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Tuesday, 25 September 2012

NetBeans Community Day at JavaOne 2012


NetBeans Community Day at JavaOne 2012

by vinay gautam

Geertjan Wielenga invited me to participate in the panel at NetBeans Community Day at JavaOne 2012 and I'm looking forward to that. I'll be participating in the "Community Session: For You -- By You: Growing the NetBeans Community" (UGF10364) discussion that is scheduled for 30 minutes from 2 to 2:30 pm on 30 September 2012 (just before the conclusion/wrap-up session).
The main topic of conversation in the "Community Session: For You -- By You: Growing the NetBeans Community" session definitely interests me and can be summed up as a discussion on "the various ways to keep the NetBeans community vibrant and to leave your mark on the [NetBeans] project." Those who submit patches and create plug-ins for NetBeans are obviously very significant to its success. However, I like that this session recognizes that there are numerous other ways to contribute to open source including "blogging, setting up user groups, organizing seminars or creating YouTube videos, and more." The session description makes a very important observation: "Regardless of programming expertise, there's something for everyone to do." I'll be specifically talking about writing about NetBeans on this blog.
There are several sessions focused on NetBeans and the NetBeans community at NetBeans Community Day at JavaOne 2012. These include the NetBeans Community Keynote (UGF10353), NetBeans and Java EE (UGF10361), NetBeans and Java FX (UGF10362), NetBeans Platform (UGF10363), and the "Closing/NetBeans Awards/Community Recognition."
The NetBeans Community Day at JavaOne 2012 page also links to a page with sessions of JavaOne 2012 with aNetBeans focus or emphasis. This page, NetBeans at the JavaOne 2012 Conference, lists approximately 30 sessions with a NetBeans emphasis.
One of the hallmarks of a strong open source project is its community and I look forward to learning more from fellow members of the NetBeans community.

Using Google Strategies for Facebook Ads


Using Google Strategies for Facebook Ads


by vinay gautam



Everyone has been watching Facebook to see if it can monetize its enormous traffic to become a going business. And the focal point of that monetization effort is advertising, just like Google's. And you've probably read about Facebook ads, or perhaps even tried them yourself. And maybe you've decided that they just don't work. You might be right, but it could also be that you are trying to use Facebook ads the same way you use Google ads, when you ought to be doing something very different.

We like to think that advertising is all the same everywhere, but it's not. The skills needed to optimize a Google paid search ad are far different than what's required for a feel-good "our company is kind to animals" brand image TV spot. They have vastly different purposes and they have different metrics for success.

So it is with Google ads and Facebook ads.

Google ads are all about "Buy now!" People searching are often in the midst of a purchase decision, and a Google ad is successful for marketers because they know how to sell. They can immediately figure out the ROI the minute someone buys, too. Google ads are simple and they work.

Facebook ads are a lot tougher. People using Facebook are not usually trying to buy something, so the same "Buy now!" approach you use with Google doesn't work. In fact, your ad probably should not be selling anything except a relationship.

Facebook ads are likely more effective by going after the very beginning of the buying cycle, where people are learning about your product and trying to decide whether they need one. Or even further back, when they are trying to solve a problem and don't even know what kind of product or service will do that.

Facebook is all about relationships, so a Facebook ad should be about that, too. How can you relate to prospective customers? Do you have a consultant that has frequent status updates that your customers might want to friend? Do you have an upcoming event (online or offline) that your friends are invited to? What can you do for your friends that might help them understand their problem better and start seeing your company as having the expertise to solve that problem?

If you develop a relationship through Facebook, the sales are more likely to follow than if you try to make a sale first. With Google ads, the relationship usually starts after the sale. With Facebook ads, you might need the relationship before the sale.

