• Cross community aggregation. 8hands Desktop brings your social networking world together into one small, easy to use platform.

• Real time notifications. Forget all those tabs and refresh buttons. 8hands Desktop lets you know exactly what is happening on all of your social networks in real time!

• Ranking friends by their "Real Behavior". 8hands Desktop uses a unique algorithm to rank your friends according to your level of interaction. The top 8 people that you are most active with will appear at your Top Friends list.

• Easy navigation between communities. With 8hands Desktop you can access all of your community sources from a single entry point.

• Instant Messaging. IM is easy with 8hands Desktop. Chat with social network friends anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

• Sharing your content. You can easily share your online content with friends on 8hands Desktop. Simply start a chat session, open the media zone to access your Flickr pics and YouTube videos, drag and drop… and voila! As easy as cherry pie.

It's easy! All you have to do is click here to download 8hands.

8hands Desktop will not ask you for much, except:

• Microsoft Windows XP or Vista operating system.
• An active internet connection.
• 16.5 MB of free space on your drive.

Mac OS X version will come soon, we promise.

A source is a social network, community, blog and/or RSS feed that is supported by 8hands.

An event is an activity on one of our social networks or RSS feeds. 8hands will notify you of events like messages, friend requests, comments and posts.

Latest Events displays your social network activities and feed updates in real time. Every time you get a new event it will be listed in the Latest Events list as a thumbnail. Mouse-over a thumbnail to see further details like when, what, and from where the event took place.

Your Scorecard is the area under the 8hands logo that features your personal information, like:

• Your 8hands username. you can change it by choosing options > edit profile.
• Your Tagline. you can write your own unique 8hands tagline or synch it with your Twitter.
• Your Traffic Rank. this is based on a scale of 1-5, it is a measure of your social activity.
• Number of Friends. the number in parentheses is a tally of ALL of your social network friends.
• Network logos. which are links to all of your social networks.
• Your Photo. to change it, double click and choose a pic from your media zone by going to options > edit profile > change picture. You can also just open your media zone and drag and drop your photo into your scorecard.

Find all your and your friends' media content in the 8hands Media Zone. You can flip through photos, videos and feeds by using the arrows, or view it as a slideshow. Click on a media item to reach its original page.

Helpful tip: use the Media Zone to drag and drop media items into your 8hands IM window!

Top Friends is a list of your 8 most active friends. It's designed to make your life easier by putting the users you interact with most above of everybody else. It's a calculation based on all of the social network activities made during the last 4 weeks. Now you'll finally know who's a real friend and who's just faking it.

Your Favorites Friends list is a static list of 8hands users with whom you can conveniently interact with via IM. You can reach your Favorites Friends by clicking on the drop down menu above the user list, where you can choose between Top Friends and Favorite Friends. Unlike your Top friends list, you can organize and control your Favorite Friends. Here you can also delete and search for users. To add a user, choose option > add/invite.

The little envelope indicates that, although a specific person is your friend on a specific network, he/she is not a member of 8hands. By clicking on the envelope sign, you will be able to invite him/her to 8hands.

If you receive an event from a social network friend AND an 8hands user, you will notice a small octopus icon on his/her thumbnail picture. If the octopus is purple, the user is online; by clicking on it you can start an IM chat. If the octopus is grey, the user is offline.

The History panel is a table featuring all your past social network and 8hands events. This is the place to see an exact summary of your online social events.

You can also modify your History table, sorting it by source, IM chats, user or 8hands user.

Adding sources is easy on 8hands. The following is a step by step guide.

And remember, you can ALWAYS change and modify your sources by clicking on "Edit sources."

To add a source (i.e. social network, feed, or the like), choose one of two ways:

Either click the small "+" icon next to your avatar and source logos, or, open the "Options" menu and choose "Edit Sources". Click on "Add new source" and select the source that you would like to you add.

To add a feed:

1. Follow the steps above.
2. Then fill in the relevant URL feed. You can choose whether or not you want to get comment notifications by marking the "do not track comments" checkbox.

If you want to add a social network source, bear in mind that there are two different types of sources that you can add:

1. Your Personal Profle: You will be asked to provide a password & username. 8hands will notify you of new private messages, comments, friend request and more. It will also compound a list of your top friends from all of your sources, as well as import all of your media into the media zone section.
2. A Public Profile: You can also keep track of profiles other than your own. Simply enter the desired screen name and 8hands will import their shared content into the media zone (like Flickr pics and You Tube videos). You will then be able to drag and drop this content into IM conversations.

