Estimated Nexus One Sales: Only 20,000 Units in the First Week
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: January 13, 2010
While we don’t have any solid numbers on Nexus One sales just yet, we can take an educated guess. And if we base that guess on Flurry, which monitors usage of over 10,000 developers’ applications on iPhone and Android platforms, the results are less than stellar.
According to Flurry, only about 20,000 Nexus Ones were sold in its first week on the market. It was outsold by Droid by more than 12 times, myTouch 3G by 3 times and iPhone 3GS by 80 times.
Here’s how the folks at Flurry came with this number:
“To estimate first week sales totals for the Nexus One, myTouch 3G, Droid and iPhone 3GS, Flurry detected new handsets within its system, and then made adjustments to account for varying levels of Flurry application penetration by handset. Flurry additionally crosschecked its estimates against Apple actual sales, released for iPhone 3GS, which totaled more than one million units over the three days, June 19 – 21, 2009. Flurry first week sales estimates can be found in the table below.”
Nexus One was a highly anticipated mobile phone, but Google (
) didn’t spend millions of dollars advertising it, opting for a sort of a soft launch for the device. It’s also sold directly to the consumers through Google’s website, which may be an innovative approach, but it can also hurt sales. Motorola, on the other hand, had spent close to 100 million dollars advertising the Droid, and if Flurry’s numbers are correct, it definitely shows the difference a good advertising campaign can make.
An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: January 13, 2010
Last week, I attended the Google Android “Nexus One” event. As you may have heard, they gave many of us in the audience the device to try out. I decided that before I wrote anything about it (other than saying on television that it’s a “nice little device“), I would give it a real shot, so here I am, a week later, with my thoughts on it. To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a full review or overview, for that, see our review here. Instead, I’m going to come at this from the perspective of a pretty hardcore iPhone user of the past two-plus years.
I’ll come right out and say what everyone will want to know: Do I think the Nexus One is better than the iPhone? No. There are certain things it does better (I’ll get to that), but overall, if I had choose one, I would still choose the iPhone — specifically, the iPhone 3GS. Is that my bias talking as someone who has used the device on a daily basis for over two years? Maybe a bit, but overall I do believe that while the Android phones are rapidly catching up to the iPhone, they are still not quite up to that device’s quality.
Lest you think I’m a complete newbie to the Android platform, I’ve actually had and used a number of Android devices over the past year or so. I still have a G1 unit, as well as the myTouch3G. I’ve also used the Droid quite a bit since its release. Each of those devices is solid in their own regard when compared to 99% of the phones on the market. And the Nexus One is the best yet. But none are the iPhone.
I’m going to focus on the three biggest things that stand out in my mind about the Nexus One as compared to the iPhone (both good and bad).
Google Apps
Praise of the iPhone aside, there is no question what the Nexus One does better: Google apps. Every single Google app is better on the Nexus One (and all Android phones, for that matter, but on the Nexus One it’s more obvious because this device is the fastest). Gmail, Maps, and Google Voice in particular absolutely blow away their counterparts on the iPhone (of which only Maps is a native application, and Google Voice, famously, isn’t available).
It’s hard to describe just how great Google Voice is on Android. When I set it up, I had to confirm maybe three or four things, and I was all ready to go. In two minutes, my Google Voice number completely took over my Nexus One. This included getting not only getting all Google Voice incoming calls and voicemails, but doing outbound calls with my Google Voice number as well. This is absolutely the future of number portability, and that no doubt has the carriers — and likely even Apple – spooked.
Gmail is also ridiculously better on Android because it includes things like native support for starring messages, labels, and threading. Again, this is true of all Android phones, but the Nexus One showcases how much better Gmail is on Android than on the iPhone because it’s the fastest. If there is one thing that makes me want to use Android every day, it’s Gmail. And that won’t change unless Google ever (or ever is allowed to) build a native Gmail app for the iPhone.
Maps offers a number of features on the Nexus One that aren’t on the iPhone native version. This includes Latitude (which can run in the background), and Navigation. Other Google apps, like Google Sky Map and Google Goggles are also pretty cool, and useful to varying degrees, and again, only available for Android.
