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If you haven’t heard the rumours, then your (2nd) favourite Social Networking site Facebook, is due to release big news later today at their conference at FB HQ. Now for our money, there are two main things that could be in the pipeline, the first being the Facebook Phone we mentioned a few weeks ago, or more than likely a new design of the Facebook website.

So if it is the latter, just as Twitter did a few weeks ago, what can we expect? Well our money is on;

Facebook Places
After the release of Facebook Places in more and more countries we are pretty sure you can expect better integration. More than likely separate from your standard friend feed and a dedicated area on each and every page where people log in and out. For me this would be an advantage, as I really don’t want that xxx is at ‘McDonalds Restaurant’ in my feed. But I could live with a widget sitting somewhere, and it will be even better if you can move it around (though they will never let you remove it completely).

Facebook Chat
As everyone knows Facebook Chat is complete gash and I for one don’t even sign in anymore. Expect better integration and more options. probably losing it from the bottom right and placing it somewhere else, with rumours on the left hand side. You might also see different options such as a pop out feature, and perhaps even voice / video features (rumours have been flying around with Skype). Though the latter would again raise security fears over entrapment and abuse. And you can bet Zuckerberg will be tapping into your feed and be enjoying the very same strip tease as you…!

Improved Search
Now that Facebook is tied in with Bing for search results, the FB crew are really hoping you never need to leave their site ever again. We expect a more prominent search and results areas and a way of displaying / sharing those results with your friends.

General
Generally you can expect a fresh look pretty much everywhere, including larger profile pictures and new ways in which events and groups are handled. The guys over at TC believe they have an idea of what the design will look like and we have included the image below. If it is, it looks pretty uninspiring and I just wasted my day writing this…. Lets hope for bigger and better…

More unlikely reports suggest an official Facebook Toolbar (boring). What ever happens, expect normal people whining on their statuses and expect businesses testing the new profiles to see how they can better utilise them to lure in customers, like, high 5′s and god knows what else. Whatever happens stay here for updates or of course just like our Facebook page.

New Facebook Screenshot

Google Me Social Network

The rumours have been flying around for a while and now Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed for the first time that Google Me, a new Social Network will be released by Google this year. Expected to go head to head against the like of Twitter and Facebook, details are scarce at present, but we do feel the pressure is on Google to produce this time around.

After Google’s recent disasters when it comes to networking, also known as Google Wave and Google Buzz they really do need to step up to the plate sooner rather than later. The social bandwagon is already in full swing and Schmidt towers is late to the party.

But can Google provide the next level that will be above and beyond Facebook and Twitter. They have a base in search obviously, and with Google Docs but how are they going to tempt us to sign up to another Social Network? Some kind of easy bookmarking / share options would make sense, perhaps appearing next to personalised searches and showing what your friends have searched. Given the disgust at Digg still, there could be a widening gap in the arena for something similar. Integration into iGoogle makes sense, and this would bring it up everything open my browser. But I then might be less inclined to leave myself logged in?

Online games will be a main point of attack we feel, with Google recently investing over $100 million in Zynga, currently the game developers of the moment with Facebook smashes such as Farmville and Mafia Wars. But then it will really depend on their target audience….

We will obviously update you as we hear more, in the meantime, what do you think? How can Google push the boundaries and bring Social Networking to the next level? Comment below or let us know on @averagejoesblog.

New Twitter Screenshots

Some of you may have been lucky enough to get your mucky hands on the new twitter. Others may still be waiting in line to test it out. It has been quoted as the Facebook killer but let’s take a closer look as for most of us the wait could be a week or two…

Visuals
The first thing you will notice is a wider homepage with a two column approach which crams in more information. The left hand column is your standard timeline you would expect to see with a few new tweaks. The right hand side is more dynamic depending on content and will include details, pictures and videos which you can read more about below. After that the changes are small, but still significant.

