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Asia Continues to be Facebook's Strongest Growth Region
By Ben LoricaNovember 20, 2009
With Facebook topping 330 million active users over the past week, the company's strongest growth region continues to be Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook added close to 17M active users in Asia alone. Since my previous post, the share of active users from Asia grew by 2% (to 13.5% of all users), and roughly 1 in 7 users...
The War For the Web
By Tim O'ReillyNovember 16, 2009
On Friday, my latest tweet was automatically posted to my Facebook news feed, as always. But this time, Tom Scoville noticed a difference: the link in the posting was no longer active. It turns out that a lot of other people had noticed this too. Mashable wrote about the problem on Saturday morning: Facebook Unlinks Your Twitter Links. if you’re...
So Long iPod, Hello E-Reader
By William StanekNovember 4, 2009
William Stanek here, talking about electronic paper displays (EPDs). In my earlier blog entries, I introduced EPDs, discussed how the technology works, and delved briefly into ways they're being used. Now, I'll dig in and take a closer look at...
Using Flash Remoting for Authentication to your AFCS/Facebook AIR Application
By Russ FergusonNovember 3, 2009
If you have had an opportunity to look at the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service (AFCS) you could see that there is a huge opportunity to do interesting multi-user applications without needing to write all of the server side code. However there is the challenge of how do you control who comes into your application and what they are allowed to do. In addition, keeping your application credentials safe in case your SWF file was decompiled. So as the title suggest you can use a service like Facebook to take care of the users authentication and Flash Remoting for the application authentication.
Four short links: 22 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 22, 2009
Eight Billion Minutes Spent on Facebook Daily -- you weren't using that cognitive surplus, were you? How We Made Github Fast -- high-level summary is that the new "fast, good, cheap--pick any two" is "fast, new, easy--pick any two". (via Simon Willison) Isaac Mao, China, 40M Blogs and Counting -- Today, there are 40 million bloggers in China and...
Windows 7 is Here! - Win free Ebooks.
By Laurel AckermanOctober 21, 2009
Windows 7 becomes widely available today, and O'Reilly has 2 new books to help you make the most of it.
There are Over a Million People Actively Using Facebook Right Now
By Ben LoricaSeptember 24, 2009
A little over a week ago Facebook reached a major milestone: 300 million active users. The fastest-growth region continues to be Asia, but growth in other overseas regions such as the Americas and Africa have also been strong. Currently reaching only 1% of potential users in Asia and Africa, Facebook has barely scratched the surface in both regions: Growth in...
Report: Facebook A Haven For Hate Groups
By Caitlyn MartinSeptember 18, 2009
Dr. Oboler published a new report on Tuesday and this time he has targeted Facebook and with good reason. Despite a prohibition in the popular social networking website's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, it's terms of service, Facebook has remained a happy home for Holocaust denial and racist "white pride" groups.
Fallacious Celebrations of Facebook Fans
By Mark DrapeauSeptember 16, 2009
Publishing "top 10" lists is unfortunately a staple of modern journalism. But alas, writers must drive readers' eyeballs, even when discussing serious topics like the government. And so we find a new list that mixes Web 2.0 with the government: "Top 10 agencies with the most Facebook fans." For the record, this list is topped by the White House with...
Show Off Your O'Reilly Media Books!
By Mary RotmanSeptember 15, 2009
Have a bookshelf full of O'Reilly books like our Facebook Fans Michael Pelikan and Kay Bieri do? Use it to win more! Take a picture or record a short video of your books and post it on the O'Reilly Media Facebook Page before 5pm PT Thursday, September 17, for a chance to win two ebooks of your choice.
Labor Day Weekend Question Contest Has Ended - We have our winners
By Laurel AckermanSeptember 9, 2009
Thanks so much to those who took the time to leave a comment to our Labor Day Weekend Question post. We have our winners.
Facebook App Case Study: Additional elements and gotchas
By Mirza HatipovicAugust 14, 2009
Welcome back to the series and the concluding article of the exciting facebook series. So far we worked hard to implement features like the front end, administration, loading of YouTube videos etc. In the last article the application came finally to life. We implemented a database that contains 14 levels for the game.
