Facebook Home [APK] for ANY Android Device

facebook-home

APK Download Link – MoDaCo Thread

By now, if you’re even slightly interested in Facebook Home, you’d have seen a ton of pictures and videos depicting how it works/looks etc, and I cannot do a thorough review about it anyway here since I’ve only used it for about 10 minutes before getting annoyed enough to not want to try it again. Plus my love-hate relationship with Facebook over the years also wouldn’t help me write objectively at all.

Launcher homescreen UI

Screenshot_2013-04-15-16-09-45

Homescreen UI (sorry about the choice; I’ve to find a non-personal status)

There is one thing about Facebook Home launcher that is going to be very obvious once the UI springs up, that it assumes that your life revolves around Facebook. Seriously, imagine unlocking your phone to see status updates filling up the whole screen which can be swiped left and right for even more updates. Let’s not talk about how unusable it is, the mere fact that Facebook News Feed popping up on the phone full-screen is intrusive enough, whether you’re a privacy freak or not.

Gesture 1 – Long-Pressing

Screenshot_2013-04-15-16-09-38

Long pressing on the screen zooms out the picture on the status

This is how the UI looks when you long press anywhere on the screen. Pretty handy if you like scrolling through Facebook a lot and zoom in/out pictures with a single long press. You’ll notice that the notification bar is missing in the screenshot; you can easily enable it to show at all times in the Home Settings.

Gesture 2 – Tapping

Screenshot_2013-04-15-16-10-04

Chat Head

Tapping anywhere on the screen will bring up the “chat head”, which is essentially your Facebook profile picture in a round icon. Clicking on the chat head will show you 3 different options – going to Facebook, Messenger or the App Drawer.

How Do I Go To My Apps?

Screenshot_2013-04-15-16-10-14

App Drawer

I didn’t find any way to make folders or put widgets on the homescreen (erm duh, how to do it on top of status updates!), so it’s good that at least the app drawer is readily easy to access and the experience is quite smooth altogether. The chat head comes in really handy in terms of navigating through the mess, i.e. your Facebook news feed.

Note

Overall, the experience is not bad, but since these are the extracted APKs, don’t expect them to work fully well. I’ve had my system slowed down on some occasions because of testing out Facebook Home. But the whole launcher app takes away key elements from Android that we came to love – customizability, widgets, etc… and slaps the Facebook news feed on top of the Android OS. If this is the next version of Facebook app, which they position as it is, I am probably not going to use Facebook on my mobile again, or unless they come up with a better way to integrate with existing Android elements, instead of overriding them.

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by richxiong on April 15, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by richxiong on April 15, 2013

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Android Apps’ Settings Should ALL Be Cloud-Synced

I need to format my SD Card; I am sure there’s some data somewhere on the card causing some errors at boot, and some lags during use. I’ve been living with it for a couple of weeks. It’s the internal SD that comes with Galaxy S2 and I don’t use an external one. Nearly 12 GB of apps data + music + photos. You may think that I am ranting because I am lazy to backup like 7 GB worth of my music and pictures. Couldn’t be further from the truth. My music and pictures are so well-organized in Dropbox that I don’t need a second thought before deleting.

It’s the apps data, scattered across different folders and the tricky part is you’ve to restore them back in the right places exactly, else your apps wouldn’t read those data off the card. Things like launcher preferences (I use 2 launchers btw), Whatsapp messages/photos (I keep whatsapp msgs cos sometimes I need to refer to them), and basically various apps that keep/read data off the SD card.

I know some apps have already implemented something like Dropbox integration so that the apps data would be synced automatically with Dropbox and that’s way too awesome. But I have over 140 apps installed on my phone at any time and it’s safe to say more than 2/3 of them do not support cloud-backup of their settings/preferences/data, YET. The thought that some of my favorite apps might lose all the data/settings is just scary. :/

Y U NO

Ok I’m done ranting. If you’ve a perfect solution for my problem (i.e. if you also tweak/flash AOSP ROMs a lot), do tell. I could live with even a partial solution, but definitely NOT manually setting up all my apps each time I have to format SD Card/tweak or upgrade OS.

