Category: Tech news

Facebook has posted its first official promotional video for Facebook Home to its YouTube account, and unfortunately it isn’t the bizarre video set on an airplane they showed during their presentation earlier today. Instead, it uses the classic method of tugging at your heart strings and playing on your disconnectedness from real-life relationships to suggest how much a device could help with that.

The idea that using a phone will somehow bring you closer to your immediate real-world family and friends more so than, say, actually interacting with them in person is nothing if not a little bit ridiculous. And that comes through in the way that people in the video are either A) laughing and having fun with friends, or B) checking out Facebook Home on what looks like the new HTC First hardware, but never truly C) doing both at once.

Maybe saddest of all is that Facebook no longer seems to care so much about its similarity to chairs. Now it’s more like “hugs are like Facebook.” Or “Facebook Home is like your friends, only more social.”

A household is a business. And like a business, there are tools to help you keep everything — from repairs to grocery shopping — running smoothly.

The Lapka system is made up of four sensor modules that measure different aspects of your environment: radiation, electromagnetic fields, humidity and nitrates in food.

Sony’s entry into the high-end Bluetooth headphone fray excels in every category that counts.

Heroku customers are getting first access to a critical update to the PostgreSQL database system that will patch a major security hole. The overall PostgreSQL community will get access to an update on Thursday.

Here’s the statement from Heroku:

Heroku Postgres databases will be undergoing a brief but important update between today Monday (April 1st) and Wednesday (April 3rd). During the update, your database will be offline for roughly sixty seconds, and will then be restarted. Due to the nature of this update, a scheduled time is not possible. Individual notifications will not be sent for databases that require maintenance.

Last Thursday, the PostgreSQL site issued a statement saying it would be issuing the update on April 4 to include a fix for a high-exposure security vulnerability. They strongly urged customers to apply the update as soon as it is available.

No word back yet, but I’ve asked Heroku’s public relations team for comment about why they are making the forced update and the reason they are getting first access.

Hacker news commenters are saying the early access may be due to the sheer number of Heroku customers using the PostgreSQL database.

The privilege also raises questions about PostgreSQL policy toward security and who gets early access and who does not.

One Hacker News commenter said:

Meanwhile they are holding back a security fix for numerous other companies that also take security extremely seriously. This creates a situation where companies considering posgresql will now have to ask “will I get security fixes as soon as they are ready or will I intentionally be left vulnerable while more privileged users get early access?” Not a good precedent as far as I’m concerned.

It’s an unusual move by Heroku and a striking example of how cloud security is a major issue. Companies like Heroku rarely issue these forced updates. Most often they are for major updates to the platform. But a security vulnerability such as this could have consequences to the entire platform.

Menlo Ventures said today that Karl Mehta, the tech entrepreneur perhaps best known for founding virtual goods monetization startup PlaySpan and leading it as CEO through its $190 million sale to Visa, has joined the Silicon Valley venture capital firm as a partner.

According to Mehta’s LinkedIn, he stayed on at Visa as the CEO of PlaySpan for two years post-deal, leaving the company just last month. In his new role, Mehta will focus on investments centered in financial services, mobile payments, e-commerce, and gaming — no surprise, given his background. He has a solid history with the firm: Menlo was an investor in PlaySpan, and the Visa deal earned the company a spot in the Menlo portfolio’s “Hall Of Fame,” the firm’s managing director Shawn Carolan said in a blog post today.

Though much of his work has been as an entrepreneur, this will not be Mehta’s first time on the investor side of the table. He’s showed some activity on on AngelList, and was previously a founder and partner in a firm called Source Ventures.

Mehta has also been active when it comes to policy and government: He was selected by the Obama Administration to serve as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow in 2012, and he was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to sit on the California Workforce Investment board.

Here’s a quick quote from Menlo Ventures’ announcement:

“Karl is a tenacious entrepreneur with a great eye for what’s coming next, a strong ability to execute, and an unprecedented understanding of the payments landscape. We look forward to collaborating with Karl as this exciting market evolves to product the next set of market leaders.”

As Forbes first reported this afternoon, Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy for product and engineering, has decided to step down from her current position. Google has now confirmed this.