Microsoft Disrupts ‘Nitol’ Botnet in Piracy Sweep


Microsoft Disrupts ‘Nitol’ Botnet in Piracy Sweep

by vinay gautam

Microsoft said Thursday that it convinced a U.S. federal court to grant it control over a botnet believed to be closely linked to counterfeit versions Windows that were sold in various computer stores across China. The legal victory also highlights a Chinese Internet service that experts say has long been associated with targeted, espionage attacks against U.S. and European corporations.
Source: Microsoft.com
Microsoft said it sought to disrupt a counterfeit supply-chain operation that sold knockoff versions of Windows PCs that came pre-loaded with a strain of malware called “Nitol,” which lets attackers control the systems from afar for a variety of nefarious purposes.
In legal filings unsealed Thursday by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Microsoft described how its researchers purchased computers from various cities in China, and found that approximately 20 percent of them were already infected with Nitol.
It’s not clear precisely how many systems are infected with Nitol, but it does not appear to be a particularly major threat. Microsoft told the court that it had detected nearly 4,000 instances of Windows computers infected with some version of the malware, but that this number likely represented “only a subset of the number of infected computers.” The company said the majority of Nitol infections and Internet servers used to control the botnet were centered around China, although several U.S. states — including California, New York and Pennsylvania — were home to significant numbers of compromised hosts.
Dubbed “Operation b70” by Microsoft, the courtroom maneuvers are the latest in a series of legal stealth attacks that the software giant has executed against large-scale cybercrime operations. Previous targets included theWaledacRustockKelihos and ZeuS botnets.

The core target of this takedown was 3322.org, a Chinese “dynamic DNS” (DDNS) provider. DDNS providers offer typically free services that allow millions of legitimate users to have Web sites hosted on servers that frequently change their Internet addresses. This type of service is useful for people who want to host a Web site on a home-based Internet address that may change from time to time, because dynamic DNS services can be used to easily map the domain name to the user’s new Internet address whenever it happens to change.
Unfortunately, these dynamic DNS providers are extremely popular in the attacker community, because they allow bad guys to keep their malware and scam sites up even when researchers mange to track the attacking IP address and convince the ISP responsible for that address to disconnect the miscreant. In such cases, dynamic DNS allows the owner of the attacking domain to simply re-route the attack site to another Internet address that he controls.
Microsoft told the court it found “a staggering 500 different strains of malware hosted on more than 70,000 subdomains” at 3322.org. The court granted Microsoft temporary control over the name servers for that domain. While 3322.org is owned by a Chinese firm, the dot-org registry is controlled by the Public Interest Registry, a company based in Reston, Va.
Although Microsoft did not explicitly address this in its filing, experts say 3322.org has long been associated with malware used in highly targeted attacks aimed at stealing corporate and government secrets from U.S. and other Western firms.
“The vast majority of the interactions with the 3322.org hostnames for those outside of Asia — particularly those in the United States are malicious,” said Steven Adair, a security expert with Shadowserver.org, a nonprofit that helps ISPs track malware attacks. “While not quite as prevalent now, the 3322.org domain has been a hot spot for malware used to conduct cyber espionage for several years now. We can already tell this move has had an impact on cyber crime operations.”
But it is not clear how effective this action will be at blocking that activity, or more than temporarily disrupting Nitol’s operations.
Joe Stewart, director of malware research for Dell SecureWorks, posted a message to Twitter.com this morning noting that only 57 percent of the subdomains he’s been tracking as related to targeted, espionage-type attack activity were disrupted by Microsoft’s action.
Part of the problem may be that much of the malware calling home to 3322.org has instructions built into its genetic makeup to seek out commands and updates from many other dynamic DNS providers not impacted by the court order, said Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research at security firm Damballa.
“What we’ve seen is that we’re currently tracking about 70 different botnets that had command and control domain names within 3322,” Ollmann said. “But all of those have secondary domain name [controllers] outside of 3322.org.”
Potentially complicating matters further, 3322.org now appears to be instructing affected users on how to get around having their sites redirected to Microsoft’s servers.

Microsoft Fixes Zero-Day, Four Other Flaws in IE


Microsoft Fixes Zero-Day, Four Other Flaws in IE

 
by vinay gautam
 
 
Microsoft has released an emergency update for Internet Explorer that fixes at least five vulnerabilities in the default Web browser on Windows, including a zero-day flaw that miscreants have been using to break into vulnerable systems.

