Archive for April, 2010

File Under: Events, Social
Apr
21
2010

Facebook Shows Off New Tools to Socialize the Entire Web

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SAN FRANCISCO, California — Facebook is launching a new suite of tools that bring the Facebook social experience to any site on the web.

The company is releasing a set of products called Social Plugins, which any web publishers can drop into their website using one very simple line of code. These plug-ins will let visitors “Like” news stories, photos and so on. Once a user likes something, it instantly gets added to the appropriate section of their Facebook profile.

The plug-ins are part of a new Facebook initiative to make every website on the internet sharable across its network, something the company is calling the Open Graph.

The announcements were made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and platform engineer Brett Taylor at the company’s F8 developer’s conference taking place here Wednesday.

Facebook will roll out the Like buttons Wednesday morning, and Zuckerberg boldly estimates that within 24 hours, there will be one billion Like buttons across the web.

Facebook has often been branded as the next AOL, a website that basically recreates several experiences available on the open web — chat, e-mail and link sharing — behind a closed gate. But with Wednesday’s Open Graph announcements, the company is giving website owners a bigger door into Facebook’s closed system using simple HTML tools and by incorporating open standards into its authentication system.

Zuckerberg, speaking with his trademark brand of stiff, awkward enthusiasm, calls the new Open Graph initiative “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web.”

A grand platitude, certainly, but one of the most transformative shifts in Facebook’s policies, as it enables sites to more easily link up their content on the open web with the Facebook ecosystem and access its 400 million active users.

“With these tools, any web page can become a Facebook page,” Taylor says. “If you don’t like the way Facebook pages look, just make your own. Add the Like buttons and the Open Graph elements and you’ve got a page that’s fully integrated into Facebook.”
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File Under: Events, Location
Apr
21
2010

Facebook Tags Everyone at F8 with RFID Chips

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Meet your friendly Facebook RFID tag.

Here at Facebook’s F8 developer’s conference, each attendee has a small plastic token attached to their badge. Inside the token is an RFID chip. On the back, there’s a ten-character unique ID code. We’ve all been instructed to go to facebook.com/presence and enter our personal code to activate it.

Once your token number is linked to your Facebook account, you can walk around to each of several readers set up around the venue here. There’s an RFID chip inside this little blue piece of plastic, and at each reader, that chip gets scanned and some sort of post goes up on your Facebook profile’s Wall.

There’s a photo booth — scan your chip and it snaps a photo of you and uploads it to your account. There are gaming lounges, and you can become a fan of whatever company or game is sponsoring that lounge by tapping your chip against the reader.

It’s possible there’s some tie-in to a larger presence-sharing announcement coming later on at the conference. Or, it could just be something born from a keg-fueled discussion by some engineers, as the Presence site on Facebook says.

Either way, as soon as it was explained to me what this little blue dongle was doing hanging off of my badge, my first thought was, “It begins…”

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File Under: Events, Social, Web Standards
Apr
20
2010

Up Next For Facebook: Expect More Open Interactions

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Facebook F8

Facebook essentially copies a bunch of services that are already available on the open internet — chat, e-mail, media sharing, profiles — for its 400 million active users. But it also provides tools to help those users interact with each other while they’re outside Facebook’s walls, and there are signs the company is ready to make those tools more open and more easily integrated into other websites and applications.

The social network has already seen great success with Facebook Connect, its authentication system other websites can use to let their visitors log in using their Facebook username and password, then leave comments or share items with their Facebook friends with a single click. They can also hop around between websites and apps without creating a new account at each stop.

Facebook Connect has certainly fueled the explosive growth of social interaction across hardware and software platforms, as it helps Facebook friends notify each other of their activities on other social websites, the movies they’re renting, or the high score they just got on their favorite iPhone game.

Facebook Connect was first announced in 2008 at F8, Facebook’s developer conference. The next F8 is taking place Wednesday in San Francisco, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to announce the next phase of his company’s plans to further extend its sharing platform during his keynote address.

The Facebook Connect system isn’t entirely open — a key reason for its existence is to feed social sharing traffic back into Facebook. But it has much in common with other emerging open standards like OpenID and OAuth. Most social websites use a mix of both Facebook and non-Facebook options to handle user authentication, and Facebook Connect is not fully interoperable with competing technologies.

