Posts tagged Looks
Facebook’s Updated Android App Looks a Lot Like its iPad App
Dec 7th
Today Facebook announced that it is launching an update to its Android app that it is “two times faster than previous Android apps.” This update looks a lot like the Facebook iPad app, all the way down to the Nearby option, which was previously called Places and, previous to that, Check-In. Messages and notifications start at the top of the screen, which should make navigation around the app much simpler. The menu is now located on the left-hand side of the app. Users don’t have to switch back-and-forth from the Home screen just to see events, news feed and messages and other features. Now everything is located in one space.
Slowly but surely, the world’s biggest social network is beginning to converge its platform UIs. The big question is, will users like the new UI?
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Historically, Facebook has been slow to update its Android apps. When Facebook finally does update the apps, it packs in a lot.
Zuckerberg has gone on the record as admitting that Facebook’s Android apps have always “been a little behind”. The update will be available for download soon in the Android Market. With the shift toward HTML5 and the convergence of platform UIs, this seems likely to change.
Speaking of Android, the long-rumored Facebook phone will run a modified version of Android. It is slated to launch sometime in the next 12-18 months.
What do you think of the Facebook user interface? Tell us in the comments.
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Seo In Young looks dazed & confused upon arrival in Singapore – allkpop
Nov 28th
 allkpop |
Seo In Young looks dazed & confused upon arrival in Singapore
allkpop by leesa86 – 15 mins ago On November 28th, singer Seo In Young posted a hilarious photo of herself dazed in the Singapore airport. In the caption, he exclaimed, “Singapore! I'm here at MAMA! A very confused me at the airport“, and shared the photos … |
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Vevo Looks For New Ad Deal With YouTube – ReelSEO Online Video News
Nov 24th
 ReelSEO Online Video News |
Vevo Looks For New Ad Deal With YouTube
ReelSEO Online Video News The following is an index of our more popular video search engine optimization (Video SEO, VSEO,… Many of us here at ReelSEO are still settling back into our routines following the awesome SMX West… We had the privilege of speaking with Bruce Clay … |
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Draft W3C Standard Looks More Like ‘Please, Do Not Track’
Nov 18th
Last December, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission called upon leaders in the Web browser industry to develop technological means to enable servers to comply with federal guidelines – which are likely to become laws – mandating that they refrain from implementing any kind of behavioral tracking for individuals who explicitly opt out of all tracking. Although lawmakers two years ago envisioned a system where each server asks each user for her explicit permission, the preferable alternative would be for a user who simply never wishes to be tracked, to never be asked.
The challenge for the industry is to implement such a provision on HTTP, a stateless transfer protocol. For a server to keep track of whom it’s not supposed to keep track of, it might be best to have a tracking system. But that may end up being illegal, so W3C is instead considering a kind of handshaking protocol.
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The second working drafts of W3C’s Tracking Preference Expression protocol and Tracking Compliance and Scope protocols, published Monday, are in large measure placeholders for a myriad of issues that have just now been discovered, let alone needing to be resolved. It’s clear at this early stage that very little has been decided, but participants in the discussion are moving forward with the following basic principles: A new field expressing the user’s desire not to be tracked, should be added to the HTTP header. This way, a server sees the user’s wishes and settings prior to making any kind of response.
But from there, the option is being opened for the server to issue challenges in response. For example, would the user consent to tracking if the data was being kept only by the originating server, instead of sending it to a third party tracking service? Perhaps the user doesn’t know which service that is, so the server may respond with a link to a policy document on its Web site explaining the legal relationships between itself and its ad partners. From there, the user may be able to grant an exception – to say, “In this case, I’ll trust you” – or to continue her resistance to being tracked.
But the door is being left open for the server to respond with an exception of its own. Technically, it’s a way for the server to enter into a bargain with the client (user) which says, “Either you let my service track your behavior or I won’t let you in.” Yet one of those placeholders in this week’s version of the W3C document leaves the door open even further, with this question with response to the Tracking Response Header Field: “Does it indicate when a site believes it has an exemption from DNT, such that the user can react appropriately if it isn’t true?… The header could say I see that you say DNT, but I am tracking you for the following reasons.”
