Facebook Dating/Social Apps

Social Connect Facebook App

Professor Appy

Social Connect (A Facebook Dating App)

I came across this app that just launched on Facebook. It’s billed as a lifestyle and dating app, and it’s all that and much more – Social Connect can be just for fun and it’s very entertaining and informative.

Even though I already have a girlfriend, and so I’m not searching for a mate, I can see why Social Connect can become popular for those users seeking to add a little spice or romance in their lives by connecting with a compatible partner.

I used Social Connect to find a sports partner, as I’m trying to get in top shape. I found a gowl named Lara, and she’s been teaching me Yoga, spinning, Tai Chi, and we help each other with cardio training.

Social Connect is a real hoot! You can ask users secret questions. Someone asked me if I had ever displayed public affection, and of course I have – in trees, in the cloud forest, in the forest canopy and just above the waterfalls. In fact, most of my romantic encounters have been outdoors.

There’s also a section called Rate Me, where you can rate members based on appearance, if they so choose to be rated. I’m a little shy, but I may be tempted to get rated in the future.

I really love the charm section where you can send other users charms such as single roses, diamond rings (of the virtual kind), chocolate kisses, wine, tropical flowers, and cards. You also can send what they call “Connects”, which are messages, as well as winks and ice-breakers.

You can keep your favorite charms in a treasure box, and you can send charms and invites to your selected friends.

Social Connect has to be the most exciting dating app, with all its nifty features such as the Guardian feature for safer dating, Favescape for checking in and checking out local hot spots, and its location-aware and updating platform through its integration with Foursquare and Twitter (one of my fave applications; after all, it’s got a bird as its logo), a Social Card, which provides your profile and whatever faves, and a What’s New section to check out your new charms, messages, and to even check out who might have peeked at your profile.

If I were not in a serious relationship, I’d use the Social Connect app to find a compatible mate. But it’s also fun for rating and sending charms, and the FaveScape section sure provides some great tips on trying out local eateries and taverns and cafes.

Professor Appy gives Social Connect the highest rating: 5 Hoots

Design: Super-fantastic – 5 Hoots

User Friendly: Indeed it is! – 5 Hoots

Entertaining: Fun times and very creative – 5 Hoots

Useful: Absolutely – Targeted Search, Updates, Reviews, – 5 Hoots

Original: Highly imaginative – 5 Hoots

5 Hoots!

Xobni Mobile BlackBerry App Review

You receive emails from lots of people, some with the sender’s contact info and others without them, and most likely, there’ll be plenty of such messages that you’ve not bothered to copy into a contact and sync it with your BlackBerry’s address book. The Xobni Mobile app for BlackBerry eases the job for you by pulling together phone calls, emails and text messages you’ve exchanged with others, with incoming contact details, to build a comprehensive address book that virtually links to everyone who is a common factor in the circle. It is similar to the Social Networking websites that shows common friends between you and another person, even if he/she is not in your friend’s list.

Xobni Mobile BlackBerry App Features

BlackBerry Xobni Mobile app can be used in two ways; either you can let it mine information for you from incoming emails and text messages automatically, or you can pay for letting it sync all the information it had extracted from all your email in Outlook, and get it to your BlackBerry. The second option is more precise as the mobile application automatically mining info from incoming emails is not that fool proof (sometimes, it extracts unwanted numbers as well). Further, no frequent syncing is required, even if the other guy had not mailed you for a month as the app syncs across from Outlook over the web, thereby getting all updated info.

The Xobini address book can be accessed by scrolling to the top, while you are typing an email. The contacts are sorted by those who you are in contact most often, even though specific search using letters/words is also possible. Alternatively, you can add the addresses the standard way, if you want to.

Given the size of information that Xobini puts together, it goes without mention that quite a few memory space will be taken up for the same. So, the app gives you, the user, an option whether to accumulate data in the phone memory or external memory card.

On the downside, the install experience could have been made much better. Also, you are required to set up the online account before you can use the app in the BlackBerry. And quite oddly, the app requires you to click open the app permissions page while you install it.

Conclusion

Xobini Mobile is an excellent BlackBerry app that combines the utilities of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Gwabbit, backed by seamless integration with the BlackBerry OS. With this app at your disposal, no longer would you be required to scavenge old emails for a person’s contact details again. Single license of Xobni Mobile BlackBerry app comes at a price tag of $9.99, while Xobni Mobile with Xobni One: $6.99 + $3.99 monthly fee or $39.90/year.

