Facebook announced today the addition of both social reporting and password reset to their mobile apps.
Social reporting, a feature available on the web-version of Facebook since March, allows users to submit a report on content they are unhappy about both to the posting user and Facebook. "Safety and child psychology experts tell us that online issues are frequently a reflection of what is happening offline. By encouraging people to seek help from friends, we hope that many of these situations can be resolved face to face," says the social reporting page itself. This feature will now be available on mobile devices, as Facebook reports that almost 70% of these reports result in the original poster removing the offending content on their own. Makes sense why they'd want this on mobile apps, as many of us do our Facebook activities from our iPhones.
The second feature, mobile password reset, seems like a no brainer in a world with continuous access and private information coming and going from websites and iPhone apps like Facebook's. If the comments to the announcement are any indication, many users will benefit from this enhanced security precaution.
ParkBud is proof that functional can also be beautiful. This well-designed parking app has been soaring to the #1 position on chart after chart, and quite frankly, it does not disappoint.
It's no secret folks love using the Facebook app on their iPhones and it seemed like just a matter of time before a dedicated Facebook app made its way over to the iPad. Funny story - sometimes foregone conclusions aren't as foregone as you think, and it would seem that Facebook currently has no immediate plans to create an iPad app. The reason? Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the iPad "Isn't mobile."
The initial response to such a statement is one of sound and fury, but it seems that Facebook's true planning is actually a bit more elegant than Zuckerberg let on. According to company Mobile VP Erik Tseng, Facebook is trying to figure out a unified strategy across all tablet devices so that there can be one tablet-optimized Facebook for Apple, Dell, HP, etc. The thinking goes that Facebook is currently tinkering with an HTML5 version of the service which will present a user-friendly, unified experience across all devices.
Furthermore, Facebook fanatics can still put up wall posts or upload embarrassing pictures via the traditional Facebook website which is easily accessible on the iPad's web browser. It may not be as streamlined or elegant as the iPhone's Facebook app, but it's still perfectly functional.
Even though there's no official iPad Facebook app on the immediate horizon things are far from dire. While it would be nice to go to an tablet optimized version of the social networking site in one click, having to navigate for a few more seconds has never killed anyone and it won't start now. I'm sure we'll all find a way to manage somehow, and we'd rather Facebook take their time and get it right then rush out a half-baked app that barely works and proves to be more cumbersome than helpful.
Following our report on the launch of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Square app and payment service for iPhone, Visa and DeviceFidelity have joined the iPhone payment market with a solution named In2Pay. This time, enabling iPhone uses to make contactless payments with their device rather than receive them.
Announced today, the In2Pay solution allows iPhone users to make “contactless transactions” by positioning their iPhone in front of a contactless payment terminal. In order to use the service, the iPhone must be housed within DeviceFidelity’s protective case, which uses microSD technology. The case is said to allow “mobile contactless capability” to the iPhone and is compatible with the 3G and 3GS models.
In a press release, Visa says: “By placing a removable In2Pay microSD into the protective case, iPhone users can take advantage of In2Pay's secure contactless capabilities where contactless transactions are offered. They range from buying goods in retail stores and at unattended kiosks, to transit ticketing, and even securely accessing buildings and computers networks.”
Trials of the service are scheduled to start during the second quarter of this year.
The service builds on Visa’s payWave technology for contactless transactions and uses the DeviceFidelity In2Pay technology to make use of any mobile phones with a microSD memory slot. This suggests that the iPhone may not be the only device Visa is aiming In2Pay at. The iPhone, of course, does not currently support microSD and therefore needs a casing to house the microSD card.
"The more than 200,000 apps on the App Store are an integral part of iPhone users' lives." said Amitaabh Malhotra, COO, DeviceFidelity. "With our In2Pay solution, we want to give both iPhone users and app developers the power to do even more, by putting the convenience of interactive secure mobile transactions, right at their fingertips, anywhere they are."
The In2Pay case is apparently designed to stay attached to the iPhone and offers a micro USB slot for charging and syncing their device.
It will be interesting to see how the service will be priced by Visa when it comes to roll out the service and, whether or not the DeviceFidelity case will be free or part of a subscription package. While the additional case could be seen as a benefit to some, many iPhone users dislike the idea of any housing that adds weight or thickness to the device and others preferring specific cases.
News Fuse is a streamlined app that gives you easy access to a wide variety of news sites. It's not rich in features, but it makes up for it in ease-of-use. If mobile Safari is too cumbersome for you, give this app a go.
