Facebook is today rolling out a new product called Pages feed that will allow you to see only content from the pages you follow in your main feed. This section was discovered earlier in the month in testing, but Facebook has confirmed to The Next Web today that it is rolling out to all users.
The Pages feed section appears in the left sidebar of your Facebook page, and can be accessed via this link directly as well.
Note that this does not affect the way that the News Feed works at
all, instead, this allows you to see a continuous separate feed with
just pages content. This serves a desire among some Facebook users to
see more from the pages that they follow in their feed.
It also comes at an interesting time, As Facebook has come under
criticism from some using its pages ad products. Some users, like Mavericks owner Mark Cuban,
have complained that their promoted Pages content was not getting
enough exposure in the main feed. Perhaps exposing pages content more
directly to users will increase engagement with the
content without having to tweak the main feed.
Facebook says that the new section is rolling out to users now, so you should have it soon if not already.
Ah, the news feed,
Facebook’s party central. Purveyor of addictive updates on friends and
former acquaintances. And ground zero in the battle for what the social
network was, is, and where it’s going.
What shows up in that news feed, an interview with the relevant manager at Facebook
reveals, is the result of an endless chess game of algorithmic
amendments by the company trying to please its users — as well as
endless rounds of complaints from those users.
Case in point: earlier this week, a programmer uncovered a Facebook URL
that appeared to show your feed unfiltered, algorithm free, with all of
your friends’ updates in chronological order. That was news to
Facebook, which has no idea where the page came from.
“That was not something that was ever live,” News Feed Product Manager Will Cathcart told Mashable.
“It was a mix of our current algorithms and an old approach. It was
ranking by [interesting] friends, rather than by which posts were likely
to be interesting.
“As soon as we heard about it, we turned it off.”
So there you have it: mysterious hybrid algorithms are capable of
floating around the Facebook ether. (Perhaps not surprising in a young
company culture of self-avowed “hackers” whose motto is “move fast and
break things.”)
More disturbing, though, is the speed with which Facebook moved to
shut it down. Why not let it stick around and see if users liked it?
Because it wasn’t being properly explained, Cathcart insists. It would
have caused confusion. “It was being touted as everything,” he says,
“and it wasn’t everything.”
But isn’t this a sign that there is a call for a complete and
unabridged version of the news feed alongside the “top stories” and
“most recent” options? (By the way, don’t put too much stock in that
“most recent” — it’s merely a chronological presentation of the same
“top stories” picks).
Cathcart demurs. “When we talk to people, they say they want to see
everything, but they actually want to see all the games, or all the
photos,” he says. “There’s really a lot of content happening on
Facebook, and if you show it to them, what they want is something more
drilled down.”
However, Cathcart admits the user testing that gave rise to this
conclusion isn’t recent. It was conducted before 2011′s F8 conference,
which was the first we heard about Timeline. There have been one or two changes to the site since then.
There is, of course, the infamous real-time ticker
you can choose to have pop up in the top right hand corner of the
homepage, which details every last one your friends’ Facebook doings as
they happen. There’s no chance to pause and reflect on them, as in the
regular news feed. Blink and you’ve missed it.
Even Cathcart admits the ticker “feels a bit ADD.” For that matter,
he willingly concedes that the news feed algorithm concentrates too much
on friends you’ve interacted with, rather than letting that
all-important update from a friend of old be randomly discovered. “We’re
trying to do a better job on that,” he says.
“People value seeing a mix of things. All complaints about that from users are valid.”
Just don’t question the need for an algorithmic filter at all.
Cathcart draws a line in the sand here; he insists the algorithm is
ultimately more useful than user scrolling alone.
“For many of our users, there are thousands of things that have
happened on Facebook,” he says. “They don’t have the time to go through
all of those things. We can make their experience better by trying to
pick out things where they’re most likely to find engagement.”
And if you really do want a complete, unfiltered, algorithm-free feed
from all your friends? Cathcart’s suggestion: create a Facebook list,
then put all of your contacts in it. “We don’t expect a whole lot of
people will put everyone on the list,” he laughs.
