Home - Stay N Alive

The Book is Off to the Press, but Wait — There’s More!

Posted on February 1, 2008 by jessestay

I’m extremely happy and relieved to say that “I’m on Facebook — Now What???” is off to the press, and the eBook is now available for purchase on the HappyAbout.info site.Â It has been a long time coming, but we’re finished!Â “I’m on Facebook — Now What???” is now officially one of the first books of its type available for sale, anywhere.Â Jason and I are pretty proud of that, and hope you enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed writing it.Â If you’ve pre-ordered an eCopy, you have probably already received it, or will receive it in the next day.Â Purchase your copy here!

We love reviews!Â If you have a short review, we’ll post a link to Amazon.com for the book as soon as it is up, and you can post your reviews there.Â The more reviews we have there I am told increases our visibility on Amazon, so feel free to write one up, but save it for when I post it here.Â Also, you may start blogging about the book now!Â Our publisher has a terrific affiliate program, so if you’d like to make a little money off of your review in your blog, you can do so here.Â Also, don’t forget to add yourself as a fan to the Facebook Page, and subscribe to our blog at FacebookAdvice.com!Â Thanks again to Jason for his hard work and example in writing the book – he has been an excellent co-author to work with.Â Also, thanks to Lorenzen and Scoble for their great contributions to the Foreward and Afterward!

Wait, there’s more…

I’ve had so much fun writing this book, that I’ve decided to write another one.Â Today, I just signed a contract with O’Reilly to write what will be probably the first published manual on Facebook FBML.Â It will be a “small animals” book, which means it won’t quite be a full sized book, but it’s not quite a Pocket Reference either.Â It will most likely be called, “FBML Essentials”.Â So, if you’re a developer, anxious to develop Facebook applications, stay tuned!Â I will probably be putting together a separate site for that book too, similar to what we have done for facebookadvice.com.Â Please, feel free to share below your frustrations with Facebook development – I’d love to hear the most common complaints and perhaps resolve those in the book!

O’Reilly is also helping me get to Graphing Social Patterns West (no one has invited me to speak though, sorry – I am open for speaking engagements while I’m out there though!) March 3-4.Â If I get any other appointments I might leave earlier in the week, so feel free to book me for your user group meetings, radio, TV, podcasts, or whatever while I’m out in the L.A./San Diego area (that is my home away from home, as my grandparents live there)!

Cha Cha Saved My Brother – Why I’m a Believer

Posted on January 31, 2008 by jessestay

A few weeks ago, I met at a Tweetup with Justin Keller from ChaCha.com and a few others that were in town visiting for Sundance.Â He gave me a cool, free scarf with the Cha Cha and Sundance Logos on it.Â It was my first official “Sundance Swag”.Â Â That was also my first introduction to Cha Cha, and from then on I heard a lot of cool things on Twitter about Cha Cha, and lots of celebrities up in Sundance that were loving it.

Today, that meetup had meaning when my brother called me from I-40 in New Mexico on his way to Las Vegas, between Gallup and Albuquerque saying he was stranded.Â He wanted to know why traffic was at a standstill on what would usually be a pretty vacant Road (it is in the middle of the desert!).Â I checked Google, couldn’t find any traffic info for that area.Â Then I checked Google Maps to look at the traffic, and no traffic showed for the area.Â I checked accuweather.com and weather.com to see if it might be weather, but couldn’t see any evidence.

Then I remembered Cha Cha had a “Human Powered” search engine.Â I sent a question to “242242” (CHACHA on your cell phone) via text message on my iPhone asking why my brother was at a standstill.Â Within just a couple minutes I received a response saying they were cleaning up after near white-out conditions, and to wait out until they cleared up the roads.Â A link was attached, which also told me there were several accidents ahead and the road was closed (I love my iPhone’s browser!).Â I quickly called my brother and told him the details so he could decide to find the nearest hotel and wait it out.

Cha Cha in this case saved my brother from a pretty tough situation!Â Consider Cha Cha your personal, real life social, search engine for your cell phone – you send it a text message, a human “guide” that gets paid $.20 per transaction sends you your answer back, with a link to the source(s).Â There is also a web version, which takes you to a chat box where you can ask a live person your question.Â I had worse results with that – the person just returned a bunch of vague links with no real answer.