Whitten joined Google 10 years ago and oversaw the company’s privacy policies during a tumultuous time when its Street View cars were accused of spying on people’s Wi-Fi networks and Google decided to consolidate its over 70 privacy policies under a single document.

Whitten has a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon, where her thesis looked into “Making Security Usable.” She spent seven years as an engineer at the company before she was promoted to director of privacy right after the Wi-Fi Street View story broke and Google had been severely criticized for the privacy controls of Buzz, its pre-Google+ attempt at launching a social network.

At the time, Google described her as “an internationally recognized expert in the computer science field of privacy and security. She has been our engineering lead on privacy for the last two years, and we will significantly increase the number of engineers and product managers working with her in this new role.”

Whitten, Forbes reports, will be replaced by Lawrence You, a Google engineer who previously worked at Pixo, Apple and Taligent. Forbes reports Whitten will remain at the company to oversee the transition.

Comparison shopping network Shopping.com, which was purchased by eBay back in 2005 for $620 million in cash, is officially rebranding as the eBay Commerce Network.

eBay says that the site has evolved from being a comparison shopping site to an actual commerce ad network, and this shift in title reflects that. The network aims to connect retailers with buyers across sites like eBay, CNET and Bing. The company says that 4,000 merchants already work with the eBay Commerce Network to acquire new customers via advertising.

The comparison shopping market is a competitive space, and Shopping.com hasn’t been the go to destination for buyers to comparison shop online. eBay says that the current state of ecommerce necessitates merchants to advertise across multiple channels to reach consumers when they are shopping and researching online.

No word yet on what eBay is doing with Shopping.com. It appears the site will remain as is for the time being.

Everyone, it seems, is a Game Of Thrones fan. The fantasy series, which was spawned out of a series of novels by George R. R. Martin and adapted for HBO, just aired its third season premiere last night and a whole bunch of people were watching. The show touted its largest-ever live audience during the broadcast, which is good news. The bad news is that it also had more people pirating the show than ever before.

The Season 3 premiere had an average of 4.4 million viewers at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, which was greater than Game of Thrones’ previous record showing of 4.2 million viewers. That was for the Season 2 finale, which set the stage for the new season. It was also substantially higher than the Season 2 premiere, which had 3.9 million viewers last year. Over three airings, the premiere had 6.7 million viewers, which was above the 6.3 million that tuned in for the previous season’s debut.

Last night’s stats were impressive, but HBO can expect a lot more views when it counts on-demand, DVR, and online streams of the show. Last season, HBO reported that Game of Thrones had an average gross audience of 11.6 million people watching when non-live viewers were also taken into account. No doubt the larger live viewership will likely translate into a larger aggregate audience on HBO’s on-demand and streaming distribution channels.

That said, while the Game of Thrones audience is tuning in en masse to watch the show live on HBO, the number of people downloading the show for free is growing even more quickly, according to TorrentFreak. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as Game Of Thrones has been the most-pirated show over the past year.

But TorrentFreak reported that, after a quick look at the number of downloads from the premiere, Game Of Thrones appears to have become even more popular this season. A few hours after airing, hundreds of thousands of users were part of the swarm to download or seed the series to others:

A few hours after the first torrent of the show was uploaded the OpenBitTorrent tracker reported that 163,088 people where sharing one single torrent. 110,303 were sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent while 52,786 were still downloading.

How big is that? TorrentFreak notes that the previous record for the largest BitTorrent swarm “belonged to the season premiere of the TV show ‘Heroes’ with 144,663 peers.” But that was just a single file. Considering that there are usually multiple versions of an episode being seeded at any given time, TorrentFreak estimates that more than a million viewers have downloaded the show since being aired last night.

In addition to the number of downloads TorrentFreak had more info, including a breakdown of where those downloaders are coming from. HBO has said in the past that many pirates of its shows are international viewers frustrated by the typical lag between the U.S. air date and when the show appears in other markets. HBO is working to collapse those windows.

But a quick look at the early Game of Thrones torrent stats shows that the No. 1 market for pirates is actually the U.S., which is where nearly 13 percent of downloads were coming from. English-speaking markets like the U.K., Australia, and Canada were also big on pirating the show. Surprisingly enough, Australia, which has a population of a little more than 20 million, made up about 10 percent of the total. (That, by the way, matches comments that Martin made about a lot of the show’s piracy coming from the island nation.)

