Facebook launches own app store for iPhone, Android

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/facebook-launches-own-app-store-for-iphone-android-50007908/

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0CRZIG5VvmY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The video above shows a survey conducted via YouTube which encouraged participants to give their opinions and test the functionality of the application 'The Status Detective'. To encouraged responses posters were put around Goldsmiths university with the link to the application advertising a £20 prize incentive (user to be chosen at random on the 14th May 2012). Overall the video wasn't as effective as the paper prototyping but did attract the application some attention.

exciting update

There has been a recent lack in blog due to working on the report.

However I am pleased to announce that the prototype application has been approved my Facebook and the SSL certificate has finally gone through which means the Anonymous Status application will be LIVE by the 14th May 2012.

I can also confirm that the prototype is finished after surveys and user testing and will be functional.

Yay !

This is the logo I've designed for the application it needed to be designed well so that users trust the application and believe it's something Facebook approves of and not a virus or anything that could harm the users computer. It was made using Adobe Photoshop CS5.

I want to embed the application once authorised into Facebook's newsfeed status box, diagrams to follow.

DIAGRAM

My SSL certificate has not yet been approved by 'Global Site', the reason this has taken a while is because my hosting email MX records were not set up yet.

Meanwhile I have began mapping the concept of "Meme me" the idea of data grabbing from users profiles to generate imagery.

Here is a diagram / map of the pages the user will face

Blogger has a new layout & update!

So Blogger has kindly decided to confuse me today and add a new layout which I'm sure will benefit the website in the long run but is not benefiting me right now because I don't know where anything is!

That aside.

I'm currently having a go at building my old/new idea of "meme ME!" the concept of taking keywords from the users Facebook profile and generating images from those words.

I  am currently experimenting with Yahoo Pipes, my plan is to filter a Facebook profile then search Flickr for the images generated from the keywords found on the users profile to then generate 3/4 images to represent that users Facebook.... essentially creating the users current meme. It sounds complicated... below I've just outlined what I'm trying to achieve.

1.) Pipe searches Facebook for current likes and what the user is talking about...e.g. shopping & drinking

2.) Pipe takes keywords found and searches Flickr for related imagery

3.) Imagery is generated and posted onto users Facebook profile.... named as the users "current meme"

IMAGES & DIAGRAMS TO FOLLOW

error !

Just as everything seemed to be slotting together I get an error in Filezilla, however Filezilla did help me in explaining when you login to the SSL section of your website you don't want ftp@ you require ftpes@ to login. This basically takes you to a different upload port.

The SSL is https:// whereas the standard site is hosted on http://

I believe there is an error because the SSL was only put through today and the certificate still needs the thumbs up.

The email from 123-reg stated the following "Your application is now with GlobalSign’s vetting department. Once GlobalSign has validated your SSL, they will send you an email to let you know your SSL has been issued.

You will be contacted by GlobalSign (the issuer of your SSL certificate) in order to complete some manual checks.

Once your SSL certificate is issued, you will need to manually install it. But don’t worry, we will help you through the process."

I'm thankful I've left time between purchasing the SSL certificate and finishing my application, it just goes to show a Facebook application cannot be made last minute !

success!

I feel I've reached the first milestone in managing to link my website with Facebook's application developer

https://apps.facebook.com/anonymoustatus/

Currently it's just 123-reg's holding page displayed because I haven't uploaded anything but the fact it's linked is a great achievement since it's taken a good two weeks.

The reason it took so long was to do with the fact you need an SSL certificate to link your website/application within Facebook's interface.

useful link

http://code.google.com/p/facebook-java-webapp/

Reading 'Facebook application development' I was suggested the above link on page 31, I'm going to keep it handy because it seems it could potentially help me with the java coding later on :)

I was excited to see the showcase the java facebook app had displayed, however when I followed the link it lead me to a page informing "This application does not yet support secure browsing (HTTPS)".

Thankfully I have already read a number of sources so I can understand what this means, basically Facebook applications did not used to require an SSL certificate then Facebook forced it upon all applications by October 1st 2011. Therefore if the application didn't have the certificate it was taken down which is what has clearly happened to this one (pictured).

123 reg making my life harder

I have been a 123-reg customer for at least five years now and they've always had issues with loading, it seems when the website processes too much data it seems to crash.

123-reg have let me down so many times today whilst trying to register an SSL domain name. Upon payment I entered my card details and was told there was an error, so I re-entered only to be given another error of 'you've already paid' this could have potentially been catastrophic, in that I could have paid double due to the websites inefficiency.

I've just had a look at GoDaddy.com's prices for SSL certificates and their cheapest is £19.99 whereas 123-reg's certificate is £9.99.

Adobe Digital editions

I'm not getting on with 'Adobe digital editions' I found it strange to begin with when downloading an e-book from Waterstones how it was a .acsm file with no explanation of what programme this could be run with. I soon worked out it was Adobe digital editions so installed the programme, the interface is smart and professional, easy to navigate and tasteful in colour scheme. However If the user (me) chooses to scroll down it skips a whole page! which is highly frustrating as I like to still have reference to what I've just read.

I've attached a screenshot of the interface, blurring out the books content for copyright reasons.

2 Books !

I have found the above two books, 'Facebook application development' I was able to purchase as an e-book from the Waterstones website.

'Building Facebook applications' I have had to order from Amazon so I will be reading and reviewing the development book first.

