Facebook Making Its Employees Use Substandard Android App

Facebook's new and improved iOS app is live, but employees at the social network aren't reaping the benefits. According to a report from Business Insider, the company's worker-bees have been encouraged and in some cases outright ordered to switch to Android phones, precisely because Facebook's Android app is so bad.

Apparently not uncommon at tech companies, "dogfooding" (as in "eat your own dog food") is a clever way to incentivize product improvements.

And it totally works by the way: I worked at a summer camp once driving this pontoon boat that broke down every single day, forcing me to row grumpy kids back to shore against the wind. One day the owner of the camp came out on the lake with me: I killed the motor on purpose and offered him the oars. Boat was fixed that week.

So rejoice Android users! Facebook's design team feels your pain, because their bosses are making them. A platform-native update similar to the one iOS users got yesterday should be on its way soon.

Stoked? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Facebook's New iOS App is Twice as Fast

Let's just clear the air: for a long time Facebook's iOS app has sucked.

Features that worked fine in desktop browsers took on an awkward UI or were just left out, and interminable loading screens tried our patience to the breaking point. (When loading the news feed takes so long you have time to guess what its contents will look like and think better of reading it, you know there's a problem.)

And, believe it or not, all that design talent Facebook poaches thought so too. They explain the problem, along with what went into fixing it, on their "Under the hood" blog. "We realized that when it comes to platforms like iOS, people expect a fast, reliable experience and our iOS app was falling short," wrote engineer Jonathan Dann.

The problem with the app's older versions was that instead of being entirely coded with Apple's iOS SDK, it embedded the HTML5 code Facebook used for all its mobile platforms. This made it easy to support mobile access for dozens of devices, but it also slowed everything down.

The solution: "We rewrote Facebook for iOS from the ground up (I really did open up Xcode and click 'New Project') with a focus on quality and leveraging the advances that have been made in iOS development." So while the new app mostly looks identical to its HTML5 predecessor, optimizing it for iDevices has made it smoother, more responsive, and just plain faster.

The new app also includes a few added features and UI updates - a "New Stories" banner and improved gestures for photo viewing among them - but the main focus of the update was speed.

Facebook is reportedly working on a similar update to improve its app for Android phones, but has yet to announce release dates.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN. 

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

American Horror Story: Season 2 Teasers

Two quick teasers have been released, via the official American Horror Story Facebook page page, for the second season - a brand new story (set in the 1960s), called American Horror Story: Asylum. Both are mum on plot details, but offer plenty of creepy atmosphere. Check them out below.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Lundgren Returns for Universal Soldier 4

Magnet Releasing announced today via Twitter and Facebook that they will be distributing Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning On Demand and in theaters.

The fourth installment, which stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, picks up where the third film, Regeneration, left off. The franchise centers on Luc Devereaux (Van Damme) and Andrew Scott (Lundgren), two soldiers who kill each other in Vietnam but are subsequently reanimated through a secret government project along with a large group of other once dead soldiers.

John Hyams, who wrote Universal Soldier: Regeneration, has co-written and directed this latest film.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com