Regardless of my one bad experience, I have now added 242242 to my cell phone contacts list.Â It will be my new friend when I need to find things on the go.Â Don’t forget to add it to your contacts!

Why Facebook Did Not Release Their Platform Last Night

Posted on January 26, 2008 by jessestay

It’s all over the web right now that Facebook supposedly “released their platform last night”. I want to clarify the situation – Facebook did not release their platform last night! What Facebook did release, as the title of their announcement states, is a Javascript Client API library for Facebook.

First, let’s discuss what a platform is. A platform is simply this – an interface to a major website or operating system, of which Software Developers can write their own software for. Back in May, Facebook opened their platform for developers. They have also announced plans to license their platform to third party websites at one point in the future. However, after last nights release of a javascript library, I still do not have the capability to let other Facebook developers write applications, using the same architecture (think Bebo) as Facebook on my own website.

What Facebook released last night is simply a client-based API (that loads into the user’s memory) which has access to access Facebook Data for an application that already exists on Facebook’s systems. I am still tied to Facebook with this, it requires an application API key like all other APIs, and nothing has changed. In fact, the Javascript library is even more limited than the other, server-side APIs, in that I cannot upload Photos with the Javascript library like I can, say, in PHP or Perl.

What you can do is have access to an existing application on Facebook’s servers, and tie your external website to that application. This has always been the case with the Facebook API, and will continue to be in the future. iLike uses this with their iTunes application. We’re Related uses this in their registration process on the FamilyLink.com site. It’s just you can now do it in Javascript.

I was going to blog on this last night when the announcement came out, but the announcement last night does mean something significant. It means Facebook is starting to compete with OpenSocial. OpenSocial, a javascript-based library currently, gives you access to a library of friends on a single social network, only requiring static html to access that API, just like Facebook’s new API library does. What OpenSocial has that Facebook doesn’t however, is what they term the “Apache Shindig Project”. Shindig is a truly open platform, which does allow you to allow your own users to create their own apps on your site only, and even share them with other Shindig-supported websites.

I repeat – Facebook is not there yet! The announcement last night means Facebook is closer to competing with OpenSocial, but they are still just as closed as they have always been.

Pownce – Why it May be Worth Considering

Posted on January 26, 2008 by jessestay

I’m very surprised that Twitter is not trying to compete with Pownce. As some of you may know, Pownce recently went out of beta, and opened their platform to anyone interested in joining. For awhile, I wasn’t much of a proponent for Pownce, but just recently, I’ve decided to give Pownce a try and see if it could be a good alternative to Twitter.

The last time I tried Pownce, I was unaware of Twitter – to me, Pownce just didn’t make sense at the time. Why would anyone need another way of sharing things with their friends? Isn’t that what a chat client is for?

It wasn’t until today, when I wanted a way to share a song my brother’s band did with friends, I realized Twitter just didn’t fulfill my need. You see, with anything but text updates, you have to go to an external website, upload the file, then post an external link to that file, photo, or video for others to see.

Pownce took care of that issue for me. With one integrated client, I was able to upload the file I wanted to share, and boom – it was available to all my friends to not only click, but play directly from the Pownce client! Not only that, but I opened up http://m.pownce.com on my iPhone, and I was able to play it right on my iPhone, without having to download the file! Pownce supports most file types, as well as links, and events, as well as plain status updates like Twitter.

The other thing that I thought I may complain about, which Pownce has, is ads. Because Pownce supplies users with its own client (they do have an API – I’m sure there will be other clients available in the future), they are able to provide users with inline ads, separate from their updates, right in the client. Honestly, I kind of feel this is somewhat comforting – from these I know my update service has an actual revenue model. There’s organization among the chaos, and I know my update client will be around for awhile longer. We complain when there are ads, but honestly, I think this is a flaw that will catch up with Twitter – the unknowns of how Twitter will make money are making the community ask questions.

So, now that I’m on Pownce will I move away from Twitter? For now, no – Pownce needs an SMS option before I completely switch. There’s something to say about having my phone make an SMS sound every time I get an @ reply or a direct message. Also, Pownce does not yet support tracking – this is an extremely valuable tool on Twitter! I also have a great network on Twitter. For now, I can see myself having both Pownce, and Twitter open – I’m really hoping the missing features of Pownce are taken care of, and my network also gradually moves over so I can take advantage of this great service! You can find me on Pownce at:

http://www.pownce.com/jessestay