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Filed under: Business, Apple, iPhone

Apple allows free-to-paid demo apps on iPhone

One of the biggest complaints about Apple's iPhone App Store has been the lack of any way to try an app before you buy it. Apple has addressed that issue by allowing free-to-paid app upgrades. This means apps that used to have two separate versions, free and paid, will now be able to merge into a single download, with the ability to buy an upgrade from within the app.

Apple has been pretty strict about rejecting demo versions of apps although "lite" apps have been allowed. Basically, developers weren't allowed to give away a feature-crippled free version of an app for the purpose of upselling customers to a feature-complete paid version. That rule made Apple look harsh compared to competitors like Android, which offers a trial period after which users can get a refund on an app they don't like. If Apple isn't going to do something like that, allowing demo capabilities is the next best thing.

[via TUAW]

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Web

Facebook introduces @mentions

Facebook has been pretty busy today releasing new features on the popular social networking website. In addition to launching Facebook Lite, a stripped down version of the social networking site, the company also announced a new way to connect your content to friends.

Status updates have always been one of the most popular and most used features of Facebook and today's introduction of "friend tagging" in updates is sure to make the it even more popular. Much like Twitter's @reply feature, tagging in Facebook status updates work by adding an @ symbol in front of the name of your friend or family member. Facebook recognizes this and will show you a list of your friends, making finding the right person quick and easy.

A plus to Facebook's version of this feature, is while the @ symbol makes including friends easy, it won't actually be displayed. You'll also soon be able to tag friends in applications as well. Friends you tag in your status updates will get a notification and a wall post linking them to your update. They can also remove the tag if they don't want to be linked.

Like most new Facebook features, most users won't see this right away as they take time rolling out the feature to their millions of users.

Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Facebook plans to introduce "lite" version

A large number of Facebook users received a message yesterday, telling them they'd been invited to test something called Facebook Lite. The messages turned out to be an accident, and the users who received them couldn't sign up. Because nobody's seen it yet, there's still a lot of speculation about what Facebook Lite actually is.

Facebook's recent acquisition of FriendFeed has led some people to believe that Facebook Lite is a bare-bones, status-updates-only version of Facebook, designed to compete with Twitter. Although this would make some sense, TechCrunch says it's the wrong answer. Based on information that Facebook Lite is already being tested in India, they're reporting that Facebook Lite is just a slimmer, low-bandwidth version of the site, targeted for users whose Internet connections are too slow to properly use the current version.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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