Filed under: Utilities, Features, Social Software, web 2.0, Web

Facebook apps are pretty controversial, as far as developments in the world of social networking. When they first arrived on the scene, some people rejected them as ugly and useless, while others loaded their profiles with as many apps as they could find. I admit, I was in that first camp for quite a while. But, while I’m still disappointed with Facebook apps in general, I also have to admit that we’ve come a long way since the days of pirates versus zombies and throwing virtual sheep at one another. Here are 10 Facebook apps that I think represent the best of Facebook:

Integration With Other Social Sites

1) Dopplr: Where Next?

What It Does: Displays your upcoming trips from the excellent travel-centric social network Dopplr on your Facebook profile.

Why You Need It: Because telling people where you are by manually changing your “current town” on Facebook is passé and a waste of time when you have Dopplr. With this app, friends can easily see when you’re leaving town and when you’re getting back.

2) Upcoming

What It Does: Integrates your Facebook events with local events from Upcoming. Lets you add events and view events from either site.

Why You Need It: You’re using Facebook to create, browse and confirm events anyway. You might as well make sure you don’t miss anything because you forgot to check both sites. Upcoming also suggests events in your area, so you might find out about a cool opportunity that would have otherwise passed you by.

Continue reading 10 Facebook apps you might actually want to install

10 Facebook apps you might actually want to install originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Freeware, Social Software

Twitter has made a change to the way users can track when they are mentioned by other Twitterers. The Replies page is no longer, and instead has been replaced by Mentions. To be more accurate, the Replies page has been changed into a Mentions page, though the URL twitter.com/replies remains the same.

What does this mean? In the sidebar of your Twitter page, rather than the word Replies, you’ll see your @name, in my case @jasonclarke. That page now shows not only tweets where other people mention you at the beginning of the tweet (a regular reply), but also in any tweet that contains your @name. Fortunately, the setting that allows you to ignore @replies to Twitter users that you do not also follow still acts as you would expect.

It’s an obvious move to give users the ability to see any time they are mentioned in a tweet, but it’s a bit odd that Twitter chose to replace the Replies page rather than simply add a new Mentions one. It seems like it would be valuable to some users to be able to focus in on replies as opposed to any mention, particularly for heavy Twitter users.

Twitter Replies rebranded as “Mentions” originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, Beta, web 2.0

Caterina Fake knows something about creating a popular website, as evidenced a photo sharing website you might have heard of. Flickr, anybody? Caterina’s latest project is something called Hunch, which uses information you give it to provide “hunches” about decisions you have to make. Hunch is meant as an alternative to relatively useless Q&A sites where the people trying to answer your question often break into petty bickering amongst themselves.

I’m not quite sure how Hunch works, except that it asks you questions — usually 10 or less — that help you narrow down your decision. As more users start populating the site with information about who they are and what they like, it will get better at making “taste profiles” for each individual user, and thus providing better hunches. It’s an interesting idea that could definitely catch on, especially with a founder who’s got such a great track record. Hunch is offering sign-ups via email now, so go get on the list if it sounds interesting to you.

Hunch learns about you and answers your questions originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Freeware, Social Software, Beta

Desktop Twitter clients are a dime a dozen. But Twittastic Beta has a few features that really make it stand out from the crowd. This Twitter client for Windows does all the usual things, allowing you to see the latest updates from your friends, check direct messages or replies and send your own replies. For some reason there’s no button for sending direct messages.

But Twittastic really shines when you want to share pictures or other files with your friends. The program features integration with Twitipic for image uploads and Drop.io for everything else. Want to share a document? Just click the Stuff button and select “Send a File.” It will be uploaded to Drop.io and a link will be added to the text box. “Send a Picture” will do something similar, but using Twitpic. You can also drag and drop any file from your desktop or Windows Explorer into the desktop to upload it.

You don’t have to stop at just sending images already saved on your PC. If you choose to send a screenshot, Twittastic will bring up a utility to let you capture a screenshot from your computer and automatically upload it to Twitpic. Or you can send an image from your webcam.

Twittastic also features integration with tweetshrink, which is a service that will help you stay within Twitter’s 140 character limit by shortening certain words the same way the TweetDeck Twitter client does.

[via Technix Update]

Twittastic makes sharing pictures, files over Twitter simple originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

As if having your mom on Facebook weren’t awkward enough, Facebook has rolled out special groups for families, aimed at getting everyone in your family to join the site. The groups are private, so none of your family activity should end up in your friends’ streams, and family members who didn’t want to join Facebook might feel comfortable joining for this. Other than the privacy aspect, and the ability to send invitations to non-Facebook family members, family groups operate just like regular groups.