Third Party Apps
Maybe the hardest thing (or Apple’s greatest strength, depending how you’re looking at it) in using an Android device after being accustomed to the iPhone is the app difference. Simply put, iPhone apps, as a whole, are much, much better than Android apps. Maybe that’s because Android apps aren’t quite as mature yet. But I don’t know. The Android Market has been around for over a year now, and the fact that there still isn’t a Twitter app that’s as good as the top five iPhone Twitter apps is a bit odd to me. Seesmic for Android is the closest yet, but it still gets blown away by the polish of apps like Tweetie on the iPhone.
That said, there are a number of apps that are useful on the Nexus One in ways they couldn’t be on the iPhone. That includes the instant messaging apps (again, Google’s own seems to be the best), and Pandora. Pandora on the iPhone is great, but you have to it open at all times. On the Nexus One, it’s brilliant because it can play music in the background while you do other things. Obviously, this issue (background apps) has been talked about in the past ad-naseum, so I won’t dwell on it here.
Again, it’s worth repeating that the best Android apps are all Google-made. That’s not true on the iPhone where most of the best apps aren’t Apple-made. To me, that speaks to the power of Apple’s platform. Android’s platform will continue to mature no doubt, but so will the iPhone’s. It has to be worrisome for Google that the divide is still this wide.
Hardware
The Nexus One hardware is in some ways superior to the iPhone. For example, I’ve never been a fan of the iPhone’s plastic backing, which it received after the first generation (which had an aluminum back). The Nexus One has more of a solid rubber and aluminum back that feels nicer. HTC, which makes the device, has also finally managed to get a removable battery backing that isn’t awful or ugly.
The front of the Nexus One leaves something to be desired in my opinion. It’s the closest yet to the iPhone in terms of sleekness, but whereas the iPhone is almost one smooth surface except for the one button indent, the Nexus One has a face that is broken up by its frame and the silly trackball that Google keeps insisting manufacturers include. I have never once used the trackball, nor do I intend to. It’s a waste of space, and makes the device look and feel cheaper.
While the Nexus One does have a nicer screen than the iPhone, it has a downside too. The OLED screen is much harder to see in daylight when compared to the iPhone’s screen. This is the same problem the new Zune HD has, and it really is a problem. In the dark, these screens look beautiful, better than the iPhone’s — but it’s not always dark. And when outside during the day at time, it’s almost unusable.
Instead of the one button that the iPhone employs, the Nexus One sticks with the standard 4-button (not including the scroll ball) Android approach. These buttons take a little getting used to, but can be powerful if used correctly. That said, I’m still not sure Android’s hardware wouldn’t be better served if these were software-based. There are a number of ways to get to Search via these buttons, for example. And while I get that this is Google’s thing, I find this repetitive, and in some cases confusing. One method to do that would be fine.
The Nexus One’s 5 megapixel camera does seem to take significantly nicer pictures than the iPhone’s 3 megapixel variety. But the biggest advantage of the camera pay be its LED flash, which is pretty powerful (though not fantastic for taking pictures in dark rooms still). I’d be shocked if the next version of the iPhone didn’t gain both of these upgrades.
The single biggest problem I have with the Nexus One hardware is likely a combination of hardware and software. I mis-click on things way too often on the Nexus One. While the device’s touch screen is obviously a huge improvement over the original G1’s, it’s still nowhere near as accurate as the iPhone’s. I’m not the only one who has noticed this. I often find myself mis-hitting icons, mis-typing letters, and the touchscreen mixed with the Nexus One web browser is simply not very good at all (try the menu system on espn.com to see what I mean). Apple is great at nailing the little things, and I’m not really sure why the touchscreen mechanics are so much better on the iPhone. But they are.
Speaking of the touchscreen, whereas before it was just odd that Google wouldn’t include multi-touch support in its apps, now it’s just annoying. The little “+/-” magnifying glass that shows up when you should just be able to pinch to zoom is beyond lame. And it may be even worse when viewing/manipulating pictures on the Nexus One. I’m not sure if Google still has their gentlemen’s agreement with Apple not to use the multi-touch gestures, but Palm seems to be using them just fine.
One Device To Rule Them All
If you were to ask me to describe in general terms why I like the iPhone more than the Nexus One, it would be hard to do. On paper, Nexus One seems to have a lot going for it, including a nicer screen, a better camera, a faster processor, etc. But using them side by side, when it comes to regular, everyday use, the iPhone (again, the iPhone 3GS) still wins.