Facebook Causes App

Facebook Causes Now Available

Summary

Facebook and any other web 2.0 site has one thing about it that really sets it apart from all of the other sites on the internet. That thing, quite simply put, is the ability to bring people together like never before. You can live in Canada and South Africa can be in your bedroom because of your ability to communicate with people around the world through Facebook. Any application that takes advantage of this unique ability is one that definitely deserves to be highlighted. Causes is an example of such an application and it could very well change the world forever.

User Interaction

Interacting with Causes is very easy to do. All you have to do is scroll around and click on buttons that represent various actions. This is the prototypical Facebook app because all of the controls on this app are controls you would find in other areas around Facebook. Therefore, the average Facebook user will have no problems adjusting to the set of controls available in Causes.

User Interface

The Causes user interface operates under the same deal as the Causes user interaction. This app is basically built into Facebook and you use it however you wish within your Facebook account. For that reason, the user interface is the Facebook user interface. Any person that has had any kind of experience working inside Facebook should not be surprised by anything that they see in Causes.

Utility and Productivity

Causes is not just a great software package in the technical sense, it is a great package in the social sense. The people that created Causes understand exactly the power of Facebook and they have leveraged that power in order to get people to organize into different social activism projects. It is not only a powerful application for the tens of millions of people that now use it, but there is every chance that it could change the world through the power of the social activism project.

It is important to remember that the best social activism projects are the ones that are well organized and therefore able to keep their members interested. The same is true for the Causes app on Facebook, as only the projects on there that have high levels of organization are able to retain members. In the world of Causes, a successful cause is not one that actually raises a lot of money, but rather one that maintains a high list of membership and spreads the word about whatever social action it is backing. With viewers given the maximum choice as to what they want to create and back, Causes has started something that could easily sweep through the rest of the web 2.0 websites.

Rating

At the end of the day, Causes is not a flashy application. Nevertheless, it is an extremely important one that people can get so much out of if they are willing to put in the time necessary to cultivate those relationships. Because of the great potential this app has, we have marked it 8.5 out of 10.

Facebook’s Visual Bookshelf App

Facebook’s Visual Bookshelf App Brings People Together

Summary

The Visual Bookshelf is a Facebook Verified App. That essentially means that people from Facebook have looked it over and said that it is fine as far as trustworthiness and security is concerned. That is a great thing, because Visual Bookshelf is quickly becoming one of the most popular apps on Facebook.

User Interaction

The two main actions that are involved with Visual Bookshelf are adding books to your own shelf and then browsing through the shelves of other Facebook users.

When you are adding books to your own shelf, all you are doing is filling out the information on a form and then clicking the submit button in order to add that book to your shelf. There is a lot of information contained within your shelf and therefore you can actually take the extra time and actions to browse through your own bookshelf in order to make sure that all of the books are there and catalogued correctly.

Similarly, you can look through the bookshelves of other people. The great thing is that you have maximum choice when it comes to how you would like to browse. For example, you can simply browse through shelves by clicking on profiles and navigating to the shelves, or you can take a look at people that have the same books in their shelf as you. The choice is endless and this is a great way to meet people that share your interests.

User Interface

User interface issues on Visual Bookshelf are non-existent. Essentially, this is an app that runs inside Facebook and steals the Facebook interface to use for its own program as well. The graphics are unique and the way in which the text is spread out across the shelf is also unique. However, the overall design of the graphical user interface still includes Facebook in it to a very large degree.

Utility and Productivity

One of the main purposes of the Facebook service is to allow people to connect with other people. Because this is one of the main purposes, any application that helps that purpose along is definitely one that gets a high utility score. The Visual Bookshelf app is one of these because you can tell a lot about a person based on what they read and more importantly what books they like. You can also judge how well two people will get along based on how similar their tastes actually are. Combine both of these together and you have Facebook’s Virtual Bookshelf.

The productivity on this software is high for the same reason. You can meet people with similar tastes in a fraction of the time it would take you to meet them in the real world. At the end of the day, that is a very important point that is most definitely worth emphasizing.

Rating

Visual Bookshelf is easily one of the best apps on Facebook for the reasons mentioned above. As a way of recognizing that, we have awarded Visual Bookshelf a score of 9.0 out of 10.