Utility

Clever Hippo, is a slick application that was launched about a week ago. I initially delayed a review because I didn’t see much value in an application search engine given that Facebook has one. In the long run, I still don’t see this as an effective business model given that Facebook is going to be forced to update their directory sorting functions due to the massive influx of new applications. For the time being though, Clever Hippo is pretty darn useful.

Clever Hippo not only searches application titles and descriptions but also the names of developers that have built them. There are also a number of sorting features that allow you to browse through your search results more efficiently. Ultimately, this is what the Facebook application directory should be. I’m guessing that eventually it will be similar but not in the immediate future given all of their other development projects. If you want an alternative way of finding applications, then go grab the Clever Hippo Search Engine application.

Clever Hippo Search Screenshot

Popular Searches Page

Courtland Allen and Aaron Rosado, two MIT college students have just released an application that enables you to access your Gmail account from within Facebook. Honestly, I see Facebook as more of an unproductivity tool than anything else but this application is seriously well made. You can pretty much access all of the gmail features from within this application. The only feature that is currently missing is the embedded Gchat application. Additionally, this application lacks some of the aesthetics and AJAX features that Gmail has. That’s not really a big deal though given that the application works properly and doesn’t look bad at all. If you were interested in accessing your Gmail from within Facebook, this application definitely gets the job done. If you want to check out Gmail on Facebook, go grab the Fmail application.

Fmail Inbox

Fmail Compose

Fmail Message

Want to post comments on content anywhere on the web that your friends can see? I new startup called CommentAnywhere enables users to post text, photos and videos directly to any website and share that content with their friends. When you browse to a page, you can view which of your friends have commented on that content. The only downside of the application is that currently you need to register by entering your Facebook email and password but there is nothing on the page specifying that they have integrated with Facebook.

From the perspective of an average visitor, I would be highly skeptical of a registration like this. The cool part though is that the software utilizes Facebook for the social connections. Ultimately, I think individuals are going to use one site to manage all of their social connections and then there will be websites and/or applications that leverage those connections. I would assume that this is what Google is aiming for with their new platform. If you want to check out their application which is in the alpha phase, go check out their website.

There have been a number of applications on Facebook that enable you to place image grids on your profile that help describe you. I previous reviewed the GridView application which generates a grid of your friends’ profile images. Since then there have been a number of copy cats. This most recent application, generates a grid of your friends, photos, favorite movies, music, books and t.v. shows. While the application is pretty simple, it does generate some pretty cool grids.

Another cool feature is the AJAX overlay that appears when you click on each of the images (as pictured below). The 10×10 application is monetized via the Amazon affiliate program. The Amazon affiliate program has become a standard form of application monetization and has been extremely lucrative for some. If you want to visualize your interests then check out the 10 x 10 application.

Blake Commangere, developer of the Zobies, WereWolves, Vampires and Causes applications has launched a social content discovery application with Lucas Ryan and Yanda Erlich. The application while similar in concept to StumbleUpon, uses Facebook to handle the social connections. The application is relatively simple. All you do is install a browser widget and suggest sites as you are browsing the web.

Rather than sorting information by category, as StumbleUpon does, the Discoveries applcation (which is powered by Mogad), sorts contend based on what your friends suggest. Unfortunately, when I was testing the application, none of my friends had added the application yet so none of my content was very relevant.

When you initially configure the application, you can select sites that you would like to see in your Mogad feed. For some reason I had content from sites that I hadn’t selected yet none of my friends had installed the application. Blake has said that they are still in beta and perfecting the algorithm so there may be some small bugs. For now though, the application seems to work and the concept of social discovery is a powerful one.

One thing that I find interesting about this application is how it leverages Facebook to manage all of the social connections. Leveraging Facebook in such a way can be extremely powerful when launching your own site. Rather than spending time to develop the social component of your application, you can easily tie into Facebook to leverage their social components. If you’d like to try getting content based on what your friends are reading, go grab the Discoveries application.

Discoveries Homepage

Discoveries Content Selection Page

Yesterday afternoon, Lee Lorenzen posted a comment on my blog about a new feature of Adonomics. Adonomics provides analytics tool comparable to SocialMedia’s Appsaholic. As of a couple days ago though, Adonomics has added a valuation feature which is simlar to dnScoop‘s website valuation tool.

The Adonomics valuation tool calculates the value of the I Am Hungry application (which was put on eBay two days ago) at $25,789. Apparently the marketplace doesn’t agree given their current maximum bid of $1,000. It will be interesting to see if anybody steps in toward the end of the auction and bids it up. Perhaps Lee would be willing to hop in and pay for the application, providing a discount to his calculated value of $25,789.

While the valuation calculator is simply one method of calculating the value of an application, it is currently the only calculator that does so currently. I also think it provides relatively accurate value based on other applications I have tested out. I also think they may want to adjust their algorithm based on the sale price of the two applications for sale on eBay once the auctions are closed. Ebay is the closest thing to a perfect marketplace so it should provide an accurate representation of value. Just for fun, here are the values of a few randomly selected applications:

• Likeness – $7,629,890
• Nicknames – $1,808,170
• Causes – $4,570,260
• My Bush Countdown Clock – $7,300

A new startpage application, WidgetMinded, launched on Facebook yesterday. The application allows you to browse through over 20,000 widgets to display on your profile. It’s an interesting application in that it provides a startpage within Facebook. It almost seems like an oxymoron.

