Nearby Friends is a Facebook feature that will inform you about your friend’s location when they are nearby. You can also use the feature to track your friend’s location in real time. This feature is available in the Facebook mobile app, where once enabled, you will occasionally be notified when your friends are in the proximity range of your current location. That way, you can quickly meet up to grab a bite together, all thanks to Facebook.

Released on April 17, 2014 and currently rolling out in stages, the feature is probably not available to you yet, which makes it perfect for us to have a quick discussion about 5 essential things you should know about Facebook Nearby Friends.

Recommended Reading: 20 Facebook Tips And Tricks You Should Know – Part II

1. How To Use Nearby Friends

First off, for Nearby Friends to work, you will need to share your location with your friends and have them do the same to you. To enable Nearby Friends (when you get it), go to the More tab within your Facebook application (iOS or Android) and look for Nearby Friends in the menu to turn t on.

Any of your friends that has opted in for this feature by turning it on will be able to see you in the list, if the both of you share your respective locations. The list will also show the distance between you and your friend, their last logged location and the current neighbourhood they’re in.

Sharing Precise Location At Stipulated Time

If you’re not okay with sharing your location all the time, but for perhaps a gathering or a meet-up you’d want to, Nearby Friends has an option for you to set the time you are trackable via the feature. You can share the precise location of your whereabouts to your friend(s) for a period of time which you can set.

That means you can look for your friends’ precise location on a map and be able to tell when they will arrive at the agreed meeting point, or if they aren’t on the way yet (even if they said they are).

2. Use Of Your Data

There is no such thing as a free lunch and yes, using Nearby Friends will eventually get you submitted to some advertising (says Facebook). Basically, there is a plan to eventually use the data gathered by your location history for marketing purposes.

The data you submit to use Nearby Friends can be easily harnessed by Facebook to share with advertisers who will probably forward targeted ads to you – which isn’t so bad. For example, you will probably receive an online voucher, if you and a friend are lunching together at a certain restaurant that has a special promotion.

(Image Source: TechCrunch)

Then again, this isn’t news because every other Facebook features that requires your location even before Nearby Friends, can be used the same way.

3. Facebook Features That Use Location Info

Even before the launch of Nearby Friends, there were other Facebook features that use or rely on your location to work. Those features are known as Facebook Messenger, Nearby Places, Check-in and Status update. If you use Facebook Messenger and share a status update via mobile, know that your location info is turned on by default.

So, technically, Facebook already knows your location as exposed by you from the features listed above. It just can’t track you most or all of the time, until now. If however, you are fine with this, Nearby Friends is probably a great feature to help you reconnect more easily with friends.

Read Also: Facebook & Your Privacy: Why It Matters

4. There Are Other Better Apps

Note that there are already a few other services that offer similar, or even better, features that bank on location sharing. Just to name a few there is Circle, an app you can use to find out what local events are happening around you and which of your friends are attending the events.

Then there’s Banjo, where you can get information about live events and breaking news on your favorite social network, sortable by location.

Connect brings all your social networks friends (not just the ones on Facebook) into one map. You get to see which friends are nearby, who is visiting from out-of-state, and your social address book is always up-to-date.

We recently also reviewed Firechat, an app that allows you to chat offline with peeps in your vicinity using Open Garden mesh networks, without an internet connection.

Note that if you are an Android user, you already have a feature very similar to Nearby Friends: Google Now Commute Sharing. Through Commute Sharing, you can let your friends or family know when you’re heading home from work. It works over the Google+ network where you can share your locations to those in your circles.

Once enabled, your location will be available in the form of Google Now cards when you’re at work, leaving from work and when you arrive home – every step of the way.

5. Yes, We Need To Talk About Privacy

Nearby Friends can only work if both you and your friend share each other’s location. The good news is you have the option to share your location to your Facebook list , just a group of friends or make it public to everyone.

But let’s face it, most people will probably share their location to everyone on their Facebook since it is a lot more convenient to do so.

Overexposing your personal information to everyone may result in nothing, or it may come back and bite you one day. There are repercussions to oversharing that is unique to each individual so do use the feature with caution, rather than complain about how Facebook is invading your privacy or misappropriating your private data when something bad happens. The feature is optional, and at the end of the day, remember that you are in charge of your own privacy matters.

Read Also: 5 Facebook Privacy Settings You Should Know

Conclusion

In comparison to other similar services, one clear advantage Facebook Nearby Friends has is that most of your friends are probably already on Facebook. One possible disadvantage is, this feature could probably have an effect on your battery life. However, if you want to bring your online social life back to real life, this is probably one of the best Facebook feature that could turn that into reality.

Freelancers have a lot on their plate, and although the most important role would be to keep the dough rolling in, sometimes keeping track of payments is a high-strung job. Times like these, you need a good invoicing tool to help you keep track of your clients, payments and invoices so you can focus on delivering the best job for your clients.

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About Blinksale

Blinksale is full-fledged online invoicing tool with tons of features to help you stay on top of your project payments while keeping the peace with your clients.

