May 30, 2007 at 9:36 am · Filed under User Interface, User Experience
It’s like Minority Report. Insofar as real-world analogies, it’s highly reminiscent of the videos by NYU’s Jeff Han videos that circulated in heavy volume last year for his touch computing experiments. This time it’s Microsoft’s project Milan, a five year project which has resulted in a surface computing solution.
Check out the video on Crave.
Read the press release on Microsoft’s site.
Tags: Jeff Han, Microsoft, Touch Computing, User Experience, User InterfaceShare This
May 29, 2007 at 9:38 am · Filed under Programming, Applications
One of the applications Terralever created for the Facebook Platform launch as a proof of concept is called ’stuffCLOUD’.
If you’re a Facebooker and want to give it a try, you can go to the Application Directory (http://www.facebook.com/apps/), click on “Just for Fun” in the right-hand column, and then page through the listings to find stuffCLOUD (you can read about it and install it if you like from there). In it’s current release state, it definitely is FAR more fun when a few of your friends have it installed also (in fact, the more of your friends that install it, the more interesting it is).
We are currently in the process of adding a few new features that were requested by some users.
- The default view on a user’s profile page will show how popular the things in your cloud are in relation to the entire Facebook universe (not just your friends). In the short term, if you add the application, you’ll want a friend or two to add it also.
- The streamer view will be upgraded-it isn’t our immediate priority, but we will be adding some cool functionality so that you can add tags to your stuffCLOUD right from the stuffSTREAMER.
- Notifications that are more fun (this is the lowest on the priority list, but we definitely want to get there).
There are still bandwidth and timeout issues intermittently with Facebook. As things stabilize, we’re continuing to improve stuffCLOUD!
Let me know what you think!
Tags: Applications, Facebook, Programming, TerraleverShare This
May 26, 2007 at 9:41 am · Filed under Programming, Alpha
In the recent Joost Private Beta invite drought, I opened the floodgates and was handing them out like candy…
Can anyone return the favor with a Popfly Alpha invite? I’d love to get my hands on one. If you have one to give, please send it to my sdmca[at]hotmail[dot]com email address!
Tags: AJAX, Alpha, Apple, Joost, Microsoft, Popfly, Programming, SilverlightShare This
May 24, 2007 at 4:43 pm · Filed under Programming, Beta, Social Networking
Pictures from the Facebook f8 Platform Launch event in S.F.
Tags: Beta, Facebook, Programming, Social Networking, TerraleverShare This
May 24, 2007 at 11:51 am · Filed under Events, Programming, Social Networking
Well, the cat is out of the bag… I’m at the Facebook Platform announcement and hack-a-thon in San Francisco. Terralever was invited to develop with the platform prior to its release. For the past ten days or so, we’ve been test driving the platform and created a few applications.
Applications? Let me back up. Facebook, previously a ‘closed’ site doing all its own development, has made the switch to being an ‘open’ site with the release of the Facebook Platform. The platform allows developers to leverage the power of the rapidly growing social network combined with application functionality of their own.
The Facebook Platform offers two key pieces which, when combined, make the sky the limit for development. The first piece is set of API’s which exposes various pieces of information from the Facebook network. Processing is handled on the developer’s server, so applications can mingle the information received from the API calls with whatever programming the developer provides. The second piece, a markup language called FBML (yeah, it stands for Facebook markup language) allows some processing to occur, and some information to be viewed, once processed by the Facebook server prior to rendering. You also have HTML available to you, of course, as well as Flash and Silverlight. JavaScript—not so much; there is a (very) limited amount of AJAX that is available, however.
Facebook applications are granted real estate on users’ profile pages, in both the narrow and wide columns, as well as their own “Canvas”—basically an entire page which is framed by the Facebook navigation.
Monetization? You bet. Facebook’s take: $0.00. How? On the canvas page, Facebook is allowing outside applications to place their own advertising. Additionally—and this is the one that really surprised me—you can do commerce transactions without leaving the Facebook site. And, again, Facebook’s take isn’t a dime.
The platform isn’t live to the public yet, but the powers that be are telling us that it will be rolled out to the public tonight. Our applications are called “stuffCLOUD” (a visualization of things that an individual, their friends, and the entire Facebook universe like) and “Flipbook” which is a photo flip-book which leverages albums in the Facebook user’s profile. I’ll blog more about the apps themselves later and how they are received.
This is just the beginning…
Read the Terralever Facebook Platform Press Release.
Tags: Events, Facebook, FBML, Flash, Hack a Thon, Programming, Silverlight, Social Networking, TerraleverShare This