Again, nothing has actually been standardized at this point. But what’s being actively considered is actively engaging the user in the protocol delivery and exchange process – something beyond the simple binary state that some engineers started with.
Presently, some Web users are able to opt out of some tracking methods by virtue of browser plug-ins, which produce cookies using a de facto standard format that many servers will read, and some will pay attention to. There isn’t any law or rule that says how tracking opt-out cookies must be observed by servers. But that isn’t the biggest problem with the current system, says a Carnegie Mellon report on the relative viability of the current slate of plug-ins, released last month entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Opt Out” (PDF available here). As Pedro G. Leon and his fellow researchers wrote, users have trouble with current opt-out tools because they don’t understand what all this bargaining between server and user is supposed to be about.
“Many of the tools we tested provide insufficient feedback to users,” the report reads. “Participants were unsure of what it meant to be opted out and how they could tell whether opt-out was working. Participants who tested the browser cookie settings also had no mechanism for understanding what was happening behind the scenes unless Web sites didn’t work. DNT mechanisms also provided no feedback; however, there is currently no way for tools to confirm that DNT preferences are being honored. While AdBlock Plus did not provide explicit feedback, users noticed the absence of all ads on pages they visited and inferred that the tool was effective. In contrast, Ghostery and TACO users received notifications on every Web site visited about which companies were attempting to track them and whether trackers had been blocked. Users appreciated this feedback and gained an understanding of what the tool was doing.”
If Web standards bodies manage only to recreate the same scenario users are faced with today, there’s a danger that they’ll just leave their browsers in the default state – in which case, DNT could end up being mostly meaningless.
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Yahoo’s Livestand Looks Really Nice, But It’s No Flipboard Killer
Nov 4th
Yahoo is getting super-serious about the role tablets will play in its future content strategy. On Tuesday, they launched IntoNow, an impressive social TV app for the iPad that marries the check-in functionality of GetGlue with the real-time content identification of Shazam. The next day, the company pushed out LiveStand, another iPad app, this one in the tradition of personalized news reading apps like Flipboard, Zite and AOL’s Editions.
The app, which comes in advance of Google’s own rumored offering, is pretty well-designed. It has less content sources than many existing players, but what it does have is formatted very nicely.
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One of the first things you’ll notice about Livestand is that it’s built to support multiple users. For families who share an iPad or other tablet, that feature will be appreciated. An app that displays personalized content is only really useful to its original user, and lots of families share tablets. The feature won’t be necessary for everyone, but it’s nice to know it’s there.
Pretty Layouts, But Limited Content to Fill Them
Rather than being a direct copy of the much beloved Flipboard, Livestand crosses that popular app with something more like AOL’s Editions. It’s a personalized content app, but it doesn’t pull content from your friends on Twitter and Facebook, nor does it let you plug in any old RSS feed your heart could ever desire. Instead, Yahoo has launched with a list of content partners, whose articles and blog posts are formatted in an attractive, magazine-style layout. From that list, which is anchored heavily by Yahoo’s own content properties, you can pick and choose sources that suit your fancy.
In putting it through its paces, we noticed a few minor areas that could use improvement. In some cases, the app only loads the first image in a given post. That’s unfortunate, because additional artwork could help make the lovely article detail pages look even lovelier. It’s downright unhelpful when the post we’re trying to read contains an infographic.
We hesitate to be too harsh, though. The thing did just launch yesterday, and on the whole it’s pretty solid.
For users who don’t necessarily want to trick their news-reading app out with any content source imaginable, Livestand is a worthwhile product. Users who are already happily settled in to an app like Flipboard, Zite or Pulse are probably going to stay there.
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How To Build A Site That Looks Great On Every Screen
Oct 28th
The responsive design revolution is upon us. With tablet and smartphone use soaring and changing our media habits, Web publishers no longer have a choice but to build designs that work properly on any device or screen size.
The hard-working Silicon Valley design firm ZURB has recently released version 2.0 of its responsive design boilerplate kit called Foundation, which is a fundamental framework for a one-size-fits all Web project.
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Foundation is a CSS and Javascript framework that comes with a boilerplate and the necessary plug-ins. It uses a 12-column grid that is both “fluid and responsive,” meaning that it flows properly in response to different or changing screen sizes.
