Facebook Cookbook

Contributors

The following people contributed recipes to this book:

Jayant Agarwalla: The Winning Formula for Facebook, The Winning Formula for Facebook

There aren’t many people in the world who can claim to have a winning formula for building Facebook applications. Jayant is one of those very, very few. I had the pleasure of interviewing him on stage at the ICE08 conference, and I can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone with a deeper understanding of what it means to build a successful Facebook app. And he should know! At 21 years old, Jayant, who comes from Kolkata, India, is the cofounder of http://scrabulous.com and the Scrabulous application on Facebook (now called Wordscraper). He’s currently the VP of business development and marketing for Scrabulous.

Will Pate: Community Gardening, Community Gardening

When I set out to find someone who could write eloquently about some good community gardening strategies, my list had exactly one person on it: Will Pate. From starting the Infinity BBS when he was still in high school, through cofounding Raincity Studios in Vancouver, to being the community manager for Flock, cohosting commandN, and in his current role as community manager for VenCorps, Will has demonstrated an unparalleled understanding of how to grow a vibrant community. You can find him at http://www.willpate.org.

Alistair Morton: Finding Inspiration, Finding Inspiration

Al is one of the most talented designers I’ve ever met, and certainly the tallest. We’ve collaborated on a few projects, which has given me the opportunity to notice that even his on-the-phone doodles are individually perfect works of art. I asked him to contribute a recipe that’s a little outside the regular scope you might have come to expect, and to shine some light on where he finds inspiration for his creative endeavors. You can find him at http://www.peapod.ca.

Rajat Agarwalla: Scalability, Scalability

I’ve never met Rajat, but I have had the pleasure of sharing a stage with his brother, Jayant. You might not recognize their personal names, but you’ve almost certainly lost hours and hours of your life to their creation: Scrabulous. Few Facebook developers have dealt with the scaling issues that they have! The brothers hail from Kolkata, India, and are cofounders of http://scrabulous.com and the Scrabulous application on Facebook (now Wordscraper). Rajat is the CEO and chief software architect.

Mark Slee: Cross-Language Development with Facebook Thrift, Cross-Language Development with Thrift

I’ve only had the honor of meeting a handful of Facebook’s development team members, which fortunately included Mark. I saw Mark present at the FSOSS07 conference on Thrift and immediately cornered him to contribute a recipe. He’s one of the original authors of Thrift and is a product manager at Facebook. Prior to that, Mark was a member of the engineering team, focused on systems infrastructure, mobile applications, and general site development. He holds degrees in computer science and mathematics from Stanford University, and spends the better part of his spare time listening to and producing electronic music.

Ilya Grigorik: Advanced Caching with Nginx and memcached, Advanced Caching with Nginx and memcached

Every now and then, you run into a person who is so much smarter than you that you’re really just dumbfounded. Ilya is one of those people. He’s the founder and CTO of AideRSS (http://www.aiderss.com), an RSS filtering service designed to help you find and read what matters. In his downtime, he maintains a popular blog (http://www.igvita.com) where he talks about Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and best practices of scalable web architectures. The scope of his recipe is probably beyond all but the most advanced readers, though I encourage you to consider it in your architecture if you’re planning an app that really needs to scale.

James Walker: Integrating Drupal and Facebook, Integrating Drupal and Facebook

Since some of you will be experienced PHP developers, there’s a good chance that you’ve played around with Drupal or even built some sites on it. What you may not know is that you can save yourself a lot of time and energy by building your Facebook app on it! James, known to his loyal followers as Walkah, is a High Priest in the religion of Drupal. He’s also a father, a geek, a drummer, a (former) hockey goalie, a music nerd, a free software advocate, a beer drinker, a thinker, a Cancer, a flirt, a closet singer, a dork, a hugger, a clown, and alive. James and I have shared many conversations in which the answer ended up being “Drupal,” so I was thrilled when the conversation about him contributing to this book started with “Drupal” and ended with “Yes.” You can find him at http://walkah.net/ and at http://lullabot.com, where he’s the director of education.

Daniel Burka: Facebook’s Global User Interface, Facebook’s Global User Interface

Daniel is one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Maybe it’s because he’s a fellow Canadian, but it’s always such a pleasure to run into each other and catch up. You may not recognize his name, but you know his work: Daniel is a partner at Silverorange and the design director at Digg, as well as a cofounder of Pownce. You can find him at http://deltatangobravo.com.

Jason DeFillippo: Starting Out in PHP, Starting Out in PHP

Many of you will be new to the world of programming or won’t be overly familiar with PHP. I asked my good friend Jason DeFillippo to contribute a recipe on a simple but effective beginner PHP tip, which he happily did. Jason has been building websites professionally since 1994, working for companies such as Epson, Paramount, Technorati, and 8020 Publishing. He specializes in social media and blogging and is the cofounder and CTO of the Metblogs global network. Jason’s blog can be found at http://jpdefillippo.com, and his awesome photos can be ogled at http://aphotoaday.com.

Martin Kuplens-Ewart: Web Standards, Web Standards

Martin was a member of our team at Radiant Core and now consults on frontend development for Zerofootprint. He’s a brilliant web designer and writes better HTML than almost anyone I’ve ever met, which makes him perfectly qualified to contribute a recipe about why web standards are important, even on Facebook. Martin has helped major groups and brands, including Microsoft, Mozilla, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, UNESCO, YMCA, and Zerofootprint, understand how to embrace web technologies and online community as part of their core business, and he has developed online solutions for these and other major organizations. He is an expert in the development of web applications using standards-compliant methodologies and is a 10-time judge of the Web Marketing Association WebAwards. Martin’s consulting services can be found at http://www.apolitic.com.

Pete Forde with Rowan Hick: Advanced Relational Database Table Optimization, Advanced Relational Database Table Optimization

Pete Forde is a cofounder of Unspace Interactive, one of the world’s best Ruby on Rails consulting firms. He’s also an amazing photographer, a charismatic leader of the tech community in Toronto, founder of our Rails Pub Night, and a co-organizer of the Ruby Fringe Conference. I asked Pete to contribute a recipe about optimizing database performance and got more than I could have hoped for when he dragged Rowan along for the ride. You can find Pete at http://www.unspace.ca or on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/leftist. Rowan is at http://www.rowanhick.com.

Alain Chesnais: Attracting Users Through Facebook Ads, Attracting Users Through Facebook Ads

Alain is the vice president of product development for View 22, makers of the SceneCaster application. Their Facebook application, a portal into the world of SceneCaster, has quickly attracted over a million users. Alain has previously worked at Alias|Wavefront, ATI, Tucows, and TrueSpectra, and has forgotten more about the world of 3D than you or I will ever know.

Jeffrey Tseng: Measuring Your Success, Measuring Your Success

I was completely blown away when Albert Lai, Kontagent’s CEO and an old friend of mine, showed me their demo. Albert’s a very successful serial entrepreneur and has another great startup on his hands, cofounded with his CTO, Jeffrey Tseng. Kontagent is focused on providing next-generation social analytics tools for developers, and Jeffrey is well-suited to his roll, having previously been the founder of a startup that provided consulting services for wireless sensor networks. You can find them at http://www.kontagent.com.