I can only get Google Analytics to work about half the time these days (I get an messagewhen trying to login that says “An Error Has Been Detected”).

This is happening for every site I monitor (which is significant). I don’t know if this is just a problem for me or if other people are seeing it as well but it’s really frustrating.

While still vague in regards to details, Facebook today released some important information regarding their new design that is sure to excite those users that are considering leaving for other networks. The first of such features seems to be a slap in the Face (and maybe a token from former Google Execs) to Google Employee-founded FriendFeed. Facebook is calling the feature, “Publisher”, and from the Developer Wiki,

“The Publisher will be a central focus of communication and sharing in the new profile. It sits right on top of a user’s Feed inviting the user or others to add content. Applications can integrate into the Publisher to provide rich experiences for creating or finding content to post into their own and their friends’ Feeds…

This has replaced the old Wall Attachments feature. Now, Wall is just one type of application for creating content (text content), on par with posting links, or uploading photos or videos. For example, to add a video with the Video application, the user no longer creates a Wall attachment and adds the video. Instead, the user posts a video to a friend’s Feed just as if she were writing a Wall post.”

From the screenshots (to the left), it appears as though you can also comment on each posted item, further encouraging a “conversation” amongst members of the Facebook community. What’s most interesting is the integration with the Facebook Platform API and ability for developers to present items for discussion within a particular user’s Feed. It appears as though your applications will be able to actually utilize the text box within the publisher to present information on a user’s feed in different ways. More information regarding the new combined Feed/Wall can be found here.

Also very interesting is it seems as though Facebook will soon allow, via the publisher, the automatic playing of Flash, and onload events within FBJS. It seems this is Facebook’s answer to the demand from users migrating from Myspace and the competition from Bebo who allows such onload events.

In addition to the publisher, Facebook has released more information via their developers wiki about the Tabs that will be available, and how applications will be displayed via those tabs. It appears as though at first, all applications will be rendered in their current form in a tab called “boxes” (they mentioned earlier today that name may be temporary). What’s new though is it seems as though your application will be able to give the user options to render other forms of profile boxes to an “Info” tab on the user’s profile. It’s unclear, but this could mean your application will be able to have multiple forms of displaying itself within the user experience beyond just Canvas pages, profile boxes, and feeds. A new FBML tag has been created for this purpose called “<fb:add-section-button/>” which appears to give your application the ability to have the user add a “section” to their profile. (I now need to update FBML Essentials!) Such section will have the ability to display image objects or text that the user can type and provide to your application.

Facebook is also allowing your applications to register an “Application Tab URL” which will have your Application appear in a list of applications next to a “+” (plus) sign in the list of tabs. The user will then have the option to add your Application as a tab, offering an alternate canvas view of your application for the user’s friends to see.

Beyond the Info and Boxes tabs, it’s a bit unclear as to what the other tabs will be called. The most recent screenshot by them includes a “Photos”, “Wall”, and “Feed” tab, but it seems as though the Wall and Feed may be combined to produce the “Publisher”. It could be that the current “News Feed” will be under the Feed tab, while the combined Mini-Feed and Wall will be under the Wall tab. I’m sure we’ll see more screenshots soon. Also of note is that the Action items, the links below your profile image currently, will be no more. Instead you’ll be able to offer your users interactivity via the publisher and other integration points throughout the user’s profile.

It also seems as though the separate News Feed/profile is no more when you log in. It seems they are bringing the focus on the profile and including what is now the “News Feed” to become what will be the “Feed” tab. I like this new concept and hope it catches on - I think it will be a win-win for both Facebook, users, and developers in that it will bring a more fluid experience to users, and encourage discussion and people more than anything else.

With the release of this information to the developers wiki it seems Facebook is on the verge of releasing the new design very soon. I would expect to see such features in the next week or two, considering it was originally supposed to launch last month.

UPDATE: Facebook just released their official announcement here: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=107

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After the MiniDV videotape camcorders and before the explosion of hard disk camcorders,several manufacturers were making these camcorders that would record directly to DVD media. A handful of them recorded to full-size DVD media, but most recorded to a small... Doran "Fozz" Barton http://www.fozzilinymoo.org/

I think this will be the last interview video from the 2007 Utah Open Source Conference. This is Derek Carter of NeverBlock talking about Xen, virtualization, and his history using and teaching about Linux and open source software. I think... Doran "Fozz" Barton http://www.fozzilinymoo.org/

I received a copy of the cover for FBML Essentials last Friday. I was waiting to figure out what the bird was on the cover before I shared it. The bird is a White Throated Dipper - from Wikipedia:

The White-throated Dipper (Cinclus cinclus) is an aquatic passerine bird found in Europe and the Middle East, also known as the European Dipper or just Dipper. The species is divided into several subspecies on colour differences, especially of the pectoral band.

My Editor tells me that usually they don’t have reasons for the animals they have on the covers of O’Reilly books, and that they usually choose an animal that fits well with the look and feel of the book. I guess one could say that most birds are “Social” - anyone know anything more about the White-throated Dipper? Here’s a video of one in the wild:

You can pre-order the book here - it should be available in print around June or July, based on the production schedule they sent me. There’s always a chance it could be at Graphing Social Patterns in June. If not, look for it at OSCON in the O’Reilly booth (and who knows - maybe I’ll be there to sign your copy!).

UPDATE: I forgot to mention - Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook.com, and Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com did the Foreword and Afterword for the book. Thanks to both of them (Rodney wrote his Afterword on his birthday!) for putting the time in for those! It’s an excellent read and reference for all already into or looking to get into Facebook development!

