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I'm sure you've already received similar feedback; but still: pressing the home button for me is something that should never result in a spinner showing up for a few seconds. The first time I saw this I had to restrain myself from immediately deinstalling Facebook home (and that's coming from someone who decided to try out the app for at least a few days).

Furthermore I'm missing a way to show the currently showing post in the Facebook app (I want that because home is missing some features).

Finally: I was somewhat frustrated to learn upon release of Facebook home that you guys decided to start out us-only. Understandable of course, but please don't make the rest of the world wait in vain for the arrival of a date (the 12th) that doesn't actually allow you to try out the app (I sideloaded an apk instead).

On a more positive note: ballsy move, and nice execution!

Am I the only one who's a bit sad that the biggest success of a nice open-standards protocol (XMPP) has been it's usage in a closed-down proprietary form? I mean, Whatsapp have done some cool stuff, but I really would have liked to finally see a dominant but open instant messaging network.

Howcome Google hasn't bought these guys?

"Basically if you never click, Like, comment, or share posts by a Page, Facebook made that Page less likely to show up in your feed. Cathcart says “That’s a relatively large change. It resulted in a large decrease in spam reports”, meaning it succesfully made the Facebook news feed better."

Following that logic I know a really good way to make the news feed even 'better': don't show any page updates ever. Or even any updates at all.

This is for real. Just confirmed the auto-execution of an USSD code on a Samsung Galaxy Mini II. Try the link below to see whether your device is vulnerable:

http://www.tinyurl.com/samsungexploit

It will show your firmware version by executing *#1234#.

Yes, that's the one! After reading that post I practically stopped visiting Techcrunch.

If I recall correctly, it was a post by Arrington that informed me about the existence of hacker news. Which for me personally directly resulted in a reduction of visits to Techcrunch, and a sharp increase in visits to HN.

Anyone else who remembers the post I'm talking about (couldn't find it) and who had a similar experience?

Well, maybe I'm missing something here, but I really think it's mind blowing HN-readers are only now realizing this is happening with these kind of apps.

And yeah, if you don't do this (everybody else does AFAIK) you're left with a disadvantage in hooking you up to your friends who also use the service.

I actually think the CEO's response is not that bad.

If this is really happening, it's going to be a slippery slope towards more blockades.

Here's to hoping they make the social signal (being plussed by your friends) a more important part of ranking a website in the search results. It could really help the non-content sites (read: web apps) that would otherwise have a hard time ranking highly.

Some more information about this can be found here: http://packetstormsecurity.org/files/108010/SA-20111219-1.tx...

And I'm sure you're not the only one. I want to be able to post technical (public!) stuff, but keep it from showing up in my 'family' circle. Why that's still not possible is beyond me.

Although not correct, posting to both my 'public' and 'techies' circles would be one way of addressing this issue. But alas, according to you this doesn't actually work that way.

Interesting to finally see some informed discussion about this going on. In the meantime I've scripted my Galaxy S to turn off syncing when the screen is turned on. It helps a lot to combat lag, as the phone often had the annoying (but understandable) habit of starting a sync when it was awakened by me: resulting in slowness just when I tried to use the device.

Not to mention how overly aggressive they are in their tactics to bring in new members.

'There's one message waiting for you!'

Well, what's the difference between making an ad look like a legitimate endorsement, and endorsing a product even though you're financially benefiting because of the affiliate link?

What about when some site is raving about a product, and pointing users to the product's website using an affiliate link. No disclosure at all. Is that also illegal? Because I think it would be great if it was.

No USB Mass Storage support on the Galaxy Nexus. Well, for us Linux (and Mac) users that's some bad news.

It's actually also used by WhatsApp, only not in a way that suggests they will ever open up their service for federation (and why would they?).

So yeah, XMPP is part of the solution, but not if it's used in a closed off proprietary way.

