Reuters reports that when asked about the potential existence of a Facebook phone, Rose replied:

“This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programing interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way”.

“The rumors around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown.”

If that wasn’t enough to crush any hopes of a branded Facebook smartphone, when Rose was asked there would be a Facebook-branded device, the answer was an unequivocal “No”.

This update suggests that HTC could be working on a new version of its HTC Sense UI, looking to incorporate Facebook features into specific parts of the Android operating system. There were reports that INQ is also working on a similar device, although not much is known about the device.

Reuters reports that when asked about the potential existence of a Facebook phone, Rose replied:

“This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programing interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way”.

“The rumors around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown.”

If that wasn’t enough to crush any hopes of a branded Facebook smartphone, when Rose was asked there would be a Facebook-branded device, the answer was an unequivocal “No”.

This update suggests that HTC could be working on a new version of its HTC Sense UI, looking to incorporate Facebook features into specific parts of the Android operating system. There were reports that INQ is also working on a similar device, although not much is known about the device.

Reuters reports that when asked about the potential existence of a Facebook phone, Rose replied:

“This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programing interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way”.

“The rumors around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown.”

If that wasn’t enough to crush any hopes of a branded Facebook smartphone, when Rose was asked there would be a Facebook-branded device, the answer was an unequivocal “No”.

This update suggests that HTC could be working on a new version of its HTC Sense UI, looking to incorporate Facebook features into specific parts of the Android operating system. There were reports that INQ is also working on a similar device, although not much is known about the device.

Reuters reports that when asked about the potential existence of a Facebook phone, Rose replied:

“This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programing interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way”.

“The rumors around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown.”

If that wasn’t enough to crush any hopes of a branded Facebook smartphone, when Rose was asked there would be a Facebook-branded device, the answer was an unequivocal “No”.

This update suggests that HTC could be working on a new version of its HTC Sense UI, looking to incorporate Facebook features into specific parts of the Android operating system. There were reports that INQ is also working on a similar device, although not much is known about the device.

Facebook has finally added the ability to access the site via a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection, which should drastically increase security for users.

HTTPS provides a combination of the HTTP and SSL protocols, enabling encrypted communication between your computer and a web server. Without it you’re exposed to sniffing attacks on the network; for example, if you’re using a public Wi-Fi to access Facebook via plain HTTP, someone using the Firesheep add-on for Firefox can easily retrieve your data. HTTPS makes it a lot harder to do that.

The feature is available as an option on the Account Settings page. If you don’t see it yet, don’t worry: Facebook will be gradually rolling it out over the next couple of weeks.

Those who are concerned about online security probably know that it was possible to access Facebook via HTTPS for quite some time now, for example using the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox add-on, but some of Facebook’s features, for example chat and photo uploads, did not work properly over HTTPS.

Unfortunately, even Facebook’s implementation of the protocol will not be perfect. “Some Facebook features, including many third-party applications, are not currently supported in HTTPS,” writes Facebook’s Alex Rice in a blog post, promising that Facebook is working hard to resolve these issues. Furthermore, if you choose to enable HTTPS, you should know that it will slow down your Facebook experience, as encrypted pages take longer to load.

More About: facebook, HTTPS, security

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We talked about a wide range of topics regarding the company these days, and Taylor has a clear command over pretty much all of them. Obviously, he knows plenty of things that he’s not going to tell me, but the answers he did give are actually pretty insightful as well.

First of all, just as he did during his time on stage, Taylor made it very clear that there are two key high-level focuses for Facebook in 2011 from a technology perspective: HTML5 and mobile. And actually, as he sees them, those are both very much related as well.

Taylor said that the biggest transition internally that Facebook will make this year is a shift towards much more development resources being placed in mobile. Whereas right now, most developers are working on the site itself, over the next year, as they focus more on HTML5, that’s going to shift. Further, “over the next couple of years, a large percentage [of development teams] will be working on mobile primarily,” Taylor said.

Taylor said that there’s already a team just devoted to making HTML5 games within Facebook a reality. Sure enough, today we got a lengthy post from Facebook about the very matter. Of note, so far the team has found that short-term, 2D games are the only kind that are going to be really feasible with HTML5 until WebGL is more of a reality. And all of this s very early, but Facebook wants to share their finding as quickly as possible to help the web evolve.

Does that mean an evolution away from Flash? After all, Flash dominates the market for the types of HTML5 games that Facebook is talking about. “Well it’s hard,” Taylor said about Flash specifically. When I laughed and noted he was giving the diplomatic answer, he assured me that it is something they think about a lot. “We want to be ahead of the curve and fill in the gaps when possible,” is how he ended up putting it.