It responds to percentage-based widths as well as media queries, so you won’t have to worry about how the layout will work on different screens or devices. The package even comes with the responsive typography, buttons, forms and tabs you’ll need.
ZURB is demonstrating Foundation on its Soapbox page, so you can play around with it yourself and see how well it works. Look at how the same page resizes to fit these two different browser windows:
If you visit the Soapbox page on your phone or tablet, you’ll see the page flow out the same way to fit the screen. Whether for prototypes or even full-blown sites, it’s great for the Web that ZURB has given us Foundation. You can download it from Github and go to town.
More Responsive Design Resources
It’s an exciting time to be a Web designer, because HTML5 and CSS3 are powerful new technologies, and everyone’s learning to use them at the same time. HTML5 Boilerplate is a great starting point for the very basics of how to build a modern, Web-standard, responsive site.
There’s also a service called Treesaver that has a similar implementation to Foundation, but it’s finely tuned for future-of-magazines-style content sites.
For those who don’t want to have to build their own platform, Jux.com is the way to go. Jux just released its new batch of code, and now it produces responsive designs that work on the desktop as well as the iPad.
It even lets users control the iPad version with touch gestures. It’s a whole new way of publishing that’s optimized for any device, and there’s no technical implementation to get in your way. Whatever your geek-level is, Jux will make your full-screen content pop on a desktop or tablet.
And be sure to check out Dan Rowinski’s story about the BostonGlobe.com design process, which is one of the best examples of responsive design around.
What are some of your favorite sites that look great across all devices?
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How to Find Out Who Looks at Your Facebook Profile
Oct 25th
If you’re a human being (read: not spambot) and you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably wondered who looks at your profile. Facebook’s voyeur-identifying techniques are stealth, allowing you to be a voyeur without really feeling like a stalker. Here are some of the ways you can bypass Facebook’s secret algorithmic ways and find out who’s looking at you – and who you’re looking at.
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The most obvious yet oft-overlooked is the friends list on the left-rail of your Facebook profile page. According to the Facebook Help Center, this section “might include friends who you interact with the most in Wall posts, comments and mutually attended events. However, Facebook does not select friends to show based on whose profiles you choose to view or who you interact with over messages and chat.”
Science20.com has a different hypothesis, suggesting that the people who show up on the left-rail are the ones who look at you the most over a period of time. Go to your profile and refresh it multiple times, and see for yourself. Another technique suggested by the article for discovering who views you the most is this: Go to the search bar at the top of Facebook.
Type in the first letter of each character in the alphabet. The first name that pops up is either the last person you looked at, or the last person who looked at you.
Facebook also gives you friend suggestions; those are people who may have been looking at your profile.
Friendster Failed Because It Turned Online Gazing Into Stalking
On Facebook, the term “stalker” is harder to peg. On Friendster, it was easy thanks to the “Who’s Viewed You” feature, jokingly referred to as “Who’s Watching Me.” The feature launched out of nowhere on September 30, 2005, and showed people who had been viewing them – and how many times their profile had been viewed since the beginning of that month.
In 2009, Friendster tried to relaunch. It didn’t work out too well.
Users of Facebook, on the other hand, have accepted frictionless sharing, the varied browsing tools and a news feed that keeps delivering fresh content it thinks you want to see.
If these workarounds aren’t doing it for you, and you’re really serious about finding out who looks at your profile, check out this bookmarklet and the WhoIsLive add-on.
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Facebook’s First iPad App Looks Sparse, Utilitarian & Good Enough to Love
Oct 10th
Facebook is rolling out its first iPad today, though at press time it’s not available in the iTunes app store where I live. Screenshots are available though and there’s not much that’s surprising in the design at least. Images are embedded below.
The app relies on big photos for most of its design strength. That makes sense. As the world’s biggest photo sharing network, there’s nothing Facebook could have built that would have pleased all of the people all of the time (hundreds of millions of people) more than a big, full-screen display of photos taken by our own friends. Newsfeed, including apps, and chat look similar to the way they look on the web. Facebook check-ins, displayed on a big map, look different and interesting. Images below, what do you think?
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You’ll be able to access the app directly once it’s available here; click the images below for full size view.
