A few months ago, we wrote a list featuring some of the top jailbreak apps for the iPhone 4. And yet, things like a Wi-Fi hotspot and lockscreen customizations couldn't convince some of our readers. One person even commented: "I keep looking for a reason [to jailbreak], but it's just not worth the effort."
To you, sir, we say this: oh really? Perhaps this new, expanded list will change your mind. For regular jailbreakers, we think you'll find something new to love on the list below, too.
I don't know about you, but when I think of tech, "fashion" isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, I picture unkempt, scraggly beards, Cheetos-stained T-shirts and pale skin that would make an Asian princess jealous. But born of all these truly unsightly things are technologies that can help keep the rest of us stylin'.
Yesterday, Facebook rolled out an update to its "Groups" feature, revealing a completely revamped experience that now offers collaboration capabilities, email subscriptions, group chat and more. You can create a group of your own, as always, but you can't necessarily join any group out there on Facebook - unless the group is set to "open," you have to be invited by a current group member.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the Groups feature was designed to allow the 5% of people who actually use features like this to do the job of building the groups for the rest of Facebook's user base. Are you among the 5% who wants to create and manage groups of your own? If so, here's how.
Facebook announced some great changes yesterday - users finally have a way to download all their information and photos, there's a dashboard to handle applications and privacy settings, and even a nifty new way to handle all of your social connections in their numerous and varied stratifications. It did, however, forget its much-needed mantra - opt-in, not opt-out.
If your friends have caught wind of the groups feature already, then hang on to your inbox, because things are about to get messy unless you tweak some settings...and fast.
Positive language about learning new things and serving the self-interest of readers is the most common characteristic of blog post titles that get shared the most on Twitter, according to new analysis posted on the blog Smart Data Collective.
An analysis of 3,000 titles concluded that the words increase, socialize, automate and manage appear most in posts that prove popular. Terms including write, talk and trust appear to have a negative weight on the likelihood of a post being retweeted.
Do you want to be notified of Android notifications like calls, text messages, low battery alerts and more when you're on your computer? An open source mobile application called "Android Notifier" does this by connecting your mobile phone's notification system to the notification system on your computer. The desktop application currently works on Mac only, via the popular notification app, Growl. The project's developer says the Linux port will arrive "soon" and he's looking for volunteers who will connect the app to Windows systems as well.
But he needn't bother. We came across another application called the "Android-Notifier-Desktop" which offers a multi-platform desktop client for the above mobile app to the overlooked Linux and Windows users.
Below is the complete installation guide to using both of these apps on your computer.
Location-based mobile applications, also now being called "check-in services" to differentiate themselves from other geo-aware apps like Google Maps, are the hottest new social applications on the mobile scene today. The lineup includes game-based applications like Foursquare and MyTown, which each provide points, credits and/or badges for "checking in" (registering your physical presence) with a particular venue. There are also dedicated shopping-related check-in services like Shopkick, which rewards retail customers with discounts and deals for patronizing select establishments.
But almost all of the check-in apps integrate some form of mobile advertising. After months of experimentation with various formats, marketers are starting to discover what strategies actually work.
Have you ever wanted to walk into a building and be automatically checked into Foursquare, without any action on your part? That's the promise of an intriguing DIY project from electronic engineering hobbyist, Casey Halverson. He has come up with a low-cost solution that involves a Nike+ sensor, a $25 breakout board and a Web service called Stumble.to that watches for electronic devices, then automatically checks you into your favorite places via Foursquare and other location-based social networking services.
A recent build of Chromium, the open source Web browser which serves as the testing ground for Google Chrome, has been updated with a new feature: Google Chrome Labs. This internally accessed page is available by typing in about:labs in the browser's address bar. Currently, there are only two "labs" (that is, experimental features) available for testing - an option to use side tabs for Windows users and an option to see an expose-like tab overview for Mac users.
So how can you access this new Labs section, which is still off-limits to users of the standard Chrome browser? We've got the details in our latest "weekend project."
Twitter lists are a beautiful thing, a great way to gather together expert opinion on any topic. If you thought Twitter's own search was bad at retrieving archival conversations, though, is archival search of Twitter lists too much to dream of?
It may not be anymore, thanks to a startup called Nsyght. Nsyght has been around for a few years now, and it does a whole lot of things for and beyond Twitter, but the service's newest feature is what really moves the needle for me: The ability to filter and search the archives of the lists of people I'm following. I can see what Chris Grayson's Augmented Reality Peeps list has said about Google over the past few months, or what the members of the Enterprise Irregulars said about the much-tweeted #Workday analyst demo event earlier this week. Hello, useful!