What’s clear from the data is that not all the pirated downloads are coming from markets that didn’t have access to the show in the hours immediately after airing, and in fact, there’s a large number of viewers in the U.S. who just aren’t paying to watch the show.

That’s no longer surprising, of course, and it seems to be a fact of life that HBO is just willing to live with, knowing that not everyone is going to pay for cable plus a premium video channel like HBO just to watch one show. Then again, there are some who believe HBO could cash in on folks who love its programming, but don’t want to pay $100 a month to get it.

But if you think HBO is going to make that switch anytime soon, don’t bet on it.

Even though the Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey state legislatures just passed laws that pave the way for online gambling in the U.S., Zynga is not going to be the first to get in on it.

Given how terrible the economics of running a blog are, TechCrunch has been exploring new revenue streams. They may include, but are not limited to, premium Justin Timberlake-filters on blog posts, Path 3.0-like stickers for Livefyre comments and a new sponsored section about Scientology-related hardware startups.

What has been most promising, however, are virtual currencies and real-money gaming. If the hope of real-money gaming has boosted Zynga’s shares by about 15 percent in the last six months, imagine what it can do for AOL’s stock.

In that vein, we’re launching a new series of slots and social betting games that let you put real money on the startups you think will get ahead. Think of it as an even easier way to bypass SEC regulations around being an accredited investor.

Why bother with the $1,000 minimums of Funders Club or deal with AngelList or SecondMarket, when you can just straight-up gamble your seed capital?

Yes, the game on top of this post really works. Seriously, click the spin button. There are real prizes in this, including a ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco (which is worth $1,795). The Tesla Roadster, I’m afraid, is virtual though. But if you do get three Alexias in a row, she could write you a poem and if you get three Anthony Has in a row, he could sing you his infamous rendition of the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” over Skype. For every three-in-a-row match that readers get, we’ll collect their contact information for a drawing. And one person randomly selected from each pool will win the prize.

Special thanks to real-money gaming platform Betable and Murka, a social gaming studio for putting this working game together in literally a week.

AllThingsD reported last week that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was working on a new mobile startup called “Jelly.” Today, a company blog post has emerged that gives us a few more details as to what Jelly might focus on, but it’s still hazy on details.

In the post, Biz Stone, who is co-founder and CEO of Jelly Industries, Inc., says it will be for “everybody,” and will be mobile focused. Yes, it doesn’t sound like much, but Stone also said that the company is named after the jellyfish, which sheds light on the type of application he might be working on:

We are inspired by this particular animal because neurologically, its brain is more “we” than “me.” Also, for the past 700 million years, this decentralized structure has been wildly successful.

To us, it sounds like Jellyfish might have something to do with social good, or helping others out. By calling out the “we” vs. “me” aspect, it’s clear that Stone won’t be working on another social network that lets you express yourself in 140 characters, set up a bio or otherwise peacock about how amazing you are and why you’re interesting, all over the Internet.

Doing “good” is another ballgame, though.

You might be a generous person trying to change the world for the better, but can you prove it? Jelly sounds to us like a way to connect you to social causes and show off your contributions. The Twitter co-founder explained that “People are basically good—when provided a tool that helps them do good in the world, they prove it.”

The service will be free, but won’t be available for “a while.” Additionally, Stone says that Jelly will be taking up a good part of his time, save for some of his advisory roles at companies like Branch and Fluther. Jelly is self-funded and based in San Francisco. Much like Ev Williams’ publishing service Medium, Stone is in no hurry to become a big company he says.

There aren’t many central homes for philanthropy and volunteering on the web other than a site like Causes, which piggybacked Facebook’s success and open graph. The site never took off as a standalone service, lacking helpful discovery tools to connect you with causes that you might care about.

For the most part, you donate here, sign a petition there, but there’s no scorecard. If you had a public-facing profile highlighting your positive actions, you might do more good for the world and inspire others to, as well. It’s too early to ride the speculation train on Jelly, but if Biz Stone wants to do some good in the world, it will be an interesting story to watch unfold.

Ever since Google announced that access to its then-new email application Gmail would be invite-only at first, startup founders have been angling to reproduce that same kind of fervor for their own services. But it wasn’t until the new iOS app Mailbox launched its innovative “reservation system” that we’ve seen anything come close to replicating the same level of demand that Gmail saw back in the day. And now, a new San Francisco-based company known as Queueing Theory wants to bring a Mailbox-like reservation system to any startup – especially those targeting mobile users.