Perhaps the single biggest reason that I like Apple products, and their software, in particular, is the attention to detail the company puts in. In my mind, that’s exactly what still separates the iPhone from all the Android phones. It’s the little things. The things that are almost too small for you to even notice, but the make the experience subtly better.
Android is like a very nice painting done entirely with broad strokes. The iPhone is more like a masterpiece in which every little detail has been meticulously defined. Just as people have different tastes in art, people will have different tastes when it comes to the iPhone versus the Nexus One. But that doesn’t change the fact that some pieces of artwork are considered to be a masterpieces, while some are considered to be merely very good.
If you’re an iPhone user who is sick of AT&T or just looking for a new device, I’m not sure that the Nexus One will be enough to satisfy you. Both Jason and Mike of TechCrunch have successfully switched from the iPhone to the Android platform, but both will admit that there were speed bumps (well, Jason will anyway — while Mike will privately, then deny saying such things).
Jason made some compelling arguments a few days ago about that switch, and how it takes time to get used to Android. I definitely agree with that. And think I could get pretty comfortable with Android. But the point is, I don’t really want to. In my mind, the iPhone is still the better device. Not better in every regard, but better overall. The Nexus One comes close, closer than any Android phone yet, but it cannot snatch the iPhone’s cigar.
Further, the problem with switching to something like the Nexus One now is that even if you think it’s better than an iPhone, a new iPhone is inevitably coming in another 6 months or so that will be much better than the Nexus One. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see it on Verizon this year, which would negate at least half of the complaints about the device.
And, of course, there will be better Android phones coming down the pipeline as well. So if I were an iPhone user thinking about switching (which again, I’m not), I’d probably wait to see what Apple announces in June and then see what Android phone is available by then if the next iPhone doesn’t blow you away.
It’s impressive how far these Android devices have come in a year. But the software/hardware combination still lacks the refinement of the iPhone. Maybe by this time next year, with Google now taking a more hands-on approach, they’ll have a device that can match Apple’s. But they’ll still likely lack the apps. And the iPhone will still likely lack the best Google apps. But it’s good to have competition. And it’s good to have two companies that can play off each other and push innovation — while at the same time, changing the industry. It’s very clear that Google and Apple will be those two.
ImageShack Updates iPhone App With Powerful Photo, Video Sharing Options
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: January 13, 2010
ImageShack, one of the largest media hosting sites on the Web, updated its iPhone app ImageShack Uploader (iTunes link) this morning, unlocking features that enable users to easily share both videos and photos using either ImageShack services and third-party sites like YouTube and Twitter.
ImageShack Uploader 2.0, which is free of charge, lets you record videos and shoot pictures using the iPhone’s camera, and gives you the option to upload them directly to ImageShack servers.
Thanks to further integration with its real-time photo sharing service yfrog, users can also opt to share pictures and videos straight to Twitter, including media that was already stored on the device. Finally, there’s a direct YouTube upload option for videos as well.
A couple of months ago, yfrog also added the ability to snap pictures or record video straight from your Webcam and share it with the world in real-time.
3 Must-See Video Presentations About HTML 5
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 26, 2009
Here is a must-see collection of three interesting video presentations about HTML 5 by Google. If you are a web developer you can’t miss them!
Red Hat heads back to the desktop with SPICE
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 26, 2009
Red Hat is the number one Linux company, but they haven’t been interested in the Linux desktop for years. With the open-sourcing of SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment), that’s changing.
SPICE, like Microsoft’s RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) andCitrix’s ICA (Independent Computing Architecture), is a desktop presentation services protocol. They’re used for thin-client desktops, and SPICE will be too. In 2010, you can count on Red Hat returning to the Linux desktop.
But they won’t be doing it as a competitor to traditional desktops like Ubuntu 9.10 or Windows 7. Thin clients are meant for corporate desktops, like those in a company where Red Hat is already powering the servers. Remember, it’s in Linux servers, not desktops, that Red Hat has found its riches.
On the server side, SPICE depends on KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) for its horsepower. Guess what virtualization software Red Hat focuses on? That would be KVM. So if you have a company that’s already invested in Red Hat on the servers, wouldn’t it make sense to offer them a complementary Linux desktop option as well? And perhaps sell a few more server licenses along the way? I think so, and Red Hat thinks the same way.
