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- Facebook iPhone App Update Brings Push Notifications, Contact Sync
It seems like forever ago that Facebook promised push notification support in version 3.1 of its incredibly popular iPhone app (iTunes link). Now it has arrived, just in time to usher in 2010. 3.1 brings the promised push notifications, and also the ability to sync your Facebook contacts with your iPhone’s Address Book for a more seamless communication experience.
Right away upon opening the app, you’ll be asked if you want to enable push notifications, and you’ll also encounter a dialog box asking you about contact syncing. Turning syncing on will automatically add links to the Facebook profiles of all the people it finds in your address book, and you can also choose to replace the photos for those contacts with their Facebook profile pictures.
As for the push notifications, they apply whenever someone sends you a new message, or whenever you receive a new wall post, friend request, friend confirmation, photo tag, event invitations and updates, and comments. If that seems like a lot, you can go ahead and selectively disable any options you don’t want to receive a push notification about. I’m actually very happy with the implementation. It means I can disable email updates for most of those things. Here’s what it looks like when you receive a message. Not too much info, but it gets the job done.
Contact syncing seems to be a little hiccupy at the moment, but that might only be because I’m also using MobileMe to sync my address book across all computers. It does appear to be working very slowly despite some error messages, though, but I find that the “fb://” format links don’t open anything on the Mac. Probably because the Facebook app developers didn’t count on people who have a desktop syncing system implemented. They automatically launch the FB app on the iPhone, though.
What do you think? Well done, or were you looking for more from Facebook push?
Переслать - 21 iPhone Puzzle Games to Kill Time With
I think I’ve spent more time playing games on my iPhone than I have on my old Playstation, Playstation 2 or Wii. It simply boils down to the fact that whenever I’m standing around waiting in a line, waiting for the train or in a dentist’s office, I can pull out my phone and have a quick game of something. Having a great choice of games in your pocket means you never need to be bored again while waiting around.
Here are my 21 favorite games to wait around with. The key common features for these games are that they’re quick to start playing and that you can achieve goals quickly with available playtime of as little as a minute. There are no long drawn out strategic battles, epic adventures or quests to get absorbed into.
Aztec Quest
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
My new favorite puzzler, Aztec Quest requires you to get the ball to the destination utilizing the available gadgets with some great physics based puzzles.
BeeCells
Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free
BeeCells is a simple puzzle game where you need to clear the colors by moving at least six of the same colors next to each other. After each turn, more colors appear and its a race to clear cells before they inevitably fill up.
Aurora Fient II: Arena Daemons
Aurora Fient offers an epic level-upping RPG with multi-player (of sorts) game play, based on a simple puzzle clearing game (matching three or more of the same blocks), offering the same gameplay with different twists, power ups and great sounds and graphics. This gives you quick gameplay wins with long gameplay goals to obtain. Aurora Fient costs $4.99 and is easily worth it in my opinion.
Toobz
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Toobz is a simple pipe game where you try to get the water to the edge. While the graphics are plain, the game play can be addictive and good fun.
Geared
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Geared presents you with gears you need to layout in the allowed spaces to make the required preset gears rotate.
Flood-It!
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Make the screen one color by flooding the pixels with colors in the least number of moves. The flood always starts in the top left and floods all matching colors.
Pocketball
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
One or more balls will drop from the top, leaving you to guide them to the correct bucket with ropes attached to pegs.
Gravity Sling
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Send the astronaut back to the space shuttle by flinging him around planets.
TanZen
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
TanZen is very peaceful and relaxing, aligning up triangles into the silhouetted shape.
TimeLoop
iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
In TimeLoop you need to perform multiple actions at once, but you only have one guy. So you need to go back in time to help do all the necessary parts.
Tiki Towers
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Build bridges and towers by assembling bamboo sticks, so your monkeys can get to where they want to go.
Toople & Topple 2+Plus
Website – iTunes Topple 2+Plus: Free – iTunes Topple 1: Free
Stack different shaped blocks and see how high you can go. Topple 2+Plus enables online leaderboards and profiles. Both are now free.
KittyPuzzle
Website – iTunes: $1.99
KittyPuzzle is a simple tile sliding game, but with gorgeous kitten pictures to reward you at the end. You can also use your own photos.Peggle
Peggle shouldn’t need an introduction, a cross between pinball and color clearing games it is one of the most addictive games ever.
Zen Bound
Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free
Relax and paint objects by covering them with rope. Utilizing the accelerometer and touch screen perfectly, this is one of the best original games for the iPhone.
Zentomino
Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free
Zentomino is the same concept as TanZen, filling the silhouette but with pentomino pieces instead of triangles.Orba
Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free
Orba is a color clearing game, where each game does go on for a while, but is the type of game that can be put down, saves your position and can be instantly picked up to resume clearing to end with the highest score. Simple and addictive.
Totemo
Clear the screen by matching various configurations of totems.
Vortex
Get the spaceship back to earth by strategically placing black holes, planets or various gadgets to assist.
Polyhedra
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Fill up the screen by making shapes as big as you can in the available area, without letting them be touched by the critters while growing and using the accelerometer to change the direction of gravity to your advantage.
Minesweeper Classic
Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free
Figure out where the mines are in the field, in a perfect translation of the Windows classic game.
