Facebook to Let Users Update Twitter Accounts From Its Site

Facebook is becoming more user-friendly with Twitter as it tries to step up its game and defend against the growth of full-featured Google+.

People with accounts on both Facebook and Twitter have been able to update them both simultaneously for a long time -- but from Twitter to Facebook, and not the other way around. That’s about to change.

Facebook says it will soon let you send your status updates to Twitter, a feature it previously only offered for the Facebook pages curated by businesses, bands, celebrities and other public figures. Soon, average users will be able to update both social networks at once from Facebook,says ZDNet.

The upcoming feature is part of Facebook’s new Subscriber functionality, which lets you adjust the amount and type of activity you see from friends, follow the public updates of people on Facebook who are not your friends and opt-in to share your public updates with people you don’t know but who might be interested in you.

The latest news likely is meant to coincide with F8, the Facebook Developer Conference, which will be held Sept. 22 in San Francisco.

Wanna get started once the feature is rolled out? Here’s how you do it, according to Facebook’s September update of its Subscribe for Public Figures document.

Go to facebook.com/twitter and link your profile or page to your Twitter account. Once you link your accounts, your Twitter account will be updated every time you post a public update to Facebook. Only posts whose privacy you set to Public using your inline controls are eligible for this.

Consider this: Twitter’s 140-character blips don’t feel quite right on Facebook, which lets people post longer updates. Also, frequent Twitter updates are right in line with the ethos of the site, while they can be annoying on Facebook.

But going the other direction -- from Facebook to Twitter -- might be appealing if for no other reason than providing content for people who struggle to keep their Twitter stream interesting for fickle followers who can unfollow you on a whim.

How to Download and Install Windows 8 Into a Virtual Machine

Here's how to download and install the Windows 8 Developer Preview into a virtual machine on your PC.

We've shown you how to go about installing the new Windows 8 developer preview on a brand-new hard drive or a partition of your existing hard drive--that's easy.

However, most of you probably just want to check out Windows 8 without making a commitment to installing the OS on its own separate drive (or drive portion). No problem! You can still fiddle with the new OS in an environment that's much easier to remove once tinkering time ends, thanks to the power of virtual machines--applications that let you run a virtual PC inside your PC (cue Inception music).

Go grab VirtualBox and install the default package. Once you're finished, you'll open right into a fresh copy of the application. This is where you'll begin creating your system inside your system.

To start, click on the giant New button in the upper-left corner of the app. Give your virtual machine a clever name and select Windows 7 as the operating system. Make sure that your choice of OS (32-bit or 64-bit) matches whichever version of Windows 8 you downloaded.

Click Next, and you'll be taken to a screen that asks how much memory you'd like to devote to the virtual operating system. The 32-bit version of Windows 8 requires 1 gigabyte at minimum, and the 64-bit version requires 2GB, but the more RAM you can give the virtual OS, the better it will run. Click Next once you've made your choice.

Leave the "Virtual Hard Disk" options and subsequent "Create New Virtual Disk" options exactly as they are, unless you think you'll need to access your virtual hard drive in a separate virtual machine application. You can select either a "Dynamically allocated" or "Fixed size" virtual hard drive based on your personal preferences--we suggest you use the "Dynamically allocated" disk on our installation. On the next screen, make sure that your virtual disk has at least 16GB allocated to it for the 32-bit version of Windows 8. The 64-bit version needs a minimum of 20GB.

Once you're ready, click Next to create your virtual machine.

When your new virtual PC is ready, it will appear in VirtualBox's list of available machines (powered off at the moment, we note). Highlight it and click the big Settings button. If your system supports hardware virtualization, you can give your virtual machine access to additional CPU cores via the System submenu. If you don't know whether your CPU supports hardware virtualization, you can check for yourself on Intel and AMD's websites. For Intel processors, look up your own processor model and check for virtualization under "Advanced Features." For AMD processors, look up your processor model and look for a feature listing called "AMD Virtualization Technology."

Now click on the Storage submenu and then on the Empty line underneath "IDE Controller." Click on the little CD icon next to the CD/DVD drive listing, and select the option, Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file. Scroll for the Windows 8 .iso file you previously downloaded to your actual (not virtual) system and load that up. Now click on the big OK button at the bottom of the overall Settings window.

Cross your fingers and click on the big Start button to load your virtual machine for the first time. If all has gone well, the first thing you'll see is an annoying pop-up message that tells you about your keyboard and mouse capturing options. Ignore it. VirtualBox will boot and go right into the Windows 8 installation mechanism. Now take a breath: You've made it past the tricky part. And before you know it, you'll be fiddling around in Windows 8's funky new user interface faster than you can say, "Virtualwho?"