And this stance on HTML5 is vital for Facebook because Taylor really does see mobile as the future — but as it stands right now, that’s a bit of a problem. “The popularity of mobile devices will change,” he said implying that the dominant devices today might not be so dominant in the future. And if that’s the case, why should Facebook dump resources into them? Wouldn’t it be easier if they just focused on HTML5 — something which will work on an increasing number of devices going forward? Of course.

“We want Facebook to be consistent on the web and on mobile,” Taylor said, echoing what he had said earlier on stage. He also spoke about the trend of web applications taking cues from mobile apps. “I think that’s a really interesting trend. And it’s one that I’m really excited about,” he said. “People design better with constraints,” he continued, acknowledging that the latest version of Twitter on the web was a great example.

Oh, and yes, Taylor also said that work is well underway for tablet-optimized versions of Facebook. But he still wouldn’t commit to a Facebook iPad native app anytime soon.

I then moved on to more specific products within Facebook.

I first asked about Single Sign-On. This is the product that’s supposed to greatly ease the strain of having to sign in over and over and over again within native mobile apps. Taylor noted that most of the top apps have already implemented it, and said that as its adoption continues, the entire experience will only get better.

But he acknowledged that it’s not a perfect system, and went into some detail about how they have to get it to work on the iPhone, which is more limiting on background functions between apps. Essentially what they have to do is dump you into the Facebook app to load up your info then immediately take you back to the app you’re trying to log-in to.

Asked about Messages, Taylor said that it’s going great overall. “It’s a pretty big new system for us,” he said noting that the email and SMS additions require quite a bit of work to get going. “We’re rolling it out social group by social group,” he continued. “We hope to have it rolled out fully in the not too distant future,” he went on to say, which should be good news for a lot of users out there.

When I asked about the transition at the top of the Places group, with Justin Shaffer (fresh from the Hot Potato acquisition) taking over the project from Michael Sharon, Taylor noted that Sharon had been working on it for a long time. “It’s business style versus functional style,” he continued. “We encourage people to rotate around projects,” he said noting that Sharon was still working on the mobile team.

In terms of the Places product itself, “right now we’re focused on social value,” Taylor said. “Obviously, deals is a big part of the product, but we need to build really valuable social interactions,” he said. In terms of what’s driving people to use it, it’s simple: the ability to tell friends where you are — and the way they can tag you at a place.

With regard to the Questions product, Taylor was a bit more reserved, calling it “a very different product than most Facebook products.” “It’s not quite in the state that you want to roll it out fully. We have a lot to do on it,” he continued.

Groups, however, Taylor was much more enthusiastic about. “Groups are being used a lot,” he said. Again, one of the big things he cited there is that people can set up Groups on behalf of other people. When I asked if this was helping the product much like picture tagging did early on in Photos, Taylor said it absolutely was. “It’s been growing really well,” he said.

“Lists were really about filtering, Groups are about sharing,” he said also noting that the privacy issue here is interesting. That was a key focus for Groups, making it very easy and obvious to see who exactly you’re sharing what with.

I then asked what Taylor thought about the rise of these new mobile photo sharing apps like Instagram and PicPlz. Do these pose some sort of threat to Facebook? “It’s something we’ve talked about a lot — about what the interaction they’re seeing means,” Taylor said. “But we’re really happy that they’re built on top of our graph,” he continued with a laugh. He also said that he can’t wait to see how those products will evolve, noting that this is the first time we’ve seen a genre arise around a very particular element.

He also said that like Flickr and other more established photo services, the majority of pictures coming into Facebook now come from smartphones. So the service has to look at what these smaller players are doing and adapt.

Finally, I asked Taylor about the Turkish use of FriendFeed sustaining it against U.S. traffic loses. He said it has been amazing to see it rise there and in a few other countries organically. He also said that before he left Facebook, fellow FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit did a few things to ensure that FriendFeed will be able to run completely autonomously indefinitely.

[image: flickr/scriptingnews]

Although no other details have been divulged, we all remember Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to China, where he reportedly met with Chairman Wang. Zuckerberg has openly expressed sincere interest in tapping the highly populated country, asking “how can you connect the whole world if you leave out 1.6 billion people?”

Facebook is not alone behind The Great Chinese Firewall as other sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Wikipedia are blocked as well. There is hope, however, as Google faced a similar predicament back in mid-2010 but now, have continued its operations in China and is fairly doing well.