The patch, MS12-063, is available through Windows Update or via Automatic Update. If you installed the stopgap “fix it” tool that Microsoft released earlier this week to blunt the threat from the zero-day bug, you need not reverse or remove that fix it before applying this update. The vulnerability resides in IE 7, 8, and 9, on nearly all supported versions of Windows, apart from certain installations of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012.
Separately, Microsoft issued an update for vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on all supported versions of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. The update addresses the vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player by updating the affected Adobe Flash libraries contained within Internet Explorer 10. Adobe addressed these in two separate Flash updates last month, including a fix for Flash zero-day that has been under active attack.

WordPress Image Optimization Plugins: Our Top 10


WordPress Image Optimization Plugins: Our Top 10

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WordPress Image Optimization Plugins: Our Top 10Images are important.
Even if your blog’s content relies heavily upon the written (or typed) word, how well you utilize images to draw people into the meat of your content and retain their interest can have a major impact on engagement metrics such as bounce rate, time on site, and page views.
But on the flip side, images can also be a big drain on your site’s resources. Whilst poorly coded themes and bloated plugins can slow your site down, a few large images can have a far greater impact.
With those pros and cons of images in mind, I thought I’d round up all of the best image-related plugins for WordPress. Whether you’re interested in making the most of your images, or want to optimize them so that your site’s load speed isn’t compromised, there’s something for you below!

10. Image Pro

Working with images in WordPress can be something of a clumsy experience — the efforts that the WordPress development team are putting into improving the media uploader for WordPress 3.5 is strong evidence of that.
However, that need no longer be the case with Image Pro, as you can see from the following video:
Popout
Although we only mentioned this plugin just the other day, it bears mentioning again, and takes a rightful place here.

9. Gallery to Slideshow

This plugin does exactly what it says on the tin — it takes a standard WordPress gallery, and converts it into a slideshow:
Gallery to Slideshow
Although Gallery to Slideshow only offers up barebones slideshow functionality, you can make a copy of its CSS files and fiddle to your heart’s content.

8. NextGEN Gallery

If you’ve been a WordPress user for any length of time, you have probably heard of this plugin – it is after all one of the most downloaded plugins of all time.
Quite simply, NextGEN Gallery is the best gallery plugin for WordPress, hands down. If your blog is image-driven and you want to add a little more spice to your galleries, this is the best solution.

7. Watermark Reloaded

If you display your own images on your WordPress blog, you may well want to ensure that people can’t simply use them for their own gains without you receiving some sort of credit.
This is where Watermark Reloaded – a plugin that enables you to add a customized watermark to all of your images. You have control over every aspect of the watermark; from the font, to the positioning, to the color, and much more:
Watermark Reloaded

6. Bulk Resize Media

Image file size can be one of the biggest issues when it comes to site speed. It is all too easy to upload a 500kb image without even realizing it.
This is where Bulk Resize Media can help, because it automatically resizes any oversized image to a set maximum file size. You can configure the maximum width and height, as well as the jpeg quality. You can also use its bulk resize feature to resize all existing attachments.

5. SEO Friendly Images

You are no doubt aware that images can be of great help when it comes to SEO. Not only can a well optimized image help Google better understand the relevancy of a page to any particular keyword, but you can drive traffic to your blog through image search as well.
That’s where SEO Friendly Images can help, as it can automatically complete the alt and title tags for all images in your blog posts if you forget to input them.

4. Media File Renamer

If I had a dime for every time I’d uploaded an image then realized that I wanted to change the file name, I’d be a rich man. Deleting the image on the server, then renaming the local image and re-uploading it is a real pain. However, that can be a thing of the past with Media File Renamer:
Media File Renamer
With the plugin installed and activated, the filename will match the image’s title (with spaces replaced with dashes). This is a quick and easy way of optimizing your image filenames without having to fiddle about too much.

3. Google XML Sitemap for Images

Everyone knows that sitemaps are handy for search engines. They give the likes of Google a guided tour of your website, with an explanation of the importance of one page when compared to another. In this way, the most important parts of your site are more likely to be prioritized, indexed and cached accordingly.
Although I am no authority in image sitemaps, I presume that the logic remains the same. Google XML Sitemap for Images, as you would expect, generates a sitemap for your blog’s images, just as you would expect sitemaps for posts, pages, taxonomies and archives.

