Notes for 5/24/2010

Hope you had a nice long weekend! Here are my weekly notes:

Did you play Pac-Man on Google on Friday? Software-usage-tracking-tool RescueTime crunched the numbers and guesstimates that the first-ever interactive “doodle” consumed 4,819,352 hours of time.
This is a pretty interesting design idea: using LED lights to create fake sunlight reflections on interior walls.
Here’s a good [...]

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed

Today Facebook announced it had acquired FriendFeed. This is exciting, interesting news for a number of reasons. First, I think FriendFeed is a fantastic platform. Facebook is about to get a whole lot better thanks to the engineers behind FriendFeed (this is very much a talent acquisition). Second, I think this will cause Twitter, [...]

Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL) and Social Media

Can an antiquated organization use social media to become relevant to younger generations? The Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL) may soon give us an answer. They’ve started to create a presence on Twitter and Facebook, and promise that more is on the way.
First of all, what is a community league? From Wikipedia:

A community [...]

Facebook Connect gaining momentum

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m a big fan of Facebook Connect. It’s easy for end users to understand and use, and relatively straightforward for developers to implement also. I’ve been working on adding Connect support to ShareEdmonton, and haven’t run into any major roadblocks yet.
Recently, I started looking for information about other [...]

Can Facebook become the new default?

I find Facebook incredibly useful, if not particularly exciting. My usage reflects that – I like to add people on Facebook in order to maintain connections, and I like to keep my profile looking fresh, but I rarely surf Facebook like I used to. Yet there’s no escaping Facebook. The numbers tell the story. Check [...]

Happy 5th Birthday Facebook!

Today is Facebook’s 5th birthday. Hard to believe it has been around that long, actually. Over 150 million people have joined since launch, and Facebook is now a household name. I remain a regular user of the site, though I’m not nearly as active there as I once was. I guess you could say [...]

Facebook’s virtual gifts – money well spent?

In a post at VentureBeat yesterday, Eric Eldon shared some estimates that suggest Facebook’s revenue from virtual gifts this year will be in the range of $28 million to $43 million. That’s a serious amount of coin for nothing more than an image on a web page.
Gifts are priced at $1 each, and the [...]

I love Facebook Mobile via text messages

Building a mobile application that works really well is hard. In general, I think we put up with sub-standard mobile applications simply because they offer convenience, not because they blow us away. The iPhone is definitely changing things but for the most part, I still cringe when I need to use most mobile apps. Especially [...]

Facebook’s new profile design

Last week Facebook reiterated that profiles will soon be redesigned. They’ve been working on the changes for quite some time now. On Wednesday they held a press event for reporters and bloggers:
Earlier today we had a small press event where we walked a few reporters and bloggers through the upcoming changes to the profile. [...]

Why Messaging via Facebook Rocks

Facebook has a ton of interesting features, but one of the most boring is increasingly becoming my favorite – messages. The wall is what most people think of when communicating via Facebook, but private messages are the way to go when you’d rather not have everyone reading what you have to say.
Here’s why I [...]

Facebook Instant Messaging

If there’s one thing the world needs, it’s yet another instant messaging service. Okay, that was sarcastic! What we really need are better ways for the existing IM services to work together. Anyway, TechCrunch reported today that Facebook is getting ready to launch its own instant messaging service:
Our understanding is that the service will [...]

Coming soon: Clean up your Facebook profile

Apparently Facebook is gearing up to release a "profile clean-up" tool that, if enabled, will only keep a user’s top 12 applications on the main profile page, and will move the rest to an extended profile. They say they are implementing this feature in response to user feedback:
As time has gone on, we’ve received [...]

I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face

There is no privacy on the web.
Early this morning, Robert Scoble’s Facebook account was disabled because he violated their terms of service by scraping data from the site. That caused a flood of a posts from people saying that either Scoble was wrong or that Facebook got what it deserved. Most people siding with Scoble [...]

Facebook dropping "is" from status updates

I knew something was up! For the last week or so, all text message updates I have received from Facebook say something like "Kimberly Male is is eating dinner" – note the double "is". Also, I got a strange message from Facebook saying that texts were being turned off because I hadn’t sent a text [...]

Fortune fires up the photocopier for PayPal story

Fortune published an article today about "the hyperintelligent, superconnected pack of serial entrepreneurs" who left PayPal for bigger and better things; a group of individuals they have dubbed "the PayPal mafia". Founded in 1998, PayPal itself is fairly interesting, but the people behind it are downright fascinating!
As I was reading the article, I had the [...]