Items tagged with Like
We’ve been talking about Facebook’s revamp of its “Like” system for months, but the social network giant today finally performed a global launch of new “Reactions” which should better allow people to express their feelings about a post. The long-standing thumbs up is now joined by a heart (Love), and emojis signifying laughter, surprise, sadness and anger. The Reactions should go a long way towards cutting down on the awkwardness of Liking a post about a friend’s loved one dying or any number of horrific things that get posted to Facebook that we feel compelled to acknowledge with a Like. “Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating,”...
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Will they or won’t they? It’s been a topic of discussion surrounding Facebook for years — will the company introduce a “Dislike” button to go alongside the inescapable “Like” button? When we last visited the topic in late December, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea outright, citing its negative connotation. “You know, some people have asked for a Dislike button because they want to be able to say ‘That thing isn’t good’,” said Zuckerberg in a public Q&A. “And that’s not something that we think is good for the world. So we’re not going to build that.” Well, it appears that Zuckerberg and company have had a change of heart over the past nine months. In another Facebook Q&A...
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The question of whether to add a “dislike” button just won’t go away for Facebook, in part because the company hasn’t aggressively shot the idea down. This week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg closed the book on the issue by saying outright that Facebook won’t create a “dislike” button. However, he went on to say that Facebook is considering other ways to help user express emotions other than “like.” Could that mean buttons similar to “dislike” down the road? Image Credit: Facebook In his “Q&A with Mark,” Zuckerberg noted that people sometimes read posts that are sad or cover sensitive topics and would like to acknowledge them with something other than a “like” button. He says...
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As I sit here writing this, I'm thinking, "Should I depressed that it's a newsworthy topic when Facebook changes its 'Like' button, or just accept that it's a sign of the times we live in?" I'm not sure of the answer, but as silly as it sounds, in this case, a revamped icon is kind of a big deal, and for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is that Facebook is home to more than 1.15 billion active monthly users, making it the most popular social network in the universe. All those members add up to one very large asset for Facebook, which rakes in tons of cash by advertising to all those eyeballs, plus the cut it gets from in-app purchases of casual games that flood the network. Without...
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Besides being a low-ranking Marvel Comics super-villain, Trapster is a free application that went live on the App Store last Friday, allowing users to share information real-time on speed traps.Besides the iPhone (naturally the highest-profile device in the bunch), the app runs on GPS devices like Garmin and TomTom, as well as on smartphones such including Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia S60 and N95 and other Java/J2ME phones. How does it work? You click on button in the app or call a toll-free number to report a speed trap. Other user's phones will alert them as they approach the trap. Trapster learns the "credibility" of traps based on how many users agree with the report. Trapster...
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Not content to let Nintendo Wii owners have all the fun with motion-based, wireless game controllers, Asus has just announced its own Wii-like controllers for Windows PCs, called the Eee Stick. It seems that Asus is putting the "Eee" moniker on all of its new products lately, such as the Eee PC and the Eee Box. In fact, the Asus press release made it sound as though the controllers will only be available bundled with some models of the Eee PC and Eee Box, and not as a stand-alone product.Asus states that the Eee Stick "translates users' physical hand motions into corresponding movements onscreen." It will include "a collection of games developed or adapted specifically for use with it." As to...
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This smacks somewhat of those old blindfold taste tests you see on commerials. It goes a little something like this... "I hate Diet Coke." "Here, try this new soda!""Wow, it's great!""That was Diet Coke!""Ooops!" In a similar move, Microsoft took Windows XP fans and showed them a new OS, "Mojave." What's interesting is that this "new" OS wasn't really new at all... Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named...