Now have fun in Windows 8!

Videos, Dating, Amazon, Friends, Tabs and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU

Turkish video applications, raunchy dating apps, a friend quiz in Chinese, birthday reminders, Amazon sweepstakes, invite friend tabs and custom tab apps were on our list of apps that emerged by monthly active users this week.

The apps on our list grew from between 84,800 and 324,400 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define “emerging” applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.


                                  Top Gainers This Week

Turkish video apps on our list this week included Genç Video, topping our list with 324,400 MAU while another, VideoPro, grew by 105,000 MAU. Another video app, Veoh Videos, grew by 125,300 MAU. These apps allow users to view, share, Like and comment upon videos on the app, and sometimes auto-post videos to a user’s Wall as well. Dating apps Fbp with 132,000 MAU and the raunchier ! Make Luv 2 me ! with 126,100 MAU were on the list, too.

In the middle of the list were apps that did a variety of things. 21個問題 with 121,800 MAU is an app that asks users questions of their friends then posts the answers to the Wall. Birthday Reminder grew by 108,100 MAU and promises to automatically post to friends’ walls for birthdays with a customizable message. Amazon Sweepstakes grew by 105,000 MAU.

An app that replaces the older function on Facebook Pages to invite your friends made an appearance on the list, too. The Turkish version, Sayfalar için Arkadaş Davet Butonu, grew by 113,300 MAU and the English version, Invite Your Friends Button for Pages, by 101,700 MAU. Then a pair of tab apps, Static Tab – Welcome Tab for Pages with 101,300 MAU and Hike FREE Tab Builder for Pages: New Static FBML with 84,800 MAU, made the list, too.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Facebook Locks the Top Navigation Bar in Place as Users Scroll

Many Facebook users are seeing the site’s top navigation bar locked to the top of the browser window no matter where they scroll. This floating navigation bar gives users access to their notifications, friend requests, messages, and links to the home page, profile, and account settings at all times. Previously, if users scrolled down the news feed, a profile, or other page on the site the top navigation bar would scroll with it and become hidden from view.

By giving users access to navigation functions even when they’re scrolled down a page, Facebook may be able to reduce the likelihood that they’ll leave the site when they finish viewing something. Instead, they’ll be tempted to visit another part of the site, especially if they have pending notifications, requests, or messages.

Users may recognize the floating navigation bar as it’s used on both Twitter and Google+. Some might say this is one more way Facebook has followed the lead of its competitors when its comes to design.

Users may also notice that while playing certain social games such as CityVille, their right sidebar that contains the games ticker and ads stays fixed when they scroll. This is not the case on all games and apps or at all window widths, though. We believe the fixed sidebar for games depends on how third-party developers utilize the fluid canvas option released last month, and is not related to Facebook’s cross-site implementation of the floating navigation bar.

The rollout of persistently visible navigation options, along with several recent product releases and site changes, could be groundwork for a more significant redesign to be launched at f8 next week. Rather than shock users by changing many things about the site at once, Facebook may be opting to push changes one at a time.

Facebook tested a design of the news feed a few months ago that removed the Most Recent feed and locked both the top navigation bar as well as the left navigation bar of bookmarks. If our theory holds true, Facebook might be trying to get users accustomed to the fixed navigation bar before it alters the news feed at f8.

It’s safe to assume that removing the second tab of the news feed would significantly alter user behavior and cause some backlash. Minimizing additional confusion by keeping other design elements stable, even if just for a week, could increase the chances of a successful reception.

We’re seeing the locked navigation bar across our accounts, so it may have been rolled out to a majority or all of the user base. If you’re not seeing it yet, or have feedback on the new design, let us know in the comments.

Windows 8: Microsoft's Swiss Army knife vision

Microsoft, in revealing details of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system this week at its Build developer conference here, has presented its vision for computing in a tablet era that's starkly different from the one offered by rival Apple.

Apple believes that consumers will want discreet devices that are designed to take on specific tasks. That's why its computers run a beefy operating system designed to handle heavy-duty computer processing required, for example, by computer-assisted design applications, and its iPads run a much lighter-weight operating system that's fine for surfing the Web or reading a digital book.

That's not the vision Microsoft's pursuing. The software giant believes consumers will want a meaty operating system that can run on a variety of devices--everything from a slim tablet up
to water-cooled high-end gaming system. Not surprisingly,
that operating system is Windows.

"Their approach is to take the PC OS and bring it to the tablet which is opposite of what Apple is doing," said Jason Maynard, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities. "Sometimes when you have a hammer, everything looks like nail."

