Utility

Facebook chat rolled out yesterday but apparently some users are already tired of it. Jesse Stay just contacted me to tell me about a new greasemonkey script that he hacked together that blocks chat for Facebook users. Personally, I’ve kind of enjoyed the limited amount of Facebook chat experience I’ve had so far aside from the fact that it’s limited to the browser. I’d like to have a standalone Facebook chat clients as well as an email client.

Seriously I have no idea what’s taking Facebook so long to roll out an updated messaging system but the current one is horrendous. My current inbox on Facebook has over 250 messages and there is no hope of recovery. Anyways, aside from my Facebook inbox, having a tool to blog Facebook chat could be useful for many. The only problem is that even though the Greasemonkey script will block chat, your friends will still be notified that you are online.

Receive a message? You simply won’t receive it causing your friends to assume that you have now ignored them and no longer want to speak to them ever again. This is the risk you take when you play with greasey monkeys. Still though, for those that have 5,000 friends (or close to it), signing on to Facebook can be a detriment to your health with an instant influx of 30 plus messages taking up your entire screen. For those few that have friend overload, I’m sure that this tool will come in handy.

Update
As a number of people pointed out in the comments, apparently there is a way to simply go offline. All you have to do is go to the right hand side of the Chat bar and click “Go Offline.” Figuring out how to use chat would definitely be a good idea, prior to building applications around it

Are you a fanatic about complete transparency in this digital era? If you are then you must add the new FindMe application to your Facebook profile. Every 15 minutes your approximate location will be updated in your Facebook status thanks to a simple technology similar to Google Maps mobile technology which determines where you are based on cell phone towers. I’m not quite sure why on earth I would want to let anybody know where I am at any given minute but this is a great tool for parents that want to track their activity offline.

Did your girlfriend say she was going to a movie with her friends today? Why is she driving around another state then? You can now put your relationship to the test by adding the FindMe application. Then again I would suggest against this application if you want to maintain any sort of normalcy in your life. Imagine your friends calling you “Hey man you just drove by my house but didn’t stop by! Great friend you are!”

This application also makes sense for those hard working truck drivers but really how many truck drivers are really active on Facebook? This tool raises the bar for invasive technology but then again you have to opt into it. Do you think this application is useful? Will you be installing it? If you want to you can go grab the Findme application.

I often get in conversations with others about success and how to obtain it. For each of us success is different but I can always recommend a few key books that helped make me who I am today. I typically reference “Think and Grow Rich,” as well as “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and “Never Eat Alone.” Those three books create the Nick O’Neill book trifecta. There’s one other book I’ve recently added to my lineup and that’s “The Secret.”

While the video may initially come off as cheesy, there are a lot of valuable lessons. One of the key components of that book is the concept of “vision boards” that you use to place an image of your goal so you know what you are working toward. Another component is your personal list of goals that you constantly need to review. The closest thing I’ve seen to mimicking the tools necessary for success on Facebook is the On Track application.

The On Track application provides you with a way to list goals, create vision boards and manage projects. It’s a great tool and I highly recommend checking it out if you want somewhere to keep track of your goals. I think this is a great iteration and what would be a nice addition is some sort of internal community where members can ask each other about tricks for overcoming challenges and how to maintain goals.

Right now the application appears to be less focused on being social but I definitely see an opportunity for this to succeed. By leveraging a little more community and building out their features a little more, this could be an amazing application for those that are …. well, trying to stay on track! If you are one of those people that have high goals and want a place to manage them, check out the On Track application.

One of the largest problems for developers since the platform launched last May has been the lack of robust application statistics that provide access to all the demographic statistics within Facebook. Instead, developers have opted to use Google Analytics which fails to provide demographic information outside of approximate location. While Facebook provides some demographic statistics, the time period for each of the stats is significantly limited.

Last week while attending the Graphing Social Patterns conference in San Diego I had the opportunity to speak with Ian Swanson, CEO of Sometrics, about the solutions that his company is providing. Sometrics provides developers with access to statistics encompassing installs and uninstalls, age, gender, number of friends and location. They also currently provide live chat support for those developers that need assistance with getting things configured.

The application has been in beta since last October when it demoed at the first Graphing Social Patterns conference. I was really excited to post about it at the time but was told not to. Five months later the application is live and ready for developers. If you are looking for more useful statistics on your application, I highly recommend checking out the new Sometrics Application.

Weekly Statistics

Applications Overview

Daily Stats

A new Facebook application called Fuser lets you view all of your MySpace comments and messages from within Facebook. I previously reviewed a similar application that imports your Myspace profile and this one isn’t much different. The application loads a java application that automatically logs in to MySpace and scrapes all of your content. The main problem is that I can’t send my messages from within this app.

I have to be honest though, I don’t have any messages to send on MySpace but I’m sure there are Facebook users that do. For those individuals that would have a need to send MySpace messages, this application is not for you. This appears to be one of those applications that have a great idea but don’t go through the effort to complete the task. I know that it’s programatically possible to create an application that sends messages via other social networks but this company chose not to.