But several recent events point to Facebook making its own platform work better with open technologies. Last year, the company joined the OpenID Foundation and it began partially supporting the technology by allowing users to log in to Facebook using OpenID credentials. Also last year, the company hired David Recordon, one of the key architects of OpenID and OAuth, and purchased FriendFeed, a website that aggregates people’s social activities. Soon after acquiring FriendFeed, Facebook released its Tornado sharing framework under an open-source license.

Facebook wouldn’t comment on any upcoming announcements when contacted for this story. However, outside developers remain hopeful that the company will continue to grow its sharing platform by making it work in tandem with other open technologies already in place.

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File Under: HTML5, Web Apps, Web Standards
Apr
16
2010

Google Turns to HTML5 for Gmail’s New Drag-and-Drop Attachments

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gmaildragndropGoogle continues to use HTML5 to push its web apps into the future. The latest bit of HTML5 to feel Google’s love is drag-and-drop support, which is now a standard part of Gmail. If you’re using Google Chrome 4 or Firefox 3.6, you can now simply drag a file from your desktop onto a message window and Gmail will automatically attach the file.

The new feature solves one of the most common complaints from web app users — why can’t I just drag and drop files like I do everywhere else? Well, thanks to the new APIs in HTML5, you can.

We’ve seen a few implementations of HTML5′s drag-and-drop features, including on Google’s own Wave, but Gmail, which has over 140 million users, is by far the most popular web app to embrace the new features. Part of the reason for the slow uptake of drag-and-drop support might well be some of the difficulties developers have had in supporting the feature — differences between browsers make drag-and-drop one of the most complex HTML5 features to implement.

Hopefully, with Gmail leading the way, drag-and-drop for uploading files will become more common since it is, as your less tech-savvy friends have no doubt pointed out, the way things should have been from the beginning of the web app era.

Gmail’s drag-and-drop support has skipped the usual Gmail Labs trial period and gone straight to standard feature (the feature is also already available for Google Apps for your Domain users).

To see drag-and-drop in action, just grab a file off your desktop and drag it into a Gmail compose window. The area above your message, where attachments are shown, will change to say “Drop files here.” Drop the file in the target area and it will automatically be uploaded and attached to your message.

For now, the new features are limited to Firefox 3.6 and the latest version of Chrome, but Google says it’s working on support for other browsers. However, that’s an odd thing for the company to say given that the only real way to use HTML5 drag-and-drop is if the browsers themselves have added support (again Internet Explorer 8 is left behind since it doesn’t support drag-and-drop — unless you’re running Google Chrome Frame).

Curiously, Safari 4 supports the HTML5 drag-and-drop API, but for now, the feature won’t work in Gmail if you’re using Safari.

Drag-and-drop isn’t the only new feature making its way into a Google product. The Google Docs team has also announced it will be switching from Gears to HTML5 to power its offline features. For the most part, the change won’t be noticeable since Gears was designed as placeholder hack for HTML5′s offline features, though it does mean that offline support will be disabled for a few days in May.

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File Under: Identity, Programming
Apr
15
2010

To See How OpenID Can Work Well, Look at Stack Overflow

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openid logoOpenID, the decentralized identity system that dispenses with usernames and passwords in favor of a single, portable web identity, promises to eventually change the way we login to our favorite websites.

While OpenID holds great promise, the reality today is that users sometimes don’t understand it. It’s an entirely different experience than a traditional login, so it can be confusing, and the user experience varies radically from site to site.

OpenID is, frankly, a work in progress. But, as developer Jeff Atwood recently wrote on the Stack Overflow blog, “I would rather be part of the solution than yet another brick in the wall of the problem… even if it involves a tiny bit of short-term friction.”

Atwood goes on to give an interesting developer perspective on what it’s been like to use OpenID on Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is an interesting case study since OpenID is the only way to create an account at the site (you can use Stack Overflow without creating an account, but there’s no way to sign up using a traditional username/password).