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by richxiong on April 7, 2013  •  Permalink
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Living On The Cloud – Integrating Everything Into Evernote

evernote-windows-phone-app

My friends think I am a control freak when it comes to organizing things; they’ve seen my OCD going to work on so many different occasions that it no longer surprises them when I am being extra particular about a small thing. They’d look at my Android home screen, my bookmark folders, the way I obsessively label everything on Gmail, my Pocket list, my Dropbox folder and believe that I know exactly where to look when I need a certain piece of information or a news article. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

The truth is I have absolutely no idea when and where I save a certain piece of information, much less being able to retrieve it in no time. Useful information such as a news article, an interesting research finding, something on the internet I found useful for blogging or a quote I found especially inspiring are dispersed among places such as Chrome Bookmarks, Pocket, Evernote, Gmail, Google+ (yes, I email and post stuff only to/for myself), and Twitter favorites. And then there is also a physical notebook I carry around with me most of the times which I use to jot down ideas, blog topics or things that I need to do more research on. When it comes time for me to sit down, organize things and get some work done, I would be looking all over the place for everything that I’d come across in the past few days.

I’ve kept Evernote on my phone for over a year but hardly use it much beyond taking a couple of notes. After reading this article on Lifehacker, I decided to give Evernote another shot and this time I’ve decided to be disciplined about it and use Evernote exclusively for all the use cases the author mentioned in the article. I even took more than 30 minutes creating Stacks > Notebooks > Notes and moving most of my bookmarks, articles and notes onto them. The result and the productivity following the move have been more than satisfying:

evernote UI

Literally spent more than an hour creating those stacks on the left sidebar and importing over 100 notes into them

Value Proposition – Centralized Information Center

Evernote Web Clipper has become my new best friend on my Chrome browser. I no longer obsessively save articles on Chrome anymore. Although Chrome is synced across all devices and much more easier to load an article than say I open a note on Evernote and then click on the link to load, Chrome doesn’t help me much in saving articles from other sources. If I am reading a news article on Flipboard for example, it’s much easier to drop it onto Pocket or Evernote than say open it in Chrome and save it to Bookmarks. Sometimes, I don’t feel like loading the articles because the 3G is slow most of the times and I don’t have time for it.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I could move so quickly away from Pocket and Chrome bookmarks is the fact that I can write down notes, potential blog topics or even draft blog posts in Evernote; eventually all of them are available to me on all devices in just ONE place. Of course, you can argue that I could use different services for such a wide variety of activities; my point is wouldn’t it make better sense if I can do everything in just one place? Besides all these, I can also save code snippets I come across from forums and also Linux scripts that I could use when I log onto my Ubuntu. Doing all the saving/organizing from Android is even easier than using the web clipper; the system-wide “Share” button makes it possible to save everything into Evernote (or any other services for example) and I can’t emphasize enough how much I love that bit about Android.

I did mention I also used to use Gmail/Google+ to solve the note-taking part, but honestly it sounds a bit lame even to me no matter how convenient it could be. We should probably use Gmail for just what it’s intended to be, i.e. sending and receiving emails.

2013-03-28 17.15.16

Perfectly Synced + All Notes Listed in Chronological Order when not viewed in Stacks/Folders

It’s worked out perfectly for me. What about you?

It’s been more than a week since I started using Evernote exclusively to speed up my work flow, and I’ve to say the result is astoundingly satisfying. I am not saying that other services I mentioned in the post earlier can’t compete with Evernote in terms of providing users speed, productivity and convenience. In fact, every app/service has something unique that it does very well. The fact that I get all crazy over Evernote is the consistency, in the sense that “Evernote” has sort of become the go-to app/service for everything I do on the Internet/mobile phone. Do you also use Evernote extensively to help you in your productivity? I want to know why or why not and also what other services keep you at the peak of your productivity.

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by richxiong on March 28, 2013  •  Permalink
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[REVIEW] Action Launcher Pro for Android

Presentation1

Play Store Link – Action Launcher Pro by Chris Lacy

The ability to tweak/customize the look and feel of everything on Android has always been one of its strongest selling points. Third-party launchers are always among the most popular apps at any point in time, even more so in the pre-ICS era. Before Android 4.0 came along, the stock launcher on both AOSP Android and skinned Android (TouchWiz, Sense, etc.) were not so flattering and functional, to say the least.

Although Android 4.0 is a huge leap for Google’s home-brewed mobile operating system in terms of both aesthetics and performance, third-party launchers have continued to thrive well. However, innovation in that area has significantly slowed down after Android 4.0. Popular launchers such as Apex, Nova focus on improving the stock AOSP launcher by adding more flexibility, themes, functionality but there hadn’t been a new launcher that focuses on productivity, and reinvention.

That is until Action Launcher came into the picture. I didn’t discover it until I came across it recently on my news feed, so I’d only talk about what’s in the latest iteration, rather than how it evolves.

