple had an interactive services group, he reckons Kontain looks a lot like the media-sharing site that Apple might build--you know, if Apple were to build such a thing.

Kontain is and will likely remain a free service, like Facebook and MySpace. Martin says users will be allowed 250MB of storage space initially--100MB more than the max that Flickr allows--but if it's determined that a "super user" is posting worthwhile content, that user might be given more space to, er, contain his or her digital life.

New features, such as high-res photos, multiple users of the same site, or Kontainer, embeddable Kontainers, and other additions will be rolled out regularly during the site's alpha phase, which Martin expects to last four months or so, depending on user feedback and site development. That said, once they make the leap from alpha to beta, they don't plan to leave Kontain in beta forever, a la Google. So if you're the type who doesn't like to buy a car in its first model year, or if you still worry that this whole Internet thing is a passing fad, Martin says that although Kontain will always be an "adaptive" work in progress, the site should become final six to seven months from today.

Rest assured that Fi and the Kontain team, particularly Martin, won't be satisfied with it being just OK.

"Right now, out of 10 it's a 1," Martin says. "We believe this is the beginning for us. The goal is to raise our standards and move the Internet forward."

And if it doesn't work, he's always got his Seadoo jetskis and New York City's public waterways.