Facebook already has a "like" feature that lets its billion members express their endorsement for everything from a status update to a photo to web article to an App Store app, but now Facebook is testing turning "like" into "want". Called "Collections", it sounds like it would function as a wish-list, perhaps in the Amazon or GDGT fashion, but with partner retailers in a way that could eventually see Facebook entering the massive e-commerce market. Alexei Oreskovic of Reuters quotes a statement from Facebook:

People will be able to engage with these collections and share things they are interested in with their friends. People can click through and buy these items off of Facebook

Seven pilot retailers, including Pottery Barn, Victoria's Secret, Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors, Smith Optics, Wayfair and Fab.com are in testing now. Wanting an item in a collection would put it in your timeline, allowing your friends to see it. Although Facebook said they won't be making affiliate or referral revenue off "wants" it's hard to see them providing the service without any form of recompense. They're a for-profit business, after all.

This is how Facebook says the tests will roll out:

Facebook's new Collections feature will gradually be offered to 100 percent of its U.S. users. Some users will see the "want" button as part of the test, while others will see a button inviting them to "collect" an item or to "like" an item.

No word yet on when or how Collections will hit Facebook's iPhone and iPad apps. In the meantime, anyone here eager to turn their "likes" into "wants"?

Source: Reuters

If you've got an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad running iOS 5 or higher you've got iMessage, Apple's free MMS-like service that works with any other iOS device, and Mac running OS X Mountain Lion, to let you easily send photos without paying your carrier for a special messaging plan (data rates will still apply if you aren't on Wi-Fi). iMessage is built right into the same Messages app and Share Sheet that sends SMS and MMS to your non-iPhone using friends, so you don't have to do anything extra to use it. Just pick your photos and send them!

How to send an iMessage photo using the iOS Messages app

1. Launch the Messages app from the Home screen.
2. Tap the New Message button in the upper right hand corner

3. Choose the contact you'd like to send a video to.
4. Tap the Camera button next to the message entry area.
5. Select whether you'd like to take a photo now or choose an existing one.

6. If you chose to send an existing photo, you'll be shown all the pictures and videos in your Photos app. Scroll through and find the photo you'd like to send. Tap on it to select it.

7. Review the photo. If it's the one you want tap the blue Choose button in the lower right hand corner and it will be inserted into the message.

8. Tap the Send button and you're done!

If you're using an iPhone but the person you're sending to doesn't have an Apple device or isn't using iMessage, your video will be sent as a regular MMS message. If that happens, it will appear in a green bubble instead of a blue one. This also means you'll be charged any applicable text message or multimedia message fees.

If you're sending a photo from your iPad or iPod touch, you won't be able to send an iMessage to anyone not using the service.

How to send a single iMessage photo using the iOS Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app from your Home screen

2. Find the photo you'd like to send and tap on it to select it.
3. Tap on the Share button in the lower left hand corner.

4. Select Message.

5. The photo will be automatically inserted into a new message.
6. Type the contact name or search for the contact you want to send to by tapping the blue "+" button.

7. Tap the Send button and you're done!

How to send multiple iMessage photos using the iOS Photos app

1. Launch the Photos app from your Home screen

2. Tap the Share button in the upper right hand corner.
3. Now select the photos you'd like to send by tapping on them. You'll see a red check appear next to them as you select them. To deselect one, just tap it again.

4. Once you're done selecting the photos you'd like to send in an iMessage, tap the Share button in the bottom left. (If it is greyed out, it means you've selected too many photos to share at once. Try selecting fewer photos at a time.)
5. Now choose Message when choosing what method you'd like to use to share them.

6. The photos will auto-insert into a new message.
7. Type the contact name or search for the contact you want to send to by tapping the blue "+" button.

8. Tap the Send button and you're done!

How to send an iMessage photo from your Mac with OS X Mountain Lion

If you're on a Mac running OS X Mountain Lion, you can send photos just as easily as you can with iOS using iMessage. When sending from a Mac, you'll only be able to send photos to other users of iMessage so keep that in mind when you're choosing what contacts to send photos from your Mac to.

