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Inside App Links, Facebook’s open source effort to make mobile apps more like the Web

Apr30
by on April 30, 2014 at 9:03 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, f8-2014, Profiles and Interviews

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Earlier today at F8 2014, Facebook unveiled App Links, a new open standard for deep linking across different mobile apps. The official App Links website has yet to go live, but it will eventually be located at AppLinks.org. Mobile apps are the future, but, up until now, the increasingly siloed nature of the ecosystem has been its biggest weakness. The interconnectedness of the Web – its webbiness – helps keep it open and serendipitous as we jump from page to page. The mobile platforms themselves have tried to implement deep-linking into their own products, but Facebook believes it’s in a…

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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: A ‘whisper mode’ would encourage friends to privately discuss public conversations

Apr30
by on April 30, 2014 at 8:51 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Social Media

Twitter Goes Public On The New York Stock Exchange
Twitter is looking to encourage more private discussions on its service. CEO Dick Costolo would like to have a “whisper mode” that allows users to take public conversations and discuss them solely with friends, according to a video interview with Bloomberg. While the social network is public-first, meaning content is shared with everyone by default (unlike Facebook, where friends are the default), it does have a direct message (DM) feature for one-on-one chats. This potential new feature isn’t likely to replace that, but rather allow users to pick a tweet or set of tweets and use them as a jumping-off…

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The difference between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’

Apr30
by on April 30, 2014 at 7:27 pm
Posted In: Analysis and Opinion, Around the Web, How-To's, LifeHacks

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This post originally appeared on the iDoneThis blog. Whenever I realize I’ve been running ragged, I know I’ve fallen into a rut of reactive rather than proactive work. Instead of going about my day steered by plans and intentions, the unstable “whatever comes up” gets to dictate my day. This schedule of working deadline to deadline, fighting fires and flying by the seat of your pants racks up time debt. You’re borrowing from other areas of your life like spending time with your family or on your wellbeing. Humans tend to be bad at understanding how we’ll feel in the future. In our…

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Everything Facebook announced at F8 2014 in one handy list

Apr30
by on April 30, 2014 at 7:18 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Events, f8-2014, Mobile

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At today’s F8 conference, the focus was on developers. If you’re building for Facebook, today was chock full of news nuggets. If you’re just a regular user, there was at least one refinement to make the apps you use with Facebook less intrusive. Bookended by Mark Zuckerberg, the keynote was used to share information about three key areas: Build, Grow, and Monetize. The overarching idea is that, now that Facebook has stabilized its platform, it’s investing in tools for developers to grow and make money with their apps. Here are the announcements that will help developers (and users) get the…

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Bloom.fm to shut down after investor pulls funding: ‘This is a poetically crappy turn of events’

Apr30
by on April 30, 2014 at 6:50 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, UK

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Bloom.fm is shutting down its mobile-focused music streaming service, after its investor “unexpectedly” cut off funding. In a short statement, the company said it was “shell-shocked” and unable to find new investment at such short notice. The company described its fortunes as “poetically crappy” after surpassing over a million registered users in the UK. “A massive thanks to everyone that helped us get this far,” it said. “We’re absolutely gutted. But it’s been a real pleasure.” Earlier this month, Bloom.fm claimed it was blocked from using Apple’s iAd mobile advertising network because its service was in direct competition with iTunes…

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