After jealously observing the Facebook app on my wife's Blackberry Pearl, I am shocked that neither ShoZu, Snap2Face/Skybook nor FriendMobilizer have come close to matching the simple elegance of Facebook for Blackberry. Each of the aforementioned Windows Mobile apps, I believe, will fail to become very popular among users because they are trying to do fundamentally different things than the official Blackberry and iPhone apps.
So I'm going to attempt to specify the basic features that would make for the best "Facebook for Windows Mobile" application. The developer who carries these out will, I predict, quickly dominate the rest.
What we already have
A couple of mobile-friendly versions of the FB user interface. Whether you use http://m.facebook.com in PIE, or http://iphone.facebook.com in Opera Mobile/IrisBrowser, or indeed desktop-level Facebook in Skyfire/Opera Mini/etc., we already have great ways to passively view most of Facebook. FB apps for WM appear to have devoted most efforts to remaking their own, sometimes uglier interfaces for viewing the same information. While this introduces the possibility of offline synchronization, this is nowhere near a key functional benefit offered on Blackberry and iPhone. The trend is toward more users having data plans and ubiquitous data connections.
A way to access Facebook Chat. 3rd-party multiprotocol chat applications offer this for Windows Mobile already.
Several ways to update your status. You can do this through Facebook Mobile, SMS, etc.
A crappy way to upload mobile photos. You can send an MMS to [email protected] - not ideal and lacks the ability to place photos in specific albums, tag, etc. But it is a start.
A crappy way to receive notifications. The FB notifications feed is actually available via RSS, and several free RSS clients exist for Windows Mobile.
A really crappy way to new FB message alerts and everything else. Suppose you registered a new Gmail account devoted solely to receiving Facebook notification emails. You could register that address with your Facebook settings, set it as the address to receive email notifications and then turn on notifications for everything that happens on Facebook. After setting up this email account on your Windows Mobile device, you could receive regular alerts from Facebook on your mobile device. (Heck, with System SEVEN beta or some other service that utilizes the IMAP IDLE feature, you could essentially have "push" FB alerts).
What we don't have (but Blackberry does)
Based on the features listed at http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/features/social/facebook.jsp , you can see that the man feature that WM users don't have is "push"-style homescreen notifications. On the Blackberry homescreen, the number of new Facebook notifications and messages sits beside a little FB icon. It is updated immediately as new messages and notifications are received.
Thus I would propose the following specifications for a WM Facebook app (or suite of mini-apps). The Facebook Developers API should be used, not some unreliable html-parsing library.
1. New/unread FB messages and notifications on a "push" or rapid-refresh basis. This either means (a) a Today screen plugin that lists the unread message counts and points Pocket IE to the appropriate http://m.facebook.com link when tapped, (b) WM popup notifications of the same, or (c) a MAPI interface library that allows the FB Inbox and/or FB Notifications feed to be added as regular mail accounts in Pocket Outlook - letting WM take care of popups if the user so desires.
2. A photo upload and tagging tool. The user must be able to select a photo (or take one) and then choose to either add it to any existing album or create a new one, followed by the option to tag that photo.
3. Dedicated Facebook chat. If it is easy, of course.
Everything else on Facebook - contacts search, Phonebook, etc - is just as easy to access on the existing Facebook Mobile site. My instinct is that developers inevitably waste our memory with bloated software when they make "native" interfaces that just rehash the content at http://m.facebook.com/
Or am I missing something? Maybe others have thoughts. I'm no developer and I don't mean to sound demanding - I'm just trying to give developers some ideas here.
would be fine if someone would fix the iphone.facebook.com java problems
libpurple already incorporates facebook im but i dont think there is a client for windows mobile that uses it. As for uploading, you can upload pictures but not videos directly from a touch series phone (videos are uploaded to youtube). If the protection can be stripped from an ipa and the can be decrypted then I dont understand why we cant port the facebook.app. I have an iPhone 3G and an iPod Touch, both jailbroken. I'll SSH into them and grab the files for the facebook app but the rest needs to be done by someone else. Just give me sometime to find them.
1. New/unread FB messages and notifications on a "push" or rapid-refresh basis. This either means (a) a Today screen plugin that lists the unread message counts and points Pocket IE to the appropriate http://m.facebook.com link when tapped, (b) WM popup notifications of the same, or (c) a MAPI interface library that allows the FB Inbox and/or FB Notifications feed to be added as regular mail accounts in Pocket Outlook - letting WM take care of popups if the user so desires.
2. A photo upload and tagging tool. The user must be able to select a photo (or take one) and then choose to either add it to any existing album or create a new one, followed by the option to tag that photo.
3. Dedicated Facebook chat. If it is easy, of course.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wFacebook will have ALL of these things that you mentioned. A little patience is all that is needed. I started developing this only 2 weeks ago Thanks for the breakdown though, it gives me something to work towards. I hope to have facebook chat up and running in the next release. Push style notifications will come as soon as I can figure out an "always signed on" connection to facebook. Photos and tagging are very easy to do, I just haven't gotten around to implementing it.
What you have to realize is that the blackberry apps and iPhone apps are both designed by facebook. They access facebook's data directly. Facebook does not allow this in its API so we have to find workarounds. Blackberry has nothing to do with it's facebook application (as far as I know). Facebook developed and maintains it.
Also, thanks for the tip on the rss feed. I did not know this and this may help with notifications!
Give computerjunkie some time....
And all the requested features will be hopefully implemented.