Mailbox, which was recently acquired by Dropbox, generated interest in its application by first collecting sign-ups at a dedicated URL. Users were given a reservation number via SMS, which marked their place in line, as well as a Private Code to unlock the app once it became available in the App Store.

Though the company claimed that using reservations helped it with the strain on its servers, the system had another side effect as well – it made the buzzy new app feel like an exclusive club which only the coolest early adopters could access. Now other applications, like newly launched “smart calendar” Tempo, are utilizing similar systems – in Tempo’s case, it’s claiming that their efforts require “significant up-front email processing,” necessitating a reservation system of its own.

But why limit this feature only to email or calendaring apps? As any startup founder can tell you, getting hit by a heavy load of users can tank your servers quickly, leading to a poor user experience.

That’s where Queueing Theory comes in. It will introduce a Mailbox-like reservation system designed with the needs of mobile app developers in mind. Though the system has a web interface, it’s being targeted specifically at those who want to launch in the Apple App Store (and soon, on Android, too) before actually having the server capacity to support sign-ups from the general public.

Instead, users can sign up for their spot directly from the app or from the startup’s homepage. After providing their email address, users are given a spot in line, which is sent via SMS and appears upon subsequent app launches.

Where the company’s system varies from what Mailbox introduced, however, is that it’s building out a whole social network just for signing up for new App Store apps which are live, but only for “special” users. Startups can create a set of custom badges or stickers which then appear on Queueing Theory users’ profiles. With a glance, you can check out which apps your friends are signing up for, then click the stickers to sign up for the apps they’re waiting on, too.

There will also be a premium set of stickers that users can purchase for a nominal fee in order to move up in line. Users at the top of a line will also have a “golden ticket” sticker. Those who collect the most golden tickets for apps on the Queueing Theory system, will then receive discounts on additional “super queue” stickers in the future.

For developers, the system offers not only a way to quickly integrate a waitlist into their mobile app, but also a way to generate buzz and move up the App Store charts, ahead of anyone actually being able to use their application. (It’s unclear how Apple will respond to this, though.) Developers will also have an online dashboard where they can selectively filter sign-ups, create custom invite batches, design their “sticker set,” and more.

Hilariously, Queueing Theory hasn’t used its own invite system to collect interested users’ emails ahead of its official launch – instead, it’s hiding behind a Launchrock page here. The company says that development on its own system isn’t yet complete, but it will transition from Launchrock to a Queueing Theory page in the next few weeks. In the meantime, users can sign up here for access to that forthcoming page, which will then put them on the list to be alerted as to when the Queueing Theory sign-up page becomes available. Click here for more information.

UPDATE: Thanks to the (so far) nearly 200 people who signed up, but this was an April Fools’ Day gag. Because please don’t do this to your apps. Really, don’t. (In other news, maybe I’ll just go raise some funding for this thing?)

Thomas Goetz, the former executive editor at Wired Magazine who stepped down after more than a decade at the trailblazing tech publication late last year (weeks after the departure of longtime Wired chief editor Chris Anderson), will announce today that he has taken on two new roles — keeping one foot in journalism, and one foot out the door.

Goetz will assume an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) role at the health-focused philanthropic organization Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He’ll also be joining the TheAtlantic.com as a blog correspondent focused on “big ideas in technology and healthcare.” His first post for the Atlantic went up today.

As far as the EIR role, in a personal blog post to be published today announcing the news, Goetz says that he will spend much of his time working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer program. He explained:

“Here in Silicon Valley, Entrepreneurs-in-Residence are typically affiliated with venture capital firms, working to evaluate portfolio investments and hatch new companies. At best, they’re interim positions that end up producing something exceptional. My role with the RWJF is modeled on those posts, with a few differences befitting a non-profit foundation rather than a VC firm.”

He elaborated a bit in a comment to TechCrunch, saying:

“Over the past couple months, I’ve been talking to many EiRs in the Valley about what they do, and it seemed like an great role to bring to RWJF. I’m confident some amazing projects, hopefully TechCrunch worthy, will come of it!”

