Hasta La Gadget!

Following the usual leak + wait-and-see saga, AT&T has today confirmed that it’ll be the exclusive home to one half of HTC’s Facebook-infused duo. The so-called Status will be making its way onto Ma Bell’s airwaves on July 17th, with eager social networkers able to get their pre-orders in today. It’ll sell for $49.99 on a two-year agreement, with that tally netting you a dedicated Facebook “Share” button that’ll allow photos / videos /websites to be instantly uploaded to your account. We’re also told that it’ll ship with Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) onboard, with an “enhanced version” of HTC’s Sense overlay. Other specs include a 5 megapixel camera (with autofocus and LED flash), a 2.6-inch touch panel, 480 x 320 screen resolution and capacitive navigation buttons. Oh, and if you’re uninterested in the hue you see about, Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile standalone stores will feature an exclusive mauve edition in due time. Fancy.

Continue reading HTC Status ships July 17th, currently in a pre-order relationship with AT&T

HTC Status ships July 17th, currently in a pre-order relationship with AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week on the Gadget Lab podcast, the crew talks video chat, cameras and of course, more iPhone rumors.

Staff writer Mike Isaac went to Facebook HQ this week to check out the social giant’s latest announcement: Skype video chat integration. Basically, you can video chat with any of your Facebook friends without launching the Skype program — all of the chatting occurs inside of the browser window. It’s a pretty cool innovation, even if Google+’s “Hangouts” group video chat feature stole some of its thunder.

Next up is reviews editor Michael Calore with a fancy new digital camera, Olympus’ Pen E-P3. Our reviewer gave it high scores for its fast shooting speeds, built-in flash and full 1080p. Plus, it’s quite pretty to look at.

Finally, our Brian Chen weighs in on two of the major cellular carriers. Verizon finally ended its unlimited data plan for new customers, leaving Sprint as the last of the big four U.S. networks to offer a limitless data plan. Speaking of Sprint, there’s also talk of a Sprint-carried iPhone in the works, according to an analyst’s speculation.

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Or listen to the audio here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #119

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0119.mp3

Your next job application could require a social media background check. Odds are, you have no clue what that means. Nobody does. It’s new and scary and probably scours the Web for pictures of you puking on the beach. More »

This article was written on August 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Recently Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, updated his status on the social network site to “100 Million people on Facebook!”. No need for a press release or something fancy when all it takes is a one-liner status update to let the World know that the site you founded just reached a major milestone. That’s 100 million active users that are using Facebook regularly. This number tells us that Facebook is growing, and pretty rapidly too. It was about two years ago that MySpace hit their 100 million users, but at that time they included inactive users in the number as well.

When I first signed-up for Facebook, back when it was “The Facebook”, I wouldn’t have ever imagined that it would grow to be as large as it is today. Back then, I believe it was late 2004, Facebook was only available to those who had an email address from a certain list of colleges and universities. Granted, they continued to add schools pretty regularly, but not every college student had access. Now they have opened up to nearly everybody around the Globe which has really helped contribute to the 100 million milestone they recently reached.

Source: Mashable

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Mark Zuckerberg introduces three new features to Facebook: video calling, group chat and a new chat design. Photo:Jon Snyder/Wired.com

PALO ALTO, California — Facebook unveiled three new products at its headquarters here Wednesday: video calling, group chat and a new design for its chat system.

In a major partnership with Skype, Facebook now offers free video calling between connected users of the site. Beginning Wednesday, users will find a Call button in the top right-hand corner of their Facebook pages. After clicking on the button, the video chat window launches on your Facebook page, inside of your browser window.

“Think of this simply as a mini-Skype client,” said Skype CEO Tony Bates during the announcement. “One that’s obviously embedded in a very attractive way.”

The group chat announcement comes as an add-on to Facebook’s already existing chat function. When you’re chatting with a friend on your Facebook page, a button allows you to add other friends to the chat.

Finally, the company redesigned the chat window, so your Friends list can now vary in size relative to your browser window. A list of friends who are online will appear, as well as those who are offline that you message with the most.

The new Facebook chat integrates Skype for video conferencing. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The video-chat announcement — obviously the star of the show — comes as a competitive jab at Silicon Valley media giants Google and Apple. Apple introduced its FaceTime video-chatting protocol in 2010, available for Macs, iPhones and iPads. And Google last week launched its brand-new social networking site Google+. Facebook, Apple and Google’s intentions are clear: to lure customers into their media ecosystems with the hippest social networking tools.

Facebook’s partnership with Skype is, in essence, a partnership with Microsoft, who acquired the chatting platform for $8.5 billion. The move should benefit Microsoft, too, by expanding Skype’s presence into the social networking realm.

Google’s social network launched with Hangouts, a group video-chat tool, which can host up to 10 users in a video conference. By contrast, Facebook’s offering with Skype does not offer a group-chat version.

“Today we’re doing one-on-one,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when asked about a possible group chat addition. “The companies [Skype and Facebook] have been working together for a while.”

Skype CEO Tony Bates (left) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduce Skype video chatting for Facebook. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Google and Facebook have been in especially fierce competition with each other over the past year, competing for engineering talent. In May, the Daily Beast revealed a Facebook-led smear campaign against Google in unflattering detail.

But Facebook isn’t talking much about Google today. When asked what he thought about the competing company’s social service, Zuckerberg was tight-lipped: “I’m not gonna say a lot about Google.” Though he did implicitly refer to Google when he mentioned “a lot of companies entering the social space.” In other words, Facebook did social first, and Google and company are now hopping on the bandwagon as it takes off.

Speculation on today’s announcement ran high on the mobile arena. The New York Times reported that the first official Facebook iPad app was in the works.

But mobile news was scant at the conference today, and there was no Facebook iPad app among the announcements. “Video calling isn’t live for mobile yet,” Zuckerberg said, though he hinted at more to come. “It’s the beginning of launch season, 2011.”

Google+ launched with an accompanying Android mobile application for handheld devices; the iOS app is reportedly waiting for Apple’s App Store approval. Nearly two years ago to the day, Facebook launched its iPhone app. The app is also available for the iPod Touch and Android phones. Yet still no tablet-optimized versions created by Facebook itself have been previously released (both RIM and HP developed their own versions for the BlackBerry PlayBook and TouchPad, respectively).

As of today, Facebook hosts 750 million active users, according to Zuckerberg.