Entries Tagged 'Facebook Applications' ↓

I sometimes think that if I’d ever been taught to manage my time, I might not have dropped out of college the first time around. Luckily, by my second try I had pretty much taught myself.

Considering all the college kids out there who use Facebook, there should be some strong time management applications available. Here are a few I found that might help keep kids in school, or at least keep them from flunking Syntax.

First up is Projects. As the name suggests, this app is useful for helping you track some aspects of group projects, which would have been awesome in my salad days when meeting with a group for an assigned project meant running all over the dorms trying to track them down.  (You know, I really am not very old, I graduated like two years ago. I don’t know where these phrases like “salad days” come from.) You can open a new project in Projects, including title and description, invite other group members to join (as long as they’re your Facebook friends), and share files relating to the project. Files can be in several formats; I haven’t found the limits yet. (For example, can I upload videos? Until I get a better computer, we’ll never know. Or you could just test it yourself, of course.) There’s also a project Wall which allows group members to communicate on the page.

I love the design of this, it’s completely frill-free and very easy to use. You could easily use this to track every aspect of a project: meeting times can be scheduled on the Wall, and files upload quickly and are easy to see. I wouldn’t mind seeing a more specific scheduling aspect, though, to separate it from the other Wall conversations.

On that note, let us examine a social scheduling application called Timelight.  When using Timelight, your pre-formed choices for meetings are mostly about food and sports, which seems appropriate to my life since that’s mostly what I do when I meet up with people. There’s also a “Your Idea” option, and a few miscellaneous things like movies.

Here are some weird things about the application: When scheduling a meeting, fields to fill out include state and zip code. Now, I am pretty sure most people don’t schedule hang-outs in another state, so who is really collecting my data here? And what are they doing with it?

Also, I assumed that the “Your Idea” option in the “meeting type” field meant, you know, MY idea. But the app didn’t ask me for details, and now I realize it means my friend’s idea. I’m not sure there is an option for my idea. However, once you create the plan you have the option of entering a new name for it, so it’s not a big deal.

I like this app. I have a hard time keeping track of my appointments and it’s nice to have a fun tool that reminds me to, you know, hang out with my friends more. What bothers me is the insistence that “Timelight needs information about you in order to make better scheduling decisions.” As far as I can tell, I’m making all my scheduling decisions and Timelight is simply facilitating that. So why do they need to know, for example, what I do for a living?

However, the app promises not to show the info you enter to anyone, even your friends. It’s probably okay and I am unnecessarily paranoid about my data being stolen and sold to the Russians or whomever. And it’s a cool tool either way, so who’s complaining, right?

Why write a Thanksgiving post? Because there is no single place in America you can go to escape persistent reminders of the upcoming slew of holidays, not even the Facebook Observer. And isn’t that really so comforting?

If you’re reading this in another country, let me give you a brief history of Thanksgiving, the first in the string of winter holidays. (Unless you count my fella’s birthday on the 20^th, but you probably don’t.) Thanksgiving is the commemoration of a legendary meal in which the first white settlers in America sat down to eat all the American Indians’ corn and meat and bread and stuff. The Indians were also allowed to take part, or so the legend tells us, but after dinner the colonists got all the peach pie and forced the Indians to have smallpox for dessert.

That is one view, anyway, and it’s shared by some Facebook groups. For example, Happy Thanklesstaking! is working to remind people about the reality of the Native American situation, and they also bring us this wonderful little picture:

The group encourages members to make a donation to one of several Native American groups, rather than spending a ton of money on a force-fed bird and canned cranberry sauce.

This is very admirable, but you can’t ignore that Thanksgiving in recent years is less about screwing the Indians and more about celebrating your family and friends, and taking time to be grateful for the good things in your life.  Also, eating a lot. There are any number of Thanksgiving countdowns (here, here and here, to name a few); hardcore eaters might use these to judge when they should begin fasting in preparation for the blowout.

