New Facebook Feature Notifies You About Weddings

Thanks to Facebook, i never miss out on wishing my friends on their birthdays.With the popularity of birthday reminders, Facebook is now adding up a similar notification feature for engagements and weddings, which will notify you when your friends are getting married or engaged, so that you don’t miss congratulating the couple .Facebook announced  a new feature called "Weddings and Celebrations" Similar to the birthday feature, the weddings and celebrations feature shows friends' status on the top right-hand side of the page once they change it to "married" or "engaged."

When a new notification arrives, users can simply click on it and congratulate the couple without having to switch between profiles, just like the way you post a birthday wish. In addition to this, you can even send a friend request to the person your friend is getting engaged or married with.New wedding and engagement announcement will appear for two days after couple makes announcement.With this new feature, the world is certainly shrinking into Facebook.

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Nexus 7 Tablet Review

By Akshay Moza

Google has unveiled its very own branded Nexus 7 tablet. It is the first tablet with Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean". Priced at around $199 for 8GB and $250 for 16GB. It basically renders every 7 inch tablet priced at more than $300 in the market. So if you are looking to buy a small tablet to surf internet and play games, this is the one to buy.                                                                                                                                                  

     

Physical Features and Internet:

Kudos go to the Taiwan based hardware manufacturer Asus. Nexus 7 looks well built which is classy for $200 tablet. A Glass screen dominates the front of the tablet, and around the back there's a slightly grippy, stippled black rubber panel. The display is bright enough to see indoors and out, on par with the Kindle Fire, although it's more reflective and less saturated than the high-end AMOLED screens used by the far more expensive tablets like the Toshiba Excite 7.7 ($499.99) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. A Wi-Fi-only device, the Nexus 7 connects to the Internet using 802.11 b/g/n, albeit only on the 2.4GHz band. The tablet supports Bluetooth for audio and NFC to transfer files to other NFC-equipped Android devices. Interestingly, Google Wallet doesn't appear in Google Play on the Nexus 7. So, for now, at least, it doesn't look like you can make NFC credit-card payments here.

Performance and Apps:

The quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset inside is one of the fastest mobile processors around. This unit runs at 1.3GHz in single core mode, and 1.2GHz when two to four cores are active. It's far faster than the Kindle Fire's older dual-core chipset. System wise Nexus 7 is at par with other recent Tegra 3 tablets like Toshiba's Excite 7.7. I have read few reviews on Nexus 7's performance v/s other tablets and it has certainly proved to be a front runner. Graphics performance is rock-solid with a 55.9 fps rating in NenaMark, higher than the Excite 7.7 and the Asus Transformer Pad TF300. Nexus 7 weighs 12 ounces and has a front-facing camera. Battery backup is supposed to last for 4 to 5 hours during normal use.

Nexus is the first Google device to install Chrome as the default browser, and  it's about 30 percent faster than the older stock Android browser. It has a better tab interface and screen transitions are indeed smoother. Also there's no lag with the touch keyboard.

Google has claimed Nexus 7 to be a serious gaming device and with Android 4.1 on the cards ,the user experience might prove to be more polished than previous Android iterations.

Google Nexus 7 highlights

• Size: 198.5 x 120 x 10.45 mm
• Weight: 340 gram
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Bluetooth
• Nvidia Tegra 3 processor
• USB
• GPS
• NFC
• 8 or 16 GB internal storage
• 1 GB RAM
• 4325 mAh battery
• 8 hours of active use
• 1.2 megapixel front camera
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• Sensors: Accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope

Positives:

Fast, Well-built, Value for money

Concerns:

Limited storage, No HDMI or MHL to connect the tablet to HDTVs.

Bottom Line:

Google and Asus smack it out of the park with the Nexus 7, a terrific small-screen tablet that's an incredible value at $200. Well, I am eagerly waiting for its release in Indian markets to have it in my hands as it's the most bang for the buck you can get in the market right now.

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8 Reasons To Use Friendcaster For Facebook And Ditch The Official App (Android)

 
Facebook has been getting a lot of flak for its Facebook App for Android from a long time now . Not only is it buggy and slow , every update that has been released creates more problems .
On the wake of Facebook’s IPO, Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed that they will be concentrating more on mobile devices . But with the continuing under-performance of the official app , one must start looking at alternatives if not already .
Though there have been improvements in the User Interface recently , the whole experience is woefully buggy .

After using both the apps (Friendcaster and Official FB app) and testing it thoroughly I have listed 10 reasons for ditching the Official App for Friendcaster .

• Initial Start-up Time : It took a painfully long 9 secs to get anything on the screen after tapping on the icon whereas Friendcaster took less than 3 secs to start-up.
• Notification : This took around 10 secs to load while it took less than a second to load in FriendCaster .
• Messages : Messages  took around 8 secs to load and 2 secs compared to FriendCaster
• Profile Pages : This was the longest wait ever . My profile page took over 14 secs ! to load whereas it took only 3 secs to open in Friendcaster.
• Facebook Pages : Facebook pages are better organised in the official app but takes around 11 secs to open compared to 4 secs in Friendcaster .
• Photos : Opening a photograph took around 12 secs in the Official app and it took less than half of that using Friendcaster .
• Push Notifications : This is where Friendcaster is clearly a winner . The user interface and speed of the notification is amazingly brillliant . I have used the Official app for a long time now , and I have noticed that push notification is pathetic , and most often redundant .
• User Experience : The official Facebook App has a very iPhone feel to it . Like most of the other apps it just is another iPhone clone . Friendcaster makes use of the Andoid User design guidelines ,making the app much faster and easier to flip through .

What’s really intriguing me is the fact that Facebook has access to  every inch of their servers and internal API’s but still a third party developer is making faster and better application .

Note : These results are based on the tests made under the following parameters.

1. Device : Lg Optimus One
2. OS : Android 2.2.2 (Froyo)
3. Connection : 2G at (15-25kbps)  

[Original Post By Anish Hegde @ www.bigbangtechie.wordpress.com]

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