This is the new UI. Looks pretty good to me.

After using Aero for two major versions of Windows, Microsoft has decided to move away from Aero UI. The new appearance introduces a new cleaner, flatter and minimal design that resembles their Metro user interface. Even though we get this flatter design, there will still be some hints of Aero like the taskbar transparency. The main reason why Microsoft did this is because they want to make the experience more consistent. This decision is appreciated because in the Developer Preview, when ever you switch between the Metro and regular user interfaces, it feels jarring to switch between two distinctive appearances.

This change will be a love/hate situation, but I feel that most people will get used to this after some use. Microsoft says that people can experience this new UI in the upcoming “Release Preview”, which is coming this June.

If you can remember back to 2008, Comcast started to enforce a bandwidth cap of 250GBs. At this time, many popular “tech stars” like Chris Pirillo even revolted against the cap. Due to all the video stream we have done these past four years, a 250GB cap is ridiculous for all.

Comcast mentioned in their blog post a nice statement that they basically messed up:

So as the market and technology have evolved, we’ve decided to change our approach and replace our static 250 GB usage threshold with more flexible data usage management approaches that benefit consumers and support innovation and that will continue to ensure that all of our customers enjoy the best possible Internet experience over our high-speed data service.

However, like in any business, Comcast is out there to make money. And boy, does Comcast try to snag your money for any overages:

The first new approach will offer multi-tier usage allowances that incrementally increase usage allotments for each tier of high-speed data service from the current threshold. Thus, we’d start with a 300 GB usage allotment for our Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tiers, and then we would have increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The very few customers who use more data at each tier can buy additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 for 50 GB).

But luckily, Comcast has some sense and has decided to bump all plans up to at least a 300GB cap:

The second new approach will increase our data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).

In both approaches, we’ll be increasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today’s 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month.

Comcast may still be doing it wrong, but this still won’t make people happy, especially Netflix. Realistically, I would set the low-end plan to a cap of 500GBs and all other higher-end plans to a full 1TB. Capping might help to prevent users downloading too much via torrents, but to cap at 300GBs is too low; I sometimes go through 100GBs+ in one day!

What do you think of Comcast’s move? They’re on the better track, but keep in mind it’s been four years since a change!

It was national news when Facebook bought photo sharing app Instagram for a whopping billion dollars but today Facebook expands its photo enhancing arsenal. After quietly enhancing the mobile version of its applications yesterday Facebook hired the two-man-team behind the popular Android photo sharing app Lightbox. The service will be shut down a month from today, June 15th, yet for those of you who will miss the service the code behind it has been posted to GitHub.

Today’s email was filled with news about tech, including jailbreaking news, iPhone 5 rumors, and even Scott Thompson’s split from Yahoo, which preceded a list of tweets about marriage equality and other topics that have been far from understated throughout the Twitter-sphere. At the bottom you are given the option to, as you should have with any email newsletter, unsubscribe. For now, I will leave that link unpressed and see if Twitter can continue to surface what is important and maybe even show news that you or I haven’t seen before.

So will you be disabling these notifications or do you think a little news refresher might be handy?

Nokia has filed for a patent for technology that uses a vibrating tattoo to tell you when your phone is ringing.

The patent application that has been filed in the US uses metal ores which would vibrate underneath the tattoo when a call was received or if the phone’s battery was running low. Users would simply have to scratch their arm if they wanted to dismiss the alert. The papers filed say the vibration would feel like a tingling sensation.

The tattoo itself would contain magnetic ink that would pick up electromagnetic signals sent by your smartphone. Any message you wanted the tattoo to pick up it would be received in a series of pulses, much like Morse code but as vibration. If nothing else it would remove the need of having to remember to switch off loud phone rings in crowded trains or in officers. A simple scratch of the arm could dismiss a call. The tattoo would involve a small surgical operation to insert it underneath the skin. Nokia says the technology would only be activated after the scars had healed. The patent also suggests that the technology could be applied like a transfer also but would be less wear resistant.