Facebook App Case Study: Front-end Module
By Mirza HatipovicAugust 5, 2009
Welcome back to our exciting series. In the last article, we discussed about the administrative part of the application, where we implemented a background activity to allow every application user to upload their own videos and add mistakes. This time we will work on the front end that will be visible to everyone by default and where the main game play will take place. Before we start with the development, there are important things that need to be considered. First of all, there will be 14 levels to play, 14 levels means 14 video clips, 14 movie snippets.
Facebook App Case Study: Administration module
By Mirza HatipovicAugust 3, 2009
Last time we talked about the way how to work with YouTube videos and how to implement those into our app. We worked hard to implement typical features that can be found on most video sites like play, pause, seek etc. We even have the feature to seek through the video using the Seek Bar that we built from scratch. As we already know, there is one external library used in our application that allows us to load videos into the swf and manipulate the video using ActionScript 3.0. This is a huge advantage since the official YouTube library is written in AS2 and it does not fit our project requirements. Using the library, we were able to create video controls using pure ActionScript 3.0.
Facebook App Case Study: Integrating YouTube Videos
By Mirza HatipovicJuly 22, 2009
Welcome back to our series. In the previous article, we discussed the elements that are the necessary building blocks of the application MovieExpert (http://apps.facebook.com/movieexpert/). We created the main swf, we created the invite screen, we worked hard to make the invite screen actually work on our iFrame. Now that we have all those details done, we can move on and concentrate entirely on the application in the swf file. We know that the invite screen on facebook appears only when the use installs the application, the next time he logs in, he will be redirected directly to http://apps.facebook.com/movieexpert/.
Facebook App Case Study: Preparing the Elements
By Mirza HatipovicJuly 8, 2009
Welcome back! Finally we will work on a real world application that will go live. The application that we will be creating will be named “Movie Expert”. One reason why I chose it is because I am an avid Movie fan and I will have lots of motivation to work on it in detail. The other reason is because it is really a sample that has the potential to utilize the facebook actionscript 3 library the proper way.
Send Gifts Component
By Mirza HatipovicJuly 8, 2009
Sending gifts and items are one of the favorite actions among the millions of facebook users. Friends send items to friends, "buy" gifts, "sell" virtual items etc. Honestly I am not engaged in this activity a lot on facebook, but the number of people willing to send virtual gifts, buy virtual goods is shockingly high! So this article might be underestimated on the first sight, but because I am aware of the trend of sending and receiving gifts, it is worth writing a complete article that covers the trend in actionscript. The number of possible implementations for this component is really countless and in this article we will be able to show only few of them.
Four short links: 8 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 8, 2009
Stop Whining About Facebook's Redesign (Slate) -- How can I be so sure that you'll learn to like the redesign? Because you did the last two times Facebook did it. The conclusion is that sites don't say why they're redesigning, and that causes the resistance. C# and CLI under the Community Promise (Miguel de Icaza) -- Microsoft have announced...
Search Friends Component
By Mirza HatipovicJuly 6, 2009
Welcome back to the series. In the previous articles we discussed topics like publishing of news, sending notifications to specific friends etc. The articles covered topics that are not only bound to the user interface in the facebook application development. This time, we are going to play around with the already existing (but complex) MultiFriend component. The component from the article 11 was quite good, but it really had the potential to be a kick ass component for facebook. There were things I wanted to implement, but was not able to because the whole article covered the basic construction of the component.
Jonathan Heiliger on Web Performance, Operations, and Culture
By Jesse RobbinsJune 24, 2009
We were honored to have Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook’s VP of Technology Operations, as our opening keynote speaker at Velocity. Jonathan is one of the most accomplished leaders in our field, and is a master of the craft. Here is his keynote in it’s entirety:...
Facebook Adds Million of Users in Asia
By Ben LoricaJune 19, 2009
Since my previous post on Facebook users by country, the company has grown rapidly in Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook grew 90% in Asia going from 11.4 to 21.7 million active users. With a Market Penetration of only 0.6% in Asia, Facebook has barely scratched the surface in the region. The company also gained 11.3M users in Europe...