I'm getting really tired of all these proprietary instant messaging solutions. It won't be long before people will realize they will at some point have to pay for usage of WhatsApp. When that happens, something else will gain traction, restarting the cycle again once more.

I hope Google just acquires WhatsApp already and opens up the platform. It's been years now, and about bloody time for something to appear that's the standard, open, cross-platform and free way of sending messages over the internet.

Still rolling out apparently, I'm not getting the redesigned facebook.

I got all excited when I saw 'Huddle' had been replaced by 'messenger'; thinking this would mean google talk and huddles had been integrated. I mean, wouldn't it be great to have an alternative to the closed stuff like whatsapp/kik/etc? Google would have to start by releasing a native google talk client for the iphone (why isn't there one yet?!).

I'm amazed that after all these years there's still no real open standard for instant messaging that is also actually the defacto standard.

About posting techy stuff: what do you when you don't want to bother your non-tech friends with posts like that, but you _do_ want all the people (that you don't know) following you to be able to read these posts? Have you manually put everyone of those in a circle as well?

Am I the only one who is a bit disappointed with the slow speed of development of G+? When it launched a lot of users were quick to point out some of the larger issues they were having, and as of yet not much has been done to fix them.

Have a look at their what's new page: http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/static.py?hl=en&#... - mostly rather small tweaks, nothing yet that improves their circles concept (e.g. allow us to define which circles show up in our default feed).

Also, with regard to their new product 'huddles'; why haven't they integrated this with google talk? A lot of my friends use google talk, practically none of them use huddles. So instead of improving the groupchat on google talk (and maybe just release an iphone app already!) they roll out this new product that locks out desktop users. Anyone care to explain to me why they might have gone this route?

As Tom Anderson also argued a while ago: it's not a facebook-competitor in its current form yet, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that G+ is proving to be a nice blend between twitter and a blogging platform. When large content-creators switch to G+ (and a lot of them are, because of 1. followers, 2. larger posts, and 3. comments) their audience will slowly move over to G+ as well.

I will not be surprised if this will gradually result in more facebook-like activity (closer social contact, between friends) on G+.

I thought the article was a little low on content; found this one somewhat better written and more informative: http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/37877/?a=f

Will probably be visiting Kenya shortly, so I'm definitely going to have a look at how 'mobile' is being used over there!

His reply gives me the shivers, partly because I'm afraid I won't be able (if I were ever to be locked out) to generate enough attention to warrant a response by Vic himself. But mostly because of the incredibly reassuring way he chose to word his response:

"You bet on Google. We owe you better. I'm investigating."

Maybe it's just me, but I think their ad is fantastic. I hope they become successful in the US!

Of course it's a concern, it's a problem circles were supposed to resolve. I for one am still barely sharing anything, because I don't want to bother people with posts that I know will not be interesting to them.

And yes, tagging would be nice as well, but I don't think one should have to explain to his/her mother to filter out their #tech and #business posts. That just won't work.

So, how are these hackers sharing their technical insights on G+ without bothering their real-life friends and family?

That's right, they aren't.

Unless you manually add all your followers to a 'followers' circle and share to that (and subsequently pollute your default stream with your followers' posts) there's currently no way on G+ to keep your technical public persona apart from your more personal, private one.

As has already been mentioned in the comments on the post earlier today, emailing a direct login link or merely a password reset link actually do have different security implications: when an attacker gains access to the account by resetting your password, you will know about this as soon as you try to login yourself. With a direct login link you won't.

Furthermore, when offering direct login links you are training your users to not remember their passwords. A bad side-effect, unless you have only users who will never login except when notified.

> I'm not saying that there aren't low-security services where this convenience is good. It's more that the author hasn't taken into account that there is greater security in the forgot password system.

Exactly. And I think it's somewhat dangerous for the author of the article to not understand this important distinction and at the same time advise creators of web apps to implement this behavior.

Judging by the amount of upvotes for the article and the comments it has been getting, I'm afraid some of us will simply follow his advice and replace reset password emails with direct login links.