A few months back, I asked Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens if Red Hat was going back to the desktop. “Yes, Red Hat will indeed be pushing the Linux desktop again” with KVM, he told me.
The open-sourcing of SPICE is a step in that direction. Indeed, by the timeRed Hat bought Qumranet, the company that was behind both KVM and SPICE, Qumranet had already released a complete KVM/SPICE virtualization program, Solid ICE).
Red Hat hasn’t announced a re-release of a now completely open source-based Solid ICE, but that’s only a matter of time. It’s the next step, and it will be a smart one.
I say that because, unlike RDP, ICA or Unix/Linux’s VNC (Virtual Network Computing), SPICE isn’t a “screen-scraper.” With these protocols, the server has to do all the heavy lifting of rendering the graphics. But with Solid ICE and SPICE, each SPICE session can access local system resources. In other words, a SPICE Linux virtual desktop user can use their PC’s graphics. This means SPICE users get close to stand-alone desktop video performance and at the same time the servers aren’t being overloaded.
As Stevens explained in a statement about the open-sourcing of SPICE: “The SPICE protocol is designed to optimize performance by automatically adapting to the graphics and communications environment that it is running in, so vendors have a terrific opportunity to enhance it for their specific applications.”
What all that means for you is that, some time in 2010, you can expect to see the release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops. I expect to see it arrive sometime before another thin client-like take on the Linux desktop, namely Google’s Chrome OS, arrives.
As I’ve said before, we’re in for some interesting time in 2010 with desktop operating systems.
Source: Link
Google Goggles
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 10, 2009
Google Goggles is a visual search app for Android phones. Instead of using words, take a picture of an object with your camera phone: we attempt to recognize the object, and return relevant search results.
Goggles also provides information about businesses near you by displaying their names directly in the camera preview.
Apple scraps 1,000 iPhone apps
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 10, 2009
- In: Apple
- Leave a Comment
Apple has booted Molinker and its products from the AppStore, following complaints that the developer was posting fake reviews.
The Chinese company had more than 1,000 apps in the store, mainly cheap travel guides for the iPhone. The products actually represent about one percent of the apps available in the app store.
Molinker was caught out by the iPhoneography blog, which noticed that a good 90 percent of reviews on Molinker products came from the same 50 people – most of whom had pretty poor English too. Even more suspiciously, these users only seemed to use Molinker apps, as they never reviewed anything else.
The implication was that the reviews were being posted by staff at the company itself. The owners of the blog contacted Phil Schiller to draw Apple’s attention to the scam.
How to Change the Carrier Name On Your iPhone
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 4, 2009
If jailbreaking an iPhone alone does not make you happy enough and you are looking to pimp your iPhone much more, how about changing your carrier name?
Here is a short guide that will help you customize the carrier name that is displayed on status bar of your iPhone.
Requirements
Before you start, please note that this guide only works on iPhone OS 3.0 or above. Also, you need to have a jailbroken iPhone with Cydia installed. If you have not jailbroken your iPhone yet, click here for the jailbreaking guide.
Instructions to Change Carrier Name
Step 1: Tap on the Cydia icon on the Springboard to launch the application.
Step 2: The carrier name is changed with the help of an app called ‘FakeCarrier‘. Tap on the ‘Search‘ option in Cydia and type ‘Fakecarrier‘ to find the app.
Step 3: Select the app by tapping on the name and click on ‘Install‘. Follow the instructions to install the app. Finally, click on ‘Return to Cydia‘ to finish installation.
Step 4: Once the installation is completed, you will be able to find a ‘Carrier‘ icon on the iPhone Home Screen. Tap on the ‘Carrier‘ icon to launch the FakeCarrier application.
Step 5: You are now given three options – ‘Fake Carrier‘, ‘Fake Time‘ and ‘Show BatteryLevel‘. Tap on the ‘Fake Carrier‘ option to change the carrier name.
Step 6: You are now prompted to enter your Carrier text. Enter the text of your choice and tap on ‘Set‘.
Step 7: Similarly, you may replace the time banner on top with your customer text using the ‘Fake Time‘ option. Tap on ‘Set‘ to confirm the change.
That’s all, the carrier name on your iPhone should change to the one of your choice. Please note that if you would at any point like to get back to the default Carrier and Time text, you may follow the same steps and at the final text input, tap on ‘Reset‘ to get the text back to default.
