Entries tagged with facebook - Channel 10

Get Your Facebook Calendar in Windows Live

sarahintampa — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 08:15:00 GMT

Jamie just taught me a cool new trick: I can access my Facebook calendar right here in the new Windows Live. To do so, you have to export your Facebook calendar via a link provided by the Facebook web site. Don’t worry, though – the process is surprisingly easy. This is a great tip for anyone thinking of using Windows Live as their new homepage or start page for aggregating their activities across the social web.

If you want to add your Facebook calendar to Windows Live, here’s how:

Open up http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/events.php which, after you login, will show you all of your Facebook events
Click the Export Events link and the following information appears (see below). Copy the link.
Make sure you don’t share that URL with anyone, it contains IDs that are pertinent to you and you only.
Head over to Live Calendar and hit the Subscribe button
Ensure that “Subscribe to a public calendar” is selected, paste in the URL that you just copied, give the calendar a name and finally pick a color for the calendar. Once you’ve done all that hit Subscribe to calendar.
Your Facebook calendar will appear at http://calendar.live.com along with any other calendars that you use.

thanks, Jamie!

emoze Adds Facebook Messaging to Windows Mobile Phones

sarahintampa — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:46:00 GMT

Do you wish you could receive your Facebook messages along with your regular email on your Windows Mobile phone? Now you can with the new version of the emoze mobile push email service. With emoze’s free application, you can read, reply, and send messages directly from your phone’s interface without having to open up and browse to the Facebook web site itself. It’s completely integrated with your phone, all that’s required is a data connection.

Installation is fast and simple, so anyone can do it – not just the technically savvy. Once installed, the emoze Mobile Client application communicates with the Emoze Global Service Network (EGSN) to receive the incoming emails and direct them to the inbox on the mobile device. The app works in the background, but doesn’t slow down the operation of the handset or interfere with other functions, says the company.

Emoze can be downloaded from www.emoze.com or downloaded directly onto your Window’s Mobile device by navigating to http://emoze.com.

LiveUpload For Facebook

sarahintampa — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

LiveUpload for Facebook is a new plug-in for the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta that lets you upload your photos from your PC directly into the social networking site, Facebook. Besides making it extremely easy to get photos off your PC and onto the net, the absolutely coolest thing about this plugin is that it also persists the tags you added in Photo Gallery when the pictures are added to Facebook. This includes any “people tags” that you’ve added using Windows Live Photo Gallery. What that means is that when you tag your friends in Windows Live Photo Gallery, those tags will also appear on Facebook if you’re Facebook friends with those people.

Photos uploaded with this plugin can be added to an existing album on Facebook or they can be added to a new one you create on the fly. You can even use the plugin with multiple Facebook accounts – which is perfect for those families who share one login on the home’s PC.

If you're interested in building your own plug-in, there’s a development resource page on the Windows Live Digital Memories Experience Team. Also, check out the Windows Live Photo Gallery Publishing Plug-in Platform Overview over on MSDN and the Sample Plug-in for Flickr.

The LiveUpload for Facebook plugin also works in the beta version of Windows Live Movie Maker, too. If you want to download the LiveUpload for Facebook plugin, just click here.

VisualSage: A New Way To Browse Facebook

sarahintampa — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:09:00 GMT

Have you ever wanted to use Facebook as a desktop application? Now you can with a new and innovative application called VisualSage. This WPF-powered app presents a unique way to browse and use Facebook by providing access to many of Facebook’s functions, including pokes, profiles, photos, and chat, all right from your Windows desktop. You can also use VisualSage’s built-in search feature to perform advanced friend searches and then organize your friends into groups via drag-and-drop.

In addition to simply providing an alternative interface to Facebook, VisualSage can create interactive representations of your Facebook “social graph,” which is your network of friends on the Facebook service.

Reviews of the app on Facebook are mixed. Some users are not able to get signed into the app or report other error messages appearing. I’m disappointed to say that I fall into that first category – I can never get signed in. But for those people for whom the app works, the reviews are glowing, so I’m definitely keeping my eye on this one. Perhaps an updated version will finally let me in so I can try it for myself.

