Entries tagged with facebook - Channel 10

The History of the "Poke"

Sarah Perez — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:49:00 GMT

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.

Tuttles Madcap Misadventures: Enter to win!

Laura Foy — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:13:00 GMT

The Tuttle Madcap Misadventures Starlight charity challenge pairs having a good time with doing good. A first of its kind fundraising initiative Starlight Starbright Childrens Foundation has partnered with Legacy Interactive on the development of this original game. Learn more about how you can help in this clip and see how you can win through their unique Facebook challenge.

PhotoZoom Facebook App

Sarah Perez — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:31:00 GMT

PhotoZoom, the web site that leverages the new Deep Zoom technology which makes your photos "zoomable" now has a Facebook app all of its own. The PhotoZoom application lets you create Facebook photo albums that use this Deep Zoom technology. You can choose to convert your existing albums to PhotoZoom albums or just create new ones. After you add the app, you'll be taken to the PhotoZoom site to get started. Very cool! (via LiveSide)

Microsoft Partners with Top Social Networks for Data Portability

Sarah Perez — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:03:00 GMT

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.

C8: Zune Rocker shows us Zune Social and the new FaceBook application

Max Zuckerman — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:06:00 GMT

From Channel 8:

"Cesar Menendez (my favorite Zune Rocker) has shown me how the Zune team has taken music back to its pre-digital roots when people used to gather at record stores and tell each other about the latest and best ways to rock out--or mellow out, depending on your style. It's called the Zune Social and it really is an interesting concept that leverages the back end from the XBox Live infrastructure and allows you to create a profile that displays your songs played, favorites, and friends. From there you can find out what others are listening to, get a taste of it, and share it with others... very cool stuff."

Cesar also demoes the integration with FaceBook in a new app which you can download by going to your Zune Social homepage.

Check out the video on Channel 8!

JD and Brian Podcast - Episode 5

Brian Johnson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:03:00 GMT

This week on the podcast, JD and I welcome guests Nic Fillingham and Andrew Duthie for a lively discussion of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, cool stuff we saw on Channel 10, and we ask the question, "How do you handle all the different social networks?"

Links:

List of All the Microsoft Facebook Groups

Sarah Perez — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:54:00 GMT

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

Windows Mobile Fans

Friends of the Blue Monster - "change the world, or go home!"

Microsoft Student Group - perfect for readers of Channel 8!

Young Microsoft Employees -Social/networking group for Microsoft employees & contractors under 30

Microsoft Alumni

Microsoft interns - group for all current and past interns

i work for Microsoft DPE Division & I'm Lovin It

Groups for Products

MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2005 - This group is intended to provide help and support for SQL related questions.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM - A place for Dynamic CRM groups, pros, users and friends to chat about the world of CRM.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 - Group for programmers who use Visual Studio and want to share experiences with others.

Microsoft Dynamics AX

Microsoft .NET group

Microsoft Dynamics (CRM,GP,NAV,AX)

Microsoft Dynamics (Great Plains)

I love Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets!! (yes, seriously)

Fans of Microsoft Exchange Server & Microsoft Exchange 2007

I Run Microsoft Vista

Official Microsoft Office Users Group

Microsoft Zune - Official facebook group for the ZUNESCENE community and friends

Microsoft Surface Group - for fans of Surface

Microsoft Business Solutions

Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook - for discussion about the book

Microsoft Forefront

Groups for Certifications/Programs

Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Group

Microsoft MVPs

Microsoft Certified Professionals

Hey! There's two of these: Microsoft Student Partners & Microsoft Student Partners

Microsoft in Education

MCAD - Microsoft Certified Application Developer

Groups for Events

Microsoft TechDays 2008

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008

MIX08

Even Channel 8 Has A Group

Microsoft Channel 8

Using Silverlight In Facebook

Nuri Cankaya — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:13:00 GMT

In this video interview I'm chatting with the ImagineCup 2008 and S2B Facebook applications creator Daron Yondem. In both applications Silverlight is used as the underlying technology. Let's discover the basics of cool social network applications in this video.