1. Find the photo file you'd like to send to another iMessage contact. It can either be in iPhoto or any other folder saved on your Mac running OS X Mountain Lion.
2. Launch the Messages app on your Mac. It looks like a pair of blue and white chat bubbles. By default it should be located in your dock.
3. Choose the thread that you have going with that contact. If you don't already have one started, you can create a new iMessage thread with them.
4. Now drag the photo you'd like to share with them into the area that you would normally type your regular message.

5. The photo will insert by itself. Hit enter on your keyboard to send the file.

That's all there is to it. All of these methods will work when it comes to sharing photos from any iMessage enabled iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac. So what are you waiting for? Start sharing those pictures!

Shortly after Apple unveiled iOS 6 at WWDC 2012, they released the standalone Podcasts app into the App Store. They've now updated it to support both iOS 6 features and the iPhone 5's taller screen. I originally intended to include all of this in my iOS 6 review but due to size and time constraints, I'm posting it separately, and belatedly.

Before the release of the dedicated Podcasts app, podcasts were downloaded via the iTunes app and could be played back in either the Music or Video app, depending on whether they were audio or video podcasts. That split, along with with the lack of any ability to subscribe to podcasts, made it a less than ideal experience, which numerous third party apps tried to solve).

Apple's attempt to solve it themselves is similar in structure to iBooks or Newsstand. It has a place to find your existing content and a place to get more content, in this case the Library and Catalog views. (Since podcasts are all free, it's not called a "Store" as it is in other, similar Apple apps, but it's functionally similar.)

The Library view organizes your shows in either a grid view, featuring album art, or a list view. To see the episodes of a particular podcast, tap it. There's pull-to-refresh support so you can check for new episodes at any point. From the episode view, you can tap an episode title to start streaming it immediately, the white downward arrow button to start downloading it (the 50MB limit applies if you're on cellular), or the the blue arrow button to get more information, including episode descriptions (which should include show notes, but since links don't function, they're essentially useless). You can also hit the share button to access the Share Sheet so you can Mail, Message, Twitter, Facebook, or Copy the podcast link.

Tap the podcast artwork or the arrow to the right of it to see options for that podcast. Options include the ability to toggle the podcast subscription on or off, auto-download on or off, the sort order (oldest or newest first), the play order (oldest or newest first). You can also mark all episodes as played or unplayed.

When an audio podcast episode is playing, you get full screen album art that, unlike the Music app, is properly centered. Tapping the list view button at the top right gives you a list of additional episodes, so you can easily switch between them. Tapping the album art, which replaces the list view button at the the top right, takes you back to the main player screen. This is pretty much the same behavior as the Music app, and the consistency is appreciated.

Basic controls are also consistent in behavior if not in look. In Podcasts the buttons are big, gray, industrial, and almost old-school looking. You have play/pause and skip back/forward, and if you hold down on skip back/forward, you get rewind and fast forward. There are also two new controls, a 15 second skip back and skip forward. They're useful if you missed something and want to quickly re-listen or re-watch it, or if you want to hurry through a segment you don't enjoy. De-emphasized beneath them are the volume scrubber and the AirPlay button (if an AirPlay device is detected).

Unlike the Music app, if you tap the album art you aren't taken to list view. Instead, the album art lifts up to reveal a heavily skeuomorphic options panel that fills much of the screen with an old-style reel-to-reel tape player. It also provides controls for sharing (with the same sheet as above), for listening speed (1/2x, 1x, 1 1/2x, 2x, and 3x), and a sleep timer (off, 5, 10, 15, 30, or 45 minutes, 1 hour, or when the current episode ends.) There's also a positional scrubber with a tiny red line indicating your current time index in the podcast. While the touch-point appears tiny, it works just like the positional scrubber in the Music app. You can also reveal the options screen by using the small "gripper" control at the bottom of the album art to pull it up. To return to the player screen, grab the gripper -- now at the top -- and pull it back down. Strangely, you can't tap the tape deck to pull it down the way you can tap the album art to pull it up. No consistency points there. (or fit and finish points.)

