Beatmania IIDX 20 Tricoro Version Blue

It was an another update of this month with more songs as part of the new mode that was released. Songs from Legend Cross were still in the game and you can select them from the normal music select screen so that there’s no need to worry about what’s going to happen to them.  This update contains additional songs and especially for new boss songs and is known as Omega Attack. Previously, you could unlock the Legend Cross songs by obtaining Astran lights and some crystals that are needed to unlock the secret boss songs. Plan 8 is the extra stage boss song and is by far even harder than the normal boss songs and the secret boss song is Thor’s Hammer which turns out to be LED remix of La Campanella and speaking of La Campanella, this isn’t the first rhythm game remix. The previous one was by Cranky and that was in DJ Max Portable 3 and Technika 2 and above. Now, in Omega Attack, you can unlock songs by clearing in-game viruses in the in-game network. Whether you clear or fail the song in whichever mode you’re in, you’re awarded the CPs. You can use the CPs to purchase the weapons for your character to clear the viruses so that you can unlock the songs. This is sort of like a social RPG way of progressing in a rhythm arcade game although you can choose to play it in the normal way. As you clear more of the viruses, you unlock more songs, new weapons and upgrade your character’s code level to earn more CPs per play. However, some tiles on the map require more hits to clear. The mode is divided into two sectors with each sector containing its boss song where the real boss fight comes in as you play the song. But then, there are some factors in unlocking the songs from the respective sectors.
Lastly for Legend Cross songs in Standard Mode, you may need to buy Devil and Angel Cards using Dellars which require of course the E-Amusement Cards with premium membership. I guess that Premium Mode may have the time limit and makes use of the Paseli. Fortunately, if you had played the Legend Cross songs during Legend Cross event, you can buy the Devil Cards which are less expensive than Angel Cards but for CS Revival songs, they are automatically unlocked the day after the last day of the event.

Wordament on IOS

WHAT? They should have released this port earlier or so! Having to release this last week was already too late back then when other people already predicted before we reached beyond last week which is already the week with Christmas day we’re already in.

Surprisingly enough, the IOS users are able to get another Metro gaming experience with Wordament, another game that was originally on Windows 8 and Windows Phone and it is the first game to feature Xbox Live support. Wait, Xbox Live support on non-Microsoft devices? OH JEEZ, WHAT WAS MICROSOFT THINKING LIKE THAT? When you start the game on the IOS, you’re presented with the sign in page that you may need to login with your Xbox Live account or Microsoft Account. Otherwise, you can play as a guest which is an offline way to play. And of course, this isn’t the first Windows Phone game that was ported to IOS.

Gunhound EX for PSP

Originally a PC game, G.Rev has announced the demo version available for the PSP while the full version of the game for the PSP will be available in late January next year. It’s a run and gun game but the PC version looks like you’re playing on the PSP no matter which aspect ratio you’ve chosen as the in-game resolution surely looks like the PSP resolution that it can be ported to PSP without graphical loss. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see what the whole game looks like because for Kokuga for 3DS, the whole gameplay may be boring without the use of special weapons, leaving your offensive attacks kind of weak and more time consuming to take out the enemies but I may assume that the owners of that game already had some fun kicking the enemies’ asses with those cool weapon cards.

Blazblue Calamity Trigger on Windows 8

OK, guess what when it was recently released this perhaps this week or last week, it is on Windows 8 and Windows RT devices are not supported. Perhaps, the game itself is damn advanced just like the original PC port two years ago. If that release date was such a case to you, you were better off with the original PC port or other versions of the game as the Windows 8 release of this game was already too late then like we thought that there would be some sort of calamity approaching or something but it turned out that no such shit happened and therefore, you’re still able to play the Windows 8 version.

However, do you probably want to play the freaking Windows 8 version when you already have owned other version? What about moving on to the latest series when you are already a big fan of the series or the genre itself? To the business and consumers, the operating system is already a technical mess or technical disaster for desktop users in which people already found it unacceptable in various ways.