The metal ores could work via pulses, suggesting it could use different signals for a variety of different methods so if an email was received, an SMS message or social network update.

If the patent comes come through for Nokia using ferromagnetic links for users to physically link themselves to their smartphone it would certainly be a unique selling point. The idea of embedding technology into your body is nothing new. The artist Stelarc was famous for inserting an ear in his forearm. He then wanted to insert wireless technology so he could use the artificial ear as a transmitting and listening device. However the likelihood of this piece of kit actually making it onto the market is probably remote.

Yet, whether the technology ever finds it way onto the market is beside the point. As Nokia continues its campaign to gain a greater share of the smartphone market, filing for patents and coming up with new and innovative ways to use technology is a great way of engaging with smartphone users. Some might say it’s quite an Apple way of doing things, of developing creative ideas for technology and pushing the boundaries for how we interact with smartphones.

Nokia linked up with Microsoft in 2011 and proceeded to design, build and put on sale a range of Nokia Lumia smartphones, first the Nokia Lumia 800 and then early this year the 700 and 900 were unveiled. The Finnish manufacturer has already said they want to take on Apple in terms of design, suggesting that they see innovative technology as a great way of generating enthusiasm for new products.

The New iPad

After selling 15.4 million new iPad’s in Q4 of 11′, Apple just had to do it again. Called the “new” iPad, Apple is trying to make an upgrade that will allow the current original iPad owners upgrade to the new look with even more and better features without changing the overall design from the iPad 2. Here is a quick rundown of the differences and similarities of the two.

Retina Display

Being easily the overall point throughout the rest of the keynote, the new Retina display has a larger pixel density than the average High Definition Television at 2048 x 1536 pixels (264 ppi). Though this isn’t as much as the iPhone’s 326 pixel’s per square inch, the device is not meant to be held as close as the iPhone. And yes, it still has the 10 hour battery life.

A5X

For this iPad, the new display needed a little bit more to drive itself. Thus, the A5X chip was born. Being a Quad-Graphics-Core processor, it allows the iPad to keep it’s graphics smooth and fast.

iSight Camera

Bringing the optics of the iPhone’s 5MP camera to the new iPad, the iPad can now be used as a primary camera making the “need” of a separate digital camera less likely. The front facing camera is still standard VGA quality though.

The Rest

Being able to keep the iPad’s 10 hour battery life seemed to have been a challange with the new display which may explain the slight thickening of the new iPad to 9.4 mm thick.

Overall Viewpoint: Not enough of a reason to upgrade unless you have an “original” (1st Generation) iPad.

Apple TV

The Apple TV, Apple’s way of making content more easily accessible through your TV got yet another upgrade, except this time being more from the software end. Aside from the original, the only main hardware difference is the ability to stream 1080p content to your TV instead of the original 720p. The interface itself got a complete overhaul to now support a larger 3rd party, in house developed application set. The new system also allows for Apple’s “Genius” functions found in iPods, iPads, iTunes, and iPhones to be used in the Apple TV.

Review of the new iPad is coming soon by Marc Billow.

Today Apple sent out invitations to various media outlets informing them that the rumored March 7th keynote is, alas, no longer a rumor. The invitation sports an iPad, assumably a third generation device, with as you will see in the image below (from commenter “maclook” on the MacRumors article) a higher resolution screen. Of course Apple is know for their photo trickery so as always we can’t be sure that this isn’t just a digitally rendered version of such a device.

Anyway, set an iCal event for March7th and we will see you then.

The shot heard round the world; an ABC Nightline Special going inside of the Foxconn factory in the heart of Shenzhen, China. Now before I start I want to bring something we all subconsciously think about to everyone’s attention. When you see that shiny g6old sticker that denotes a products country of origin to the all too familiar location of China, what do you think about or even what don’t you think about? It is hard to fathom that a sticker or a line of text like “Made in China” could bring visions of over worked and under paid workers to mind or the really shocking part, we have the ability to ignore this thought altogether.

Everybody throw away your iPhones!