Media
Media is the next big thing on the list with embedded video and pictures within tweets. Depending on the format of the link and media it will preview / open in the right hand column. This will only work on approved providers, currently alot of the big names are signed up including youtube, vimeo, Flickr etc. and expect more and more to be expected soon. For me this is one of the main features and improvements and everything works well. However it is not hugely different from my tweetdeck is it… ;-)

New Twitter Media Gallery

Search
Search gets a much more prominent focus at the top of every page. No doubt trying even harder to push twitter.com as your home, not just for your social lives, but also for your search requirements as well. We have been unable to test search so far so we can’t tell you if there are any additional filters once you get to the search results. But we do hope so!

Timeline
Your timeline, @replies, retweets, searches and lists all appear in a neat navigation above the main content area which is currently your timeline. I am not sure why they have seperated replies and retweets, many people use via @xxxxx nowadays rather than RT and other ways so this may be confusing. I would have also liked to see a ‘total retweets’ for a particular tweet which doesn’t seem to be here. On a quick glance it may make it more difficult to filter and keep everything included with your username in the same place.

Twitter Shortcuts

Messages
Interestingly direct messages have moved and are now located near the search. I wonder if this is to dis-courage people from using private messages? We use them alot as to not dilute our public feeds with a long string of conversation, but perhaps twitter view it differently and want to reduce the number of private messages? Again we couldn’t test this feature, it would be nice to be able to DM multiple users…

Tweets
Tweets themselves are laid out in pretty much the same way which I think is the right move. Retweets are more clearly defined and all twitter names are accompanied by your real name (or what you entered). You can now also follow conversation threads to an extent. Within a click you can see the last response, however more clicks are needed if you want to view more which feels a little clumsy. It would be better for the whole conversation to appear on the RH side on a single click.

What’s missing?
There seems to be no add on for multiple accounts so for now apps are here to stay. People are complaining about no addition to the 140 character rule, and to those people I suggest you f*** off back to Facebook. You obviously haven’t grasped twitter at all!!

Overall
Although some really useful additions and features (particularly around the media side), we still can’t see why you would log on to the homepage rather than your all singing and all dancing app. And after an initial play we have no doubt you will be back to your twitter client before you can say #failwhale….

The New Twitter

Pictures from TC.

Instant search is live now and you can try it out over at Google UK and staff have described it as “search at the speed of thought”. Currently only live on desktops, it is expected to be pushed to mobile devices this year and is only available in the US, UK, Spain, Germany, France and Russia.

The main worry might come to SEO professionals who now need to again learn the tricks in the system to keep their clients at the top of rankings. Will people stop at more major key phrases or will they continue on and type in a longer tail to filter less searches?

Google estimates that the typical user spends nine seconds entering a query and 15 seconds looking for answers. They claim that Google Instant could shave between two and five seconds off a typical web search.

Surely the problem Google will have is predicting what people actually want? I was worried when I tried to find Google Analytics this morning that typing in ‘anal ytics’ might bring me an unwanted surprise. However it didn’t and in-fact after testing ‘anal’ (to a degree, mik) it still showed analytics results. What does this mean for the gay community? Must they now wack off to stats and graphs? Is this a secret ploy from Google to turn everyone straight…?

The new Digg has been open to the public from today, Thursday 26 August, and before that for a fair amount of time to beta testers. Now I do love Digg and the idea of it. And the new version has some great features (not to mention getting rid of crap framed pages) BUT it does have quite a few flaws.

I am actually going to start with my summary, and go into detail further down.

In my opinion the new Digg will help to increase traffic on large sites (Telegraph, Mashable etc.) and now decrease traffic to smaller sites, such as here at AJB. Overall this will mean that the overall quality of content on Digg will decrease and ultimately so will it’s users, traffic, advertising and money, leaving Kevin Rose a Kevin Who? and here’s why;

Content
Power users (those with thousands of followers) are even more powerful and are really the only people able to get sites on the front page. The larger sites (Mashable already do it) will automatically submit their stories on Digg, so no-one else ever can, thus increasing it’s followers and removing the kudos from the average user who done it first. In my opinion 25% of Mashable’s posts don’t deserve to be on Digg, so we will just end up with crap pushed onto our screens.