User Info Component
By Mirza HatipovicJune 17, 2009
Welcome back to the series. This time we are goings to build a really exciting component that will be used to simply display information about the user. Well, you might say why to we need such a component, is there are real purpose behind that? Well, in my opinion, yes. There are a lot of facebook applications out there done in Flash where we see information about the friends etc. During the process of facebook application development, there will always be a need to quickly display information about the specific friend. The information that is contained inside the component could be every bit of information that was entered by the user.
Publish News Component
By Mirza HatipovicJune 17, 2009
Welcome back to our exciting Facebook ActionScript series. In this article we will discuss one of most important (and most exciting) features of the FB platform, it's the publishing of news. We all know when we log in to facebook, we see plenty of news about our friends. Some were sent by the users, some where sent by applications. In lots of cases, the action is initiated by applications. We see stuff like "FriendX has just completed level 5", "FriendY just left the building" or "John just sent something to his friends", I'm sure you saw a lot of news similar to this on FB. News are an integral part of application because it's one of the ways that the virality of applications is ensured. Suppose we have the fanciest application on FB, what value we have out of this application if we do not publish any news, if we dont make sure the friends are not notified about the action don't in the application? The application simply needs to "talk" and publish news if the application user performed some action. We need to make sure everybody knows that we just topped the high score of the player from Nigeria.
Notification Component
By Mirza HatipovicJune 10, 2009
The notifications are one of the most interesting (and important) parts of the facebook area. In order to completely understand the Flash side of it, we need to understand the basics of the facebook notification, what it is and how...
FBML, YML, OSML oh my! HTML, meet Social
By David RecordonJune 5, 2009
Given how quickly the Social Web is coming together, I believe that HTML will need to support social elements someday soon. It's great to see this type of innovation by Facebook running in the wild, but the web itself ultimately evolves best when multiple competing approaches come together. Just as OAuth brought together the best practices from AOL, Flickr, Google, Yahoo! and others, there is a similar opportunity to bring together FBML, YML and OSML along with the client-side benefits of XFBML.
Multifriend Selection Component
By Mirza HatipovicMay 26, 2009
Welcome back to our series. We will continue to work on components that will help us develop facebook applications faster and with less bugs. There is one quite useful component that will will be used throughout the facebook development and that's the MultiFriend Selection Component. There is already one developed by facebook and is displayed when using standard FBML.
Enhanced status component
By Mirza HatipovicMay 26, 2009
In the last article we worked extensively with the ProfilePic component and showed how the component can be used in real time scenarios. We had an interesting example of a real word application with the "Would you..." application clone. I really had a lot of fun working on it and hope you too. For us it's important that we were able to work with components that where previously build based on the previous articles. The goal is not to hurt the "DRY“ principle, which means "Don't repeat your self". Every component that was created needs to reused again so no development time will be spent on them anymore, except when extending it. This tutorial will deal mostly with text. The idea of the application is the following: We need to create some sort of "Mood Checker", an application that will allow us to browse through the statuses of users.
2 Years Later, the Facebook App Platform is Still Thriving
By Ben LoricaMay 13, 2009
In a few weeks, the Facebook application platform will mark its second anniversary. While it garnered lots of press coverage in the months after it launched, the arrival of the iTunes app store shifted attention away from Facebook's vibrant ecosystem. The media glow is understandable: among other things, the younger iTunes platform is adding apps at a much faster rate...
Goodreads vs Twitter: The Benefits of Asymmetric Follow
By Tim O'ReillyMay 10, 2009
I am never more painfully reminded of the limits of symmetric “friend”-based social networks than I am when I post a book review on Goodreads. I love books, and I love spreading the word about ones I enjoy (as well as ones I expected to enjoy, but didn’t quite). Most of the time, my reviews go out quietly to a...
