Facebook 3.0 iPhone App Features & Screenshot Tour

A couple of hours ago, the Facebook 3.0 app for iPhone and iPod Touch finally made it’s way to the App Store for download.

The UI has been completely revamped to support a number of new features that can be seen in Facebook 3.0 iPhone app. This app is getting mixed reviews from everyone, but for me, it’s the best Facebook for iPhone app release till now.

I’ve compiled a list of the best features along with screenshots of Facebook 3.0 iPhone app.

Menu View and New UI

The main interface gives you access to news feed, profile, friends list, messages inbox, chat, friends requests, events, photos and notes icons. You can open those applications from there. If you swipe your finger, you will get additional space to save your favourite pages and friends for quick access to their profiles.

Revamped News Feed

The news feed in this Facebook 3.0 app shows everything just like you see on the desktop version of Facebook. Earlier, activities of some Facebook applications wasn’t shown, but now they are also included. Plus you can Like/Comment on stories just like you do from a computer.

Profile View

You profile also shows all your Facebook activity along with your information and photos. This area is pretty much the same except a slight change in the interface.

Friends and Page List

If you open the Friends list from the menu, you will now also see the option to browse your fan pages along with your Facebook friends. A much betetr feature to manage them separately. Previously we had to search for pages.

Call Friends

Image Credits: @MystaKool, @ellipsis3

iPhone users having the Facebook 3.0 app can also call their Facebook friends directly from within the app. This feature is not available for iPod Touch users.

Facebook Chat

The chat feature in this app now shows your online and idle contacts in alphabetical order and you can easily find an online friend by jumping from different alphabets. Previously, you just had to scroll up and down to find online/idle friends.

Notifications

The notifications area is also pretty much like what you see on your computer. Although, I personally liked the previous Notifications better in this app as it also showed thumbnails for photo comments.

Requests Panel

The requests feature still doesn’t show requests for groups, fan pages or any applications so that you can easily ignore the unwanted ones ;) And it would have been nicer if they supported Friends Lists while adding friends.

Events and Birthdays

Yep, the events feature is back from where you can check details of an event created on Facebook along with details on who’s attending, may be attending or or won’t be attending. Plus, you can also check for any upcoming birthdays – No more excuses of forgetting birthdays just because you use Facebook on iPhone!

Notes Feature

You can now read notes on Facebook 3.0 app and also create new ones to quickly share it with your friends.

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Add Facebook Friends to Windows Live Messenger

How many of you have more friends on Facebook than Windows Live Messenger (WLM)? Atleast, I do as I’m more active on Facebook than Windows Live.

Since the launch of the new WLM, many services have been integrated to it, like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. Now you can even add contacts from these services in your WLM contact list.

It’s better to use the Connect tool in Windows Live Profile, rather than going through each of your Facebook friends’ profile for their Windows Live address and adding them individually.

How to Add Facebook Friends to Windows Live Messenger

Wondering how to do this? Just follow the steps below :)

1. Visit the Connect page from Windows Live Profile from here.

2. Next sign in with your Windows Live ID and proceed.

3. Select Facebook and press the arrow button next to it.

4. Sign in your Facebook account and choose the friends you want to invite.

5. Add a personal message to your invitation, once they accept your invite, start chatting.

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Get Emoticons List in Facebook Chat

I personally don’t prefer Facebook chat much and have almost put it on offline, but this tip could be helpful for those who use it a lot to chat with friends on Facebook.

I’m sure none of you would be aware of the entire list of emoticons available in Facebook Chat, but this little Greasemonkey script will display all of them like in any IM chat window.

How To Get Emoticons List in Facebook Chat

Follow the simple steps below to get your

1. Close any Facebook tabs/windows if they’re opened.
2. Get Greasemonkey addon for Firefox.
3. Now install this script for Greasemonkey to display Facebook Chat emoticons.
4. Sign in Facebook and open a chat tab to check emoticons.

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Best Facebook Desktop Applications for Windows

Facebook is now the most popular social network with over 300 million active members. Even being this big, Facebook has no official application for desktop to manage their updates and account without opening the Facebook website.

I have managed to compile a list of (almost) all the desktop applications available for Facebook, and I’m sure people like me who are very active on Facebook would love to try them out.

Best Facebook Desktop Applications

Let’s kick off with the list!

