The Best Facebook-Integrated Devices from CES 2011

The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas featured the launch of many new products that include Facebook integrations. The emerging trend is the inclusion of either Facebook social sharing features, or device-specific Facebook apps on devices that don’t require a connection to a computer. Most of these products don’t focus on comprehensive interactivity or simulating the Facebook web experience, but instead offer access to core features like photos and the news feed in different shapes and sizes of devices.

Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg has conducted interviews with many of these companies, which you can watch on Facebook Live. Here are our picks for the best new integrations:

The new color version of Barnes & Noble’s ereader includes new social features which allow users to share quotes and recommend books with their Facebook friends. When users highlight a piece of text while reading, users can instantly quote the text and post it as a status update. Users can also select a passage, add their own context, and post it their own wall or the wall of a friend. By removing the manual text entry, Barnes & Noble makes sharing a much quicker and more natural part of the book reading experience, while simultaneously gaining exposure for the NOOKcolor in the news feed.

Debuted at CES, the new HP Photosmart eStation includes a detachable 7-inch Android display which includes full-featured Facebook app. HP also recently released a line of printers which connect directly to the internet and allow users to download apps which can be used on printer touch screens. The Facebook Photos app lets users print photos from their profile and those of friends without connecting a computer to the printer. Since many Facebook photos aren’t high enough resolution to print as full-pages, the app makes it simple to print multiple photos on the same page. In-store kiosks at Target also allow users to print from Facebook, but now users can print from home without having the manually save photos from Facebook to their hard drive.

Chumby released its new eight-inch screen Chumby 8 tablet device at CES this year. Both Chumby 8 and the original Chumby 1 allow users to browse photos and their news feed through its Facebook app. Users can set up different accounts and custom feeds within the Facebook app, or download one of the 1500 other apps. While the Chumbys offer significantly less functionality than Facebook’s mobile apps for phones, the unique alarm clock form of the Chumby 1 and digital picture frame form of Chumby 8 offer a more whimsical social media experience.

Users can view their Facebook photos and those of friends as soon as they’re posted using Kodak’s recently released Pulse wireless digital photo frame. New photos from friends are automatically synced to frame over a Wi-Fi connection. When friends upload new photos, the frame shows an alert with an option to immediately view them. Kodak Pulses also have unique email addresses to which photos can be sent for display, making them a great gift for the less technologically savvy. Unfortunately, those trying to send photos to the Pulse frames of friends or parents have been thwarted by problems on the Kodak Pulse servers, causing photos to not be delivered.

The new

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How Facebook Could Add Email to the Message Inbox

Facebook has invited members of the press to an event this coming Monday, and the invite email included the Facebook Messages looks icon. Given the existing rumors about a Facebook email service, and hints that some sources have given us, here’s a look at what might be launching on Monday.

Referred to as “Project Titan” among Facebook employees, the email revamp could address criticism about deficiencies in the existing Messages product such as lack of easy forwarding, mass “mark as read”, and attachment uploading. More significant would be giving users an @facebook.com email address to which email could be sent and read within the messages product, as well as POP and IMAP support for reading your Facebook inbox from other email clients.

A more full-fledged email product, especially one without POP or IMAP-support, would reduce the reliance of Facebook users on Gmail and other email services, bringing email’s extended time-on-site to Facebook. It would also further bind users to Facebook for the long term.

Facebook has made only limited forays into email to date. In October, it launched Groups, which aimed to be an elegant replacement for email lists by allowing users to set up Group email addresses to which emails could be sent. creating a persistent record of posts in the Groups feed. However, many users felt overwhelmed by the volume of email notifications they received since the product defaulted to email users about every action taken within the Group.

At the beginning of 2010, Facebook shut down the applications notifications system and as a replacement began allowing application developers to send users email. This change was in part designed to move spammy or low content messages off of Facebook and onto email, redirecting the ill will and labor associated with seeing these messages away from Facebook.

One question will be where notification and applications emails will go in the new Messages product. Some users might prefer to keep all Facebook-related communication within Facebook, which could be facilitated with the option to sort a single Messages inbox by types such as one-to-one from a friend, one-to-many from friends, Events, applications, and notifications.

Among other possibilities, a way to highlight one-to-one messages would be especially useful since they are more often important, timely, and require a response then other messages. Facebook created an Unread Messages sidebar module in an attempt to remind users to check their Messages, but more often the problem is that users read a one-to-one message, can’t respond immediately or don’t have a reply yet, but then forget to reply at all. This broken sequence has probably thwarted many potential business relationships and romances.

We’ll be at the event Monday with live coverage and analysis to let you know whether the update will be more of a user interface change or the addition of truly new functionality. If Facebook does distribute email addresses to users, maybe it will have something to export back to Google after all.

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More New Games Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps

Games fill all five of the very top spots on this week’s AppData list of emerging Facebook apps, defined as those still under a million monthly active users. But a few interesting non-game apps are growing as well, a bit further down the list:

Hollywood City has added over half a million new users to Digital Chocolate, which also has Vegas City and Island God on the list. The first two are reskins of Millionaire City, while Island God is new. Digital Chocolate has been on a tear over the past month or so; it has another new game just out, called Epic Fighters, which resembles its game MMA Pro Fighter.

Pogo Games is also worth a look. This Electronic Arts portal leads to a number of casual games, like other portals, but EA owns enough well-known IP to make its offering significantly different.

Intelligent Elite is the list’s first non-game app. The app uses IQ and EQ (emotional quotient) tests to draw users in; when they’re done, they’re directed on to membership at the Intelligent Elite website, which bills itself as a dating site for smart folk.

Moving down, TravBuddy.com Countries Visited Map follows a well-worn path, having users mark where they’ve been on a world map. And friend.ly, the last app we’ll point out, is a connection tool for Facebook users to find people they don’t know in real life — something the social network itself has generally tried to avoid.

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How To Change Facebook Background For Free

Want to know how to change a Facebook background? Then you've come to the right place.

There are several methods to changing your Facebook layout. But if you're a bit technically challenged like me (not to mention lazy), then the easiest solution is to install a small piece of software called Chameleon Tom (I wonder how they came up with that name?).

All you have to do is install Chameleon Tom toolbar (get it here), browse the available layouts and click install when you've found one you like.

Here's the one I installed:

There are plenty of categories to choose from, so you should find something you like.

Click here to change your Facebook background in seconds.