Important tips & tricks for iPhone/iPod touch
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 3, 2009
1. Flip between pages by tapping
Many iPhone apps feature a paging system with dots at the bottom of the screen, such as: the Home screen, safari, weather.
You probably know that you can flip between pages in these apps by swiping left or right across the screen. As an alternative, you can also tap the areas either side of the row of dots at the bottom of the screen.
2. Save drafts in Mail
With the Mac OS X Mail app, it’s easy to save your currently-edited message as a draft by clicking the Save as Draft button in the toolbar. Saving a draft in the iPhone Mail app is a bit counter-intuitive. First, from the message editing screen, tap the Cancel button. You can then tap Save to save the current message as a draft, or Don’t Save to scrap the message altogether.
3. Domain Resolution
When typing a URL in Safari, you don’t have to type the “www” or the “.com”. For exmaple, you can type “iPhoneToolbox” in the URL box in order to view “iPhoneToolbox.com”.
4. Jump to the top of the page
Flicking up and down to scroll through a Web page, an email message or a list of messages is fairly quick; however if you’re near the bottom of a long page or list it can take ages to scroll back up to the top. Thankfully there’s a quick way to return to the top: just tap the status bar at the top of the screen.
5. Customize the iPod dock icons
iPhone ships with 5 icons in the iPod’s dock – Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos and More – for quick access. However, let’s say you hardly ever watch videos on your iPhone, but you do listen to a lot of podcasts. iPhone lets you change the default dock icons, replacing the Videos icon with a Podcasts icon. This trick also works in the YouTube app.
6. Surfing Internet while talking
You can get on the internet DURING a call. You can only do this if your connected to a WIFI network (it wont work via edge), just hit the home key and click on Safari. Now your surfing while talking! The person on the other end can’t hear the keyboard clicks either.
7. Save an image in a web page or email
If you want to keep an image you see in a web page or email message, tap and hold your finger on the image for 1 second to get a Save Image button:
Tap the button to save the image in your Photos library, in the Camera Roll album.
8. Put your iPod (the one in your iPhone) to sleep
If you like falling asleep while listening to music, this tip is perfect for you. The Clock application on the iPhone doesn’t only tell time. You can also use its timer feature to sleep stop music from playing.
1. Go to the Clock application.
2. Tap Timer at the bottom of the Tab Bar.
3. Tap “When Timer Ends >”, and choose “Sleep iPod”. Tap “Set” on the top right.
4. Then, just use the scroll wheels to set the time to when you wan your iPod to sleep.
9. Access the scientific calculator
Did you know the iPhone has a scientific calculator as well as the normal calculator?
10. Screenshots
Simultaneously press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons to take a screenshot of your current screen. You’ll hear a camera shutter sound, your screen will flash white, then the screenshot will appear in the “Saved Photos” library of the Photos app.
12. Select Icon for Bookmarked Webpage
When you are browsing a web page on Safari and add its icon to your home screen by pressing the “+” button and select “Add to Home Screen”. The icon is a screenshot of the page you were on. You can have a different icon by zooming in a particular item on the page. It can be the website’s logo or any picture.
13. Extra keys
Do you need to type an umlauted-u (ü) but you’re not using the German keyboard? Touch and hold the U key and you get a set of additional keys to choose from. This works for several of the alphabetic keys, enabling you access to letters such as éîçåß, etc.
14. Shift Key
Apple with its vast iMac experience has featured the shift key press option on the iPhone multi-touch screen. This is especially relevant if you want to capitalize few letters without pressing the CAPSLOCK option.
15. Home button options
A very underused, yet convenient feature is that you’re able to set the function for double-clicking the Home button. By default, this just brings you to the Home screen, meaning no different function than clicking the Home button once. But if you go to the Settings app then navigate to General then Home Button, you’ll find a few handy options. I have mine set to go to my Phone Favorites but you can also set it to open the iPod app, or just show the iPod controls when music is playing.
16. How To Create A WebClip Icon For Your Site
This is a good tip for those of you who design web sites and applications geared toward the iPhone. Dan Dickinson posted instructions for creating the icon for your site that shows up on the springboard when someone creates a web clip for it.
Create a 57×57 PNG.
