Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re planning on adding Facebook Home to your device this weekend, you might want to consider the positives and negatives of doing such a thing. If you’ve got an HTC First, you’ll likely have purchased the device because you want Facebook on your device, and there’s really not a whole lot you need to consider. If you’re a Facebook user and have an Android device, you’ve got what might be a rather easy decision ahead of you.

With the launch of Facebook Home you’ve got the ability to use advanced features (new this week) for Facebook without adding the Home launcher to your Android device. You’ve got three applications in the mix now where before you had two:

• Facebook for Android
• Facebook Messenger
• Facebook Home

The first two have received updates today along with the update for Facebook Home which include connections to Home, but do not require Home to work. If you want to avoid Home entirely, you’re free to do so. With Facebook Messenger you get what Facebook calls “Chat Heads”, a rather awesome feature that you can learn all about in our Chat Heads First! post from earlier today. With Chat Heads you’ve got Facebook’s messenger service with you at all times – those heads can pop up anywhere!

Facebook for Android stays largely the same if you don’t download Facebook Messenger or Facebook Home. In fact you’ve got basically an app with no real surface updates at all if you don’t download Messenger or Home – how about that? If you do download Home, though, you’re in for a real trip.

When you first open Home, you’ll be treated with a full-screen presentation of one of your friends’ recent status updates with a photo that will be oversized enough to fit your display. This status will be accompanied by a short blurb – sometimes the full text, sometimes just a clip, and you’ll see some recent activity from your “updates” in the form of small bars with attached Facebook “Heads”.

These Heads will continue to pop up throughout your experience with Facebook at this point. They’re just your regular Facebook profile photo living in a sphere rather than a square, and outside of Chat Heads, they’re just plain old Heads. You’ll find the SlashGear “head” to be more of a “Gear”, as it were.

You can cycle through statuses from here, pretty pictures included if you have friends that post appropriately colorful bits and pieces. Whichever status you leave up, that’s the one that sticks as your “wallpaper” as you cycle through apps if you do choose to enter any app from this point onward.

Your apps are all still accessible, and as our Facebook Home Review shows, you’ve got a really basic experience waiting for you. This Facebook Home environment makes for a real Facebook Front and Center situation, that’s for sure.

The lockscreen isn’t actually a lockscreen in Facebook Home, it’s called “Cover Feed.” With Cover Feed as your first screen, you’ll often not really want to go far beyond – or if you do, it’s through Facebook that you’ll be doing it. Facebook Home covers you in a solid blue aura of Facebook. I nearly typed “of social networking”, but with Facebook Home, you don’t get your other social networking (or any other) updates on the Cover Feed, you only get updates from Facebook.

Above: Facebook’s own camera interface makes its mark as your primary go-to shooter as well.

The story is a bit different when you get a Facebook Phone like the HTC First. Have a peek at our HTC First review to see how different the experience is – it starts with apps other than Facebook being able to give you notifications in-launcher. That can be quite an important decision point for you if you’re planning on working with Facebook Home one way or the other.

Above: Your normal Android settings are available if you know where to find them. On the Galaxy S III you can simply pull your notifications bar down and hit the gear!

You can download Facebook Home right this minute from the Google Play app store for free and load it for a limited number of devices. After today there will be updates every once in a while adding smartphones to the fold – for now, it’s quite obvious that AT&T is being favored for the hero line-up. Have a peek at which devices can work with Facebook Home and let us know what you think!

BONUS: What you’re seeing above is the Samsung Galaxy S III running the Quadrant benchmark test with Facebook Home running, then without Facebook Home installed at all. The differences can be seen two ways – extremely minor, or just different enough to sway you one way or the other. Consider your options!

Facebook Home vs Homeless: should you go blue for Android? is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s nearly time for Twitter to launch their own music service – with today’s updates letting us know that not only is this rumored project real, it’s right around the corner. If you head to https://music.twitter.com/ right this minute, you’ll even be able to connect the service to your own Twitter account – as odd as that sounds, the service hosted by Twitter itself. This service shows up as “Twitter #music web by Twitter, Inc.” when you sign up, the tagline “The best new music in the world right now” shining brightly.

The Twitter music service we’re seeing here has been given a bit of a viral push by the likes of Ryan Seacrest earlier this week out in the open in a rather obvious bid for some pre-release chatter. You’ll find Zynga to have used this same fellow for some Draw Something 2 stoking as well, just under a month ago – the time is nigh!

