Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve been following the Facebook press events that have occurred over the past couple of years, you know one thing is rather apparent: they love to hold press conferences. Zuckerberg and the Facebook crew have held press conferences for everything from the opening bell on their IPO top an announcement about possible Facebook couponing. Here’s the long and short it, it being the April 4th Facebook event: if Facebook wanted to make a Facebook phone, they wouldn’t do it like this.

We’ve seen the Facebook phone already. It’s been released by HTC more than once, and rumors of a phone such as this have been swirling for years. The reason people are pumped up about discussing such a device isn’t because they want one, it’s because the idea is so absurd. Why in god’s name would someone create a smartphone dedicated to one single service?

“Anyone for an HTC ChaCha?“

Instead you’ve got a Facebook event coming up that will address the fact that there’s been no acceptably solid release of a Facebook app for Android thus far in the social network’s history. What we’ll see is a presentation about 1 hour long with several top Facebook developers talking about how this version of Facebook for Android will be a real, dedicated, just as good as iOS release. And we’ll all go home wondering why Facebook didn’t just send out a press release instead.

Have a peek at the iOS version of Facebook today, then have a look at the Android version of Facebook, then you’ll know what’s being released at the upcoming event. Let us know if you think otherwise!

Facebook event to reveal “real” Android app (not a phone) is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Pictures speak a thousand words. A couple more hundred, if they’re really good. When arranged one after the other chronologically, you could even use them to tell your life’s story. Doing so, however, will take a lot of time and patience that you may not have.

Lucky for you, you can get Picturelife to do it all for you.

Picturelife is an app that you can use to sync all your photos from various social networking platforms to your computer. The app can grab images from numerous popular sites including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Dropbox. After the images are synced, organized and de-duped, you can access and browse through all your life’s shots on your desktop, browser, or on your mobile device via their iOS and Android apps.

Memories are free to make. Unfortunately, they may not be free to organize in this case, because you’ll have to purchase a storage plan in order to start using Picturelife to back up your pictures – unless your life can be summed up in less than about 1700 photos (or 5GB.)

[via Laughing Squid]

Facebook may have finally ignored the Timeline at the company’s most recent press event when they unveiled the new News Feed that’ll be coming shortly, but that doesn’t mean they’re not making changes. Facebook has introduced a cleaner look to Timeline, and they’ll be slowly rolling out the new design over the coming weeks.

One of the biggest differences you’ll notice right away are the elimination of the “Friends,” “Photos,” and “Likes” thumbnails, which are now compressed into simple text links toward the top. The “About” section also looks different this time around, as it now sits vertically on the left side of the Timeline.

Overall, though, your various Likes are organized much more neatly, and you can manage your favorite movies, books, TV shows, etc. in a more orderly fashion, including the ability to not only add your favorites, but also add movies and books that you want to read. These are separated from your favorites using tabs.

Apps also are more integrated into your Timeline, meaning that certain apps can have dedicated sections. For instance, if you use Instagram a lot, you can dedicate a section of your Timeline to strictly Instagram photos that you’ve taken. And now, all of your likes on the left side of your Timeline, with all recent activity being posted on the right side, allowing for easier browsing and scanning.

Facebook introduces cleaner look to Timeline is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The 2013 edition of Facebook‘s efforts to bring the developer universe into the social networking fold has been revealed, complete with several different events taking place around the world. The Facebook Mobile Developer Conference 2013 will be taking place on April the 18th in New York, on the 2nd of May in London, and all the way over in Seoul on the 7th of May. This series of events also goes by the name Facebook Mobile DevCon 2013, if you’d like to be short about it.

This series of events will be host to many different developer-themed keynote speeches and interactive engagements for mobile developers of many kinds. Companies such as GetGlue, EyeEm, Zeebox, and Fab.com will all be in attendance with opportunities to chat and talks of their own with you, the up-and-coming Facebook app developer, about their experiences on the way up the mountain. Also included will be a list of fabulous hot-points as promised by Facebook:

You’ll hear about:

• how to implement our iOS, Android and JS SDKs to drive installs and engagement
• how to best implement Facebook Login to bring trusted, cross-platform identity to your apps
• best practices for using Open Graph to share rich and engaging stories back to Facebook
• how to use Facebook to power engaging social, mobile games
• design tips and product best practices to increase user satisfaction
• the tools, libraries and techniques we at Facebook use to build our own iOS, Android and Mobile Web apps

Each of the three events is a one-day-only engagement in each of the major cities on the map. Each of these events will be “capped-off” with a fabulous and friendly dinner as well as time to speak with Facebook engineers, product managers, and more to speak on your app – or possible future app for Facebook. These engineers and product managers are being promised to, as Facebook says, “review your app and debug any integration issues” you may have – fun stuff!

Facebook also notes the following:

This is a highly technical event – we’ll be deep in product and code – but if you’re at the sharp end of mobile development, we’d love to meet you there.

Sound like your cup of tea? Have a peek at the Mobile DevCon sign-up page and pick your favorite location. Let us know if you’re going, and if you’re feeling cheeky, feel free to let us know what app you’re bringing along to work on!

Facebook Mobile DevCon 2013 revealed: Android and iOS on tap is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Remember the Socialmatic camera concept by ADR-Studio? It’s been almost a year since they unveiled the instant camera basically takes Instagram to a whole new level. It took a while, but they’re going ahead with production for the Socialmatic, which is expected to launch early next year.

That said, a few changes are in order. The Socialmatic will no longer be exclusively linked to Instagram (for obvious reasons), but will instead allow users to share their snaps on Socialmatic’s own network or on the usual social media channels, like Twitter, Facebook, and of course, Instagram. What sets the camera apart is that it’ll come with an internal printer, so you can print your favorite photos instantly and wherever you want to.

The Socialmatic camera will will run on Android and come with 16GB of internal storage. It will also be equipped with Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity, GPS, as well as have an SC-HD slot for external storage. It’s also expected to have a large 4:3 ratio LCD viewfinder which takes up almost the entire back of the camera, and offer true optical zoom.

In case you were wondering about the branding, the Socialmatic team is currently working with Polaroid to help bring the camera to market, though there’s currently no final agreement for them to produce the camera. No pricing information has been made available yet.

[via Gadget Review]