2. Lazy Load

One way to all but eradicate the potential issue of images slowing down a site’s load time is to only load them when they are needed — i.e. when they are within the enduser’s viewport.
Lazy Load does exactly that. So if you have a large image halfway down a blog post, it will only load when the user sees the spot where it should be. Everything is is loaded beforehand, resulting in a smoother browsing experience.

1. WP Smush.it

What if there was a way in which you could reduce an image’s file size without compromising its quality? Well, in short, there is. It is known as “lossless” image optimization, and involves stripping out unnecessary meta data, optimizing the compression process, and so on.
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7 WordPress Map Plugins That Put The World At Your Fingertips


7 WordPress Map Plugins That Put The World At Your Fingertips

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Find A WordPress Map Plugin That Meets Your Needs.Direct Virtual Visitors To Your Real Location.
Maps have come a long way.  Gone are the days of maps that would reload every time you needed to zoom in, zoom out, or look at a different quadrant.  AJAX has made maps faster and more intuitive to use, while map service providers have gone out of their way to provide developer-friendly APIs that make it easy to add maps to your site.  As a result of these developments, there are now a number of different plugins that allow you to put customized, interactive maps on your WordPress website.  Take a look at some of the plugins below to see what you can do.

MapPress Easy Google Maps - Download

This is your just-the-facts-ma’am (and excellent) Google Maps plugin.  It creates a custom field in your post or page, where you can search for location on a map, decide on the size and borders of the map, and post it with a shortcode.  If you find yourself putting in a lot of maps and don’t want to be bogged down with crafting maps, this is your go-to plugin.  Get the Pro version for more features like custom marker icons, mashup maps, a sidebar widget, integration with TurboCSV, and to remove the branding.
A Really Easy WordPress Map Plugin.A Screenshot Of MapPress Easy Googly Maps

Interactive World Maps - Download

A little bit different than the other map plugins here, Interactive World Maps is not specifically intended to create accurate maps of precise addresses.  Instead, it is designed to allow you to create SVG maps of the entire world, a continent, a country, regions of a country, a US state, and the metropolitan areas of a US state.  It also allows you to add (1) a tooltip with a description and title for the area when it is hovered over and (2) an action, such as opening a link.  For those of you want to show maps of service coverage, this a great offering.  The developer has gone out of his way to make it easy to install and intuitive to use; you will be surprised how quickly and smoothly you will be able to put together a sophisticated looking map.
A WordPress Map Plugin For Showing Service Coverage.A Screenshot From Interactive World Maps

WordPress Google Maps Plugin - Download

One of the most balanced of the plugins available in the market, WordPress Google Maps plugin is simple to use, easy to customize, and features a library of excellent addons that extend the functionality of the basic plugin.  For those of you who like it, but are looking for something a bit cheaper, check out the lite version which does much the same thing, but has a few less features.
A WordPress Map That Does It All.A Screenshot Of WordPress Google Maps.

Comprehensive Google Map Plugin - Download

This excellent plugin allows you to fully customize your maps through their shortcode builder (the maps are inserted into a page or post with a shortcode) .  Toggle the different options to enable: width, height, zoom, map type, alignment, direction hint, map language, pan, scale, scroll wheel, street view, map drag, GEO mashup (markers in one map will show up in other maps), hundreds of map markers, info bubbles, KML/GPX/Geo RSS URL , bike paths, traffic info, and the Panoramio library.  As you can see, they weren’t joking about comprehensive.  If this strikes as you as kind of a lot of options to juggle, the plugin provides you info bubbles in the shortcode builder that clearly explain what each option does and includes some even more detailed documentation as backup.  And don’t let the number of options make you feel overwhelmed, this plugin is actually very simple and easy to use.
A WordPress Map Plugin That Does It All.A Screenshot from Comprehensive Google Map Plugin.

