Facebook iOS 6.2 Lets Y...

It happened to me. Yes, I once uploaded a pic of my friend to Facebook from my phone, forgot to change the setting from “Public” to “Friends” and had the friend get told that day by a random person: “Hey I just saw a picture of you on Alexia from TechCrunch’s wall!” So now I’m circumspect. Apparently this social media disaster was happening to more people, because Facebook just fixed it — at least on iOS . Android has apparently had the new feature for over a week. Now iPhone users too are able to easily edit Facebook’s photo privacy settings — by selecting the drop-down arrow on the status update and selecting “Edit Privacy.” Though you still can’t edit the update text or any comments themselves from your iPhone, this is pretty useful. The last time I messed up on a photo privacy setting, I had to access Facebook’s Mobile Web page on a foreign connection to fix it. Not pretty. In addition to this nod to paranoid people, Facebook iOS Version 6.2 allows users to post the emotion and action updates they’ve come to know and love on the web, including Happy, Sad, Wonderful and, my favorite, Loved. You can also now start a new conversation with a photo sent to you in messages in Version 6.2, though I don’t think this feature will be remembered enough to see that much traction, unless teenagers are exhibiting some novel group photosharing behaviors on Facebook Message that I don’t know about. And speaking of Facebook Message, let me take this post about an app update to let you know that a standalone Messenger for iPad is likely not happening, though a trial app was in the works when we reported on it. Basically Messenger was not seeing the growth Facebook hoped for (turns out people don’t want a messenger app PLUS a Facebook app) after Facebook’s primary app became less buggy and slow. So, nixed. PSA: Update your apps periodically, people.

Lumu Launches Kickstart...

Last we saw Lumu Labs it was in Hardware Alley at Disrupt New York  where the Slovenian startup was showing off a prototype of its digital light meter plus iPhone app — aiming to convince photographers to replace “bulky” traditional light meters with a pocketable gizmo that plugs into their iPhones. Now, the startup has just kicked off a Kickstarter campaign , aiming to raise $20,000 over the next 25 days to get its light meter into the wild. Lumu’s hope is to replace the standalone light meters that pro photographers carry around with them by harnessing the iPhone’s processing power and battery, and coupling that with its own digital light sensor. The sensor plugs straight into the iPhone’s headphone jack. Lumu says its hardware is more sensitive than the on-board iPhone light sensor, hence it’s able to provide photographer-friendly luminance measurements. The basic idea is for a photographer to grab a light reading using Lumu on their iPhone, then input the suggested settings into their camera. Settings are displayed in Lumu’s app, which also allows the user to save data to the cloud so they can retain light-setting and location info, plus add voice records, notes, pictures, photo parameters, and more. Returning to Kickstarter, Lumu said campaign funds will be used to help with the manufacturing costs of the device, and to recruit more coders so it can further extend the features of the app. The startup’s main software guy, Benjamin Polovičm, told TechCrunch: “We want to take advantage of the smartphone’s processing power and different sensors. The plan is to make different smartphone apps with custom functionalities for all sorts of professionals (photographers, videomakers…). “We also believe that other developers are more creative than us and hope that they make their own software with new ideas and features, or inspire us. Further, we have to make Lumu work on (almost) all Android devices. But we don’t want to be too specific about our future ideas, because we don’t want to limit our supporters’ creativity.”

Dots Updates iPad App F...

It was but two weeks ago that Dots, the highly addictive connect-the-dots-style betaworks-backed game, migrated the app to the iPad and added multiplayer support . Today, however, the company has a brand new update that may address some of your woes on the iPad. The update lets users zoom to 1.5X or 3X the game view, so that the gameboard and the dots fill out more, or all, of the screen real estate on the bigger iPad. “When we first pushed the iPad app, we thought that people would want to play the game at the same size that it was on the iPhone,” said Patrick Moberg, co-founder. “But we soon realized that our users had been playing Dots for iPhone at 2X mode (zoomed) on the iPad, and that they wanted the same blown-up experience with the iPad version of the app.” Clearly, the Dots/betaworks team is ready to iterate as quickly as possible to keep up momentum. When the app first launched on May 1st, I called it the most beautiful mobile game I’d ever seen . Matt joined in  the chorus, and in a week’s time, a million other people had downloaded the app too. And just as Paul Murphy explains in the interview, Dots cares much more about engagement than user acquisition, which is good news considering the app has seen well over 300 million games played. And surely acquisition, as well as engagement, must be growing as the gamemaker introduced multiplayer mode. However, that’s not to say the new multiplayer functionality is without its flaws. As it stands now, users must pass and play from a single device. Both users play the exact same board, as opposed to leaving anything to the luck of the draw. As Greg points out in his post, this alone makes the game that much more competitive and addictive, but there’s still room to grow. Moberg didn’t go into too much detail, but did explain that the team is thinking more and more about how to improve multiplayer mode in a way that doesn’t just copy other games out there, but does it in an entirely different way. The update is available now on the App Store .