To invite a friend to 8hands, click on the envelope icon. An invite box will open; enter your friend's email address and they will be added to your 8hands.

You can add any 8hands member to your Favorite Friends list. Just click on the favorites tab, then click on options and choose the add/invite option. Finally, fill in your friend's username (which will usually be his/her email address).

The 8hands chat allows you to start an Instant Message with everyone of your social networks friends, that are also 8hands members.

There are 3 ways to start an IM chat :

1. The latest / top friends list: These lists are dynamic and based on your recent activities. if the 8hands logo appears on the thumbnail it means that the person is also a 8hands member and you can start an IM chat with him or her.
2. The favorite friends list: Your "Favorite Friends" list is a static list of 8hands users with whom you can conveniently interact via IM.
3. The history window: The history panel reveals all the interactions you had around your various social networks / blogs and sort them all in one table. Double click on a user's thumbnail will open the IM window chat.

The 8hands chat window gives you a straight access to your media zone and allows you to send your content to your friends with only one click. All you have to do is click on "Add Media" from the IM window.

You can also view your history panel, which contains all your previous chat history and your social networks events.

This is definitely one of our favorite features! While chatting on 8hands, click on the "Add Media" tab and drag & drop files directly and easily from your Media Zone to your IM chat window.

Of course you can! Send network suggestions to: info (at) 8hands (dot) com

8hands uses port 5222 and port 8080.

Lost your 8hands password? Have no fear! Just click on the "Forgot Password" option in the 8hands login menu, and your login details will be mailed to your email address.

8hands isn't exactly a messenger - it's more of a notifier. Add your various social network profiles (or get an online social life) and you will start seeing things popping up like crazy!

All you have to do in order to solve this annoying issue is mark the "Remember Me" checkbox when you log onto Facebook. After that, you will not be prompted to enter your log-in details so often, and your 8hands & Facebook will run smoothly together.

As for now, 8hands will only support the English versions of MySpace and Flickr. We are working on it, and hopefully we will fix the problem in one of our future versions.

Microsoft announced a bug for the RTM version for vista which caused a 3rd Party applications to not run properly.
Microsoft has released an update to fix this problem.

All other vista users – you guys don't need to worry as all other versions has been released after the RTM bug has been fixed, so 8hands (and all other applications) should work fine.

To download the fix:

http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_RTM_Bug_List#3rd_Party_Game.2FApplication

Currently, when you are installing 8hands on a Windows system that is not your main OS system (like on Parallels Desktop for Mac, Bootcamp or any other virtualization software for Mac or Linux), 8hands may not load, and inform you that msvcr71.dll is missing.

We are working on a fix for that problem, but until we fix it, it's recommended that you will download the dll file from here and place it under your Windows/System32 folder.

After that, 8hands should run smoothly.

YES! 8hands Mobile is a FREE application.

Though please note that you may be charged by your operator for the air time it takes to download it and for having 8hands Mobile load content from the Internet, depending on your data plan. We highly recommend signing up for a flat rate data plan prior to becoming addicted to 8hands Mobile.

8hands Mobile is currently supporting the following devices:

Nokia 6288

Nokia 6500c

Nokia 6555

Nokia N73

Nokia N95

Samsung A707

Sony Ericsson K770i 

If you don't see your mobile device please send us an email.

We'll keep rolling out some more devices soon, so stay tuned.

*These devices don't support the "Calling from 8hands" feature.

To download 8hands Mobile register here and edit your phone number. Click "Download". An SMS will arrive to your mobile with a link to download 8hands Mobile.

If you're already using 8hands Desktop you can login with your 8hands Desktop's login details and click on "Download". An SMS will arrive to your mobile with a link to download 8hands Mobile.

Sure! You can download the application by using the following link:

http://m.8hands.com

In order to modify/disable the "Allow application to read data in Contacts" prompts:

1. Go to the applications/games folder on your phone, where 8hands Mobile is located, select 8hands Mobile then click "Options".

2. Choose "Application access".

3. Choose "Data access".

4. Choose "Read user data".

5. Set up your preferences.

In order to modify/disable the "Allow network access" prompts:

1. Go to the applications/games folder on your phone, where 8hands Mobile is located, select 8hands Mobile then click "Options".

2. Choose "Application access".

3. Choose "Communication".

4. Choose "Network access".

5. Set up your preferences.