high tech roadshow

Facebook announced on Thursday its "chat heads" feature will open up a new way to communicate with friends, regardless of what you're doing on your Android phone at the time.

صورة: ‏‎Facebook Chat Heads for iPhone and iPad begin rolling out today to some users: http://on.mash.to/Z0l4ai‎‏

As a part of its new Facebook Home interface on Android-powered smartphones and eventually tablets, the company introduced functionality called chat heads, allowing you to instantly message with friends, no matter what app you're already in (from checking email and playing games to browsing the web).
A floating picture of a friend's head appears on the screen — their Facebook profile image — and can be dragged via your finger to anywhere on the screen. You can tap it to open a message window, and more than one chat head can be on screen at one time.

Facebook is updating its iOS apps to include the chat heads feature this week, with the necessary update hitting the app store Tuesday, the company has announced.
iPhone users who download the update will start to see chat heads pop up over the next couple of weeks, Facebook says.

Chat heads was unveiled as part of the Facebook Home announcement two weeks ago. Messages received on Facebook appear as bubbles with your friends' heads in them. You can drag the bubbles around the sides of your screen. Clicking on them reveals the message; dragging them to the bottom dismisses the chats altogether.
On Facebook Home, a new downloadable layer that sits on top of Android, chat heads appear on your home screen and lock screen. On the iPhone and iPad, they will only appear within the Facebook app.
Keith Schroepfer, CTO and VP of engineering told the D: Dive Into Mobile conference that the iOS app update featuring chat heads would be pushed out at some point this week. Facebook later clarified that the update would arrive Tuesday, but that chat heads would be a staggered rollout.
Do you have the chat heads update? Think it's a useful feature? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of Facebook

Today Facebook revealed another much-anticipated new product: No, not a Facebook phone like many thought. Not really, anyway. Its new product is called Facebook Home, an optional home screen for some Android phones that puts the social network front and center on your mobile device.

What's it like? Well, it's kind of like this:

Here's how Facebook describes it: "As soon as you turn on your phone or press the home button, you see a stream of posts from News Feed."

This new feature is called "Cover Feed," and it rotates through what's happening on Facebook at that moment: new pictures that your friends upload, links they share and status updates they post. No need to launch a Facebook app, the latest from Facebook cycles through, automatically. Always.

And lastly, it has a new feature called "Chat Heads." Essentially, they're chat bubbles with a friend's image that pop up whenever someone messages you on Facebook, regardless of what you're currently using your phone for. And it stays there until you swipe it away or reply.

If Facebook is the way you communicate—messages, chats, sharing, posts, etc.—then you'll probably love Facebook Home. The design is innovative and the new features integrate the social network into everything you do.

But if you're a casual user, still rely on emails or—gasp—phone calls to communicate with friends, Facebook Home will likely drive you insane—thanks to the inundation of constant images and updates, the "Chat Heads" popping up when you're searching for directions. Facebook Home is akin to the "interrupting cow" joke.

More than 60 percent of Facebook users have voluntarily taken a break from the social network for a period of several weeks or more due to "Facebook fatigue," and yet it is still one of the top destinations for smartphone users.

Facebook Home will be available for download from the Google Play Store on April 12 if you own the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galazy S III or the Samsung Galaxy Note II. If you don't, and you're in the market for a new phone, the HTC First, which comes preloaded with Facebook Home, ships on April 12 in the U.S.

Will you try out Facebook Home? Why or why not? Let me know in the c

Enhanced by Zemanta

keep up with the newest technologies and contemplate about how these will be used in the future. On this blog I'll share my thoughts about the future of technology, based on the

high Tech RoadShow inventions of today.