If Office Hits The iPad...

Remember this ad ? The ad where Microsoft attempts to position the iPad as a chopstick-playing toy and the Surface as a PowerPoint-editing machine? Yeah, that’s why we can’t have nice things. Microsoft just released Office the the iPhone . It lets users edit any Word, Excel or PowerPoint document. As the oh-so-catchy name states, Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers is Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers only, meaning the app is essentially $100 a year. It’s not “Office for iOS.” It’s just a way to open and partially edit Office files for those saps paying for Microsoft’s pricey cloud platform. Judging from the screenshots, it looks like a quality application. It supports rich media content like charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. And since it works through MS’ cloud service, all changes saved on the phone updates the original, too. But forget about a native iPad app. Microsoft can’t kill the only legitimate selling point of its struggling Surface tablet. Microsoft might have moved enough Surface tablets to not call it a flop, but the tablet was far from a blockbuster hit. Ever since launch, Microsoft has supported it with constant ad campaigns touting the tablet’s productivity chops. The latest TV spot pits the Surface RT against the iPad, deeming its offering as the superior choice for those that need to get any work done. However, in Microsoft’s world “work” equals editing a PowerPoint deck . This is something you can do quite handily on the iPad using Keynote and, in fact, I suspect Keynote users are well aware of the benefits of their superior platform. Middle manager infighting must be rampant at Microsoft. One on hand, the company has to properly support its Windows 8 ecosystem and that means position its tablet offering as the only MS Office solution. But then, likewise, a true mobile version of MS Office would better help fight Google Docs. In this case the Office team lost, relegating Office to just the iPhone and in a truncated version at that. Windows 8 wins, the Surface stays slightly more interesting, and everybody in Redmond wins. Only the consumer loses.

Microsoft Releases Free...

Microsoft Office has finally arrived on iOS in an official app released by Microsoft itself, and it’s free to download, but to use it there’s a considerable catch: you need to be an Office 365 subscriber. Microsoft’s Office 365 costs $99.99 for a one year subscription, and Redmond has really been pushing the SaaS-style version of its desktop productivity suite lately, so the iPhone app is a natural way for it to sweeten the deal for prospective buyers. Microsoft calls the app its “official Office companion optimized for your iPhone,” and the software provides Word, Excel and PowerPoint viewing, editing and creation. Documents are stored in the cloud on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro or Sharepoint servers, making them easy to access again from the desktop or other sources, and the app works together with Office 365 to show you your most recently-opened documents on your computer automatically. The app also lets you look at and edit documents attached to emails on your iPhone on the go. Microsoft doesn’t look to have skipped many corners building this app, with support for charts, animations, shapes and SmartArt graphics built-in, as well as a resume feature to pick up editing exactly where you left off on your desktop. There’s offline functionality that commits changes back to the original once you find a connection, and comment sharing and review for collaborative editing. Office for iPhone isn’t optimized for iPad yet, thought it’s hard to imagine that isn’t close behind. And while you require an Office 365 subscription, you don’t actually have to have the desktop version installed anywhere to use this mobile edition, so it is a fairly standalone product. You will need at least an iPhone 4, or a 5th generation iPod touch, running iOS 6.1 or higher, however. And the subscription requirement is sure to be a bummer for many, but the counterpoint of that is that the mobile version is completely free otherwise. Lastly, this is U.S. only for now, but should roll out to other countries over the next little while, according to Microsoft, so if you are geoblocked, just have a little patience.