Review: The New Facebook App for iPad

There was no mention of it at the F8. Apple didn't bring out a surprise guest in Mark Zuckerburg at its iPhone conference last week. Where was the much anticipated and now long overdue Facebook app for iPad that the world has been waiting for?

Well, on Monday afternoon, the app quietly arrived via a post from Facebook's own page on, you guessed it, Facebook. 

It's main integration is for the iPad, previously incompatible with the Facebook mobile app for iPhone, but it also serves as an upgrade for iPhone users. It is said that this app will also work across Android and other mobile platforms soon. 

So, I took this app for a test drive last night on my iPad, and I have continued using it this morning. At first, I did not see the point of going to this app over my web page. The functionality seemed, if anything, scaled back from the web experience. After some more time with the app, I found that it was a better over all experience for iPad Facebook-ing. 

The key difference for a user standpoint is that everything can be run through the app. If you click on an article, for example, you will be taken to the site that the article is on, but it is still framed within the Facebook borders. This will change the game for developers. Instead of creating apps that rest on your mobile device, you will now see more apps that are ingredients into Facebook's app experience. 

The new app provides great new features, including optimized photo viewing, and as mentioned above, never having to leave the app itself to visit different sites. 

That said, there are a few functionality changes that Facebook must make right now:

1) Sharing a link. The web experience lets you post a link and recognizes that you are doing so by including the article title, choosing a thumbnail or embedding the video. On the app, the link shows up raw and looks like a user error when posted. 

2) Back button or History. One of the cool new features is that you can simply slide the screen from left to right and it will take you back to the page you were on before. Unfortunately, this does now work the other way around. Clicking through to an article on a different site, still within the Facebook app framework, you can easily lose where you were on that site if you, say, accidentally flipped the screen back with your finger. I mean, you can find it again, like I had to this morning, it was just a pain to retrace my steps. 

3) Pages filters. On a 'fan' page, there is no filter to only read what the Page administrator has posted vs what everyone has posted. This was a distracting and annoying experience. You'll quickly see how much spam and nonsense other people post on your fan pages without this feature. 

4) Video chat. Through the message function, which is slick and very useable, I was surprised that I could not video chat. This would be a huge step for Facebook in the mobile space, especially considering their recent partnership with Skype. 

The new app will need some improvements, and more will likely bubble up the more people use it, but over all, the experience is quite good. I will be interested to see how the new web features, including Timeline, will integrate into the Facebook app moving forward. ~p

Is the Playbook everything I want iPad 2 to be?

I got an iPad for Christmas. I took it back. My reason was obvious and logical: I am waiting for the next one. This mythical next one is supposedly launching March 15th. But that is completely unofficial and just based on the cycle of other Apple products. Still, it was good enough for me. I want a camera. I want to use FaceTime. I want a better screen and more storage in a lighter, more powerful package. Too much to ask for iPad 2? Maybe. But it is right on par with Blackberry's first edition of the Playbook.

This isn't the first time I've seen a demo on the Playbook. But it is the first time I've seen a product demo so close to launch with what I describe as 'in-the-moment' testing. Who knows how many takes this Jeff guy took, but it looks unedited and real, and so does the 'bar stamp' on his hand as he takes us through the features. Nice touch.

So as I wait and wait and wait for iPad 2 to come and out almost certainly let down my high expectations, I get closer and closer and closer to getting everything I want right now in the Playbook.

What do you think? Should I wait or buy a Playbook? ~ p

What's the game plan for Blackberry's Playbook?

The world as I know it has been split into three types of people: Blackberry users, iPhone-ers, and everyone else. I am a hybrid of groups 1 and 2. I use a Blackberry but still have a MacBook, iPod, and an Apple email. With my loyalty of two companies, I’ve been asking myself, what am I going to do once Blackberry’s tablet is in market? That question became a bit more real yesterday.

If you didn’t hear, the Blackberry tablet was officially announced. It will be called Playbook. I’d like to say here that I’m really glad it wasn’t named the often-rumored ‘BlackPad’. With that name, they might as well have called it ‘Our version of the iPad’. Playbook makes me think of a 'game plan'...never a bad thing. Anyway, with little to no true information leaked, it was hard to know what RIM’s, ahem, Playbook was for their new device. Would they go after the business market? Would it have a camera? Why would I want this thing?

That, too, became clearer yesterday. The Playbook seems to have taken all the negative press about the iPad and used it to develop their features. It is 0.4 inches (9.7 mm) thick, making it thinner than the iPad’s 0.5 inches. It will have two cameras, a 5-megapixel one at the back, and a 3-megapixel one at the front. It has a video-recording function. It’s half the weight of iPad, at just 0.9 lbs. It’s flash-friendly, provides multitasking capabilities, and supports 1080p HD video, giving users a ‘full Internet experience’. It also includes an HDMI video output and USB port. To top it off, it’s on a very cool new OS from QNX that promises to be way faster than anything out there. Playbook also adds credibility by targeting the business crowd, as shown in the video below. I mean, if it’s reliable enough to run a presentation, I can count on it to surf the web, right?

The way I see it, this could go two ways. 1) I get excited about all the features iPad doesn’t have and get the new Playbook and be totally happy with the decision, 2) I wait for Stevie Jobs to put his counter move in market with the 2nd generation iPad next year. Not that’s he’s announced his plan to do so…yet. ~ p

(Source: www.wired.com)

Next Pads to the Party: Blackberry 'SurfBook', Samsung Galaxy

Hold on to your iPad. The Tablet revolution has only begun. So, yeah, I don’t have an iPad. This was a conscious decision. Sure, I’m not going to lie. I wanted one. But now, I’m waiting. In the next two months, we are going to see a flood of Pad/Tab devices hit the market. Here are nine Pads listed by Mashable that we can expect in the next year or so, but this list could actually be in the high teens. It doesn’t even include Blackberry’s device, which has been given lots of buzz on the street with the name ‘BlackPad’. But, as engadget reported earlier today, it might actually come to market with the name ‘SurfBook’, as RIM has filed that trademark in Canada (image above).

Another device making waves today is the Galaxy Tab by Samsung. Pumping up their marketing machine ahead of launch, the video (above) shows off some of its functionality. The two key features that are unique in a current market of one (iPad), are the video chat and Flash compatibility. More importantly, I just wrote ‘Flash’ and Steve Jobs didn’t mystically appear and wipe out my hard-drive. Cool. ~ p