Facebook Desktop

Facebook Desktop is a Windows program that, with a small memory footprint, provides updates to the users Facebook profile, such as messages, pokes, wall posts, and friend requests. You don’t need to refresh your profile a hundred times to keep track of your Facebook! And just cause you’re not on the website doesn’t mean you’re not on Facebook. Download Facebook Desktop

FBQuick

FBQuick is a quick and easy way to get all your Facebook notifications right on your desktop without having to open the website. Download FBQuick

Bloom

Bloom is a multi-platform desktop app that let you upload your photos and videos easily and efficiently to Facebook, download albums and view your friends’ photos. You can upload photos to a new or an existing album, you can tag them and you can view your friends photos. [Download Bloom

FaceDesk

FaceDesk is an Adobe AIR application to use Facebook as a standalone application, instead of having to open it in a web browser. This app acts like a browser and only lets you browse Facebook on it. You won’t be able to view any other sites on it. Download FaceDesk

FB Photo Uploader

Upload photos to Facebook using a Java-based desktop application, including tagging photos before you upload. It looks more like a stripped down version of Bloom. Download FB Photo Uploader

FB Tray Notify

fbTrayNotify is a small Windows application that sits in your taskbar, providing balloon style alerts when you receive new messages, friend requests, event invites, group invites, pokes and shares. Download fbTrayNotify

VisualSage

Visual Sage for Facebook is an innovative Facebook chat and desktop application implemented by VisualSage, an innovative software technology company. This app is built upon Microsoft’s new technology WPF which shows all our friends at Facebook in a network. Download Visual Sage for Facebook

ScrapBoy

Scrapboy is a free desktop client for some of the popular social networks like Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace. It is a very useful app that brings all the features of social networks right on your desktop. Download ScrapBoy

Gabtastik

Gabtastik is a WebKit based app that lets you chat with your Facebook buddies from your desktop. You won’t have to open the entire Facebook page in your browser, just to chat with those friends, thus, saving system resources. Download Gabtastik

Zebr

Zebr lets you keep tabs on your Facebook friends from your desktop and see what they are doing. It is an AIR-based app. Download Zebr

FBLook

If you are an Outlook user, you probably have it open all the time. Now you can update your Facebook status, see your friend statuses and see notifications of new requests without having to open the browser or any other applications. FBLook seamlessly integrates Facebook into Outlook. Download FBLook

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Facebook Introduces Prototypes, Apps In Making

Facebook’s engineers thrive on innovation and experimentation and work on projects that inspire them and build on new ideas, but not all of those features and improvements make it to the main site.

For such applications, Facebook introduces Prototypes, an application directory which brings all the usable product experiments built by Facebook engineers for everyone to try.

Facebook Prototypes

You can test any of the products and features launched by Facebook Prototypes and then provide feedback directly to those who built them. So far, the Prototypes directory shows only five applications, but more will be added soon. Applications available in Prototypes are:

• Desktop Notifications – For Mac OS X, Adds Notifications to your desktop, alerting you when interesting activity happens on Facebook.
• Similar Posts – Gives you an easy, one-click way to find similar posts right from your homepage.
• Enhanced Event Emails – Includes an iCal file as an attachment to your Event Invitation emails, enabling better integration with external calendaring solutions (Outlook, Google Calendar, etc).
• Photo Tag Search – Search for photos that your friends are tagged in.
• Recent Comments Filter – Add a filter to the homepage that shows what your friends are commenting on.

A detailed review about these Prototypes and other tips will be done later.

Try Facebook Prototypes

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How to Find Orkut Friends on Facebook

We all know how dominant Orkut was in social networks back in the year 2003. Still many people have friends on Orkut whom they haven’t been able to find on the current in thing – Facebook.

This is an old trick, but you can easily find your Orkut friends on Facebook by following the steps below.

How to Find Orkut Friends on Facebook

1. Drag this Facebook bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks bar.
2. Now login to your Orkut account, and click the Facebook bookmarklet. If that doesn’t work, you can alternatively try opening this link.
3. The Friend Finder tool in Facebook will now looks for your Orkut contacts that are not in your Facebook friends list.

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How To Upload Photos By Facebook Mobile

Facebook has a separate site for mobile users with a clean interface and less options; optimized for all mobile devices. Along this, it also allows you to upload photos directly from your mobile phone.

Many times I’m asked by my friends on how I set up Facebook to upload photos directly from my mobile phone. So for them, and all those who don’t know how to, I’m writing the procedure below for your convenience.

Sending photos to Facebook is very easy, but some people still have problems on setting it up. First thing I would like to make clear is that this feature of uploading photos works on all mobile devices with MMS capability and Internet connectivity in it because it uses email to upload photos to your Facebook account.

How To Set Up Facebook Mobile to Upload Photos

Simple follow the steps below to start uploading photos directly from your mobile phone.

