Facebook Announces Newly Designed News Feeds

Facebook announced new design elements to engage users more effectively on Facebook on Thursday.  The new design rolls out today, facebook.com/newsfeed, for some users, but the roll-out will be gradual. The most notable changes include: larger images, videos, more prominent check-ins, more detailed information from publications, a greater display of possible friends without having to click on the profile. You could even view highly trending content.

Facebook claims, this allows for “a richer, simpler, more beautiful feel” as well as more choices on what shows up on the news feed. You can determine what feed you want to view from choices such as photos, news content/likes, music and games.  Check out the gallery below to see some of the highlights.

Facebook’s new navigation menu is very mobile-inspired and allows a continuous look and feel across devices (desktop, tablet, phones).  The company claims you get the most out of “smaller screens” to gain a greater experience.  New notifications, that Facebook calls “new stories bubble,” show updates across your feeds, that float on the top of your screen.

While Facebook is excited about this new format, they are planning on rolling it out on a gradual basis to certain users and spreading the new format to a wider audience.  So far we’re excited to see what we can do with the new format of Facebook, from a visual design, it looks cleaner and thus far seems easier to navigate. 

AT&T’s HTC One X Gets Android Jelly Bean Update

According to AT&T, HTC One X owners can expect to see the update to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean begin arriving on handsets today. It still keeps last year’s HTC flagship a hair behind the curve in terms of the latest Android software, but it’s a major upgrade from the Ice Cream Sandwich build the phone shipped with.

AT&T detailed what users can expect from the update in a blog post, including new Jelly Bean features such as Google Now, enhanced notifications, and more. The phone’s Sense 4 build remains more or less the same with the addition of a new front-facing camera countdown timer. 

To check for the update, which also enable ISIS mobile payments and AT&T’s Locker cloud service, navigate to your phone’s settings menu and check under ‘About phone.’

Source: AT&T

Could This Be The Samsung Galaxy S4

A few minutes ago, our friends over at @evleaks took to his Twitter account to post two images of what could be our first look at the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4. This Twitter account is known for being fairly spot-on with his leaks and predictions of phones in the past, but the images of this Galaxy S4 look quite different from the earlier Galaxy phones Samsung released in the past. 

First off, the square-edged design that this device is sporting looks a lot different from the S3 before it, something that we had assumed Samsung had wanted to keep. Even though we wish they did, it’s hard to believe that Samsung would get rid of their “iconic” home button and move towards on-screen buttons instead, which this image suggests.

The rectangular design does match up with the reported S4 cases that we saw the other week. The specs listed in one of the images also somewhat match up with what has been rumored so far, but there isn’t even so much as a Samsung logo to be found on either of the two pictures. We have heard rumors either way on whether or not the device will sport a FHD Super AMOLED or not. This leak suggests that it will.

Evleaks is usually pretty spot on with what he finds however, so this could be close to what we will end up seeing on March 14 at the Unpacked event.

Source: Evleaks

Yahoo Preparing To Shut Down Services

The 7 products that are set to be discontinued include: Yahoo App Search, Yahoo Sports IQ, Yahoo Clues, Yahoo Message Boards, Yahoo Updates API, Yahoo Avatars, and the Yahoo app for Blackberry. The Blackberry app will continue to be listed in the Blackberry App World until April 1st. Then it will no longer be available for download, and it will no longer receive any support from Yahoo.

Yahoo’s Avatar might be the biggest hit to Yahoo users. Many Yahoo users create their own cartoon-like avatars to use for instant messaging, and for e-mailing. If you check the Yahoo Answers boards, a majority of user icons are their custom avatar icons, which makes me wonder why a service like that isn’t successful. Yahoo says that users who still want to keep their avatars must download their avatar image and manually re-upload it as their profile picture.