This somewhat overhyped location-based coupon application has a fantastic, forward-thinking concept. Unfortunately it doesn't have much to offer users at the current time.
Bio: Web developer by day, Mac and iPhone developer by night.
- Created iPodderX, the world's first podcast client
- Wrote "Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari" prior to the SDK being released
- Loan Shark was chosen early on by Apple as a "Featured" app, and is also featured in Apple's own "iPhone Your Life" pages.
Interview with August Trometer: Part 2: [audio:http://148apps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/AugustTrometerP2.mp3]
To listen to the audio interview, click the play triangle above.
To download the .MP3, right click and choose "Save Link As...".
Finishing up our interview with August, I ask him about what it is like being an iPhone developer in the lime-light, or Celebrity Developer. He talks about how much fun it has been to break out of the traditional role from time to time, and how it has really helped out his programming business.
I also get his opinions on Apple's filing to have jailbreaking iPhones judged illegal, what that means to the development community, and how jailbreaking is actually beneficial to the App Store and making the iPhone a popular development platform. August also tells us why he has avoided it.
Most importantly, August gives us the breaking story about the soon to be released app, YOWZA!!, and how it will change the way you shop and use your iPhone.
Listen to how August met Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman on Heroes) on Twitter, and joined forces with Rick Yaeger from MacMerc, to create a whole new business model for an iPhone app, and how they have tackled the problems of turning your iPhone into a money-saving shopping tool! And it's going to be FREE!
Yelp for iPhone is an amazingly feature packed, incredibly useful app for finding services and entertainment in your urban bubble. Need to find a cafe, restaurant, tire changing station, drug store, etc that's approved by the community around it? Yelp i
Colloquy began life as an excellent open source Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for the Mac desktop, and now the fine folks at Colloquy Project have released a mobile version to the App Store. The iPhone / iPod Touch edition is an incredibly robust appli
When connected to the Internet you can use Wikipedia Mobile to search Wikipedia for articles, which can then be saved to you're iPhone for offline viewing. Pages retain their original formatting and can be searched for words or phrases, but the app has no
Developer: Motacore Price: $1.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.4
iPhone Integration [rating:0/5]
User Interface [rating:0/5]
Re-use / Replay Value [rating:0/5]
[rating:overall]
Endless Walls is an application that displays a slideshow of wallpapers from Flickr and allows you to copy then to your camera roll for later use as wallpapers. The problem with this is that it looks like many of the images used in Endless Walls are copyrighted. Even though the images are loaded directly from the Flickr servers, this is still an application that ignores any sort of copyright or do not download settings the owner has set on their images. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
It would be easy enough to go to one of the Flickr groups that were created to index iPhonesizedwallpaper images and download them directly to your iPhone in Mobile Safare. So is this application doing anything different? Well, yes. For one they are charging for the ability to do this. They are also ignoring the setting that the owner has set to keep people from downloading their images. Next, they are not even displaying any of the metadata for the photo such as who uploaded the photo, title, etc.
Another thing, they claim that there are over 7,000 wallpapers. Then why do I see so many duplicates? Inside the Endless Walls bundle, there is a file called cache.xml -- while I'm not sure that this file contains all of the images used, it does contain only 2,000 unique URLs all pointing to Flickr.com image servers.
Motacore.com, the developers of Endless Walls were asked if they though their use of copyrighted images in this application was OK and this is their response:
That's a very interesting point that our attorney may have overlooked. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I will speak with our counsel as soon as he is available for a meeting.
While Flickr is currently one of our bigger sources, we are in the process of moving away from it to a user submitted (submitted to us) cache of wallpapers.
Way back in the pre-historic days, you know before the App Store, when there were other ways to get application on the iPhone, there was an application called Wallpaper, developed by Sean/Big Zaphod, who now works for Tapulous. It was a great and similar app but all of the wallpapers were user submitted directly from their iPhones. Seems like that is the direction that Motacore is heading. (And here's hoping we'll see an official version of Wallpaper, too!) Motacore is targeting the end of September, 2008 for this move. We'll see how it goes.
So, in the end, I'm torn. This is a really easy application to grab new wallpapers on your iPhone, and fairly well developed. But legally and morally it just doesn't seem right. So I'm going to have to leave this application at 0 stars. In the end you will need to make your own decision. Once they move to a user-generated and submitted version, we will re-visit it.
We've been working the past couple weeks on an Mobile Safari version of 148Apps.com. It's now ready for your mobile viewing pleasure. Just go to http://148apps.com with Mobile Safari to see it. We'll still be making a few adjustments in the coming weeks but let us know if you see any problems with the mobile version.
