Apple Inc. today has been awarded a new virtual store patent (Patent No. US007660749) by the U.S. Patent Office, indicating the company could roll out a virtual app store environment where users could customize their own virtual characters.
The patent application also gives hints at the environment, suggesting there would be far more outside of the actual store. The entire virtual world, including the environment outside of the store, would dynamically change according to various factors such as the time of day, weather, and possibly even to yearly seasons such as summer and winter - think Rockstar’s GTA.
The world’s largest social network Facebook has hit an important milestone.
The company founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in a blog post that Facebook was cash flow positive in the last quarter ended in June.
The company previously forecasted it would become cash flow positive sometime in 2010.
However, many material costs were not considered in the analysis. Only costs required to keep the site operational, such as server costs and other capital expenses, were considered. Acquisition costs, such as the most recent $50 million FriendFeed acquisition were not considered. Facebook also said that private investment cash was not considered. Other costs that can have a material impact are not considered as well, such as accounting charges, interest, and taxes.
Update: When asked what the company is working on, Expono told us “we are working on improving photo browsing (bigger better photos) and new ways users can explore public/friend photos.”
Expono (@expono) is a relatively new photo sharing website that recently went live with a slew of many extensive features you won’t find on the most popular media sharing sites such as Flickr.
Expono lets you upload, manage, geo-tag, backup, embed and share your photos with social media sites such as FriendFeed, Facebook, and Twitter.
If you want to share your photos via Facebook, you just follow the simple instructions to connect your FB account with Expono, then you’ll be able to easily share full photos across Facebook. You can also tag friends in photos.
Facebook Usernames are now live. You can now register your “facebook.com/username” to easily share your Facebook profile with friends. This was one feature Facebook was missing that other services offered that made it easy to share your profile, such as Twitter.
Your Facebook profile has went from a complicated URL structure of http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=111111111 to http://facebook.com/yourname
The feature has just gone live, and in about 15 minutes after the launch, there have been over 500,000 registered usernames, so grab yours before it’s gone.
Symbian Freak has posted some of the first screen shots for the Facebook application that will come preinstalled on the much-anticipated Nokia N97. The app will offer push notifications on the Nokia N97 directly from the customized Facebook widgets on the home-screen of the phone. Judging from the screenshots, there does not appear to be any significant differences from the current Facebook 1.5 app for the BlackBerry. Nevertheless, the app will add value with new social networking features to the Symbian platform. The Nokia N97 also boasts a powerful 5.1MP camera…you can see photo samples here.
The standard Facebook mobile for phones is fairly basic that really only includes access to status updates, profiles and wall posts. Now, that’s changed for Windows Mobile users who can now have a feature rich Facebook experience on their mobile.
On April 27, 2009, Facebook announced it would open the entire activity stream via a new API. According to Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing, the new Facebook Open Stream API will be two-way, meaning developers can leverage the data but people will also be able to respond (for example to comments), via the third party applications. Developers will be able to use the entire feed via one simple API call, or use parts of the feed.
Some did not expect Facebook to become so open, as the company was previously very restrictive when it came to taking data outside of the community. Given intensifying competition from Twitter, who is very
comScore has just published a report showing Twitter’s traffic growth worldwide. The numbers are very impressive. Twitter reached 10 million unique worldwide visitors in February 2009, up 700+% over last year. US traffic also surged, reaching 4 million unique visitors in February, up over 1,000% a year ago.
The cable industry is feeling increased pressure from online sites like Hulu that let you watch select TV shows whenever you want straight from your computer. The cable industry is now feeling increased pressure to do something about companies like Hulu who pose a significant threat as trends indicate consumers are shifting to watching TV online and want interactivity and more choice.
Comcast will be expanding its free online video site Fancast to include more social media and social networking features, premium subscription services, and a wider assortment of online videos much like Hulu. Fancast will also stream live shows playing on TV to Fancast as part of a premium feature. Read the full story
Facebook is responding to the recent outcry over the recent more Twitter-like Facebook redesign. Facebook will not be returning to the old design, but will make changes based on feedback including:
*Live updating: One of the most common requests is the ability to see your stream update automatically. We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page.
*Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we’ll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. This will happen in the coming weeks.
*More choices for applications: We’ve heard feedback that there is a lot of application content appearing in the stream. We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream.
The world’s largest social network Facebook has hit an important milestone.
Update: When asked what the company is working on, Expono told us 