In other words Atwood and company made a big bet on OpenID and for the most part it appears to be paying off. Here’s some key points for developers that Atwood pulls from Stack Overflow’s OpenID experiences:

  • Google is by far the largest OpenID provider at 61% of all registered accounts
  • The change from “enter your OpenID URL” to “click the logo of the company that provides your identity” is a huge usability improvement (I’d disagree with this one, if anything, Chris Messina’s OpenID Connect proposal seems more like the future of the OpenID UI.).
  • Support for multiple OpenID providers is key, since it gives your users the ability to change OpenID identities whenever they want. This is important, as their current OpenID provider could disappear, locking them out of their account.
  • The OpenID protocol itself can be implemented in unusual or incomplete ways by different providers. Atwood points to specific problems in the way Gmail handles OpenIDs, which require Stack Overflow to request your e-mail address as a kind of fingerprint for your OpenID.

The Stack Overflow crew seems to be happy with its OpenID-only account system. It’s worth noting that Stack Overflow obviously attracts users with a higher-than-average tech savviness, but the lessons Atwood details are relevant even if OpenID is only one of your site’s many sign-in methods.

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File Under: Web Apps, Web Services
Apr
15
2010

Twitter Plans to Launch its Own URL Shortener

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SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter has announced it will start its own URL shortening service for tweets from its official apps.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams made the announcement Wednesday night at Chirp, the Twitter developer’s conference. It happened casually, during a Q&A session with attendees.

Williams sees the lack of an official Twitter link shortening service as “a problem” that needs to be solved.

When Twitter turns on its URL shortener, it will be the default shortener for the Twitter website, and the official Twitter apps on BlackBerry, the iPhone and Android — yes, there is an Android app in the works, Williams confirmed. The BlackBerry app is finished, and the iPhone app will be released as soon as Twitter completes the acquisition of AteBits it began last week. AteBits makes the super-popular Tweetie for the iPhone, which will be rebranded as Twitter for iPhone.

Twitter must have been planning this for a while, because it purchased Twee.tt (that’s a URL from Trinidad and Tobago) a few days ago, and that will probably become Twitter’s short URL root.

Right now, the Twitter website uses bit.ly to serve short links, and the most popular client apps give people a choice between bit.ly and other sites like tinyURL or J.mp. But bit.ly is the most popular, mostly because it’s the default link shortener for Twitter.

Williams said that the official client apps that are on their way will probably not give people a choice between different shorteners. “If they want to use a different shortener, they can just use a different app.”

The official apps will also serve Promoted Tweets from Twitter’s ad platform.

Bit.ly will likely survive — people are loyal to it now because it offers real-time stats for traffic and retweets on your shortened links. Bit.ly also has a paid service and a platform for creating your own URL shorteners.

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File Under: Events, Identity, Social
Apr
14
2010

Twitter Switches on @Anywhere

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This is an @anywhere hovercard

This is an @anywhere hovercard

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter’s @anywhere features are now live for developers to start using, the company has announced.

Developers can begin using the system to integrate different kinds of Twitter engagement directly into their sites or apps. You can find details about it at the new Twitter developer site (which also launched Wednesday) at dev.twitter.com.

@Anywhere basically provides a way to let Twitter users follow other people and send tweets directly from within your web page or app.

The key component is the “hovercard” — you’ve seen them on the Twitter website for the last month or so. Any time you see somebody’s Twitter handle mentioned, you can hover over that person’s handle and a little window pops up showing their profile photo, location, short bio, number of followers, and — the key part — a “Follow” button you can click and add them to your follow list right there, without leaving the page.

The announcement was made by Twitter’s head of platform Ryan Sarver at Chirp, the company’s developer conference happening here.

You can start dropping hovercards onto your site using “a few lines of JavaScript” (outlined on the documentation page at Twitter’s development site).

It’s interesting to see so much excitement around hovercards, which have a lot in common with hCards, the microformat standard for publishing and sharing contact information on the web. Microformats have been around for a while but they haven’t really been widely adopted, and it will be interesting to see if rebooting the idea on top of the Twitter platform — a social layer that makes them more accessible and relevant– will give new life to the concept.

The other components of @anywhere are the “Connect with Twitter” (a remote sign-in system) and the Tweetbox, which you can embed in your page and let people send tweets directly from the page.

