Daily Bits

Apple iPhone 4 It Is!

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So the keynote speech that Steve Jobs gave might not have gone flawlessly. From what the guys at Gizmodo have been saying – it was a funny event due to the technical glitches that were encountered. Check out the video for yourself, and tell me it isn’t ironic.

Despite that funny clip, I have to say that I am wow-ed by the iPhone 4. Yup, count me in as one of the boys – the fanboys!

You might think that I am being irrational at this point, but let’s take a look at why, if you’re buying a new phone, the Apple iPhone it should be.

One, it has multi-tasking capabilities now. No need to go to the home screen to use another app. Just like your “powerful” little netbook, you can switch from one app to another with ease!

Two, it has got FaceTime. Nah, it’s not a Facebook app. In fact, this is the new feature that allows video calling. In line with this, the new iPhone has two cameras – back and front – that will make video calling even more convenient!

Three, you gotta have the Retina Display. This technology makes the iPhone 4 the best mobile phone when it comes to screen resolution. It really doesn’t get any better than this (yet)!

Four, I think this is the best looking iPhone yet. It exudes machismo which no other phone out there can beat. And, it’s the kind of machismo that does not offend.

Yep folks, it’s the Apple iPhone 4 for me.

Little Folk Of Faery

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Practically everyone I know is on Facebook. Now that can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. One thing that I know I like about Facebook is that I get to discover a lot of things that I probably normally wouldn’t find.

Take this little game called Little Folk of Faery. Now, hardcore gamers might scoff at the whole idea. After all, would they want to play with faeries? Casual gamers would know, however, just how much fun this little game can be!

I only discovered Little Folk of Faery the other week and I have been dying to play it. It’s about a bunch of faeries – the magical kind, not the contemporary kind – who have come upon hard times. They’ve lost their magic and their village is in ruins. Your task is to help them get back on their feet and rediscover their magic. How cool is that?

The most amazing thing about this game – as far as I can tell based on the screen shots, videos, and reviews – is the fact that the graphics are astounding. Forget cute little Tinkerbells. The faeries in this game are a fantasy-lover’s dream! And, it’s not only the creatures that are beautiful. The attention to the details is obvious. The flowers, the lights – everything is designed to take your breath away!

It looks to me that the designers really put a lot of work into making the graphics work together to impress. If only for that, I will purchase the game. Here’s the problem for me – I tried the demo version on my MSI Wind, and it doesn’t work! Apparently, the netbook’s resolution is not compatible with the game. Help!

Apple’s Announcement At WWDC 2010

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I know everyone’s holding his breath for what Apple has to tell the world at today’s WWDC event. I know I haven’t been able to sit still since yesterday! We all have to wait for a couple more hours before the announcement is made – which is supposed to be at 10 a.m. local time. The event is being held in San Jose, California. For those of you who are in other parts of the world – just stay up a little bit longer. The news should be worth it!

So what are we expecting?

No doubt, Steve Jobs will be talking about the Apple iPhone 4G, which is supposed to best the iPhone 3GS by miles. It’s supposed to have a much better screen resolution, a front-facing camera, and a better performing battery – at the least. Needless to say, the new iPhone will be able to support 4G data transmission, which means we can transmit data wirelessly at more satisfying speeds.

Of course, more interesting to some people is how Steve Jobs will approach the leak that happened recently. Remember when someone at Gizmodo leaked details about the new iPhone? I wonder if Jobs will even mention it! Personally, I think he’ll mention it but take it lightly. He’ll probably drop a bomb or two that we aren’t expecting at all. But that’s just me.

What are you expecting from the keynote later on? Do you think that the guys at Apple have something else up their sleeves that will take our breaths away or do you think that there’s nothing they can do to impress us anymore? Hang on to your seats folks!

Google Buzz Now Has Reshare, Not Rebuzz

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For Buzz users, have you wanted to share an interesting buzz that you want to share with your other Google Buzz followers? Are you tired of the copying the buzz and pasting it to a new buzz just to let your followers find it?  Google finally gives a solution. Nope, sorry folks its not called “rebuzz” but rather a more correct and dandy tag called “reshare.”