So here’s what Windows 8 version is like. The system requirements falls in the same range as the original PC port and the controls are done with touch, gamepad and keyboard so that you can try out the game with the arcade stick again for example for better arcade experience. Fortunately, this is damn cheap to get and that’s the best thing about Windows 8 port compared to buying other versions. However, it may not be the same for buying other stuffs just to get this port as the overall costs may be much higher than buying a console and the console port together.

Maimai Plus

The word, Plus, sounds like there’s going to be an IOS port of this rhythm game but my imagination is wrong. It is actually an updated game with additional stuffs and improvements. There are more Vocaloid songs to play in addition to the originals as well as even more Extend songs. Another information is that there is some soundtrack CD called, Rave Party Tokyo or something, in which Sega took several songs for that game and to a surprise, it seems that various Touhou circles were involved in that soundtrack CD. Even Cranky, the BMS music composer was involved as well as his latest song was put in Maimai Plus. This isn’t the first time his song was in put the commercial rhythm game in the arcade. The previous game was DJ Max Portable 3 according to the Japanese Wikipedia of La Campanella.

Damn, it seemed that the mechanical problem of the card swiping part for Maimai is still there despite the update that took place yesterday when blogging this in Eastern regional time. And it’s really fascinating to me when some little kids try to bash the shit out of the buttons of whichever arcade games when they’re in attract modes. What an inaccurate rule and its factors that the vacation is left out way too long like lasting for more than five weeks for children.

Megatex at Expo this month

This one seemed to be small like there was not much to say. It was basically the last IT show of this year that took one hall. Surprisingly enough, HP is not the only one that has the USB technology that hooks up both the keyboard and the mouse at the same time. From my findings, it seemed like Rangers is another company that produces the same set. Speaking of that company, I remembered using their wireless keyboard with the mini mouse part on the left and right sides. The left side has the left and right mouse buttons while the right side has the trackball thing that allows you to move. When I used that keyboard one more time, there was some Android TV thing with the flashdrive and the SD card in. From the look of the interface, I was certain that it was powered by Android like what I used in the SITEX IT show.
The exploration took place two days ago but the show won't be over until next Tuesday which is Christmas Day. In fact, I was distracted like hell by the SMART TVs displaying the respective websites with the latest news articles so that section was skipped anyway although I explored one previously in the previous IT shows.
Lastly, I found Garageband to be interesting to use but as I don't have the app on my IOS device due to the fact it is priced or I don't have the Mac computer, it would take me time to figure out on how to use it based on my experience on using FL Studio.

Sound Voltex Booth–December Touhou Arrangement Packs

Wanting to see more? There’s probably one thought from Konami and this month may have more than one pack of Touhou arrangements. This started from last week and they think that this is not over yet. Maybe they’re adding more of the arrangements before reaching next year but then, it seems that the preparation for some celebration next Tuesday will be cut off like some badass Touhou characters will be tearing apart the whole globe if the remixes are poorly done again for that game. Nobody wants that consequence to happen again like what already happened the last time when some Bemani songs were horribly screwed up that the controversy already happened.

Well, it may be too late to play off the fourth pack of Touhou arrangements for that game but there was still time for the third pack that was released last week. So in the meantime, you can try out the famous arrangements from the third pack such as Marisa Stole The Precious Thing, Help Me, Eirin, Kero Destiny and three other arrangements I don’t even know of. Speaking of those three famous arrangements, there have been MAD videos everywhere with those songs.

The fourth pack may contain more arrangements we have known a lot such as Nights of Nights and the other one by IOSYS which is the arrangement of Orin’s theme and holy cow, it seems that Cool & Create, IOSYS and Silver Forest have been pretty famous but unfortunately sometime this year, it seemed that Silver Forest had already disbanded so how can Silver Forest be credited by then when their arrangements are put in Sound Voltex?

