We knew that Microsoft’s launch date was nearing for their mobile strategy re-boot. Designed to go head-to-head with the current heavy-weights of the smartphone arena — the Apple iPhone and the myriad Google Android-powered devices — what we didn’t know is what the new Windows Mobile 7 would look like and what sort of handsets would be available on launch day. That officially changes today with a big media shindig in New York hosted by CEO Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft is really hitting the ground running, with 9 new handsets that will run Redmond’s newest flavor of mobile OS. For those of us in North America, we have a total of 5 to choose from depending on your intended network. If that  choice is AT&T, your selections will be limited to the HTC Surround, Samsung’s Focus or the LG Quantum (pictured). T-Mobile customers will have one fewer option with either the new HTC HD7 or the Dell Venue Pro.

All of the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 phones will include the high-performance Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, the processor of choice for most Android-powered phones these days. Microsoft has indicated that the new phones will begin shipping in time for the holidays this year with even more choices arriving in 2011, including phones from both Sprint and Verizon Wireless.

Continue Reading →

From their corporate headquarters in Palo Alto on Wednesday, Facebook hosted a special media event to showcase some of their latest updates and changes to the popular social networking site.

While some of these site-enhancements, specifically the ability to upload hi-res images to Facebook  and an improved chat feature have leaked out prior to the event, a long list of new features were announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The event focused on three major new features including the ability to download your information from Facebook, a revamped application privacy dashboard, and finally the ability to create tightly-controlled groups.

Facebook’s new ‘Download Your Information’ tool allows users to port their data from Facebook in a .zip file format and essentially allows users to take their entire profile from Facebook and do with it what they please.

“People own and have control over all info they put into Facebook and “Download Your Information” enables people to take stuff with them,” Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday.

A one-click process will download everything from your profile, including your list of friends, events, all of your messages, notes, wall posts and all of your photo albums and videos. An intriguing idea, and one that lends credence to Facebook’s claims that they are an open platform concerned about your privacy and user’s ownership of their own personal data.

Continue Reading →

Have you heard about the new Twitter.com? The revised site offers embedded media, infinite scroll, and a host of new user experience enhancements. World-wide roll-out begins today, but depending on where exactly you are, it could take several weeks for the new features to reach you.

One of the biggest changes facing Twitter.com users is the different layout, which in my opinion, resembles the new iPad native Twitter app. Your @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists sits directly above your timeline now, creating an easy way to switch your view depending on what you’re interested in seeing. On the right, the default starting panel will show you recent followers, who you’re following, along with recent trending topics and suggestions on who to follow.

Clicking a specific tweet causes a panel to slide out to the right, showing you that user’s recent tweets and if they’ve embedded some media with their tweet, you can see a larger version of that as well. If the tweet was geo-tagged, the right-hand panel will display the location on a map. Twitter is offering an easy way to embed both photos and video directly in your tweets, which will be visible within other user’s timelines or visible upon clicking a tweet containing embedded media.

With partnerships with the likes of Vimeo, YouTube, twitpic, Flickr and others, embedding will be easy and seamless. One of the coolest examples of this new feature is sharing a link to an entire Flickr set of pictures. When you do, those who follow will be able to see a bunch of little thumbnails in their right pane. And near the bottom of this pane, a slideshow for the pictures is also automatically created. Very slick indeed.

Continue Reading →

Here at The Flickcast we like to experiment with cool gadgets, software and such that can add something fun to our otherwise dreary lives toiling away for the man. Of course you can find most of us on Twitter and Facebook and yes, the site itself has its own Twitter and Facebook presence as well.

Another social media site and software we’ve been having a go with is called GetGlue. I could describe the site and its mission to you, but instead I’m going to let the folks who know it best tell you all about it (Plus, its Friday and I’m lazy). From the GetGlue website:

GetGlue is a social network for entertainment, with more than 4.5M new unique ratings and check-ins for tv shows, movies, music and books every month. GetGlue users rate and check-in to things they like to get recommendations and earn rewards.