Facebook is likely to be unbanned only if it is willing to accept the country’s extreme authority in censorship. With an Internet user base of 457 million, it’s going to be difficult for Facebook to ignore if the company wants to hit one billion users this year.

The possibility of Facebook opening in China is more likely because Facebook is willing to compromise that the other way around. Regardless, we’re sure the millions of citizens of China will be as happy as we are if they could join the 600 million others on Facebook.

We’ll update you once we hear more so stay tuned.Yahoo News, Image Credit

If you need a refresher on what data-mining means, here the definition from the Facebook Data Mining Page;

Data mining, a branch of computer science and artificial intelligence, is the process of extracting patterns from data. Data mining is seen as an increasingly important tool by modern business to transform data into business intelligence giving an informational advantage. It is currently used in a wide range of profiling practices, such as marketing, surveillance, fraud detection, and scientific discovery.

In the less complicated words of Jim Haas;

Every time you use Facebook or one of the thousands of web pages using Facebook Connect your personal information is being collected and then sold to marketers and mysterious 3rd parties without your consent. Facebook gets rich and you don’t make a dime.

This extension blocks Facebook from tracking your movements on the web, which sounds great. The extension will block all data going to Facebook until it reaches 100,000 downloads. After 100,000 downloads this is where it gets strange. Facebook DataMine will then sell your information to third party websites and share the profits with you. This may excite you or in-my-case scare you. Users are able to opt out at any stage. My initial reaction was sweet, extra money, this extension is going to hit 100,000 installs fast. Then I pressed the install button and this popped up:

It made me think twice, “This extension can access: Your data on all websites…” I can’t just hand-over all that data to someone else. Then I thought some more, Facebook DataMine will let me own my data for a set time and then they will own it. Yes I will be reimbursed for selling my data. However if my data is to be sold by anyone, it should be Facebook. After all isn’t this another example of someone monetizing off the back of Facebook and leaving them out?

I trust Facebook. You’re all laughing at me right? But I do. It’s like the old saying, “better the devil you know”. Facebook launched in Feb 2004 and it took the site 5 years to become profitable. A part of me believes that Facebook should be making money for the amazing service that it is providing.

However if you want to make your data into money and have no issues with your data being sold, give Facebook DataMine a try.

Facebook is currently testing a new feature called “Buy With Friends,” which allows users to get discounts on virtual goods purchased by their friends.

Here’s how it works: A user makes an in-app purchase using Facebook’s currency, Facebook Credits, and shares it in his or her newsfeed. A friend sees the purchase and can then buy the same item at a discount directly in the newsfeed.

Currently, the feature only works for certain in-game purchases of virtual goods. Developers determine the items and terms of the promotion.

Speaking at the Inside Social Apps Conference in San Francisco Tuesday, Facebook’s head of commerce product marketing Deb Liu said that during early tests, more than half of users chose to share their purchases with friends, Forbes reports.

Although Buy With Friends is currently restricted to virtual goods, we can easily envision how this feature could be expanded to include physical goods as well, especially as more and more retailers set up shop on Facebook. The prototype could be Facebook’s way to participate in the kinds of group-buying offers recently popularized by the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pavlen

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The Learning Company has posted trailers for both Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego casual games that it plans to launch on Facebook in February. The games are being developed by Blue Fang Games, whose previous titles include Zoo Kingdom on Facebook and Lions Pride on iOS devices.

The trailers for the two new titles should bring back lots of memories for people of a certain age. The Oregon Trail game appears to have some obvious social twists on the iconic trek across the country (like being able to form a “wagon party” with your friends), in addition to more traditional “Trail” activities like crossing a river or hunting for buffalo.

Meanwhile, Carmen Sandiego appears to engage users in a global search for criminals, with the ability to enlist the help of friends along the way. We can imagine some other obvious features too (like leaderboards) with opportunities for virtual good tie-ins, though The Learning Company and Blue Fang haven’t revealed full details yet.

Of course, these companies are far from the first to try to profit from the combination of nostalgia and social media. There’s already an Oregon Trail game for iPhone, while an upcoming release from Rock Software is a play on the once popular Nintendo game Mike Tyson’s Punch-out.

What remains to be seen is whether such nostalgia can drive sales. After all, the biggest enthusiasts for these titles are all far beyond the age the games – which are somewhat educational in nature — were originally intended for. That said, most of us at Mashable can easily see a work day or two lost come February when Oregon Trail drops.

Video: “Oregon Trail”

Video: “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

More About: blue fang games, casual games, facebook, facebook games, Oregon Trail, the learning company, trending

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