1. Send a MMS to mobile@facebook.com from your mobile phone with a photo attached in it.

2. Facebook will read that photo and to associate your mobile number with your account, confirmation code will be sent to you as a text message. Note down that code.

3. Now open Facebook and go to your Profile page.

4. Then click the Photos tab and click “Create an album” button.

5. Now click Mobile Uploads tab. There you will see a box to enter your confirmation code.

6. Enter the confirmation code (sent by Facebook) there and you should now see a new album “Mobile Uploads” in your Albums with the photo in it that you sent earlier.

Your Facebook account is now been configured to receive photos directly from your mobile phone. All the images uploaded from your mobile will be stored in the “Mobile Uploads” album.

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Free Facebook Advertisement Credit Worth $100

I must say, Twitter is really replacing my feed reader to get the latest and hot tips. I hardly check my feed reader now, when I can get everything from my friends on Twitter.

As you all know Facebook is one of the most popular social networks out there, that has also beaten MySpace in terms of traffic per month. They allow you to advertise your Facebook pages, brands and other websites through their geo-targeted advertising system.

Won’t it be fun if you get some free Facebook advertising credit? My friend, Andan Ali, on Twitter shared a trick to get free Facebook advertisiment credit worth $100 by joining The Visa Business Network.

The Visa Business Network is a part of Visa’s dedication to helping small businesses succeed. By offering free Facebook advertising credit, they believe to help us grow and manage our business better.

Get Free Facebook Advertisement Credit Worth $100

• Go to The Visa Business Network page, and join the network.
• Fill in the form with your business details (no need to enter advanced details) and submit.
• Now you should receive a confirmation email with your Facebook advertisement coupon code.
• Follow the instructions carefully given in the email and enjoy free advertising on Facebook worth $100!

Remember, the generated coupon code is valid for the next 3 months and should be redeemed before that. And oh, yeah, I know all your minds here, so use this promotion wisely! ;)

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Backup Facebook Profile with SocialSafe

Most of us are addicted to online social networks like Facebook, Orkut, Hi5 etc. and for some managing an online social profile is now more important than keeping up with the one in real life.

Since no web service is infallible, you never know when your account might get hacked, deleted, suspended for false spamming or anything like that where you may lose important data, friends, uploaded photos etc.

We have already shared how you can backup your Twitter profile (followers), but there was no way to backup Facebook profile, until today, when I came across the perfect tool to backup your Facebook profile.

SocialSafe is a backup tool for Facebook which allowws you to download your Facebook friends, photo albums, photos you are tagged in and all your profile info to view them offline or just make a backup.

We, at Sizzled Core, have always reviewed and shared free applications and tools which are always helpful and doesn’t even cost a penny from your pockets. SocialSafe isn’t free, but I think it’s a must-buy application for hardcore Facebook users having many friends and popular profiles and I think $2.99 is not a big price the application is asking for.

Features

• Download all your photo albums and photos you’re tagged in.
• Backup your friends and profile info.
• View and browse your Facebook profile offline.
• Let friends know that you’ve downloaded the photos.

This Adobe AIR-based application is really simple to use, and it’s one license can let you use this application on two machines. Since SocialSafe has just released, there is lots of room for new features to be added. For now, your Wall Posts in Facebook are not backed up, but in the next versions that feature will also be added. Another feature I’m looking forward to is the backup of your private messages. I hope they add that soon.

Where is the backup stored?

If you’re wondering where your backup gets stored on your computer, a quick view in the FAQs page found me the path for stored backup location in Windows and Mac.

• Windows: C:Documents and Settings[USER_NAME]Application Datacom.1minus1.SocialSafeXXXXXXXXXLocal Store
• Mac: /Users/[USER_NAME]/Library/Preferences/ com.1minus1.SocialSafeXXXXXXXXX/Local Store

SocialSafe is available for both, Windows (XP, Vista, 7) and Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger). The first 10,000 copies of SocialSafe are being sold for just $2.99, so I’d suggest you to better hurry up! Payments are done via PayPal.

Download SocialSafe

If you have already purchased a license, this application can be downloaded from here: Download SocialSafe.

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Facebook App for Android, Coming Soon

Facebook has its official mobile apps for almost all mobile operating systems i.e iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian etc, but Andoid has been the only one left out.

That may be because of the past rivalry between Google and Facebook, but it looks like Facebook has finally decided to come out with an official app for Android.

This new Facebook Android app is expected to release somewhere in this this week and will use the new Facebook Stream API which provides access to news stream and status updates.