My precocious 11-year old daughter announced a few days ago that
she wants an iPad mini for Christmas. Although she occasionally uses my
iPad 1, she's never seemed particularly interesting in one of her own. I
think part of the appeal is the cuteness of the mini. Although I don't
see any particular purpose for the thing, she seems to love it. I think
she'll probably just use it to play games and to watch Dr. Who* on
Netflix but there's hope that she might read a few books too along the
way. And, yes, I've tried to convince her to get a Kindle or Nook
instead but she seems bent on having me purchase one. I just hope that
it has a longer support life expectancy than my iPad 1 did.
My oldest son, now a freshman at Oklahoma State University, wants a
Microsoft Surface. He texts me about them on an almost daily basis and
how the Surface is all the buzz at OSU. He also tells me that I should
write about the fact that students there are all wanting one. I keep
thinking that he should have gone to a better school. That and I just
bought him a laptop before he went to college. Apparently, a lot of
students are taking their tablets to class to take notes on or to do
whatever. When I was in college, a lot of the students would bring their
cassette recorders to class so that they could record the pearls of
wisdom with the hopes of playing them back later. I was too busy paying
attention and writing my own notes to bother with all that nonsense.
But, whatever. I certainly don't want him to be the only one not being
geeky in his classes. Be it far from me to prevent that.
Personally, I think they'd both be better served to do the following:
My daughter should take possession of my Acer One netbook that has
Windows XP on it. She can play games, watch Netflix and have Microsoft
Office on it for the rare occasion that she would do any real work on
it. Additonally, it has a full keyboard and it cost under $300 when it
was new.
My son should take my iPad 1. Hey, isn't everything retro cool now?
Sure it is. Let's go with that. Plus, it's Apple. I mean, isn't that
what kids at cool colleges are into?
Problem solved.
I presented this idea to both of them, separately.
The response to both ideas was met with irritation and mild disgust that I would even think of such a thing.
So, my well thought out plan that would result in a lot of savings
for me and cool (OK, sufficiently cool) technology for both of them. It
was a win-win situation.
Besides, since I am the technology writer in the family. I should get
the new stuff. However, I wouldn't buy an iPad mini for myself nor
would I necessarily buy a Surface.
I think the mini is too expensive. I think the Surface is too expensive. And, yes, the regular iPad is/was too expensive too.
Both are way overpriced for what they are. You can buy a nice laptop
for the price of the mini and two laptops for the price of the Surface.
My wife sees their requests as easy Christmas gifts but I see them as a
waste of my hard-earned money.
The bottom line, of course, is that it will be a very merry Christmas for both of them and a bleak one for dear old dad.
What's that? You want to know about the middle child? The red-headed,
6-feet two-inch, 225 lb. 16-year old wrestler middle child? Oh, he
probably wants a gun or sword or another pair of cowboy boots or
something. He doesn't care about technology. He'd rather have gas for
his pickup than anything with a screen on it--unless it's a bug screen
for the pickup. He hasn't told us what he wants yet but I'm sure he
will. No one really seems to hold back in the "I want" department.
Alas, poor me. I guess I'll wait until next year to ask for what I
want. This year's budget is blown. Thanks, Apple. Thanks, Microsoft. The
least someone could do is send me a coupon or something.
*Yes, Dr. Who. And, she makes my wife and me watch it with her. She's hooked on it, thanks to the oldest son.
We have been hands-on with Black Ops 2 on the PlayStation 3 for over a
day now, and just like most PS3 gamers we’ve experienced a lot of
problems with Black Ops 2 freezing at certain points, which includes
audio that sounds like a rap when you get freezing for a few seconds
during online play. You’ll find a phrase repeating itself over and over
occasionally, although this hasn’t stopped us playing the zombies mode
in Black Ops 2 but of course the problems are extremely annoying.