Maynard doesn't think that Microsoft's approach is without merit. The company is simply playing to its strengths. After all, Windows runs more than 1 billions PCs worldwide. And when Windows 8 arrives, most likely late next year, it will ship on as many as 400 million PCs, according to some analyst estimates. At the Build conference, Microsoft harped on the potential market to developers in hopes of convincing them to create new applications for Windows 8.

"The opportunity for building these applications is Windows. These applications will run on all new Windows 8 PCs, desktop, laptop, Windows tablets, small, big screens, all-in-ones--every Windows PC, whether it's a new PC or an upgrade from Windows 7," Windows President Steven Sinofsky told the 5,000 developers gathered for his keynote address at the conference on Tuesday. "That could be 400 million people when this product launches. That's a market opportunity for all of you."

The challenge, though, will be convincing developers to create slick applications that take advantage of the touch-enabled Metro interface of Windows 8. And it's likely that they'll only do that if they believe hardware makers will come up with compelling designs that encourage users to use the new operating system as a tablet and not just the PCs that Windows has traditionally run.

That's why Microsoft has been working with hardware makers to insure that Windows 8 can run on ARM chips. The ARM system-on-a-chip architecture means that devices themselves can be thinner and lighter. That should open the door to some slim and attractive tablets running the operating system. But those ARM chips won't be able to run some legacy Windows applications unless programmers go through the bother of porting those applications.

That means that ARM tablets running Windows 8 won't have complete backward-compatible functionality. And it removes some of the advantage that running Windows brings to a tablet.

Those legacy applications will be able to run on Windows 8 computers using the x86 architecture with chips from Intel and AMD. But that architecture requires more hardware components, meaning the devices themselves may wind up being thicker and heavier. That's fine for slipping into a dock to handle traditional workplace computing tasks such as crafting a presentation. But those bulkier devices aren't particularly comfortable to sit back and read a book on.

To be fair, it's still early. Microsoft and its partners have at least a year to work out the kinks before Windows 8 and the variety of devices on which it will ship debut. And they recognize the challenges.

Qualcomm is one of the key Microsoft partners, working to optimize its ARM-based Snapdragon chip for Windows 8. It's also working hard to help developers figure out how to port legacy applications to the new platform, though it realizes it can't tackle every one.

"Our focus is going to be on the top applications that address the top 90 percent or so of users," said Steve Horton, director of software in the chipset division at Qualcomm. "But if you're using Quicken 99, you may be stuck."

Similarly, AMD is pushing hard to help its partners create ever thinner devices that can handle the broadest swath of applications.

"There is definitely the opportunity for thinner, lighter devices" running x86 chips, said Gabe Gravning, senior manager for client product marketing at AMD. "The market is moving in that direction."

That's Microsoft's big bet with Windows 8. Microsoft sees Windows as the Swiss Army knife that can meet everyone's computing needs. It's got to hope that the prevailing market wisdom of Apple, providing specific devices running different operating systems tailored for discrete purposes, will prove flawed.

Facebook Takes Lesson from Google+, Revamps Friends Lists

Facebook began rolling out smart friend lists to users, in what is seen as a response to Google+ circles. The new tool makes it easier for you to group Facebook friends into categories such as close friends, acquaintances, or work colleagues, and it should be live for most users by the end of the week, Facebook said in a blog post.

Some of the new smart lists on Facebook will be automatically created, including work, school, family, and city (based on your location). You will be able to add or remove friends from these lists manually, as well as create your own lists, such as close friends and acquaintances. As with Google+, each list will have its own news feed, too.

With the close friends list you will see everything a person posts in the News Feed, while the acquaintances list will show only important postings, like relationship statuses or location changes. People you add to the restricted list will see only your public posts (another new feature introduced recently).

Google+ is the hottest contender for Facebook’s social networking crown. It has garnered more than 25 million users since it was launched as a limited beta in June. Among other features that it has received praise for, Google+ uses circles to easily organize your friends, so you could still have people following you (Twitter-style) and share things with friends or selected groups (Facebook-style).

However, Facebook’s smart friend lists are not a direct rip-off Google+. Facebook’s Blake Ross, a product director, explained in a blog post that the smart friend lists are just improvements of the lists feature, which has existed for several years, but was hard to find (deep in the old, confusing privacy    settings) and clumsy and time-consuming to organize.

By automating most of the smart lists, Facebook has one-upped Google+, as you don’t have to add someone to a circle/list every time you have a new friend/follower. Facebook’s lists will also feature suggestions, which should make it easier to add the right friends without too much effort.