Twitter for BlackBerry 4.0 Update

Now that you can connect your BlackBerry on Twitter with the Connect capabilities. it features new tabs, streamlined design, and simplified navigation makes this an enjoyable app on BlackBerry. The Connect tab shows you who retweeted, favorited and followed you and gathers all your mentions in one place. Even better is that it is simple to filter mentions and replies to see only certain interactions.

Other improvements involve the access to existing and new functionality such as the new Discover Tab which encompasses Trends, “Who to follow” suggestions, and an easier way to browse categories. On the Me tab, you can find messages, lists and your favorites Tweets there.

Well, that’s the update to the app for BlackBerry but then, this sort of update should be available earlier to me.

New Apps for Xbox Live

What, is that all this future has got? No matter how much you plan to view all the episodes of y our favorite show, it is gotta be time consuming like it may take days to weeks to finish watching everything on your Xbox 360 console. Perhaps they should have implemented this earlier or so. Crunchyroll, AOL On, Vimeo and even that ignorant IGN are the ones we probably know of we had gone there before. For Crunchyroll, this is where you can watch your favorite shows there from whichever culture you like. It is launching in all Live Markets except Japan, UAE, Slovakia and Saudi Arabia which may be due to some laws or whatever but come on, that place is where we have the rights to view stuffs on online legally compared to other sites which may be the illegal ways. AOL On, well, whatever it is, it is the video sharing service by AOL where you can watch the videos under Reuters, Entertainment Tonight and more. Vimeo, well, unfortunately, maybe I should go back to my YouTube videos anyway as there was no sign of momentum there whatever.

Lastly is the ignorant IGN site where you can see the previews, reviews, guides and the beginner-like gameplay videos as well as the instant access to game walkthrough. The reason I called that site ignorant is that I had found some game like SFR for Xbox 360 to be the failure as the control concepts were already complex to be implemented into the Kinect technology as such sports like skateboarding may be kind of tough for it. Also, the contents were unusual and the voice execution in gameplay is annoying. The final boss battle was kind of disappointing and the course exclusive stuffs were kind of retarded in terms of the idea. Lastly, the menus had the serious downsides to me as well. I surely don’t like to use the freaking voice command so I turned that off entirely on my console. To make things worse, you may have to memorize those things to make the voice commands kind of non-responsive and the interactivity doesn’t seem to be effective enough like you have to drag whatever you select to the bottom-right icon. Well, stay away from that Kinect game no matter but then IGN gave this a 7 which caused the fans of the franchise to be angry and this is why the site, IGN is as ignorant as ever that we prefer Classic Game Room even better. Their reviews are better and they even reviewed the retro games and other games not released in the western regions.

Mobile apps with Instant Access to Infinite Drive

Well, another cloud storage service coming from another company which is Bitcasa similar to other cloud storage services we used like Skydrive, DropBox, Google Drive to name a few. This one regards the mobile apps that allow instant streaming of documents from the Bitcasa Infinite Drive which is the name of the Bitcasa cloud storage service.

Infinite Drive however, never runs out of space and is accessible from anywhere and any device and you can get instant streaming, access anywhere in streaming media content off the Instant Drive to your mobile and desktop devices without having to synchronize stuffs again. And as Instant Drive is an infinite cloud storage, it acts as a virtual external drive that expands with the user’s growing storage needs without worries of running out of space.

When you backup your data to the cloud storage online, they are protected with client-side encryption in which you can see and access the data. In addition, there’s the time-capsule versioning similar to the Volume Shadow Copies in the operating system but then this is rarely used although it can be used as a last resort when certain mistakes happen.

For sharing content, you can share your data with your friends or perhaps the public regardless of file size. For sharing on the mobile devices, you can also set up alerts to protect against large downloads that may affect their mobile bandwidth changes.

Starting in February next year which may be like too late or so, Bitcasa will provide unlimited storage for just $10/month.