Переслать - Microsoft to Reveal Tablet; Apple Speculation Now Shapes the Industry
According to the New York Times, tonight at Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote address, he will unveil an ambitious new tablet device that’s the result of a partnership between Microsoft and HP. Citing people familiar with Redmond’s plans, the NYT describes the tablet as a “novel take” on the format and says it will possibly be available mid-year. Right around when Apple’s iSlate is rumored to also be available.
It’s just the latest in a recent crop of PC tablet announcements, all seemingly stemming from the desire to beat Apple at a game no one is actually sure they’re even going to be playing yet. Apple’s influence and consumer cache is now so powerful that the competition doesn’t want to be stuck endlessly going after an iDevice-killer, and are instead trying to beat Cupertino out the gate.
Little is known about what exactly Microsoft will be unveiling today, but the information gathered by the New York Times suggests that it will be competing with the Amazon Kindle as well as with whatever Apple has in store:
My sources, however, say that Mr. Ballmer will show the as-yet-unnamed H.P. device, which will be touted as a multimedia whiz with e-reader and multi-touch functions.
That sounds pretty much in line with the rumors currently circulating about what Apple’s iSlate will also be packing. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that Microsoft had been following the speculation and theorizing about what Apple’s new wonder device would eventually look like as closely as I had, and then had rushed a rough approximation of that same device into production to match or possibly beat Apple’s supposed timeline.
The key to whether Microsoft’s risky play pays off or not will depend on a few key factors. First is price point. The latest rumors put the Apple tablet somewhere around the $1,000 mark. The JooJoo, by contrast, is currently selling pre-orders for $499.00. I’d expect Microsoft’s offering to be closer to the JooJoo in pricing, but to offer a lot more in terms of functionality as well. In fact, even if this new slate device doesn’t threaten Apple’s plans, expect it to all but eliminate demand for the JooJoo.
Never before has a company had the kind of power that Apple now wields. Simply by planting a seed about a potential upcoming product development, they can change the direction of an entire industry. Imagine if the Mac maker was never even planning on creating a tablet to begin with, but just wanted to seem like it was to draw competitors into a a money and time-wasting vortex in a market that really has very little growth potential. Probably not the case here, but scary, nonetheless.
Переслать - A Plea for a Significant Aperture Update
Through the past three quarters, Aperture users (like myself) have only seen two updates to the pro-level photo processing and organization application from Apple — and those have really only been stability type releases. About a year ago we saw Aperture’s consumer-level sibling get places and faces and some of us figured Aperture wasn’t far behind. Seems we may have figured wrong. I think Aperture users have been patient enough — we want a meaningful update already!
First, to clear the air: I like Aperture, and it works well for me. But it’s application envy that’s got my level of rile slowly compounding, as I watch the ‘little brother’ (iPhoto) get powerful features, and the competing Adobe Lightroom continue to wow and delight users. And at a $200 investment in the software, I feel like I need to stay committed to it and get my money’s worth. But I wonder at what point those of us using Aperture have begun suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, and are defending our captors rather than breaking free for greener pastures.
As a potential conflict of interest, I co-manage a Denver area Photoshop and Lightroom user group. It came about mostly out of my enjoyment of mingling with other shutter-happy folks, but has resulted in slowly painting me green with envy. Lightroom does some seriously awesome stuff! Starting with the fact that it’s 64-bit (which is huge when handling large image processing tasks), and it can handle area-specific color editing with brushes, and so on. It’s a super solid photo processing and organization tool. To boot, Adobe is very public about making its beta release of the upcoming version 3 available for anyone to try. It’s getting harder and harder to rationalize my devotion to Aperture.
Look, I realize Aperture isn’t broken, but neither was my last MacBook when I replaced it. I think we’re all guilty (at some level — I’m closer to the top, I’m sure) of wanting more. More power, more bells and whistles, more better! But If Apple’s going to offer a pro-level tool, it needs to give it care and feeding, thusly, showing some love to those who’ve shelled out good money for it. Here are some features I think Aperture needs to keep current users happy.
64-bit
Snow Leopard supports it now, so what reason is there not to offer this? I had a post similar to this ready around Snow Leopard launch, and trashed it because I figured it was a no-brainer that we’d see an update along these lines to Aperture in the following weeks. I am Jack’s broken heart.
Faces & Places
Aperture should at least keep up with its consumer level sibling. Faces and places are very useful tools — and it drives me batty having to manually tag my Aperture photos with this information.
Fix Tethered Shooting
To my knowledge, it’s probably limited to the Canon 40D, but Apple broke the ability to shoot in tethered mode for my dSLR a while back. This is lame. I want a fix!!
Focused Editing
Taking a page out of the Adobe book, I’d like to see the ability to apply edits to only select parts of a photo. Sometimes you only want to lighten, darken, or change color of a specific part, not the whole thing. I realize this is more an image editing feature, and not processing, but I’ve seen it in Lightroom, and I desire it.
These are just a few ideas, things that are ultimately important to me (though I think they’re general enough that others would agree). But what else? Let’s hear from the Aperture users, or potential Aperture users. What would you need to see in a hopefully sooner than later update to Aperture, to keep you happy and on board with Apple? What would cause you to jump ship and pursue other solutions?
Переслать
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