The GetGlue mobile app enables users to check-in to tv shows, movies, music and books, plus see what their friends are consuming in real-time. On GetGlue.com users can quickly build up their taste profile, get fresh suggestions every week, browse top lists and find taste neighbors.

And with that, a cool new idea was born which now consumes time in my day. Fortunately, the GetGlue team make it very easy to check in and share your favorite items with applications for the iPhone, Android and now the iPad.

This is good news for us iPad users because using the GetGlue iPhone app on the iPad wasn’t working so well. Now that there’s a native iPad app, my use of GetGlue will undoubtedly increase. Plus, did I mention the stickers?

Over the years, Google has had some pretty amazing ideas. Google Maps has revolutionized the way we travel, Gmail has changed the way we communicate, and Android has taken the smartphone world by storm. One thing that really never caught on, though, was the Google Wave service.

At first it sounded cool: on AIM or Google Talk, you’d always be able to see that whoever was chatting with you was in the middle of typing something. Instead, Google Wave allowed conversations to exist in real-time, with no more waiting in anticipation as the person on the other end typed away. This, theoretically, would speed up conversations, leading to more productivity and less time just staring at the screen, waiting for a reply.

Unfortunately, Google Wave is no more. Google had this to say today on their blog on the subject:

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

We wave goodbye to Google Wave, those of us who used it. Those who didn’t shall carry on emailing, IMing, Tweeting, Facebooking and  texting as usual.

Way back in October of 2009 I wrote an article entitled “Is Twitter the New Film Critic?“  I now know the answer to that question is “yes.” My theory was that with so many people talking about movies on Twitter it may be possible to assess the success or failure of a film based on film-goers opinions. Twitter commentary could feasibly act as a barometer for new releases and be the best movie critic to date.

I’m kicking myself for not acting on that idea because now someone beat me to the punch. TechCrunch brings word of a new site called fflick; a movie “review” site that taps into Twitter and determines how well films are trending on the social site by analyzing how often the film is mentioned:

“…you’ll find the Positive and Negative tweets, which display a list of tweets that the site has automatically categorized using its sentiment engine. After looking through a handful of movies, I found that the system was pretty good at identifying both negative and positive tweets, though there were occasionally some tweets that were only mentioning a film in passing or were mis-categorized.”

Having gone through some of the current film ratings myself on fflick I have to say the site reflected what I would consider to be the true sentiment regarding a particular film.  The way in which this process works is not unlike movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.

Continue Reading →

There are plenty of genre films flooding Hollywood today. What was once a niche market has now become quite a popular section of the box office on a week-to-week basis. With remakes, reboots, and sequels taking over, it’s nice to see a truly original film sneak by and surprise us all.

Catfish first popped up during the Sundance Film Festival, surprising nearly everyone in attendance, and confusing the rest. At that time, the film was declared “ready to blow away the public” but now we’re finally getting our first trailer for the film.

We don’t want to give too much away, but the title doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the film itself, so we’ll let the synopsis do the heavy lifting.

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel’s brother, Nev. They had no idea that their project would lead to the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives. A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times, Catfish is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.

Interest piqued? Well, check out the trailer after the jump, and make sure to sit through the first half so that you get to the good stuff. Catfish hits theaters on September 17th.

Continue Reading →

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are so popular they are starting to consume more and more time. People flock to them to update their status, communicate with friends and generally let the world know the ins and outs of their daily lives. It’s hard to believe Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg knew what he was starting back in the day but whatever he thought, I would bet the success of Facebook has surpassed even his wildest estimations.

If success means you end up having a movie made about your life and the social networking site you founded with a few friends, then check Zuckerberg off the list, he’s made it. David Fincher’s The Social Network tells the story of the founding of Facebook and the trails and tribulations associated with something that got very big very fast.

In it Zombieland‘s Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg and soon-to-be-Spider-Man Andrew Garfield plays co-founder Eduardo Severin. Plus, the film also features Rashida Jones, Josheph Mazello and Justin Timberlake. To help get you ready for the film, we’ve got a new teaser to share with you today, so click through to check it out.

The Social Network hits theaters on October 1st. What do you guys think? Are you interested in a movie about the founding of Facebook?

