Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Net giant Google just revealed their plans to release their version of living in a virtual world with the online 3D social arena “Lively.” Unlike the program “Second Life”, Lively allows users to enter “their world” via IE or Firefox after the initial download and installation of the program. You can make use of integrating the Internet in several ways, bring in your photos or videos that you have hosted online, email your friends inviting them to join, or use the special pre-written widgets to embed your Lively area on your blog. Currently it doesn’t work with MySpace, they are still working on that one.

“It’s integrated with the Internet. It’s not an alternate destination,” said Niniane Wang, Google’s engineering manager for the project. “Our intention is to add to your existing life.”

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While not confirmed, news has been trickling out from Facebook users in China that they were not able to access their data.

A clear picture has yet to be painted but Facebook is close to confirming the phenomenon. “We are disappointed to learn of reports that users in China are having difficulty getting access to Facebook,”

Representatives from the social network reportedly told CIO News. “We have not made any changes to our site that would create access problems and are looking into the situation.”

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We all knew that is was just a matter of time before Facebook would finally catch up with MySpace, well at least in the total number of worldwide unique visitors. The latest numbers from comScore show that both MySpace and Facebook registered around 115 million unique visitors coming from all over the world this past April. So, with that we can officially declare that Facebook is no longer the second largest social network. Likewise MySpace is no longer the largest social network. So whoever is the largest social network today would depend on which of the two you like better.

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Facebook users aren’t just looking forward to taking their Friends with them to other websites, thanks to the recently-announced Facebook Connect feature. Very soon they’ll be seeing a new look to their Facebook Profile pages, according to product manager Mark Slee on the Facebook Blog.

Slee served as tour guide this week for tech journalists and bloggers at Facebook offices in Palo Alto, showing off mockups of the redesigned pages. If you are a Facebook user, you’ve no doubt noticed clutter and the need to do lots of scrolling on some very busy-looking profile pages. Slee is promising a cleaner look thanks to expanded use of tabbed pages, including a “publish” box that centralizes all user-uploaded content.

You can check out video from the tour itself or see a slide show of the redesign features. As usual, the most interesting part of the preview is the comments section as Facebook users weigh in on the proposed changes; lots of MySpace-bashing, of course, but also some good suggestions. No doubt Slee and Facebook developers are taking plenty of notes.

Read [Facebook Blog ]

While rumors about buyouts, mergers and partnerships continue to swirl around them, the number one and number two social network websites are announcing new features and services. MySpace, the top social site, is taking the wraps off of “data availability,” which allows members to easily share public profile information and user-generated content with Yahoo!, Ebay, Flickr and Photobucket.
And Facebook, after hearing complaints from state attorneys general about the threat from child predators and cyberbullies on its website, has agreed to tighten up security to protect its under-18 users. The social network will work with a task force to make sure identities and ages of members can be verified while trying harder to keep inappropriate content - including alcohol and tobacco advertising - from underage eyes. 

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Facebook chat was initially confirmed late in March, which was proceeded with a limited roll-out that began in early April for users in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York. It seems the testing must have gone over well and that means good news for anyone who was itching to chat and feeling left out. The new chat feature is now available for all active Facebook accounts.

While the ability to chat with other Facebook users is great, it would be nice to see some integration in the future, whether it coming from Facebook building in support for other services or releasing an API that other services can then use to integrate Facebook chat. With such a popular service I am sure the community would be behind it.

Via [Inside Facebook]

Popular social networking site Facebook has introduced a new feature that will allow it’s users to share content from other sites via their Mini-Feed, which sends it to the News Feeds of their friends. Users can import stories, albums, and other content from such sites as Flickr, Yelp, Picasa, and del.icio.us. This latest feature is yet another way for users to share information with each other easily and quickly. All they have to do is click the “Import” link at the top of their Mini-Feed. The site promises it will be adding even more sites, including Digg, in the near future.

Read [Facebook Blog]

Finally, the long awaited Facebook chat is rolling out. First reported by the Inside Facebook blog, and a few hours later, the Official Facebook blog announced that new Chat facility is indeed being gradually rolled out in some Facebook networks.

The Facebook blog did not specify any exact date as to when the Chat feature will be implemented across all Facebook networks. But users don’t need to do anything to install the Chat facility, as it will just pop out at the bottom part of the users browsers. When the Facebook Chat bar appears, users can view the list of online friends and even start a conversation with any or all of them. 

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Facebook continues to prove that it’s a social network like no other by using a new user-powered translation engine for their site. They’re going to use this to add 22 more languages to Facebook so that it will be accessible to more people across the world. Currently, Facebook is only available in four main languages: English, French, German and Spanish. This move will no doubt add to the site’s overall visibility and accessibility.

As mentioned previously, the translation engine will be a user-powered, so if you’re interested in contributing to Facebook’s expansion, you may do so by going through the simple application process here. You need to be a member before you can actually see that linked page, so if you’re not, don’t forget to sign-up.

Via [TechCrunch]

As part of the its commitment to data portability, Microsoft Live has teamed up with 5 top social networks to facilitate and make it easier for members of those social networks who are also using the Windows Live Messenger to import their address book from their social networking profiles into the Windows Live contacts list.

Using Windows Live Contacts API, members of Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, Tagged and Hi5 can logged in to these social networks and see which of their friends are using the Windows Live Contacts API. LinkedIn, Tagged and Hi5 users will have to wait a little while though as it is currently available for Facebook and Bebo users only.

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