Adam Bell, a jailbreak developer, has now released an iOS jailbreak tweak that brings Facebook chat heads to iOS systemwide. The new jailbreak tweak is called ‘Message Box’.

Facebook recently announced Facebook Home for Android that offers deep integration of the social media giant’s services into the operating system. One of the features highlighted on Facebook Home was the ability to have “chat heads” systemwide no matter which app you were using.

Facebook chat heads on homescreen and floating on top of other apps allows users to always stay connected with their friends and continue the conversation without the need to switch apps. Facebook recently updated it’s iPhone, iPad app and brought chat heads to its native app however, the feature is limited to being just inside the Facebook app for iOS.

Message Box for iPhone / iPad allows users to float the active chat heads and access the messages on the homescreen or any other app. The jailbreak tweak is known to be stable however, a few stability issues have been reported on the web.

If you find yourself using Facebook chat a lot then this jailbreak tweak could be a must have for you. The tweak is available for free on the developers GitHub page and will also be made available on on BigBoss Cydia repo.

Starting today with Facebook Gifts, you can instantly gift your friends iTunes digital gifts and recommend albums, movies, games, apps, and more available on the iTunes Store.

Search for a specific song or album to recommend, or let your friend decide. iTunes digital gifts are available for $10, $15, $25, or $50.

According to AllThingsD, the partnership between Apple and Facebook includes Facebook into a $260 million dollar business for third-party businesses which equates to about 13% of total sales.

So that adds up to around, say, a $260 million-dollar market size for physical iTunes cards split among participating retailers, of which Facebook will now be an active participant. That pie is small compared to Facebook’s overall revenue ($3.71 billion in 2011), but another digital product with less overhead and high demand is definitely a win for Facebook’s Gifts department

This partnership will help both Facebook and Apple, which have had issues working together in the past, particularly during negotiations over Facebook being integrated into Apple’s iTunes based social network, Ping. Ping was Apple’s failed social media experiment and frayed the relationship between the two companies.

However, the two companies worked together to integrate Facebook into iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion. Now, Facebook can benefit from selling the iTunes gift cards through its service and Apple can benefit from increased sales of the gift cards, as well as more iTunes users.

{Via MacRumors}

Having the ability to take a good photo is one thing, being able to present it in an interesting way is a whole other thing, especially when you have lots of pictures that you want to display. This is where Mixel for iPhone comes in.

If you recognise the name then you may have used Mixel when it was available as a social collaging app on the iPad. However, as that app died, this app has cropped up and is already flying high in the App Store charts.

The social aspect of Mixel is still there, in fact you can’t even create a collage without first signing in either with your Facebook or Twitter account, if you don’t have either of those then you can stop right here!

Once you have signed in you can select to follow or invite your friends and choose other users to users to follow too. This provides an Instagram style photo stream of Mixels that the people that you follow have created. This adds additional functionality to your Mixels as you can add to your friends Mixels.

The first thing you’ll want to do is create your own Mixel, this is easy to do, click the large plus in the middle of the task bar and you’ll be ready to start getting creative. Your first job is to select some pictures. If you’ve linked your Facebook and Instagram accounts you’ll be able to select pictures that you’ve posted to both of them as well as from your camera roll and photo stream if you have one.

Once you’ve selected your pictures they will be automatically imported into a collage and at that point you may decide that you are finished. However, if you want to you can start tweaking the design by shuffling the placement, zooming and moving the individual pictures.

You can also choose between 6 different styles. These styles controls the borders and and overall theme of the collection and can add a whole new perspective to your work. The results can be pretty impressive too regardless of whether you decide to just go with the default selections or micro-manage each individual picture.

Completing your Mixel will post it to your Mixel timeline so that your followers can view your creativity, once there you can choose to share it via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook as well as your Photo Stream.

Mixel’s from people that you follow can be expanded on. If you all go to the same event or place, or just a shared theme of pictures you can extend someone else Mixel by adding to the existing one. This is especially fun if you have a bunch of friends all using Mixel.

For style and ease of use Mixel rates highly as do the results. The reliance on social media integration and the fact that you have to post your work to your Mixel timeline to complete your work seems a little over the top.

That being said if you don’t mind the social media integration then Mixel for iPhone is a great way to add a new perspective to your pictures and is Free.

What we like

• Create impressive results
• Easy to navigate and create
• Create co-operative collages

What to know

• Twitter or Facebook account required
• Cannot create private collages

Early Saturday, NYTimes reported that Apple Inc. (AAPL) was looking to invest “hundreds of millions” in microblogging company, Twitter. The report assumes that either Apple is investing or purcahsing a large stake in the company and that the two companies have been in talks in recent months over such a matter.

Apple has considered an investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars, one that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, up from an $8.4 billion valuation last year, these people said. They declined to be named because the discussions were private.

There is no guarantee that the two companies, which are not in negotiations at the moment, will come to an agreement. But the earlier talks are a sign that they may form a stronger partnership amid intensifying competition from the likes of Google and Facebook.