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Our Utah Social Media Developers Garages (UTSMDev) happen every second Tuesday of every other month, and that is coming up one week from today. Our next meeting will be on May 13th from 7pm to 10pm at the same place as last time, Bungee Labs. We’ll bring the Wii or Xbox in case there’s time to play afterwards.

At this event, Bungee is going to show us a simple “Hello World” for Facebook using their Bungee Connect Platform. For those unaware, Bungee had “Platform as a Service” down before Google App Engine came out, and have recently even partnered with Amazon EC2 in order to provide full server access beyond their current platform. I have some videos of their stuff I took while at Web 2.0 Expo that I’ll try to post later this week in my “Utah Startups” series.

I am still looking for businesses to sponsor snacks and drinks (or even a full dinner - Bungee supplied Fuddruckers for our last event!) for the event - if your business would like some exposure I’ll be sure you get the credit. It could be a great way to meet new developers, Social Media experts, and bloggers!

As usual, while this event is targeted towards developers, everyone is welcome at the event, as it could be a good way for your business to meet developers in this area, as well as just learn a little more about the Social Media space! For future announcements of UTSMDev events, be sure to subscribe to our Google Groups mailing list here!

Bungee Labs is located in the old Wordpress building on the second floor - you can find directions here:

625 E Technology Ave B2300
Orem, UT 84097

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=625+E+Technology+Ave,+84097&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.724817,82.265625&ie=UTF8&ll=40.325575,-111.679738&spn=0.008163,0.020084&z=16&iwloc=cent

Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page.

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(I’m beginning to move much of my activity over to FriendFeed lately. Scoble calls it the “World Wide Talk Show” - please subscribe to my feed to comment and participate!)

I was going to write a few more of my annoyances with Twitter today, but a few pleasant announcements have come out of Twitter lately that I thought I’d share.

First, just announced today, Twitter will be shutting down accounts entirely that they have marked as “spam” on their blacklist. What??? Twitter has a blacklist? Yes, you heard it right.

Before today, Twitter would mark accounts as “spam”, but not tell the owners of the accounts they marked them as spam. Those owners of the accounts could follow others, but no one was able to follow them, and there was no way for the owners of those accounts to know they had been blacklisted. It was the same with the API - it was actually a huge headache for me as a Twitter API developer because despite me following the user, Twitter would respond with nothing as though the follow went through, but the next day the user would show up again as not being followed. I checked with Twitter and they confirmed the accounts I was having trouble with were indeed accounts that were on their “blacklist”.

Today, Alex Payne confirmed on the Twitter Dev mailing list that from now on users marked as Spam on Twitter will have their accounts suspended entirely for violating the Terms of Service. He also confirmed that they would avoid the headaches Facebook has had (aka Scoble’s account being suspended) and contact the owners beforehand to let them state their case.

I strongly welcome this new practice - Twitter has all the stats on their end to flag accounts as possible spammers, and by removing their accounts promptly this will make Twitter a much nicer place to use. The only other thing I would suggest they add now that this is in place is a way for developers to notify them of possible Spam accounts. You can do this as a user by “blocking” the account in question - I have no way to do this as a developer that I’m aware of.

The second, very welcomed feature is the addition of a “since” variable when requesting the friends or followers of an individual. In the past on SocialToo.com I had to do a request on all of an individual’s friends and all of an individual’s followers, and do a compare to see which of those following you, you weren’t following. For several A-list bloggers with near tens of thousands of followers, this was taking a few hours to complete the entire script, not to mention increasing the number of HTTP requests back to Twitter’s servers, I’m sure further burdening their already overburdened bandwidth.

Now, with the “since” variable, I can keep a tally of when I last checked your following/follower ratio and only do a request on those friends that have followed you since the last check. I can now go from checking those you follow on a daily basis, to checking almost every minute!

Last, Twitter has added the ability to determine, with one API call if a friendship exists between two individuals. Now rather than having to get a list of those you’re following, and then those that have followed you, I can just get a list of those following you and check to see that a friendship exists.

It is very refreshing to see such an active effort on Twitter’s part to help out the development community. I hope they continue to maintain the relationship they have with us, and continue to listen - many of us really want to see them succeed.

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Earlier today I was checking out some stuff on www.digg.com when I saw this fine advertisement from McDonalds show up and block what I was trying to read. There must have been some problem with the code for the ad. Click on the image below to see the full-size screenshot....

Read the rest of this article on Netlobo

Here are the details (there is also a calendar):

Utah OpenSUSE user group wiki page

Tonight we are having our first openSUSE User Group meeting, we’ll be discussing 11.0 Beta 2.

* Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 @ 7:00pm. * Location: Applebees, 105 E 12300 S, Draper, UT * Google Maps: Click Here

You can get more information on the group here.

I saw this plate the other day…

A few days ago, I wrote about how hard it is for good, employed job seekers to search for new work while retaining anonymity.

But what if a candidate is not really “looking”, but also wouldn’t pass up the right opportunity if it, well, fell in their lap…?

Sometimes the difference between someone “happily employed” and “happily employed… but listening” isn’t very much.  As an employer, how can you be attuned to those subtle shifts in perception of both your company as an employer, and their outlook as a candidate?

As far as I can tell, there is no way for someone to easily, passively and privately tell a company, “yeah, if you had something great for me, I would be interested.”

Is there?