Well I mean that is what everybody on Twitter is saying right now, so lets see it. Are you willing to throw out you investment because of where it came from? Well before you answer that question let me explain what I mean by “investment.” I don’t mean just your iPhone I mean everything you have ever bought that has the label “Made in China.” You see, the Nightline special focused on Apple because they are one of the only companies that would alloy for a reporter to see their factory. That factory that you saw, those workers you saw crowding into that building for a job, not all of them will be building Apple products. Some will be, yet other will be building products for companies like Nintendo and whoever else contracts their work to Foxconn. So now are you ready to throw out your investments now?

Well Apple Incriminated Themselves, They Must Be Stupid.

At first glance it seems like they just made a huge mistake but let me explain to you why this is really a great, in terms of options you have to handle mass suicide, way to handle this situation. By allowing the truth to be placed out in the open, Apple has shown they are willing to fix the problem, instead of just shuffling it under the rug. They are paying for this audit in order to see what is wrong, a step you must take before you address a problem. At the end of the show Bill Weir noted that they were invited to do a follow up to this story later, after Apple has had a chance to help Foxconn workers and in turn China’s labor force as a whole.

They should just move back to the Good Ol’ US of A.

Well they are, as an engineering student in upstate New York my classes are starting to be crafted around an area deemed the “Tech Valley.” I will let you guys do your own research on this subject but the picture to the left is a plant being constructed under GlobalFoundries, a company based around the semiconductor industry. It has been said that Apple is very much vested in the whole program and would in tern like to move back, partially at least, to American labor.

So, instead of telling everybody on Twitter what a horrible company Apple is, take a step back and realize this problem isn’t all Apple’s fault. Really, Apple is one of the only companies willing to take a stand to end unfair labor conditions for those in foreign countries. If you have any questions of comments be sure to leave them below and thank you for reading.

With all of the hype being generated about SOPA and PIPA, Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, there have been a ton of huge outbursts with many of the major companies (both positive and negative).

One of the world’s leading internet browsers, Firefox, are about to change the whole debate and flip it over once again, positively of course. According to their recent press release one of Mozilla’s press partners have sent us, they plan on redirecting their main Mozilla.com/org pages for twelve hours to protest SOPA and PIPA, but not only are they redirecting one of the most hit websites in the world, they are also changing the default look of the Firefox startup page for tens of millions to see that SOPA and PIPA are just out right wrong.

View their full press release below:

In support of the virtual strike to protest Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Mozilla will be doing two things:

Mozilla is redirecting traffic from the main Mozilla.org and Mozilla.com English websites to an action page for 12 hours on Wednesday, January 18th from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm US Eastern Time.

Mozilla is also changing the look of the default Firefox start page so that the tens of millions of Firefox users will see a black page with a call to action message to increase awareness of PIPA/SOPA, rather than the traditional white page with the Firefox logo. (The search functionality will in no way be altered by this action.) We hope the blackout of our US sites will help bring attention to this important issue and encourage users to educate themselves about PIPA and SOPA. All users will still be able to receive security updates and access our technical support website. This will NOT affect Firefox users.

The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. These new laws would give the US government and private business incredible censorship powers that would have effects globally, damage the Internet’s security and discourage innovation and investment worldwide.

Monica Caires | Senior Account Executive
Allison+Partners
505 Sansome 7th Floor | San Francisco, CA 94111
www.allisonpr.com
Facebook: Allison+Partners | Twitter: @AllisonPR | YouTube: apwest
Blogs: http://allisonandpartners.wordpress.com | http://www.naked-culture.com/
Personal Twitter @MonCaires

We are really hoping other major companies, just like Mozilla, will come out of that cave and defend against these awful laws. I can just picture how much hype the new Firefox default launch page will create; it is going to be massive.

What are your thoughts on SOPA and PIPA? As for us, like many, we are defending against it because we’re in the land of the free, home of the brave! I would do anything to protect my rights and privacy.

If you have been in school in the last couple of years, there is most likely a huge chance you have used the popular e-learning CMS program called Moodle. With the help of Packt Publishing, who is notorious from writing about open source projects like Moodle, they have taken it to the next level.