Features

• Create, manage and send new and recurring estimates/invoices
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• Invoices can be sent via email or printed out in PDF
• Payment reminders and thank you notes included.
• Invoices can be customized to include, among others:
  • sales taxes
  • freight costs
  • late fee
  • non-US currencies

What’s more, if you want a different look, you can even customize your invoice via CSS. Blinksale also comes with Stripe integration so you can receive credit card payments right into your checking account. You can now even send payments to fellow collaborators who also hold a Blinksale account. For at trial run, check out their 15-day trial here.

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Using the Rafflecopter widget below:

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Find out how else you can earn entries (and a higher chance of winning) in the widget. [More info]

Bookmarking has been around for a while, yet not a lot has changed. The familiar bookmarking interface probably needs a facelift. While it may have been perfect back in the infancy of the Internet, bookmarking has become a more prominent part of our online behavior that the old interfaces just can’t cut it anymore. We need our contents organized, and easy to save.

There are a few apps and services out there that can help you do just that, but there’s now a new kid on the block: Dragdis.

Dragdis is a supremely easy to use drag-and-drop clipboard tool that stands out from the crowd. No more screengrabs, copy-pasting or saving to desktop needed. Just drag and drop. Sounds good, right? Let’s check out what Dragdis has in store.

Recommended Reading: Saving And Organizing Web Pieces Wtih Keeeb

Getting Started With Dragdis

Dragdis is available as an extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. To use Dragdis, you first have to register an account with the service. You can create a new account or register using your Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts.

Once you’ve registered, you’ll be taken through a quick tutorial on how to use Dragdis. You’ll also be prompted to install the Dragdis extension for your web browser of choice.

Dragdis requires this extension to work, so there’s no getting around installing the extension.

Once you’ve installed the extension, Dragdis will take you through the rest of the tutorial, including how to create a folder and how to drag and drop content into this folder.

We’ll be covering all of that in the next part of this post.

Saving Content In Dragdis

First and foremost, let’s take a look at the Dragdis sidebar itself. To access this sidebar, click on the Dragdis icon in your browser’s navigation bar.

In this sidebar, you’ll see your account name, plus two groups named Drag to… and Home. Drag to… is where your social network "apps" are, by default. These apps let you share content directly onto social networks linked to your account with Dragdis (more on that later).

Saving Text, Images, Videos, Webpages

With Dragdis, you can bookmark and save text, images, videos and even entire webpages. Just drag any content to the right side of your browser window and the Dragdis sidebar will appear automatically. Then drag the content to the folder of your choice. You can do the same with images and text.

As for saving a website (see below), just drag the site’s favicon from the URL bar over to Dragdis.

To save videos, once you have Dragdis installed, a small Dragdis icon will appear in the upper left corner of videos you view. Drag this icon into Dragdis to save the video.

Organizing Your Content

Organizing saved content on Dragdis is very simple. Click on the + icon beside your account name to create a new Group. You can add folders inside each group with the + icon within the group. Rearrange groups and/or folders by simply dragging them in the order that you want.

More On Sharing

After you’ve dragged content into a folder, you’ll be given the option to tag or share that particular content. Sharing is caring, right?

Clicking on Click to tag or share will open a new tab in your browser.

Here, you can find the Dragdis link for this item, some social network Share buttons, as well as the ability to add notes and tags to the item. At the bottom you’ll also find a link to the source of the item, the Delete link.

Folders On Dragdis

If you like, you can also share entire folders through Dragdis. Content on Dragdis is semi-private, in that your content is only visible to the public once you’ve chosen to share the content.

To see the contents of a folder, just click on the folder name in the sidebar. You can also access this folder by visiting the Dragdis website. Do note that you can watch video content directly in the folder, which is a nice touch.

Settings And Customization

There’s a basic Group settings screen that you can access by mousing over the group and clicking on the small gear icon that appears. This will open a new tab and take you to the Group settings screen, where you can change the group color.

You can also do the same with folders; just mouse over a folder and click on the small gear icon. Here, in the Folder settings, you can rename folders and customize the folder icon.

There’s also a drop-down menu that you can access by clicking on your account name or profile picture. This drop-down menu gives you access to Dragdis’ Settings, Browser extensions, terms and conditions, as well as letting you log out of Dragdis.

In the Settings page, you can change your name and password under the General tab, and manage apps that have to your social network profiles under the Apps tab.

Conclusion

Dragdis is an excellent application for saving and organizing the links, text, images and videos that you might find on the Internet. You won’t have to worry about using an additional application such as Evernote, nor will you have to worry about not having access to your saved content on a different computer, making it a great tool that almost anyone will find a use for.

Photography has been around for a long time, but there hasn’t been a lot of progress over the past few years. Sure, the sensors in our cameras and DSLRs are getting better and better, and we’re getting cool technologies like WiFi connectivity, but the medium itself hasn’t changed much. We’re still capturing flat 2D images, with the only improvements being the size and detail of these images. Until now. Say hello to the Lytro Illum.

The Lytro Illum is a game-changing light-field camera, the follow-up to their first Light Field Camera. The Lytro Illum retains the previous model’s party piece, the ability to refocus your photographs after you take them, but improves on the previous model in almost every way possible.