Unique Features

Quick Drawer

app drawer

The app drawer on Android has stayed the same, or at least very similar for the better part of the years since Android’s conception. There’s always a button in the middle or leftmost of the dock at the bottom of the screen, tapping which would bring up pages of all apps or one vertical scrolling page of all apps. In Action Launcher, the app drawer has been reimagined. The app drawer button is at the top left of the screen; you can also get to the drawer by swiping the screen from the left or hitting the home key from the default home screen (for phones with a physical home key of course). Scrolling in the quick drawer is extremely smooth and it kinda reminds me of how Windows Phone organizes all its apps. Productivity wise, this is a plus.

Covers/Folders

home screen

The above is the typical homescreen of my phone at the moment (boring I know; it’s a habit). And apps are organized in folders so that I have access to all on the home page.

make cover

If you open up a folder, there is a three-dot menu button with which you can use to Make the first app in the folder the icon of the particular folder. In my case, LinkedIn. Choosing “Make cover” will result in the following screenshot.

LinkedIn Cover

Instead of the folder icon, now my Social 2 folder has become LinkedIn icon. Tapping the icon would take you to LinkedIn, obviously. But what about the rest of the apps in the folder? Tapping the LinkedIn icon twice quickly or swiping up or down the icon will open up the folder, where you can get to other apps. The whole idea behind it is to eliminate some time going to the folder if there’s a particular app in the folder that you go to the most during a day, for example. Another plus for productivity, but I haven’t seen much use of it in my use cases.

Note: You can revert back to the folder icon by following the same step I did while making cover.

Quick Search Bar + Play Store Integration

quick black bar

Lastly, it’s the little semi-transparent bar at the top of the screen just under the notification bar, which has Quick Drawer button, Quick Search Button and a Play Store icon. It took me about 1 minute to get used to this bar and I actually find it pretty productive and refreshing to get to apps, by either opening the quick drawer, or using the search for apps. The search icon typically searches for EVERYTHING on your phone, apps, contacts, playlists, etc.

search

Special Note – Screen Margins Adjustment

It’s a bit ironic this part came in last because this is actually the first thing you have to do after installing Action Launcher Pro. Due to Android phones’ having different screen sizes and dimensions, the spacing of apps and screen margins need to be adjusted in order to get the previous settings you’re used to. For example, on my Galaxy S2, after setting row x column setting to 4×4, the apps and widgets were actually weirdly sized, in the sense that they were out of place and looked either stretched or squeezed (if you set 5×5).

Go into Action Launcher Pro’s Settings > Display > Screen Margins and play with the following two values until the icons/widgets are sized the way you want.

screen margins

Final Verdict

In a nutshell, I find it very difficult to move away from Nova Launcher Prime, which I’ve grown so used to and which I cannot live without. To be fair, I’ve been using Action Launcher Pro exclusively for 3 days and I have to say its unique features indeed help with productivity in my use cases but I am still inclined to go back to Nova everyday. I will keep Action Launcher installed on my phone but will be using Nova as default for now, i.e. until the next iteration of updates from the dev could bring me back to his app, if ever.

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by richxiong on March 11, 2013  •  Permalink
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SwiftKey 4 Update Brings Flow and Flow Through Space Features Out Of Beta

swiftkey 3

SwiftKey Flow – Swipe-based gesture typing just like you saw earliest in Swype keyboard. 

SwiftKey Flow Through Space – Basically SwiftKey Flow without having to ever raise your finger. Yes, you can continuously swipe and the keyboard would predict the entire sentence. 

Back in December 2012, SwiftKey released beta apks for their popular keyboard app with new features in the work – Flow and Flow Through Space. Through an update earlier today, the app is branded to SwiftKey 4, in which the two Flow features are integrated.

If you purchased SwiftKey 3 before, just update the app and the features would be available in the upgraded SwiftKey 4 app. If you haven’t purchased for whatever reason, there wouldn’t be a better time than now to do so (well actually there is – wait for promotion!), but that’s not the point. I mean the keyboard is finally complete, although there are a couple of things I need to get used to personally because of enabling the Flow features. For example, I’ve grown so used to swiping left to delete a word, instead of tapping or holding the back key. Now that won’t work if you’ve enabled the new Flow features; it’d predict a word if you swiped left.

Other than that small gripe, there is nothing much to complain about this update as the prediction system on SwiftKey has already been the leader in the keyboard battle for a long time and the integration of the two features is just icing on the cake for SwiftKey 4. If you’re a first-time user, there’s no harm in trying out the trial version and see if you find it worthy to purchase.