Yahoo is following Google’s routine of cleaning out apps that just don’t bring in the kind of engagement and success that the companies want. CEO Marissa Mayer, who is also a former executive from Google, is doing her best in order to turn Yahoo back into the juggernaut it was back in the days. Its shareholders want Yahoo’s stock price to pick back up, and so far they’re pretty happy with the progress that Marissa Mayer has made.



Source: Reuters

MetroPCS Moves Shareholders Meeting To April 12th

The MetroPCS/T-Mobile merger has been negatively perceived by many of MetroPCS’s shareholders. They believe that the merger will only land them more in debt, and that there isn't enough value in it for MetroPCS. P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, an investment adviser that owns 2% of MetroPCS’s shares, believes that the company should stay a stand-alone company and wait for a better offer to arrive.

Paulson & Co., MetroPCS’s biggest shareholder with 8.7% of the company’s shares, stated that it’s going to withhold its vote until it sees the final proxy statement, which will be submitted by MetroPCS at the meeting. Paulson & Co. also echoes the concerns of P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, and says that the merger would result in too high of a debt for MetroPCS, and that the company should explore alternative options.

T-Mobile is gunning for this merger with MetroPCS because doing so will help it expand its 4G LTE network. This would also make them the best, cost-friendly service providers in America, with both companies offering unlimited 4G data, and T-Mobile soon to be offering contract-less service plans like MetroPCS. The two companies will continue to operate as separate entities, but they will combine to make a fierce, value-oriented competitor to the other 3 major carriers.

Source: MetroPCS

Samsung Unpacked Invite Confirms Galaxy S4 For March 14

And there we have it, the official invitation to the Samsung Unpacked event for March 14. It’s not even a question as to what will be unveiled as the teaser makes multiple references to the Galaxy S4.



Source: Samsung (Twitter)

Pandora Eliminates Unlimited Mobile Streaming

In an effort to balance growing royalty costs, Pandora announced Wednesday that it will be eliminating unlimited ad-supported music streaming on the service via mobile. Pandora listeners in the US will now be limited to 40 hours of free ad-supported streaming on their mobile devices each calendar month, after which they’ll have to pay a fee to keep listening.

“Our royalty rates have increased more than 25% over the last 3 years, including a 9% increase in 2013 versus 2012,” Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy told Mashable. “What we’re trying to do is manage those royalty costs with a minimum amount of listener disruption.”

Listening on desktop computers will continue to be unlimited, with the 40-hour restriction applying specifically to mobile devices. The change does not affect users who pay for Pandora’s subscription service Pandora One.

“We’re conscious that those royalty rates are scheduled to go up another 16% over the next couple of years. So we're trying to be very balanced,” says Kennedy. ”We want people to continue to listen to and enjoy Pandora. We hate to bring any limit to that listening, but think that this is really a balance that we need to maintain”

Kennedy says that the average user on Pandora only spends 20 hours on the service across all platforms. He says that Wednesday’s announcement is likely to only effect 4% of Pandora’s monthly active listeners.

Listeners will be notified when they reach 85% of their monthly-allotted time, so they can adjust their listening habits accordingly.

Once a user hits 40 hours, a $.99 in-app purchase will allow them to keep listening with ads on their mobile phones for the remainder of the calendar month.

Pandora did something similar in 2009, when it limited listeners on the web to 40 hours per month of listening time.

“That was in the early days, when our desktop monetization was much less mature, and it enabled us to balance the royalty cost pressure that we feel with our desire to obviously grow the service and let people listen as much as possible,“ says Kennedy.

That cap effected 10% of listeners, primarily because at the time, Pandora had a lot of heavy at-work listeners who would start listening at 9 a.m. every day, and not stop until 6 p.m. when they were headed home.

“There isn’t quite that use case here. So, it’s a smaller set of people that will be affected,” he added.

In the most recent quarter, Pandora reported $74 million in mobile revenue, up 112% year-over-year. Kennedy says Pandora's monetization rate for mobile isn't yet quite as mature as it is for those accessing Pandora from a desktop. So, while Pandora pays the same amount in royalties when a user listens via mobile as they do from a desktop, Pandora earns significantly more from desktop listeners than it does mobile.