The good news is that Activision are aware of the
Black Ops 2 problems targeting PS3 users, and confirmed today in a tweet
that a fix is being worked on for connection issues and freezing with
the PS3 version. You can see that tweet in the image below, which has
received some messages from angry gamers. Some people are telling other
PS3 players not to bother using Black Ops 2 on the platform until these
issues are fixed. One gamer said, “I’ve had enough of not being able to connect in Black Ops 2, and it keeps freezing“. Others are explaining how “stressed” they are and hope Black Ops 2 is fixed on the PS3 before the double XP weekend starts.
Shortly after starting up the PS3 version of Black Ops 2 yesterday we
noticed patch 1.02, although nothing official had been said about what
this update included but we did have a few ideas that we reported in this article.
These included making online play live and other ideas like bug fixes
for the launch, but that article received a lot of comments about Black
Ops 2 problems and connecting in multiplayer with freezing on the PS3.
One of the most common complaints is in regard to error messages asking
you to try again after you can’t connect to server, which we’ve also
experienced a number of times over the last 24 hours.
Black Ops 2 multiplayer freezes on PS3 – this is the
problem we’ve experienced the most on our review console, although a
few PR readers have had things a lot worse than us, which is thanks to
their PS3 console freezing completely “every hour or two” and crashing.
This meant a hard restart, and we know that’s not something we like to
do under any circumstances.
Have you had any problems with COD Black Ops 2, and if so is it with the PS3 or Xbox 360 version?
We might see patch 1.03 rushed out to update the PS3 system with better
performance, so we’ll let you know if this happens, but for now hit the
comments with any server issues and freezing that you’ve experienced.
It is also worth noting we’ve seen a few glitches with people flying
around in Black Ops 2 as well, so not sure if this is just us.
When the ability to jump between apps landed on the iPhone it had been
met with rejoice, although some teething problems were experienced with
memory, but now it seems that Android users are enjoying the larger
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with multiple app windows, so that you can have
more than one application running at once. This allows the user to have
two apps side-by-side, which is perfect when you have a massive 5.5-inch
screen to work on, although the same feature is heading towards the
Samsung Galaxy S3 with a Jelly Bean update.
You can count this as one of the more solid
rumors, which we first heard about towards the end of last month, and
now we have an image below that shows how multi windows would look on
the Samsung Galaxy S3. Nothing has been officially confirmed at the time
of writing, but we are to believe this Galaxy Note 2 ability would
arrive on the Galaxy S3 after Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean is installed. You
can see a much bigger image that is more than 1,200 pixels wide here on TGSpot, although it is the same as the picture below.
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 multitasking – if you don’t
own the 5.5-inch smartphone and want to know a little more about
multitasking on the Galaxy Note 2, and how good it is to have multi
windows on such a big display, then you can see a video below this
article that officially demonstrates how it works. We totally understand
why this is a good feature on a 5.5-inch display, but we wonder if it
would perform as well on a smaller screen as on the Galaxy S3? It is
also worth repeating that currently this is a rumored feature for
Samsung Galaxy S3 after a future Jelly Bean update, and not officially
confirmed just yet.
If you own the Samsung Galaxy S3, would you like to have multiple windows like on the Galaxy Note 2? The bigger handset is certainly the perfect mix of a tablet and smartphone, so this is why it’s so popular and becoming a real substitute for other gadgets, which is also helped by the multiple carriers
understanding the popularity of such a device after the success of the
original version last year. If you’re a Galaxy Note 2 owner, then you
might want to see some of the diverse cases on offer in our earlier article from today.
User base has quadrupled in the last year alone.
Cloud storage service Dropbox has announced that it has reached the 100 million user milestone.
The firm, which is now five years old, announced the milestone today in a blog written by founder Drew Houston.
"Once
upon a time, Dropbox had its humble beginnings in a Boston train
station when I forgot my USB stick at home," he said. "We're still
unsure if it was fate or fluke, but one thing's stayed the same all
these years: each of us has a unique reason for using Dropbox."