DropBox Ver 2.0 for IOS

This update is gonna be a major one for the IOS and here are the following features:

• Updated Photos experience: You can scroll through the photos and pick the one you want to display. On the Ipad, the left pane is the Photos pane similar to the one on the Iphone and Ipod Touch and even better, there’s also the secondary pane for displaying the photo while retaining the first pane. When you preview the photos, you can choose to email, send a text or Facebook message, share to Facebook and even Tweet. It’s a nice opportunity to share with your friends on social networking sites. Even better is that they have included the speedy scroller. What the hell is that and how can this work on the mobile devices? Will this feature divide the number of photos into the respective groups?
• Well, I had the Camera Roll synchronized to my DropBox storage so for every new photo taken, it will be synchronized. But with Version 2.0, there is a feature that allows you to make a folder and upload to specific folders.
• Lastly, they had gotten rid of the text labels on the tabs in favor of the simple iconography. The icon is changed as well for the simplified future.

The update will be initiated on my IOS device and explored in a few moments right after this blog post.

Bing Social Results for Ipad

Previously, they already started rolling out this feature and now it was available for the IPad yesterday in the western regions. This feature is for Safari on Ipad including Ipad Mini for the social sidebar. This is kind of easier to plan your decisions on Ipad than on the normal computers as the device is more mobile and you can plan from anywhere you are in.

In addition, you can also connect to other accounts of yours such as the social networking accounts to get the search started with this new feature similar to Google search engine.

I don’t know if this will be available on other web browsers as well as the mobile versions of those web browsers but until then, you can try out this new feature on the Ipad devices.

Raiden Legacy on IOS and Android

Last time, I might have played Raiden Fighters Aces and the graphics, music and sounds are obviously more accurate compared to MAME emulation of Raiden Fighters series. Where-else in this compilation on IOS and Android, the ENTIRE PORT IS BASED ON MAME EMULATION CODES! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? THIS IS LIKE SEIBU KAIHATSU WILL SUE THE PORTERS FOR SURE! The good side is the controls and the graphics but then, the graphics will go too pixelated even on the great sharp modern smartphone and tablet devices compared to the Xbox 360 port. This part is bullshit like that in terms of the graphical settings. The gameplay is kind of flawed with minor bugs as well and especially for the charging in Raiden Fighters series. Then, for SOOOOOUUUUNNNDDDS, the freaking soooouuunnnddds! The sound is based on MAME emulation as it sounds compared to playing Raiden Fighters Aces.

Gameplay-wise on IOS and Android, I’m pretty sure that you can play even better like that in terms of scoring as long as you don’t forget the respective factors in each area in each game in the series. Hell, that is the best part of the compilation and of course, you’re going to buy it!

At this rate, the compilation is going to be okay to me like that compared to Xbox 360 version where certain game modes are sort of underrated to me in addition to some programming inaccuracy of the ports. If the compilation for the IOS and Android is ported by Success Corporation, Gulti and Seibu Kaihatsu instead of that fucking DotEmu, then the whole compilation can be even better like that just like the Xbox 360 port. Buy this port if you want but I don’t know if DotEmu has the permission or not.

Firefox 18 will have static themes

Well, for some reason, the browser is slowed down like hell due to animated themes. Remember that Windows Vista has animated desktop and other cool stuffs as well? Those surely take lots of resources but we still find them quite cool all along. Sure, the animated themes in Firefox are likely to take lots of resources and it can be troublesome in terms of performance and the browser has to do all the buffering work non-stop like crazy by redrawing all the stuffs no matter how fast the browser can be.

Well, there is a bug which is the reason on why there is a huge resource hog. The solution is to have smaller resolution images so you may have to make a theme out of small images without losing various details you want. But to make the solution worse, they have no choice but to remove the animations entirely. I guess this is more troublesome in terms of performance than static skin.

One brave thing Mozilla is that they have understood that people will be upset with this decision but it seems that there is already a workaround where you can install Personas Shuffler to get the animations back. Bravos, Mozilla.