Extended ProfilePic Component with Effects
By Mirza HatipovicMay 8, 2009
In this article we will extend the ProfilePic component from the last article and show example of how we can use it in real world scenarios. We will create a facebook application that asks the user a question about the displayed friend. Yes, it is in fact a copy of an existing application (I don’t remember the name and I don’t want to make advertising). The application simply switches from one question to another and associates the displayed friend with the question. Like, for ex., the question appears “Would you ever like to date Monica?" and the application user can simply select between “Yes” of “No”. On the other side, you can choose if you want that the answer is send to the user as a notification. Personally I enjoyed the application and will use it as reference to make a flash version out of it. On the other side, we will use the component and add features to it so the sample will demonstrate how useful the component can be in the development process. We will have the freedom to create our own questions. They can be stored either in the database or XML, but in our case it will be stored in a flat XML file.
ProfilePic Component
By Mirza HatipovicMay 8, 2009
In the last article we discussed how components are built with the facebook api in mind. Now it's the time to do something more with it. We know how things need to be set up in order for the components to work. We learned about sessions, about the tow frame time line structure of the components and we talked about the inheritance of the UIComponent class. The previous example leveraged just a small potion of the methods that UIComponent provides. In this article we will take more advantange of the UIComponent class in order to create a component for the profile pic.
Component Architecture for Facebook Applications
By Mirza HatipovicMay 8, 2009
In the last tutorial we discussed the new library that was released by Adobe. The new library from Adobe fits much more naturally into the whole architecture of facebook applications that are built using the Flash platform. We need to know that the previous approach using the PHP library is not useless. In order to create stable and useful Facebook applications we need to know about many ways how to achieve the same goal. If you followed the series from the start then you are on a good way to be able to create truly cutting edge Facebook apps as we have discussed have to grab results from DB and we also make use of the ActionScript library.
Poll Results: Do you currently develop, or do you plan to develop, for the Twitter platform?
By Rich TretolaApril 20, 2009
Well, although Twitter is certainly hugely popular, it appears that developers don't care as much about the Twitter APIs as they did with Facebook. The Twitter poll had less than half as many responses as Facebook, which means that there...
Active Facebook Users By Country
By Ben LoricaApril 19, 2009
Since I last posted numbers on Facebook's user base six week ago, the company has added close to 20 million active users. I've had a few requests for detailed numbers by country so I quickly assembled an update for each of the regions shown above....
Using the brand new Facebook ActionScript 3.0 library
By Mirza HatipovicApril 15, 2009
In the 5th article we will deal with Adobes new Facebook ActionScript 3.0 library. It is a brand new product and it is still in beta, but it looks promising. In fact, it has beed there for quite some time and was original developed by Jason Christ. This time Adobe decided to support it and add features. The way the library works differs from the methods from the previous articles because it is completely based on ActionScript and does not use a PHP middle layer. In this article we will explore the library briefly and examine the basic features to get us started. The goal of this article is to create a simple swf file that will connect to facebook.
Creating a Custom API for Flash using Facebook API and PHP
By Mirza HatipovicApril 15, 2009
In the previous article we discussed how to set up the framework for PHP, FB API and Flash. We did a lot of work to make this happen. We tested the framework only with very simple methods that made calls to the FB API and databases. In this article we are going to extend the sample to implement all necessary calls to the api. We will try to find the most important and needed fb api methods and teak them for usage in Flash. All the hard work will be accompanied by a sample that will make the whole article more interesting. We will create a small photo album viewer that will let you send notifications of type "I like this" for every photo to your friends. This sample will be more interesting.
Setting Up AMFPHP for Flash and Facebook API
By Mirza HatipovicApril 15, 2009
Following good software engineering principles and following the goal to make flash based facebook applications easier to develop there are well known technologies to utilize. So far we have been introduced to the basics of Flash - Facebook API communication. In the second article we discussed the various methods to embed swfs into the facebook canvas. Equipped with that knowledge, we can make a good step forward. In software engineering, experts say that we should develop applications “close to the problem”.
Poll Results: Do you currently develop, or do you plan to develop, for the Facebook platform?
By Rich TretolaApril 14, 2009
According to the poll results nearly 40% of you responded that you are not interested in developing for the Facebook platform and 17% said that they would experiment with it but didn't choose a time period. The remaining 40% split...