Move Photos from Flickr to Spaces and More

Sarah Perez — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:43:00 GMT

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.

New Microsoft Office Facebook Apps

Sarah Perez — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:21:00 GMT

Two new Microsoft Office powered Facebook apps have just appeared: Framed Again and Office Poke! The Office Poke app is an alternative to SuperPoke, letting you send funny work-related pokes to your friends, like "Throw a Stapler," "Send Underpants through Inter-office Mail," and "Steal Lunch." The Framed Again app lets you re-create your friends on Facebook by inserting their photo into a headshot, onto a business card, or onto a poster. You can customize the size, rotation, brightness, and other elements of the photo and then share it with your friends.

Frame Your Friends!

Barbora Zychova — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:48:00 GMT

There are 17,375 applications on Facebook today, including two new ones I'm going to write about - Framed Again! Gadget and Office Poke! Gadget.
The first one allowes you to make an exchange of photos more fun. All you have to do is go to the special Framed Again! gallery, choose a frame with head-shaped cutout you like, include your friend's photo and save it.
Frames include office-related themes such as "Employee of the Day", magazines, album covers or fantasy business cards.
Users can upload their photo directly into the frames and post them on a friend’s Facebook page. It's very easy to resize, rotate and color the photo in a way that it will fit right into the pre-made frame.

Office Poke! gadget gives more options to all those who already like to SuperPoke! their friends. Users can engage in a common office-based behavior from having lunch with friends/co-workers to throwing a stapler at them. You can even explain why have you decided to punish
them - e.g. for having a questionable bathroom hygiene or having a really, really bad haircut.
More Office Poke! you use, more poking powers you get. After sending just 5 of them you get promoted from an Intern to the Office Gossip Coordinator.
Over the time you'll gain the authority to fire, hire, promote or demote your employees... ehm friends.

Update Facebook with Media Center Info

Sarah Perez — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:06:00 GMT

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.

Upload to the Web from Your Phone

Sarah Perez — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:47:00 GMT

A new mobile application called CellSpin lets you create video, audio, photos, and text on your cell phone and upload that content to your favorite social networking web sites and communities. From the phone, you just pick one of the four media types you want to create and then, with one click, you upload the content to the web. At launch, CellSpin supported Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Picasa, flickr, LiveJournal, Live Spaces, and eBay. When you sign up at CellSpin, you will receive an SMS on your phone with a link to download the software unless you have signed up from an unsupported phone. With your CellSpin username and password, you can begin uploading content as to the web as soon as the app is installed. You can also upload content from the CellSpin website itself.

Social Network Screensaver

Sarah Perez — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:10:00 GMT

A new product called Chirpscreen is a screensaver that displays information from your social networks. Having just launched into beta, the screensaver currently shows content from Facebook and flickr, but plans to offer much more in the future. The Facebook content includes status updates from your friends and the flickr content can be your photos or photos from the network that match a particular tag. The application works by collecting the information from 3rd party sources via its APIs or RSS feeds to display a screensaver of your personalized content. With the screensaver active, pictures and updates from your friends float slowly across your screen. Each piece of content the screensaver shows is linked, so you can click it to open up a web browser that goes directly to that page. Chirpscreen is currently available for Windows only.

Export Outlook Contacts and Import Them to Facebook

Sarah Perez — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:44:00 GMT

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.