With their brand new release of Moodle 2 Administration not too long ago, Packt has now decided to offer a series of discounts towards their Moodle book collection.

• Buy any Moodle print book and get 20% off
• Buy any Moodle eBook and get 30% off

After the massive failures from the JooJoo tablet and now the Grid 10, Fusion Garage might have disappeared in thin air. The first sign of the disappearance was that their website went down, reporting the 503 database error. As of right now, the website is barely up: certain images won’t load on the site, and when you go to their online store, the button for purchasing a Grid 10 said: “We are currently running out of stock. Thank you.” Also, Fusion Garage hasn’t posted any new content on their Twitter and Facebook feeds, due to the fact that their PR team ditched the company. Here’s a statement from one of FG’s employees:

Unfortunately, none of our efforts have resulted in any communication from the company to the customers. Given all of this, we don’t have any other choice but to cease working with FG effective tomorrow. (Source: Engadget)

While it’s sad to see a small company disappear, it’s hard to be sympathetic when Fusion Garage delivers so little to the market. A great example of this was the JooJoo tablet. It offered some features that the iPad doesn’t have, but ultimately failed because of it’s performance and the web-only UI. Best of all (not really on Fusion Garage’s part), they discontinued the JooJoo after only having 90 pre-orders for the device. Wow.

It’s been less than a year since the Mac App Store was launched by Apple, back in January. Already, the technology giant is celebrating a relatively significant milestone, being 100 million downloads. In comparison to the iOS app store, the number is completely diminished, but considering that Macs have a much smaller market share than their iPhone and iPad counter-parts, it’s a pretty impressive landmark.

The Mac App Store is “home to thousands of apps”, Apple claims – I certainly love using it, what about you?

Here’s the official press release:

 Apple’s Mac App Store Downloads Top 100 Million

CUPERTINO, California-December 12, 2011-Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, and download and install them in just one step. Apple revolutionized the app industry with the App Store, which now has more than 500,000 apps and where customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps and continue to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”

“With Autodesk products in both the App Store and Mac App Store, we can reach hundreds of millions of Apple users around the world,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Platform Solutions and Emerging Business at Autodesk. “With our free AutoCAD WS and the more powerful professional drafting tools of AutoCAD LT, we’re using the Mac App Store to deliver new products and reach a growing base of new Mac customers.”

“The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition.”

“In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

The Mac App Store offers thousands of apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews. The Mac App Store is included with Mac OS® X Lion and is available as a software update for any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard®. For more information visit, www.apple.com/mac/app-store.

Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit, developer.apple.com/programs/mac.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Written Upon the Steam forums, Gabe Newell, Valve’s CEO/President, has notified users of the recent attacks.

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:

Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.

We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.

We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.

While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.

We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.

We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.

I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Gabe.

Newell strongly recommends that you reset your password for both the forums and the Steam service as well as check credit card statements for possible fraudulent activities. Steam/Valve have not yet released an official statement on the attacks.

Today, Motorola officially unveiled the Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition tablets. They’re destined for the UK and Ireland, and will come out with Android Honeycomb 3.2.

The Xoom 2 is nothing particularly special when compared to the tonne load of other Android tablets on the market. It features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage. It’s also rocking a 5 mega-pixel camera on the back, with a 1.3 mega-pixel shooter on the front. On board, it has Motorola’s new Splash-guard protection, which claims to offer spillage safety.

The Xoom 2 Media Edition, is almost identical to the Xoom 2, but has a smaller 8.2-inch display, rather than the full 10.1-inch. I honestly don’t see why companies do this. In my mind, a tablet should be around the 10-inch mark. Any smaller, and you’re starting to loose the initial point of a tablet, but maybe that’s just me.

It’s also worth noting that Motorola are including stylus technology. Similar to what HTC and Samsung have pushed out this year, it should provide ‘pin-point’ accuracy for accurate note-taking.

