Pipe B Blog

This morning (midnight EST) Facebook began allowing its users to have “usernames” whereby you can:

Easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile with a Facebook username.

But who really cares? Out of the 200+ million users of the social networking website, only about 200,000 grabbed a username. The website provides little information as to how useful these usernames would actually be, and the hassle involved (and strictness) is probably the leading factor that is turning people off.

For example, when checking whether a username is available, this message appears:

(USERNAME) is available. Remember, you can’t change your username once you set it. Are you sure you want to set (USERNAME) as your username?

Nobody really cares, and once again, Facebook is taking a step in the wrong direction and trying to do too much, and turning its users off in the process.

While software-maker Microsoft Corp. is trying to convince consumers that its latest operating system Windows 7 is completely new and innovative, its competitor Apple disses it, claiming that it’s just the same old Windows.

During the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Bertrand Serlet from Apple stated that the Windows 7 had very similar complexities that existed in previous versions of Windows. Serlet even went as far as to say,

Fundamentally, it’s just another version of Windows Vista.

When talking about Apple’s latest Snow Leopard operating system, he took a much different tone. Apparently, he is not only proud of Leopard, but also loves it!

It is becoming ever more theorized that the online social community website Facebook is quietly building a micropayment system to be integrated within its website. This platform is rumored to be similar to a virtual currency, that may fluctuate daily just like any other “real” currency.

According to Facebook spokesman David Swain,

We do not have details to share at the moment because this will be a very small alpha, only a handful of developers, but will likely share more as we evaluate the results of the test.

Do you remember when “Gifts” first became available through Facebook? They offered each item at the price of $1, payable using a credit card. This was later turned into a point-like system, where USD is used to purchase credits, and “Gifts” became priced according to these credits.

Many people have already come to the realization that Apple products are overpriced because of style and “coolness” factors rather than actual usefulness. The latest OS for their popular iPhone is further evidence of this theory.

Earlier in the week, Apple started to blitz out push notifications, which is a sign that they will soon be releasing new operating system to the general public. This is where Apple is showing signs of usability weakness for systems that companies like Nokia have fixed years ago.

In order to handle the plethora of notifications, a novel menu was added, allowing iPhone users to handle the notification settings for individual applications, and provide a faster way of turning them on/off en masse. Unfortunately, this causes real headaches for business users, headaches that Nokia solved over 10 years ago.

What Nokia did back then was allow for quick toggling between multiple settings rather than the old “menu hopping” ways of the new iPhone OS.