The folks at Engadget have managed to dig up a full changelog of the upcoming Palm Pre and Pixi webOS update, version 1.4, and it’s definitely an interesting one.

Besides bringing a couple of bug fixes, it’s also quite loaded with new feature, some of which long-awaited, such as video capturing and editing, sending videos over MMS, and Adobe Flash 10 support for the Pre. Here’s the list of major features Pre and Pixi owners will see today:

* Phonebook Transfer (import & export)
* Adds Video Capture capability & edit
* Calendar Enhancements
* Messaging Enhancements
* Improved Performance (Phone & CAL)
* Email Enhancements
* Notification Enhancements
* Adds Adobe Flash 10.0 (Pre Only)

Also, here are the most important fixes from the update:

* Time Zone bug fixed
* Network time sync bug fixed to reflect accurate Network time
* Bluetooth car-kit transition to device corrected
* No EV icon bug fixed (random)
* Random browser formatting bugs fixed
* Fixed bug that incorrectly displayed Sprint when actually was Digital Roaming
* Missing Contact issue specifically with swap down to 1.2.9.1 or less

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum.

So your business is on Facebook, and brand engagement is up thanks to some savvy social media strategy. You may even be interested in further distinguishing your brand by building a custom landing page for your account.

But what kind of value does a custom Facebook Fan Page offer? What are your fans looking for on a social network that they can’t get from your business website? For some insight, let’s check out how some big-name brands have stepped up their engagement by investing a little more TLC into their Facebook presence.

Interactivity

Social networks are not passive, so your Facebook landing page shouldn’t be either. It’s nice to have a great looking “Welcome” splash, but users are going to want to do something when they arrive.

Facebook is all about sharing, and The Gap has an ingenious promotion on the Baby Gap tab of their Fan Page. The simple splash image has a link to one of their photo albums where fans can upload pictures of their babies wearing their favorite Gap denim gear.

This kind of campaign provides a wealth of free, user-generated content that displays Gap products, and best of all, the functionality of photo uploading is already built into Facebook — no development necessary. This is an interactive idea that any small business could implement.

The Home Depot has built a bit on the shareability of Facebook actions with their DIY Gifts app. From Home Depot’s Fan Page, you can grant the app access to share your gift purchases with the recipient and your friends. While this approach may not work for everyone, it’s a step toward increasing consumer visibility on Facebook — a growing trend.

A Full Website Experience Within Facebook

Some companies go all out when it comes to their Facebook presence, integrating fully fledged mini-websites right into their Fan Pages. Adidas sneakers is a good example. They’ve added a multimedia content hub under the tab “Your Area” that offers photos, videos, and events based on your region. The site is built entirely in Flash and isn’t all that interactive, but it offers a rich media experience without ever leaving the boundaries of Facebook.

Dell’s Design Studio page is another example of a full-tilt Flash site inside Facebook. This one lets you browse and tweak custom artwork for your new laptop before linking you over to the corporate site to complete the purchase. You can also share your design choices with friends, all without connecting a single Facebook app to your account.

Deals!

The key to Facebook, and any social network, is to keep pushing out content that your fans are interested in. Many businesses do a great job keeping their fans apprised of deals and discounts through status updates.

Another great way to keep content fresh and visual within Facebook is to promote special offers on a custom tab. This may be something new visitors see when they land on your Fan Page, or a rich destination you can link back to in a post.

Walgreens does it very simply. Their landing page is a nice branded splash image that simply touts their “Exclusive Offers for Our Facebook Fans.” Their promotions are in their updates, but this simple, static custom page encourages users to become fans without any bells or whistles. They leave the deals to the built-in functionality of Facebook, and your business can too.

By simply changing the image on your custom page, you can call attention to a new product or promotion that your fans will see whenever they land there. It’s an easy way to keep your page looking fresh, in addition to regular updates.

Conclusion

These examples have been built for large companies that probably have more web development resources than the average small business. But if you’re serious about your commitment to Facebook engagement, consider taking some inspiration from these examples and exploring the possibilities that custom pages and apps can offer your business.

Ever wanted to Facebook friend someone you just met right on the spot? Until today, that wasn’t easy. But now, if you have an iPhone, all it takes is a single bump, courtesy of the Bump iPhone app.

For those of you unfamiliar with the app, Bump allows you to share contact information with friends simply by bumping your phone once with another friend’s phone (note: they much touch to work, you can’t just shake it in the air). The app then connects your iPhones and transfer contact information like phone numbers and addresses.

Now a new update to the app has brought it a couple of new features, but the one people will be talking about though is the Facebook integration. If you link your Facebook account to Bump and swap contact information with another person who has done the same, you can choose right then and there to initiate a friend request. Once done, a prompt will appear where the other party can accept or deny the friend request.

