Facebook’s iPad App Is Hidden Inside Of Their iPhone App

There are things out there all around us that we often miss because we’re just not looking. This is perhaps most true in the tech world, where thousands of secrets are out there in the wild, hidden in code. If you know where to look, or if you can read the code, you can find those secrets. It’s how so many features of iOS get revealed early by sites like 9to5 Mac, who are great at parsing the code (and confirming our non-code-digging scoops). It’s how we knew basically everything about Chrome OS before it actually launched. It’s how we knew Facebook Places was coming before it was announced. And now we’ve just uncovered a new massive find this way.

Hidden in the code of Facebook’s iPhone app is the code for something else. Something everyone has been waiting over a year for. The iPad app.

Yes, it’s real, and it’s spectacular (well, very good, at the very least). And yes, it really is right there within the code. Even better, it’s executable. (Update: a lot of pictures here.)

For the past couple hours, I’ve been using Facebook’s iPad app. Well, I should qualify this. I can’t be sure if this is the version they’ll actually ship, but based on everything I’ve seen, I’m going to assume it’s at least very close to the version they’re going to ship. While much of it is written with HTML5 (as you might expect from Facebook), the native iPad work is very good too.

In particular, the navigation system is great. Unlike the iPhone app — which even its creator is complaining about now as being stale — the Facebook iPad app uses a left-side menu system that can be accessed by the touch of a button or the flick of the iPad screen. The app also makes great use of the pop-overs (overlay menus) found in other iPad apps. When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook. The photo-viewer aspect looks great — similar to the iPad’s own native Photos app. Places exists with a nice big map to show you all your friends around you. Etc.

It’s all good. I’m going to put up a post after this one with a ton of screenshots of the entire app.

All of this is possible apparently thanks to a seemingly tiny update Facebook pushed yesterday to their iPhone app. Version 3.4.4 seemed like a small version that restored the “Send” button for comments and chat among a few other little things. Facebook may have even pushed it out in response to some backlash they had been getting about the app, as Financial Times covered a few days ago. Perhaps it was the rush to fix some of those issues that caused Facebook to push this version — which will clearly eventually be Universal Binary (meaning it will house both the iPhone and iPad versions of the app) — with the iPad elements inside. Whatever the case, the app is carrying a payload of much greater importance than some bug fixes.

So, I’m using it. Can you? Well, yes — if you don’t mind doing some things you’re technically not supposed to do to your iPad. We obviously don’t recommend it, but if you catch my drift, I’m sure you can figure out a way to access Facebook for iPad. Related, it must be noted that a Canadian engineering student, Marvin Bernal, who calls himself an “iOS Enthusiast” actually noticed this Facebook mistake almost immediately and tweeted about it.

So, after over a year of complaints, Facebook now appears to truly be on the verge of releasing the iPad app. It has now been well over a month since the New York Times’ Nick Bilton reported about the app’s existence and said it should launch in the “coming weeks”. At the time, we further verified its existence , but did not hear a timetable for the launch. Once source now says that based on the HTML changes rolling out on an hourly basis, it looks like work is still underway. But much of that work appears to be smaller tweaks at this point. We’re close — just in case the code being attached to the iPhone app didn’t give that away.

During the launch of the Skype video chatting integration a few weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company was gearing up for a full slate of launches in the coming weeks. The iPad app will be one of them. And based on what I’ve seen tonight, I’d be even less surprised if Project Spartan ties in with it as well eventually. The one thing the iPad app (like all the other Facebook mobile apps) is missing is gaming (and all other third-party apps). Spartan could bring that down the line.

We’ll be doing a post with a ton of images shortly. Below, a quick taste.

Update: And all the images. Enjoy.

Update 2: I’ve confirmed with a source who had previously seen the Facebook iPad app that this is in fact the very app that they were planning to launch with. We’ll see if that timetable gets sped up now.

iPhone 4 Review

http://mobiletechupdatenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/iphone-4-review.html

Apple iPad 2 (16GB, Wi-Fi, black) Review

http://mobiletechupdatenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/apple-ipad-2-16gb-wi-fi-black-review.html

Thank you :
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/25/facebooks-hidden-ipad-app/

China Web users hit 485 million

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The number of Chinese Internet users hit 485 million at the end of June, with microblogging and group-buying posting the highest user growth rates, a Chinese government Internet statistical body said on Tuesday.

The number of microblogging or Weibo users rose over 200 percent in the first six months of the year to 195 million users from 63.1 million at the end of 2010, said the China Internet Network Information Center in a report.

The number of group-buying users also rose 125 percent to 42.2 million users from 18.7 million users at the end of 2010.

Sina Corp, Tencent Holdings and Baidu compete in China's hot Weibo space. Weibo acts like Twitter by allowing users to post links and short messages and accrue followers. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China.

The rise in the number of Weibo users could be causing a knock-on effect on the more traditional social-networking sites that saw the number of users fall to 230 million in the first half of the year from 235.1 million at the end of last year.

Renren Inc, Tencent and Kaixin001 compete in the traditional SNS space.

Despite the rise in total number of Web users, China's Internet penetration rate remains low -- at around 36 percent -- compared with developed Asian countries South Korea and Japan, which boast Internet penetration rates of more than 70 percent.

There are also signs that China's Internet growth is slowing, CNNIC's data showed. The rise of 6.1 percent over the end of 2010 is the slowest annual growth rate recorded.

Thank you :
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-Web-users-hit-485-rb-3290857925.html?x=0&.v=1

Women’s World Cup Soccer Final Scores New Twitter Record With 7,196 Tweets Per Second

After an epic run, the U.S. women’s soccer teamsuccumbed to Japan today in the final of the Women’s World Cup tournament. And if you were paying attention to your Twitter stream today, you may have seen an influx of Tweets about the game, which ended in a penalty shootout. Twitter just Tweeted that the Women’s World Cup final scored a new record with 7,196 Tweets per second. Even U.S. President Barack Obama joined in Tweeting about the game. And from the Tweet, “today’s end to the Paraguay/Brazil game is now 2nd with 7,666 TPS.”

The Men’s World Cup soccer tournament last year also achieved record engagement on Twitter at the time. For basis of comparison, last year’s men’s World Cup Final marked the largest period of sustained activity for an event in the service’s history, with over 2,000 Tweets per second (TPS) during the last 15 minutes of the match, and 3,051 tweets per second when Spain scored its winning goal in the final match.

Of course, Twitter, which just turned five years old, has grown significantly in the past year, especially in international markets. In May we saw Twitter see a significant peak in Tweets Per Second, following the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The event reached a high of 5,106 Tweets per second.

In terms of past events, Super Bowl 2011 saw 4,064 TPS, and the all-time high was New Years Eve 2010 in Japan, which hit 6,939 TPS at its peak. On the day of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in March, Twitter usage reached 5,530 TPS. And during the Royal Wedding in England in April, Twitter reached a peak of 3,966 TPS.

This past week, Twitter announced that its users are sharing 350 billion items per day and600,000 users are signing up for the service daily.

Thank you : http://networkedblogs.com/kxhPi