Tag Archives: facebook

Facebook buys Occulus Rift

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Well this was unexpected. If anything I would have thought Amazon or MS would have acquired Occulus. Needless to say when I first heard facebook was buying this I felt a bit let down but after reading through the many articles on the deal I atually think this might be a good thing. Maybe facebook was the right company to buy it. Here is a good article which describes some of the good/bad things about the acquisition:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-you-shouldn-t-worry-about-facebook-buying-oculus-rift/1100-6418545/

I am currently waiting for the next generation of Occulus to arrive this summer – I have it on pre-order!

Facebook admits young teens are losing interest in the site

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Now this is an interesting headline on cnnmoney this morning. For those who are not paying attention, more teens are shying away from facebook. Why? Its just not as cool when your parents are on it too (and probably reading your posts haha). Teens like to be using the ‘next big thing’ before everyone else. They do not like to follow the typical trends that everyone else does. If you dont believe me look at their music collection:) So what are they using? Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumlr to name a few. Go ahead, see if your kids are on these sites. You might be surprised to see what you find.

Do you want to clean up your facebook page?

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There is a cool free service called facewash that does just that. It cleans up your facebook page so that it is ‘interview’ ready. It can also search for keywords and delete posts containing them. This might be easier than going through years of posts to determine what is professional or not. This free service is a must for all college students applying to jobs.

Link to Facewash

Is Facebook posting your private messages?

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It seems like this is a hot issue right now. Is facebook posting your private messages on your timeline? On one end of the issue are many users who claim that their private messages are being posted. On the other end is facebook who is saying no, they are not being posted. My thoughts?

– If it was on facebooks end, I am sure they are or have fixed it.

– If its on the users end, its because they cannot remember what they wrote because these are old posts from years ago. I checked mine and thought they were probably not private messages but I was not 100% sure. But I cannot remember messages I sent 3 years ago.

– From a technical standpoint, all of this information is probably stored on different tables or even different databases so the programmers of facebook would have had to purposely put the information in your timeline and if they are denying it, then more than likely they did not do it.

– My suggestion for facebook: Get better privacy and this would not be an issue. Make everything private by default and let users make things public if they choose. Why this company has a problem with privacy is beyond me. It is one of their biggest downfalls. I have friends who have stopped using it due to privacy concerns.

Here are some news stories about the issue:

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/facebook-not-posting-your-private-messages-1B6071010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/us-news-blog/2012/sep/24/facebook-leaking-private-messages

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/reports-facebook-users-seeing-private-messages-pre-2009-showing-up-on-timelines-as-posted-by-friends/

Facebook videos not playing?

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I had this problem on 3 of my computers and thought it was a Mac issue. Well maybe it is but I have been reading online that PCs are having the problem as well. Now I am not 100% sure what is causing the issue, whether its a setting on the computer, browsers, or in facebook itself, or even in a plug in. But I do know a solution:)

In your address bar you will see something like: http://www.facebook.com or www.facebook.com

The problem is that your browser is looking for a secure connection to view the video. So to view it you need to make sure there is an (s) in that web address like so:

https://www.facebook.com

Do you see the (s)? Type that in and reload your page. The video should now play. And yea you will need to do this each time you want to view one but at least its working.

Facebook CEO: ‘Betting on HTML5 our biggest mistake’ and future of HTML5

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on record yesterday discussing their recent move to a native app in Apple’s iOS. The facebook app had been developed in HTML5. Now I am not quite sure why a company with the resources that facebook does would have even considered an HTML5 app vs a native as native is definitely better, however, they did. But why was it a mistake? Because Apple has chosen to not allow HTML5 apps to run as fast and smooth as native ones.

Article is here

So what is the future of HTML5? Well at this point APPLE does not want to support HTML5 mobile apps. Why? They lose control and money. Sure they are supporting it in the browsers but they are not supporting it in apps. Why would HTML5 apps be good for developers? Because you could develop one app and publish it to all mobile devices. So for instance, Apple has purposely made apps running HTML5 run slower than they would as webpages in their browser, citing security and stability concerns. While it might be valid it a very suspicious as Apple has been trying to tell people to use HTML5 instead of Flash for similar reasons.

Here is an article about Apple stopping HTML5 dead in its tracks on iOS (not the browser). And this has not changed with iOS5.

Here is another article about why apps should go to HTML5 but they are not being supported:

Why apps should but are NOT going cross platform with HTML5

Facebook drops HTML5 for native iOS app (Xcode)

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I think this speaks volumes about the power of HTML5 vs native app development. What I find interesting is that both Apple and Google claim to really push HTML5 yet they still make sure their native apps run significantly better – for now at least because I am sure their futures OSs will offer better support. I am surprised a company like facebook even attempted HTML5 vs a native app to begin with and am surprised it held up so well to this point. This shows HTML5 does have power but not enough compared to Xcode. Xcode offers a lot more and HTML5 is really only designed for simple apps. When you are a company like facebook that has millions of users I could only imagine how bogged the app could easily get. Well here is the article for your reading pleasure:

Article: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/23/3262782/facebook-for-ios-native-app

Another article: http://mashable.com/2012/08/23/facebook-ios-5/

Finally your deleted facebook photos will actually be deleted – after 30 days

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As many have discovered, when you delete your photos from facebook, they are not really deleted. They are just no longer in your profile but they still remain in facebook databases and are sometimes used for ads and such. According to new sources (article here) when you delete your photos they are only used by facebook for 30 days and then deleted. While I am happy they are actually deleted, I need to ask myself, why does facebook need to use them? Should we all stop using this service due to their weird privacy rules?