SwiftKey 4 Play Store Link 

SwiftKey 4 Trial Version

What’s New in SwiftKey 4

2013-02-20 16.31.32

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by richxiong on February 20, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by richxiong on February 20, 2013

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Overeating Habits Could Grow Out Of A Culture

Food for thought – while growing up, were you told that eating three meals a day was a norm? Were you given the notion that you should eat at certain timings (e.g. 8 am, 12 pm, 6 pm) even when you weren’t hungry? Were you encouraged to eat a lot, or eat a variety of things (meat, different vegetables, rice)? Were you told to finish everything on your plate even if it meant too much for you? Were you scolded (beaten in extreme cases) because you refused food? Were you worried that you’d get sick/pass out if you ate much less than you used to?

If any of the aforementioned sounds familiar to you, your dietary choices could be greatly interfered by a cultural conditioning you grew up with. Is it impossible to shake it off? Nope, but it takes more than embracing change and a great deal of discipline to make it happen. The question is do you need to? Of course, unless you have a weight problem like I do, you don’t need to look any further into it.

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by richxiong on February 13, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by richxiong on February 13, 2013

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Rant: Laugh Tracks Are Lame And Annoying

5610558478_the_big_bang_theory_10_xlargeEven with an annoying laugh track, The Big Bang Theory is still a favorite

Laugh track is a thing of the past. Really. The first TV show with a laugh track dates way back to 1950 and the said show did so poorly that it had to be cancelled not long after. Let’s face it; no matter how successful a sitcom is, it doesn’t nullify the fact that laugh tracks in the background are extremely annoying.

Featuring a laugh track in a TV show doesn’t automatically make it funny. It’s no rocket science. Why would the audience need cues to laugh? If the jokes are so obscure or require so many references to understand, they aren’t really good jokes anyway. In what way is it helpful that the laugh track reminds the audience to laugh because they cannot understand the joke or worse they don’t find it funny? Humor is highly subjective by the way. It makes no sense to me that the viewers would laugh at a plot because the producers think it is supposed to be funny when it’s really not. Lame!

I don’t have any working knowledge about TV production nor do I personally know someone who does, so my point here would strictly be from a viewer’s perspective. I doubt anyone would like to go strongly against my opinion here. Of course, I am aware of the numerous studies stating that laugh tracks do work (that explains why they’re still here today). The underlying point of these studies is that laugh tracks make people feel as though they were watching a show with a bunch of other people in a studio or a comedy club and that in a psychological standpoint,  such an (fake) “environment” would encourage people to laugh more freely. *rolls eyes*

That said, it’s not likely that laugh tracks would be totally gone in the near future, with highly successful shows such as The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother still featuring them. Even older cult favorites such as Seinfeld and Friends had gained monumental successes with laugh tracks on, so I don’t really have a solid case against laugh tracks here. But it doesn’t mean that laugh tracks are great or even remotely useful; maybe people just choose to ignore them because the shows are truly great, which is what really matters anyway.

modern-familyIf the success of Modern Family is any indication, a laugh track isn’t necessary

I am not really a sitcom nut. The only sitcoms I’ve watched so far are The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, Modern Family and Arrested Development. Each of them offers a unique sense of humor that appeals to me greatly but the first two sitcoms feature laugh tracks while the rest don’t. When things are put into perspective like that, it makes watching sitcoms with laugh tracks more unbearable now because I’ve subconsciously developed a slight contempt for TBBT and HIMYM, although I still love them. My point is – if Modern Family and Arrested Development (and many others) could make it work so successfully without using laugh tracks, surely laugh tracks aren’t an integral part to make a show work (funny, for that matter).

Laugh tracks should go, definitely; it’s only a matter of time. Over 60 years since the conception of laugh tracks, I believe it’s about time TV producers move on without these pre-recorded, lame laughing sounds. Hearing laugh tracks constantly throughout a show is like having someone to sit beside and nag you every few seconds to laugh. Who would love that?

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by richxiong on February 10, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by richxiong on February 10, 2013

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Rolling back to Android 4.1.2 (Galaxy S2)

Almost a month ago, I wrote a raving review on Android 4.2. In the post, I commented on how important it is for Android to have these incremental updates and even praised the bunch of features introduced in the new iteration of Jelly Bean. However, after a month of using 4.2 as a daily driver, I am afraid I can’t say the same about it today.

In fact, I was already annoyed by a few bugs 2 weeks ago but had been preoccupied with a lot of stuff, so I didn’t find enough reason to roll back to 4.1. Plus doing a fresh install is always a painful experience for me. I typically have about 100+ apps installed on my device at any time and re-installing and re-configuring the majority of them is extremely tedious.

Of course, I’d like to point out that what I mention in this post is by no means conclusive and the issues may be device-specific or even subjective. Or maybe not.

