Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will release this July for $19.99, $10 less than its predecessor, and narrow the gap between Apple’s mobile and desktop operating systems. Mountain Lion will also take a bite out of social media as it comes with the popular platforms integrated within its presence – something that has been notable in Windows 8.
The app is in trial (beta) mode and will change throughout the process. It will self-update and Facebook developers encourage you to give feedback.
The app will let you chat with your Facebook friends, see your ticker feed and get quick notifications from the comfort of your desktop.
Download Facebook’s Messenger For Windows
When you download and install the program, you will be greeted with this window where you will be prompted to log into your Facebook account.
When you log into the Facebook app, it will keep you logged in until you sign out. If you close the Window, it will hide in your notifications area.
The log in process will open your default browser to Facebook to log in.
You will then get a notification in the taskbar which when you clock will present you with your desktop version of Facebook.
From first testing it, the app is buggy, resizing the window can make your contacts vanish.
The interface is a windowed version of Facebook’s right hand bar which features ticker and your contact list along with the 3 default notification areas and a link to your profile on top.
Each of the notification icons on top, when activated will take a bit of the space that ticker takes and contains a scrollbar. It always stays confined to its window size.
Chatting with people opens a new window with a tab for each person. Unfortunately, if you are running Windows 7, each tab will not be individually displayed in the preview icons of your taskbar – as is the case with Windows Live Messenger or MSN.
If you are very addicted to Facebook, there is a feature which lets you dock it to the right of your screen. No Window will come on top of it and it will act just like it does on the Facebook website.
This feature and whether or not you want it to notify you when new messages arrive can be found in its icon in the notification area.
You can also toggle its dock mode with the bottom right button – next to the search bar.
Overall, the app is handy for those who don’t want to keep a browser open, but it is still in trial and with time, most will likely prefer to keep Facebook in the browser.
So, feel free to give it a try. What do you think of this program? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Ever since the beginning of Google +, Google kept chat separate of the social network and I will admit that it did make reconnecting with the people I invited on there difficult – especially the ones that aren’t so tech savvy and are squirmish at the thought of instructions.
Once you click OK, your chat list will get a bit longer and you will automatically connect with those who have connected to you – provided they are in your circles.
Now if you are uneasy with this idea, Google has also added some new privacy settings.
Just click on the Chat Menu and choose Privacy Settings.
You will then be greeted with the following dialog.
If you click on the circles, you will get a custom option. Clicking that will allow you to choose which circles will see you as available and be able to chat with you.
You can even design a “People who I want to speak to” circle for this purpose.
Hopefully you will find the new chat simpler to use out of the box and if you are new to Google +, then you should check out our other articles on it that date back to pre-beta when we made a thorough tour of everything you see today.
Google + has been adding new features since they first launched the beta a while back – during that time, you needed an invite to get in and the doors opened and closed from time to time. Google + is now public and is still evolving.
You may have noticed links on certain terms that have a # in front of them. If you haven’t used Twitter, then you probably won’t recognize that they are hashtags which people can use to signify an emotion. For authors, it is a great way to categorize your posts such that if someone searches Google + for something, that they find your post.
While we are on the subject of adding posts, Sparks is gone and has been replaced with a more sophisticated search system and hashtags which can be pinned to the left side where Sparks used to be. You may, however, notice something new. It is called What’s Hot. It will essentially display the posts on Google + with the most activity.
It cycles every now and then and can also be found after you have read all of the newest posts in your Newsfeed.
Authors may want to know how their content gets branched out on Google +. To do so, they can click on the options menu on the right side of the post and choose View Ripples. It will gather all of the shares and map them based on circles and groups of linked circles.
It will open a new tab where you can see the Ripples of how content has been shared.
Scroll down and you get raw statistics. The ripples can be made bigger or smaller and dragged around.
Pictures have a new twist now. You will notice a new Creative Kit in the Editor Menu.
Click on it and you get a streamlined editing session in Picnik.
This will make editing pictures in Google + a lot easier and you will be able to edit them whenever you want. If you want to immerse yourself, you can even do the edits in full screen.
It is likely that this will only be the beginning as Google + intends to make inroads on the social network market. Businesses and bloggers and causes will soon have pages, and if they look anything like some of the concept ideas, we may have one very powerful tool from Google.
The pages could include a maps applet, +1 button, verification status, public circles display, a canvas page where editors can do what they want and stylize, and Google Offers.
It is also noteworthy that Google Apps, Google Docs, Blogger, and Google Reader are or will be integrated with Google + soon.
Facebook has done it again, touching anything and everything. While the way people create statuses can be improved, it didn’t mean that the process needed to be stripped down.
Facebook will be rolling out more changes and this one affects your newsfeed. From now on, you will see everything in real time. From a friend’s account being hacked and being taken for a joy ride to the FMLs to the relationship statuses to the more serious stuff to the more interesting stuff, you will now see it all in real time and even when you aren’t on the home page.
Things started fine for Google Plus. People were desperate to get in and some dedicated users found ways to get them in. Google has decided to open the flood gates on the project and when they saw that things didn’t go as planned, they deleted profiles and entire Google accounts that they deemed didn’t have a valid personal identity.
Google had better bring its business pages feature to Google Plus and fast. People who have blogs, who own a business, or want to promote a website want to be a part of the Google Plus wave. However, the only way they can take such a part is to create a Gmail account for their site or business and create a Google Plus account for that business or site.
Google Plus is growing fast and it will soon be getting new features to establish itself as a real alternative to Facebook.
You may have noticed some changes in Facebook. To some they aren’t new, to others, it was never noticed, to others, they may not have seen these changes yet. Oh yes, Facebook has a way of changing things around and leaving its users either in a peaked stage of curiosity and enthusiasm, or has sent them to numerous help threads pleading for a way to reverse changes.
While Facebook may still have 750 million users, in a matter of a week, Google Plus doubled its users to 20 million. Only 3 weeks old, Google + has become a possible contender to Facebook after several failed attempts at a social network by Google.
If you haven’t already read the first tips and tricks article, you may want to check it out. If you have already read it, here are some new tricks to try.
Google+ has kicked off and has more than 10 million users. It will become a challenger to Facebook as the social networks start to clash. Facebook has already taken the initiative to ban Google + ads and block direct exports of contacts and data. However, Google+ isn’t complete. There are a few things that it will need before it can mature out of its successful field testing phase.
You can contact him through his Google+ page or his email or the CSIYF main email. Be sure to follow him on Twitter: @JulianCWolfe
You can contact him through his Google+ page or his email. Be sure to follow him on Twitter: @TwebStab
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