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Navigate your Facebook News Feed with keyboard shortcuts

Facebook doesn't have a large collection of keyboard shortcuts and many of them require browser-specific modifiers. Still, if you spend a lot of time in Facebook, using the keyboard shortcuts can be time-savers. The News Feed navigation shortcuts in particular, are convenient and easy to remember because they work the same in every Web browser (no modifier required).

To scroll through your News Feed, just use j to scroll down and k to scroll up. To comment on the selected story from your News Feed, use c. To like or unlike a selected story, use l.

Keep in mind … Read more

Confused about Facebook Home? Ask Maggie has answers (FAQ)

Facebook wants to take control of your smartphone. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And what the heck is Facebook Home anyway?

Facebook, which has been rumored for more than a year to be building a new so-called "Facebook phone," made a big announcement yesterday at its headquarters in California. The company took the wraps off Facebook Home, a set of apps that can be installed on your smartphone and integrate your whole experience with Facebook. Following the big announcement, I started getting questions from readers, friends, and other reporters about what this new software … Read more

Friday Poll: Will you adopt Facebook Home?

Facebook is looking to get cozy with the home and lock screens of your Android device. The just-announced Facebook Home is a suite of apps that replaces your normal home and lock screens with social-media content. It puts Facebook in your face every time you power up your phone.

Users will get notifications from friends, plus photos, status updates, and link shares. It pretty much serves up all your Facebook information without you having to ask for it or open up a separate app.

Users will be able download Facebook Home from Google Play, like a regular app. It does require a special confirmation to install, since it makes such radical changes to the existing look of your screens.… Read more

Facebook wrestles Google for control of your phone

Facebook doesn't want anything to come between you and your friends, not even Google or Android.

Facebook today unveiled a new downloadable user interface that takes over your smartphone's home screen, lock screen, and wallpaper. Instead of the regular Android features, you're treated to a slideshow of updates, photos, and shared links.

Facebook wants to take direct control of its user base, and it's going about it in a smart way. Home, which will be available for download on April 12 on select Android phones, isn't a new phone or operating system, or even a … Read more

Hey haters, 'Home' is the right amount of Facebook on your phone

Toss aside the remarks about making people more prominent than apps. Throw out the blurb about changing our relationship with technology. You don't need the warm-and-fuzzy spiel to get Facebook Home, you just need to see it.

Thursday, the social-networking company unveiled Facebook Home, a family of apps that takes up residence at the center of your Android smartphone.

Facebook will be unavoidable to those who opt to download Home. And yet the company has tactfully pushed its way further inside the smartphone with a technique that's neither too obtrusive nor too bland. In fact, Facebook Home is … Read more

Facebook wants to rule the phone with Home

CNET Update can't stop saying Chat Head:

Facebook didn't want to make its own phone. Instead, it made Home, a skin for Android that changes the phone's interface. Today's Update explains what Home does and which phones can download it.

For more on Facebook Home:

- Details on the HTC First, the AT&T phone with Home pre-installed

- Overview of the Facebook Home interface

- Facebook uses Chat Heads for messaging

Watch CNET Update in the video above, and subscribe to the podcast via the links below.

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iTunes (HD) | iTunes (SD) | … Read more

Facebook's colonization of Android

The smartphone business is becoming more like Nascar every day with multiple companies vying to get their brands more prominently promoted on the screens and cases of mobile devices. It's an intensely competitive market in which telecommunications carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and HTC are getting top billing. Of course, Apple with iOS controls the entire smartphone user experience, and Google with the more open Android holds sway with its broad suite of apps and its own branded mobile devices.

Enter Facebook Home, a family of apps that CEO Mark … Read more

Facebook Home: Bold experiment or extreme bloatware?

Hard-core Facebook devotees may find Home to be the smartphone experience they've been looking for.

For everyone else, Facebook's new Android skin may be little better than bloatware (although, to be fair, it's not forced on people). In particular, Android purists will want to stay clear.

Facebook took a major step today toward staking its claim in the mobile field with Home, which is a family of apps wrapped up in a custom user interface. It's an ambitious step, and likely a smart one, given that the alternative would have been the boneheaded move of building … Read more

Facebook touts Home's benefits for developers

Facebook launched Home to put a user's friends at the center of the phone. But for developers, it means a new way to help people discover their apps and reengage with existing users, the company said.

Facebook today launched Home, a family of apps and a skin that runs over Android. The company said users will be able to download the user interface in the Google Play store, and that links would be found in its Facebook and messenger apps. Facebook said that there would be monthly updates to add features and broader availability, and it also will expand … Read more