Deal-Breakers:

1. Battery Issues

2. Screen of Deaths and crashes

3. Less responsive than 4.1

Battery Issues

This is a deal-breaker for most people, I am sure. But I am not one who blindly complains about battery life while doing everything wrong with charging and maintaining. By “battery issues”, I don’t just mean poorer battery life but the fuel gauge is completely messed up. This is no baseless gripe. I always practice the habit of keeping the battery level between 40-80% and only charge it fully once or twice a week. In Android 4.2, the battery fuel gauge acts up no matter how much I’ve conditioned the battery. In extreme cases, the device would auto-reboot and the battery % would drop all the way down to 8% from initially 60+ % or so before the reboot. I am sure this is nothing new to the community of Android flashers. Such a thing doesn’t really happen when I was using Android 4.1.2, except once or twice when I really mis-calibrated the battery. Also, battery drain is humongous. To put things into perspective, same number of apps, same usage, same kernel, I get 10 hours of standby + at least 2 hours of screen time on Android 4.1. On 4.2? 7 hours of standby + 1.5 hour of screen time if I am lucky. The standby drain is far too obvious and do I even need to mention the screen-on drain?

Screen  of Deaths and Crashes

This part annoys me to no end. Really. Imagine scrolling through your contacts, whatsapp conversations, tweets, and the screen just went ice cold. There are also stability issues with the camera and gallery app that have no proper fixes. Although much later builds are claimed to have the problem fixed, I have been more annoyed than impressed to give 4.2 another shot. Also as I mentioned earlier, those random reboots could also mess up the battery %, making it very difficult to get a clear picture of realistically how much % is left.

Responsiveness

This is purely from a user-experience standpoint. I am very very particular about device performance especially in terms of responsiveness. Not that I am saying I must have a ROM that is lag-free but that if there’s a lag, even a very minor one, I notice immediately without fail. On numerous occasions, 4.2 gave me lags while switching from one app to another, while typing, while launching apps. This wasn’t really a deal breaker for me when I was using 4.2 for over 3 weeks but when I rolled back to 4.1.2 last night, the difference was almost striking.

To sum up, again I am by no means bashing Android 4.2 or the work developers have put into the Cyanogenmod project to make it possible for us to get a taste of 4.2 so early. Quite the opposite actually; I have tremendous respect for the devs who put in time and effort to make it work for us, even when they have no proper support, such as source code or documentation whatsoever to work with from the official channels. I am just saying that I’ve had a much better experience using Android 4.1.2 than 4.2 and that I won’t likely return to 4.2 anytime soon. If you have a different experience or if you have any advice on how to make 4.2 work perfectly for you (especially in performance and battery departments), please kindly do share!

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by richxiong on January 25, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by richxiong on January 25, 2013

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Kobe Bryant is on Twitter, FINALLY!

kobe twitterOver 150,000 followers in a little over one hour of sending out his first tweet. And the account is verified so it’s really our dearest Black Mamba. I am predicting a million followers after a day or so. Ha! Go give Kobe a follow if you bleed purple and gold. Let’s break some Twitter records!

@KobeBryant

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by richxiong on January 4, 2013  •  Permalink
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Instagram’s Privacy “Outcry”

Capture

If you don’t trust a service, don’t use it. Ha, life goes on for everyone else.

First of all, about my stand on Facebook and Instagram – they provide you free services, so they have to do “something else” to make money, i.e. advertising. How else do you think they make money? Really, they are social networking companies. NOT social charities. Companies that don’t make money are BAD and no one would give a crap about them.

Second, the mass media blew the shit way out of proportion that it’s impossible to save the dumb public from spreading said false information even further. Don’t get what I am saying? It means you haven’t read articles with sanity and ACTUAL information such as this one from the Verge and this one.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/20/3790312/instagram-reverts-to-original-terms-of-service-after-public-outcry

What can we learn from this? That most people don’t do research after hearing a news story from ONE source or worse from a friend or a friend’s friend. It also didn’t help that I remembered seeing at least 4 or 5 major sites (that are supposed to be professional) spreading the false information they believed was correct, in a self-righteous tone too. The keywords? “INSTAGRAM WILL SELL YOUR PHOTOS, AT WILL”. No. I am serious; it screamed exactly like that when the news broke. After all, it kinda makes me wonder if that was really what Instagram wanted? Create a fuzz with some obscure language with regards to privacy, cause the public outcry, and then revert back to the old terms, which really benefit Instagram, NOT the uninformed users.

After a while, I wouldn’t want to bother offering my view on Instagram to others anymore. This is way over and done with. The same people who complaint during this outcry would probably never find out that the old terms of service were really more intrusive than the supposed new ones, which they hated so much. Ironic huh?

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by richxiong on January 3, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by richxiong on January 3, 2013

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