Recommended Reading: Turn Your iPhone Into A 3D Camera With Poppy

What Is A light-Field Camera?

Light-field cameras use an array of multiple microlenses, usually smaller than 1mm in diameter, to capture four-dimensional light field data. Basically, what this means is that a light-field camera not only captures the color and intensity of light, but also captures the direction of light.

This isn’t entirely new technology. It was proposed by Franco-Luxembourgish inventor Gabriel Lippmann back in 1908.

But the technology to process these images in interesting ways hadn’t been available until Lytro founder Ren Ng and his Stanford University computer team showed that cameras with powerful graphics processing capabilities – both hardware and software – could allow users to refocus and shift the perspective of images captured using light-field technology.

That’s why Lytro Illum comes in.

A New Way To Snap Photos

The Lytro Illum is a complete refinement of the previous Lytro Light Field Camera that’s targeted towards professionals and advanced amateurs, especially those working within the fields of creative photography.

The Lytro Illum has its own custom 40 Megaray sensor, which captures four times as much information as the sensor in the older Light Field Camera. The images this sensor captures are then processed by the Illum’s software with "tablet-class processing power". This combination of sensor and software is what allows you to refocus images after capturing them.

What does this all mean, though? Well, check out these examples to see what the Lytro Illum, and light-field camera technology, can do:

Cool, huh? Let’s check out the device that can do this from the palm of your hands.

The Hardware

The Illum’s user interface is simple and uncluttered, with only a shutter and a special Lytro Button, similar to a depth of field preview button, on the top of the body.

There’s also the usual exposure lock and autofocus buttons. Everything else is controlled through a 4" touchscreen that’s also angled slightly upward, to facilitate photo-taking without having to raise the Illum to eye level.

As far as the lens is concerned, the Lytro Illum boasts an impressive 35-250mm equivalent zoom lens with a constant f/2.0 apeture and macro capability. The lens is light, too, weighing in at only half a pound.

Here’s a cut-out top down view of Lytro’s previous Light Field Camera, showing you the microlens array:

The Illum also has the common connectivity ports such as a hot shoe for external flash units, a remote shutter port, a tripod mount and an SD card slot.

Lytro also has a suite of desktop tools that will not only let you refocus and shift the perspective of images, but also transform your images into dynamic animations for desktop, mobile and even in 3D.

The Lytro Illum is currently available for pre-order at a special introductory price of $1,499, with a $250 deposit required to reserve a camera. Pre-orders are currently limited to the USA, Canada, EU countries, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.

Whether you’re working, taking a break in the park or preparing an awesome meal, listening to some tunes while you’re getting things done makes the task a lot easier and fun. There are plenty of ways to get ahold of music for listening on your Android device, but if you’re really looking for one that is free to add to your own playlist or maybe you want some background music for your next Instagram video, we have just the thing for you.

(Image Source: Norebbo)

Take a look at our list of top 5 apps to search, listen to and download free music on Android. You don’t have to register an account for any of these apps to use them. And the songs come from multiple sources so you probably can find tunes that are right up your alley. If you don’t have the time to transfer your music from your PC to your Android device, these apps may be your best bet for downloading them on-the-go.

Recommended Reading: 10 Premium Music Players For Android – Best Of

1. Free Music Download

Free Music Download is an app with a clean and straightforward design. Once launched you have two options, search and files. The search option allows you to search for any songs related to a keyword whereas the files option features all the songs that you’ve downloaded using the app.

You can also use the downloaded songs and set them as ringtones, alarms or notification alerts from within the app. Free Music Download uses SoundCloud as its source.

2. Music Search

Music search is an easy-to-use app capable of searching and downloading free music on your Android device. To download the song you like, all you need to do is tap the song on the search results then tap the Download button at the bottom. You can even listen to it without having to download the file first.

The downloaded song can then be accessed easily under the app’s library tab. There, you can preview the progress of downloads as well as look at the list of your downloaded songs. Besides that, you can set any of the songs as a ringtone from within the app as well.

3. Music Download Paradise

This app works in a similar way to the previous two. Simply search and tap on the song to preview or download it to your Android device immediately. Once downloaded, you can access the songs from the Library section in the app itself.

Music Download Paradise also includes a share option. Just tap your downloaded songs in the app and tap share. Instead of opening your music player, you can also play your songs using the app’s built-in music player.

4. Music Maniac

You can use Music Maniac to look for individual songs by tapping on the MP3 Title/Artist Search option. The download section will list all of your downloaded songs. Tap on any of them to play the song automatically on your Android’s default music player.

In case you’re wondering where the app stores your downloaded songs, look at the top right for the navicon button and tap on the View Download Location. If you want to clear your download list, you can do so from within the navicon menu as well.

5. Free MP3 Downloads

Just hit the search button from within the app to look for a song. Tapping the songs from the search results will start the download immediately. To delete a song, all you need to do is simply tap, hold the song and choose delete under the listen tab.

You can also listen to your song using the app’s music player. This app relies on the Jamendo open source API for their content, which means all the songs available through this app is free music released by the creators themselves.