Much like with its desktop cap, as mobile monetization matures, Pandora may reevaluate its decision to cap mobile streaming.

“We don’t know exactly what the time frame will be. We believe that monetization on mobile will eventually get into the same range as the desktop, and I think we continue to make good progress in terms of our mobile monetization efforts,” says Kennedy.

“So we do see this as not a permanent change, but, and an appropriate and necessary balancing for this stage of development given the royalty cost that we bear.”

Pandora will be contacting users it feels might reach the 40-hour cap via email in the coming days, notifying them of the change.

Android 4.2.2 Hitting Testers For The Verizon Galaxy Nexus

We heard that an update for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus was coming "soon", but the news didn't say exactly what update we were going to see. Now we know, and it's good news everyone. It looks like the Verizon Galaxy Nexus is about to get Android 4.2.2, as the update has rolled out to testers.

The word comes from the good folks over at XDA, where member El Madhattersays that he got the test build of Android 4.2.2 for his Verizon GNex this week. The update is build JDQ39, and comes with new radio baseband versions listed as FK01 and FK02. So far, other testers have commented on the XDA forum thread saying that the new radios work "really well". 

Source: XDA Developers

HTC One Review

I recently had the pleasure of seeing an HTC One hands on. Being the phone geek I am, I had to give the new HTC flagship phone a deep look into what HTC has brought to the HTC One.

First things first, the size of the phone is great. Some may say too big, but a standard size of today's phones. As for the screen resolution, this has to be the best screen on any phone I have used or even seen. I had the pleasure of going through the different apps, home screens and even saw a few brief seconds of Madagascar 3.

Which brings me to the next new feature of the HTC One, HTC Soundboom.... the only word I can think of to describe the sound on the new HTC One is phenomenal combined with the Beats Audio built in to the two stereo speakers located on the front of the phone is amazing.

I'd also like to point out that HTC has enabled the option to utilize Beats Audio along with the built in speakers on the phone, as where prior to the HTC One this was not an option.

HTC Blinkfeed is another new feature HTC has incorporated in to the HTC One. Some may find this feature useful, however I’m not a huge fan. HTC Blinkfeed is HTC's version of Flipboard and works very similar to Flipboard.

HTC Zoe is a great concept, this feature allows for multiple different phone options. One being the option to store photos online to save or email to family and friends, the ability to take a phone and edit the image right on the mobile device. Such as if you are taking a picture and a person walks though the picture you can edit the person out of the picture. This is all made possible with the help of the HTC Zoe feature that allows you to continue capturing the picture even after the picture has been taken. 

The body of the phone is great, its a solid metal body that just feels right in your hand, along with the Sense Voice noise canceling mics built in to the metal body. on the back it houses the camera the industry first and only ultrapixel camera  HTC has not said what the camera equals out to be in megapixels, however according to my findings it somewhere in the range of 4-4.5 megapixels.  

All in all this is going to be a huge device for HTC, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Please be sure to sound off in the comments section and let us know what you think. 

HTC Confirms Sense 5 Update Coming To Several Current Phones

HTC posted a message on their Facebook page in response to a user question asking if Sense 5 would be coming to the HTC One X. HTC subsequently followed up with Android Police to confirm that Sense 5 would be made available to specific phones, but some HTC One hardware specific features (most likely HTC Zoe) would not be included.

While it’s nice to see HTC commit to giving their customers the latest version of Sense, the way the statement is worded makes us think that it’ll be quite some time before the update is actually rolled out. HTC One S and One X owners here in the U.S. are still waiting to get their Android 4.1 updates which were released in Europe and Asia in December. If HTC maintains its current software update speed, international devices will be updated to HTC Sense 5 in the second half of the year and carrier branded phones here in the U.S. will probably not see the update until late 2013.