Houston
told The New York Times that the aforementioned figure represents a
user base that has quadrupled in the last year due to more consumers and
small businesses utilizing the service.
Dropbox's journey to the
coveted 100 million user mark, however, hasn't been easy. It
experienced a glitch earlier in 2012 which resulted in users receiving
spam through personal e-mail accounts. The company stressed that it's
taking steps to improve security.
Meanwhile, to celebrate the milestone, the service is offering a giveaway. It's giving away 10GB for life for its top 100 favorite stories and 100GB for life for its top 10 favorites.
At last, we can finally say that Black Ops 2 Zombies is officially upon
us. We have been providing you with early gameplay and inside
information on Pack a Punch weapons and Wonder Weapons, but now we switch our attention to the main easter egg secret hidden inside the game.
Most zombie players right now will be just trying
to get to the highest wave possible, learning the map and all of the
weapon locations as they do so. However, for those that got the game
early – there is a big easter egg to solve which will award you with the
Tower of Babble achievement and as far as we’re aware – nobody has solved it yet so we don’t know what the rewards are.
To point out, this easter egg is different to the musical easter eggs
which you have to find teddy bear locations to activate – details on
this side quest can be seen in our previous article here.
Now, the Tower of Babble quest is a different beast all together and it
reunites you with Richtofen, the infamous character from the first
Black Ops game.
It appears that you have to search for various items scattered around
the map and to complete this easter egg, we have heard that you need
all four players to complete – so it won’t work in solo mode. Furthermore, we’ve also heard that you need to select normal difficulty mode as well, as it won’t be possible when playing on easy.
We’ve gathered up the latest progress on the Tower of Babble easter
egg for you here, but obviously we’re looking for your input on any
further stages that you may have got to so that players can read this
and work through the easter egg together. The primary objective that we
can see, is that you have to search for pieces need for table parts.
There are five confirmed parts so far including the table – these
have been identified as a card reader, a nav card, a radio and a meteor.
The bus depot is a good place to start looking, as you should be able
to locate both the nav card and the meteor at the bus depot. The other
items are scattered around the map, with some items like the card reader
turning up in different areas – we found it at the farm house.
Below is a video that we’ve found which should help you out with the
achievement. It provides a nice format to the easter egg, but only part 1
is available for the moment – so keep an eye out for part 2 when it
becomes available. The video also mentions that there may be two parts
to the main easter egg – one with Richtofen and the other with Maxis.
Treyarch has clearly made this easter egg a lot more difficult than
the easter eggs contained in Black Ops 1. If you consider yourself to be
a zombies pro, let us know how far you have got on the Tower of Babble
secret and if you can offer up any further progress for our readers.
We’ll provide updated details as we get it.
It turns out that while Apple made the bumper case famous with their
iPhone 4, it looks like Google want in on a piece of the action too.
Along with the release of the brand new Nexus 4 smartphone, Google has
now made the somewhat surprising decision to unveil $20 Nexus 4 bumpers
on the official Google Play Store as well. Will Apple now regret not providing iPhone 5 bumper cases we wonder?
Nexus 4 bumper cases are now an official product from Google
and regardless of whether they ‘stole’ the idea from Apple or not is
irrelevant now, with the rather high $20 price point a much more
debatable issue. Unfortunately, the Nexus 4 bumpers are unavailable at
the moment according to the Play store, with no indication on when they
will be back in stock.
Official product details from Google are non existant as well, which
is a bit strange in our opinion as we would expect Google to make a big
effort advertising these if they want to charge $20 for each one. Have
they just uploaded them to the store now, knowing that they won’t be
available for purchase, just to make iPhone 5 owners take notice and
gloat a little bit perhaps?
The reality is for iPhone 5 owners is that they now have to make do
with third-party bumper cases, as Apple has basically said that the
iPhone 5 is now built in a way where it ‘doesn’t need’ a bumper case any
more – unlike the iPhone 4, which spawned the infamous AntennaGate
problems and hence the birth of the bumper as well, which Apple
initially handed out for free.