A few questions I’ll be eager to find out the answers to:
- How will the browser inside the Facebook App perform relative to Safari? Will there be anything special about it?
- Facebook on Mobile Safari works ok on the iPad, the app is an alternative to its clumsiness. Will the trade off in terms of functionality given up for stability and responsiveness found be worth it?
- Will people want to chat in IM on an iPad’s on-screen keyboard?
- Is this going to be a case of Facebook swallowing the world? What does this mean for the web? For other apps?
You know that millions and millions of people are going to be trying this app out. Hopefully it will be worth the wait.
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Google Looks to Cash in with YouTube Channels, New Circular Ads
Oct 4th
Google is reportedly in the final stages of negotiating several deals for original YouTube content with major media outlets and celebrities such as Tony Hawk. The search giant is also testing out new ad formats, one of which is reminiscent of the …
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Here’s What Spotify’s New Facebook Integration Looks Like
Sep 23rd
The deep integration with Facebook that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced at the f8 conference yesterday is now live and we’ve taken some time to explore how it works and where on Facebook you can expect your Spotify activity to pop up.
The new integration can be activated from within the Spotify desktop client. We were prompted to opt into it from the right column of the service, but if you’re not seeing a similar call to action, you can go into your accounts settings where a new option will appear: “Get personal recommendations by sending music you play to Facebook’s Open Graph.”
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Once this box is checked and your Facbeook account is connected to Spotify, every song you listen to will be displayed on Facebook. Yes, even guilty pleasures, songs you may be checking out for the first time and those 1980s pop hits you occasionally put on for purely nostalgic reasons. This is something that might not be immediately clear when you first activate the integration.
Where Your Music Activity Shows Up on Facebook
The first place your friends will start to see your music pop up is in the site’s new real-time news ticker. As each track begins to play, an update will pop up in the news ticker telling everybody which song you’re listening to at that exact moment. They can click on the update and check the song out for themselves if they so desire.
One thing that wasn’t made entirely clear in the company’s initial announcement was whether or not this on-site playback will work independently of the Spotify desktop client. It does not. You have to have Spotify running to listen to tracks. That’s not a huge deal, because Spotify is now open to everybody (no invites required) and the basic service is free.
Your music-listening activity will also be published to your own news feed. If you’re listening to lots of tracks, the text will read something like “John listened to Whoomp! (There It Is) and 17 other songs on Spotify.” That can be expanded to reveal all 18 songs, each one of which can be clicked on and played. If you click on a song listed on a friend’s profile and other friends of yours have listened to that same song, Facebook will tell you that.
From this point forward, Facebook will keep a record of every song you listen to on Spotify. Those songs will be listed in condensed form on your profile as “Recent Activity.” If you have the new Timeline profile activated, your top artists and top albums will be broken down into monthly increments alongside all your wall posts, photos and other activity.
Implicit Social Recommendations: Who’s Listening to What?
Of course, Facebook will also show you what other friends are listening to, so long as those people have Spotify connected to Facebook. This is where things start to get a little more interesting. Say my friend Stephanie is listening to an album, and that fact is posted on her Facebook wall. Then our mutual friend Sarah clicks on one of those tracks and starts listening too. What I’ll see in my news feed is a notification that both Sarah and Stephanie are listening to the same album right now.
This adds a new social layer to the music listening experience that didn’t exist before. It’s something we’ve started to see with group listening services like Turntable.fm, but this is baked right into Facebook’s social graph. It’s also different because the music being played is explicitly chosen, not curated by others as is done in the group-listening apps.
The Music Dashboard: A Centralized Hub For Social Music Activity
As announced yesterday, Facebook has also gone live with a new Music dashboard. This is where all of the music-related activity in your social network is aggregated. It filters the status updates from your friends and only shows the posts pertaining to who is listening to what music. Again, if multiple friends put on the same album, you’ll see that here.
Off to the right, the page displays the most listened-to songs across your whole network. This is likely to be much more meaningful to you than Billboard charts or even what the most popular tracks on Spotify in general are.
As of right now, only a handful of people in our network have activated the new integration, so there isn’t a ton of data yet. But we can imagine this becoming a much more interesting place if more people begin to participate.
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