Overview of embedding SWFs into Facebook Canvas
By Mirza HatipovicApril 9, 2009
Following the first article where we introduced the basic usage of Flash with PHP and Facebook, we are here in the second article to discuss all about the correct embedding of swf's into the facebook canvas. There are a lot of ways of how to do that and everyone of it has its pros and cons. We will discuss this in in detail in this article. Every step will be accompanied by a sample where we will demonstrate the pros and cons.
Will Facebook (all but) replace corporate websites?
By Martin KelleyApril 9, 2009
I'm looking at the work of a potential non-profit client now. They have a fine website: recently redesigned, it looks good and gives off the air of elegance that they want to project. The client is world-renowned, rich in history...
Creating a Hello Friends App using ActionScript 3.0, PHP and Facebook API
By Mirza HatipovicApril 6, 2009
As we all know life is much more colorful with friends, Facebook it's the best example on the internet for this case. Its even more colorful when you can use the Facebook API to create applications on that platform. Using Flash, PHP and the FB API we can utilize ActionScript OOP features to make the applications perform better then with standard FBML. I'm not trying to say here that FBML is bad, no, this series will try to teach how implement the existing knowledge of Flash into the Facebook application platform.
New Poll: Do you or will you develop for Facebook?
By Rich TretolaApril 6, 2009
Facebook is an absolute monster with a tremendous audience. Facebook also has public APIs allowing developers to create applications for the Facebook platform, So, we would like to know if you currently develop or if you plan on developing for...
New series covering Facebook application development using Adobe Flash
By Rich TretolaMarch 31, 2009
We would like to announce that next week a new series will be published on InsideRIA covering application development on the Facebook Platform based on the newly announced Adobe AS3 Library. This series will be authored by Mirza Hatipovic. Facebook...
Adobe and Facebook Joint Effort
By Rich TretolaMarch 31, 2009
Adobe and FacebookŪ just announced a joint effort to enable Web developers to create more compelling applications using the Flash and Facebook. A new officially AS3 library officially supported by Adobe and Facebook is a free and open source programming...
Hack in the Box (Dubai) 2009 / Psychotronic(a) / Hacking the Psyche
By Nitesh DhanjaniMarch 30, 2009
I will be presenting Psychotronica: Exposure, Control, and Deceit at the Hack in the Box Conference in Dubai (20th - 23rd April 2009).
ActionScript 3.0 and Google Maps work together on Facebook
By Mirza HatipovicMarch 18, 2009
The application FindMee on Facebook is a nice example of how ActionScript 3.0 can be used together with Google Maps API for Flash on Facebook to create simple but useful applications. The application itself can be used by travelers to...
"Right Here Now" services: weaving a real-time web around status
By Mark SigalMarch 11, 2009
The "status update" has become the ultimate social gesture (ala Twitter tweets). Now, imagine Status and Location as application ingredients that can be combined together to create new application compounds using social ingredients, like People, Places, Localities, Times, Topics and Events. The composite that results is what I call "Right Here Now" services, and the focus of this post.
Facebook is Growing Fast in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
By Ben LoricaMarch 5, 2009
With Facebook recently passing 175 million users, I decided to update my analysis of its user base. The weekly growth in number of users has remained steady, with the last 5 weeks being exceptionally strong: Facebook added over 25 million users since early February. The share of U.S. users inched up slightly from 30% to 31%. The company added users...
Facebook in 2010: no longer a walled garden
By David RecordonMarch 4, 2009
A lot of what I've been working on the past two years has been built on the assumption that the model that social networks use today will fundamentally change. Social networks have largely been built on the premise of being walled gardens in such a way that users can't communicate or share content or friends across networks; put simply this is what keeps a Facebook user from being able to send a message to a MySpace user. This is the same model that destroyed AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy's ISP businesses when normal people chose the Internet itself versus their thoughtfully curated walled gardens.
Where else do you want InsideRIA?
By Steve WeissFebruary 26, 2009
We're ready to extend the reach of the InsideRIA community beyond its home site, and can use your input. We're on Twitter--@InsideRIA--and will soon be adding a widget to the site that enables you to track InsideRIA-generated Tweets. Here are a few other things we're considering:
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