What are your thoughts on Google’s decision to sell Nexus 4 bumper
cases – do you say fair play to them? A lot of consumers are still very
livid over trying to actually order a Nexus 4 though, so we doubt they will be too pleased to hear that Google are charging $20 per bumper case.
Will you be getting one of these or will you search for an inevitable
third-party Nexus 4 bumper which will be cheaper in comparison? For iPhone 5 owners, is this another wake up call to Apple that iPhone 5 bumpers should be available?
The latest version of the Android operating system, known as
Jelly Bean (4.2), has started rolling out to some Google Nexus handsets.
Some Twitter and Google+ users started reporting that the new version
of the OS is being pushed out as an over-the-air download in the early
hours of Tuesday morning.
"Just checked my Galaxy Nexus and it's downloading 4.2...Aww yea," 'Jason Paul' posted on Twitter.
Shortly after, the download appeared on the popular developer and
modding site XDA Developers. The download is the 'Takju' version of the
OS, meaning that it is the GSM build for Nexus handsets bought directly
from Google.
The timing of the update is surprising, given that the only devices to arrive running Android 4.2 as standard (the Nexus 4 handset and Nexus 10 tablet) just went on sale,
on Tuesday. Network-locked versions of smartphones often take longer to
receive operating system updates, as the build needs to be tweaked for
each operator and then run through a testing process.
Jelly Bean Android 4.2 brings a revamp of the Siri-like Google Now
voice control functionality, a new Gesture Typing feature similar to
Swype and a 360-degree photo-capture mode called Photo Sphere.
People can check to see if the update is ready to download over the
air by checking for updates in the system settings on their handset.
OK, I'll admit it. The iPad Mini hasn't left my hands in the last three weeks. It's been no contest, really. While the larger fourth-gen iPad
has sat alone by my bedside table, the Mini has gone on field trips on
the bus, gotten dragged in my jacket pocket while I dropped my kid off
at school, been coddled at the cafe over breakfast, and slipped
alongside my laptop on work excursions.
As I predicted when I
reviewed it, the Mini's had a hard time leaving my hands, because few
places seem inappropriate for it. At a
Kindle
size, it's bedroom-friendly. It'll set up nicely on a kitchen counter.
It slides into otherwise lesser-used front pockets on backpacks. And it
might be the best gaming handheld Apple's ever made, based on the sheer
size of the screen and its thin, two-hand-friendly frame.
But, what does that mean?
It means, I'm enchanted with the form. And rightfully so. You could make the argument that the original
iPad was all about screen size and form, more than anything technologically revolutionary. The same feels true here. The
iPad Mini would have been a shocking device a few years ago, but now it slides into a landscape of other small tablets. I love using it, but I still don't find it a surprising device. I do, however, find it to be an extremely addictive one.
Why
have I left my larger iPad behind? I can think of a few reasons. First,
the form's less seductive. I've lived with all previous generations of
iPads, and the fourth-gen feels too much like the third-gen in casual
use, so I find it a little less fun to play with.
Also, I commute
to New York City from New Jersey. Sometimes I take my laptop back and
forth. The iPad Mini is the more commuter-friendly device, hands-down.
In that regard, I'm actually pretty curious about the LTE model that's
arriving in stores soon.
Limitations: A matter of perspective
Much
like the original iPad, the Mini lacks a much-desired feature, but it's
not nearly as effective. The first iPad didn't have a FaceTime camera
-- or any camera at all. It was a buzz kill because the iPad seemed
ideal for casual video chat. The iPad Mini lacks a higher-definition
Retina Display, which is frustrating because the Mini is perfect for
reading, and deserves the best display tech possible to improve that
experience.
But you can live without Retina Display on an iPad
Mini, far more so than you could live without a camera on the iPad. The
display is fine for reading. I've read books, magazines, and even
written reviews. It's just not as good as it could be. Oddly, older iPad
apps that don't rely on Retina seem to shine the brightest: I dusted
off and redownloaded The Elements and found it looked wonderful on the
Mini. It's all a matter of perspective, and Retina-conditioning. Of all
the people I've shown it to, those who don't seem to follow tech or own
previous higher-def or Retina Display devices didn't mind at all.
