Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Good news for Android device owners



Android device owners who want KitKat but are still waiting on their handset provider to deliver it need not wait any longer. A newly released build of its CyanogenMod (CM) 11.0, a custom ROM based on Android 4.4, brings the OS to a number of popular smartphones that are yet to get KitKat, including some Galaxy S3, Sony Experia Z and HTC One handsets. CM 11 'nightly builds' now support more than 40 individual makes of smartphone.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Facebook sympathise button alternative to the like button



Digest:  Facebook has devised a "sympathise" button as an alternative to the "like" button for use in certain situations.


The problem is solved for when you've seen something ... but can't 'like' it. Users have been demanding a “Dislike” button for a long time. The social network evidently hears their complaints: During a Facebook hackathon held "a little while back," an engineer devised a "sympathize" button that would accompany gloomier status updates, according to Dan Muriello, a different Facebook engineer who described the hackathon experiment at a company event Thursday. If someone selected a negative emotion like "sad" or "depressed" from Facebook's fixed list of feelings, the "like" button would be relabeled "sympathize."


How does Facebook’s sympathize button work?
It would work something like this. When a user selects a negative emoticon such as “depressed” or “sad”, the Like button would automatically be relabeled as “Sympathize.” However, it won’t make its way to the site anytime soon, says Muriello. He said his fellow engineers are enthusiastic about the creation, but it needs to undergo rigorous analysis and testing before reaching the site.

 



Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Facebook updates its News Feed



Digest: Facebook will begin adding related links with news stories, to help users find more content. Also, older stories generating newer comments will bump back up near the top of News Feeds. 




Facebook is boosting its efforts to put more news in its News Feed. That is, real news from the news media, rather than status updates from friends.

Statement from Varun Kacholia, Facebook's engineering manager, and software engineer Minwen Ji: “Starting soon, we'll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile.”


Facebook will tweak the way its displays articles in user News Feeds: "This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently," the engineers wrote on blog post