Finding famous people and places with Bing

Looks like they’re planning the features for Bing that are somewhat similar to the ones in Google search engine. When you search for something famous, you may end up seeing the picture next to the description as well as the web address and the title of the web page. In addition, you can see the section that displays several images that you can see even more if you click on the Image tab. Also on Google search engine as well as the Bing search engine, if you hover on the link, you can see the preview on the right pane as well as the related topics you want to search for as well. However, there are some differences between these two search engines. The Bing search engine has the Social Results pane that displays the topics that are posted in social networking websites.

Header for Twitter profile

Just like the cover image on your Facebook and Google Plus account, it seems that Twitter already has one. So far, I might have seen some special Twitter users having some header like image on top of their profile pages and I still haven’t set up my account to have that. By tomorrow, if you don’t upload a header photo, you will end up seeing the default grey image on your profile and that’s not good looking but don’t worry, it doesn’t seem to be a large consequence anyway. It is somewhat their recommendation or encouragement for you to do it.

Skydrive for Xbox 360?

Yikes, what the fuck? This is a disastrous idea Microsoft has come up with and it is going to be a disastrous report/article you’re going to see from here and Neowin site. You see, having the cloud storage on Xbox 360 console is already fine for storing game saves perhaps but THIS is a disaster striking the company’s asses! Who thought this may be a good idea anyway? You can’t edit stuffs on the Skydrive directly on your console and I don’t know if you can view photos and videos on that console. It may be seriously flawed that it makes the network viewing of the content look like the USB media player connected to the console. THIS IS MORE LIKE A READ-ONLY CLOUD VIEWER than the fully functional cloud service on the device and such technology like this SHOULD NOT be implemented in USB media players as well.

When it comes to servers, what you’re gonna do about the data stored on them. Do you edit, create and remove stuffs directly on the servers? Who the hell at the data center may want that?

Well, I don’t know if the game saves can be stored in the Skydrive storage or not but a huge technical disaster may happen to your account that will affect all the services that power it if you happen to have violated some new rules or terms of usages or whatever like what already happened to someone’s Hotmail account.

Next at Microsoft

Well, what now? There’s also the Pulse app as well as other apps that represent the other blogs on multiple platforms. And now, there’s even Next at Microsoft, the first-party sort of the news viewing app for Windows 8. This is about the stories from across Microsoft and get behind the scenes of the trends such as the Natural User Interface and Big Data as well as profile the work of the people the blogger, Steve Clayton meets from Microsoft Research, his incubation labs, designers, developers and more.

How is this the magazine style online news viewing app? It doesn’t look like an online magazine or some sort at all to me because it consists of all the blog posts posted on various blog sites around Microsoft domain. Performance is also the key goal to the developers so you can speed through the content with a flick and not be distracted by unnecessary bells and whistles.

In the future, there will be version 2 coming in with more stuffs but in the meantime, you can install the app and it’s already free and get started.

Xperia and Box renew partnership through next year

Announced before the last year’s festive season and initially running for a year, the Xperia smartphone and Sony tablet users can now get the free 50GB Box cloud storage for life by signing up or accessing existing Box accounts from their devices before the end of next year.

Development Area Update

As Windows Live Mesh would be replaced with the new Skydrive, it seemed that I had decided to move my development data to my Box cloud storage but the Box Sync was annoyingly flawed that I decided to another migration again and this time, the Music Remix Area would be moved to my Skydrive account. Even worse was that the policy was changed that having abusive data in your Skydrive cloud storage can lead to the removal of your Microsoft account.

