Hasta La Gadget!

Visiting your Facebook news feed can feel like a chat with parents eager for grandkids — it’s sometimes a flood of engagements, weddings and baby photos. Whether you enjoy it or not, that not-so-subliminal messaging is about to get more prominent with a US trial for promoted posts among everyday users. Just as with earlier deployments, American socialites can click a link to push a given post higher in others’ news streams and get feedback on just how many have taken a peek. The testing is limited to those with under 5,000 friends and subscribers to keep the celebrities and social media experts on the sidelines. However, anyone with a quiet life might want to duck and cover for the next few days while more sentimental friends push all their sugary updates to the top.

Filed under: Internet

Facebook lets Americans try promoting their posts, won’t let you escape saccharine updates originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ready the spandex and decide on a name for your alter ego, because come October 16th, you’ll have the chance to fight crime from the comfort of your computer. On that date, the “Connected To The Case” website goes live with the aim of crowd-sourcing tips from its users to help the cops solve active investigations. You’ll use your Facebook login for access, as the service pulls data from your profile to prioritize cases with which you might have a connection. Morgan Wright, CEO and Chief Crime Fighter of Crowd Sourced Investigations, told us its system looks at five key areas when digging for pertinent triggers: “date, location, time, relation and demographics.” It then uses that data to tailor notifications of unsolved crimes based on — for example — proximity to your school, or where you used to work. Rest assured that you control the privacy settings, and if you’ve got useful info to share, you can do so anonymously.

Law enforcement agencies can register to include their cases from today, with the initial roll-out targeting the US. The plan is to expand first to other English-speaking countries, with foreign language support in the future to build a global network of internet do-gooders. Including data from other social networks is also in the pipeline, starting with Twitter and later, Foursquare and Pinterest. A smartphone app is also on the agenda, so get your detective devices ready — we can be heroes, if just for one click.

Continue reading Connected To The Case to use Facebook for crowd-sourced crime solving

Filed under: Internet

Connected To The Case to use Facebook for crowd-sourced crime solving originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you own a BlackBerry, it might not have been immediately apparent that Facebook Messenger has been an option since October; unlike with Android or iOS, you had to track down the download on Facebook’s website. We don’t know why it’s been kept out of a more accessible channel, but that ends today with Facebook’s chat-focused app arriving on BlackBerry App World like most any other title. There don’t appear to be any new tricks included with the expanded availability, although we’d say that the wider exposure is enough of a highlight for an audience that just needs to get by until BlackBerry 10. Those who don’t use BBM for all their instant messaging can find what they need at the source link.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Facebook Messenger for BlackBerry reaches App World, sates compulsive chatters originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TweetDeck is Twitter’s professional desktop client, though you might not always know it given that the app is sometimes out of step with its more pedestrian siblings. Today, Twitter is presenting a unified front in a more timely fashion. The web versions of TweetDeck now show the expanded tweets and header photos that reached the iPad and mobile apps a week ago. No major surprises are waiting in the wings save for the absence of a matching update to the native Mac and Windows apps — hopefully, that’s a gap that closes soon.

Filed under: Internet

TweetDeck for the web slips in expanded tweets and header photos originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 17:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When it rebranded as My[___], the social network innovator was met with much deserved derision. It was widely perceived as a desperate attempt to recapture the interest of the hipster class that once propelled it into the mainstream, before being overshadowed by the creeping empire of Facebook. The spectacular crash of the brand eventually led to News Corp. to sell it to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake. Since then, the partnership has been quietly working behind the scenes to rebuild the site and return it to its former glory. Like most of the tech media we’re understandably skeptical of any attempt to relaunch the flagging social service, but after getting a peak at the redesign we’ve gotta say we’re rooting for it.

Myspace (notice, no camel case) has be rebuilt from the ground up and bears almost no resemblance to its previous incarnations. There’s still a heavy focus on music and an integrated playlist creator. Visually everything has been stripped down, with thin clean sans-serif fonts, large images and lots of soft grays. Instead of a vertically aligned wall of posts, profile pages are dominated by a large image that fills the window completely — like Facebook’s cover photos taken to their logical extreme. Images and status updates are arranged in a side-scrolling grid that clearly takes inspiration from some of Tumblr’s flashier templates. It’s all quite beautiful and even integrates with its popular competitors. You can sign up for an invite at the source and check out the teaser after the break.

Continue reading Myspace teases slick new revamp with minimalist flair (video)

Filed under: Internet

Myspace teases slick new revamp with minimalist flair (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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