A secondary, but still important, use for Thanksgiving is that it lets college kids go home and get Mom to do their laundry. I am not in college, and actually have a washer/dryer one floor away from me, yet still I sometimes make my mom do my laundry on this hallowed weekend. Traditions are important. If you’re down to your last stack of whites and getting desperate, you might try Rides Home For Thanksgiving Break! which is exactly what it sounds like. Not a lot of people are using this, it seems, but the more people who sign up, the better chance you’ve got of finding your ride, so tell your friends to tell their friends.

If you don’t need any of this, but you miss making silly Thanksgiving-related art projects like you did in grammar school — well, you can still trace your hand and make it into a turkey, but if you want something higher-tech you can check out the Thanksgiving icons.

The only thing I can’t find is an application to organize my cooking process. This is maybe not that surprising giving Facebook’s demographic, but I would still love to see something that lets you organize your shopping and cooking in the days leading up to T-day. If anyone has seen something like this, leave it in the comments and I just might use it next year.

One of the best media cataloging sites YourSharade has released its Facebook Application. YourSharade acts like a digital representation of the real activities. It allows users to sort books,movies on a virtual shelf and even browse new clothes purchased by their friends.

Its is packed with many features -

For more features and other information don’t forget to check out YourSharade Application

Note - For installing the application you need to sign-in to the site from your Facebook page. 

Looks like a cross-over happening We now have the OpenSocket Facebook application, which enables users to run OpenSocial gadgets on Facebook. So what does this mean? Pretty simple actually, as developers can wrap their OpenSocial Gadgets. For more on the demo, check it out here. From the stated reasons, OpenSocket is trying to get Facebook to adopt OpenSocial

It is early days yet for OpenSocket as there are few things that it needs to sort out before hitting the real main-stream in Facebook. The first thing that needs to be identified is for whom it is meant? Developers or End-users or both?

For more on the benefits of OpenSocket do check out the link here .

U2 released a track from the reissue of their album Joshua Tree. The track, called “Wave of Sorrow,” has been unfinished for 20 years, but was completed for the album reissue and then posted on Facebook’s iLike application.

Not only does this video feature Bono singing the song, it also includes Bono explaining the song and Bono forgetting the song…while singing the song. He wears sunglasses — ’cause he’s cool! He’s Bono! — and sounds, at least at the beginning, kind of befuddled as to what is happening — ’cause he’s old! He’s Bono! — and it’s quite a treat to watch.

Christmas is coming soon and enjoy these applications on Facebook

Christmas Cash Machine - Developed by Sourabh Niyogi it is more towards sharing shopping info with friends and earning cash thru that

Christmas Cards - Developed by Pixel Apps, it is a super-cool app. to send Christmas cards to friends. Best-part is that cards can be sent to wall posts.

Christmas Countdown - Nice app. for keeping a check on the time towards Christmas. It is a clock which keeps telling you when the Christmas is coming. Developed by Wishafriend.com

Christmas Decor - Want to check out the best decorations for Christmas. Christmas decor is for you.

Christmas Tree - Developed by Face It .

Christmas Gifts - Developed by Briac Pilpré and Isabelle Hernandez it is a nice application to send gifts to friends on Christmas.

C.G. Lynch has written an excellent article at CIO.com regarding Facebook widgets for business users. The essence of the article is providing value through widgets which moves beyond entertainment.

The five widgets according to the CIO.com piece are:

1) Wikimono

An absolute necessity for Wiki and Facebook lover. It gives Facebook users a terrific opportunity to use Wiki right inside Facebook. Typically a user can create any type of Wiki with no experience whatsoever. You don’t need to know HTML, absolutely nothing. Just start.

2) MyLinkedIn Profile

A cool way to flaunt your Linkedin profile on Facebook page with a simple badge.

3) Sticky Notes

It is simply rocking on Facebook, a small widget company  called Squared Media has create this app. and today it has 200,000 active users on Facebook. A sticky note is a perfect sol. for leaving messages which are notifications. Notifications of meetings, interactions, plans anything

4) Blog RSS Feed Reader

Would be a smart-move to read news-feeds from your Faceook App itself. Do check Blog RSS Feed Reader. It does minimize the load on inbox.

5) Marco Polo

Check out where your friends are traveling, where they’re going. Especially good for colleagues who want to connect and explore what’s happening.