The world as frankps sees it!
frankps
(25 comments, 622 posts)
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Posts by frankps
HaxSync – Android Facebook Sync
6 days ago
People in Android
With Android 4.0 Google is taking a step in the right direction updating the contact manager into the new and improved “People” app. The biggest change is a set of APIs that integrates Android with social networks. This is important as you can then let your contacts maintain their own contact information, and you will then always have updated information available on your phone.
The second change is the most visuale one, as the user interface has also been completely revamped and viewing contacts has now become a much more visual experience. The People app will pull high resolution images of all your contacts straight from their Google+ account and display them in the contact list and in the in-call background. It seems that there is now yet another incentive to move your social circle over to Google+.
According to the API Overview of ICS when a new photo is pushed to a contact, “the system processes it into both a 96×96 thumbnail (as it has previously) and a 256×256 “display photo” that’s stored in a new file-based photo store”. Your contacts information is now also available to you no matter which app you are in. So, if you are in Gmail, viewing an email from your contact, you can click on their image to reply to the contact through any available channel, including through SMS, social networks and IM.
The first time I saw the new app demoed I went WOW, but when I got the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone in my hands I went BAH! It is great to get your contacts to update information about themselves through their social profiles. But, why did Google have to limit the pull of high resolution images from Google+. Why doesn’t Google Contacts (the address book for Gmail) support high resolution images? Do you have friends actively using Google+? I don’t… So untill yesterday I had blurry pictures covering half of the screen when I ever was using People on my phone. A 96x96px thumbnail for incoming calls wasn’t pretty on incoming calls, and reminded me more of a C64 game.
A third improvement in People is that you can see your contact’s last updates on social networks, both Google+ and Twitter are supported out of the box. So what about Facebook, Google’s biggest competitor? Luckily, Google has made a plugin architecture available and there is already a third party solution available for you!
HaxSync – The Missing Facebook Integration
I have found an application that more or less solve my problem. HaxSync allows you to sync your Facebook friends with your Android 4.0 device. The sync is complete, with both status-updates and high resolution contact images in the People App! I bought the app within seconds and most of my contacts are now shown with beautiful high resolution images. But Google should integrate their services better ways…
How to configure HaxSync
- Install the official Facebook App.
- Go to System Settings → Accounts & Sync (Android Settings, not Facebook App Settings).
- Click “Add Account” → HaxSync.
- Click “Authorize HaxSync”.
- Confirm Authorization
- Wait for HaxSync to finish syncing.
- You should now see your Facebook contacts in the Android People app.
What happened yesterday on Flickr?
I normally have inbetween 100 and 200 views of my pictures a day. Best day before yesterday, was a day with 700 views. Yesterday I had stunning 5,823 picture views. I had to check if there was an article on my blog that suddently had gotten equal lots of hits, but no. Flickr’s own statistics also show that no particular photo had gotten more then 3 views.
So what happened?
Facebook Cards
Tired of dull business cards? Thought so! MOO is a great company specializing in doing great looking business cards. A friend of mine has already gotten her personally designed cards from them and they are looking smashing. In fact, they have the best prints I’ve ever seen for business cards.
Now MOO has come up with the great idea of doing Facebook cards. Well, they are just business cards pulling information from your Facebook page, but to get these cards you must have activated the new Timeline functionality (a blog entry I did in Norwegian).
To get the Facebook cards business started MOO is doing a promotion of 200,000 free packs of 50 cards is on a first come, first served basis. However the offer is capped at 5,000 orders per day (that’s 250,000 cards per day) in order, Moo says, to ensure a “strong ethos of customer service and to make it fair.” They even pay for postal fees. After the promotion the cards will cost £10/€15. Yesterday I managed to order my free pack:
I’ll be getting the set of cards beginning of February.
Airtight – A Killer App for Google TV
1 month ago
You might have heard the phrase If you can’t beat them, join them! That was exatly my first thought when I heard of Airtight. Airtight is an AirPlay receiver for Google TV, that lets you stream video from your Apple devices. I have tested the client with my Logitech Revue, iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air, and it is a fantastic app! To run Airtight you need a Google TV boxes running at least Android 3.0.
This first version of Airtight can only stream photos and videos, and do full mirroring of an iOS device. Streaming music is currently being “looked into” by the developers. And of course, anything protected by DRM is in this stage of development unsupported. Apple might look the other way, but AirPlay’s still a proprietary technology and this isn’t something Apple’s given its blessing to. If you feel like giving the app a try — work in progress, bugs and all — it’s available to download now for $0.99.
Spotify with inbuilt apps
2 months ago
Spotify recently published a public beta of an upcoming version of their app. This major update will introduce a redesigned user interface. The new main page gives you a better social overview, as for example what your friends are listening to, both of songs and playlists. Search has been reimplemented with predictive search results. Just start start typing in the search bar and Spotify will suggest possible tracks, artists, albums and playlists. The Buddy List now shows what your friends are listening to right now and you can also see and hear your friends’ starred tracks, as well as the music they’re adding to their playlists. OS X Lion users can enjoy the new Spotify as a full-screen app.
Another major new thing in Spotify is their app store, called App Finder. The new Spotify comes with an improved Last.fm support. It is now not only limited to scrobbling, it now also give you recommendations. There are also apps for newspapers that review music, and funnily enough the first Norwegian newspaper is already present:
The Dagbladet app is beautiful and I have both read reviews and at the same time listened to the albums being reviewed. Hats off for Dagbladet, as they have made one of the best apps available in App Finder and I hope that they will have great success with it. Another Norwegian app is Soundrop, but I’m still trying to figure out how it works 
The songs on the album is descretly put on the left side of the review under the album cover, and you can easily add songs to your favourite list of music and to other playlists as you are used to.
Other applications to look out for are the one from Guardian and Rolling Stones magazine. They are both not in the same league as the one from Dagbladet, but both provide great music suggestions and that is what it’s all about in the end.