This will also mean if you have your own site and you want it to get to the front page, you will have to pay someone (a power user) to submit or dig it for you with no guarantees) so it is seen by all their followers.
In the past you could be a successful digger without actually befriending anyone. If you submitted a story and it had good content it would eventually be dugg by others and rise up the rankings through the upcoming section. This meant Digg was content orientated, which in my opinion is the way the web should be. Now, with the removal of upcoming stories this will no longer happen. It will be socially driven (I have more friends than you)

Topics
With the old Digg I always thought there were not enough sub-topics to put your submission into. Digg’s answer? Remove sub-topics all together!! Now some might think this is a good idea, and to you my friends, I say you are mad!!

The advantage with the sub-topics is the ability to refine your search even further. Let’s take sport for instance, dominated by US sports, such as baseball, basketball, eggball (you call it football, fools!). Now for me, I don’t really care to much for those sports. In the past I could easily click motorsports, soccer (football, fools!) etc. which made my experience, as a user, much easier to find the kind of content I want.

Followers
Kevin Rose has jumped on the Twitter Bandwagon. We must all have ‘Followers’ in some ego boosting stupid online virtual world. But how do you find some? There is a ‘dugg by’ but this only includes people who you are already following, which asks the question how do you actually find new people you aren’t following?! So far, it isn’t easy. The only way I can see is go into each individual page (by clicking on the comments button) and then click each commenter and whoever submitted the Digg. There is however no way to see who has dugg the post in full which means your options are limited.

This will actually help closed ‘groups’ of people on Digg manipulating stories, which after recent events, I am sure is something Digg want to avoid.

For me, this is just Digg rushing everything out without proper testing or planning. If you want people to build a follower / friend base that’s fine, but they need to be able to find people!

Main Layout
Although I love the majority of the new layout, and the speed there is one glaring omission. Who actually submitted the post!! To me, these are the people I want to connect with as they are actively trying to find great stories for us to read. But at the moment you have to click into each post to find their details. #Fail
Also the sponsored Diggs are now less visible, they integrate far to easily into the feed and look like a normal submission apart from some small writing inside a pale yellow block. I can only assume this is a ploy to help their revenue and advertising given recent backlash from their investors.

Search
Well I haven’t got it to work yet! Whenever I type my user name, or anything else it comes up with the ‘wheels are off the wagon’… It did work once and I typed in the blog ‘averagejoesblog’ but there were no results or profiles available. Both lies…

If Digg are not careful, all their wheels might fall off the Digg bandwagon…

So there you have it. My take on the new Digg. I found myself venting on twitter so just thought it easier to write it all down. I would love to know your thoughts and ideas for improvement?

You can comment here, or get me on twitter @stuartflatt. And of course I am on Digg – stuartflatt.

P.S I would love to get this high on Digg and prove all my theories wrong so give it a digg huh ;-)

Free New Digg Invite

Ok so the new Digg is going through beta testing and to be honest, it looks pretty dam swish! Following other recent upgrades to major social sites (myspace) it looks like a love child of Facebook and Twitter with a much easier to use interface.

There are still a few teething problems, but overall we are impressed. What do you think? For your free invite just click here and comment below.

Don’t forget to add me as a friend! :D new digg old digg.

ESPN Premiership Goals

ESPN have just launched the best sport’s junkie app ever! ESPN Goals will bring every Premiership goal direct to your mobile (. For a modest subscription of just £3.99 per month, or £29.99 per season you get to see every Premiership goal ‘within minutes of the ball crossing the line’. That is well before Sky and BBC highlights go to air.

Sounds perfect doesn’t it? Well hold your horses just a second. Although you will still be able to beat Sky and BBC to the punch, they will not show goals between 2:45 and 5:15pm on Saturdays, which is protected from TV coverage. This must equate to around 70% of games? However you will get access in minutes to all early and late Saturday kick-offs, as well as Sunday and midweek games.

The app is currently only available to Android and iPhone users, although will be available through ESPN’s mobile site.

What do you think? Is it worth the cost bearing in mind you miss Saturday 3pm games? Let us know below.