It will not be a full-featured Facebook app, like the iPhone one. You won’t be able to even check your Inbox, but all we can do is expect Facebook to add better access support and features as the time goes on.

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Facebook Chat on Desktop

We all know that the chat feature in Facebook is one of the worst feature they have added. I mean, it’s not stable at all and keeps disconnecting every now and then while chatting with someone.

There are several multi-IM that allows you to chat with your Facebook buddies, but if you’re looking for a Facebook-only desktop app for chatting, then this application might help you.

Gabtastik is a WebKit based app that lets you chat with your Facebook buddies from your desktop. You won’t have to open the entire Facebook page in your browser, just to chat with those friends, thus, saving system resources.

The only requirement this app has is that you need to have Adobe Flash Player installed. Gabtastik runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS X.

Download Facebook Chat on Desktop App

You can download this application from here: Download Gabtastik

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Facebook 3.0 App for iPhone Now Available

Facebook 3.0 app for iPhone and iPod Touch is now finally available in the Apple Store for download! After the app was submitted to Apple, it took almost two weeks for it to appear for public.

The version 3.0 of the Facebook app is by far the best release till now with lots of new features.

Some new features:

• Check for upcoming events and birthdays.
• Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
• Write notes and read your friends’ notes
• Zoom feature for photos
• Change your profile picture
• Post updates and photos to Facebook Pages.
• Like feature for all Facebook activity.
• Make calls from within the app
• … And a lot more!

The only feature that couldn’t make it to Facebook 3.0 is “Push Notifications”, but it will probably make it to Facebook 3.1.

Download Facebook 3.0 App for iPhone

You can download using iTunes or directly download from the link given below.

Direct Download Link for Facebook 3.0 App

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Windows 7 Tranformation Pack 2009

Last week at PDC, Windows 7 was revealed to the tech world by Microsoft. I was eager to know more and more about the new features and its awesome looks.

At that moment it clicked in my mind to test the geeks that whether they succeeded in making a transformation pack for Windows 7 or not. I was amazed to know that it already exists with the latest Windows 7 theme, start menu, wallpapers etc.

So here it is for you guys, Windows 7 Transformation Pack 2009, the loaded piece to download to sooth your eyes unlike similar packs formerly released before the new looks and features were unfolded officially.

Also check out 5 Windows 7 Transformation Packs which were posted earlier for Windows XP and Vista.

This transformation pack includes:

• Windows Se7en Visual Style
• Windows Se7en Start Menu
• Windows Se7en Styler TB
• Windows Se7en Pie Dock
• Windows Se7en Wallpapers

Download Windows 7 Tranformation Pack 2009

[Via Technix Update]

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Google Mosaic Wallpaper

Google is everywhere, it is taking control of your every aspect of life slowly, gradually but effectively. Now its time to experience the Google effect on your desktop with this amazing mosaic wallpaper featuring Google Logo.

It was last month when I found the Giant Google Logo Mosaic. Now it was really not appealing to fix only logo right on my desktop, so I simply added some reflexive effect to the original file to made it more appealing.

I hope you guys will like it.

Wallpaper

Click the image below to download high quality version.

All credit for the original logo goes to the original designer!

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Best Free Painting Applications

Image editors like Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW and GIMP are used for high-level image editing, which can also give very realistic looking paint effects, but now you can use a number of free tools to give that effect.

A paint effect application is not a full image editor like Photoshop, but it can give way more options and features than the usual Paint app in Windows.

Below are some of the free apps I found which can be used to give nice paint effects to your photos.

MyPaint

MyPaint is a fast and easy graphics application for digital painters. It has extensive options for brush creation and configuration which give effects like natural painting. It also supports pressure sensitive graphic tablets. MyPaint is a multi-platform application supporting Windows and Linux. Download MyPaint.

ArtRage Starter Edition

ArtRage 2.5 Starter Edition gives you 8 painting tools and lets you create, save, and print as many pictures as you like and doesn’t limit their size. It has a very appealing interface with limited features for a beginner. Download ArtRage Starter Edition.

TwistedBrush Free Edition

The free edition is a version of TwistedBrush with a significantly reduced set of features that is suitable for painting original artwork. But you can use its quick start guide to get familiarized with tools. Download TwistedBrush.

Project DogWaffle Free Edition

It’s a light, yet powerful tool for artistic expression. You don’t have to worry about things get messy. Simply paint, erase it, and try again, and again, and again…… Download Project DogWaffle Free Edition.

Artweaver

Artweaver is a free application for creative paintings with all artistic effects you need. It supports layers, gradients etc. and contains variety of digital brushes. You can also create sketches with photos. Download Artweaver.

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