One of the biggest iPhone stories this week took place just yesterday, when Facebook debuted a new feature called Facebook Places for the iPhone, a location-based social network. Simply tap one button in the Facebook app to see a list of nearby places, tap the one that corresponds to where you are (a restaurant, a bar, a park, a zoo, etc.) and a Facebook status update announces where you are to your friends. It is similar to other location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla (although it lacks the extra features of those services such as the game aspects). Of course, if you are like most attorneys who I know, you have no desire to let other people know where you are and indeed may consider that an invasion of your privacy. If so, you'll still want to pay attention to Facebook Places because if you are one of the 500 million people with a Facebook account, even if you don't use the feature, any of your Facebook friends can use it for you and check you in at a location. So if a friend joins you at a restaurant, or even just sees you across the room at the restaurant, he can indicate on Facebook that both of you are at the restaurant — or, for that matter, at a bar or other location. If you want to prevent others on Facebook from doing this, you'll have to change your Facebook privacy settings. Thus, for some people Facebook Places will be a cool new feature, but for others it will be an annoying invasion of privacy that forces them to change privacy settings to opt out. For more information, including advice on protecting your privacy, check out these articles by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Miguel Helft and Jenna Wortham of the New York Times and Adrian Chen of Valleywag. By the way, the new version of the Facebook app for the iPhone also lets you upload pictures and video in the background. Other news of the week that might be of interest to you:
- If you practice bankruptcy law, you'll be interested to learn that West has released the Norton Bankruptcy Dictionary as an iPhone app. Click here for Norton Bankruptcy Dictionary ($4.99):
- Oxford, Mississippi attorney Tom Freeland writes about Pano, an iPhone app that lets you take panorama photographs.
- Nick Spense of Macworld UK writes about updates to LogMeIn Ignition, an iPhone app that I use all the time. (My review is here.)
- Steven Sande of TUAW reports that Apple was awarded patents for two iPhone features: slide to unlock and keyboard letter pop. I use both features every day, and I bet you do too.
- David Pogue of the New York Times describes three iPhone 4 tips.
- David Kravets of Wired reports on a federal Second Circuit ruling that using an iPhone to secretly record a conversation does not violate the federal Wiretap App if used for legitimate purposes. (Keep in mind, though, that you also need to be aware of state laws on recording conversations, and if it is an attorney recording the conversation, the state rules of professional conduct may also limit or prohibit the practice.)
- Brian Chen of Wired writes that the director of Apple's App Store also has apps that he wrote in the app store, including a fart app. No word on whether Apple will soon release an official, Apple-sanctioned fart app.
- One of the reasons that Apple has resisted putting Adobe Flash on the iPhone is that, until recently, there was no software that allowed one to run Flash on a mobile device. There is now a Flash app for Android, and according to Avram Piltch of Laptop magazine, it has serious flaws, suggesting that it is probably a very good thing that we don't have Flash on the iPhone. (Link via Daring Fireball.)
- I recently wrote about a backdoor method to use the volume buttons to take pictures with the Camera+ app. Apparently Apple wasn't too happy about that undocumented feature because the app was pulled from the App Store. Lex Friedman of Macworld argues that Apple should let developers access the volume button. I agree and I hope that Apple reconsiders.
- And finally, Rene and Georgia at TiPb tested two skins for the iPad — the Invisible Shield (which I reviewed here) and BodyGuardz — against a severe scratch test. If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the brutal test below. (Spoiler alert: both held up quite well and the iPad was protected. Whew!)
