Some Ideas for the Future of Facebook Desktop Apps

With the opening up of Facebook's API at their March 14th event, we're beginning to see a ton of new desktop applications cropping up in an attempt to harness the news feed and bring Facebook out of the browser in much the same way as applications such as Twitterific do for Twitter. Some are updated versions of former Twitter aggregates, such as TweetDeck, which features both Facebook and Twitter suport now; some are new contenders bringing many social networks together into one application, such as Skimmer; and some are Facebook-only, like Seesmic's Facebook application (though this will apparently be rereleased as an updated version of Twhirl in the near future, combining desktop access to Facebook, Twitter, and Seesmic all in one app).

Having tried each now at least for a few days each, I'd have to say that they all have their shortcomings, though the real problems lie in Facebook's API itself. Developers finally have access to status updates just as the Facebook homepage is becoming a "real-time" stream of all of one's friends' actions. If all you're after is an out-of-browser aggregate of your friends' statuses, then I would definitely recommend any of the aforementioned applications. However, Facebook is taking social networking in an exciting direction with the latest homepage redesign, and it's only a matter of time before the applications are given access to that potential as well. One can only hope. At the moment, the closest any of these applications comes is Skimmer's integration of photo album updates, as well as rudimentary profile updates. The only catches being that you can't view the photos without going to the site (unlike with Flickr updates in Skimmer, which can be browsed in-line), and that it only notifies you that a friend has updated his/her profile, but not what has changed.

The other real downfall is that the Facebook API does not seem to allow for commenting or messaging from third-party applications. All of the Twitter applications come with the ability to reply or send direct messages to other users, yet the Facebook complement to this feature is lacking in each one. If I like someone's status or a photo they posted, I should be able to comment on it, no matter where I am seeing this update.

At the moment, I'd have to say it's a close toss-up between TweetDeck and Skimmer for me, though the ball seems to be in Facebook's court before the improvements that need be made can have a chance.

A Rant About the Plague That Has Been Killing Facebook and the Steps They're (Finally) Taking

It's been some time since I last wrote a post (almost a year and a half), but with the f8 Keynote tomorrow, I felt the need to rant a little on the issue of social platform development.

Over the past seven months or so, I've been following the development of fbChat and the newly launched Facebook redesign rather closely in anticipation of their releases. A side effect of this is that I've also found myself exposed to a lot of bitching amongst developers about what these changes would mean to them. I guess I should probably backtrack a little first.

Last year, Facebook released their API to the developer community to open up the possibilities for applications on the platform. The results have been mixed at best. On the one hand, many developers took this opportunity to create applications like Causes, which allows users to donate via Facebook to various causes and to recruit their friends. This, I believe, is the type of application Facebook was hoping would come out of opening up their API.

Unfortunately, a much larger percentage of developers saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of users by creating programs that not only incentivized spamming one's friends with application requests, but actually required it in many cases, in order to actually use the application. The term the developers used to describe the desired effect of this as the "virality" of their application.

Before I continue, let's take a moment to reflect on this word, "virality." What many developers were optimistically comparing their applications to were viruses. You know, like HIV or Ebola. Seriously?! I understand that developers are hoping to make money, just like the rest of us, but do they really have to be so sleazy about it? Why can't more developers have a sense of ethics and make programs for good?

Well, Facebook tolerated this behavior for a while, but a few months ago, they finally lashed out and began pulling applications for short periods of time, if the developers at Facebook felt that the application was abusing its users' rights. You wouldn't believe how pissed off the developer community was about this. Too bad for them, because Facebook has given them a deadline to adhere to a code of conduct Facebook created (since the developers clearly didn't have their own), after which point they will begin pulling applications from the site.

Finally, a step in the right direction. This combined with the redesign's relocation of applications away from the front of profiles may finally achieve the result Facebook thought would have been self-evident and self-creating last summer. Maybe, instead of bitching and moaning about how this is going to be like an anti-virus to their applications, those developers most threatened by this should focus their efforts on creating worthwhile applications?

Just a thought.

d-rock out.

What Is and What Should Never Be

So much for keeping to a schedule... Not only have I not updated my blog in over two weeks, I haven't been working on my bigger project either. It sucks. I mean, I did have finals, which ended a week ago Saturday, and then I had to adjust to being home again, which included starting work and finally getting my hands on Guitar Hero II, but I'm still at least mildly disappointed that I haven't been keeping up with my schedules for either project. Guitar Hero, though, is AMAZING. Seriously, it is one of the best games currently available, and for no reason other than sheer enjoyability, both by players and watchers. It truly is a game that everyone can enjoy, unlike other favorites such as the Halo series and Gears of War, which are not nearly as fun to watch as they are to play.

Speaking of cover bands, as that is what Guitar Hero essentially is about, I went to a bar the other night with some friends under the idea that there would be a really awesome cover band doing songs by Metallica, REO Speedwagon, and other such bands that are typically covered at bars. What they actually performed were songs by groups such as Good Charlotte and Simple Plan, which might have been acceptable if the members were all 12. But they weren't. Nor was their audience, clearly. Both band and audience were primarily comprised of people in their late-20s and early-30s, who, at best, were in college when most of those songs came out, and I think that is being very gracious with their ages. To say the least, we were very disappointed, though this barrage of shitty pop-rock also had the effect of making us feel very old. Perhaps it is a misconception, but I was under the impression that most cover bands performed, for the most part, songs from the early-'90s and prior, songs that they enjoyed when they were young. Therefore, the effect of seeing a cover band do songs from when I was in middle school and high school made me feel fucking old. I mean, seriously, five years from now, if I were to play that "Lips of an Angel" song at a bar, I would hope that someone would have the decency to throw a bottle at my head, or at least boo me off stage.