If you consider your Facebook profile somewhat like a startpage then it doesn’t make much sense to use. Conversely, if you prefer to use your own startpage and would prefer to have yours within Facebook, this is a great start. All of the widgets appear to be Google gadgets. The one downfall is that for each widget that you add, it doesn’t appear in your profile, you need to view the widget within the application.

I personally think showing the widgets within the application defeats the purpose but it does effectively illustrate what can and can’t be done within the Facebook platform currently in regards to distributed widgets. It will be interesting to see if Netvibes, Pageflakes and other startpage competitors follow suit. If you want to try out the first startpage application on Facebook, go grab the WidgetMinded application.

A friend of mine recently posted a note on Facebook explaining why he still chooses to keep a blog for his Facebook friends, rather than just communicate with them via notes. Beyond the most obvious explanation – Facebook is closed to non-members – he offered this as a defense:

“Facebook’s lack of a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor makes composing my blog posts much more difficult. On Blogger [Google's blogging platform], a single button makes whatever I have highlighted bold. Another button adds a link. Another inserts a picture. Facebook’s system is too complex for simple expression.”

WYSIWYG editors are commonplace on social networks. MySpace offers one for its blogs, for instance. Every common online forum package offers an editor of some sort. Why, then, doesn’t Facebook simply create one and satisfy its users?

The answer lies, perhaps, in another part of Facebook’s messaging system: its Walls. Facebook’s wall system is fairly advanced for a social network: while HTML isn’t allowed, posters can add pictures, music or videos using Facebook’s Share method, or they can attach content from any of Facebook’s applications. Despite this, Facebook strives to maintain a simplistic layout for their walls, as can be seen here:

While this message comes with a video atttached, the box itself stays relatively minimal and compact. Clicking the video attachment will open an embedded player underneath the message. The post itself can’t be modified in any way: only plain text can be added.

Here, however, is a sample post from Facebook’s Advanced Wall application, which allows for WYSIWYG posting on a separate space:

Ignoring the annoying advertisement at the bottom, this post is still a much more gaudy, excessive one than the simple wall post above. Font sizes change, colors are edited, and images are added. (Videos posted would appear without a thumbnail: the player would appear without prompting.) Is it more “expressive?” Perhaps. However, Advanced Wall posts take up much more space, and are much more eye-catching, than Wall posts are.

On a site like MySpace, which lets its users run basically amok, HTML editting like the above post might not seem out of place. Facebook, however, has built its entire service around understatement, minimalism. Users can’t change its page layout, add images – beyond photos – or really change the workings of Facebook’s default Information block system. Wall posts aren’t meant to be fun or eye-catching: they’re meant to be messages, plain and simple.

Notes are really the only self-expression any user needs: nowhere else is HTML formatting really necessary for basic communication. Writing notes, however – especially longer notes – sometimes requires slightly more complex formatting.

Notes, however, appear in users’ feeds when they are written. Allowing very easy formattion via notes would lead to possibilities of cluttered, unwieldy feeds. So, Facebook makes formatting slightly harder than the norm for notes. Rather than including a WYSIWYG for instant gratification, they merely allow formatting, and include a link to standard HTML formatting tags.

Why is this an advantage? Simple: it means that for users who really want to stylize their note, or for users who already know what they are doing, formatting isn’t hard at all. At the same time, they add a slight learning curve to formatting, so casual, inexperienced users don’t go overboard with their styling.

Sometimes, as in the case of Facebook’s notes, keeping a feature out means keeping away a lot of clutter in the meantime.

Running a small business? Why not run your operation on Facebook? Maybe not totally but a new application has made it easier to run at least one portion of your business on Facebook: conference calls. The Free Conference Calls application makes it easy to set up conference calls. All that you need to do is create the conference, add the attendees and finalize the call.

The application utilizes your phone number as the identifier when calling in. One of the coolest features of the application is an AJAX box within the conference event page which displays callers that are present. You are also able to invite users based on their email address not just your Facebook friends. I tested it out and it worked flawlessly.

The Free Conference Call application is highly useful and leverages the standard Facebook interface design. One other cool feature of the application is the ability to host public events that anybody else on Facebook can participate in. I guess you can view it as a party line. If you make conference calls for your small business or for personal reasons, I highly recommend checking out the Free Conference Call application.

Are you an ex-MySpace user that is tired of logging into your MySpace to view your profile. Thanks to Jess Martin and Drew Chen you won’t have to do that again. The new SpaceLift application enables users to import their MySpace profile directly into the SpaceLift application. You can also click through each of your friends and view their profiles within Facebook.

My first time through I received an error. After emailing the developers of the application, I came back later and everything seemed to be working smoothly. My profile was successfully lifted even though my MySpace page currently has a template. The only thing that I think is lacking from this application is the ability to view your Facebook friends’ MySpace pages. Personally, I no longer use MySpace. The only purpose of using this application for me is to check up on the profiles of those friends which have yet to hop on the Facebook bandwagon.

While most of my friends have hopped on the Facebook bandwagon, there are a few that I am not in direct contact on a frequent basis and they have failed to convert. I’m sure they’ll move over soon enough! If you want to import your MySpace profile, go check out the MySpace SpaceLift application.