Also, even though Podcasts is an App Store app, it does seem to enjoy certain privileges not afforded other App Store podcast apps. Namely, Podcasts gets to use its special controls on the Lock screen and in the fast app switcher. Instead of the standard skip forward/back buttons, which annoying skip entire episodes for other players, the 15 second forward and backward buttons are presented instead. If other players do have access to the same controls, hopefully they'll implement them. If they don't, Apple should make them available so everything in the App Store stays as fair and functional as possible.

The video player interface is different than the audio player interface. Unlike the audio player, the video player isn't given the same character or style, and there's no skeuomorphism in sight. Instead, it's almost identical to how podcasts used to be played in the Videos app. It does add a playback speed button, however, but without the 3x option. There's a fullscreen/widescreen toggle, which is more important on previous 3:2 iPhones and iPods than it is on the 16:9 iPhone 5 or iPod touch 5. Also missing are the new 15 second back/forward buttons, and in their place the single, old 30 second back button. It's also the only part of the Podcast app that supports landscape orientation (though you can watch in portrait as well if you really want to).

Unlike iBooks or Newsstand, Podcasts also has a strange hybrid area that's in the Library section but provides Catalog content. It's called Top Stations and it's another way for Apple to display featured or recommended content, but using a radio dialer metaphor rather than the usual iTunes Store list display. It's accessed through a huge tap at the bottom of the screen, and given equal waiting to the podcast library itself, which is interesting.

At the top, you can toggle between audio and video podcasts. On the "tuner" band you have the basic iTunes podcast categories on top and under them, the sub categories. Under that you have large-sized album art for 5 shows, one on top of the other. Swiping horizontally moves you through sub-categories and then categories. Swiping vertically takes you through the recommended podcasts. Horizontal and vertical scrolling is independent, so if you swipe down to the fifth podcast in one category, you'll still be shown the first one if you swipe over to a different category. Tap the artwork and the latest episode will start to play. Otherwise, if you linger for a momentarily, an info icon will appear to the bottom right of it. Tap it and you'll get a list of episodes and a Subscribe button.

It's a visually dynamic way to suggest new shows, and a novel way to bring "Store/Catalog" content into the "Library" part of the app. It'll be interesting to see if we get analogs to this in iBooks and Newsstand (racks?), and the other player apps like Music and Videos.

The Catalog section is what used to be the Podcasts section in the old iTunes app, but all done up in the new iTunes app style. Tap the Catalog button and you get the iBook's style revolving door animation. Inside, there are tabs for Features, Audio, Video, Charts, and Search. If you tap Charts, you start off with an audio and a video chart combined on one page with horizontal scrolling, along with a Categories button at the top left to get more specific charts. If you you tap "See All >" you get a proper vertical list view of either audio or video podcasts. The Categories button, however, gets awkwardly re-prositioned next to the the back button for Charts, which squishes the screen title between it and Library (which sometimes appears and sometimes doesn't), and truncates it beyond the point of usefulness.

There's also a lack of consistency for audio icons, with the toggle using the fairly common speaker icon, and the tab bar using a chunkier, rounder speaker glyph, which is odd.

Search bifurcates between episodes and podcasts. The episode results page is the more chaotic of the two, presenting stacked vertical lists of 4 episodes each that you can scroll through horizontally, as well as a large set of album art for related podcasts that isn't vertically stacked but can also be horizontally scrolled. For the episodes, tapping on the downward arrow beside a specific episode starts it downloading that episode. Tapping on the album art or the episode title, or anything else for that matter, takes you to the podcast page. In the podcast results tab, you're simply given a list view of shows that match the search results. Tap on any one of the podcasts and you're taken to its information page.

