Facebook Herald

Late last night the AFP reported that Facebook has signed akin to the one that Myspace signed last January. From the press release:

We are raising the safety bar, first for MySpace and now Facebook, and soon for other sites as we fight for an industry gold standard. Facebook and MySpace are showing how to aim higher and keep kids safer.

This is with out a doubt a good thing. The focus of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumentha and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper is urging the development of new technologies verifies the age and identities of people using these sites. This would presumably be linked to a database of sex offenders and cyber predators so that they could be flagged or removed. Facebook actually had something similar to this in a way, when only individuals with e-mail address’ attached to an accredited college could join. I’m not saying that the old sytem flagged people in any way, just that it was a way to verify someones identity.In my opinion, there should be a minimum age for Facebook users

They also aim at severing links to pornographic web sites, something that I have not yet seen on official Facebook pages. On app pages on the other hand, I have seen advertisements for porn websites, so I wonder if Facebook will now be more closely monitoring the ads developers choose for their apps. Keep your eyes open for news on this in the future. The full AFP article can be found here.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, News | No Comments »

What:

The What is Bowfishing? App was created by Jeremy Stewart to be a quiz about bowfishing.

Here It Goes:

Every now and then I scroll through the list of newest apps for Facebook to see if there is something interesting that I could use and review. Sometimes I am looking for something particular, and then sometimes, like today, I’m just browsing. It turns out that an app called What is Bowfishing? caught my eye.I have to admit that my first reaction was, probably appropriately, “What the hell?” But then I remembered that I am an unbiased reviewer, perhaps there is a whole subculture of bowfishermen on Facebook that I don’t know about. At the very least I would learn something about bowfishing.

It turns out that the app is actually a five question quiz. Quiz is being very generous as there doesn’t seem to be a wrong answer to the questions. So, I guess a multiple choice questionnaire, about, you know, bowfishing. Like those “Which ___ are you?” quizzes, at the end it will give you result. Myself, knowing nothing about bowfishing other than you probably try to shoot fish with an arrow, achieved a result of “carpenator” to be, I guess, proudly displayed on my profile. Oh, and to see your results you are forced to invite a friend. So, yeah, two of my friends received invites to this app just so I could test it. Sorry guys!

There is no actual information about bowfishing provided to you, there is now social networking aspect such as forums or pictures, and it doesn’t even answear the posed question of “What is bowfishing?” In fact the only other functions on this are to take other quizzes or to make your own, which will ask you to install a separate app. This app would score much higher if it was called something like “What Kind of Bowfisher Are You?” or some such. Her at Facebook Herald we like apps that do what they are suppose to, do what they are represented to do, and do it well. If you want, for what ever reason, you can obtain this app free of charge from What is Bowfishing?

2/10 Well, there aren’t any errors…..

Oh, as a side note, bowfishing actually has quite the surprising presence on Facebook. A search for it brought up a list of 27 groups, the largest of which is Bowfishing. Check out them and other groups for actual information on bowfishing.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, Reviews | No Comments »

This just in from the official feed, three changes to the way the cookie API works.

Couple of updates to the Cookies API: data.setCookie & data.getCookies were pushed out:

1. Cookies API disabled for desktop apps.
2. Cookies API don’t require a session key.

3. If no “expires” attribute is specified in the cookie, the cookie is set to expire after 24 hours.

Facebook, baking a better cookie.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, News | No Comments »

According to the official feed Facebook is back on the Tuesday schedule for the push of their weekly update. The changes are as follows:

r96774 | jleszcze | 2008-05-05 01:04:21 -0700 (Mon, 05 May 2008) | 17 lines

• References and official support for the Java client library are being removed with this change. Please refer to the associated post to the developers blog for further details.

r96967 | wzhu | 2008-05-05 18:23:27 -0700 (Mon, 05 May 2008) | 18 lines

• Fix bug 2087: Condensed multi-friend-selector not displaying in IE

r97132 | ookelola | 2008-05-06 15:00:49 -0700 (Tue, 06 May 2008) | 17 lines

• bug 2103

r97168 | ccheever | 2008-05-06 16:05:42 -0700 (Tue, 06 May 2008) | 46 lines

• adding online_presence field to user table in FQL. returns a string, one of “active”, “idle”, “offline”, “error” (when we can’t get presence info on our side), or does the usual behavior when that information is privacy restricted.

