Facebook has begun to test its Graph Search product within its iOS and Android applications, the company has confirmed.
The change was first noticed by Mashable reporter Seth Fiegerman, who tweeted a screenshot of the interface that looks very similar to Graph Search found on the web.
Graph Search was launched in limited testing by Facebook in January 2013 and available to all users in June 2013 on desktop. It is designed to let you filter through all the content you are connected to on Facebook and find the relevant information and images you want or need.
Read: What is Facebook Graph Search?
During Facebook's fourth quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerburg said: "We're really early in the game on [Graph Search]. You can see that because we haven't even really rolled out our mobile version of Graph Search yet and we're a mobile company. Pretty soon, you should expect us to roll out the mobile version of this. I think that's going to be an important step because most of the usage of Facebook overall is on mobile."
Facebook further said it now has 945 million monthly active users on mobile, which is a 39 per cent increase over the year-ago quarter. As Facebook's user base becomes more mobile attached, it's a necessity for Facebook to move Graph Search past just the desktop.
Zuckerburg's "pretty soon" words on Graph Search are here sooner than expected, even though the testing on mobile on a very limited basis. It's not clear when it may launch to the public.
Via: The Verge
Source: Seth Fiegerman
Researchers have found a way to warn users every time when Android applications are tracking their location. A dedicated app is being developed for the Android platform that will warn you when apps snoop on your whereabouts, and it will pop up a warning to let you know that you are being spied on. The new app, said to be coming on Android’s Google Play store within the next two months, has found a novel way to detect app spying without requiring you to root your device.
The new app aims to help ordinary users understand when their location is being accessed by third party applications. It will display a large and easy to understand banner saying “Your location is accessed by [name of app]”. Currently, Android does show a small crosshair icon in the upper taskbar that appears every time an app accesses your location, but researchers have concluded that the meaning of this icon is obscure to the regular user. In fact, a field study led by Rutgers University’s Janne Lindqvist, concluded that users were shocked to learn just how frequently apps use their location data, after dealing with a prototype of the new notification app.
“People were really surprised that some apps were accessing their location, or how often some apps were accessing their location,” Lindqvist said.
The end goal of the upcoming app is first, to raise awareness among people that they are being tracked very often, and second, to put pressure on Google and app developers to be more conservative with location queries.
Interestingly, Google’s has already flip-flopped positions on the location permission issue. First, with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean it allowed users to disable permissions for specific apps, and then, shortly after, removed the newly introduced feature in Android 4.4 KitKat.
It’s also interesting how Lindqvist’s team had to use a function within the Android location application programming interface (API) to get a signal for every access to location. “People have previously done this with platform-level changes—meaning you would need to ‘root’ the phone,” says Lindqvist. “But nobody has used an app to do this.”
source: MIT Technology Review
How would you like to recover 1GB of storage space on your Apple iPhone or Apple iPad? You might not need the extra storage now, but you will probably be happy to know that it is there if you need it. To recover the extra storage, what you are doing is deleting unwanted OTA updates. It might seem hard to believe, but the first OTA update for iOS came with an update in November 2011 to fix a battery problem on iOS 5.0.1.But we digress. With iOS 7.1 beta 3, iPhone and iPad users have the ability to remove OTA updates that are collecting dust in your device. To delete those unwanted files, open the Settings application on your home screen. Tap on General > Usage. Look for Storage and tap on iOS 7.1 beta 3. Then, tap on Delete Updateand you are finished. You just opened up about 1GB of storage space. Keep in mind that this is available on a beta version of iOS and the feature might not make it to the final version of iOS 7.1.
Last month, we passed along the word of an update for the Windows Phone version of UC Browser. Now, the Android version has received an update that is supposed to make the already fast third party browser, work even faster. UC Web, the developers behind the multiple-award winning app, says that the latest update quickens speeds by 15% on 3G and Wi-Fi connections.How is this improvement in speed achieved? Is it some sort of black magic or witchcraft? Nah, the bump in speed is credited to the use of algorithms that make the browser more efficient in dealing with data retrieval and storage. And the update also brings some new features like the Web Applications Center which allows users to add web apps to the browser. And the new Image Viewer lets you create a photo album effect using all of the pictures on the webpage you're currently viewing.The UC Browser now has a widget for quick access to the "rich services" on the browser, right from your home page. The update also includes the usual performance improvements and adds support for more regional languages. It's all just a free download away from the Google Play Store.