Pronamic Google Maps – Download

The Pronamic plugin is really designed to be the developer’s friend.  Not quite as user-friendly (although it does use a simple, if not especially well documented, shortcode implementation) as some of the other offerings in the market, it instead offers a wide range of excellent options for someone who is comfortable with mucking about in WordPress code.  That means some interesting features: use of Google Maps API v. 3, conservation of database tables, easy integration with custom post types, Geo Microformats, and it comes out-of-the-box in debug mode.
A WordPress Map Plugin For The Developer.A Screenshot From Pronamic Google Maps

Nokia Maps & Places - Download

For those of you looking for an alternative to using Google, this plugin makes good use of Nokia Maps’ API.  The maps generated by the plugin have a nice, somewhat quieter, look than your typical Google Map and allow for you to add a dark overlay that contains your description of the map.  For those of you looking for a quality map with a slightly more elegant look (IMHO), this plugin might be a good option.
Popout

WP CloudMade Maps – Download

This plugin must be the favorite of the graphic designer or blogger with a strong interest in visually compelling and design-friendly maps.  WP CloudMade’s StyleEditor is designed for you to be able to take control over your maps’ look and feel by enabling you to create your own map styles, borrow styles from other designers, or hide features that might not be as relevant to your map’s needs.  This allows you to create maps that are unique looking, uniquely attractive, and uniquely suitable for your purposes.  That it is also easy to use, and shows you in the WYSIWYG editor how the map will be formatted in your post, are further pluses.  I do have to take points off, though, for difficulty of installation (you need at least two API keys) and the fact that the actual mapping didn’t work well for me (it couldn’t seem to correctly locate my house or work).  This could be because it usesOpenStreetMap and Flickr Map rather than Google Maps, but considering that I had no similar difficulty with Nokia Maps (which shares data with Flickr) I am not precisely sure what the issue I faced was.
Take a look at the tutorial video below to see how the StyleEditor works:
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5 Point SEO Checklist for WordPress Bloggers


5 Point SEO Checklist for WordPress Bloggers 

by vinay gautam

Want more rankings and more traffic to your WordPress blog? Here’s a quick 5 point SEO checklist that you can use ever.

Checkpoint #1: Gut Check

Before you even write a new blog post, seriously ask yourself if what you’re writing about is useful, interesting and fresh for your readers.
Sometimes, we bloggers become so focused on constantly creating content that we don’t put out our very best 100% of the time. To help you out with your own quality checks, here are four blogging styles which I’ve found to be the most valuable to readers:
  • Write a step by step tutorial on how to do something
  • Write about something controversial or “edgy”
  • Write a list of tips, like a top 10 or “5 Tips for___”
  • Write about something newsworthy
This might not seem to have anything to do with SEO, but it does. Readers want good content and Google wants to see that you’re attracting people who are actually reading your content. So before you write or post anything, run a gut check and ask yourself if it’s good enough to be published with your name on it.

Checkpoint #2: Turn on the Rankings By Turning on the Traffic

You don’t always have to wait for traffic to come to you from the search engines.
Sending your own traffic from the beginning can actually help kick start your search engine rankings.
Repeat visits are good for SEO, and so are long page visit times. This is why you should do everything you can to get your blogs off to a good start from the moment you post them. If you have a Twitter following, and email list or just a lot of Facebook friends, send a shout out and ask them to come check out your new post.
This isn’t organic traffic, but if you’re in the habit of doing this every time you publish a post, you’ll get a lot of repeat visits…and from people who will actually spend time reading your posts. When the search engines see that you’re getting repeat visits and long on site times from the start, they’ll be more likely to rank your content high.

Checkpoint #3: Be Ready to Engage Your Readers

Have you noticed that your posts usually get a spike in traffic right after there have been some comments posted?
This is because user generated content is the most valuable kind of content in the eyes of the search engines. So be sure you’re ready to respond quickly to people who leave comments on your blogs and that you have some good Social Plugins installed for soliciting responses from readers.
WPMU DEV makes a WordPress plugin for Google + and for Facebook. I also suggest the “1-click-retweet/share/like” WordPress plugin which lets your readers share your content via Facebook, Twitter and Google + . The more “social votes” and comments you get on your blog posts, the better change you’ll have of getting traffic and rankings.
So when you get your first comment, respond quickly and keep the conversation going. If you keep the conversation going, your post could end up generating repeat traffic AND new traffic for years.

