Facebook Pulls Back Curtain on 'Timeline'
Nice article by @wired that includes geeky MySQL details.
The new Facebook profile pages are so clean and well designed. This is what it will look like.
How to check-in on Facebook using the Facebook API
Was playing around with the Facebook API this evening and thought I’d share this little php code snippet that allows you to check-in to a place on Facebook via their php-sdk.
$facebook->api('/'.$uid.'/checkins', 'POST', array(
'access_token' => $facebook->getAccessToken(),
'place' => 'place_id',
'message' =>'I went to placename today',
'picture' => 'http://www.place.com/logo.jpg',
'coordinates' => json_encode(array(
'latitude' => 'lattiude',
'longitude' => 'lattitude',
'tags' => $uid),
)
)
Building Facebook Messenger
Very nice to see the upcoming Facebook Messenger project employing the use of the MQTT technology (the brainchild of Andy Stanford-Clark & Arlen Nipper). Hopefully we will be seeing more projects using this great technology in the not too distant future!
Facebook Vibes
So today Facebook’s video chat went live. I saw the headline on Hacker News and minutes later my mom popped up on Facebook chat, so what better time to give it a whirl. I hit download to give it a try, and after grabbing a jar file and running an install procedure we were up and running. The chat went pretty well, although it did hang and jitter a couple times. It got me wondering though, is this using my installed skype, or did it install a second copy of skype somewhere, or are they bundling the skype protocols in some kind of library? As any curious geek would, I started checking things out.
The download link grabs a file called FacebookVideoCalling.jar that’s only 27840 bytes in size, so it seemed highly unlikely that this was the entire codec. After scoping out the jar file a bit I found that it uses LiveConnect to let the java applet communicate with the javascript dom in the browser.
protected JSObject util;
// ...
this.window = JSObject.getWindow(this);
// ...
String str1 = getParameter("appid");
String str2 = getParameter("userid");
This way they can get your Facebook user ID, and interestingly they also grab an application ID. With this information they formulate a signed request to download the application. The interesting thing to note is that this installer supports two applications:
if (paramString.equals("com.facebook.peep"))
return this.window.getMember("VideoChatPlugin");
if (paramString.equals("com.facebook.vibes")) {
return this.window.getMember("MusicDownloadDialog");
}
The video chat plugin, called peep, is what is downloaded now. At some point in the future they seem to be prepared to download another app though, called Facebook Vibes. I searched around to see what this is all about, and it seems that this is an unannounced feature that has yet to be released. The vibes app connects with a music download dialog in the page though, so I’m guessing that with this release we are seeing the seeds for Facebook’s upcoming music offering.
It’s too late to look into this further and I still haven’t found the codecs, but anyways, you heard it here first: Facebook Vibes.
Source: lifeisagraph.com
How cool is this guy’s (Alexandre Oudin) Facebook profile?!
World Map of Social Networks
Just in case you had any doubts about the fact we live in the age of Facebook, just check out Vincenzo Cosenza’s latest edition of the World Map Of Social Networks.
Mark Zuckerberg interview at Startup School 2010
The Social Network
I just got back from watching “The Social Network” and overal… I thought it was a fantastic film, and loved it. Some great camera work (especially the boat scene).
In a way it boils down to differentiating who the dreamers and achievers are, and it’s called action!
Verdict: a must see!
