Articles about Facebook

Kim Dotcom enters the spotlight once again after claiming that Google, Facebook, Citibank and Twitter, among others, infringe upon his patent for two-factor authentication. The man is one of the founders of controversial Megaupload and Mega cloud storage lockers and is currently under indictment in the US for copyright infringement.

Dotcom decided to reveal the alleged wrongdoing and mention the patent yesterday, after Twitter enabled the security feature: "Twitter introduces Two-Step-Authentication. Using my invention. But they won't even verify my Twitter account?!". The patent in question was filed in 1998 by Kim Schmitz (Dotcom's birth name) and is named "Method for authorizing in data transmission systems".

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Way back in 2007, Microsoft purchased a fraction of Facebook. The social network returned the favor in February by buying Atlas. The two tech goliaths are still smitten with one another, and today we learn that Microsoft search engine Bing gets closer to your friends.

Now the search engine is integrating Facebook comments directly into the sidebar that appears to the right side of search results. "Starting today, you will see comments on a relevant Facebook post within sidebar, as well as the ability add your own, all without having to leave Bing. You can also Like a post directly from Bing. Now you can see what your friends might know about what you’re searching for and engage with them directly without leaving the search page", Nektarios Ioannides, program manager for Bing, explains.

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I was with a friend recently who has a pretty exciting Internet startup company. He has raised some money and might raise more, his product is in beta and it’s good. It solves a difficult technical problem many companies are struggling with. We argued a little over the name of the product. Of course I thought my suggested name was better or certainly cleverer, but then he said, “It doesn’t matter because we’ll probably sell the company before the product ever ships. It may never appear at all.”

His company will exit almost before it enters. This is happening a lot lately and we generally think it is a good thing but it’s not.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of consumers, publishes its report on safety in the digital age. There are some winners and also some major losers this time around in the "Who has your back?" statement -- hint put down your cell phone, step away slowly and nobody gets hurt.

The annual report looks at major technology service providers' commitment to users' rights in the face of government data demands. EFF examines 18 companies' terms of service, privacy policies, advocacy, and courtroom track records and awards up to six gold stars for best practices in categories such as requiring a warrant for content, telling users about government data demands and publishing a transparency report.

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After using the Android and iOS counterparts, Facebook app for Windows Phone 8 feels rudimentary and out of place by comparison. Even though the interface takes some design cues from the operating system, it is not very intuitive, wastes too much screen estate and displays content in a visually unappealing way. The app would be rather nice, except 2010 has long passed.

Now Microsoft wants you to love the Facebook experience on Windows Phone 8, releasing a beta app that stands up against the Android and iOS alternatives. Gone is the infinite horizontal scrolling, now replaced by tabs that you might actually find useful. Swiping to the right reveals a tab to the left of the screen, containing a link to your profile, favorites, groups, friends, apps, settings, the usual policy information and a log-out button.

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According to the London Fire Brigade, the number of accidental fires involving young professionals (aged 18-35) in the UK capital has dropped by an average of nearly two a week since the fire service started using social media to deliver fire safety advice.

The Brigade set up its Twitter account and official Facebook page in 2009, and now has over 66,000 followers across both social sites.

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Facebook has released Facebook for iOS 6.0, a major update for its iPhone and iPad app. The major new feature in version 6 is the introduction of "chat heads", which allow users to chat from anywhere in the app -- this feature isn’t yet universally available, but should be rolled out to all users "soon", according to Facebook.

Chat heads are small circular icons representing both individual chatters and Facebook Messages. The chat head appears automatically when receiving a message, or can be manually set up by tapping the contact’s name in the contacts list.

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Perhaps Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are geeks of similar kind. Gates, along with buddy (and chief executive) Steve Ballmer, is known by us old-timers for a series of self-effacing videos spanning more than a decade -- many distributed internally or shown publicly at tech trade shows. Zuck is ignored -- gasp, is there a metaphor here -- in the first commercial for Facebook Home. The app is now available on Google Play.

While Zuckerberg introduces Home to Facebook employees, he is ignored by one using the Android skin. The video, which is posted to YouTube, had about 7,000 views when I peaked yesterday; the number is nearly a quarter-million today. The commercial spot is fun, festive and does what many of us wish we could do in a room: Ignore Zuck. Something so self-effacing makes him more human, too, less the geek or the privacy-invader critics call him. Put the CEO in more videos, I say.

