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The "What You get From Facebook Pages" Series: Default Widgets and Applications

Posted on April 19, 2008 by jessestay

On FacebookAdvice.com I am starting a new series on “What You get From Facebook Pages”. Over the next week or so I’ll cover several topics on how you can best optimize Facebook Pages for your business. In the first article I’m covering the default widgets and applications that are installed when you set up a Facebook Page. Read more about it here.

Need some help getting a Facebook Page set up for your Organization? I do consulting! Contact me at jesse at staynalive dot com and I’ll get you setup with a plan on how you can utilize Facebook to bring your company more customers.

Recruiters, Here’s How to Approach Me!

Posted on April 15, 2008 by jessestay

I get e-mails very regularly from recruiters asking for either a referral or for me to work for their client. Most, if not all, come to me in the form of a generic e-mail, very little personalization, and obviously no care for me as a developer. Here’s one I received today, and my response – it’s my hope that recruiters, which since they generally don’t Google us developers beforehand so probably aren’t reading this, will take this advice to heart. They will have much more success by doing so! (BTW, I’m very confused by this – first they say there’s an unemployment low, then they say timeliness is critical because employers grab candidates quickly. If you’re a developer, believe the first one – getting a job should be easy, and the power is in your hands.):

Good Afternoon All,

I’m writing to touch base with each of you, regarding your present employment situation. The unemployment low has continued in Utah and has created a tremendous need for talented IT Professionals across the state of Utah.

We current have open opportunities for .Net and Java developers, in addition to Technical Project Manager and Business Analysts. If you are presently looking or know anyone that might be, please contact me directly.

In this market timeliness has become critical, some employers are hiring very quickly to grab the best candidates available. If you have thought at all of looking, don’t delay, get in touch with me today.

All the best,

And my response:

First of all, I’m an individual, not an “all”. Secondly, I strongly suggest Googling the names of those you contact, get to know them, and approach them only if first, they fit the description, and second, you can personalize with them a little. I talk to developers on a daily basis, and they hate recruiters because of this. You will get much better response by doing so.

Without Googling me beforehand, I will respond with the above every time – please do your research before contacting me!

Can’t Install Vista SP1 Due to Language Pack Problems? Try This.

Posted on April 14, 2008 by jessestay

For the non-tech-heads visiting my blog you can probably ignore this one, although it might provide some useful insight if you’re having issues with upgrading to Vista SP1. I have had the biggest headache recently trying to get Vista Service Pack 1 installed on my Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit Edition PC. The new Vista SP1 is stated to have many bug improvements, and since Hulu would occasionally crash my machine during my wife’s viewing of old “Major Dad” episodes (yes, they even have that on there!), I finally got fed up with it.

The problem with Vista SP1 is if for some reason you thought you needed every single update out there and installed all the language packs (I actually do have a fascination with foreign languages), SP1 refuses to install, and won’t even show up in your list of automatic updates to install under Windows Update. So, I figured, why not just remove them? Well, it appears that that, too seems to be a bug in Vista. Despite the fact that it would take 30 minutes each (at least) to remove each language pack, eventually, I started getting errors on the last few language packs I was trying to install. Vista was fighting back with me, avoiding with a vengeance not to be upgraded.

So I searched all around the internet trying to find a solution – I wanted to fix all these bugs, but the bugs were keeping me from upgrading Vista to fix the bugs that were preventing the upgrade! (Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?) After a week of waiting for things to be resolved in various threads on Google with people that were experiencing the same issue, I came across this forum post from Saad Siddiqui on this thread on VistaHeads:

There is a workaround but it requires dealing with the registery so backup registery first.

1. press Windows Logo Key + R to open Run Dialog
2. Type regedit
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHEINE\SYSTEM\CONTROSET001\MUI

there will be an entry for romanian language DELETE it. [for english the key is “en-US” in the navigation tree].

Repeat step three for

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHEINE\SYSTEM\CONTROSET003\MUI

this will make SP1 installer to see only English Language there.

hence it will continue installation.

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHEINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROSET\MUI

It was corrected that instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROLSET001 it was really HKLM\SYSTEM\CONTROLSET001\Control\MUI\UILanguages, repeated for CONTROLSET003 and CURRENTCONTROLSET. Backup your registry first!!!

I tried this, removed all languages except US from the listed languages under my registry, and voila – all of the sudden Vista SP1 was appearing in my list of Automatic Updates! I installed it, and now my wife can watch her “Major Dad” episodes on Hulu just fine. It should be noted that even the Microsoft employee in that thread was unable to diagnose this.

So if you’re looking for a quick shortcut to get rid of all the pesky language packs so you can install Vista SP1, hopefully this provides a solution that works for you. Good luck!

I’ve Been Guy Kawasaki’d!

Posted on April 3, 2008 by jessestay

Greetings to all of my new subscribers, thanks to a great post I’ve been working on with Guy Kawasaki over on his blog here:

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/04/ten-things-you.html

The post is about 10 things you didn’t know about Facebook – these are all excerpts that you can find bits and pieces about in “I’m On Facebook–Now What???“, with a few additions. I’m really glad Guy put me to task to put this list together. Be sure to purchase one of his books as well!

The story behind this post is both Guy Kawasaki and Chris Pirillo were looking for a way to automatically follow those that follow them on Twitter, so they could better communicate with their fan-base. I decided to take this as an opportunity (as I wanted the same feature for myself), and wrote http://socialtoo.com to do just that for them. They both signed up (see Chris Pirillo’s post here – he mistakingly thought I worked for Twitter), and Guy Kawasaki generously offered to promote the book Jason Alba and I wrote, “I’m On Facebook–Now What???” via his blog. The funny thing is I was actually able to use Guy’s, “I know you would do the same for me…” as Guy thanked me for helping him out.