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One of the great appeals of Apple products is their elegant design. (Elegant enough to entice long-time Segway CTO Doug Field to leave Dean Kamen's brain trust at Segway and move over to Steve Jobs lair as VP for product design at Apple.) Apple's designs have such a unique appeal to them that they frequently invite competing manufacturers to imitate Apple's designs. By now, we've lost count how many iPhone knockoffs are on the market already. But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Apple should be blushing proud at Averatec's just-announced All-In-One PC. (Although we doubt it if Apple is happy about how much the All-In-One looks like an iMac.) Upon first glance, the All-In-One...
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Apple is certainly litigious over the use of the word "pod," and on Wednesday it received a taste of its own medicine, as it was sued over its "Mighty Mouse." No, it's not for the reason you might think, as its already licensed the name "Mighty Mouse" from CBS.Apple is facing a new lawsuit over its Mighty Mouse peripheral, reports say. The case was filed in Greenbelt, Maryland by a company called Man & Machine, which is accusing Apple of violating a trademark associated with its own Mighty Mouse device, an optical mouse designed to be waterproof and chemical-resistant for use in environments such as labs and hospitals. Crucially, M&M began selling its product in 2004, over a year...
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While AMD is frantically trying to ramp up the speeds of their existing Phenom designs, we’re starting to get a slightly clearer picture of what the company plans on offering next. AMD’s technical director of sales and marketing for EMEA, Giuseppe Amato, told Custom PC that ‘if I look at the next generation architecture of our CPU, then it will definitely not be, how can I say, comparable with the Phenom. It will look completely different.’ Amato was unable to give us any specific details of the new architecture, but did add that it would ‘solve problems that today we think can never be addressed by hardware.’ We’re waiting with baited breath to discover what kinds of problems AMD is planning...
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Over the last year, there has been an influx of ultra small form factor PCs, from companies like Asus and Acer. But Everex has also gotten in on some of the action and have just unveiled yet another new mini-PC at their on-line store. In the post, Everex says the new MyMiniPC, as it is called, is exclusively created for the +100,000,000 MySpace users of the world. But the system is essentially a standard, albeit tiny, PC with a custom Linux-based operating system with a few MySpace related applications integrated. According to Everex, the MyMiniPC is "...what happens when you combine an award winning design* with the power of Open Source. The limited edition gPC mini...
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Korea's MIU is out with a new UMPC, which they call a "HDPC," for Hybrid Dual Portable Computer. It's so very, very hybrid -- it looks like a hunchbacked fax machine mated with a tricorder. Equipped with a dual OS -- Windows XP or a Linux distro -- it tries to do everything. Qwerty keyboard, 800x480 resolution on a 4 inch display, and they take a run at wireless internet, navigation, mobile phone, media player, electronic dictionary, VoIP, PSP type gameplay, camera... it would be shorter to list what it can't do: Look good. It's hideous. You'd think the battery life would suffer running all that, plus its Via processor (500MHz or 1GHz), but the reported life is 7 hours at "high power" or an impressive...
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Promises, promises. Can it deliver?The technical trick of Skyfire is that it's a proxy browser. The Skyfire app itself isn't a full browser. Instead, big Skyfire servers elsewhere process Web pages, including all the media and browser formats -- like Flash, Java, and Ajax -- that a normal desktop browser would handle but that most phones can't. Then it streams data to phones, which the mobile half of Skyfire displays. To the end user, it looks like a browser, but the mobile app is just one part of the product.This means that Skyfire can do things on mobile phones that mobile browsers, including Safari and Opera, cannot, at least not without bogging down the phone. The danger is that the...
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Turning over the calendar means lots and lots of lists. The lists cataloging the year gone by get boring fast. We like crazy stabs at the future much better. Here's a list of ten things that could change the next ten years of your future, chosen despite --and because -- they seem so unlikely. But as the author points out, pretty much all of today's must haves seemed like harebrained schemes the first time you heard of them, didn't they? Here's my fave:THE CHUMBY The creators of this bizarre little device have generated a huge buzz over the past few months - and it's not even due to be launched until early in the year. The Chumby is a wireless internet device about the size of a rugby ball....
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