If you haven’t noticed, Facebook has recently rolled out its brand new lightbox viewer!

Over the last week, the lightbox feature has been slowly released to some of the Facebook users. As for Malaysian, we only got to see it changed two days ago.

According to Facebook’s spokesman, the new lightbox viewer will be fully visible to some 840 million users by the end of this week.

The last time Facebook changed its photo viewer interface, it was back in August 2011.

How do you like the new viewer? As for me I LOVE it!

My only comment – while it looks more elegant now, the black unfortunately isn’t in much consistency with Facebook’s existing colour scheme.

It is fairly common, and correct, to think of our smartphones as expenses. They might bring us many conveniences, but in many instances these conveniences are luxuries.

At the same time, the important benefits they do bring us are difficult to measure. It’s time to turn around that thinking.

There are a number of ways your smartphone can make your wallet fatter.

Price Comparison

Have you ever seen someone at a store playing with a smarpthone while shopping? While that could be standard texting and messaging, oftentimes the person is comparison shopping right from the smartphone.

There are a number of apps that perform this function. All you do is scan the barcode with the camera and the app spits out the price of the product at various other outlets — though usually online.

The Amazon Price Check app is one of the more popular ones. That’s not surprising, since Amazon is one of the world’s largest retailers. The premise is simple: scan products at a store before you buy, and see if you can get it cheaper on Amazon.

This works particularly well for Amazon Prime customers, since they get free two-day and discounted overnight shipping. It might not be instant gratification, but it’s better than waiting for standard shipping.

Other mobile price comparison apps include Google Shopper and ShopSavvy (which was actually around before Amazon’s and Google’s price tools).

Alternatively, you can use the smartphone browser to search any site you’d like. In any case, it’s an easy way to save money using your mobile.

Coupon Apps

It seems that coupons are a lost art form. Maybe it’s because newspaper circulation is down considerably.

I remember my mom going through the Sunday circular and clipping endless coupons.

It was then my job at the store to find the items on the coupons. That seems to be a relic of the past, though.

The coupon itself, though is alive and well. The difference is that websites and smartphones provide them now.

One app that has gained plenty of traction is Cellfire. It’s just like a Sunday circular, in that it provides numerous coupons.

You can view these in the mobile app or on the website. You then “clip” the coupons, which adds them to your account.

Once you’re at the register, you show the cashier your smartphone, and he or she enters the barcode number. That instantly applies the coupons you saved.

While it typically doesn’t cover groceries, Groupon is another popular discount app. It offers you deals in your area, which you can redeem right from your smartphone. That is, you can buy the deal, and then use it by displaying your smartphone.

If you remember getting those Valpak coupon packs in the mail, those are also around in mobile format. The art of couponing is not dying at all; it’s just changing the medium.

Mobile-Only Discounts

Last year on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, we saw retailers try something new.

While they still offered their standard lineup of in-store discounts, they also offered special discounts for people who bought things on their smartphones.

This is something that any retailer can do, and that some actually do. Since most retailers have mobile apps, they can offer deals right within the app. That incentivizes people to install the app, which is what they want in the first place (so you’ll buy from them).

Other specialty apps offer discounts on certain products and services as well, too. The Orbitz mobile app allows you to book travel from flight to hotel to rental car, and has mobile-only deals for cheap hotels.

Other travel apps, such as Kayak and Travelocity, have hotel deals that are available only through the mobile app.

In that way, it’s silly to shop any other way. Why pay full price on the web when you can just use your smartphone to save a few dollars?

Our smartphones can cost us plenty. In America the two-year cost of smartphone ownership — when factoring in the device cost, service plan, and apps — can be around $1,000.

It’s nice to have the ability to recoup some of those dollars by using our smartphones.

By using price comparison apps, coupon apps, and mobile-only deals, we stand to save a few dollars while we use our phones. It might not cover the whole cost, but it will make the total cost of ownership much less expensive.

When the status box is left empty, clicking on the “Post” button simply does not work.

Alright – here is the trick to posting an empty Facebook status. Just copy and paste the code below and post in as your Facebook update:

@[0:0: ]
@[0:0: ]
@[0:0: ]

The more you repeat the code, the longer your empty Facebook update is!

Well I guess this little trick is a bit pointless, but hey, as long as it makes some people happy, right?

FileSonic has disabled all file-sharing, while Uploaded.to has severed all access that comes from the United States.

A notice that run on FileSonic’s front page says, “All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.”

Uploaded.to, on the other hand, may have dropped the US, but continues to provide file-sharing service to other countries.

It is currently available in Malaysia.

It is kind of hardly believable that despite living in a world of technologies and Internet, a world in which slow mail is no longer prioritised, I am still receiving physical CNY cards from friends.

I prefer sending e-cards, though, although some may argue they are lacking the “touch” factor unique to the physical ones.

This Chinese New Year, there are definitely good reasons why you should be sending greeting cards online – particularly using Maybank’s fantabulous Facebook app!

Yes – as the title suggests, everyday a RM250 worth of ang pow will be given away to the favourite CNY e-card created using the mentioned app!

Let’s take a quick tour to see where to send the free e-card!

Upon landing on the main page of the app, click into it and this is what you will be greeted with:

“Golden Lion” is the e-card I was talking about.

There you get to “choreograph” your own lion (or Golden Lion) dance by dragging and dropping various movement templates into the timeline, after which you can select a CNY song you like as the background music.

Once done, the e-card will feature your golden lion dancing in its cutest manner and you get to send it to your Facebook friends!

Let’s see what I have done!

OK lah the blurb is added on by myself but you can see my interpretation of the Golden Lion.

You probably do not understand the text but I have been so into Thai lately that I had to create it in Thai. Go figure the meaning out! Teehee.

The “Zodiac Mash-Up” in the app allows you to enter your date of birth and it will interestingly put together your Western and Chinese zodiac signs.

This is mine:

I was born on the 28^th and am now in my late twenties. Now can you guess the year and month of my birth?

Happy Chinese New Year in advance readers!