It looks like bug 2103 was a bug that was causing thumbnails of web pages in wall post to not have the page name displayed. Good to have that fixed so we know what we are clicking on.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, News | No Comments »

What It Is:

After reviewing Mario Velasquez’s lack luster Mario Kart Fan app I decided to see what other applications he offers and there is quite the list. He seems to have a thing for using other people’s intellectual property, which, I guess is OK if it is an appropriate work of homage. On his extensive app list I found Warcraft Fan that combines two things that I love: Warcraft and Tower Defense games. I know, I know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But,am I really being fooled this time.

The Way It Works:

When Warcraft III, Blizzard Entertainment’s immensely popular entry into their RTS franchise, was released it shipped with a fully functional map editor that allowed players to modify the way the game was played. One of the most popular modifications was to create a map and make it into a Tower Defense map.

A small note on Tower Defense Games: This is a popular flash game genre in which a stream of monsters enter the playing field and attempt to cross it from the entrance to an exit on the opposite side. Playing fields normally come in two flavors, a wide open field or an already laid out maze like path, though there are other variants. It is your job to place varying types of towers strategically on the playing field to stop any monsters from reaching the exit. Most games will allow nineteen monsters to pass before the twentieth ends your game.

This app is a flash version of the popular Warcraft III modification. The playing field has a single long path with an entrance at the top of the screen that winds around until coming to an exit point next to the entrance. You are given forty gold to purchase your initial towers from which you have a choice of arrow(7g), canon(9g) or anti-air (12g). Each tower has it’s own advantages and disadvantages such as the arrow tower is fast but weak, the cannon tower is slow and can’t hit air targets but does splash damage, and the anti-air tower fires quickly but only hits air targets. Each one can be updated to increase their range and damage so these are all you’ll need for the first waves.

As your towers kill monsters they will reward you with gold which you use to buy new towers or upgrade your current ones. After a certain number of of rounds you will be given one lumber to spend on unlocking one a three new kinds of towers: a water tower that has relatively low damage but a splash and slowing affect, a fire tower that has high splash damage and fires fast, and an earth tower that fires very slowly but does the most amount of damage and splash in the game but only hits ground units. Each of these cost fifty gold after you unlock them. You could also spend your lumber on increasing the amount of gold you get from each wave. You can also spend forty gold at any time to gain a life back.

The warning on the app download page says that this is a tough game but it doesn’t actually present much of a problem until wave 32 when the difficulty suddenly swings up. Eventually you may want to mute the sound because the repeated custom sounds of things dieing will grate on your brain. The towers and monsters loose detail due to the small size of the game, and the towers look the same no matter how you upgrade them making it more difficult to find which ones still need upgrading. Besides the game the app also offers the Youtube and Flickr streams for video and pictures from the Warcraft franchise that his Mario Kart Fan app offered for that franchise. It also offers the forums, high scores, and a section that shows you who else uses the app.

All in all this is a pretty solid reproduction of the popular Warcraft III modification and that makes it seem more of a tribute than an attempt to profit off of some one else’s intellectual property as Mario Kart Fan came across as being. It’s fun and when you finally get past wave 32 it will feel like an accomplishment. Still though, I feel like a focus on the social aspect of the app would be well served. This is a definate improvement over Mario Kart Fan game wise and has the things that made that app neat, notably the streams. This app can be obtained free of charge from Warcraft Fan.

