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GO Launcher EX

GO Launcher has been around since the Froyo days and has its fair share of features that still keep it an old favorite among Android users. It's a robust launcher that transforms your Android experience, allowing you to customize your icons, grid, and dock dimensions; transition animations; … Read more

Facebook has acquired the team behind Spaceport, a cross-platform development company specializing in Web-based games, the companies announced Tuesday.

The move shows a continued focus for Facebook on mobile development expertise.

"After looking at Facebook's mission of building best-in-class mobile experiences, as well as much internal discussion with my co-founder and mentor and YouWeb Incubator founder Peter Relan, our team saw a huge potential in working more closely with Facebook," Spaceport co-founder Ben Savage wrote on the company's site today. "With that said, today we're announcing that the Spaceport.io team will move as … Read more

In its first quarter of this year, Facebook, according to its lobby disclosure form, shelled out $2.45 million on lobbying costs. The figure amounts to a 75 percent increase from the $1.4 million it spent in the previous quarter, and a 277 percent increase from the mere $650,000 it spent in the first quarter of 2012. In 2012, Facebook spent a total of $4 million on lobbying efforts.

The company's lobbying budget is now in the same ballpark as that of … Read more

Facebook announced Tuesday that it has spruced up the mobile version of Pages, which serve as the Facebook identities of brands and businesses, to better match the needs of people who access them on smartphones.

Pages accessed via mobile browser or iOS app now feature a fresh design and layout that pushes essential business information such as location to the top of the page and better promotes consumer actions such as "likes," check-ins, and shares.

The social network has simplified and enhanced the mobile Pages experience for administrators, who can now more easily switch between public and admin … Read more

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an independent U.S. securities regulator that seeks to protect investors, is asking lawmakers in around 10 states to amend their legislation to allow financial firms to peak at social media accounts when employee misuse is suspected, a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

The fear seems to be that brokers could use their social media accounts to spread information that would influence stocks, and that misdeeds would go unchecked without … Read more

At last, the Facebook phone has been unveiled, except it's not really a phone, it's more of a suite of apps with a launcher.

Social networks have been able to infiltrate most aspects of our lives so far without having to entangle themselves in the messy business of designing or making a hardware product, so why start now?… Read more

Facebook has begun using a Google image format called WebP that could lower its network costs and speed up its Web site. But the move has angered some members.

When people upload JPEG photos, the social-networking juggernaut converts them into the WebP format. And now it also apparently has begun delivering those images to people with browsers that can handle them, which today means Chrome and Opera.

Even if it's just a limited test, Facebook's scale and influence means that's a major endorsement of Google's image format.

But problems arise when it's time for people … Read more

Facebook seems to be behind what one ubertechie blog calls "one of the longest-running mysteries in the data center industry."

The company is reportedly looking at building a $1.5 billion data facility in Altoona, Iowa -- an effort previously referred to by state and local officials as the rather cloak-and-dagger sounding "Project Catapult."

The Des Moines Register cited legislative sources in reporting the news, in a story that was picked up by insider data blog Data Center Knowledge.

The Register reported that the facility is being touted as "the most technologically advanced" in … Read more

Early this morning, the public Facebook page called Binders Full of Women apologized for posting Boston police scanner chatter that erroneously identified a missing Brown undergrad as a suspect in this week's Boston Marathon bombings. The Binders Full of Women feed author subsequently deleted the post. Earlier, in the midst of multiple other posts about the unfolding Watertown, Mass., manhunt and shootout that started last night, the author defensively noted that any misinformation must be excused because, "I am NOT a journalist, and I am only relaying information from the [Boston Police Department] scanner and news sources." … Read more