Facebook has open sourced the Pop animation engine that drives its Paper app, now available in a listing on GitHub.
The Pop engine supports basic static animations, and also has spring and decay dynamic animations for building realistic, physics-based interactions. The Paper app has been praised for its design, and now developers will be able to access the same engine that drives it for their own iOS and OS X apps.
Social networking giant Facebook today has refreshed its iOS Messenger application, redesigned from the ground up last November, with a few new features you should know about.
The biggest news in Facebook Messenger 5.0, available free for the iPhone, is its newly added ability to exchange video messages from your library with other Messenger users. Previously, you could only share photos and short voice recordings using the app.
Other enhancements worth mentioning include easier photo sharing, improvements to the search feature, a tweaked user interface making it easier to send photos, voice messages and more...
After acquiring virtual headset maker Oculus Rift for $2 billion (the deal got a thumbs-up from feds), Facebook now seems to be moving into the fitness tracking space with news of its latest acquisition, Finnish startup ProtoGeo Oy that created the fitness-tracking app Moves, available free in the App Store.
The development comes amid some major reshuffling in the fitness and health tracking market.
For instance, Nike is currently in the process of shuttering its wearable-hardware division that produces FuelBand-branded accessories and there are rumors that the company is collaborating with Apple on a sensor-laden fitness band that would control other devices via gestures...
ShareDraft is a new jailbreak tweak that lets users save share sheet messages as drafts. The share sheets, which are used for iOS' built-in Twitter and Facebook sharing, normally force users to send a message or lose it. With ShareDraft installed, you can save messages to drafts and recover those drafts when sending future messages.
We've taken ShareDraft for a spin on video, and while it isn't perfect, heavy share sheet users might find it to be a handy add-on. Check past the break for the full video review.
Facebook is finally following the likes of Google and Yahoo and will launch an advertising network with a focus on mobile platforms, according to Recode.
Facebook hasn't publicly acknowledged its plans, but the publication says Facebook will take the wraps off its mobile ad network at its F8 developer conference in San Francisco at the end of April.
An ad network from Facebook essentially means you'll see Facebook ads even when you're not on Facebook - think any app on the App Store. In a way, Facebook's solution could go after Apple's iAd network, which has failed to catch wind with the industry.
Following yesterday's release of Facebook 9.0 for the iPhone and iPad with direct comment replies and other improvements, the social networking giant today issued the first major update to its Paper for iPhone application, which was released on February 3.
Paper version 1.1, now available free in the App Store, includes a bunch of useful features that were missing in the initial release.
You can now add photos to comments, get notified about upcoming birthdays and events, follow posts from your favorite groups, choose among the nine new article covers from outlets like Fox News, Bloomberg News, Mashable, FT, kottke, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Hacker News and more...
Facebook rolled out an update for its iOS client this evening, bringing the app to version 9.0. The update brings about a handful of new features, including the ability to reply directly to comments.
The ability to reply directly to comments has been a wish list item for users for quite some time. Don't get too excited though, it'll only be available on select Pages that have enabled the feature...
Social networking giant Facebook is bound to stir controversy all over again as it's just introduced a new friend-tracking feature. Similar to Apple's free Find My Friends iOS app, Facebook's Nearby Friends basically notifies you when your friends are nearby.
It's a rather radical idea, one Facebook said Thursday was designed to encourage people to "meet up and spend time together" in real life. Go figure. Learn more about Facebook's Find My Friends right below the fold...
Facebook-owned Instagram has responded to complaints from users who have noticed a sharp increase in the number of fake accounts and followers that are spamming them. If you fire up Instagram's free iPhone app and hit the Following button, you'll see a message about changes in followers.
"We've removed deactivated and spam accounts," the message reads. "Your list of followers and people you follow may have changed" as a result.
This is a welcomed albeit way overdue change.
I've been a frequent victim of spammers on Instagram. Some of these guys are really smart in how they get on your Following list with the ultimate goal of populating your feed with spammy posts often disguised as so-called viral images and videos...
Get ready to pay for items using Facebook, as the social network is said to be planning a payments service that could launch before the rumored iWallet from Apple.
Facebook hasn't officially confirmed the service, but it's working to receive regulatory approval for it in Ireland, according to a report from the Financial Times. The service is said to allow users to store money and make electronic payments through the social network. Essentially, it will put Facebook in competition with Google Wallet, PayPal, Isis, Square, and soon Apple, if the rumors are true...
Feeling chatty? Love Facebook? Good, get ready to embrace Facebook's polished Messenger app if you haven't already.
That's because the social networking giant is reportedly gearing up to kill chatting in its main iPhone and iPad application (available free in the App Store) and force users to download the nicely done Messenger software, also a free download.
The writing has been on the wall ever since Facebook revamped the Messenger app and rechristened the full-featured messaging tab in its mobile client as 'Messenger'. Instead of showing your messages, tapping that tab yanks you out of the Facebook app to launch Messenger...
Facebook has posted an update for its Pages Manager this afternoon, bringing the app to version 3.0. The update includes the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as a handful of new pinning and editing features.
Pages users can now pin and unpin posts to the top of their Page timelines from within the app, allowing them to highlight important events and other announcements. You can also now create and edit events on the iPad, and more...