Entries Tagged 'Facebook Applications' ↓

I always have four tabs open in FireFox: Facebook, Google Reader, TechMeme and Google News.

Tabbed browsing is great. It beats multiple windows, but it would be much better if I could have all of that information all on one page.

Since Facebook is the only one of the four that has an “open” platform, it would be killer to be able to access these three other sites (all in feed form) right through my Facebook news feed.

The ability to do something like this would make Facebook the destination. The starting place. The place I hang out online.

For Facebook this would be a boon. After all, it has to be better to be the place than just one of the places people go.

Anyone know what it would take to make this happen?

Because sometimes (fluff)Friends and Human Pets aren’t enough. Sometimes you need a real pet. And, of course, a way to digitally represent your real pet on Facebook.

For you, there is Dogbook, an application that allows you to create a Profile page for your dog. Your dog gets her own friends, Wall and Mini-Feed, and while humans get poked, your dog gets petted. The coolest part about this (I think) is also the most functional: if your dog goes missing, you can submit an “arf alert” letting people know to watch for her.

Why is this a genius idea? Well, I’ll tell you. When I’m not cheerfully slaving for the Observer, I sometimes write for a newspaper called FETCH The Paper, which is, as you can imagine, devoted to dog news. Quite apart from the fact that such a paper exists, the pages of the paper are filled with testaments to the incredible devotion people have to their pets. We love to buy them outfits and toys, take them on our vacations, give them human-style beds and cook them human-style dinners. Giving them a Facebook Profile is just the next logical step.

The same people who brought you Dogbook also bring you Catbook, which, as you can imagine, lets you create profiles for your cats.

So far, I’ve only been able to find apps for dogs and cats. However, you can join the Birdbook group, the Ferret Appreciation Society, or Aquarium and Reptile Lovers. The real question is, how has no one started Fishbook yet?

There is also a pet-generic app called Pet Profile that allows you to create a profile for any kind of pet. (Obviously, you could use Dogbook or Catbook to do this too, but what self-respecting turtle or hamster is going to let himself be profiled on Catbook?) It looks like there are some problems with the “invite friends” feature on this app, and I haven’t used it myself, so don’t take this as an endorsement. Then again, how many friends does your pet tarantula really have anyway?

I stumbled across a rather ambitious group today: Six Degrees of Separation - The Experiment. Like the play, the movie and the popular game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, this group’s aim is to prove that everyone is connected via a chain of no more than six people. (Not necessarily related; just connected.)

I’ve seen this in other applications and groups, but in those cases the point is usually to link members to the group’s founder. I’m not clear who this group is linking to. Possibly the celebrity of the day that group members vote on?

The ambitious part is that the admin, Steve Jackson, wants to try to prove connections between every member of Facebook — which means, of course, they’ll all have to join the group. The group already has well over 400,000 members, and more are joining all the time.

For connections of a different kind, you might try getting your friends to adopt you with Human Pets. Not since the hula hoop has there been such a craze. And here of course I am speaking about the craze happening in my apartment, a craze of one.

 Well, no. Actually, there are more than 47,000 users of the Human Pets application, which allows you to present yourself as a pet and to buy other human pets. Though it sounds a little kinky, the developer has done a nice job of explaining his view of the tool as a place where minors are welcome and “mean people will be banned.”

It’s a fun format, with lots of little preferences to choose from. You can pick which animal best suits your personality, select your habitat and choose your mood. You can also take part in auctions to buy other humans as pets, and if you are adopted your owner can “feed” you and “pet” you just like he/she can with his/her (fluff)friends.

And, of course, while left to your own devices you can choose to join one of many, many herds, which are basically Wall pages for whichever group(s) you join. Show your appreciation for other pets in the herd by giving them a thumbs-up.

In case Wall conversations aren’t enough for you, there is a speedier alternative: My Live Chat. Now you can keep up with your many friends instantaneously. More interesting (to me) is that privacy settings allow your friends and their friends to chat with you. I feel like this is a nice widening of my private circle. You can also check your “public chat” box and let just anyone chat with you, but that circle is a little too wide for me. Eep, strangers! You know how it is.

 This chat is an excellent app if 1) you’ve got a lot of friends with a lot to say and 2) you can convince your friends to join as well. One nice thing is that it doesn’t have the preliminary “invite friends/skip” screen. I don’t know why that screen always bothers me, but it does. Although in this case, since this application is really only useful to me if my friends use it, that screen would not be out of place.

 Instead of the reminder screen, the app encourages you to invite people by using bribery. Inviting people earns you special features like emoticons, a must-have for any chatting scenario. How will people know you are devil-horned, yet happy, without a picture to tell them? I ask you.

 People with no friends…should maybe not be using a social networking site. But let’s assume you’re here to make new friends. While you wait for that to happen, you can try talking to Chat Bot. As developer Ramesh Kumar puts it, “It may be meaningless and yet you can enjoy the marvel of Artificial intelligence!” Chat Bot is less random than many similar programs. I tried a mini-conversation and the bot was able to semi-accurately respond to a good portion of what I said. This is a fun little time waster, until you realize that you’ve spent the last five minutes trying to get a fake robot to say something dirty. And then the shame kicks in.