6/10 Warcraft Tribute + Tower Defense = Good Enough

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, Reviews | No Comments »

I’ve noticed through my Google Analytics report that nearly 40% of our readers are using an Apple operating system. I myself do most of the work for the site on a Macbook Pro so I thought it would be nice to do a feature on something for all of those OS X users out there. I headed right over to Apple and looked through their widgit library until I found this little gem for the Dashboard uploaded in January of this year by developer Dustin Senos.

After you download the widgit it gives you instructions on how to import the Facebook Notification RSS Feed into the widgit. Facebook also tells you how to access the feed but I found them both to be a little confusing. If you have some trouble with their instructions like I did you can do it the way I did.

My suggestion is to go to your Facebook Inbox and click the Notifications tab. On that page at the bottom of your right hand side bar, there is a RSS icon next to “Your Notifications”. Right click this link, click add in the book mark that comes up and now you have the an open page of tab with the RSS link right in the address bar. Copy and paste that into the widgit and you are go to go.

The feed is set to check for updates every 15 minutes by default. You can change this to ten, five, two or one depending on how into checking your notifications you are. The great thing about this widgit is that you don’t have to hang out on the website if you are waiting to hear back on something, or want to see if someone has commented on something you posted, like a picture. This is a one click access to your Facebook Notification feed that fits in great with the aesthetic sleekness of the platform. This OS X+ widgit can be obtained for free here.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, Spotlight | No Comments »

The official feed is  confirming that the weekly push that normally goes out on  Tuesday did go out last night as planned. As you can see the normal lines of push changes are present:

r95052 | jleszcze | 2008-04-22 23:45:27 -0700 (Tue, 22 Apr 2008) | 25 lines

• creates a new API call auth_expireSession, which will expire the current session being used

r95143 | mvernal | 2008-04-23 14:20:39 -0700 (Wed, 23 Apr 2008) | 16 lines

• Adds an fb:user-status FBML tag with support for two attributes — @uid and @linked. @uid specifies the user id. @linked specifies whether urls within the status should be hyperlinked. The default value is true.

r95561 | jleszcze | 2008-04-25 16:10:13 -0700 (Fri, 25 Apr 2008) | 15 lines

• Adds an API call auth.expireSession to invalidate the current user session.

r95892 | ookelola | 2008-04-29 11:13:10 -0700 (Tue, 29 Apr 2008) | 21 lines

• Turning off “For Facebook Pages” part of the application directory…

r96022 | mvernal | 2008-04-29 17:33:12 -0700 (Tue, 29 Apr 2008) | 27 lines

• bug 2033

r96041 | eric | 2008-04-29 19:00:57 -0700 (Tue, 29 Apr 2008) | 24 lines

• improving reliability for total users metric

r96054 | jleszcze | 2008-04-29 20:27:21 -0700 (Tue, 29 Apr 2008) | 18 lines

• Expose a user’s current locale in the users table for FQl queries/users.getInfo API calls.

But note the inclusion of Bug 2033. This is the bug that has been messing with the invite list for some applications. If this fix works then it  will be a well received release push. Our beloved Haikoo Zoo is one of the apps suffering from this bug so we will keep an eye on them through out the day to see if their situation improves.

The other items coming off th official feed is that allocation for bucket thresholds have been changed. If I understand correctly, it looks like apps that get a high amount of traffic, that is the most popular apps, have received more buckets for their notifications. Request are maintaining the same number of buckets but will receive more request for some applications (we assume the popular ones) and fewer request for others.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, News | No Comments »

The BBC published a story today about the possible risks associated with the installation of Facebook Applications.

Anyone with a basic understanding of web programming can write an application.We wrote an evil data mining application called Miner, which, if we wanted, could masquerade as a game, a test, or a joke of the day. It took us less than three hours.

The article notes that you have the option of turning off the ability of an app to acess your personal information, that’s the first check box you interact with when you decide to use an app. Even if an app does mine your info, it only has access to the information that you have already made public anyway. We here at Facebook Herald recommend that you use the same strategy when installing Facebook apps as you do when you download something to your desktop.

Facebook responds to the BBC with a Q&A:

Click: Is Facebook reconsidering at present its default security settings for applications at a level beyond day-to-day review?

