At the bottom right, look for the Synced button. Tap this, and
the app will walk you through the configuration of Photo Sync. Once
you have enabled it, tapping Synced will display those photos that
have been auto-uploaded from your phone to your account. You can
choose at your leisure which ones to share, and they will be posted
to your Facebook timeline instantly, rather than requiring you to
wait through the upload process for each one separately as you go.
There are several new features for mobile status updates, too.
You can tag friends in a post, just as on the desktop version of
Facebook. Begin typing a friend's name as it appears on a Facebook
account, and the app will produce a list of friends' names that
match what you are writing. Select the name, and Facebook will
insert a blue link to the friend's own page and alert the subject.
Status updates from the mobile apps can also be limited as to who
sees them -- another longtime option on the desktop version of
Facebook. While composing a status update, you will see an icon at
the lower right of the text field. Tap that, and you will get a menu
of options for who can see the post -- Everyone, Friends, Only Me
and any friend lists that you or Facebook have created for your
account.
Facebook has also added its Facebook Gifts feature to its mobile
versions. Facebook Gifts allows you to buy a present for another
Facebook user and pay for it with a credit card. Its catalog is not
as comprehensive as Amazon's -- you cannot send an electrical
generator to get someone through winter power failures -- but less
complexity can perhaps make it easier to choose a gift, since you do
not have every retail product in the world as an option.
Here is how it works: Go to a friend's timeline and look for the
new Gift button just below the friend's name. Tap that, and you will
be presented with a catalog of gifts.
Most are of the cookies-and-candles variety, and a majority are
under $20. There is an abundance of specialty foods, like chocolate-
dipped jalapeno peppers. Some allow you to send, say, a cheese of
the month for a few months.
Once you have selected a gift, you will be prompted to pick a
card to go with it. There is a scrollable list of categories at the
bottom of this page that ranges from Birthday to Holidays to Sorry.
Choose a card, edit its message, and then -- finally -- tap Give
Gift.
Here is where Facebook is clever: It will notify your recipient
of the pending gift, and prompt that person, rather than you, to
enter a delivery address. Only if one is entered will Facebook
automatically come back and prompt you to pay for the gift with a
credit card. It would not be the way to do all your gift-giving, but
if you are just looking to send cookies to a Facebook friend, the
system's simplicity is a plus.
One last, and more lighthearted, new feature: In private messages
from your phone, you can now add emoticons -- those smiley faces,
hearts and other images that some love and some loathe. To see the
menu of dozens of options, tap the + icon at the lower left while
composing a message. In addition to the familiar buttons to, say,
take a photo, you will also see a dozen smiley-face emoticons.
On an iPhone, the full set of more than 200 images is built into
the phone, through its own alternate keyboard. On an Android phone,
it is built into the app. To see it, tap the ellipsis icon at the
lower left. Doing so will expose three separate tabs of emoticons,
each of which can additionally be scrolled sideways to show more
options.
Alas, the app cannot tell which of your friends will find a
message full of smiling cow faces totally annoying.
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News Column
Facebook Looks More Like Itself With Updated Apps
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Source: (C) 2013 International Herald Tribune. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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