Mobilize Your Social Networks

Sarah Perez — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:03:00 GMT

A service called MoDazzle brings social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Salesforce.com to your mobile phone. In an attempt to make searching these networks faster for mobile users with bandwidth issues, MoDazzle offers a way to interact with these networks using unique email addresses and SMS short codes. With MoDazzle, you can email in or SMS your search requests for different actions on the supported social networks. For example, Facebook users can email/SMS MoDazzle for locating a contact, reading your Facebook messages, poking other users, checking a friend's status, reading your wall, posting to others' walls, and more. Each community and/or feature has its own SMS short code and email address. Although it's great to see this kind of mobile integration with social networks, the system is a bit too complex to use on-the-fly from memory, since each request has a unique address and syntax. However, I can see where it could be useful if you had a unique need, like uploading photos to Facebook on the go, and wanted a quicker way to do so than using a slow-loading app. I can't imagine trying to use all the features in this way, though, unless you didn't have access to mobile browsing on your phone and needed an alternative. You can also access news, weather, stocks, directions, and locate the nearest Starbucks with the MoDazzle service.

Facebook in Your Outlook

Sarah Perez — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:47:00 GMT

From those same great people that brought us Outlook and Twitter integration, comes another excellent tool - FBLook, which seamlessly integrates Facebook into Outlook. Using FBLook, which appears in your Outlook as a new toolbar, you can update your Facebook status, see your friends' statuses, and see the number of new requests, all without having to open the browser and log into Facebook. After you download and install FBLook, you will have to tell Facebook that you want FBLook to access Facebook on your behalf, but the FBLook app will display messages that walk you through this one-time process fairly easily. FBLook works with Outlook 2003/2007 and Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

A Facebook Toolbar for IE Users

Sarah Perez — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:27:00 GMT

Although a Facebook toolbar for Firefox has been available for a while, there was not one for Internet Explorer until now. With My FB Toolbar, you can stay connected to your Facebook friends even as you surf the web. The toolbar offers instant access to essential Facebook bookmarks, like Facebook photos, groups, events, applications, and friends. With the FB Toolbar installed, you can also receive message alerts when new events occur about you or your friends on the service. When a new request or new Facebook mail message arrives, you will see this information displayed on the toolbar. Using the RSS News feature of the toolbar, you can keep track of your friends' status updates, new feeds, and other notifications like wall posts, messages, photo tags, etc. There are also some other non-Facebook features like Weather, Alexa Ranking, and integrated anti-spyware protection that round out this great download for those of you who are Facebook-obsessed!

Get Your Facebook Calendar in Outlook

Sarah Perez — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:37:00 GMT

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.

Update your Facebook status from Outlook with FBLook

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:15:00 GMT

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.

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

Vista Facebook Sidebar Gadget

Sarah Perez — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:09:00 GMT

A new Vista sidebar gadget brings the power of your favorite social network to your desktop. The MyFacebook gadget shows you if you have new messages in your Facebook inbox, new pokes, friend requests, lets you see your friends' albums, friend lists, events, and shows you your status as well as a scrolling display of your friends' statuses. You can also update your status right from the gadget. Once you've installed the gadget, you'll need to authorize it, then log in and add the feeds it requests. The gadget isn't perfect (yet), but it's certainly a great start. Let's tell the widget author thanks for feeding our Facebook addiction! (Via InsideMicrosoft)

I COLLECT FRIENDS WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Barbora Zychova — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:09:00 GMT

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.

Export Facebook to Excel with FriendCSV

Larry Larsen — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:53:00 GMT

If you're a Facebook fan, don't miss this page on TechCrunch. FriendCSV is a way to export the information from your friends list in Facebook to a comma-separated values file that can then be opened in Excel. Once you log into Facebook and fill in your email address, FriendCSV will scrape the data you've selected and mail it to you (keep in mind it violates the Facebook TOS if it is stored for more than 24 hours.) Available fields; uid, name, sex, birthday, about me, current location, hometown, profile link, picture link, high school, education, work, and affiliations.

Another interesting Facebook app mentioned in the comments, called Fonebook, will export your Facebook friends list to Contacts in Outlook 2003 or 2007. Then when you sync your phone to your computer, it also syncs your Facebook friends to your mobile phone.

Put a Facebook badge on your Windows Live Spaces site

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 04:12:00 GMT

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

Sync your Facebook contacts with Outlook (and Windows Mobile)

Laura Foy — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:23:00 GMT

Mel Sampat has created an application called OutSync.

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.