If you're like me, then you probably thought that Facebook practically invented the term "poke," a word they've adopted to mean, as best as I can describe, reaching out to someone on Facebook and offering them an informal "hello."

As it turns out though, the poke has been around much longer than I realized. This blog post on E-Consultancy filled in the details.

The poke was actually born in 1963 as a BASIC command. Both "PEEK" and "POKE" were used by programmers, POKE meaning to insert data into memory and PEEK meaning to read that data.

The POKE command was also available for 8-bit computer games as a cheat - finding the right POKE could boost your immunity, get you more ammo, etc. On Usenet, gamers would search for POKE commands for their fav games. Who knew?

The post also gives details on the history of "fingering", a word that also sounded inappropriate to me. Fascinating read, though - check it out.

It was announced that the Windows Live division has partnered with five social networks - LinkedIn, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, and Tagged to facilitate address book portability, as a part of the commitment to supporting data portability initiatives. Using the Windows Live Contacts API, announced at this month's MIX08, the users of the social networks can easily import their Windows Live contacts into the social network web sites. Starting today, you can visit www.facebook.com and www.bebo.com to find your friends using the Windows Live Contacts API.  Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn will be live in the coming months.

Additionally, a new site, Invite2Messenger, will let social network users invite their friends from their social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list. As of today, Facebook works, with the other networks coming soon.

This 2-way street for moving relationships from site to site is more secure than other methods, like "screen scraping," which is the term used to describe the process of allowing one site access to your address book by providing your login credentials (or vice versa). This new process respects your privacy while still allowing for the open flow of data.

• Notable Changes in Windows Vista Service Pack 1
• Backstage at Hard Rock Cafe
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• MySpace

I recently saw a post on Jason Langridge's blog about the Windows Mobile Fan group on Facebook, which got me thinking, I wonder how many Microsoft Facebook groups are there? Quite a few, as it turns out. I couldn't find anyone else who had put together a list of all the groups, so I figured I would. Little did I know how many groups there were. Kind of an overwhelming task, so instead, I bring you the highlights:

Groups of People

Nitrodesk Photographer's Edition is a WPF application that lets you connect to and manage your photos and photo albums across several different photo sharing services. With Nitrodesk, you can pick any online album and manage it in real-time - updating the album or photo properties, viewing and managing the comments, transferring the photos between services and much more. The app also allows you to backup your photos from an online photo-sharing website to your PC.

This program is great, especially if you want to move photos from one site to another, but don't have them all on your PC to re-upload. How convenient!! The software currently supports the following services: Google (Picasa Web Albums), Flickr, Facebook, ShutterPoint, SmugMug, and Windows Live Spaces.

You can download the beta version of the program here.

Jussi Palo, a .Net developer, has created an add-in for Windows Vista Media Center that updates your facebook user status according to what you're watching/listening on Media Center. Using the add-in, your facebook status will be updated with a line that says: "....is watching (name of program)." If you're listening to music, it says "...is listening to ARTIST-TITLE." The add-in checks every 10 seconds for changes and only updates facebook if a change has occurred.

To run the add-in, you'll need Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition and .Net 2.0. Then you do the following: 

1. Install using setup.msi, restart is required
2. Start Media Center
3. Separate Windows Forms window is opened where you must login to facebook.
4. If this is the first time running the add-in a notification is shown that you have to give the Extended Status update permissions
5. Extended permissions Windows Forms window is shown. Grant the permission, and close the form.
6. Add-in runs in background updating your facebook status.

Later when Media Center is started, only you facebook login is required.

I've written a few posts about apps that get your Facebook contacts into Outlook - like FBLook, which provides access to Facebook via a toolbar add-in, and Facebook app, Fonebook, which syncs your contacts; but what about exporting contacts from Outlook to Facebook? If you are like most people, you still tread a fine line between work-related social networking and personal social networking. However, in most people's inbox (the most inclusive social network we all have), resides all different types of people and connections. You may want to export your work colleagues to LinkedIn but export your friends and family to Facebook. Now you can, with the new ClearContext Contact Exporter for Outlook (Beta). The program lets you create and export groups of email addresses found in messages that are stored in the Outlook folders you select.

Once you’ve created the list using the Contact Exporter tool, you can import these contacts into any services that accept CSV files.  Here are import links for a few popular sites (log into the sites before clicking the links below):  

LinkedIn
Facebook (click Email Application and scroll down to Contact File)
Evite
Socializr

You can also use the exporter to create distribution lists and new contact files in Outlook. The ClearContext Exporter for Outlook (Beta) is a part of the company's latest IMS v4 suite, which is free for 30 days during the trial period. However, the Contact Exporter remains functional even after the 30 days are up.