D-Rock out.

In Defense of Don Imus

Life really does imitate art. South Park kicked off its 11th season a few weeks ago with an episode about "the N word." In the episode, Randy Marsh appears on Jeopardy and has to solve the following puzzle: N_GGERS with the clue "People who Annoy You." Being pressured for an answer he says the N word. In short, the fallout is that Mr. Marsh has to apologize to Rev. Jesse Jackson, by kissing the Reverend's ass, and is publicly humiliated, being called n*****guy. Meanwhile, Stan Marsh (Randy's son, in case you live under a rock) spends the episode trying to understand why the black community is so outraged, ultimately coming to the conclusion that he'll never understand because he isn't black.

If you follow the news at all, this may sound oddly familiar to events of the past week. On his April 4th show, Don Imus, shock jock for WFAN-NY, referred to the Rutgers Girls Basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." If you're familiar at all with morning talk radio, this won't seem that strange. But apparently people were quite offended by this, and so Don Imus was humiliated and made to apologize on Rev. Al Sharpton's radio talk show. This should have been enough, but Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, along with prominent feminists, called for Imus' show to be cancelled. And they got their wish: MSNBC dropped his television syndication on Wednesday, and on Thursday CBS cancelled his show completely.

Perhaps I'm alone, but I find this whole scenario a bit on the absurd side. I don't know if anyone bothered to look up the meaning of "nappy-headed," but it's not specific to African-Americans. "Nappy-headed" literally means possessing tightly-curled hair. I for one know a lot of white people with pretty nappy hair. Yes, Don Imus was referring to a team of African-Americans, but how is this in any way an insult? I can understand not wanting to be called a "ho." It's demeaning and sexist. But can anyone honestly say he or she has never told a joke or made an off-hand remark intended to be funny that offended someone? I don't normally refer to the Bible, but I'm pretty sure the Reverends could do with rereading John 8:7.

The real hypocrisy is Al Sharpton's reaction to all this. He said, "No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation. Perhaps he should consider how artists like Akon and Rich Boy are doing exactly that. If he really wants to put an end to intolerance, maybe he ought to start with banning songs like "Smack That" and "Throw Some D's" from the radio.

Of course, I'm being facetious. I'm not really advocating radio censorship, rather an end to hypocrisy. If Don Imus weren't a rich white guy, he'd still be on the air, and that is racist and sexist.

Censorship: where the radical left and the far right meet back up at the top of the political pendulum.

drock out.

Check out this Time cover story for a good look at what this means for radio, even if they try to be too politically correct at times and tend to equivocate a bit too much, but that's the media for you.

Tentative schedule, RIP Kurt Vonnegut

So, I think a good course of action for this thing is to try and get on a schedule. While I may occasionally post at other times because something just needs to be mentioned, or because I have to get something off of my chest, I'm thinking MWF updates would work well.

Clearly, this is not Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, but this is one of those times that something must be said, so I will keep it short. Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday of complications from a fall he suffered a few weeks ago, so in memoriam:

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt." [Slaughterhouse-Five]

drock out.

Free Speech on the Internet

I am wary at best to return to the world of blogging, but I think that it may be a good outlet now that I am a bit more mature and can use the medium towards a more appropriate goal. (LiveJournal was a terrible idea). When I came across the following stories, I could resist no longer the urge to rant.

A decision handed down yesterday from the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a minor charged with delinquency by the Putnam Circuit Court for posts made to a fraudulent Myspace page. In February of last year, the defendant, only referred to as A.B. in court records, was sued by her principal, Shawn Gobert, for having made vulgar posts on a Myspace page purported to have been created by him. The posts were primarily concerned with Gobert's policy on body piercings, and were therefore seen by the Indiana Court of Appeals as political activism. Even though the judges did not approve of her delivery, the posts were found to be under the protection of the First Amendment. No appeal was made for the fellow student who had created the fraudulent page.

The ACLU has taken up a vaguely similar case in which a Pennsylvania High School principal, Eric Trosch, has sued four former students who created three different, but equally hurtful and distasteful fraudulent Myspace pages under Trosch's name. The pages depicted Trosch as drinking alcohol/smoking marijuana on the job, using steroids, and having sex with students, among other things. MTV News predicts that yesterday's Indiana ruling will set precedent and will have some influence in this Pennsylvania case.

While yesterday's ruling will set precedent for many important reasons, there is a key difference between the two. A.B.'s posts were of a "political" nature. She was taking stand against what she saw to be an oppressive and unfair rule. While her posts may have been misguided in the language she used to express herself, they were not libelous. Which is what the Pennsylvanian posts were. The four students from Hickory High School had no other purpose behind their posts than to tarnish their Principal's name with unfounded, libelous claims. This case will inevitably be lost for the four students, as well it should be. The blogging and social networking communities are growing more populated every day and there needs to be precedent established not only for what is protected as free speech on the Internet (political discourse), but also for what is not (libel).

This may sound somewhat familiar to some of my Hopkins friends, though Dave will be glad to know that the ACLU did win an important case in San Fransisco last November which ruled that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act). No more shall moderators have to live in fear what other people post on their sites.

That's all I've got for now, but I'll update this from time to time with commentary such as this, as well as other things I might consider interesting–don't really know right now. Feel free to post comments.

D-Rock out.