Then again, sending messages through various social networks from an external application is most likely a violation of the terms of service. As was the case when Robert Scoble got kicked off of Facebook for testing out the Plaxo contact import tool. Whatever the case, Fuser lets you take a look at your MySpace messages and wall posts but not respond. I think this application does not reach its full potential. If for some reason you would like to view but not respond to Myspace messages, go grab the Fuser application.

Are you sick and tired of there being too many useless Facebook applications? Wish there were way too many? Well the EZ App Builder is here to grant that wish. The app exists to allow users to create their own applications in minutes with very little trouble, but ultimately it fails in its limitations.

Out of a lack of creativity I created an app that let’s you tell your friends you miss them to let you see what an app you can create looks like. While the instructions given to create your app are surprisingly clear, the EZ App Builder only lets you make one sort of app: the useless kind.

You’re limited to creating an application where users can do a thing to one another, such as tell someone they miss them, or some sort of poke, or the like. It does, however, allow you to easily take advantage of many of the viral tools Facebook offers.

The application that you create is adorned by 4 ads, one of which is your own: the rest belong to the parent application. One of the ads is incredibly poorly placed, right in the center, and reminds the user that the application was made by the EZ App Builder.

It’s definitely neat for a relative layperson to be able to make a custom application with ease. Given the limitations on substance, however, I will be very surprised if any of these simple applications gain any popularity in the long run. It’s relatively new, and they claim that new features will be rolled out shortly, so I think that the EZ App Builder is worth keeping an eye on.

-Jonathan Kleiman is the founder of Probook, Canada’s self-professed quintessential professional network, and CEO of CSSAGLOBAL, an offshore web and software development company based primarily in India and Canada.

My friend Andrew Cafourek picked up a pretty cool feature within the Facebook mobile application: a phonebook. I’m not quite sure how long the phonebook has been available but it is pretty darn useful. Remember the good ol’ days when we used to converse with each other rather than twitter each other? Now you can call up your friends thanks to the easily accessible Facebook phonebook!

Don’t be surprised if you get a phone call me sometime soon. This concept of speaking with people verbally is a fascinating one! Given that this is on the mobile application, I’m assuming it is easily accesible from your phone. Forget adding all of your contacts to your phone, just add them to Facebook! Actually, that would be ok if Facebook enabled you to export your contacts but unfortunately they don’t. I’m not quite sure why they are so concerned about export functionality considering LinkedIn enables you to.

Will you be using the phonebook application?

Ecard sites are an extremely popular destination among web users. On Facebook there are already a number of eCard offerings but 123Greetings has just launched an extremely robust one. The application provides users with completely free access to over 20,000 eCards. A number of applications have popped up as temporary solutions to the lack of diverse holiday card offerings but it appears as though 123Greetings may have just filled that void.

123Greetings has done exactly what a successful should do: port over their entire site! All of the 123Greetings eCards are available through this application. The Hanukkah card that I sampled was pretty awful so I hope that the others aren’t as bad. Whether their cards are creative or not, 123Greetings is already the largest destination for eCards on the web.

If you are interested in sending eCards to your friends, go check out the 123Greetings eCards applications.

I can’t deny it any longer: I’m a big fan of mashups. However, most mashups seem to serve a very limited, niche purpose that needs to be fully adopted by the user before their potential is realized, and I rarely come across apps that I feel can really add a significant amount to value to the market and to my day-to-day life.

I received an email from David White at FlightStats regarding a new application they have deployed, and I instantly saw numerous ways that the application could used to streamline existing practices in flight tracking.

As an avid traveller, I usually resort to a combination of my Apple flight tracker widget and iCal to keep my flights organized, but that method has such limited functionality that I may as well just call the airline to track my flight.

According to David, FlightStats:

“provides real time flight tracking as a Google Maps mashup, accurate flight status on global flights, flight status alerts (changes, arrival, departure, etc.) by FB notification, mini-feed updates, email or text message, plus lots of useful airport info including current airport delays and weather conditions.

As a social activity, you can share your flight info and status, track friends’ flights, alert a friend who is supposed to meet you and compare travel plans to see who’s going where.”

I really feel that this application has a lot of potential, and I’m looking forward to utilizing it to manage all of my upcoming flights and flight reviews. If you want to view flight info and statuses in real-time on Facebook, check out the
FlightStats application.

Another great application has been launched on Facebook. The College Planner application that was just launched by Embark enables high school students to apply to colleges directly on the site. In addition to applying, you can find out what schools your friends are interested in as well. Best of all, it is completely free to use. Recently, there have been a number of useful applications, including the Projects application which I reviewed yesterday.

I expect a large number of high school students to use this application given the rapidly increasing high school demographic on the site. Junior year in high school, all that people would talk about is what colleges they applied to. By senior year, all that people could talk about is what colleges they were going to. Given that Facebook applications are meant to be social, this application will most likely be a hit. If you can build what people are already talking about offline, they will typically embrace it online.

Since I’m not in high school, I won’t be using this application. If you happen to be in highschool then I highly recommend checking out the College Planner application.