Techies, those who care about the fine details of screen quality, did.
Form wins out over specs for many people. For others, that finer screen
matters more
Has anything changed over the last week? I've
learned to live with the screen. It works. It's not a showstopper, but
it's perfectly good for what it does, has excellent sharp viewing
angles, and, well, I've learned to live with it. I have dreams of a Retina Display Mini,
but I know that's not happening now. It could even affect battery life
and size/weight. I understand that. So, I accept the Mini for what it
is, which is pretty excellent otherwise. And if it means better battery
life over a sharper screen, I appreciate that decision -- even if I wish
that screen could be crisper and richer every time I look at it.
What I use the Mini for Reading,
playing games, watching videos. In that order. I don't find the Mini as
compelling for video because the screen isn't as pitch-perfect. I love
Web browsing on it, for obvious reasons. And games seem to shine more on
the Mini than on the fuller iPad. The Mini crosses over just on the
side of "handheld device" as opposed to "laptop replacement," and it
feels more like a PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS
in that regard. I've found few games, virtual-thumb-control or
tap-based, that don't fit the Mini's tweener size perfectly. And its
size, so similar to the upcoming Nintendo Wii U's Game Pad, makes it feel like a direct competitor.
But I think it's so good at playing games that the
rest of industry, handhelds and consoles alike, need to pay attention
even more than before. The Mini feels like it's really conquered the
best gaming space between the too-limited-for-most-fingers iPhone screen
and the cumbersome larger iPad.
Using the iPad Mini outside
isn't a fun experience because of glare, but I've never found iPad use
in broad daylight to be fun. That's why I bought a Kindle.
Battery
life has held up admirably. I never need to recharge after a single
day, or even two, but I do because I worry about dipping below 50
percent charge. The battery feels more like the original iPad's than the
third-gen one, something I don't need to ever babysit.
Tweener regrets? The
iPad Mini's closer in feel to an iPhone. Do I feel absurd using it? Not
really, because the difference in screen size is still considerable.
I keep thinking about the iPod Touch.
Has the iPad Mini made it vestigial? Not yet. The Mini's still bulky by
comparison, and not ideal for controlling music. The Touch (and the
iPhone) are pocket-size and feel more organic for audio and headphones.
For some reason, I always use my iPad in my home with speakers, not
headphones. It feels like a shared device.
No, I haven't spoken
about the larger iPad, the one that we awarded an Editors' Choice. I
stand by it as a technological milestone, and a strong overall package, a
polished one. It's just not something I'm currently using. That could
change -- after all, very few apps and games even exist that take
advantage of that faster A6X processor in the fourth-gen iPad. When they
appear, I'll be interested. Of course, if the iPad Mini becomes the
go-to iPad, developers might find it less critical to make A6X-optimized
games. I still think the presence of that industry-shifting Retina
Display matters, especially on a tablet, and the larger iPad is the
place to go for it. But it's become a premium feature in the current
iPad lineup, not an essential one.
Too many devices?
Maybe it's just having been through reviews of the iPhone 5,
iPod Touch, and both iPads in the span of just two months, but Apple's
unleashed a lot of gear for the holidays. That inevitably forces people
to make tough decisions. Buy the iPhone 5 or the iPad Mini? Skip this
iPad generation and wait for a possible sooner-than-expected refresh? Or, maybe go whole hog and keep buying, as I've been somewhat surprised to hear some followers on Twitter doing.
The
iPad Mini is the most fun new device Apple's released all year, and
it's the one I most love showing off. It also seems, to my surprise, to
be the device most people are most curious to see for themselves. Yet,
if you love new tech, it's the least exciting under the hood. I felt the
pull of both those feelings in the past few weeks -- but I have to
admit, it never made me stop using it.
9:16:00 AM
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