We know that Facebook  is moving at lighting speed to stay 20 steps ahead of the social networking game. Here’s a couple of other features that Facebook has in the works to do just that:

The ability to sort your friends and organize them into groups is an upcoming feature that nicely aligns with the objectives and functionality of Facebook. This will allow you to better determine who sees what kind of content, and simply offers more privacy options within your personal networks.

Another upcoming feature is the ability to read email messages in digest form, which means you can receive one single email with all of your notifications, sent to you on a daily basis. These are small tweaks, but good tweaks nonetheless. MySpace, Xing and Friendster have been modifying their profile pages for the better as well.

Looking a little closer at the iPhone, I noticed that the headphone jack is not only recessed (big boooos) but isn’t completed sealed. Peer deep into the headphone jack’s hole whilst the screen is illuminated and you’ll notice light peaking through. What does this mean? Well, according to a few forum folks with similar devices (i.e. PDA/MP3), it means dirt and lint in the iPhone’s inner workings, and even worse under the LCD screen. After searching, and trying to deciphers this sites link structure, I’ve tracked down an iPhone serial port plug for about $10 shipped from a company called Protectorz via Radtech. As for the headphone jack I have had to resort to some ‘ghetto ass shit’. We’re talking ‘pencil eraser’ chopped down to fit. I’ll post pics later, but its a good work around until something is officially developed. Plus its crazy cheap.

Right now - September 27th at 10.44am - there is just 25,275 minutes until the Palm Centro is officially available. How do I know this? Palm launched a teaser site. The copy reads: “Get a sneak peak at the world’s smallest Palm device that lets you do so much so fast”…blah blah blah. Anyway, the Palm Centro’s release date is October 14th. The release price - which is a little shocking in the good way - is just $99 with a 2-year agreement and a minimum data plan of $25/month. In the past, Palm’s Treo/PDAs were a least a few hundred dollars with a 2-year. The 4 features highlighted on the not-so-exciting teaser site are B-O-R-I-N-G: email, web access, documents, mp3s..zzzzzzzz. The device will come in red or black with a full QWERTY keyboard.

Sam Sethi at Blognation UK has a scoop: apparently, he got a preview of a new instant messaging app for Facebook — and according to his description, it doesn’t require you to download or install anything, or to register, as many Facebook apps do. You just sign in and use it. At the risk of sounding like a Facebook fan-boy, despite the ugly interface I think this could be huge.

I think it could be good not only for Facebook, which has been missing real-time chat — making do with messages and “wall” posts — but for instant messaging as a whole. Like Sam, I see it as a way of doing an end-run around the fact that you still need multiple IM clients to chat with all of your friends, who might be using Yahoo or AIM or MSN or Skype or GTalk

“No more MSN, AIM, GTalk, Yahoo chat — one instant messenger for all your friends.” All your friends who are on Facebook, of course. Still, it sounds like a pretty good solution to a Balkanized IM environment. And it could stand to make Facebook even stickier than it already is.

I just stumbled across this while reading this month’s issue of Popsci. Have you ever worried about a crook snagging your card and ordering high end goods over the phone? Well, the Beepcard contains a prototype paper-thin speaker, microphone and voice-recognition chip. In order to use the card the user must speak into the card - yes the card - and if the recorded sample is a match, the card will send “high frequency, hard-to-fake beeps over the phone or a computer microphone, signaling the credit card company to authorize the transaction”. I am not sure if it can have multiple users, but Beepcard is market ready and they’re currently looking for partners.

For years I’ve been complaining about the iTunes Store’s shoddy sound quality (128Kbps). If you can’t tell the difference then you get your ears checked. Today, Amazon launched their Music Store called AmazonMP3. It’s straight up kickass - pending any UI checks. It’s of course in Beta, and currently offers 2 million songs from 80,000 artists in blissfully superb 256kbps sound quality. The real kicker, aside from the top notch sound quality, is that they’re all DRM free – they can be used on any MP3 player. You’ll have to download a file to your machine and it currently works on Apple and Windows. Songs and albums go as low as $0.89 and $4.99 respectively.

Game On: A Real Alternative to iTunes [TechCrunch]

Canon PowerShot SD600 Introduction
The PowerShot SD600 Digital ELPH camera packs some heavyweight digital photo technology into a lightweight and pocket-sized package. It features six-megapixel resolution, ISO equivalent speed settings from 80 to 800, a retractable 3x optical zoom, a bright and large 2.5-inch, 173,000-pixel wide viewing angle type LCD screen and a real-image optical viewfinder.

Canon PowerShot SD600 Design
The Canon PowerShot SD600 is small and light. The matte-silver metal body is compact enough to fit in a shirt pocket but solid enough to have a nice, dense, block-of-metal feel. Most of the controls are on the back of the camera, next to the LCD. You control camera functions with a basic four-way-plus-OK switch, with instant access to ISO, flash, macro, burst, and shutter settings. 3.4 x 2.1 x 0.9 inches; 5 ounces

Canon PowerShot SD600 Features
The PowerShot SD600 Digital Elph features new ISO 800 and High ISO Auto settings that reduce the effects of camera shake and sharpen subjects in low-light situations with high shutter speeds, giving you greater flexibility for shooting. The genuine Canon 3x optical zoom UA lens brings you in close for the details that will make your images startling and bold.

Canon PowerShot SD600 Performance
The Canon PowerShot SD600 boasts excellent performance, its processor enhances picture definition, vibrancy, and quality, while helping increase the speed of the cameras’ startup, autofocus, shutter response, playback, and image processing speed while reducing power consumption by 35 percent compared to the original DIGIC chip. Consumers benefit from accelerated image transfer speed of a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port.

Whats included in the package
PowerShot SD600 body, Lithium battery pack NB-4L, battery charger CB-2LV, SD memory card SDC-16M, wrist strap WS-600, Digital Camera Solution CD-ROM, USB interface cable IFC-400PCU, AV cable AVC-DC300

Conclusion
The PowerShot SD600, is a 6-megapixel point-and-shoot camera that’s light on features but heavy on image quality, performance, and usability. It’s simply a great camera for anyone interested in just taking great-looking images.

We heard last week that Wordpress would be launching a new release today. Well, it’s here. Tagging and tag clouds are now available for Wordpress bloggers. There’s also the new update notification feature that lets you know when there’s a new release for WordPress, or when any other plug-ins you have get an update as well.

There’s also the cleaning up of URLs, which redirects post with changed slugs so links won’t go bad, redirects URLs that get cut off in emails, and more. This particular feature should help you with SEO as well. Be sure to check it out. See here for more WordPress resources and tools. Download the new version..

Meijer.com (never heard of it) has the Xbox 360 Premium - that’s the one with one controller and a 20GB hard drive - for $290 shipped. I don’t know where tax is applied but negligible at a price like this. In order to get this price you’ll need to use coupon code ‘meijercomgift’. I can’t make any guarantees about the company, but buy it on a credit card and if anything happens… The coupon code will get you 20% off other items too, such as the Xbox 360 120GB HD.

Go here to get the deal.

Just took a walk through the Culver City Costco.  The’ve got the 16gb iPod Touch for $389.99 and the 8GB Nano for $189.99.  Didn’t see all the colors for the Nano but nor did I flip through all 100 (exaggeration) plastic packets.