Tag Archive for iphone

Facebook Newsfeed Changes Ahead of F8

September 21, 2011 Molly White No comments

I woke up this morning to a brand new Facebook!  Even my iPhone app has updated to reflect some of these changes.

1) Last week Facebook rolled out smart lists. These lists include, acquaintances, close friends, your places of work, and schools, people in proximity to your location, and restricted people.

  • You can merge these lists with your current lists, and add or remove people to them at will.  This is vastly improved from old lists which were rather tedious to update and maintain.
  • the Restricted lists is like the limited profiles of old.  People on this list will only see what you post PUBLICLY and they are not aware they are on this lists.
  • If you click the left of the list names, a pencil icon appears and this will let you add or remove these lists from your favorites and rearrange the order in which they appear on the left side of your page
  • Just below my lists are my pages, a feature that was rolled out several weeks ago.

2) Next up is the instant ticker, this shows what people are doing on Facebook in real time, a little snapshot of activity to paruse while you are reading other updates.  I like this because I can now see if a friend comments on something while I’m reading work related content or vice versa.  Excellent news for my short attention span and as yet undiagnosed adult onset ADD :-)

Just noticed this little gem on the newsfeed ticker: when you expand upon the places check-in you get a Bing map, this doesn’t happen in the regular newsfeed.

 

3) I just noticed this little change, but the upper right hand corner that used to look like this: 

Now looks like this: 

  • The settings that were once housed under account now live under the little arrow

In the newsfeed itself, a screen shot that I failed to capture, your news is now divided into top news, and recent news, both showing up concurrently.  This change appears in my iphone app as well, as shown here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice, that in the Earlier today stories, there’s a little blue triangle behind the profile photo, that’s because Facebook has marked them as stories I might find particularly interesting.

In addition to these changes, the body of the newsfeed and the entire blue bar have changed.

 

The blue bar now travels with you as you scroll down the page, making search easier.

And photos are much bigger in the newsfeed.  Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed this change on friend’s photos only, not business pages.  These pictures are much more attention grabbing which is nice.  Looking at friends photos might be my favorite part of Facebook!

There are lots of other new changes coming tomorrow at Facebook’s Developer Conference, F8.  Word on the street is that Facebook will get heavy music, movie, tv, book, and magazine integration. In addition, the 500 character limit is said to be rising to 5,000!  I am so excited to see the changes coming!

So far I love all the changes. I check my lists compulsively, can see friends photos with more ease, and am always in the know thanks to the smart ticker.

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

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Join Pinterest Now, Thank Me Later!

May 31, 2011 Molly White One comment

My love of Pinterest makes me think of the opening lines to Ke$ha’s song “Your Love is My Drug”.

Maybe I need some rehab,
Or maybe just need some sleep
I’ve got a sick obsession,
I’m seeing it in my dreams

I’m looking down every alley,
I’m making those desperate calls
Im staying up all night hoping,
Hit my head against the walls

Because, truly, I am addicted to and obsessed with Pinterest.  I joined over the weekend and haven’t stopped browsing it’s pages since then.  I’d heard about it through sites like Techcrunch and Mashable, and then I started hearing friends on Twitter talk about it.  But the tipping point for me was when a friend on Facebook, wrote this status update:

And that sealed the deal for me. I had to see what all the fuss was about. And am I ever happy I did!

So what exactly is Pinterest and why am I so into it?

It’s like browsing an endless supply of magazine’s and catalogues that have been flagged and marked so you only see the best stuff inside.  And it’s all grouped together in categories for the easiest browsing possible.  To start off, check out the TasteMakers section:

Here you can browse through a variety of people and categories (boards as they are referred to in Pinterest), to get a feel for what’s going on. Once you get comfortable with it, you can then start to pin things yourself. Pinning something is simply adding a visual link to a website. For example I’ve pinned these DIY hanging baskets in my DIY category.

If you were to view this image in Pinterest, you could click on it and be taken to the website that offers the tutorial on how to make these. These, by the way, were the inspiration for my next house project; hanging baskets in my kitchen to hold my cooking magazines!  I started a whole DIY board full of projects I would like to undertake, some for the home, some crafty fashion stuff, and some gardening goodies.

There is something for everyone on here and each picture will lead your mind in a whole other direction of browsing and searching.  Not to mention that it is a great way to categorize your own stuff too!  And of course there’s an iphone app for it!