Over the next few weeks, there will be another news from Sony and Box as there will be a talk about the service and what they can expect from Box through next year. This is available for Xperia smartphones including the released after Xperia X10 but not for X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro and devices with Android versions prior to 2.1

Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone

It surely looks like Internet Explorer 9 for Windows Phone but IE9 Mobile to me may seem to be the prototype and therefore it’s not quite fast. So, with IE 10 for Windows Phone, it is truly fast and assumed to be less buggy. In Windows Phone 7.5, the interface seems to be changed a bit to make more room for the sites you care about so they’re no longer boxed-in by the browser frame. This same look is kept in Windows Phone 8, plus the popular features including the smart address bar, tabbed browsing and pinned sites to name a few that are retained.

It is obvious that the design may be sharing the Windows 8 counterpart of Internet Explorer browser as both Windows Phone and Windows 8 versions of IE 10 are built on the same engine and offer improved handling of key web technologies and standard, including new support for touch-enabled sites.

Like Windows 8 itself, there are more ways to share on Windows Phone. If you have an Xbox 360 console with the new dashboard, you can use the latest ways to share. Just choose the Xbox option from IE 10’s Share menu to launch the Xbox SmartGlass app on your Windows Phone and send the website you were looking at to your TV. Another feature is the Card Tap like Ad-Hoc way in which you can tap your Windows Phone on another one provided that it supports the NFC, an emerging wireless technology designed for short-distance sharing. Maybe this is like the infrared sort of thing or perhaps the card scanning or whatever, I don’t know. But note that Windows Phone devices aren’t the only devices that support NFC. Since NFC is an industry standard, you can share with any device that supports it. Even better is that you can tap on the NFC enabled poster or flyer mentioning some website that allows you to pull up the site in your browser. It is sort of like the some QR code or something for other devices where you can scan your smartphone to those codes to gain access to something that fulfills the objectives.

Using Data Sense, you can help reduce the data consumption while browsing the web without slowing things down or changing how sites appear. With that enabled, you’ll be able to load up to 45% more web pages on the same data plan or wireless connection. Also, the favorites and settings for the web browsers are backed up in case you ever lose or charge your smartphone. This may be due to the use of Microsoft Account in which your favorites and settings are kept in the cloud similar to other web browsers like Google Chrome.

Like Android and computers, the smartphones are potentially vulnerable to security threats. The SmartScreen Filter, the same as found in the computer that’s protected millions of people, is in Windows Phone as well. Also, like Windows 8’s IE 10, IE 10 for Windows Phone has the Do Not Track feature, which signals websites that you prefer not to have information collected about your visit as you browse. It’s important to note that it’s up to individual sites to determine how to interpret this signal. The feature is turned on if you choose the recommended setup option the first time you use the browser on Windows Phone and Windows 8.

Unlike Windows Phone 7.5, it seems that the Find on Page as the developers are asked to put in is in Windows Phone 8 as they are honest that they had already run out of time during the development.  This feature is also in Internet Explorer 10 which means it’s fast and robust.

Lastly, in case you find things missing, you can use the Suggestion Box to make suggestions on what do you need the developers to put in. For me, I may need the TABS to be MOVABLE like the desktop edition of the web browsers themselves.

Changes to Google Apps packages

For whatever reason, it seems that Google is no longer accepting new signups for the free version of Google Apps. The option to switch to the free version will no longer be available in 30 days. Hmmm, perhaps the customers still have some time anyway before this is bound to happen like sometime in January next year. However, the change has no impact on the customers who are already using the free version. They can continue to use Google Apps for free. More information can be found at http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/changes-to-google-apps-for-businesses.html
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=2855120.

Bravos over Windows Phone 8 Keyboard

Again, there’s not much of difference than Windows Phone 7 OS as Windows Phone 8 is actually the improved version of the OS. Various IT blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo have praised the operating system over the secrets of the Windows Phone 8 keyboard.

So what did they have? Well, they had set out to make their critically-acclaimed keyboard even more intuitive, accurate and personal. Bravos to the developers at Microsoft and this is how you call the operating system a faster one.