Goetz moving more firmly into the world of next-generation healthcare after more than 15 years in journalism should actually not come as too much of a surprise to those familiar with his work. He went back to school in 2005 to pursue a Master’s degree in Public Health from UC Berkeley, and much of his recent reporting has focused on health and related technology — personal genomics, cancer screenings, and the like. More recently, he wrote a book about the future of healthcare called “The Decision Tree” in 2010, and his TED talk on redesigning medical data has garnered some 300,000 views.

There’s no doubt that health and healthcare are increasingly hot areas in the tech industry, and more innovation is on the way. It will certainly be exciting to see what Goetz cooks up in the future, now that his job is to both write about newsworthy products and initiatives, and create them himself.

Back in 2010, our own John Biggs rightly described Parrot’s AR.Drone as ” the coolest thing [he had] seen in a long, long time.” Since then, Parrot has launched the AR.Drone 2.0 and while it’s still a very cool gadget, quadcopters have come a very long way since 2010. Last month, the folks at DJI, who mostly specialize in developing unmanned aerial systems for commercial use, sent me one of their consumer-oriented and GPS-enabled DJI Phantoms to review.

Most quadcopters are aimed at hobbyists and take a good amount of assembly and at least some experience with flying remote-controlled aircraft. The Phantom, which has a list price of $849 but currently retails for about $680, comes mostly pre-assembled and is extremely easy to fly, thanks to its built-in compass and GPS module. Thanks to having GPS built-in, the drone always knows where it is in relation to you. So depending on the mode you are flying in, every input you give will always be interpreted in relation to you and not in relation to where the front of the aircraft is (here’s a video that explains how this works).

The other cool thing about the GPS mode is that the drone can hover in position even if it’s windy. It’ll just auto-correct for the wind, thanks to its built-in autopilot (you probably want to turn this mode off when you are trying to take a video, however, as the constant corrections will show up in your videos).

This autopilot also kicks in if the Phantom loses its connection with your remote control if it flies out of reach or your remote runs out of battery, the drone itself is very low on battery, or because you turn it off to see if the autopilot actually works. Once the failsafe mode kicks in, the drone will simply fly up to 60 feet, fly back to where it first took off and land. I actually tried this and it worked surprisingly well. The drone touched down just about 3 feet from where I launched it. When you spent $700 on the drone and another $300 or so on a GoPro 3 Silver, that’s a nice feature to have.

The Phantom is a clear step up from something like the AR.Drone. Its communication distance is just under 1,000 feet and a maximum horizontal speed of about 32 feet per second and a descent speed of close to 20 feet per second. That’s fast and feels even faster if you are just learning how to fly it.

These specs show that this isn’t just a toy but can actually be used for some pretty impressive aerial photography. Indeed, since the Phantom launched earlier this year, a whole ecosystem has sprung up around it that provides owners with everything from improved propellers to cases and multi-axis camera gimbals. A gimbal, by the way, isn’t a must, but if you want to take really stable videos without the so-called “jello” effect (here’s a pretty extreme example of that), both a gimbal and some well-balanced after-market rotors will surely help.

Here is a video I took with the Phantom and a GoPro 3 White over the weekend:

The Phantom’s battery lasts just under 15 minutes, so you probably want to buy at least a second one, given that the package only includes a single 2,200mAh battery and a charger.

If you decide to get one of these, by the way, make sure you read the instructions and watch this series of videos before you turn it on. The Phantom may look like a toy and is easy to fly, but this is a pretty high-end piece of technology and there are a few things you need to know and do before your first flight.

With the 2013 NAB Show just around the corner, it’s a fair bet that DJI will announce a few new products in the coming days and we’ll make sure to keep a close eye on this company.

Facebook’s new “Home” on Android will debut on a mediocre HTC handset codenamed “Myst” but will be available on standard Android phones, according to an autopsy of a leaked developer build of the Facebook “phone” software scored by Android Police. This aligns with our scoop and predictions from last week about what Facebook will launch at its big press event on Thursday.

Building a slightly modified Android operating system for an HTC handset would give Facebook the freedom to customize its user experience in ways iOS and stock Android won’t allow. This includes a highly personalized homescreen that pipes in Facebook news feed content and notifications, but also has deep Facebook functionality built in elsewhere.

