iPhone World

So it’s been quite a while since the last post I know. The problem is I always have more to say on a topic than I have time to write it. Postings will hopefully be resuming opting for a brief write up if that’s all I can manage, with later edits to get out everything there is to say.

Now on with the post!

Facebook published an update today that claims to add push and contact synching. This is great news as both of these are long overdue. Unfortunately, after installing the update, both features seem to be MIA. There is no prompt to allow push notifications when launching the app, it doesn’t appear in the notification settings, or in the app options (all 2 of them). Likewise there is no option that I can find to sync contacts anywhere. All in all it looks as if there are no changes whatsoever in this update.

I call FAIL.

Not wanting to admit defeat I uninstalled the Facebook app and re-downloaded it. After signing back in I was finally greeted by the push approval dialog, as well as being able to locate the options in the settings app now. The notification settings allow you to choose to receive alerts for Messages, Wall posts, Friend requests & confirmations, tags, events, and comments so if you are getting flooded with notifications you can tweak it a bit.

It was not immediately apparent that synching was now available as it only shows up if you are viewing your friends list. There are a number of apps available for synchronizing your contacts with Facebook, I believe all of which are not free so this is a nice addition also. It is fool-proof to use and “just works”, but does not offer as many features as some of the 3rd party apps, such as displaying and resolving conflicts, or providing the option to manually match contacts to friends.

There also seems to be an addition that is not mentioned in the updates, which is the ability to change the feed you are viewing. Any feeds you have defined within the site are available in the app.