Hasta La Gadget!

It’s time to give your best buddy Chris Kringle the gift of iTunes music on Facebook – straight through the social network’s own gift-giving portal. This update brings Facebook Gifts up to a very real existence once again, reminding us that you’re able to not just give your friends a bunch of digital stickers, but real-world physical gifts like cookies and ice cream. What better way to tell your buddy you love them than with digital cash given through your favorite social network?

Some Facebook gifts are as odd as a pair of chopsticks while others are as fabulous as a jar of cookies – literally. Most of the items given away by people working with Facebook Gifts are simple and small – fitting in perfectly with the iTunes Gift Card way of giving. It’s the perfect “everyone wants one of these” gifts. And from Apple’s perspective, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

When Apple sells an iTunes Gift Card to a user who owns an iPhone, they download a collection of music tracks and have extra cash left over – better spend just a little bit more to get that last app! If they sell an iTunes Gift Card to a person giving that card to someone who only has a desktop machine, they need iTunes to use it. They’ll also feel inclined to purchase an Apple device on which they can play the music or movie they purchase – this media doesn’t go anywhere else.

With Facebook being a newly more integral part of the iOS experience, it’s only fitting that Apple would continue to add its services and connections in with Facebook for all. Now we’ve got to decide if it feels too impersonal to get a gift card without actually getting the plastic. Such is the intricacy of holiday gift giving!

Facebook gifts adds iTunes cards to the fold is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The online film you’re about to witness may very well blow your mind – and not just because it’s web exclusive, and made to attach directly to a Facebook app where you’ll get un-Scrooge-ified. It’s Snoop Lion (aka Snoop Dogg) speaking on behalf of himself, Ebeneezer Snoop, in what the folks at Adidas are calling a “pioneering” Facebook app – one that’s sure to get you in the holiday spirit – that spirit where you buy up tons of sportswear and hot sneakers.

It’s an animated wonderland in here with some of the “world’s finest sporting and cultural icons” including David Beckham as the ghost of holiday present, Stan Smith as the ghost of holiday past, Derrick Rose as the ghost of holiday future, and Rota Ora as the ghost of holiday future as well – yes, there are two ghosts of holiday future. This holiday tale is about to get extremely cautionary on you, top to bottom.

The big deal here is the fact that you’re able to send some holiday cheer to some friends via Facebook with a process that includes the folks at Adidas going through your gigantic list of contacts. They have a peek at if you’ve wished everyone you know a happy birthday – and if you haven’t, you’re given a second chance. WIth this second chance you’ll be giving a postcard (digitally, of course), that includes any one of the superstars shown above.

This all links in quite easily to the holiday Adidas collection of sneakers, accessories, customizable bits and pieces, and everything in-between. Whether you need a new pair of kicks or just want to get down with the holiday screen-on fireplace, listen to Uncle Snoop and let him let you in on how not to be a bother at the holidays.

Adidas teams digitally with Snoop Lion for #bahumbizzle campaign is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There’s a copyright notice people have been posting on Facebook over the past couple of days similar to privacy notice that made the rounds several months ago. Before you copy paste it on your own profile, stop. It’s bogus and unenforceable. More »

Social network Facebook has primarily handed out iPhones to its employees for a long time. Presumably, since more Facebook workers use the iPhone this is one of the reasons why the iPhone Facebook application seems to work better than the Android app. Any Android user has probably had issues and disappointment with the Facebook application for the Google operating system on a few occasions.

Facebook is trying to remedy the problem of not having many of its own employees and developers using the Android platform by encouraging its workers to “droidfood.” Facebook has placed several posters around its office encouraging users to contact its internal helpdesk to switch from the iPhone to a Android device. The image you see above is one of the posters encouraging workers to switch.

Facebook doesn’t only want its workers on a mix of iPhone and Android smartphones, it wants workers to switch to Android and report any bugs they find in the Android Facebook app using its bug report tool called Range Shake. The second photo you see here is another one of the posters reportedly plastered on the walls at Facebook showing the significantly increasing number of Android devices that are shipping compared to the iPhone.

TechCrunch reports that workers at Facebook that are on Android devices are forced to run the most recent beta version of Facebook for Android and Facebook Messenger. The Facebook internal beta builds have the built in Range Shake bug reporting tool. If Facebook really wants to make its Android apps better, I wonder why it doesn’t simply allow Android users access to a bug report tool and call it a day?

[via TechCrunch]

Facebook pushes employees to Android devices to make a better app is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like Facebook is on a path that might not go down well with many people, as the social network giant proposes to ditch its policy which enables members to vote on changes that it makes in terms of data use policy. Facebook Vice President for Communications, Public Policy and Marketing Elliot Schrage promised that the company still values user input on company policy, but declared that the “voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality.”

Current rules work this way – proposed changes on the receiving end of over 7,000 comments will automatically trigger a vote on those changes, and assuming 30% of Facebook’s members (which number around one billion) take part in that vote, then Facebook ought to abide by the results of that vote. Proposed rules will work otherwise, where members are given a week by Facebook to comment on a policy change. Once the comment period is over, any changes adopted will be reflected by a user notification. Basically, that means a dictatorship in certain aspects of Facebook. Bummer!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Windows Store hits 20,000 apps, aims for 30,000 before the end of the year, 9-Year Old’s Winnie The Pooh Laptop Confiscated By Authorities,