Using the new feature on Windows Phone 8 called Word Flow, an improved and renamed version of Quick Correct feature from Windows Phone 7.5, to help prevent time-wasting typos and focus on what matters: communicating with the people you care about, it is designed to reflect how real people communicate to each other and so it knows everything from whatever culture. Speaking of some sort of pop culture, it may be where the weakness lies in the ones who have been working on the operating systems. It’s a cool discovery on whichever culture you like but it can be distracting to work by the way. However, the smartphones surely have the limited space to put in like billions of words in English dictionary so they have chosen some 600000 of the most common words and phrases that people actually type on their smartphones to power Word Flow’s corrections and suggestions.

The result is that the auto-correction skills of Windows Phone’s are 94% accurate out of the box and Word Flow is also designed to be keen of your writing habits and what you care about. It’s always learning so it can help personalize the suggestions and corrections to suit each individual person.

During the making the virtual keyboard like that, they have seen smartphones make frustrating goofy fixes. If there’s a proof, you can check out the thousands of hilarious submissions on sites like Damn You Autocorrect. They tried their best to prevent Windows Phone series from being the stars of those sites. The device needs to know a lot of words so it can figure out what you’re trying to type. So, they have the built-in virtual dictionary akin to the dusty old copy of Webster’s on your shelf.

Even a smarter dictionary, however, doesn’t prevent strange suggestions and unwanted auto-corrections. There are already reason to know why.

And to make even more cultural popularity about Windows Phones, they have also turned to social networking sites and Wikipedia to help inform their dictionaries. But instead of relying on those sites to verify the words to ensure that they are proper words for yourself, they have instead built the programs to crawl these sites for new and commonly-used words.

Lastly, there’s also the custom dictionary feature just like using the computer but then, custom dictionary may be a rare or perhaps a pointless feature. Now, if only the developers can try even harder like that.

Facebook Update for BlackBerry

BlackBerry devices are the smartphone sort of devices that I don’t even use smartphones as I don’t contact people through the phones. Like always, I make contacts with people through the email information. The ways I contact people will be the emailing and chatting and that sounds way too social enough to communicate.

Facebook for BlackBerry is apparently updated to Version 3.3 with newer features and increased BlackBerry Messenger connectivity. Other new stuffs include the new look and feel with refreshed icons and navigation.

Using BBM Integration, you can invite your Facebook friends to BlackBerry Messenger provided that they have the BlackBerry devices. And as BlackBerry series is the smartphone series, you can make calls in addition to various Facebook features.

Unfortunately, having to share your PIN is a controversial thing to me as this is supposed to the private sort of passcode thing you should not reveal to. First of all, you may end up sharing your BlackBerry PIN on Facebook in your Facebook profile which may be kind of bullshit anyway and Facebook already had tightened the security in doing their best to keep parts of your profile settings private.

The Photo feature is redesigned for modern navigation and somehow, it looks similar to the Photo apps in other smartphone devices and you’re able to view the photos in higher resolution. Even better is that you can save photos from Facebook to your device and media card.

Microsoft Socl

Another social network by Microsoft? It may look like a research under Microsoft Research Fuse Labs according to the official blog. There were already previous social networking sites by Microsoft but they don’t seem to be having so much momentum whatsoever.

Feature-wise, it contains wall posts, interests, people/me and parties. Interests are probably the tags of interests in your profile that people can search for you based on the interests like trying to add you into Socl. The People feature may seem to be like Friends on Facebook or perhaps mistaken for being like People Metro App and Parties feature, well, whatever it is, it is the video related feature that allows you to watch videos with others in Socl and chat together as you watch.

Facebook Messenger for Android

Starting two days ago in the western region or whatever, you can make the Facebook Messenger account with your name and phone number and start messaging your mobile contacts. You can install the app straight away and get started easily and start the group conversations, share photos and more stuffs. Over the next few weeks, the accounts will become available with the app update.

YouTube for PS Vita Version 2.0

Can Sony do even better with this update to YouTube app on Playstation Vita? Well, here is the list of the improvements.