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Facebook Home, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on April 4, and leaked as three APK files shortly after, today officially hit the Google Play store and the HTC First, announced at the same event, can officially be ordered through AT&T. The social network today pushes out a new launch page designed to make a splash with its live background of endless video.

The Google Play app describes itself as "the mobile experience that puts your friends at the heart of your phone". It essentially functions in the same way as any other launcher app for Android, bringing Facebook front and center on your homepage. From the moment you unlock your device you will be bombarded with a steady stream of photos, posts from friends and notifications of all sorts -- it's like a full-screen Windows 8 Live Tile totally dedicated to Facebook.

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Checking Facebook on the move is a great way to keep in touch with friends and keep up to date with what is going on. But when you are moving about you will invariably hit an area where there is poor signal, and you find that the official Facebook app can be a little on the slow side even at the best of times. oStream offers a possible solution by synchronizing your contents so it is available for offline reading.

Even for those who will own up to being addicted to Facebook, the official Facebook app is far from being without problems. It can be slow and cumbersome to use, awkward to navigate -- generally a bit of a pain. In addition to making your newsfeed available offline, oStream also has the added benefit of running much more quickly that the Facebook app -- or many popular alternatives for that matter.

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That's the prediction Aapo Markkanen, ABI senior analyst, makes today. It's the right call, as Larry Page starts his third year returning as Google CEO. Page resumed duties on April 4, 2011, and the company's direction took a hard turn. Business is more aggressive, altruistic goals less and so-called openness a waning thing. As I asserted a year ago, "Google has lost control of Android". That Page and Company would try to wrestle back control is no surprise.

Facebook Home is good reason. The user interface debuting April 12 takes over the more app-centric Android homescreen, putting the social network first before anything else, including Google+. Facebook's OEM program could put Home on many more devices. HTC already is on board with the First smartphone. Then there is Samsung, which during fourth quarter accounted for 42.5 percent of all Android handset sales, according to Gartner. TouchWiz, which gets a big update with forthcoming Galaxy S4, is the user experience -- not that determined by stock Android. These are but two examples of many.

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How important is Facebook really? The answer may come soon after April 12, when the social network releases Home to Google Play. The Android add-on usurps the homescreen, putting interactions/people first and pushes apps to the background. This, ah, Home invasion means potential trouble for Apple and Google, but in vastly different ways. Apps anchor both their platforms, curated content and the digital lifestyles users adopt. Facebook bets that between the choice of both ways, human relationships matter more.

For either the fruit-logo company or search and information giant, another question is perhaps more significant: Is Facebook's mobile experience already good enough? Related: Do most users want to be enmeshed in a constant stream of social updates and interactions most of the time? Affirmative answer to either, or both, spells trouble for the platform developers but most worrisome for Apple, for which Facebook Home affronts and condemns the entire business model.

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Well, the rumors were false. Facebook didn't release a phone today, not that I'm surprised. There are reasons why we write so few rumor stories here at BetaNews -- they often are false. "We're not building a phone. We're not building an operating system", CEO Mark Zuckerberg said early this afternoon. But the social network has launched an OEM program for the new Facebook Home, which displaces the default Android start screen. HTC is first partner. Aptly named then, the smartphone is called HTC First.

Preorders start today, and the device will be available exclusively from AT&T, in four colors (black, pale blue, red and white), on April 12. Facebook Home, which also will be downloadable same day for HTC One X and One X+ and Samsung Galaxy S III and Note II, is First's default experience. Essentially, the social network becomes primary user interface on top of Android.

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It's the question many people have asked since the social network announced its April 4 event one week ago. This live blog answers the question.

Today's "new Home on Android" follows by nearly a month, a massive user interface redesign, as Facebook unifies the look and feel across devices and puts more emphasis on mobile. Obviously Android is part of that. Paragraphs are reverse order, with newest up top. All times EDT.

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The notion of a Facebook phone has certainly lingered for a few years now -- the concept reached a point of half-hearted fruition in the HTC ChaCha and Salsa in 2011, but neither really embodied the true potential of a Facebook phone. They were much more of "throw and see what sticks" devices -- with the only tangible evidence of deeper Facebook integration being the Facebook button on the devices’ fronts.

Much has changed in nearly two years: Facebook’s Open Graph, the acquisition of Instagram and the introduction of Facebook Camera and Messenger applications, among others. Perhaps the most strident progression Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has made in the past two years is reaching 1 billion active users. And counting. That’s approximately one in seven people in the world, and an even larger proportion if accounting for the developed world alone.

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