[Review] Facebook Page Manager For Android. Is It Worth A Download?

If you are (or ever were) an admin of a Facebook page, you must be aware of the pain an admin goes through in managing the page through his/her mobile. The world is relying more and more on mobile devices. which means more than half of the Facebook users access it via mobile. Which also means many of the Facebook Page managers also access it via mobile.

As an admin to several Facebook pages, I always felt a need for a more controlled approach to the Facebook pages on mobile. When I first heard that Facebook is releasing its own Facebook Page Manager Android app solely for managing Facebook Pages, I was ecstatic. After some time fiddling with it, I came up with this review. Lets fond out what the Facebook Page Manager can do and how it fared on the expectation.

Facebook Page Manager

The Interface:

The interface and the interactivity of the Facebook Page Manager is similar to the new look of official Facebook Android app. Once you have logged in to the app, you can see all of your pages for which you are an admin by clicking on the menu on top left. This is nothing new as one can do the same in the simple Facebook app.

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Once you choose your page, you can see all the new likes, messages and the user activities in the top notification area, very similar to how you use the Facebook app for your personal profile. You can update status and share photos from here.

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On the top right corner, there is a filter that gives you access to choose between posts by page and posts by fans. In the simple Facebook page, this option was available via links.

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Comment viewing section is same as what we have seen in the new Facebook app. When you click on comments, it opens a new ‘window’ on the top of existing one:

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You can delete a post just by swiping your fingers across the screen. Once we have seen the interface and the look of the Facebook Page Manager, it is time to see the highs and lows of this app.

What’s Hot?

Page Insights:

The best thing about Facebook Page Manager is that it provides the insights about the posts and statuses akin to the web version. The “reach” started showing under a posts since the time Facebook started forcing page owners to pay to reach more fans (among the existing only, not new). You can see how many people your post reached in this new app.

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Apart from showing the “reach”, it also shows the detailed insights. The “View Insights” gives the critical details about the post. Very helpful for targeted campaigns. If you promote your post, those insights will also be accessible.

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Notifications:

Based on your Facebook page settings, it also notifies you of new user likes and comments on the page. May not be a good option for pages with tens of thousands fans with hundreds of active users.

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Whats Not?

If you think that with Facebook Page Manager on your Android phone, you don’t need to log in to the web version, you are wrong. Facebook Page Manager is missing lots of crucial features important to a page admin.

No option to delete a comment and ban a user:

Every now and then we, page admins, came across unruly, rude and misbehaving fans. Surprisingly, while you can delete a Facebook comment from your page on mobile with the simple Facebook app, the Page Manager does not have this option (at present). No prizes for guessing that you cannot ban/un-ban a user.

No tagging in comment section:

When you use the web version, you can tag a user (who have commented on the post earlier) in the comment section. Unfortunately, there is no such service available in the Facebook Page Manager.

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Obviously if you are looking for a way to share or download images from Facebook on mobile for your page, you will be disappointed again.

Verdict:

Facebook Page Manager is helpful for people who are more in to the statistics of their campaigns but as far as a normal Facebook Page admin is concerned, it does not offer much. Most of the features such as posts by fans, update status, photos and commenting is already available on normal Facebook apps. The new Facebook App Manager is missing some important features. No doubt that this app has been designed by an intern and it seems like the intern went back to defend his thesis 😛 I hope to see the missing crucial features in later versions. Till then it is up to you to use it or avoid it.

[Review] GCloud: A Painless Way To Back Up Your Android Data In Cloud

GCloud Android App LogoThe worst thing about loosing your phone is that you lose all your contacts along with your huge chunk of favorite and cherished messages and pictures. Of course losing the expensive phone costs you the money but losing the contacts and other settings are additional pain in *some part of your body*. While there are many free Android phone tracking apps available that could help you recovering your phone but there are high chances that you would have lost your phone data.

And believe me, loosing your phone is not the only way you could lose your data. So what can you do to avoid setting your Facebook status to “Friends, I lost my phone please send me your phone numbers”? Answer is simple: Backup your data.

I have several apps that takes the task of backing up your Android phone data to save your behind in rough times. In this post we will see a new app that backs up your data in cloud.

What is GCloud and how it works?

 is a new app available in Play store that provides you with an easy (we will see how easy) way to back up your phone data. The available for free in the store and that is first among many good things. When you download it and use it first time, it gives you the option of creating an account on GCloud:

Gcloud-Welcome-Screen

Effortless Backup Process:

Once you register for a new account, considering you are a new user, you will be asked to choose the things to include in the backup. The free version of app provide you with 1 GB of free cloud space. This is more than sufficient to back up your contacts, messages, call logs and system settings.

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Once you choose the things to back up, you can forget all about it. By default, it backs up the data automatically once in a day when you connect to Wi-Fi. You can start the backup anytime by choosing it from the dashboard.

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Equally Effortless Restore:

Dashboard also provides you the option of restore, You can be selective while restoring and choose to restore only the required part of backup instead of all. Another good thing, eh? The restore does not take long and is, again, painless.