Live Search Now In Facebook

sarahintampa — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:16:00 GMT

In case you hadn’t heard, Live Search has just now been integrated into one of the biggest social networks in the world: Facebook. As Facebook announced on their blog, this is the “first step in giving you the ability to find content from across the web while using Facebook.” What this means is that when you’re doing a search on Facebook, you’ll now see the option to “Search Facebook” or “Search the Web.” This a big deal for those of you who live your entire lives on Facebook – now you can find the additional information you need without having to leave the site. One thing you may have noticed, as those over at VentureBeat did, the Facebook-flavored Live Search results appear somewhat different than the same query performed on www.live.com. According to a statement from Facebook, that’s because Facebook removes sponsored results (those results which people have paid for) in addition to using a few different filters, according to the company.

What’s really exciting, though, is that this is only the first step involving the integration of Live Search and Facebook, according to Agnus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search Product Management: “As we evaluate user feedback and results we'll explore additional ways to integrate Live Search more deeply into the Facebook experience.”

What do you think of the Live Search integration? You can communicate to the team directly on, where else? – their Facebook page.

PageRage Dresses Up Your Facebook Profile

sarahintampa — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:08:00 GMT

I’m not sure why you would want this, but a new app called PageRage will let dress up your Facebook profile so it looks more like a profile found on MySpace instead. (Yikes!) That’s too bad because one of the nicest things about Facebook is it’s clean and simple look and feel, without the busy backgrounds and image-heavy designs that are so prevalent throughout MySpace.

With the new Facebook app PageRage, you now can customize your Facebook profile with new themes that change both the background and the color schemes of your Facebook profile page. Some of these themes are basic, solid backgrounds, but others are quite busy.

Before you freak out and think this is the end for Facebook, take comfort in the fact that you can only see the new themed profiles if you have the PageRage application installed yourself. If you don’t want to see themes, just don’t install it.

The app works via a browser plugin which uses something called Yontoo Layers. Yontoo Layers create a virtual layer over your browser window. I’m not sure entirely how that all works, but it sounds a lot like what the Firefox extension Stylish offers.

I know. Facebook themes, ick. I definitely won’t be…oh wait…is that a pink one? Awesome.

Messenger for Facebook Updated

sarahintampa — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:20:00 GMT

Earlier this year, the Windows Live Messenger team released an app for Facebook which officially integrated Live Messenger with Facebook. The Windows Live Messenger Facebook app shows your online presence on your Facebook profile and lets you IM with your friends directly on the Facebook web site itself.

Recently, this app received an update. The new V.2 version of Facebook Messenger now syncs your Live Messenger status with your Facebook status. The team also listened to user feedback and removed the HIP (Human Interface Proof) challenge which was presented before you could start a conversation.

Additionally, the new version will automatically set your display name to whatever your name is in Facebook. Before it used to prompt you to fill this in. With these updates (both the HIP and display name), there are now no more dialog boxes that appear before chatting can begin. You can now just start typing to IM your friends!

You can add Live Messenger to your Facebook by adding the app here: apps.facebook.com/windowslivemessenger.

New Version of Windows Media Center Status Tool Available

sarahintampa — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:09:00 GMT

There’s a new version of the Facebook app called the Windows Media Center Status Tool now available. (We first mentioned this tool back in February.) This app lets you update your Facebook user profile status based on what you are doing in Windows Media Center. For example, if you’re watching a DVD or TV show, it will change your status to “is watching [name of program/movie].” The latest version of this app (version 0.4.2) can now be configured to request confirmation as to whether or not you want your Facebook status updated. This allows you to have a bit more control over your privacy. However, the configuration must be done via a registry edit. You have to set "ConfirmUpdate_Facebook" to "1" in "HKLM\Software\Hamar Data\FBMCE". There have also been some minor improvements in this latest update and you must now give the app special permissions on a new page, too. That page is available here and you must configure those settings before you’re able to use the tool.