On the individual podcast pages you get general information about the show, including the artist, rating, category, and can hit the Subscribe button to add it to your library. You also have tabs for the show's Details, which includes the description and episode lists, Reviews, which lets you Like a show via Facebook, along with the regular iTunes reviews, and Related, which shows you more podcasts from the same artist, and more podcasts in the same sub-category.

Of course, you can't subscribe to podcasts via RSS, or to any podcast outside of iTunes. This is still an Apple app, and still tied to the Apple ecosystem.

If you have more than one iOS device, iCloud support will sync your subscriptions between them, as well as maintain your last position.

Overall, the Podcasts app adds a lot of features that were sorely missing from Apple's original iTunes app podcast implementation. It isn't perfect, and indeed a lot users are finding it buggy and frustrating at times. Episodes mark themselves as unplayed. Interaction with iTunes on the desktop is unfinished to say the least. The Podcasts app is also plagued by a general bug in Apple's audio API that causes audio playback to re-start after using Siri or placing a call.

Hopefully Apple continues to polish and improve it, though given what's happened with the App Store app recently that's a double edged sword at best.

The feature Podcasts needs most now is background downloads. If Newsstand can fetch your periodicals every morning, Podcasts should be able to fetch your podcasts when you're plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi. However, Apple doesn't allow other App Store apps to do that, so either it would be an unfair competitive advantage, or Apple would finally have to make a background downloading API available to everyone. I've heard rumors of the latter, so lets hope it's coming, and sooner rather than iOS 7...

Power users may want to stick to a power client, of which the App Store has several, but for those who simply want to enjoy the occasional podcast, as well as iCloud sync and Apple-style integration, Podcasts is a great choice.

Free - Download now

BBC iPlayer Radio is the latest app in the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)'s iPlayer portfolio and it offers live BBC radio stations. It's a free download for UK television license payers and offers some nice features like the ability to set an alarm which will automatically start playing your chosen radio station.

The brand new BBC iPlayer Radio smartphone app, available today on iOS with Android to follow soon, transforms your access to BBC radio programmes. With the app, you can wake up with your favourite breakfast show and instantly find the breadth of BBC radio at your fingertips

Daniel Danker, General Manager, Programmes and On-Demand for the BBC, said: "BBC iPlayer Radio is radio for an audience that expects to access our content anywhere: now you truly can take BBC Radio with you wherever you go.

"It's also radio for an audience that wants greater choice and control. They want to listen again when they choose, to personalise their listening experience, to share tracks they've discovered with friends. BBC iPlayer Radio delivers all of these things, in a simple, consistent, easy to navigate way. At the heart of it is the BBC's quality radio programmes, and iPlayer Radio sets those programmes free like never before."

BBC iPlayer Radio has been designed around a dial system that lets you spin through every available BBC radio channel which even includes local radio stations too. You can swipe to reveal on-demand catch up content and videos on each available stations page as well as set reminders to ensure you don't miss your favourite radio show.

It's compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad; they must be running iOS 5 or higher. Unfortunately the app has not been enhanced to work with the larger iPhone 5 screen as of yet. We assume that it will come in an update sooner rather than later. I had a quick try of the app and really liked the way the station dial worked. If you try this one out, make sure to let us know what you think!

There is a short video below by the BBC, showing how the app works. Unfortunately the BBC decided to do it in Flash, not our fault, blame the BBC!

Free Download

Rene and Ryan Block of GDGT discuss the evolution of blogging, Apple under Tim Cook, the realties of an iPad mini, and the double-edged sword that is media attention. This is the iMore show Sunday edition!

• Subscribe via iTunes: Audio | Video
• Subscribe via RSS: Audio | Video
• Download directly: Audio | Video

Show notes

• Engadget
• GDGT
• iPad mini
• Amazon Kindle Fire 7 HD

Guests

• Ryan Block (@ryan of GDGT.com

Hosts

• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie)

Credits

You can reach all of us on Twitter @iMore, or you can email us at podcast@imore.com or just leave us a comment below.