I’m so into this site that I’ve sent requests to friends that aren’t technically inclined and to many of my clients because I think this could be useful to pretty much everyone.  For my friends that enjoy shopping and fashion, this is a great way to find the latest trends.  For my clients, this is a useful tool to showcase their products.  For my friends who cook, there is endless food porn and inspiration.  For crafty people, this is a gold mine of inspiration! Whatever your interest is, there’s something on Pinterest for you.

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Ode to my iPhone

May 24, 2011 Molly White No comments

I’m more than in love with my iPhone, I’m fully addicted to it and couldn’t live without it. Why am I writing about it here? Because without it, I couldn’t do what I do, how I do it!

Here are my top 10 apps:

Facebook – Facebook, Inc.

Email

Calendar

Twitter – Twitter, Inc.

foursquare – foursquare

Springpad – Spring Partners

Camera+​ – tap tap tap

Instagram – Burbn, Inc.

Dropbox – Dropbox

Google Search – Google (docs)


The Facebook app lets me act as all of the pages that I admin, and not only post updates, but also post photos as those pages.  This is huge for me!

Email is pretty self explanatory, I use it more than I use the phone, and have to remind myself that checking and responding to email while driving is not safe!!

Lucky for me, I’ve got lots of appointments these days, plus the schedules of my 2 girls to juggle, not to mention my social calendar (insert sarcasm here).  Hence, the usefulness of the calendar app.

The Twitter app is my favorite of all the Twitter apps, I like it better than Hootsuite or Tweetdeck or any other Twitter app.  And the bonus is that it it’s free.  I can manage my own Twitter account, plus all of my clients accounts too, and get notified whenever someone mentions me or a client on Twitter.  It’s great!

Foursquare, oh how I love to alert the general public to my whereabouts and exciting life (again with the sarcasm) But honestly, I lurve me some foursquare!  I yearn to steal mayorships from my neighborhood foursquare nemesis (this is the first she’s hearing about this). I’m talking about you @RealtorMarney! Marney’s a real estate agent extraordinaire (she runs all her own social media and rocks at it BTW) and that woman is the mayor of my life here in Lutherville! And thanks to Foursquare, I’ve gotten free loot at Aveda, discounts at H&M, and discovered a delicious little lunch spot in a Towson Office building, Crush Cafe.  It really is a nifty tool that can be used to discover new places and save money while doing it.

Springpad is my note taking, moleskine replacement, task master, recipe storer, go to for anything not handled by Google (docs) and dropbox.  I can take meeting notes here, clip links, store recipes, wine labels, photos of articles, you name it, springpad can do it.  And then I can tweet them, share them on facebook, and access them offline if need be.  Springpad is magical.

And then there’s camera+, an app that makes the built in camera app look super lame.  It takes awesome photos and let’s me edit them, in app, all before storing them to my photo album. I can also share photos to my personal facebook and twitter account right from the app.  Thanks to this app, I no longer own a point and shoot camera.  This and my DSLR are all I need for vacation, special events, and the day to day photos I like to take.

Combine Camera+ and Instagram and my love for sharing photos is taken to a whole other level! Not to mention that as much as I enjoy sharing photos, I enjoying view other people’s photos even more.  Instagram is the perfect app to consume photo content on the go!

Dropbox and Google (docs) let’s me view and edit almost all of my files on the fly.  I store everything between these two sites/apps and can set up shop on anyone’s computer for the most part.  But used on the iphone, I can access anything, anytime.  No computer, no problem!

BONUS 11th app: Google Voice – Google
Were it not for Google Voice, I’d have a much higher phone bill and no way to discern personal from professional incoming phone calls. I can call people from my computer, home phone or cell phone and it always appears to be coming from my business number, 410-775-6187. I have visual voicemail, at no extra charge. And can send texts from my phone or computer, for free. It’s easy to use and indispensable.

So at the end of the day, each of these apps impacts how I work on a daily basis. I don’t know how I did what I do before that glorious day in February when I chased down my UPS driver to retrieve my iphone.  The phone I woke up at 3 in the morning to order and tracked it’s progress as it traveled from China.  All of my anticipation and excitement have proved more than warranted.  This phone let’s me do the best job I can for my clients.

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