If you lose or change your device, you just need to install GCloud on the new Android phone and you will have all the saved data and settings back in your new phone.

Is GCloud worth downloading?

Before I say yes, I would give you enough reasons to justify my answer. There are several ways to back up your Android phone data. Google account is one of the most preferred way of backing contacts for many people. Dropbox provides 3 GB of free cloud space to back up your camera pictures and so does Ubuntu One. In fact there are many more ways to automatically backup your camera phone photos but these are good for backing up pictures not for contacts and messages. There is also GoMessage to back up your message but what makes it useful that you could have multiple things to backup in one app and that too completely automatic.

Salient Features:

  • 1 GB of free cloud storage
  • Fully automatic backup. Use it once and forget about it.
  • Backs up your text message, contacts, phone settings.
  • Selective backup and restore

If you think 1 GB is not good enough for you, you can upgrade it to pro version and you can have 10 GB for $0.99 per month or unlimited space for $3.99 per month.

My verdict is that GCloud is one of the nice free app that should be in your list of “good to have” apps, ig not in “must have apps” list. Give it a try. It does not cost you anything (other than some data usage).

How To Get Rid Of Unknown Icons on Android Home Screen

If you are reading this post you might be bugged by several unknown icons appearing on your Android phone. I was annoyed by such unwanted icons appearing on the home screen of my Samsung Galaxy S2. These icons are actually advertisements that are flushed on your home screen using “push notifications”  by some application(s) that are installed on your phone. The app developer earns a revenue each time you click on it.

Here is a screenshot of my home screen in Samsung Galaxy S2 which shows how these push notification ads look like:

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As I said before, you have installed some apps which use this push notifications to earn revenue. Our next step would be to find such (cr)apps and to do this we have this smart app . Download and install this app. It immediately tells you what apps are pushing those unwanted icons on your home screen:

As you can see in the pic above, I have got three apps that are annoying me with those crappy ads on my home screen.

Now when you have found the culprit apps, you have two options. Either you uninstall these apps or you find another way to stop these push notification ads. You can easily do the first one. But if you do not want to uninstall the app, you should go for the second option. Lets see how to do it.

How to stop push notification adds

Install .

Opt-out on the web at  . Just enter your IMEI and our tool will encrypt it using md5 and then permanently opt it out. We must encrypt it with md5 since we only store the encrypted version on our servers as an additional privacy layer.

If you are okay with providing the IMEI to a third party application, you should be happily using it. One more thing, it will stop the push notifications for the apps installed till now. If you install a new app which uses push notifications, you need to opt-out on the web again.

Hope it helps you in getting read of the unwanted icons on your home screen in Android. Cheers :)

How to Make a Hit Mobile Gaming App

With the news that the latest incarnation of Angry Birds – Angry Birds Space – has hit 10 million downloads within just three days of being released, we’ve been thinking: what’s the dead-cert formula for making an ultra-popular mobile gaming app to blow everything else out of the water? Games are the most popular downloaded apps by quite some distance. If, as a developer, you can successfully crack the art of mobile gaming, you’ll be in the money. Here are our hints on how to put together an unstoppable multi-platform mobile game – and as you can see, Angry Birds aces them all. If only we could code, we’d be rolling in it.

1. Short, snappy stages (Angry Birds, Cloudy, Air Control):

This one’s pretty obvious, but with mobile apps, most gamers are going to be using them at bus stops, on breaks at work, or waiting for the second part of Coronation Street to start – keeping your stages short and fast-paced is what it’s all about. If you’re good, no matter how often people sit down thinking they’re just going to play your game for a couple of minutes, you’ll still end up grabbing them for hours.

2. Appeal to the ‘I can do this!’ mentality (Angry Birds, Red Stone, Bejewelled):

Puzzle games will never go out of fashion, particularly when it comes to mobile gaming. We’ve all done it – spent three hours playing the same level again and again, thinking every next turn is going to be the last. The ‘I can do this!’ (or even ‘I will do this!’ for the overconfident) mentality is probably solely responsible for thousands of hours wasted on games. Build a puzzle element into your game and appeal to our inner egotists.

3. Cute, potentially angry animals (Angry Birds, Cat Physics, Bouncy Mouse):

Even those of us who manage to keep ourselves together in front of pet shop windows can’t resist the appeal of mobile games that include cute animals and characters. Maybe it’s the humorous contrast between their large, fluttering eyes and the abhorrent violence you’re about to make them undertake, but I like to think there’s an animal-lover in us all, and it’s in charge of your app downloads.

4. Keep it simple (Angry Birds, Cloudy):

With quad-core handsets set to take the world by storm in 2012, it’s no big surprise that there are plenty of heavy 3D games out there in the iPhone App Store and Google Play. That said, the games with the biggest download rates will always be the ones that everyone can play. Whether you’re on a quad-core Samsung Galaxy S3 or a 600MHz Galaxy Ace, making a game that can play on pretty much any smartphone with no lag is your key to becoming a gaming god.

So what you waiting for? Stop playing other people’s games and start developing your own!

About Author: This post was provided by Simon from Best Mobile Contracts, the UK’s leading mobile phone comparison website.