snap

This past July, Facebook's excellent iPhone application joined similar apps for BlackBerry and Palm to bring core Facebook features to mobile socializers in a distinctive Facebook wrapper. Curiously, there's no official software for the Windows Mobile platform, and no word that a program is in the works. In fact, Facebook has kept mum to my inquiries, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile team responded with evasive PR nonsense.

That doesn't mean social butterflies of the Windows Mobile breed are left in a lurch. Two software companies have stepped up to bring their own freeware versions of Facebook to … Read more

Ever wanted to post a screenshot or thumbnail of a Web site on your blog? Probably not. But if you're like us then this situation comes up all the time. Enter SnapCasa, a service that lets you drop in a preview of any site in one of three thumbnail sizes that will regularly update as time goes on. We debated using a service like this for this year's Webware 100 winner pages, but opted instead to use static images since seeing what Web services looked like years later can be kind of interesting (see Archive.org).

The tool … Read more

There was a strange moment this afternoon at the Snap Summit 2.0 in San Francisco. Dave Morin, Facebook's Senior Platform Manager was fielding some audience questions after spending the better part of an hour giving a very broad overview of Facebook's development efforts to a room full of mostly developers. For many, the event was the highlight of the day in a conference whose very promotional materials were made to emulate the look of a Facebook profile page.

An audience member in the back called Morin out on preaching openness despite the fact Facebook is one of … Read more

I'm here at the SNAP Summit in San Francisco. Most of the people in the overflow crowd are trying to figure out how to make their sites more social--how to tap into the viral effect that's busted companies such as RockYou and Slide into the big leagues.

Joshua Porter, who runs Bokardo Design, launched the day by offering up five principles for effective social design. The undercurrent of his talk: Serve your users and they'll keep coming back. That's a simple thing to say, of course. Here are Porter's five tips to making it real: … Read more

The world doesn't exactly have a burning need for another MP3 player, but that obviously didn't stop Panasonic from making one. But the company did seem to recognize that it was going to have to do something different to get more than a passing glance from a jaded Japanese market.

So it chose to focus on battery life and noise cancellation, according to Akihabara News, claiming 100 hours of continuous play on one charge and 83 percent elimination of ambient noise. The SV-SD870N is the latest installment of the "D-snap" line of media players, which share … Read more

The Snap Instant Communicator is one of the weirdest little gizmos I've seen in a while. It's a push-to-talk intercom system that runs on a PC and it only works when the Snap hardware console--which is just a few buttons, a speaker, and a microphone--is plugged in to it.

The console has eight labeled lights for the people you talk to the most. Once you add other Snap users into your account and label their spots on your device, all you have to do is press the button next to a name, and if the other party accepts … Read more

SnapVillage, a microstock site founded in June by stock-art sales company Corbis to compete with rivals such as Fotolia and Getty Images' iStockphoto, has expanded to include international sales.

Although the site now works beyond the United States, the Web site is English-only for now. The company plans to localize with more languages later, a representative said. The site is still officially in beta testing.

The site receives about 10,000 new image uploads a week, SnapVillage said in a statement Wednesday. Although there are several rivals already better established, Corbis believed it would be better off starting its own … Read more

One of the niftier functions of Apple's Safari browser is the SnapBack function. Now a Firefox extension with the same name of SnapBack introduces this feature to Mozilla users and comes with some helpful options beyond the base function of providing a quick way to return to an impermanent bookmark.

… Read more

Targets of the paparazzi need not worry just yet: This little camera ring is only a concept model for now. But the way things are going--with cameras built into pens and phones packing 5-megapixel sensors--this "Canon Snap" proposed by designer David M?nscher could probably become a reality in the not-too-distant future, with its single-button interface and other spycam-like features. And should that happen, stalkers everywhere will rejoice.

(Source: Crave Asia)