Sarver brought out some media partners to talk about how they’re deploying @anywhere features. There were some impressive presentations from The New York Times, Yahoo and MSNBC News. If you’re reading a story on one of their websites, you can see a hovercard when you hover over a journalist’s name and start following them immediately.

One other announcement from Sarver: Twitter is turning on an as-yet-undocumented feature called Annotations this week. It allows developers to add any kinds of metadata they want to tweets. The obvious one is content-specific tags, but we should see other implementations of Annotations when developers start playing with them at the Chirp Hack Day taking place tonight and Thursday.

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File Under: Events, Location
Apr
14
2010

Twitter Launches ‘Points of Interest’ Pages for Locations

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SAN FRANCISCO, California — Twitter is adding location-based place pages to its website, the company has announced.

The new feature is called Points of Interest. Starting soon, users will be able to click on a place name (or a location tag, if one exists) in a tweet and see that place on a map. Next to the map, they’ll also be able to see what people are saying about that place in a search results view. From what we’ve seen, it’s a convenient entry point into the current Twitter chatter about a certain place or city.

There will be an API for developers, which we’ll learn more about later today. The API will let developers build this feature into client apps, so it will be accessible from more places than just the Twitter website soon enough.

The announcement was made by Twitter CEO Evan Williams at the company’s Chirp developer conference taking place here Wednesday.

There are several hundred developers here at Chirp, and the announcement drew a round of applause from the audience.

“I think it’s a big step forward for the Twitter platform,” says Andy Gadiel, founder and president of JamBase, a social website for finding live music shows and events in cities worldwide. “Location is all about relevancy. Not just where you are in terms of a latitude and longitude point, but a real place in the world.”

We’ve seen huge growth around location-based services lately, especially on mobiles, where it’s become central to the user experience of almost every search-based or social app. Late last year, Twitter added the ability for users to add location to tweets, something that made tweets more relevant for search applications. The location tags are basically geotags indicating latitude and longitude, or latlongs. Also, Facebook recently added location-sharing for its users’ status updates as well.

Just after the announcement, Williams fielded a question from the audience: Will Twitter have a check-in behavior around Points of Interest, a la Foursquare?

His response:

“We’re not looking to duplicate the functionality of Foursquare or Gowalla. We want to make those services work better with Twitter. If you’re writing a tweet about a place and you type the name of that place, that’s sort of a check-in. But what we’re really interested in is what you’re saying about that place.”

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia
Apr
12
2010

Report: Google Will Release VP8 Video Codec Under an Open Source License

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on2logo_250x100

We may finally have a solution to help open video out of the morass its currently stuck in. Recently, all eyes have been on Google to see if it would open up the VP8 video codec, which it very recently bought the rights to when it acquired software maker On2.

According to NewTeeVee, Google is stepping up to the plate.

Google will soon make its VP8 video codec open source, we’ve learned from multiple sources. The company is scheduled to officially announce the release at its Google I/O developers conference next month, a source with knowledge of the announcement said. And with that release, Mozilla — maker of the Firefox browser — and Google Chrome are expected to also announce support for HTML5 video playback using the new open codec.

If this actually happens, open video will get a huge boost on the web. It will take a few years for VP8 to gain dominance, given the huge penetration of Flash and H.264, but it’s a significant step forward. Since Google owns YouTube, a major game piece is already in play.

One big question remains — will VP8 videos play on the iPad and iPhone?

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File Under: Browsers, Mobile
Apr
12
2010

Opera Mini Arrives on the iPhone

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It's real. Go ahead, touch it.

It's real. Go ahead, touch it.

After weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved Opera’s Mini browser on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

So sayeth the press release:

Opera Mini will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on market

Opera Mini, with more than 50 million users worldwide, enables fast mobile Web browsing by compressing data by up to 90 percent before sending content to the device, resulting in significantly improved page loading. Users of the app will notice an uptake in speed, especially on slower networks such as the 2G Edge network. Surfing the web with the Opera Mini App on iPhone and iPod touch will also help users save money because of its data compression capabilities. This will hold especially true while the user is incurring roaming charges.

Opera doesn’t really need to sell it that hard. If you want Opera on your Apple touchscreen, you already know all about it and you’ve been waiting for this day.

Keep checking the App Store tonight and tomorrow to get yours.

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