iPhone4idiots

One good sign a tech company may have peaked is when it goes public. Yesterday, Facebook filed an initial public offering (IPO) for $5 billion worth of stock that will put a valuation on the company of around $85 billion. Despite its’ massive user base of 845 million users every month (over half of those are daily and almost half are mobile) this stock will be expensive. Facebook made a little over $1 billion last year on $3.7 billion in revenues. Of course the vast majority of that revenue comes from advertising and a whopping 12% comes from Zynga (the makers of Farmville and dozens of other popular games). IMO, the problem with Facebook is how far can they push things. See you are the product they are selling. Most Facebook users still don’t realize this and at a certain point it’s gonna be a major problem. Facebook’s filing mentions “privacy” 35 times. The truth, however, is the less privacy you have the more money Facebook makes. Continue Reading…

Facebook has finally released their iPad app. What the heck took so long? Anyone that owns an iPad can tell how annoying it was to open the Facebook app and see it only fill a small iPhone sized portion of your display. Yes, there were jailbreak apps like Retina Display which fixed this, but for most people this was just ridiculous. It has been reported that the developer of the Facebook iPad app (who recently left for Google) said it was ready for release months ago. It is rumored Steve Jobs was pissed Facebook introduced a tablet app on the HP Touchpad first. Remember the integration of Twitter into iOS 5? Could this possibly have been Steve Job’s response to Facebook not putting Apple first?? We’ll probably never know for sure, but the bottom line is Facebook and Apple are major competitors that won’t play nice just to benefit the consumer. Anyway, thank goodness that is in the past and you can now use the Facebook app on your entire iPad screen! I’ll check it out tonight. Let me know what you think.

Since I rarely use Facebook anymore I wasn’t going to write about this, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some major changes today. With 800 million users (half a billion daily users) I’m clearly in the minority thinking Facebook is going the way of MySpace. Anyway, you might have noticed over the past month that Facebook has revamped the Friend Lists, added a real-time ticker, launched changes to News Feed and rolled out a Subscribe button for following anybody’s public updates. This is nothing compared to what is coming – Timeline and Open Graph. Facebook is going to look dramatically different with Timeline. Zuckerberg, descirbed Timeline as a place to share your stories, apps and express who you are. It’s quite interesting but has me convinced Facebook is moving in the wrong direction! Continue Reading…

So if you love tech/social media like me you probably realized Microsoft died a long time ago. Death to the Darth Vader of tech. The company that was easy to love to hate. Sure they are still a player and Windows isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, but about the only product they have with growth potential is X-Box. The three companies I see battling to be the dominate player are Apple, Google and Facebook. While I love all three in many ways there are also things I can’t stand which got me thinking – which do I consider more evil? Continue Reading…

Last night Facebook released version 3.2 update for the iPhone. Open the App Store and you will see it available for Update. There are a number of big changes the elephant of which is Facebook Places which you’ll see right in the middle of the Home page after you Update the app. Places lets you see where your friends are and what they are up to. Sounds like Foursquare you say, we’ll it should as Facebook has partnered with Foursquare and Gowalla for this ambitious change. Like Foursquare you can check-in to places so your friends can see where you are in realtime. Curious if any of your friends are at a big sporting event, concert or airport? Well, Facebook Places will answer this question. A less publicized new feature is you can now see all recipients of inbox messages. Think of it as the cc line of an email. Facebook never had that ability in Messages until now. Thus, you can see if you are the only one receiving a message or if it was sent to two or two thousand of your friends. Be careful, a reply will go out to everyone, not just the sender. I’m sure people will make that mistake a lot! For more on Facebook Places and how to opt out so your friends can’t check you in and let everyone know where you are – Continue Reading…

Twitter for iPhone app was released today. I won’t bore you with a review as most of you don’t use Twitter despite my efforts to tell you why you should. Anyway, there are many Twitter apps for the iPhone, but Apple bought Tweetie a month or so ago and Apple’s Twitter app is essentially Tweetie 3.0. If you want a review check out my Tweetie 2 review here as this is basically the same thing with a few minor tweeks. However, the best thing is that its FREE! So now is the perfect time to stick your toe in the Twitter pool. Download the app to give it a try. You don’t have to sign up or sign in to search, browse uders, see trending topics or top tweets. It’s a great way to get a feel for Twitter. To get Twitter just launch the app store and tap on Top 25 Free apps. It’s been climbing all day is currently number 7 (it was number 10 when I started this article) and should be number 1 by tonight.

What do you get when you couple a Seattle-based cartoonist named Molly Norris decree that May 20th be declared “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” and Facebook?? Well, over 100,000 fans of both pro and con Facebook Fan pages regarding the idea and a Pakistani court has ordered parts of Facebook be blocked. You can read about it here. All of this seems way too emotional to me. I mean Salmon Rushdie was signing books in New York yesterday despite the fact that Iran still has a death sentence on him. I guess Ms. Norris is hoping this story doesn’t get any bigger.

I know, not exactly about iPhones, but everyone knows Facebook and Twitter apps are some of the best on your iPhone so they warrant discussion. Anyway, I love Facebook and Twitter, but managing them can be a pain. Here I explain the difference between setting up a Facebook group versus a fan page and getting a user friendly url. I learned the hard way – the idiot way If you use Facebook and like this website,please consider becoming a fan of iPhone4idiots here! Continue Reading…

Last week Google launched Google Buzz, which is their attempt to enter social networking and take on Facebook. Why, well Facebook has somewhere north of 400 million users which is a twice that of Gmail. Just like they are going after Apple and the very profitable smartphone market with Nexus One, Google wants to take on Facebook as well. So what is it? Basically, its Gmail with status updates and photo and link sharing. I’ve been playing around with it for the past week and thought I’d give you my initial thoughts. I know, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Well nothing really other than social networking apps are among the most popular on the iPhone. Whether Facebook or the numerous Twitter apps, they both look great and are so simple to use on your iPhone or iPod Touch that even my mom does it. So how does Google Buzz stack up? Continue Reading…