Jake Mintz, Co-Founder of Bump Technologies, told me that he and his team worked closely with Facebook to make this happen. He’s “pretty sure” that Bump’s the first app that can initiate and accept friend requests; we can’t think of any mobile apps off the top of our heads that do, so we think it’s likely Bump is the first.

Along with the Facebook integration, Bump now boasts custom profiles, which gives users more control over the contact information they share when “bumping” or create frequently-used share settings such as “work,” “personal,” or “fake” (just in case you can’t shake off that persistent and annoying guy/girl at the bar).

Jake says that this is the first of many social media integrations that will come to Bump. So yes, you can expect the ability to follow the people you meet via Twitter just by bumping iPhones in the near future.

ZipList is a free online shopping list and recipe service that makes it easy to share and add ingredients with one click.

ZipList gives you the tools to create, store and share a family grocery shopping list on the web. The list can be accessed by almost any device with a web browser, or you can share it in an e-mail or SMS text message. Of course, you can also print out an old-fashioned paper list if you prefer that.

The web-based shopping list interface lets you specify which store an item is available at — you can even specify the aisle. There’s also an option to add notes about coupons or anything else that’s pertinent to whichever household member goes to the store to pick the groceries up.

ZipList hosts a recipe database with hundreds of thousands of dishes thanks to an integration partnership with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia at MarthaStewart.com. You can pull a recipe out of the database, identify it as one you plan to make, and add the items to your virtual shopping list.

If you want to pull a recipe from somewhere else on the web, ZipList provides a Recipe Clipper bookmarklet that lets you do exactly that. Again, ingredients for the recipe will be added to your shopping list.

The ZipList website is free and ad-supported. ZipList also powers Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food: Fresh & Easy Recipes iPhone app [iTunes link], which costs $0.99.

Gmail has officially integrated several of our favorite Labs-only features into Gmail proper, including previously mentioned features like search autocomplete, Go to Label (one of the biggies in my Gmail master redux), forgotten attachment detector, YouTube previews, and more.

Search autocomplete automatically suggests search criteria based on common searches; Go to Label adds excellent keyboard shortcuts for navigating your account (type ‘g’ + ‘label name’); forgotten attachment detector alerts you before you send an attachment-less message that appears to promise one; YouTube preview, like it sounds, lets you watch linked videos inside Gmail without opening a new window; custom label colors lets you set any color to any label; and the vacation dates feature lets you set the dates you’ll be away so your auto-responders don’t go out before or after your vacation begins or ends.

On the flip side, Gmail also retired five less popular features: Muzzle, Fixed Width Font, Email Addict, Location in Signature, and Random Signature.

Got another Labs feature you’d like to see graduate Labs and join the default Gmail feature set? Got one you’d like to see retired? Let’s hear it in the comments.

The Yahoo-Twitter partnership would be comprehensive and more encompassing than Twitter’s search partnerships with Google and Bing, but now Yahoo tells us that the integration will focus on three primary areas:

- Access to your Twitter feed on Yahoo: On Yahoo Mail, Sports, the homepage, and other Yahoo properties, you will be able to check the most recent tweets of your friends.

- Ability to update status from Yahoo: Yahoo will become a Twitter client, allowing you to update your status from multiple locations on Yahoo. We’re not sure if this is going to be through widgets or another method.

- Yahoo Search and media integration: Public Twitter updates will be integrated throughout Yahoo Search, News, Finance, and Entertainment, among other properties.

Yahoo will have full access to the Twitter data firehose, so you can expect real-time updates in Yahoo Search, among other integrations. They will use tweets to improve relevancy, freshness, and search results, as well as “drive deeper user engagement.”

The first integration will be available “immediately,” and that is the real-time search integration. This brings Yahoo Search in line with its competitors in terms of real-time data. You can probably expect this to launch fully later tonight or early tomorrow.

As for the other integrations, they will launch later this year.

While we all know that some tidbits of information in the iPhone/iPad SDK don’t necessarily mean we’ll see these features soon (or ever) on the devices, they can be a good pointer as to what to expect from their future iterations.

The folks at 9to5Mac and MacRumors have done some digging, and found references to front facing camera, zoom, flash and video conferencing in the latest Beta 3 iPad SDK.

There’s some evidence to support the theory that these were intended for the iPad (the size of the accept/decline buttons, for example), but as we all know, the iPad has no front facing camera, or any kind of camera at all. But a second generation iPad…well, that’s another story.

If you’re wondering if it’s worth buying something on eBay because it might be readily available and cheap on Amazon or vice versa, Q-Compare can help you comparison shop between the two services.