This feature is definitely targeted more at new users who have been reluctant to join Facebook for privacy reasons, or because they didn’t see the point of sharing so much information. It doesn’t really add anything if you’re an existing user, especially if you’re already exchanging wall posts with your dad, and making fan pages for your pets. If your family members aren’t already on Facebook, and you’d rather keep it that way, it might be best not to mention this new feature.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Facebook adds private groups for families originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Freeware, Social Software, Windows x64

Carsten Knobloch - who previously put together the first portable version of Google Chrome - had created a portable version of Digsby several months ago. Updates, however, caused it to stop functioning, but it looks like he’s managed to solve the problem with some help from a friend.

On Monday, he posted an updated version of the popular multi-protocol instant messaging app (for which he thanks Stephan) that you can take with you on your flash drive. Better yet, he’s been testing Digsby’s update feature on the portable version and it’s now applying them without issue.

The link above is for the German-to-English translation via Google, which will mess with your download. To get the Portable Digsby self-extracting archive, view the original page and click the link.

New portable Digsby version available originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Design, Social Software, web 2.0

In our reader poll, most of you thought Facebook should pay attention to the user backlash against its new design. Well, it turns out that they’ve done just that, with an in-depth blog post that acknowledges some of the main concerns people have expressed, and announces several new features due to roll out soon. One thing that’s happening right away is an update to the new “highlights” sidebar that should make it more like the old Live Feed that people seem to be missing.

The upcoming features are centered around giving you more control over what you see in your activity stream. For example, autoupdating is coming back (as an optional feature) and the ability to filter out noisy apps is being introduced. Facebook is also considering decreasing the amount of one-to-one messages — like people’s wall posts to one another — that show up in your stream, in favor of things that are more generally relevant. My personal favorite feature on Facebook’s to-do list is adding tagged photos of your friends to the stream.

Since we got so much great feedback last time, let’s open this up to the readers. Take this poll and let us know which of Facebook’s announced improvements is your favorite, or whether they’re all just hopeless.

View Poll

Facebook answers users’ layout concerns with new features originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Social Software

We’ve seen a lot of attempts to offer an integrated experience social web experience, where users can easily interact with multiple sites in the same interface. Skimmer is the latest of these, and it’s definitely a mixed bag. On the plus side, it’s a cross-platform Adobe AIR app, and its UI is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, it’s still a bit sluggish and buggy — not such a big deal, as it’s still in beta — and falls into the trap of doing a lot of things, but not doing any of them exceptionally well.

The things it does, specifically, are Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Blogger. Activity from all 5 apps is combined in a really slick-looking stream that forms the heart of Skimmer. You can click on any item to expand it, and Skimmer has its own Flickr and YouTube viewer modes for checking out photos and videos at a larger size. This app looks so good that you’re better off with a second monitor dedicated to it.

When it comes to interacting with the individual sites, though, I found myself annoyed at some silly choices: you can see all the comments on a Flickr photo in the stream, but you can’t see its title unless you switch to Flickr mode; you can retweet something from Twitter, but you can’t favorite it. Unless you have that second monitor, or unless you happen to use all five of the sites Skimmer supports, you might feel too restricted by the app and find yourself heading back to your browser.

Skimmer: 5 social sites in one, on Adobe Air originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

We’re all fans of Twitter here at Download Squad, and given the three-year old startup that has yet to announce its business plans any news on how it intends to reap the benefits of its wild-fire popularity always picque our interest. On the same day the UK government announced that they intend to teach children to tweet, the Wall Street Journal has today published a brief snippet from Twitter’s Biz Stone:

“Mr. Stone says Twitter recently hired a product manager to oversee the development of commercial accounts. The accounts would offer users more features in exchange for a fee, but Mr. Stone says Twitter hasn’t set a launch date for them.”

Clearly we’ll be waiting a little longer to discover exactly what Twitter plans to charge for (though we’re guessing that there’ll also be some kind of business metrics that Twitter will charge companies for) - however we’ll bring you all the latest news when it drops.

[via Guy Kawasaki on Twitter, no less - also, don't confuse it with this recent 'Premium Account' hoax]

WSJ reports Twitter to launch ‘fee-based services later this year’ originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Windows, E-mail, Social Software

Xobni is an Outlook plugin that adds social networking and search features to the email and contact organizer. We first looked at Xobni when the service launched in public beta last year. Today Xobni is dropping the beta tab with the release of Xobni 1.7.

The new version doesn’t come with any shiny new features, but it it does have a number of improvements under the hood that let Xobni and Outlook work better together. For instance, Xobni loads faster, loads messages better due to caching, and users can controlho woften and how much of their email is indexed by the plugin. You can also decide whether Xobni will open every time you launch Outlook or if you want it to appear only when you want it.

Xobni continues to be available as af ree download, but the company is working on a premium version that will be available this summer.

Xobni drops beta, organizes your Outlook info faster originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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