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It even works as a calculator.

OK. Starting to wonder how many PDF files you might receive if you requested for one, too?

The implication of not removing this is that you have no control over what applications your friends are adding, and what these third-party applications are doing with your data. With this new feature, it makes it privacy settings more complicated than it ever was, and even much more important to protect yourself… unless you would like your (supposedly private) data mined.

These settings all checked by default, which means before anyone discovered this feature.. who knows how much information has been unwilling shared? Thanks, Facebook!

Share this and let your friends know.

It counts the number of Likes, comments, shares, RSVPs and tagged mentions of a brand that take place within the social network. On top of that, there will also be ‘Number of Friends of Fans,’ and ‘Weekly Total Reach’.

‘Number of Friends of Fans’ gives page admins a count of the total number of friends a page’s fans have collectively. It gives page administrators a better understanding into the potential reach of their page, which could potentially be used when doing “Sponsored Stories”.

‘Weekly Total Reach’ gives a measure of how many total people have posted something about your page, how many news organizations within Facebook have referenced it, and how much viral distribution the elements of your page have generated.

Those are all great features, but it just means reporting just got more complicated for marketers.

It is definitely a different culture – and better still, they recently renamed the page to Blackberry Singapore. How many of  the 170K fans would be Singaporeans?

In this series, every week I jot down my experience and review about a new, free application that I’m trying out; whether on Facebook, the iTune Store, or Blackberry App World.

So Shaker emerged as the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2011. Of course, just like every other TechCrunch reader, I was excited to test it out. In my first minute of loading the app, Shaker seems like a mash-up of Second Life and Habbo Hotel. The only difference seems to be that the entire experience is based in a bar.

“Ahh, another 2D chat room, do we really need another?” I thought.

Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar, your pictures are placed on an virtual wall, you can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear and you can even buy people drinks.

What I definitely did not like was how the application wanted permission to almost every bit of my data.

I wasn’t too comfortable with surrendering so much information (must be thanks to the enlightenment from my friends who are into security theferret_). The idea is that it is easier to make friends if you both have something in common, and on Shaker, you can easily start a conversation with someone whom you know also likes the something that you are passionate about.

For myself, I wouldn’t really find it fun because I was never a serious chatter to begin with. My experiences on Habbo were purely for entertainment where I dressed my avatar up funnily and typed nonsensical in game. (haha sorry). It will be interesting to see how this startup with $3 million funding will turn out.

Check out the next picture for the rates. You do the math. Go figure how much it’d cost for that imba virtual good. Would anyone buy it?

Update: turns out to be a bug. Probably released before double checking.

The professional social networking site LinkedIn‘s iPhone application just got a new re-skin and I’m loving it.

The last version wasn’t bad at all; but probably because the layout and interface was just like any other application, I’ve even forgotten how it looks like. This new interface is much simpler, and of course much prettier now that it has a classier theme to it.

The main highlight of the upgrade: you can access Groups from the app now.

If you haven’t tried the new app, download it here.
While you’re at it, connect with me too. I’ll be keen to connect with other like-minded individuals.

Usually, I would just glance through to see what settings the application would do to my profile. If they want to access my basic information, yeah, I’m okay. Access to post stuff on my wall? It’s annoying, but still ok if I can delete them. But look what this app is trying to do. Manage my Pages.

Why the hell would they want access to log in and manage my pages?!?!?!  It came off as a rude shock, I find that totally unnecessary for a photo contest,  in fact I see no point in that. Needless to say, I rejected access because I won’t wish to risk anything. but if they had set this on mistake, I think it is a serious problem and they are taking security too lightly.

[Update on 3 Sept '11] Here’s another by HPB’s Beat the Blues. They want to access my Facebook chat. :O

I’ve always been a big fan of The Sims – in fact when it launched The Sims 3 in June 2009 I upgraded my laptop so  I could satisfy the specifications required for gameplay.  When the Facebook app Sims Social first launched its open beta about two weeks ago, I only had 3 friends playing it. I decided I’d block it for a while since it required many friend interactions to unlock more features to proceed; and since I had only 3 friends  active I abandoned it for a while.

Yesterday, I logged back on and now I have at least 35 new friends who are playing it. How did it grow so fast? I realised it was the sharing feature was why I stopped playing but it was also what led to the success of the game. Afterall, it is Sims SOCIAL, right.

What is Tiny Tower?

A free-to-play game on the Apple App Store (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) lets you build a tiny tower and manage the businesses and citizens (called bitizens) that inhabit it! Tiny Tower picked up a million downloads in four days.

Why Is It Successful?

It’s just another game that we know is lame yet still get addicted to; honestly I don’t know why I play it even when I know it is endless.

First of all, kudos to the super cute pixel art. The colours are vibrant, characters are randomly cute.
The updates on BitBook (facebook spoof) are stupidly hilarious.

Secondly, it is easy to earn bux, but also not too easy. These are used to mostly speed up the game, it is possible to earn them through random tasks, but is mostly based on chance. Because it is so hard to save up, it is tempting to pay to buy those bux if you aren’t patient enough.

Objectives of Game

Apparently, this is one of those games like GodFinger where there is no end to the game. In fact, it isn’t even clear what the objective of the game is.

• Assign as many bitizens to their dream jobs as possible
• Save enough bux to upgrade elevators
• Build as many floors as possible

Why I Stopped

• Shops have different restocking time, so basically every few minutes something is waiting to be clicked
• As the number of shops increased, it took too long to restock
• Gets dizzy when you scroll up and down the tower

It’s one of the best free to play games, god knows why it is so addictive… people know it is pointless yet they play it. At least I wasn’t one of those who paid real cash for bux.