Facebook for android or Bloo?

Finding a decent Facebook application for your android phone can be a huge hassle. We all know apple iphones have the best Facebook platform, but since Google and Facebook are constantly bickering we, the consumers, are left with nothing.

When I first got my phone I only knew of the Facebook for android application and it was terrible. The status feed never updated, sometimes the pictures I uploaded never actually showed up, and the notifications lagged a ton. After a little research I tried many other platforms such as babbler and Facebooktouch which was just a shortcut to the mobile site. Well, I one day found Bloo and thought my Facebook issues were over. Not so much.

It was great once everything got set up and the interface was very user friendly. Although you couldn’t upload pictures straight from the actual application you could by selecting the share option in the phones gallery.

My issue with Bloo was definitely the fact that it timed out regularly and you don’t always get the notifications which was a little frustrating. The other huge issue I had that really annoyed me was the fact that you could read your inbox but couldn’t reply. Seriously? That’s ridiculous. I was okay with it for a while but figured it was kind of stupid without it since I use it a lot.

Yesterday I decided to retry Facebook for android. I’m not sure what kind of bugs they fixed, but it is seriously so much better. Although I’m not getting notifications yet it isn’t a huge deal. I compared the feed on my computer to my phone and it was perfect. Plus when you look at the notifications they all show up, I’m just not getting alerts. I also uploaded about 10 pictures to see how it held up and they were all posted on the site immediately.

I’m very impressed with the improvements that have been made and I’m confident it will keep improving.

For now I’m sticking with Facebook for android and going to sleep. Its almost 3am.

Shapewriter review

If any of you have a my touch from t mobile, or any android phone with touch screen only, you know how annoying the stock keyboard can be. I always marvel at everyone with iphones because of their amazing keyboards. Well android lovers, you could be in luck.

Although there are a few apps out there for changing the overall look and feel, there’s only one i was impressed with. ShapeWriter.

As a free application i was a little worried it wouldn’t live up to hype. I was wrong, mostly. First of all, the new my touch phones have something similar built in, but since i couldn’t afford it, I got the older model. To text, all you need to do is drag your finger the shortest distance between letters you need and if needed, select your desired word from their predictive text box. So simple, and much quicker once you get the hang of it. I’m sure the grammar natzis are wondering why I’m not capitalizing my i’s. Being obsessed with grammar myself, this major downside bums me out. I’m currently writing this entry using ShapeWriter, and for reasons unknown to me, it does not auto cap “i” when used alone and I’m not sure how to fix this, if at all. If anyone knows how please inform me, as it can be frustrating. The only other issue you need to resolve right away is the dictionary. Since i have a fairly dirty vocabulary i needed to manually add all my favorite words.

Overall, for a free keyboard upgrade it’s fantastic, even though it takes a while to get used to.