Are you a Facebook user who also uses Microsoft Outlook? Have you ever wished that you could have your Outlook calendar update from your Facebook events and birthday lists? Now, you can! With fbCal, you'll be able to remember you Facebook friends' birthdays and all the events you've been invited to. In under a minute, you'll have a Facebook calendar you can subscribe to in Outlook or a downloadable copy you can import into Outlook. fbCal will actually generate two different types of calendars - one for birthdays and one for events - and each is available as a subscription or a download. Subscription calendars get updated whenever you refresh your calendar after there was a change in your Facebook friends or events. Download calendars are only accurate up to when you last downloaded the calendar. All the calendars made by fbCal are iCalendar (.ics) format.

To Subscribe to an fbCal Facebook Calendar in Outlook:

1. Click the link for the Internet Calendar Subscription.
2. You might be prompted to acknowledge that you are opening a hyperlink. You should click Yes only if you know and trust the validity of the linked calendar.
3. At the prompt, Add this Internet Calendar to Outlook and subscribe to updates, click Yes.

From the makers of OutTwit comes FBLook, a plugin for Outlook that allows you to update your Facebook status and view notifications without having to open a browser.

<from the FBLook website>

If you are an Outlook user, you probably have it open all the time. Now you can update your Facebook status, see your friend statuses and see the number of new requests without having to open the browser or any other applications. FBLook seamlessly integrates Facebook into Outlook.

• Update your Facebook status directly from Outlook.
• Set your status to the name of the song you're playing in iTunes or WMP.
• See your friend statuses.
• See notifications of new Friend Requests, Messages, Invites, Pokes, etc..

TechHit FBLook for Outlook runs on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. It is compatible with Outlook 2003 and 2007. FBLook does NOT work with Outlook Express.

Download: http://www.techhit.com/FBLook/

via: http://blogs.msdn.com/lokeuei/archive/2007/12/05/hey-fblook-here.aspx

Microsoft beats Google in a closely watched contest over Facebook. The company agreed to invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in this popular social-networking site. It is estimated that Facebook is valued at $15 billion. As part of the deal, the two companies also expanded their existing advertising agreement.
Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg who was just 19 y.o. at the time.
It ranked 7th in terms of its traffic in the world of Internet. Facebook has around 50 million users worldwide with about 4 more joining each month. People spend in average 19 minutes a day on Facebook. They can not only share their photos and videos but also e.g. send a virtual glass of wine, a kiss or a fish to a friend's aquarium.
Some people use Facebook to meet new people. It is also not unusual for users to compete in number of friends they "have". One friend of mine is currently thinking about what present should she give to her 1000th friend since that's the number she is approaching fast (she enlists about 10 new friends a day).
Everyone can become a member of various networks on Facebook with London and Toronto being the largest.
Facebook is also great for finding lost friends. I've found my Norweigian friend after years of having no contact with him. I'd got his profile with his picture within seconds on the Facebook finder.
According to the survey done by Student Monitor agency, Facebook was named the second most "in" thing among students. The first place belongs to the popular MP3 player while "beer" and "sex" finished behind Facebook.
You can have a look at an interesting video about student lives here.
Facebook is becoming more and more important also for various personal agencies. Cases when a person didn't get a job because of his/her strange behaviour on Facebook are not unusual any more.
Facebook is a really great tool for communicating with a large number of people at the same time. However, noone should forget that some of the information can be viewed by anyone and therefore misused.

I put a facebook badge on my Windows Live Spaces site the other day as I couldn't find any (working) facebook gadgets for Spaces in the Windows Live Gallery.

It was a fairly easy process but as I couldn't find any how-to's on the net I've written one myself in case anyone out there needs a hand.

A facebook badge (by default) shows a thumbnail of your profile picture, your name and the networks you belong to. It also links back to your facebook profile page.

If you'd like to put a facebook badge on your Windows Live Spaces site but need some help then try my how-to: http://nicfill.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7064430FFDBD7884!411.entry

OutSync is a free Windows application that syncs photos of your Facebook friends with matching contacts in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to select which contacts are updated. So you can update all contacts at once or just a few at a time.

The main benefit of OutSync is for Windows Mobile users. Updated contacts are automatically synced with Windows Mobile devices by Exchange server or ActiveSync. Thus new and fun photos appear during calls and other places where contacts are used.

Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you. They just threw a huge event down in San Francisco,called F8, to launch and celebrate their new platform and features- all of which benefit you. So I grabbed my camera and headed down there to get the low down on what we can all really expect. I was blown away- they've opened up their platform to third party developers who are all contributing to making FaceBook the place to be. Take a look at this video and then head over to some partner sites like Photobucket , box.net , uber.com , BunchBall and U Play Me and check out the collaboration.

 Also...I learned what a lolcat is. I must have been living under a rock.