Checkpoint #4: Relevant Keywords, Tags, Titles and Meta Descriptions

Okay, this sounds really obvious, but sometimes the simplest actions are the ones we tend to overcomplicate. Instead of trying to use several keywords or tags in your WordPress blogs and your page titles, narrow your focus and choose only two or three.
You can use either the WPMU DEV Infinite SEO plugin or the “All in One SEO Pack” to add your meta information to your WordPress posts and don’t try to optimize for too many keyword phrases. Relevancy is, and probably always will be, very important for search engine rankings. I’ve seen credible sites receive penalties just from deviating a little bit from their primary topics.
At the same time, sites which are laser focused on a narrow range of topics and keywords and which keep their meta information simple receive the majority of the traffic for those terms.

Checkpoint #5: Publish or Perish

You’ve probably heard this ^ saying before, and it’s just as true today on the internet as it was back in the “old days” of print publishing. If you want traffic to your site, sometimes you have to put your content where the traffic is, build up your credibility with them and use that to up your repeat visits and to gain more credibility with the search engines.
Publishing your blogs only on your blog isn’t the ideal practice if you want to attract traffic and rankings. There are probably several highly traffic and credible content sharing sites within your niche where you could bookmark your content and invite people to come back to your site and read it.
Make it a point to discover these sites and to get your content published on them on a consistent basis. This will not only help you get repeat visits, but it could help you to build a following on that site, which will make it easy for you to turn those readers into repeat visitors for your site.

Samsung takes yet another jab at the iPhone 5


Samsung takes yet another jab at the iPhone 5

by vinay gautam

Samsung has been notorious for taking jabs at Apple, especially since they lost to them in court recently. They’ve called out the iPhone 5 just a couple days ago, and now they’re at it again with a new commercial. Samsung mentions in the new ad that “the next big thing is already here”, referring to their Galaxy S III flagship phone.


The commercial pokes fun of Apple’s dedicated user base that are waiting in the line for the iPhone 5, mentioning things like, “I hear the new connector is going to be all digital! What does that even mean? I don’t know, but I’m psyched!” and “I hear you have to have an adapter to use a dock, but they make the coolest adapters!” It’s all fun and games really until we see the Galaxy S III step in.


Popout


The iPhone 5 line dwellers soon get a little jealous of the guys with the Galaxy S IIIs and start to contemplate their decision to get an iPhone 5 (that happens all the time, right?). Samsung shows off some of the features of the S III, like a larger display, 4G LTE (which it’s had for a while), and sharing content by tapping phones.
The commercial certainly isn’t Samsung’s worst ad campaign, since they’ve had a couple already that have blown up in their faces. Their Facebook post a couple weeks ago is one example, and Kate Upton showing up with an iPhone at a Samsung event also didn’t go over too well.
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Jelly Bean coming to the HTC One X in October


Jelly Bean coming to the HTC One X in October 

by vinay gautam

For the past few months, we’ve been trying to wait patiently for HTC to bring Jelly Bean to its newer devices ever since they confirmed it in July. If you’re an HTC One X owner and are just dying to get a taste of Jelly Bean, it looks like you won’t have to die any longer. It’s said that Jelly Bean is planned to roll out to the One X in October.


HTC is planning to roll out Jelly Bean to all of its newer phone by Christmas, with the One X being the only device with a narrowed-down time frame. No word yet on the One S, but HTC’s upcoming One X+ and the One XL will both ship with Jelly Bean “out of the box”. We will surely be ready for it.
The HTC One X comes with a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm dual-core processor and has a 4.7-inch 720p HD display. It’s also got 1GB of RAM, an 8 MP rear camera that records 1080p video, a 1.3 MP front-facing camera, and all the amenities you would need like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a built-in compass.
Personally, we love the HTC One X and it’s one of the nicer phones available on AT&T, but what would make it ever better is a little bit of Jelly Bean action. Come October, it’ll be nice to finally see a great mobile OS meet up with a great smartphone.