This weekend the Coachella music festival begins, and with it, we’ll be seeing Twitter launch this iOS music app – and discovery is at its core. You’ll quite likely be able to access the app itself in the next week if not this weekend and the iPhone 5/4S/4 will be first up to gain access. It’s also quite possible that this launch will be available in web browsers as well – everyone join in on the fun!

In the gallery above you’ll see several music celebrities or otherwise famous people tweeting about what they’re still calling “Twitter Music”. You’ll also find Stephen Philips – part of We Are Hunted – tweeting a few bits of music playable through Twitter itself. While this isn’t unheard of in the past, we must assume that Twitter will integrate such abilities in the near future for use by anyone working with Twitter only – or perhaps a Rdio account will be required. We shall see!

Twitter Music goes from “Invite Only” to “Coming Soon” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We reported on a story where a hacker claimed to have created an Android application that would be able to completely take over an aircraft. Hugo Teso, who is a security consultant and ex-commercial pilot, says his application would be able to make an aircraft “dance to his tune,” but the FAA has dismissed Teso’s claims today.

The FAA responded to Teso’s claims by saying the systems that are certified to be used on the flight decks are immune to the exploits that exist in a PC-based ACARS training software, which is what Teso tested his Android application on and not against systems inside of an actual aircraft. The FAA released a statement saying, The FAA has determined that the hacking technique described during a recent computer security conference does not pose a flight safety concern because it does not work on certified flight hardware.” (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Hacker Claims To Have Developed Android App That Can Hack Into Aircrafts, Mississippi Man Caught Double-Texting With 3-Year-Old, Drugs In His Vehicle,

If you’ve got one of the few smartphones compatible with Facebook Home (the app) here at the launch, you’re in luck! It’s out now, available for download from the Google Play app store and it’s completely free. Devices that can download and use Facebook Home right this minute include the Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II, HTC One X, and HTC One X+ (everyone else is currently out of luck.)

What you’ll be doing to grab Facebook Home is heading to the Google Play app store and searching just that: “Facebook Home.” If you have one of the compatible phones listed above, you’ll see the app immediately and will be able to download and install with ease. When you first head back to your home screen after installing, you’ll be met by a pop-up that asks which launcher you’d like to use.

UPDATE: Facebook Home appears to be temporarily (hopefully) unavailable in the Google Play app store once again – check back soon!

UPDATE 2: Facebook Home is once again up and ready for action – you’ll be able to download it and make it work for some smartphones, but not all! Have a peek at our guide: Why doesn’t Facebook Home work on my phone?

If you choose Facebook Home, you’ll be brought into a brand new Facebook-centric universe, yours for the tapping. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve updated Facebook Messenger and your normal Facebook for Android app too – they all exist together in harmony. Have a peek at today’s “Chat Heads” update for more information on what Messenger brings to the table.

You’ll also want to head back to SlashGear’s full Facebook Home review as well as our review of the HTC First – the first smartphone to hit the market with Facebook Home installed right out of the box. Let us know if you plan on partaking in this lovely Facebook software experience on your Android device today!

Or if you plan on skipping the Facebook Home environment entirely!

Facebook Home delivered to Google Play – available for Android now is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After a long period of speculation, we finally know about the “Facebook phone”. In fact, it’s not really a dedicated Facebook phone at all, but a custom build of Android which has a special Facebook home screen. While I’m no power-Facebook user, I can imagine that people using Facebook a lot will enjoy this new offering.

The HTC First is the first phone to come packaged with Facebook Home, software that fills your home screen with friend’s photos, status updates and more information, directly from your Facebook account. You’ll also be able to quickly bounce in and out of chats and conversations no matter what app you’re running on the phone.

Spec-wise, the HTC First phone is nothing too fancy, sporting a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm CPU, a 4.3″ 1280×720 screen, 5.0 MP rear-facing camera and 4G LTE capabilities. Under the hood, it’s still an Android 4.1 phone, and Facebook Home is really just a custom app launcher and skin running on top of it. The phone will be available in matte, black, white, red and pale blue.

If you absolutely must be on Facebook all of the time, you can order the HTC First over at AT&T for $99.99 (with a 2 year contract.)

And if you’re interested in trying out Facebook Home without buying a new phone, it should be available later today on the Google Play store for many popular Android smartphones.