So what can we expect;

iPods
We hear that Apple have 3 new iPods in store for us over the next 8 weeks, they are;

• A new iPod Nano
• A new iPod Touch
• And possibly a new version of the iPod Shuffle with a small touchscreen

Although the iLounge don’t mention this, logic suggests that you would expect dual camera on a new iPod Touch, as well as the ability for FaceTime over Wi-Fi..? It just wouldn’t make sense otherwise…

iPad

Again, an obvious choice, I have been expecting a release of a new iPad before Christmas 2010 for some time. It just makes sense to do the iPad and iPhone on a near yearly cycle so a new major product is released every 6 – 7 months.

Rumours here suggest a new, smaller 7 inch screen version of the iPad as a more entry level product. Again this makes sense, and aimed at all those who still feel the iPad is to expensive. But what I would really like to see again, is dual cameras and something like an HDMI output. Turning the iPad into not only a browsing device, but also one for viewing as well.

iPhone

Perhaps a surprise to many but expect an fifth generation iPhone within 12 months. The main reason will be to eliminate the antenna issues. How big will the upgrade be though? Just a re-package or something more substantial? Time will tell…

In the interim, Apple are reportably working on a second generation bumper for the iPhone 4. Don’t expect enhancements, more likely they are trying to reduce costs, and mass produce so they can give more away in the future.

So there it is, a load of crap? I don’t think so. Some of the ideas are a little far fetched, but in the whole they make sense. Not to mention these leaks come within a few days of the BlackBerry Torch and BlackPad announcements.. Oh coincidence? I think not. And to be fair to iLounge, in the past they have been pretty accurate.

Update 1: Someone may have leaked a 4th generation iPod picture above (via hardmac). If real, we can see a back camera and flash (but not front mounted one), a lighter / metal back, as well as keeping the more rounded design, not seen in the iPhone4.

iPod 4 th Generation

Update 2: Another leak this time, of apparently a 4th Generation iPod touch LCD screen but this time with a little hole for a front facing camera 9as seen above). To me this makes alot more sense but I am sure more things will be leaked over time, so as awlays we will keep you updated.

iPod Touch 4G Screen

So what do you think? Would you buy them? And more importantly what features would you like to see in upcoming releases?

RIM BlackBerry BlackPad

BREAKING: Blackberry PlayBook announced.

RIM (Research In Motion), the famous makers of you beloved BlackBerry are apparently working on a ‘BlackPad’ (no joke). After RIM bought the BlackPad domain a few months ago, many assumed it was a marketing stunt, but now it seems to be creeping to reality.

Going head to head with Apples iPad, the new BlackPad is pencilled for release during November and will be approximately the same size as the Apple device. Expect tethering through your mobile rather than separate 3G data tariffs though as RIM try to put one over on their arch enemies.

Since the launch of the iPad, Apple has shipped over 3 million unit’s and it seems everyone else now wants a slice of the ‘apple’ pie…

Expect to see offerings from Samsung very soon, as well as one from LG during 2010, not to mention I am pretty sure Apple will release another version of the iPad within the next 6 months…

What do you think of ‘Pads’ in general (not the female ones)? Are they useful? Do you have one? Will you get one? Discuss :)

Picture mockup from intomobile.

The Apple iPad

OK so amongst all the rumours it seems there is no smoke without Fire. A little while ago Apple announced the launch of the iPad, I mean tablet, I mean iPad!

In terms of details, what we know so far is it is a little over a centimetre thick, and weighs in a little over 1 and a half pounds. As standard it comes with a 9.7-inch touchscreen IPS LCD display, and is powered by a specially built 1GHz Apple “A4″ chipset. Bulleted details below;

• 16, 32 and 64 gig sizes
• Huge 1 month standby (by which time you would have lost it!) and 10 hours battery life
• Connectivity via Bluetooth and 802.11n WiFi
• Built in speaker and microphone
• Accelerometer as expected

You can also run iPhone apps straight from the box, though they will be with limited pixels, though developers can already update their apps to the new larger screen size.

10 years in development, maybe this is 5 years to late? We will see!