facebook development – Stay N Alive

Category: facebook development

I’m a Dummy! My Next, and Third Book

Posted on by jessestay

It’s been 2 years since the release of my second book, FBML Essentials, and everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to write my next.  I admit I’m a little addicted – it’s why I write on this blog.  I hated writing for others in High School and College, but since I started writing for myself I have really gained a sincere appreciation for writing.  Once I wrote my first book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? with Jason Alba, I was addicted.  I love writing!  That’s why I’m proud to announce that I have signed an agreement with Wiley to write Facebook Application Development For Dummies.

What will it be about?  To tell you the truth, I’m still working that out.  My thought is to keep this one extremely simple.  I want it to be so simple even marketers and brand managers can learn at least a few ways to integrate Facebook Connect on their own websites, or find ways to integrate their brand straight into Facebook.  I’d like to hear from you though – what would you like to learn about Facebook Application Development?  What would you like to learn about the Facebook Platform?

I’m honored to be working with Wiley in this effort.  They are my biggest publisher yet, and from my dealings with them thus far they are going to be a joy to work with.  My wife has agreed to not see me for the next 6-9 months (I love you honey!), and I’m still keeping my day job and running SocialToo.  Yes, I’m crazy.  I think in the end though, based on my interactions with each of you, we need a completely simple instruction on how to get started with the Facebook Platform and what it means for developers and brands.  My hope is that with the time I spend on this book I might be able to benefit each of you in getting started with this incredible platform.

Facebook Application Development For Dummies will go to print some time at the end of this year, and, having learned from my last 2 books, you can bet this book will be very up to date and will have ways of remaining up to date long from its publish date.  Tell me what you want it to include!

I’ll be at Facebook’s F8 developers conference tomorrow (I’ll be one of the only guys with a FriendFeed T-Shirt on) – come look for me!  The first 4 people to mention this post to me at the conference get a free, signed copy of FBML Essentials.

In the meantime, be sure to become a fan of FBML Essentials and I’m on Facebook–Now What??? on Facebook, subscribe to this blog, and I’ll be sure you get updated when we have a home for my new book.

Want to Learn How to Write Facebook Apps? Now’s Your Chance

Posted on by jessestay

facebook platformOn Thursday morning I’m doing a free webcast for Safari Books Online (moderated by OReilly’s Laurel Ackerman) in which I’m going to go into further detail than I have before on how to get started building Facebook apps.  I’ll take you from start to finish, focusing this time on more hands-on coding, and less introduction and together we’ll build a Facebook app from scratch.  I haven’t figured the time yet, but if we have time, I’ll also show you how in just 3 steps you can integrate a simple Facebook login into your own website and apply the same principles we went over with the Facebook on your own website through Facebook Connect.

I’m going to stick to HTML, FBML, and Javascript for this session – if you have a knowledge of just HTML and Javascript you should be able to follow along pretty well, so this should work well for both the new programmer wanting to get their hands wet, and the experienced programmer just getting started in the Facebook platform environment.  These sessions I normally charge businesses and organizations hundreds per student so this is a unique opportunity for you to come learn on a budget (free)!

You can register for the webcast here – it starts at 10am PST this Thursday (tomorrow!).  Each participant will get a free 45 day registration to Safari Books online’s huge library of tech books, and 10 lucky participants will also win a free autographed copy of my book on Facebook development, FBML Essentials.  Also, I’m starting a thread on my Facebook Page that I’d love to hear your questions and suggestions on what you’d like to hear in the session.  You can comment on that here.

I’m looking forward to sharing what I know with all of you – please hurry and register before it’s too late!

What Would You Like To Learn About Social Web Development?

Posted on by jessestay

Help is on the wayOne of my strongest expertise is developing web apps that utilize Social APIs and technologies.  My website, SocialToo is built all around these.  I’ve written a book on the subject, and reviewed others.  I’ve blogged about it, and written many apps myself, and consulted for many others.  I wrote one of the first howtos on Facebook Connect development, and wrote the very first Facebook Connect WordPress plugin.

However, I’ve realized that I’m not sharing that much.  I have presentations I’ve shared via Slideshare, but those just don’t do it justice.  I’d like to share more here on this blog, do a few geeky howtos for the developers and coders out there, and hopefully help a few of you out.  I’m not quite sure where to start though.

So my question for you is, what would you like me to talk about?  What would you like to learn?  It can be any Social Network API, really.  If I don’t know it yet I’ll go learn it and share it with you.  I’d like to help you learn what you don’t already know though.  I figure I’m pretty good at this stuff, so I may as well share it.  So, what would you like me to talk about?  Trust me, it will be much more interesting if you tell me, than if I just guess myself.  How can I help you?