Btw since you have a BB and have positive feelings regarding it's user experience and user interface it would be great if you could dedicate some time to write down some detailed specs !
Ciao
Marco
The BB app doesn't really have a "push" notification system. All apps that use notifications, like Facebook and MySpace, are simple emails. When the same email account is registered under the BB profile, and Facebook profile, it recognizes the FB notification email as the app specific notification, and gives the notification instead of the email.
But, on the app, I really don't like it much, so I don't suggest it as your "template". All it really does is give you the notifications, allow you to update your status and view your friends list. You can't view profiles or photos through the app, it opens the browser, and you have to login! Further more, the news feed only shows the notifications, like birthdays and comments.
Try something like the BB MySpace app, I love that one! You can flow through pictures and view everything in the app.
wFacebook will be like the BB myspace app. You won't have to log in to the website to see info. It will be fetched from the application itself. Also, it will have push style notifications (maybe not ALL notifications but most: Wall, Inbox, photo comment, etc.). I am looking into an always on (or as close to always on) so when the notification occurs, wFacebook automatically fetches the info THEN notifies the user so all the user has to do is start up wFacebook and check the item. Also with the semi-always on connection, wFacebook users won't have to keep logging in to facebook which right now is taking about 1.5 minutes with wFacebook because of data speeds on mobile machines.
Problem with the xda app is it requires .NET 3.5
iphone.facebok.com in Skyfire is the best solution for me.
though I think a windows mobile facebook app is much needed I have to agree the very Bloated net cf is def not the way to go. I do appreciate all you are doing as this app has potential to be very useful . thanks again for all your hard work. pleasyo code in "C"
One of the issues I'm having with Epic and Android 2.1 is functionally by design, but I'm not too comfortable with it.
One of the biggest issues I have is that the updates in the "Notifications" windowshade don't persist. Is there any way to sticky the list? Or is there an app out there which would store all of the Notifications that showed up on the phone?
Somewhat related to the previous idea but taking it one step further, does anyone know of an Android app that acts like a centralized, unified messaging stream? Similar to the concept of the master Messages folder on the Blackberry? Thinking back, if I'm not mistaken, WebOS may have something similarly implementated, but I could be wrong.
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the concept seems simple enough: to have nearly everything which produces messages, such as SMS, Emails, Gmails, Social Networking apps, etc., all be consolidated into one unified, sticky stream, in chronological order.
There are other valuable features that the BB Messages folder provides, such as the ability to compose a message using nearly any of the accounts it's unifying, right from the BB Messages folder, and to be able to choose which account to use to send the message.
Then, as a business user, I have other gripes such as lack of total all-push and instantaneous messaging, lack of copy & paste in many areas, but those are superseded by my need for a consolidated view of messages. Too many times I've missed reading email B which showed up in the Notifications drop down only because email A also showed up but took up 10-15 minutes of my attention to address, during which I forget about email B.
What do you think?
Seems like a simple thing, but I can't find a good solution.
I have some gdocs spreadsheets that I want to download (as xls or ods) and then edit via thinkfree. Yes I know you can do gdocs spreadsheets online via browser on my sgt. However, the gdocs spreadsheet mobile is not to my liking.
There are several Market apps that do downloading or synching of gdocs to/from android. A couple I have tried are 'my docs' and 'gdocs' but these don't support spreadsheets or I couldnt figure out how to make them do spreadsheets; they worked ok for text docs.
The online spreadsheat, on a desktop, does have a good save as feature. However, google is too smart and won't let me use the desktop experience from my sgt, even when I ask (nicely).
And, I prefer a low or no cost solution. I do see that Documents To Go suggests that you can do this; that isn't low/no cost.
Any other options?
Oh I tried think free online, too. Despite having some sort of 'login with google account' feature; I didnt see how it provides links or other techniques for getting at my gdocs. Maybe I am doing it wrong. Oh and I'd like to avoid signing up for another online service too. Besides I do shared authoring of some gdocs; no way could I get others to switch to a new online docs service.
___________
Found a solution. Reading closely the 'not suppurted browser' page, you can add an override flag (to the submitted url) that instructs the full google docs web experience to skip th browser check. By doing this, I can get the docs browser page of google docs that has a control that allows me to download my spreadsheets.
The url is like:
https://docs.google.com/DocAction?browserok=true#home
You need to add an app like 'Download all Files' so that the stock browser will save the file.
Hope this helps someone else!
use full desktop mode in your browser,
downlaod FIREFOX, and use it to download /open with think free
firefox is the only android broswer that lets me properly download/OPEN WITH by clicking on a link and I can select which app.
;-)
I think office suite pro will perfectly fit your need. After 30days of trial you can remove and re_install the app. Have Fun!
Hi,
I’ve been using Chrome on my desktop and I’m very used to it, specially the bookmarks bar, under the address bar, organized in folders, etc simply to use.
Now on my Nexus 10 it’s a completely different story with Chrome, as you know, difficult to access bookmarks, no home page, etc.
So my question is, is there a browser for Android can be configured the same way or very identical as Chrome for desktop, especially regarding how to access bookmarks?
Thanks in advance for your answers.
Best regards
Ricardo Pires
Wonder if it's just me or is anyone else seeing Google Now being less and less useful. Formerly I could use it to call a contact or send an email, now whatever command you give, it just opens a web search page. It's really annoying especially as I use it often on my Android wear watch. Cortana, on the other hand, has been more handy, but since it's not its home platform, it is kinda limited.