On a side note, I have no idea why the developer, Jussi Palo, chose to use a picture of eggs, ham, and sausage on his Facebook app’s page. Any ideas on that? Color me confused.

IE8 “Unboxing” Video

sarahintampa — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:44:00 GMT

In the tech world, “unboxing” videos have surged in popularity over the years as recording and uploading video to the web became easier than ever for anyone to do. As soon as a gadget geek gets their hands on the latest shiny new contraption, a video of them carefully unwrapping and unboxing the gadget and all its little components is soon to follow. In that spirit, the IE team recently posted an “unboxing” video to their Facebook page. However, as you know, there’s nothing to really unbox with a software download like IE8...so what could they possibly record? Well, as you may have guessed, the video is a parody of unboxing videos, this one featuring a “professional unboxer” by the name of Roland Wacker. The video comes across like a bit on SNL and in it, Mr. Wacker gets quite upset at an unseen nemesis by the name of Eugene. The video seems to represent a new direction for the IE8 Facebook videos page – instead of just instructional how-to’s, it looks like the team is going to have some fun too. The next video, “the History of Slices,” looks at slicing through the ages (sliced bread! surgical instruments!) and compares IE8’s web slices to the “awesomeness of samurai swords.”

Facebook Sidebar Gadget

sarahintampa — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:35:00 GMT

If you are a Facebook user running Vista or XP, there’s a new Facebook sidebar gadget for you to check out. This gadget lets you quickly change your Facebook status as well as see all the notifications sent to you including pokes, event invites, messages, friend requests, wall posts, etc. When you receive a new notification, you can click the link to open up the page in your browser. To use the gadget, you only need to download it and login. Log in once and it will remember your settings. Unlike a lot of sidebar gadgets, XP users can install this gadget, too. On XP machines, it will run as a desktop app. The gadget is ad-supported by means of a small text link at the bottom of the app.

Snap2Face Version 1.0 Arrives

sarahintampa — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:42:00 GMT

Earlier this year, we told you about Snap2Face, a Facebook app designed just for Windows Mobile users. Now, that app is out of beta and the official 1.0 version has been released. With Snap2Face version 1.0, you can fully interact with Facebook. That means you can view albums, upload photos, update your status, see the statuses of your friends, view and respond to messages, pokes, wall posts, and friend requests. However, what’s really cool about the newest version is its Outlook integration. Snap2Face allows you to import your friends’ profile photos into your Outlook contacts and then use them for caller ID. Snap2Face is available as a free download on all Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 devices (both Pocket PC and Smartphone). You can download it from here.

08:08:08 08/08/08

Laura — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:56:00 GMT

On the eighth of August two thousand and eight, when the clock is exactly eight seconds past eight minutes past eight o'clock, the time will read 08:08:08 08/08/08. We want to invite you to take a photograph at this precise moment. The moment will of course occur twice in each time zone, once in the morning and once at night- which means you will get two opportunities to photograph the moment as it flies by you.

Then send your photograph/s to Capture The Moment.

Search Share: A new facebook application

Tina — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:40:00 GMT

Search Share lets you find all kinds of videos, images and other information online and then share it very easily with friends. But Search Share goes beyond typical web search - you see visual previews and select just what you want to share. You can also search multiple topics and share all your selected results together.

To share your chosen items, drag and drop them into the Share Panel and either send to your Feed or email selected friends or save it to your profile.

Facebook Fans Rejoice As New App for Windows Mobile Launches

sarahintampa — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:15:00 GMT

Earlier we told you about Snap2Face, a Windows Mobile Facebook app that let you upload your photos from your phone to Facebook. But now, a real Facebook app has launched. Thanks to Macrospecs, Inc., you can download FriendMobilizer, a new software app for Windows Mobile phones that gives you full access to your Facebook account. This app is very similar to the app that runs on RIM’s Blackberry devices as it lets you view your friend's information and profiles, write on their walls, browse photo albums, approve friend requests, view group and event invites, read your new wall posts, read the messages in your inbox, update your status, and more.