Image courtesy Cory Doctorow

New Series: Social Coding

Posted on by jessestay

I’ve been contemplating for awhile now a good way to share what I know about Social Software Development and helping business owners, marketers, and developers learn how to set up their own social apps. Especially for developers, I know there are many out there looking for howtos and ways to learn more about starting their own App, promoting it, and getting it off the ground. As the author of FBML Essentials, I feel I am well suited for the task so in the next few days I’m going to start doing howtos and overviews on how you can get your own Apps together. If you’re “the business type”, I may get a little technical on you, but I do recommend you keep watching and forward these onto your IT personell – your CIO, CTO, and the like should read these so they can learn what’s possible to integrate into your existing environments. I’ll also try to throw in a little goodie here and there for “the business type”.

So, I’ve created a new category to the right, “Social Coding” – if you want to track just that, click on the category name and add it to your RSS. I’ve also started a new FriendFeed Room where those involved or that want to get involved in Social Coding can discuss, learn, and talk with each other. You can subscribe to that here.

Let’s start by going over the types of sites I could cover. Here are just a few – let me know if you have a particular interest in learning about how to code for any one in particular:

  • Facebook

  • OpenSocial

  • Google Friend Connect

  • Twitter

  • FriendFeed

  • Pligg

  • Digg

  • LinkedIn

  • MySpace

  • WordPress

  • MoveableType

  • Google App Engine

  • Bungee Connect

Stay tuned! I’ll keep posting news and other rants as we go forward – I’ll just be adding in some good howtos at the same time. Oh, and if you’re a developer and would like to do a howto in your preferred language for us, contact me – I’d love to let you do a guest post.

Facebook Asks for Developer Input on How to Improve Platform

Posted on by jessestay

I’m going to be interviewed by the Facebook development team on Monday. I want to give them the best answers that reflect the Facebook developer community. I’ve heard plenty of input for my “FBML Essentials” book soon to be published by O’Reilly, but now is your time to speak and have your answers heard by Facebook.

If you have suggestions for things you would like to see improved on the Facebook development platform, or just plain things that are nagging you, leave them in the comments and I’ll ask all those I have time for in my chat with them on Monday. In addition, what would you like to see in FBML Essentials? If you were to read a book on FBML, what is it you think is missing on Facebook currently? I’ll also see these get reflected back to the Facebook Development team. Add your suggestions to the comments and maybe we can start a discussion…

Please feel free to forward this on so we can get some quality feedback!

Facebook Getting the Vote Out – but is it Good for Developers?

Posted on by jessestay

You’re seeing it here first folks – this morning Facebook announced a new tag on its wiki called . I imagine an announcement from Facebook will come soon on their purposes for this. From the wiki, :

Displays a Rock the Vote widget inline in your application. The text inside the tags is formatted as a hyperlink. When the user clicks the link, a Working Assets US Voter Registration dialog appears. When the user is done, they are prompted to share it with their friends. Then they are returned to your page.

This is particularly suitable for political apps or any app that wants to encourage voter registration.

Now, I’m not that familiar with the whole “Rock the Vote” organization, and I’m very for encouraging voter registration, but isn’t this also giving preferential treatment to other big organizations on Facebook? How did “Credo Mobile” get their sponsorship on this? Does this mean apps and organizations like my company’s client, “Takes All Types” will have their own tags for developers to use too? Has FBML been turned into an advertising tool? As a Facebook Developer myself I’m a little concerned about this one.

To implement the tag, you would do something like this (from the wiki):

Register to vote!

The link looks like this:

link

And produces a form that looks like this:

rock the vote form, top

The second half of the form looks like this:

rock the vote form, bottom

Facebook Works to Reduce Spam Further With "Feed Forms"

Posted on by jessestay

Today, a new way of posting to the News Feed in Facebook appeared on the Facebook Developer’s wiki. Facebook introduced “Feed Forms”. To use a Feed form, you simply create a regular form as you would any other form, but add a special “fbtype” attribute to the form. The only documented value listed thus far is “publish”. Facebook then intercepts the form, reads the url in the action parameter, and prompts the user, asking them if they want to publish the story to their friends.

To use a “feed form”, the url in your action parameter for the form should return content in the form of JSON with a simple feed response. The example they give for return JSON data is this:

{ "method": { "fbtype" : "publish", 

           "next": "http://my.canvas.com/next_page.php",

           "feed": {"title_template": "{actor} published status",

                    "body_template" : "New status is \"{status}\"",

                    "body_data"     : {"status": $_POST['status']}}

}

I created a sample form that looks like this, returning the above data (changing the url) in application/x-json format:

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem this feature is live yet (or I’m just doing it wrong), as my returned JSON data just gets returned back to me when the form is submitted. I will post screen shots as soon as I hear confirmation that it has gone live (I expect that to be next Tuesday, when they usually do pushes).

Does this mean Facebook is doing away with the automated posting of News feeds by applications, or is it just one more way, and better way to make your feed story more likely to appear in your user’s friends’ news feeds? There is no official word from Facebook yet as to how they intend to use this.