If you’re familiar with Twitter’s “retweet,”  well Google Buzz Reshare practically works the same way. You found and interesting Google buzz post from your followers, click on a link, add an annotation or any comment and then hit the button to publish it as a new buzz on your Google buzz account. Yes, in two clicks, Google made its Buzz product more social.

In addition, “resharing” a buzz creates a new buzz that contains link to the original post. And it creates a buzz thread as soon as more followers started resharing the buzz to their followers as well. Now, when two or more Google Buzz users share the same thing to you, the buzz is collapsed to avoid cluttering your Google Buzz inbox. Sounds fair?

On why Google implemented its buzz sharing feature this way, the Official Gmail Blog tells us the following explanations: [Read more…] about Google Buzz Now Has Reshare, Not Rebuzz

Are You Happy with Facebook’s New and Simpler Privacy Controls?

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Here’s could probably be Facebook’s last ditch effort at convincing everyone of us that it minds user privacy. And this could possibly make or break Facebook, either retaining loyal users to driving them away to other “more secured” social networking sites.

So as Facebook is confronted with issues about its “complex” privacy policy, it now announces a simpler privacy control measures via a long post on the Official Facebook blog. But essentially, there are three major issues addressed by Facebook’s new privacy controls.

First thing which Facebook did was to build one simple control for setting who can see content that you post. You can now specify whether the content is viewable by everyone, friends of your friends or just by your friends. Which ever settings you choose will be applied to new products which Facebook will introduce in the future.  You don’t need to set them up once new products are introduced.

Then Facebook also reduced the amount of basic information that are visible to everyone. The connections privacy model was also removed. You now have the ability to control who can see your friends and pages and those information are no longer default to public. Of course, as these are basic information, it is but logical to have these for public viewing since its the only way for other people to find you. Otherwise, there’s no point in maintaining your Facebook account anymore.

Finally, Facebook also made it simpler to control how apps and websites access any of your information. Turning this off is now easier and can be easily done via a simple click. Turning off instant personalization is also easier now and gives you the facility to allow only partner sites to see things you’ve made visible to everyone.

With that, Facebook is proud to announced that its privacy model is now complete. And it hopes that issues concerning user privacy would be finally put to a rest.

These new privacy controls will be rolled out to everyone in the next few weeks. By then, we will know whether users are satisfied with the measures and make them stay with Facebook.

Google Puts Chrome for Mac and Linux into Stable Beta Version

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Alright, Chrome browser users, here’s some good news from Google. The latest Chrome for Mac and Linux has been finally put into a stable beta mode and will be gradually rolled out to all Chrome for Mac and PC users. You know what it means when something comes out from being “unstable” to “stable” version, right? Well, it simply means that most often than not, the stable version is more reliable and has lesser bugs. Plus of course, tons of new features are also brought in.

For both versions of Chrome for Mac and Linux browsers, these features come in bunch. Generally these new features include – browser preferences synchronization in addition to the previous bookmark synchronization feature. Browser preferences include themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages and even page zoom settings.  This means that once you’ve synchronized all these settings in one of your Chrome beta installation, you’d get the same settings in all your Chrome installations on various dekstop and laptops that you use.

In addition, the new Chrome beta release also enables each Chrome extensions to work in incognito mode. You can set this up via the Chrome extension manager.

The new Chrome beta release also incorporates HTML5 features including Geolocation API, App Cache, web sockets and file drag-and-drop.  You may want to see how HTML5 function by browsing websites developed in HTML5 such as http://scribd.com. You can also try dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail or enabling geolocation in Google Maps.

If you’re a Chrome for Mac user like me, you’d be glad to know that the latest version of Chrome beta now has full-screen mode and a powerful bookmark management feature. We’ve been wanting these features since Chrome for Mac was released and so the Google Chrome folks are finally giving it to us.

If you can’t wait for Chrome for Mac to be automatically updated, you may want to download it from this link.