Continue Reading →

Spend a lot of time on social networks like Facebook? Well then, this movie is for you. The Social Network, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, tells the story of the founding of the most popular social network around, Facebook, and we’ve got the first teaser for the film to share with you today.

Like many teasers this one doesn’t give much away except that the film will take a look at the darker side of Facebook’s creation and follow its founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and president Sen Parker (Justin Timberlake) as they create the site just six short years ago and see it grow into the juggernaut it is today.

The trailer, courtesy of Mashable, gives us at least something to work with, though it’s really only lines of dialogue. However, the tagline (also seen in the poster) of “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies” should also be telling in that this film probably won’t gloss over the troubles, both internal and external, that inevitably plague an undertaking as huge as Facebook.

Check out the teaser after the jump. The Social Network hits theaters on October 1st.

Continue Reading →

Given the storm of bad press and user revolts Facebook has been suffering since announcing their “Open Graph” feature to better spread its data across the web, it’s rather puzzling that the company would announce an unrelated new security feature. But, announce it they did. With well-known tech pundit and podcaster Leo Laporte deleting his Facebook account on-the-air, Facebook has announced a new security method that ties your account to certain known computers and devices.

Similar to a method already in-use by most U.S. banking entities, Facebook will recognize computers and devices you typically log-in with, however when an unknown device attempts to log-in, you will be required to answer a challenge-response question to verify your identity. Facebook users will be able to approve which computers and mobile devices are allowed to log-in, and when an unauthorized attempt occurs, an email or text message will alert the user of the unauthorized access attempt.

While this heightened security is certainly unique in the social networking world, it does nothing to address the serious privacy issues being expressed about how Facebook data is being extended and used by unknown and potentially untrustworthy third-party web sites. Even Congress is getting involved, with four Democratic senators calling on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reconsider the recent changes in its privacy settings and asking the Federal Trade Commission to streamline guidelines regarding privacy on all social networks.

After the jump, I describe how to activate Facebook’s new authorized device/log-in notification feature, so read on if you’d like to try it for yourself.

Continue Reading →

Have you been looking for a way to keep track of all the important news and info for Marvel’s upcoming blockbuster release of Iron Man 2? Do you also happen to be an iPhone or iPod Touch user? If so, then this is your lucky day. Why? Well, read on.

Today, Marvel has released the Iron Man Central application into the wild and its available on the Apple iTunes Store for iPhone and iPod Touch. Here’s all the info for this new app directly from the Marvel press release:

Suit up with the world’s most popular super hero in anticipation of Marvel Studios’ Iron Man 2 feature film, and learn everything about Iron Man with this totally free app!

Iron Man Central is perfect for Iron Man fans new and old, providing access to all things Iron Man including news, exclusive wallpapers, video content, direct links to Iron Man content on iTunes and more. This brand-new app also seamlessly integrates with users’ e-mail, Twitter and Facebook accounts, allowing them to share exciting new Iron Man content with friends and family.

Head on over to iTunes to get this app. Also, be sure to check out some screenshots from it after the jump. Oh, and as if you didn’t already know, Iron Man 2 hits theaters this Friday.

Continue Reading →

Before we get started, congratulations are in order for QuakeHOLD I of Escondido California who is officially the one millionth user to sign up for a Foursquare account. It’s always a momentous occasion when an app or web service surpasses the one-million user threshold and I’m guessing that there will be some celebrating in Foursquare’s HQ this Friday as they savor this achievement. In fact, a tweet from the popular location-aware service implied exactly those sort of festivities are on tap:

“We’re closing in on 1 million users! Current count is 969,775. Looks like that’s we may have something to toast during Friday Happy Hour ”

Exciting stuff indeed, but what I’m really enthused about is a novel way for brands and organizations to leverage Foursquare to help users unlock their immediate surroundings. With Foursquare, one of the sticking points is that unless your friends live in your immediate area, Foursquare doesn’t really offer a lot of regional intelligence.

Sure, you could check-in at nearby locations, maybe even become the mayor, but after a while, the allure of such things wore off and the general sentiment seemed to be, “So what?”

Continue Reading →