The application currently works on both Windows Mobile devices and Pocket PCs and it’s available for download from www.faceofmobile.com. According to the company, they will be building mobile apps for other social networks in the future, too.

Coming Soon: Get Facebook on Media Center

sarahintampa — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:50:00 GMT

It seems that lately I’ve just been finding more and more Windows Media Center plugins. The latest one I stumbled across (Thanks Ian!) is a way to get Facebook on Media Center. This is thanks to a soon-to-be-released application called Photato, which will be available in beta later this month. It looks like the Photato app will focus on bringing Facebook photos to your Vista Media Center – both those belonging to you as well as the photos that your friends are sharing. At the moment, the website for the application hasn’t launched yet, but for those interested in beta testing the application, you can email photato.beta@armchairware.com. (image thanks to Ian Dixon’s Blog)

Zine: A new facebook application

Tina — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:43:00 GMT

Zine is your own online magaZINE of articles and videos that you personalize to include the topics you care about. Zine makes it easy to dig deeper into stories that interest you, and to share stories with your Facebook friends. Keep up to date with Zine!

• Zine, powered by MSN, covers a variety of fun topics such as Entertainment, Relationships, Sports, as well as US News and more.

• You can also create specific topics that you want the latest news stories for. Add a topic for your favorite celebrity, your favorite sports team, events, or anything that interest you. Examples are Mariah Carey, Seattle Mariners, Olympics, and US Stock Market.

• If you want to explore a story further, click the search button next to the headline. You’ll get articles, web sites, videos, and images related to your story.

• Easily share any story with your friends or post it to your profile using the Share+ button.

Dashwire 2.0 Launches: Backup Your Phone and Sync Content To Social Web

sarahintampa — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:19:00 GMT

On Tuesday, mobile phone app Dashwire released Dashwire 2.0, a much improved version of their mobile phone backup and sync service. With Dashwire 2.0, you can backup your phone’s content – like photos, videos, text messages, ringtones, bookmarks, speed dials, contacts, and call logs – to Dashwire’s site on the web. This syncing is done automatically, so if you make a change to your phone, that change is reflected on the web, and vice versa. In addition, the app lets you share your content across several social networking sites. You can easily and automatically send photos and video to flickr, Facebook, bebo, and Twitter and you can also update your Twitter and Facebook status from the app. The Dashwire website also offers you a public page where you can share your mobile uploads with others who can then leave comments on the items. Dashwire 2.0 is free for Windows Mobile users - just go to m.dashwire.com from your phone’s browser to sign up.

Facebook App for Windows Mobile

sarahintampa — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:14:00 GMT

Windows Mobile users will be happy to know that they finally have their own mobile Facebook app - something Blackberry owners have enjoyed for some time. The new app is called Snap2Face and it focuses on uploading photos to Facebook on the go as well as letting you view your friend's albums. That will be useful for WiMo users who want an easy want to upload pictures taken with their phone's camera, but it's disappointing that you can't use the app to see status info, pokes, or anything else. Hopefully, the developers will add these features in the future (fingers crossed!). However, it does have one other cool feature - you can use the app to import your friends' profile photos to your Outlook contacts. (via mobigasmic)

Zine - Your Online Magazine on Facebook

sarahintampa — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:03:00 GMT

A new Facebook application called Zine is an online magazine of articles and videos that you can add to your Facebook profile. You can completely customize the magazine so you only see the topics that are interesting to you, whether that's News, Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyle, or anything else. Each main category is further divided into sub-categories that allow you to further customize your Zine. For example, you can choose to see just NFL news from the Sports category or just U.S. News and Politics from the News category, and so on. Your Zine is then loaded up for you, with each main category available as a tab at the top which you can click on to easily move through the content.

One thing I noticed right off the bat was that there was no "technology" news section listed. However, there is a feature called "My Topics," which lets you add the latest news stories for specific topics. For example, you could create a custom topic called "Olympics." I, of course, added a topic called "Twitter." I was happy to see a bunch of articles returned on the subject from big news sources like the NY Times, News.com, SFGate, and, of course MSN.com, which helps power this app.