• Subscriptions and channels – Like the YouTube home page today, you can view the subscriptions and channels you’ll like to browse the videos on and check out the information in the About This Channel menu option.
• Improved controls: Other functions include the Next and Previous buttons which may be optional and Video looping which may be useful for music or some sort and even the ability to play multiple videos at once.
• Playlist Settings: You can manage playlists and add videos to the playlists, including your favorites and water later videos and lists. Jeez, I don’t know if the smartphone versions have this sort of feature.
• Closed Captions: I don’t know if this one is in smartphone versions of the app as well but this one is quite handy for sharper understanding of what is said in the video as the sound quality or the person can sometimes sound mumbled.
• Continuous playback: Oh man, what are you gonna use this feature for? For music, tutorial or some other stuff? I may be speechless about this.
• Share: Cool and brave feature that you can tweet, email or group message your friends the video you’re going to share. You can also invite people to check out on YouTube via group message.
• Improved Search: The filter feature is available as well. Holy cow, what a shame to smartphone version, lol.
• Console buttons: Unnecessary here unless you want to treat your freaking Vita as the upgraded PSP.

Facebook Messenger for Firefox

The latest version of Firefox has Facebook Messenger feature! Once you enable it, you’ll get the social sidebar with your Facebook chat and updates, like new comments and photo tags. Perhaps the social sidebar on the right is similar to the one on Facebook website itself. You will also get notifications that you can respond to right from the Firefox toolbar similar to getting those notifications in Rockmelt web browser. With that feature in the latest Firefox, you can chat with friends and stay connect with their Facebook updates without having to go to the Facebook website itself. Like Rockmelt, you can chat with your friends while doing other stuffs on the browser itself.

Today’s Facebook integration is just the start of making Firefox more social but can other web browsers have the similar feature as well?

Office 15 now available for business customers

Finally, they can purchase the on-premises versions of Office 15, Exchange Server 15, Lync Server 15, SharePoint Server 15, Project 15 and Visio 15 through Microsoft Volume Licensing. For such an example business like that, they can buy Exchange Server, Lync Server, SharePoint Server, Visio and Office for business use but this kind of super-plan can be seriously expensive and fulfilling the licenses like these may not be quite easy for legal business use. Broad availability through the retail and online channels is still planned for the first quarter of next year.

To begin for business use, you may want to ask your Microsoft Account Team or your Microsoft Partner. In the meantime, there’s also the trial version of the product that you can try today and let the developers of Office 15 know what you think.

Rooms on Windows Phone and other phones

Well, at least people are able to use this feature due to the fact that this app is available on multiple platforms starting with Windows Phone, Iphone and Android. You can invite your friends to use this feature provided that they use the Hotmail account which is now the Microsoft account. Room app lets you share notes, calendar, photos and participate in a group chat with people you choose but Microsoft surely recommends that the whole group of yours should be having Windows Phone 8 as it has the best feature list.

I don’t know if this can work on Ipod Touch, IOS tablets, Android tablets and Windows 8 devices but here’s how for Calendar. If you’re using Windows Phone 7, IOS or Windows 8, add your Microsoft account as an email account on your device. Then, the room calendar will shop up alongside your other calendars with the same name as the room. But if you’re using Android, get the Hotmail app from Google Play and sign in to the app with your Microsoft account. Then go to the calendar app to turn on the room calendar. Once again, this feature works best with Windows Phone 8.

For photos and videos, get the SkyDrive app and sign in to it with your Microsoft account. The room photos and videos will show up as the shared folders with the same name as the room. This applies to Windows Phone 7, IOS, Android and Windows 8 users. Lastly for notes, get the OneNote app and do the same thing as you do for SkyDrive app. It also applies to four platforms as already mentioned.

I guess that Windows Phone 8 already has those apps as part of the operating system but it is a shame that you surely have to follow the instructions above if you’re using Windows 8 which sounds kind of bullshit in the first place.