However, there may be a limited market for a phone that’s totally focused on Facebook. So, as I wrote last Thursday, Facebook is likely to release a more basic version of its HTC homescreen experience as a homescreen launcher replacement standalone app that’s compatible with the unmodified Android OS — the most popular mobile smartphone operating system in the world. This would give Facebook’s hard work a much wider audience than if its homescreen was shackled to HTC.

Ron Amadeo of Android Police’s impressive find of this Facebook phone application package file (APK) confirms all of this with new details.

Facebook Phone Hardware

There’s always the potential this device could have just been a tester and something better could be debuted Thursday. But the handset build.prop file from the APK says Facebook’s new software is meant to run on:

• Manufacturer: HTC
• Model: MYSTUL (Myst_UL)
• Carrier: AT&T
• Platform: MSM8960 (Dual Core)
• Ram: 1GB
• Display: 4.3 inch @ 720p resolution
• Android Version: 4.1.2
• Sense Version: 4.5
• Rear Camera = 5M
• Front Camera = 1.6M
• No SD Card
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n

These specs mesh with what Unwired View reported the Facebook-HTC device would have, and they point to a handset very similar to the HTC Sense 4.5. There’s also the potential this could run on other carriers beyond AT&T.

“Facebook Home” Software

As for the software, it includes a logo titling it “Facebook Home” just as we wrote last week. Special features that the software has Android permissions for include the ability to:

• Spawn windows that stay on top of all other windows
• Turn off the lock screen
• Activate as soon as your phone starts
• Monitor what other apps are currently running
• Control the phone’s Wi-Fi connection
• Change the system settings

In the layout XML and image files are indications that Facebook Home will let you view Facebook news feed stories, a more standard clock screen, shortcuts for launching apps, and search via Google.

One of the most fascinating features is referred to as “Chat Heads” in the APK, and comes with the ability to “pop out chat head.” It appears to let Facebook Chat conversations float above the currently viewed screen and remain visible even while you use other apps. Think how certain websites let you activate a music player that stays persistently visible and doesn’t pause a song as you browse between different webpages. This could be similar but for mobile chat. The Chat Heads feature could be one that only runs on Facebook’s modified Android OS.

“Home” For Any Android

Possibly the most important thing Android Police discovered is that the Facebook Home software comes ready to read the settings of the launcher for the stock Android operating system, and the HTC launcher, but also the TouchWiz Launcher — the front-end mobile interface designed by Samsung. That means Home is designed to run on the more traditional Android OS installed on handsets made by OEMs other than HTC. Essentially, Facebook could ship a version of Home that could be downloaded from Google Play onto a wide variety of devices.

It makes perfect sense and supports what I wrote last week. The premier version of Home could be shown off on an HTC running a build of Android altered by Facebook. This would include the custom homescreen, but also deeper hooks, such as the ability to Facebook Chat while in other apps. On April 4th or a little down the road, Facebook could also offer a slightly less powerful version of Home for standard Android. If both are a success, it could pressure other OEMs beyond HTC to partner with Facebook to modify the Android builds they run to be compatible with the premier version of Home.

This strategy would let Facebook: 1. Build its dream experience on HTC, 2. Offer a deeper homescreen experience to anyone with Android, and 3. Persuade more OEMs to work with it.

That sounds good in theory, but the success of Facebook Home will come down to whether it really adds value on top of the existing Facebook flagship Android app. If not, few will buy the HTC Facebook phone; only the most hardcore social networkers will install the homescreen replacement, and OEMs won’t invest in deeper Facebook functionality. Years of work on Facebook’s part could fizzle out.

But if it does succeed, Facebook Home Users could give us what I call a sixth sense for our social lives by instantly being able to see on our homescreens what’s going on with our friends. It could perhaps even push Apple to open new homescreen modification abilities to developers. And most critically, without manufacturing its own devices, Facebook could gain more control of the mobile experience and drive even more engagement on the small screens that everyone’s switching to.

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Read more about Facebook’s big new Android project:

Facebook To Reveal “Home On Android” Sources Say Is A Modified OS On HTC At 4/4 Event

Facebook’s “Home” On Android Could Give You A Sixth Sense For Your Social Life

Facebook’s Android Homescreen Could Expose Apple’s Inflexibility