After my experience with Guy I respect him even more. Without my asking he offered to help me out – this is now my new mantra. When you do good things for others, looking for their needs, in my opinion, regardless of pay it always comes back to you. I will be devoting my time on Sundays to help out charitable causes such as Takes All Types (recently featured here and here), not necessarily because I’m expecting anything out of it, but because I know it helps other people, and just knowingly that always comes around for good on your behalf in the end. Thank you Guy for your sincere promotion of my book in your article!

If you’re looking for Facebook consulting, or have an external application outside, or inside a social network you would like to consider including as part of SocialOptimize’s community of Social Applications, please contact me at the links on the right – I promise I will get back to you!

New to this blog? Be sure to subscribe here!

Facebook Gives Developers a Way to Combat Spam 2.0 With

Posted on April 3, 2008 by jessestay

Facebook seems to have been on a role lately in adding new FBML tags. They are certainly keeping me busy while I finish up the final phases of “FBML Essentials“. Ironically in short duration after I posted my Spam 2.0 article, Facebook seems, based on a new post to the developers wiki, to be providing a new way to combat your Application from being maliciously used by adding the ability to add “Captchas”, or graphics with manipulated text in them to re-enter in a text box provided in the captcha. These Captchas traditionally are ways to ensure only real humans are using your software.

What is interesting is normally you would think having a Facebook profile would be enough to prove it is a real human using the Application. Within the application a developer in normal FBML can always check to see that it is a logged-in Facebook user using the application, or someone accessing the application in an unauthenticated state. Facebook is going one step further with this however – there’s nothing stopping a Facebook account from being hijacked as we mentioned earlier, and using that account to run a malicious Facebook app for a day or two before Facebook catches it and either steal your data or Spam other users. That’s what I’m assuming the launch of this tag is for.

The tag works like this – it is to be contained in any tagset, and can contain one optional attribute, “showall” which allows you to always display the captcha on the App regardless if they passed the captcha before or not, or only display it to those that have not yet been verified. The code would look like this (from the developers wiki):

Upon submit, the user would be taken back to the callback url for your application, and the additional parameter, “fb_sig_captcha_grade=1” will be passed to your application assuming the user passed the Captcha. If they did not pass, it will be set to 0. The end result captcha when render seems to look like any other captcha box on Facebook, which it seems they are using the Recaptcha format which gives back to Archive.org’s book transcription and archiving project. So regardless of whether you really need a captcha or not, you can be comfortable your app is giving back to a good cause. The captcha looks like this (also from the Facebook developer’s wiki):

Facebook Works to Reduce Spam Further With "Feed Forms"

Posted on March 7, 2008 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.

How I use Google Reader

Posted on January 13, 2008 by jessestay

I’ve been on the Google Reader band wagon for a long time now. I currently subscribe to about 150 feeds, and I read or skim over probably near 1,000 or more feed items a day. Reading my feeds is how I stay up on the latest and greatest, and how I am able to give the best advice to my clients. Instead of me going to news, now the news comes to me, which, despite the amount of news I read in a day, has made me actually more productive.

Google Reader has recently added a friends feature. Now, all those on your GMail or Google Talk contact lists that use Google Reader will appear in a Friends list to the left of Google Reader. You can choose to turn your friends’ feeds on or off in the settings (upper-right of Reader), and even invite more friends to begin using Google Reader. As your friends “share” the feed items that they like, you also get to see what they are sharing. This feature in effect has actually started bringing me even more news. It will be interesting to see the SEO effects of this as people no longer subscribe to blogs, but rather rely on their friends sharing their favorite blogs with you. Personally, I think it will improve the odds, as now more people will see your blog due to the viral nature of this system, and more people in result will be persuaded to subscribe to your blog – this time through Google, improving the SEO chances of you appearing in Google personalized results for that individual.

Here’s how I use Google Reader. Bloggers may want to take note, as this could provide some tips as to how to further improve your posts to fit with the power Feed readers out there.:

Skim, Skim, Skim! – There’s no way I would get through all 1,000+ of my feed items if I read every single one of them. I skim over the headlines, and sometimes the content, then move onto the next item. Only if the article is important to me do I read the article in detail.

Learn the Shortcuts – There are 3 or 4 shortcut keys that are essential for me. I use the ‘j’ key to open the next item and mark it as read. I use the ‘k’ key to move back to the previous item. I use the ‘shift-s’ key combination to share the item I’m reading if I think those that are friends with me might be interested. I use the ‘s’ key to start items I want to “bookmark” for later – this is Google Reader’s equivalent to del.icio.us. I then use the ‘r’ key to refresh the list I’m on – I like to click on the link “x new items” and read through those. Then, when I hit ‘r’ to refresh, it only shows me the new items I haven’t read yet.

Add as many friends as you can – The more friends you have, the more information you receive. If a friend isn’t providing productive feeds, then perhaps you can take them off, but besides that, information is good!

Stay on top of your feeds – if you don’t check them several times throughout the day, they will build up, and you’ll be stuck spending an hour or two in the middle of the night catching up. I like to use my cell phone when I’m away from my computer to go through my feeds. Google has excellent mobile tools, and Reader is no exception.

Don’t use iGoogle – I was using this for awhile, and realized a) I couldn’t use the shortcuts, and b) I couldn’t utilize the sharing or starring features. Perhaps if they improve it I’ll go back.

Those are the strategies I use to read through my feeds in Google Reader. What strategies do you use? Please add me as a friend – you can either add me as a contact in Google Talk, or shoot me an e-mail and you’ll automatically be added to my Google Reader Friends. jessestay at gmail dot com