Name it “apple-touch-icon.png”
Throw it in the root folder of your website. (Not the root of your server ,the root of your web documents.)
You can also place the image in a link tag in the head of your document, like so:
You can get more info at the iPhone Dev Center.
17. Register your Wi-Fi
Skyhook WPS is the service that, via Wi-Fi, enables your iPhone and iPod touch to locate where you are if GPS isn’t available. It generally gets you more accuracy than the cell tower triangulation method. The big issue with this method, though is that if the router that you’re currently connected to isn’t in the Skyhook database, you’re out of luck. But after a ton of digging I was able to find the web page where you can add your router to its database. After a few simple steps and an “up to 7 days” waiting period, the router should be available to help you and others get improved location positioning. This helps us all so do your part and register your router, especially if you live outside a major metropolitan area (since Skyhook usually has the big metro areas covered already).
18. Get URL Hints
In Safari, you can press and hold any links in order to see the URL and site name of the link.
19. Scrolling with Two Fingers
Some web pages contains separate text boxes with their own scroll bars. If you are trying to move around in one, you can scroll it with two fingers instead of one. That will let you scroll just inside the box and not affect the position of the entire page.
20. Maximize Battery Life
There is a separate sensor situated right above the earpiece, that detects ambient light. The iPhone uses this sensor only once per session, just as you unlock the handset. But if you cover the sensor as you unlock the phone, you will trikc the handset into thinking it’s in a dark room, and it will power down the screen brightness. You can Also turn off Bluetooth and WiFi if you don’t expect to use them for a while. You can also set email fetch time to “Hourly” or “Manually”, and turn the “Push” off in order to save energy.
21. Double tap space bar for a period
When typing on your iPhone, double tapping the space bar at the end of a sentence automatically enters a period followed by a space. No need to press “123″ to get to the numbers and symbols page where the period typically resides. I use this trick daily and it heavily increases my typing speed (especially when texting).
22. Automatically capitalize and add apostrophes
The iPhone automatically capitalizes certain words (”I” when you type “i”). It also automatically adds apostrophes (”I’m” when you type “Im”).
23. Double tap a column on Safari to fit-to-page
When browsing the Internet on your iPhone’s Safari browser, double tap any column, word, or picture to fit it’s width to your iPhone’s screen. This is extremely useful for reading blogs.
24. The magnifying glass
The magnifying glass is a nice iPhone tool when you are typing an email or any other text. If you tap once and hold, a magnifying glass will pop up showing you a zoomed in view of your words and cursor. You can now easily place the cursor wherever you want. This makes editing your writing very easy.
25. Delete spam
If you get a lot of spam e-mail or other unwanted e-mail, pay attention to this time saving feature. Add a link to Yahoo mail in Safari bookmarks. From there you can check ‘delete all’ to remove all unwanted e-mails. This is much easier than deleting hundreds of spam e-mails one at a time.
Source : Link
Facebook reached 350 million monthly active users
Posted by: 7ntinos7 on: December 2, 2009
Facebook announced tonight that it has grown to more than 350 million monthly active users worldwide. This is the first official statement the company has made since it reached 300 million users and became “free cash-flow positive” in mid-September. So, by Facebook’s own count, that’s 50 million more users in around two and a half months.
This is a slightly slower rate of growth than Facebook has seen in recent months, but obviously still a huge number. A slowdown in growth is bound to happen, anyway. Consider that the company started the year with 150 million monthly actives, and has gained near 50 percent penetration levels in some countries.
The announcement, in the form of a blog post by founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, also reiterates that the company is planning to remove regional networks, something it has discussed in more detail over the summer. This change had previously been slated for late September; now, it’s coming within the next two weeks, according to the post. More about the change, from our previous coverage:
- Regional network filters will no longer be available in the home page stream (Facebook says few people were using them anyway).
- Regional networks will no longer appear in privacy settings (though you can still share content with everyone or a school or work network).
- Groups or events that are only open to members of regional networks will now be open to everyone.
- If your current regional network is a city, that information will be moved to the “Current City” field of your profile.
- If your current regional network is a region, a new “Current Region” field will be listed on your profile.
Zuckerberg also said that new per-item privacy controls, like the ones enabled for status updates this summer, will be going live within the next couple weeks as well. Details on what this will look like, from the post:
Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.