However, The Wall Street Journal also came out and negated the claims made in the NYTime report, leading speculators to remain skeptical about such a deal between the two companies. Apple has been dabbling with social media in recent years, pushing for its own Ping network in iTunes, which failed to attract users. Since then, the Cupertino company has heavily incorporated Twitter into both iOS and OS X.

Apple has mixed in Twitter under the share sheets in multiple applications, including Safari on all of its devices and even Notification Center in iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion. Although Facebook will also be a part of the operating systems soon, Twitter remains tightly integrated.

It is unclear whether Apple still in talks with Twitter or if the two companies even had contact with each other. However, such a deal involving “hundreds of millions” might not justify the profitability Cupertino based company could possibly extract.

{via MacRumors}

On rare occasions I will tell you to go and grab a game immediately and then come back and read this review…….this is one of those occasions and to be honest what do you have to lose when all you’ll be spending is 99 cents on a universal app that will work on both your iPhone and iPad should you be lucky enough to have both.

You may be thinking, especially if you already have Asphalt 6, why should I even spend more money on the next version of Gamelofts arcade racer and the simple answer is this, it’s Bigger, Better, Faster and there’s more of it, so much in fact this review may only scratch the surface of all the features that are packed into this racing game.

If you have played any of Gamelofts games before then you will know what to expect when it comes to sound and graphics, and in Asphalt7 Heat they continue to lead the way a rainbow of electric lights that illuminate 15 different tracks from all around the world and with a pumping soundtrack the game is a dream to both see and hear.

There are four control options to choose from so you are bound to find one that suits your driving preferences, from using the accelerometer, on screen steering wheel or the screen itself the controls work very well, and you can also choose from auto or manual acceleration depending on your preference.

The quality of the controls are highlighted due to the fact that you can jump straight into Quick Play mode and start winning races immediately. Quick Race is just the beginning though, as the Career, Online and Multiplayer modes are where the real value comes in.

The Career Mode is spread over 13 cups each with 4 different races and these include normal races, elimination, knockdown, paint job and king of the hill which all offer slightly different variations on driving as fast as you can around the streets of the world.

As you work your way through the career mode you’ll have the ability to unlock and upgrade a great range of licensed cars, from a Mini Cooper S to the Shelby GT 500, from a BMW Z4 to the Lamborghini Countach and everything in between. There are 60 cars in total so there should be something for everyone.

The cars handle as well as you would expect for an arcade racer, the game relies heavily on drifting but this is relatively easy to control, early on at least, only when you start to unlock the bigger, faster cars does it get a little trickier, by the time you unlock them though you’ll be well practised, right?

Of course you don’t have to work through the game and earn your racing stripes to unlock all the flash cars, instead you can purchase your in game dollars by spending your hard earned dollars via in-app purchase but it’s well balanced, meaning that if you are willing to put the time in you can achieve your rewards without the need of spending above and beyond the original $1 outlay.

The online options are really where the game comes to life and it does this in two ways. First up is the online multi-player where you can race against your friends, and enemies, in any combination of race types and locations. The online mode works well, the games come thick and fast and there is relatively little slow down, it adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay that will keep you playing Asphalt 7 for a long time to come, or at least until Asphalt 8 comes out!

If you don’t want to want to race against people online in real time you can choose the weekly event that makes up the Asphalt Academy and see how far up the world rankings you can get.

With the game being a universal app it’s good to see that your progress can be transferred between devices. Asphalt Tracker allows you to transfer your progress between devices using either Facebook, or Gameloft’s own servers and while this isn’t quite as seamless as iCloud syncing would be it works and prevents you having to play the game twice across all of your devices.

Asphalt Tracker also enables you to send offline challenges to your friends via Gameloft which just adds more depth to an already deep game and that’s before mentioning the goals are Gameloft’s equivalent of GameCenter Achievements.

After all this eulogizing you’d think that perhaps I didn’t have anything bad to say about the game, that’s not the case. Asphalt 7’s all about social gaming and this takes the form of Facebook integration, the problem with this is though that between races and for every earned goal you are prompted to confirm whether or not you want to publicize the achievement and if you don’t want to bombard your Facebook newsfeed with your progress it can get a little frustrating.

If you’ve got this far and have not been simultaneously downloading Asphalt 7 on your iOS device you have permission to do so now!

What we like

• Great looking
• Multiple ways to play
• Smooth online experiences
• Large choice of cars and tracks

What to know

• Irritating social media prompts

Facebook, one of the world’s leading social media websites has moved ahead with plans to solidify their efforts in the editing and distribution of photos by purchasing photography app, Instagram.

Instagram, a popular iPhone app, recently added to Android as well was introduced in 2010 for iPhone, and has since grown to include over 30 million registered accounts.

Facebook announced on Monday that they are buying out the company for $1 billion USD and will be bringing the 13 employees over to Facebook to help the social network with other image and photography solutions.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new acquisition in one of his blog posts, noting that Facebook will be “keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.”

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

Instagram has gained lots of attention since its introduction, being named Apple’s iPhone app of the year for 2011. The company has achieved great milestones, specifically in adding new users, creating new features, and devising a simple and easy to use software to edit photos and share them. This is exactly what Facebook has been looking for, and this acquisition will likely benefit them greatly.

{via MacRumors}