Facebook: We regularly evaluate and adjust the security settings for third party applications to ensure that Facebook’s Terms of Service are not violated.

The full BBC article can be found here and the Full Facebook Q&A can be found here. Remember, social network responsibly.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, News | No Comments »

 What It Is:

I want to begin by saying that I am a huge fan of Nintendo’s Mario Kart franchise. I didn’t play it until Mario Kart: Double Dash came out for the Gamecube, and when Mario Kart DS came out for the hand held, I was hooked. Even now I play at least a few times a week with my friends over wifi, and have been  eagerly  anticipating  Mario Kart Wii. Mario Kart Wii was released earlier this week and I thought it would be neat to have an app review that corresponded. What I found was the Mario Kart Fan app developed by Mario Velasquez.

The Attempt:

The app provides many things, but the main feature, and the one that we are going to focus on is the flash game. The game is the main reason a person would want to install the app. What you would expect to be a Mario Kart port, or at the least a Mario Kart themed racer, is actually a, well, I don’t know what to call it.

What we’re looking at is a few background screens from Double Dragon for the NES stitched together to form an endless loop of the same back ground, if you watch, you can see the seam. The bad guys from Double Dragon have been mostly replaced with various Mario henchmen that walk from the right side of the screen to the left. These range from 8-bit goombas to 2.5D Diddy Kongs with Thwomps falling from the top of the screen. All of which appear to have been lifted out of Nintendo games. Your choice of protagonist is either Mario or Luigi in a small go-kart.

The controls use the arrow keys for movement and the “A” key as your only attack, a nitro boost that speeds you forward to ram enemies. And that’s the point, ramming enemies. There is no racing in this game, just gut splashing collisions. There are several abundant graphical glitches that are rather annoying. For one the thwomps that fall from the top of the screen can not be rammed through, which I get, but it’s nearly impossible to know how far above or below them you have to be to avoid them because the item collision sub-par and often you will clip through part of a thwomp one time and not another. In addition to the visable seams in the background that a mentioned earlier is the fact that when you are nitro boosting you can not see the only other enemy that can impede you, the spike shelled beetle things. The games end when you have taken enough damage to reduce your health bar to zero. There is a tiny box in the upper left corner of the play screen that displays how many enemies you have hit and missed, and your score. These numbers are so small that they are pretty unreadable.

There is more to this app than the game though. Accessing it through your left sidebar you can get to the forums and high scores if you manage to be able to read it. Now the next three almost could make the app worth getting and in my opinion should be the meat of the program. There is a button for photos and videos that stream for Mario Kart tags from Flikr and YouTube respectively. If you are into the franchise and like media on the subject, this is actually pretty cool. There is also a button to see other people running the app and leave them a message and a button to see a list of other apps. The whole app seems pretty ad intensive and I was not able to excess the game portion for the whole day yesterday.

The Wrap Up: 

Here’s the thing, as a Mario Kart game the flash game fails to deliver in any way. It is obvious that Mario Velasquez has some kind of programing ability, but wasted it on a sub-standard attempt to get attention from a popular franchise. Instead of shoe-horning the idea to make Mario Kart even remotely involved, why not make an original game? The idea of the game is a good one, the execution of the game is not. Grab an artist friend if you can not make the background/sprites on your own, call it Crashman or something and give developing this app another shot. There may be a good idea in here for a social media sharing app, and maybe some energy towards that would be rewarded. All in all the game, as is, is not any fun and I recommend staying clear of it. If you insist on giving it a try, it can be obtained free of charge from Mario Kart Fan.

4/10 Some Wasted Good Ideas

Popularity: 9% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, Reviews | No Comments »

Facebook generally pushes out it’s new releases on Tuesday of every week but they must have hit some sort of snag. The official feed is telling us that the release that was supposed to come out today will instead land on Thursday. They will be back to their normal Tuesday releases next week.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Filed under: Facebook, News | No Comments »