When browsing through the categories, you can click "Prev" and "Next" buttons to scroll through the virtual pages or click "Expand" to have a particular section spread out across the page. You can also send a story to a friend or post it to your Facebook profile.

With all the talk of how newspapers and other print media are fading businesses, Zine stands out as a useful "new media" kind of way to get your daily news...right there in Facebook.

Search Share for Facebook

sarahintampa — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:36:00 GMT

A Live Search powered Facebook app called Search Share lets you search for all kinds of information that you can then share with your Facebook friends. Results for Search Share can include videos, images, web pages, news, and more. But Search Share isn't just a way to see traditional search engine results within Facebook, you can also preview the content and select the results you want via drag-and-drop in order to share them with your friends.

The items you want to share are dropped into a box at the top of the app and you can then choose to email those items to a friend or post them to your feed. What's really wild is that when you hover your mouse over a thumbnail of a video, it automatically starts playing. I wasn't expecting that - I figured you would have to go off site to watch videos, but it's all right there in Facebook.

On the main Search Share page, some interesting topics are already listed for you like Today's Hot Topics. For example, today's #1 topic is "polar bear status" (how sad!). There are also boxes showing Top Celebrities, Words of the Day, Your Friends' Latest Searches, and Your Saved Search History.

Search Share is somewhat similar to Zine, in that it facilitates you being able to share various items with friends, but unlike Zine, it's more of a tool that can be used as needed instead of an online digital magazine.

Windows Live Messenger for Facebook

Tina — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:53:00 GMT

Did you know you can use Windows Live Messenger and Facebook to connect with your friends, including showing your online status and allow people to contact you from your Facebook profile?

I sat down with Chris Parker and Farid Hosseini and they gave us a lesson on how to use Windows Live Messenger with Facebook. Yep, it's that easy. Download it here!

Windows Live Messenger on Facebook

sarahintampa — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:42:00 GMT

If you're always using your Windows Live Messenger for IM'ing with friends, then you're going love this news! The Windows Live team has just announced the introduction of a new Facebook app that lets your friends chat with you via Windows Live Messenger right from your Facebook profile page. When your friends visit your profile page, they can start an IM conversation just by clicking on the chat window. Then, their IM messages will come directly to your messenger client running on your computer. And, don't worry, your chats are private - others visiting your profile won't be able to see what you're saying or view message history. The new app also lets you add the owner of the Facebook profile to your contact list in WLM directly from the app itself. To add this to your Facebook profile, click here.

New Fantasy Baseball Gadget

sarahintampa — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:44:00 GMT

I just saw this over on the Windows Experience blog: a new baseball-themed gadget for the Vista Sidebar. The Fantasy Baseball Gadget lets you check your Fantasy Baseball news, player stats, and create your own roster, and the categories update every 10 minutes. Brandon points out that the gadget requires Adobe Flash, so Vista x64 users will need to run their sidebar under 32-bit to get it going. The gadget is available for download here.

For non-Vista users, the same gadget is available on Windows Live and Facebook, too.

Vídeo: Entendendo o Live Mesh como Plataforma

Galileu — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Locutor de rádio eu não sou, mas vale a pena ver o vídeo de 5 minutos onde narro uma demonstração real da capacidade do Live Mesh como plataforma. A demonstração mostra como algumas fotos podem ser geradas de diferentes dispositivos e mesmo assim estarem presentes em todos os dispositivos (e a Web) que fazem parte da Mesh (lembrem que Mesh é rede em inglês). Ah, essa demonstração conta com a ilustre presença de:
Live Mesh (Web), Windows Vista, Facebook, Mac OSX e seu Photobooth, HTC Touch, Windows Media Center e um Samsung UMPC.

O vídeo na sua íntegra está no Channel 9, nosso site irmão, aqui nesse link. O vídeo é altamente recomendado para os que entendem de programação.

Para quem não viu o anúncio, leia aqui sobre o Live Mesh.

The History of the "Poke"

sarahintampa — 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.