Facebook testing automatic photo uploads on Android


Facebook testing automatic photo uploads on Android

by vinay gautam

Facebook is now currently testing a new feature on Android called “Photo Sync“. It works by uploading photos that you take with your phone straight to your Facebook account. It’s been rolling out to only a select number of users, which is what Facebook likes to do when testing out potential new features.


Facebook’s new Photo Sync feature more or less works the same way that Google+‘s Instant Upload works, as well as Apple’s Photostream. With Photo Sync, whenever you take a picture on your Android device, the photo automatically uploads to your Facebook account, but will remain private inside a special “Synced from Phone” tab until you give it the go-ahead to publicly post it to your profile.
No word yet on if this will be a permanent feature to be rolled out to all users or how long the feature will stay in its testing phase. To see if it works for you, go to your Timeline in the Facebook app, tap Photos, and then tap Sync (if it exists). If it doesn’t show up, you’re one of the unlucky ones.
This feature will certainly help Facebook keep up on in the race of best photo features. Buying Instagram certainly helped, but Google is right up there with their acquisition of Snapseed. It’ll be interesting to see the three-way battle between Facebook, Google, and Apple on who comes up with the best photo feature next.

Motorola revises timeline of Ice Cream Sandwich updates


Motorola revises timeline of Ice Cream Sandwich updates 

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While Samsung is keeping up with the curve on its Jelly Bean updating cycle, Motorola is still stuck on Ice Cream Sandwich. Over the weekend, the company updated its plans on its Ice Cream Sandwich release schedule. They’ve officially set new timelines for devices like the Droid Bionic and the Xyboard.


Motorola confirmed that they are working very closely with Google and their carrier partners to ensure they get Android updates rolled out to its users in a timely manner. Thanks to a handy chart, the company has laid out update release schedules for a handful of their devices, most of which will receive Ice Cream Sandwich sometime in Q4.
Some of those devices include the Droid Bionic and the Droid Xyboard 8.2, while the Atrix 2, Photon 4G, and the Electrify still have yet to be determined with “further plans coming soon” as the placeholder. Hopefully we hear from those devices soon, but we’re really only mostly excited about the Droid Bionic, which is arguably one of Motorola’s most popular devices.
What’s slightly disappointing (yet almost not surprising), is that Motorola is keeping a lot of its older devices atAndroid 2.3 Gingerbread. The Droid 2, Droid 3, and the Droid X2 all will remain on Gingerbread with no plans to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s sad to see it come to this, but it’s certainly not too surprising. We’re definitely bummed that Google’s acquisition of Motorola really isn’t doing much for Motorola’s update cycle for its devices.

T-Mobile updating network and speeding up 4G


T-Mobile updating network and speeding up 4G

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T-Mobile loves its unlimited plans and they’re one of the few carriers that still have them around. However, while providing unlimited data is certainly a boon, T-Mobile is currently working on improving and restructuring their network, making their 4G speeds even faster and providing coverage in more places.


The carrier is promising the fastest speeds yet (not counting LTE), thanks to an enhanced 1900 MHz 4G HSPA+ spectrum from AT&T. To lure in those that are sick of not having unlimited data, T-Mobile can’t only say they provide true unlimited data, but they have to prove they can provide it with efficiency and aplomb. They’re hoping these upgrades will do the trick.
The upgrade is a significant chunk of T-Mobile’s $4 billion plan to improve and restructure their network across the US. And what’s perhaps even more important, is that all unlocked international devices (as well as AT&T devices) will work on T-Mobile’s network now, which means a lot more devices can get T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ speeds that are mighty quick.
It’s said that Las Vegas is one of the first cities to get T-mobile’s improved network updates — with 75% of the city’s coverage already being worked on. T-Mobile plans to go to other Western cities like Seattle and Los Angeles, while also hitting up the East coast in cities like Washington D.C. and the New York metro area within the coming months.

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