Motorola are claiming that the two new tablets have 20% better graphics performance than the original Xoom as well. You can expect to get your hands on it, if you’re in the UK or Ireland, sometime ‘mid-November’.

Extract from the press release:

London - Building on the success of Motorola XOOM™, Motorola Mobility is rocking the tablet world yet again with two additions that bring enhanced experiences to the European market. Wi-Fi variants of the Motorola XOOM 2™ and Motorola XOOM 2 Media Edition™ — boasting powerful productivity, rich entertainment and customizable experiences — are now available: the answer to consumers looking for a tablet that can keep up with their lifestyle. Both tablets will be available at Carphone Warehouse in the UK and Ireland, as well as Best Buy, Dixons, PC World and Currys in the UK.

This morning, HTC announced their earnings for Q3. They have beaten their records from previous quarters by a large margin, and shown incredible growth, with shipments up a huge 93% compared to last quarter.

Revenue for the period was NT$136 billion (up 79%, approx: $4.54 billion), leading the net income for the quarter to NT$18.68 billion (approx: $625 million).

The largest area of growth was, interestingly, in China. Sales there increased by over nine times the period last year.

Altogether, the company shipped 13.2 million units. Those numbers are set to grow, with Q4 predictions leading the way with further records for the ever-growing company.

Thoughts? Did you buy an HTC product in the last few months?

After a long period of wait, the heavily leaked Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7 are finally beginning to see the light of day. The company promised to deliver such handsets earlier this year, and since then, numerous sources have leaked photos and videos. But a short time ago, two Nokia devices were announced, powered by Windows Phone 7.5.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is the flagship device for Nokia heading into the Holiday season. It’s been dubbed as “the first real Windows Phone”, and features a 3.7-inch ClearBlack AMOLED curved display (480×800). Inside, you’ll find a decent punch – 1.4GHz Qualcomm CPU and 16GB of storage (which is backed up by 25GB of free SkyDrive space in the cloud).

The Lumia 800 also has an eight mega-pixel camera, which is packing a f/2.2 aperture. Nokia cameras always deliver, so I’m looking forward to see how this one performs.

Finally, the Lumia 800 has quad-band GSM, so you’ll be getting HSDPA data speeds up to 10.2MBPS. It’s available for pre-order now, and is set to roll out in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, UK and Spain some time in November. Hong Kong, India, Russia and Taiwan will get it before the end of the year, and will hit “further markets” sometime next year. The price is 420 euros/approx. £400 ($585).

The Nokia Lumia 710 is the less exposed of the two, but still sports some of the fantastic features of the 800. It’s got the same 1.4GHz CPU, and features a 3.7-inch ClearBlack display. It comes in black or white varieties, with removable back covers.  It should hit the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain in November for 270 euros ($375) in November, and additional markets by the end of the year and through to 2012.

UPDATE (10/15/11): The port in the video above was rough to say the least but, a video (below) was uploaded showing a much smoother experience. The problem of server side system verification is the next hurdle to jump over.

Today, the day after the company he co-founded back in 1976, released the next generation of their mobile devices Steve Jobs has died. It is a rare and unfortunate time where we are able to look back at all the world has gained due to such a person’s contributions. Jobs recently laid the future of Apple in the hands of Tim Cook, after his second extended medical leave from Apple. His death, is assumed to be related to complication with his fight against pancreatic cancer. As a team, we wish only the best to Steve’s wife and family, friends as well as his co-workers. He will be missed.

If you would like to voice your condolences Apple has set up an email just for that: rememberingsteve@apple.com

Steve Jobs’ family has released a statement:

Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.

In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.

We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.

Today, Apple announced the continuation to the iPhone line. The iPhone 4S was unveiled, after tons of rumors and speculations.

The iPhone 4S is just like the iPhone 4 in design, being just that it’s a slight difference in weight. It’s also featuring the fabulous A5 processor, and an 8 megapixel camera. The 8 megapixel camera shoots in 1080p, producing great video’s!

