Users of iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 1G, and iPod Touch 2G may now log in to the Apple iTunes store and download the iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade for their device. It is available now for customers in the United States.
Enjoy 
Apple, iphone os, newsflash
It seems that with every new feature addition to Facebook there are as many naysayers and unhappy customers as there are proponents of the changes. From time to time I’ve written entries here supporting some changes to the site; other times I’ve criticized certain changes for making the site all the more unfriendly and hard to use. This post briefly discusses the latest Facebook feature: profile usernames.
Who needs them?
That’s a good question. To some, perhaps this marks just another “useless” feature, but for the 5 million people who registered usernames within the first 3 days of their introduction it screams for some attention. But for those of you still holding out, let me explain a few reasons why registering your own unique Facebook username might not be such a bad idea after all.
- What is a username?
For those of you who might not be familiar with how this works, a Facebook username is a unique name with no spaces that allows websites and people to quickly link to and access your Facebook profile. For example, after registering my own username, you can now access my Facebook page by visiting: http://www.facebook.com/matthamann. Yup, it’s that simple.
- A username could help family and friends find you faster
These days search is king. Type your own name into Google and you might be amazed at how many results appear that link to some aspect of you, whether it be your blog, Facebook profile, a news article from high school or college, or who knows what else? The fact of the matter is: if you have any of these social networking devices, you’re not interested in hiding your identity from the rest of the world. If you were, you wouldn’t use those services.
- It’s way more friendly
Before Facebook usernames existed, any time an individual needed to directly access or link to a user’s profile, they would have to enter a url similar to this one: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=630269242. Trust me, nobody wants to have to worry about long complicated stuff like that. Visiting http://www.facebook.com/matthamann is just so much easier to use and remember. Of course, picking a username like “dragonboy673″ probably won’t help you much unless you’re well known around the ‘Net by that moniker, but picking something closely related to who you are or what you do can drastically improve your visibility.
Are there more reasons to go ahead and get a Facebook username? Why don’t you let me know by leaving a comment?
Apple has a Monopoly on the digital media player market. I’ll give them that. But as I continue to watch the scene unfold, I’ve begun to believe more and more that Apple has gotten just a little “too big for their britches.” The attitude coming from the relatively small computer hardware and software manufacturer continues to show that Apple is more concerned with hanging on to it’s bottom-line, driving competitors out of the market, and keeping all the toys to themselves. And what company wouldn’t?
Recent articles by AppleInsider and cnet made note of a “warning” issued by Apple this past week in regard to its popular iTunes music software. Recently Palm Inc. released it’s new Pre smartphone as a direct competitor to other smartphones like Google Android-based phones and Apple’s iPhone lineup. Included in the Pre’s software is the ability to synchronize music directly with the iTunes software; however, Apple made a statement implying that it may update the iTunes software in such a way that it would prevent devices such as the Palm Pre from being recognized or syncing properly. Clearly this shows an unwillingness to play by any set of rules but its own.
Since the Microsoft vs. Apple debate always seems to rage across the web, I’ll continue the tradition by contrasting Apple’s market moves with Microsoft’s. The Redmond-based company almost always exposes APIs in its products that allow 3rd party developers to write new software that integrates closely with Windows and other Microsoft products. So if Palm had wanted to make the Pre device able to sync with Windows Media Player, they would have simply needed to tap into the proper programming APIs and things would work as expected, guaranteed. In recent years, Microsoft has, in fact, gone out of its way to ensure that portions of their systems work and play well with others. Definitely not so with Apple and yet another reason to refuse to bow to Apple’s demands.
Almost 10 years after the introduction of the first iPod and we start to see a role-reversal. Apple is the dark side, and someone needs to step in to stop them. Greed never gets you anywhere…
There’s a reason Apple has taken more than 7 years to barely reach even 10% of the U.S. computer market, much less the world. If Macs were really so great, do you think 89% of the world would still be using Microsoft products?
While perhaps obvious to some, there are a couple commands you can use to add simple font formatting to the messages you send via Facebook chat. While there’s nothing fancy just yet, I suspect the platform will slowly evolve to contain other formatting options as time goes on.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
- For bold text, enclose words in asterisks. (e.g. *this will become bold text*)
- For underlined text, enclose words with underscores (e.g. _this text will be come underlined_)
I’ll be sure to update this post as more options become available. In the meantime, enjoy using your new found knowledge!
bold, facebook, font, formatting, italic