Attention Zune Nation, Launch of Twitter App for Zune HD hours away

Remember a few months back, Zune team promised to launch Twitter and Facebook app for its latest multimedia player, Zune HD. Well it turns out that, you will finally be getting your very own Twitter app for Zune HD that will hopefully meet your micro-blogging and tweeting purposes. The much awaited app is expected to land within a few hours. This exciting news was discovered via a tweet from Microsoft’s ZuneTwitter account.

Unfortunately no word on the functionality that this overdue app will provide. Although I personally would be disappointed if it did not support the new retweet functionality. Anyhow, this little piece of news means that no longer you will be required to use the Zune HD’s browser to perform your Twitter activities.

One more thing, there is a high probability that this app like other apps will be available for free.

This news just makes you wonder when will the Zune team unleash the much awaited Facebook app? Any guesses?

Facebook app for Android updated, brings native support for viewing photos and profiles

(Technology Updates) – Remember Facebook for Android ? Yes the app, which was seriously lagging behind the iPhone version of Facebook app in terms of functionality? Guess what, Facebook has decided to change that, as it has introduced an updated Facebook app for Android. One of the disadvantages that original Android version of the famous social networking app brought was that it opened Facebook in a browser to fulfill users’ request for certain options. Well that is no longer the case. (New and missing features listed below)

New Features

The changes that this updated Facebook for Android brings include:

• View Profiles natively in the Facebook app.
• View photos right inside the Facebook app.
• Speed has improved as well.

Missing Features

The features that are missing from this app are:

• Inability to send/receive messages.
• Lacks support for events.
• Facebook chat still missing.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to the Android Market to get the updated Facebook for Android app.

Google brings real time search

Google had to do something about the real time search thing and it has done just that. Yes, Google has added real time search capability to its ever growing and ever powerful search engine. Now users can get to see real time results/updates of their search queries.

How big is this? It is huge since it gives you the chance to come across breaking news from Twitter,Facebook and blogs as they happen even if they are not that popular. To make this even more interesting, the real time search has also been rolled out for iPhone and Android phones.

It has partnered up with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendfeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca and others to make this possible. This excellent news was revealed by the search engine giant during their news conference held at Computer History Museum.

Try it Now

If you can’t wait for the feature to arrive, you can  visit Google Trends and click on a “hot topic,” which in most cases will bring you to a search results page with the new real-time feature.

Interestingly, Bing managed to beat Google in the real time search race as it already integrated its decision engine with Twitter back in October. If you are interested, you may want to check out the following link

Bing brings Twitter search

Google will be rolling out these exciting new features in the next few days. Real time search will be made available to global users in English language.

Source: Geekword

Facebook to add Panic button

Facebook has decided to add Panic buttons to its site. Through this safety button, the hot social networking site  is providing its young users, a way to report inappropriate, adult and obscene content immediately.Facebook is not the only entity that is adding this functionality, 139 other organizations are part of it as well.

In total, 140 organizations which include charities as well have signed the UK’s new voluntary internet standards. The internet standards are expected to be finalized on Tuesday.

The panic button poses a requirement, that all the interested entities should provide a mechanism to enable children to flag inappropriate content and prompt instantaneously. Also the panic buttons should be easily accessible and should have a prominent appearance.

The other provisions include

• Give parent the control to decide which sites their children can access and view.
• Sites should provide safe search and control mechanisms, using which parents can restrict their offspring’s access to potentially harmful sites.
• Provide guidelines for moderated services which includes chat rooms, instant messaging and search engines.

UK government will be also initiating an advertising campaign which aims to educate parents, teachers and children about the yet to be decided Internet standards code.