Just in case one social networking site isn’t enough for you — well, who am I kidding, no one in the world uses just one of these sites. If you use any at all then chances are you’re using more than one.

So for us, Facebook has a few applications that will help make connections between sites. For example, Twitter allows you to update your Twitter status using your Facebook status. (Some users are complaining because the status default is “X is twittering:” but developers promise to remove the “twittering:” as soon as Facebook removes the “is.”) You can also try TwitterSync, which doesn’t have the “is twittering” annoyance, although the app demands extended access to your Facebook account, and as you know, any hint of privacy violation makes me nervous.

My Links doesn’t affect your other profiles, but it does help you link to them on your Facebook profile. Enter profiles URLs from any of a long, long list of networking sites and My Links will put links to your pages on your Facebook profile. That way, friends and stalkers who really need to be checking up on you in depth can easily visit all your pages using your Facebook page as a hub.

This doesn’t always happen, but while researching apps for this post I found a tool I’ve actually been needing. It’s called Blog Link, and it puts a screenshot of your blog onto your Facebook profile. Viewers can click the shot to go through to your blog. My personal blog is on a small social network, and most of my online activity happens there. It’s nice to have a way to let my Facebook friends know where to go if they want to see my regular updates.

There’s a similar, more specific feature for MySpace users called MySpace Link. Like Blog Link, this application puts a screenshot of your MySpace profile onto your Facebook profile. It’s a good way to use Facebook to redirect people to MySpace, although I’d prefer to do it the other way around. But then, I am not a big MySpace fan.

You can now be a fan of Wikipedia on Facebook.

I enjoy this for a couple of reasons. One, that it’s a match made in heaven, as Wikipedia, being a peer-edited encyclopedia, is to social networking demographics what the Oxford English Dictionary is to, you know, everyone else.

But I also love it because the page is written in first-person:

I’m a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. I’m written collaboratively by volunteers like yourself from all around the world. Since my creation in 2001, I have grown rapidly into the largest reference Web site worldwide…My mission is to bring free knowledge to everyone on the planet.

Not only that, but Wikipedia responds to comments in first person: “Thanks for all the kind words. Please help me to grow and invite your friends to join me here on facebook!”

I keep imagining the interview when Wiki hired someone to monitor their Facebook profile.

“You’ll be posing as the public face of Wikipedia,” one interviewer says.

“Our WikiRep,” the other one says.

“Pretending you’re a real person –”

“A WikiPerson,”

“You’ll maintain our Facebook presence –”

“Our WikiFacebookPresence,”

“To the best of your abilities.”

“Your Wikilities.”

The profile has 290 fans and links to Wiki’s fundraiser.

Of course, that’s not all. You can also check out My Wikipedia, an app that allows you to display Wiki entries on your profile. The default is the entry Wiki chooses as its featured article every day, but you can customize it to display whatever you want, including options for picture of the day and “my contributions.”

There are also more than a few groups hardcore Wiki fans can join, including If Wikipedia Says It, It Must Be True; Everything I ever need to know, I can learn on Wikipedia; and the distressingly-named Wikipedia is helping me get through med school! (Please, please, let my doctor not be treating me based on entries written by a thirteen year old from Duluth.)

You can also check out the video “Facebook and Wikipedia’s Lovechild!” on the “Everything I need to know” group, which is an ad for a different site but starts with an amusing little idea about all the social networking sites going out drinking together.

Wiki, of course, returns the favor, with a comprehensive user-created page about Facebook that includes just about everything you need to know. Naturally.

I used to read Jane Magazine a lot. They had this feature where people sent in pictures of themselves and the celebrities they freakishly resembled. Why did I so enjoy this? I have no idea, but as with all my pleasures I sought to replicate it on Facebook.

First I tried Likeness, an application many of my friends have added which for some reason I thought would help me compare myself to celebrities. (You mean Angelina Jolie hates skiing too? Gasp! We’re practically twins!) But it turns out that Likeness just helps me compare my likes and dislikes with my friends’ likes and dislikes (another of those ingroup-defining apps I wrote about before), and that of course is no good to me.

Then I tried FaceDouble Celebrity Look-alike. Aha, I thought, this is obviously the thing I want. Some scanning robot will no doubt compare my picture to its database containing millions of celebrities and determine that I look like some forgotten tennis queen from 1986. It’ll be just like in spy movies!

But once again I was disappointed. This app, while fun, lets you compare your friends to celebrities, or lets you suggest the celebrity you feel you most resemble. Not having a spy movie database with millions of entries — or a subscription to People — I cannot say which tennis queen I most look like, so this app is not for me.

Groups like Celebrity Look-Alike and What celebrity do you look-alike?, though fun, also lack a spy database. Basically, what I am looking for is something that does this work for me, something tailor-made to suit my laziness and complete lack of knowledge surrounding the celebrity world. Does anyone know of an app like this? And if I did find such an application, what practical use would I have for it? These are some questions.