For all our podcasts -- audio and video -- including the iMore show, ZEN and TECH, Iterate, and more, see MobileNations.com/shows

Thanks to the iMore Accessory Store for sponsoring this week's show. Your one-stop-shop for everything iPhone and iPad, including cables, cases, chargers, Bluetooth and much more, check out store.imore.com.

Today Only: Buy the Case-Mate Horizontal Hipster for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 and save $18.00!

Handcrafted from the world's finest-grade Italian leather which is wrapped around an impact resistant molded shell, the form-fit leather hipster will keep your iPhone fully protected at all times. The Case-Mate Hipster features a magnetic closure and also has a leather belt clip allowing for maximum comfort while sitting or standing.

List Price: $35.00     Today Only: $17.00

Learn More and Buy Now

Never miss a deal. Sign up for Daily Deal alerts!

A long time ago -- in mobile years -- in a country far, far away -- unless you live in Finland -- a small company called Rovio created a game called Angry Birds which went on to become a franchise, and is now trading slingshots for light-slings with the mother of all modern franchises -- Star Wars.

On November 8, the Angry Birds and Star Wars universes will collide, in our best game to date. http://angrybirds.com/starwars

It doesn't stop there though, we'll have a whole host of toys, animations and other Angry Birds Star Wars goodness to enjoy! So, watch the video a few times, follow our http://angrybirds.tumblr.com page and check back every day - this is just the beginning.

May the birds be with you

Not much else is know at this point, but I'm guessing we'll see Pig Vader at the very least, along with a Lark Birdwalker and maybe a Hawk Solo? Either way, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes to X-Wing a Rebel bird bomb down the chute to blow the wooden Death Star into 3-star earning oblivion.

We'll find out in a month.

More: Angry Birds Star Wars

If there's one thing iMore loves even more than iPhones and iPads, it's giving cool iPhone and iPad accessories and apps to our awesome readers. This week we have...

Make home automation simple with Nexia Home and your iPhone!
cms365
 

Element Case SECTOR 4
Majik
 

September Follow iMore and Win prizes!

• On Youtube - QuisiteAL won a Seidio SURFACE Plus Case!
• On Twitter - @spaladino77 won a mophie Juice Pack Plus!
• On Google+ - stefan gemmecke won a mophie Juice Pack Air!
• On Facebook - Melissa Narcavage won a Seidio Charging Vault Kit!

Congratulations to all the winners! You will be contacted during the week with information on claiming your prizes.

Apple has reportedly placed orders for around 10 million iPad mini tablets according to The Wall Street Journal. The information on the huge order quantity number comes from various Apple supply chain vendors in the Asia region who claim to have received orders specifically for the iPad mini.

Some component suppliers to Apple in Asia say they have received orders to make more than 10 million units of the smaller tablets in the fourth quarter. That is roughly double the order that were placed for Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets in the same quarter, these suppliers say. The figure indicates that Apple believes demand for the product will be strong, despite stiff competition in the market. Apple hasn't responded to requests for comment on the smaller tablet dubbed by the industry as the iPad mini.

Apple already owns the majority of the tablet space with the current iPad but there is definitely a small chunk of that market looking for a slightly smaller or cheaper tablet; especially if it comes with all the features of the current iPad. For some buyers, the current entry price point for an iPad of around $500 is a little too high, for others it is the 9.7-inch size which puts them off. If Apple addresses both of these issues with the iPad mini then it could well be game over for everyone else.

The rumor mill has certainly gone a little quiet regarding the iPad mini over the past few weeks however we expect that to start building again very soon. We have already heard that the iPad mini is in mass production from another source and we expect it to be formally announced sometime this month.

Source: The Wall Street Journal