From a quick scan of the 'Facebook application development book' I have found useful hints and tips but mainly strong advice of where to start and where to finish.

control panel comparison

123-reg

- graphics 123 boxes look like a child's building bricks

- The font similar to Comic Sans also makes the interface of this website look like it could be designed for a young audience

- I think 123-reg's tactic might have been to make the interface basic and user friendly so the user looks at it and believes the system is fool proof

- The control panel is extremely easy to navigate but lacks certain options that one.com has

One.com

- phpmyadmin option

SSL certificate

I've been slowed down!

Facebook asks specifically for a https OR SSL certificate before you can link up a website with their application service.

This was what was holding me back before and creating confusion, as I was trying to host my application using a http:// URL as opposed to a https:// URL

I have now changed hosting providers as One.com do not support SSL, I have changed to 123-reg who I have used before. I try to use One.com as much as possible because their domains and hosting service is incredibly cheap, also the second you login you're offered services such as phpmyadmin. Everything is there on the control panel so I worry later on that 123-reg might not support what I'm doing as I've had problems with them supporting php in the past. I have also had problems with 123-reg being money greedy in the sense they act everything is cheap on sign up and there is later hidden fees, their support isn't bad though so that's why I'm willing to give them another chance.

I now have to wait for my ggstatus.co.uk to be transfered to 123-reg before I can begin uploading webpages to Facebook.

connecting to Facebook

To make an application or website that interacts with Facebook (me) the developer must login to https://developers.facebook.com/ and 'create an app'. This will give the developer all the details needed to construct the code that authorises the application to interact with Facebook.

Whilst researching I have discovered that the basic authentication is required to use Facebook, otherwise Facebook is unaware of third party developers using Facebook's content.

Thankfully I created the application a while back so this should speed up the process of allowing my website to interact with Facebook. I have purchased the domain www.ggstatus.co.uk to make the process easier as you can't use a localhost/ as the content isn't hosted online.

I chose the domain ggstatus because of the gossip/guess aspect of the website, also it's short so therefore easy to remember. I would have preferred 'the secret status' however the domain is taken and abbreviations of the name are too long/complex.

rankbook.com

I have been recommended a programme called 'rankbook'

Since being recommended the programme I've looked into exactly what it does and it's a very useful programme if you are a company or business that want emails/phone numbers and details of users on Facebook.

What the programme does is basically display the browser the user is in, as the user you can then extract profiles onto a database and once the user clicks 'go' the programme will download phone numbers, emails DOB records etc onto your programme.

I can see why this programme was recommended to me because it's about data extraction, however I want to develop a code which will pull data continuously from the users profile. The data I want to pull specifically is status updates containing certain words and punctuation.

Therefore this programme is no use to me right now but could come in useful when I want to get my website active in future.

TERMS

I have been looking up terms for what exactly I am trying to achieve and it's technical terms of how I'm going to achieve it. I am referring to the data grabbing of ones Facebook news feed.

Web Site Data Extraction

Web Harvesting

screen scrape / data scraping

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping

I have read and briefly looked into the concept of screen scraping, which is a technique that originally involved connecting a computer to a terminal screen so others could read the text.

"This was generally done by reading the terminal's memory through its auxiliary port, or by connecting the terminal output port of one computer system to an input port on another. The term screen scraping is also commonly used to refer to the bidirectional exchange of data"

I have come across this information after looking up how I can grab certain pieces of information from a website without using FQL language. I found the term 'screen scrape' from this question on the stack overflow website http://stackoverflow.com/questions/71491/how-do-you-grab-a-text-from-webpage-java

AnonymouStatus Survey

A second survey has been made so I can compare the results of the MemeMe survey to the Anonymous Status survey and see which application is more popular with the participants.

Link to survey - https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WDXDYFM

Questions below

AnonymouStatus

 

1. Above is the homepage for the AnonymouStatus application, from the name and design what is your understanding of what the application does so far?

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1=Poor understanding 10=Great understanding

2. If you were to post an Anonymous Status onto Facebook which category would your truth post likely full under?

If you were to post an Anonymous Status onto Facebook which category would your truth post likely full under?  Drunk Rant Thought Bitch

3. Would you want other users to be able to guess that it was you who posted the status?

Would you want other users to be able to guess that it was you who posted the status?  Yes No Depends on the status

4. Above is what the user's interface would look like upon clicking 'Guess' is it what you expected?

Above is what the user's interface would look like upon clicking 'Guess' is it what you expected?  Yes No

If No, why not?

5. Above is what the users interface would look like upon receiving a guess from another user, is it what you expected?

Above is what the users interface would look like upon receiving a guess from another user, is it what you expected?  Yes No

If No, why not?

6. Above is what the interface would look like if the user guessed correctly, the user receives points. Do you think points is an effective rewarding system?

Above is what the interface would look like if the user guessed correctly, the user receives points. Do you think points is an effective rewarding system?  Yes No

Comments and Suggestions

7. Above is what the interface would look like if the user decided to 'gossip' and share the anonymous status they've found with another user, is it what you expected?

Above is what the interface would look like if the user decided to 'gossip' and share the anonymous status they've found with another user, is it what you expected?  Yes No

If No, why not?

8. Would you be more likely to Guess a status or Gossip about the status?

Would you be more likely to Guess a status or Gossip about the status?  Guess Gossip

9. Do you think the application works better integrated into the Facebook News Feed?

Do you think the application works better integrated into the Facebook News Feed?  Yes No I don't know

Comments and Suggestions