At Q-Compare you select the country you’re in and the category you want to search in—you don’t have to specify the category but it really helps narrow the eBay searches—and Q-Compare displays potential matches, seen in the screen shot above.

Once you select from the initial selection Q-Compare shows the item on Amazon.com and a selection of thumbnails of the item for sale on eBay. One big perk that comes with using Q-Compare as oppose to the Google Shopping is that the results provided by Q-Compare for eBay are for current auctions only, you won’t find any stale auctions in the mix to throw off your price comparison.

Have a favorite tool for comparison shopping? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Social note-taking service Evernote may be available on the desktop and six different mobile platforms including the iPhone, but now it can boast its presence on a unique piece of hardware: your printer.

Starting today, Lexmark’s SmartSolution Interact, Presige, and Platinum printers will come with the ability to automatically send and store your scans in your Evernote account through a new Evernote SmartSolution app, a modified version of its mobile app. It doesn’t even require a computer to use.

Lexmark’s SmartSolution line of printer already comes with apps — about 20 of them to be exact — that range from MSNBC Headlines to Google Calendar. It’s an interesting line of touch screen printers that provides a lot of functionality.

Now with the addition of the Evernote app, it becomes ridiculously easy to send your scan into the cloud and access it from anyway. Evernote may have surpassing 2 million users and be on a lot of platforms, but we wouldn’t have ever thought that they’d stick the app onto printers.

This integration was probably inevitable though, especially as more and more devices gain app stores, and it’s a big partnership for the note-taking startup. It faces some tough competition from Microsoft’s OneNote software, so getting on these platforms is definitely vital to fueling its growth.

Does having apps on a printer make you want to buy these printers? Would having an Evernote app on your printer make you want to use it more? Let us know what you think in the comments.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum

Web forms can be a great asset on your business site. They let you collect pertinent data and contact information from your visitors without exposing your direct e-mail address to the world. They also set specific boundaries on the type of data you receive from customers so that the information fits nicely into a spreadsheet or database as needed.

Building a web form used to require a bit of coding and “wiring” on the back end of your site. These days, there are some great free and low-cost resources on the web that make building and integrating forms into your business website a breeze.

1. Wufoo

Wufoo is a great web-based form generator with a very intuitive interface. Forms are extremely customizable with simple drag-and-drop commands and many style options.

The forms you create “live” on Wufoo, but they are fully embeddable into your own website or blog by pasting a bit of code. But what makes Wufoo especially useful is that your account on the site serves as a hub for all the data that flows into your forms.

While you can download and configure your form to function with your own database, you may not want to when you see all the great looking reports and widgets you can generate just by logging into your Wufoo account. By hosting your data with them, everything is DIY, and easily accessible, with no need to hand your files over to a database expert to get your form up and running. In addition to viewing entries on the site, you can configure Wufoo to e-mail or text you when a user completes your form.

A free Wufoo account allows one user to generate three forms with three corresponding reports. Additional forms, users and reports come at a few price points, starting at $9.95 per month.

2. Icebrrg

Icebrrg has nearly identical features as Wufoo, and similar price points for paid accounts. You can host your own files or integrate the forms easily onto your business website and receive notifications when they are filled. A nice feature is that embedded forms are rendered in HTML, and will comply with the CSS styles of your website to match the look and feel automatically.

Icebrrg no longer has a free account, but at $9 per month, you get 10 forms, 500 entries, and 100MB of storage for customers to upload files.

3. Formsite

Formsite has a focus on a few more complex features that not every business may need in a form, but some will find extremely valuable, such as payment integration for credit cards, PayPal, and Google Checkout. They also offer multi-page and “skip/branch” surveys, which allow you to control the flow of questions based on certain rules and user responses.

Formsite has all of the customization, embedding, hosting, and notification options as the sites mentioned above, and their free account lets you create five forms, with 50 items per form.

4. Google Docs

If you’re already using Gmail, Calendar, and other Google Apps for your business, you may want to take advantage of the forms function within Google Docs.

This form generator is pretty bare bones, but the dead-simple interface and integration with your existing Google account make it useful for internal employee surveys or even the daily lunch order.

Once you create your form document, it’s tied to a spreadsheet and data summary that also live in your Google Docs. The data feedback, in the form of a response counter and various charts and graphs, is extremely detailed and easy to read (similar to Google Analytics), and the timestamped spreadsheet is exportable for whatever your database has in store.

A Google form is embeddable in an external website, but its cumbersome formatting and limited customization means that it probably won’t agree aesthetically with your sites. For now, linking to these forms is a quick and dirty way to gather data on a simple, clean interface.