I’ve been using Opera since it reached version 9.0 in 2006. I have used it every day since in one form or another. I use Opera on my PA laptop, on my Mac, on my TV, my games console and on my Phone, and since Opera’s rendering engine is now built into some Adobe products (Photoshop, Dreamweaver and GoLive) I’m using Opera even when I don’t realise it.
A few weeks ago, the Camden Roundhouse played host to one of Britain’s great underestimated bands. Perhaps to call them undiscovered would be a misrepresentation for Athlete have had 3 top-ten albums and a couple of top-ten singles, but the sell-out crowd would call them one of the country’s most unappreciated bands. The crowd was mostly middle-class 18-30s, a lot of couples and close groups of friends, which is probably one of the biggest indicators of why Athlete have never taken off in the way they should have. They’re not a band that your whole group of friends will like, some people will understand and some won’t. Read more »
Wandering around London today, I found myself in the Apple store on Regents Street, firstly to find out who’s supporting Athlete tonight in Camden (Boy Kill Boy was the answer), but secondly to test a rumour I heard. I’d been told that the iPhones in the store all had working sim cards and you could make and receive calls! I had to find out if it was true.
Whilst at work today, I, like almost everyone else in the office, was being updated in some way/shape/form on the Macworld keynote speech, in which lord Jobs announced a number of products including the Macbook Air. Possibly the most talked-about piece of hardware since the iPhone, the ultra-portable macbook looks mighty pretty (see picture below) and is incredibly small. I’m writing this on a 3rd generation Macbook with the same 13.3″ screen, but the new Air will be almost as thin as the lid of the macbook! Read more »
Well, facebook have certainly shaken things up a bit haven’t they. Almost totally opening up the API so developers can write applications that fit inside facebook itself! Utterly unheard of before, but potentially brilliant. Lets have a quick look at what you can do with all this new technology.
From the developer’s pages, developer.facebook.com they’ve created their own markup language, FBML. This allows for quick access to certain functions and their layout styles. Great stuff. You can also add in flash and mp3 files so people can listen to music. You can also add in an <iframe> element to display an off-site page. You can upload pictures from external applications and you can query the database using FQL (Facebook Query Language). This all sounds really great, but lets look at the limitations.
The big thing really is the ability to put iframes inside the canvas. From there you can do whatever you like inside the frame.
So, it all sounds good. Now it’s whether I can use it. Today I sent out an e-mail to all uni-sport.org members with a link to a survey on it (http://www.tigersurvey.com/survey.php?survey=2815) so I can get some feedback. One of the questions is about facebook and if people would want an extra feature, would it be better pictures, commenting, facebook integrates with profiles or uni-sport integrates with facebook in the way of an app. At the moment, I’m hoping a lot of people don’t go for the last option.
After some thought, I’m not sure if it would be possible to use facebook apps for such a complicated application as uni-sport. For it to work as it does at the moment, if a club asks for a web site, they will have to have their own unique facebook application. This is because of the team selection idea. If a group wanted to do team selection from within an application, only people in that group would be on the list. However, there is no way to make an application private between a group of people and AFAIK, no way to moderate who uses the application. There can’t be a global application as team selection wouldn’t work very well (it’d have to be select from people in network X who are members of group X, but that forces people to be in a group, which isn’t how it should work).
At the moment, Uni-sport is a glorified group page with team selection, match reports and a calendar. With team selection being at the heart of uni-sport, until private applications can be written, Uni-Sport will not be appearing as a facebook application.
Well, I’m glad that that decision has been made, now I can get back to my revision (lol)
Steve
Currently Listening to: David Ford
Currently Eating: Birthday Cake
Currently Reading: CSS Mastery and facebook documentation
Currently Watching: Lost season 3 finale. Amazing
Days left at University: 13
Full-time and freelance job opportunities available at Authentic Jobs:
Post a job and reach web professionals everywhere.