It also has some great battery improvements, 8 hours talk time on 3G, 14 hours talk time on 2G, 6 hours of data on 3G, 9 hours data on WiFi, 40 hours audio, 10 hours video.

So what do you think of the new iPhone? Did you think it was going to be the iPhone 5 and not the 4S?

You can get the Xperia Ray for $450 without a contract and on Newegg for $350.

Apple finally announced the iPhone 5 event date and honestly I can not wait for it! Apple has the date scheduled for October 4th at 10AM at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif. campus. It’s very clear that the event is all about the iPhone as you can see in the invite that they sent out.

So what do you think will be new in the iPhone 5 when it comes out? Other than iOS 5.

During Facebook’s F8 speech on September 22 in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new Facebook feature, the Timeline. Mark stated that the timeline will basically be a part of all 800 million user’s life scrapbooking their content throughout the day they were born and the current day.

Mark also stated what he thinks of the Timeline:

We wanted to make Timeline a place that you could feel proud to call your home. -Mark Zuckerberg

Not only did Mark address the new features, but F8 was also for the web-developers out there. During the conference, Mark mentioned of some of your favorite applications and services like Nike+ that will connect into the Timeline using their next version of Open Graph.

We’re going to connect all of those different graphs together to form the Open Graph, and when we connect all of those graphs together, the Web is going to get a whole lot better. -Mark Zuckerberg

Now I know what you’re thinking, how do I get it before release? Well, it’s very simple! Just do the following to make yourself a developer on Facebook and activate the new Timeline feature. Please note though, only developers will be able to see your new Timeline once you make it live.

• Enable developer mode. To do this, search for “developer” in the Facebook search box at the top, click the first result, and add the app into your account.
• Go to the app if you aren’t there. To get there, just go to the following line: https://developers.facebook.com/apps
• Create a new application. No, you really won’t be using this nor will anyone else will see it. Just fill out the app name, display name, and namespace that works for you. I probably wouldn’t write anything bad in there though…
• Do the legal stuff! Go ahead and agree to the Platform Privacy agreement to get your app verified by Facebook.
• Visit the apps settings page. Your app’s name should be near the top of the page.
• Enable Open Graph. Look for the Open Graph header and click on the “Get Started using open graph” text.
• Create the action and object. I’d just go for “play” a “game” or something like that…
• Save it out. You’re almost there! Just go ahead and save the object.
• Wait about 2-3 minutes. Now you simply need to wait for Facebook to recognize your account as an Open Graph developer…
• Click on your invite! You’ll see an invite on the main Facebook homepage (all of your walls of your friends…). Don’t be shy, accept it!

Just over a month ago, I wrote a post here talking about HTC’s $300 million investment into Beats Audio. HTC promised to bring Beats to phones very soon, and they didn’t disappoint. The HTC Sensation XE brings a host of new features over the original HTC Sensation (4G).

The processor has been bumped up to a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU over the original 1.2GHz (which wasn’t slow by any means!). A beefy 1730 mAh battery lives inside, as well as, of course, Beats Audio technology.

Specs:

• 1.5GHz Dual-Core CPU
• 768MB RAM
• 4.3-inch qHD Super LCD display
• Android Ginergbread 2.3
• 8MP Rear Camera
• VGA front-facing camera
• 4GB Storage, expandable via microSD slot

Throughout the medical leaves that Steve has taken he still made keynotes, etc. but something must have happened to cause him to rationalize that he no longer can “meet his duties”.

So we as a team wish Steve and his family luck, as well as Time Cook luck as CEO of Apple.

Just 16 months after the acquisition of Palm, HP announced that they will be discontinuing the TouchPad and webOS related operations. With this, the unreleased Pre 3 and the unsold TouchPads will remain unclear, but HP will still explore and optimize webOS.

“In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.“

Not only will HP discontinue webOS, but they will pull the plug on the Personal Systems group (PCs, mobile devices, storage, monitors, etc.). HP will now focus onto being a software company and are in talks with Autonomy Corporation about a possible offer for HP.

We now all hope that a company will buy webOS and make the OS live on.