YouTube Cosmic Panda & New Homepage

If you ever fancy trying out the latest version of the YouTube Player, you can visit “Cosmic Panda”.
http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda

If you ever want to ever change back, just visit the page again and click the button to revert back to the original.
Note: It only affects the browser you select it in.

Tried it for a few months – was okay but I still prefer the original.

P.S. YouTube has changed their homepage today. Love it or hate it, change was due to happen.

Facebook add, then taketh away

If you regularly browse Facebook, I’m sure you already noticed the new “status sharing” feature. As pictured above.

“Oh yay!” you will say! As it closely resembles Goolge+‘s “circles” feature which many had complemented as Google+‘s strong point.

“Facebook giveth, then they taketh away.”

Yes, that’s right. As I discovered, Facebook has removed the ability to “Hide all by annoying page“.

If you “Like” a page, they can post news stories in your main wall aka “feed”.

I don’t know about everyone else – but I hate people spamming the feed with promotions. E.g. I like “Coca Cola” for instance – but I don’t want to be subjective to their bullsh*t advertising.

Before you could solve that by hiding their posts but now when you “Hide this post” it tells you:

… the options are now limited. So Facebook is basically saying “You must put up with everyone’s spam – like it or hate it.”

I can see peoples patience wearing thin on this very quickly.

UPDATE: Several other things have been rolling out slowly through the day. I have noticed the “photo viewer” has changed.

I tried removing a Application notification posted by a friend, it does still allow you to block them.

Still no sign of being able to “hide posts by” a fan page without “Un-liking” the page yet.

UPDATE 9/9/2011:

They have finally returned the option to Hide all posts on fan pages. Thank you for catching up, eventually.

Facebook change their Applications Policy & Kill FBML

FBML is DEAD, LONG LIVE FBML…

Not surprising news but Facebook has finally retired FBML on 11th March 2011.

What does that mean? Basically it means that you no longer have to use the “Static FBML page” application to create new pages, instead you are now allowed to use iFrames!

*Party poppers and loud cheers!*

Unfortunately, this exciting news turns sour pretty quickly…

With this new ability there are some major roadblocks, mainly for non-tech savy users.

  1. iFrames must be able to serve your own web pages from a web host.
  2. Any pages that you cannot serve with SSL will bring up a user message which will potentially put off visitors, as explained in their blog post about users running Facebook over HTTPS.
  3. Applications. You can only create these iFrame pages with Facebook Applications. For some this will be a real challenge, even as a Web Developer, I still find them difficult.

Making your pages with Facebook Applications

Going back to my previous point. Admins on Facebook will now have to create their own Applications so they can display new pages on their Fan Pages.

There are several difficult hurdles to deal with:

  1. Applications are usually created by Facebook Developers, see http://www.facebook.com/developers
  2. Facebook have changed their Applications policy. You must now register a valid Credit Card or Mobile Number. Paranoid? I am.
  3. Non-tech savy users who innocently created their fan pages will have no idea how to manage their Applications.
  4. Documentation and examples are scarce for developing these new iFrame pages. FBML used to allow you to tap into Facebook services pretty easily but now you have to familiarise yourself with a combination of Signed Requests in PHP and the JavaScript SDK aka the Facebook API.

Basically if you can conquer those requirements, you will be allowed to continue using Facebook pages. In summary, your shopping list should include:

  1. Web Hosting
  2. SSL Hosting to serve your web pages on HTTPS (expensive)
  3. A valid Credit Card or Mobile Number (sorry script kiddies)
  4. A fearless attitude to creating, managing your own Applications and wading through poorly documented examples for endless hours, have fun.
  5. A knowledge of PHP and JavaScript. You prefer a different web language? Tough. Facebook is biased and wants you to use PHP SDK for now.

Hopefully I summed up everything nicely for you. Good luck.

UPDATE: 2nd June 2011
As always, Facebook has quietly made some changes (without really telling anyone).

  • You can use your mobile number to verify yourself as a Facebook Developer, allowing you to add new Applications.
  • Released SDK v3.0.0 which is an upgrade to the last version of SDK v2.2.x
  • Introduce “Facebook Credits” available to all Applications (mostly for games). Virtual currency that Facebook wants you to use. Can use Paypal or Credit Cards to make transactions.

Weekly Round Up: Issue 2

WordPress introduces custom post types in version 3.0
http://kovshenin.com/archives/custom-post-types-in-wordpress-3-0/

Twitters keywords on the homepage got besieged by porn spam this morning
http://www.twitter.com/

phpBB3′s default ‘prosilver’ theme is dog slow… Please make it lighter + easier to skin like classic ‘subsilver’ for future releases!
http://www.phpbb.com/

How fast is your localhost?
(Work machine, ‘Request per second: 2.36 #/sec’ – man that’s slow, VPS Web server ‘RPS: 8000+’, that’s more like it! proof)
#ab -n 500 -c 10 http://localhost/

The HTC Desire/Legend might be the first Android phone I actually want?
http://gizmodo.com/5504266/htc-desire-review-an-even-more-desirable-nexus-one

http://gizmodo.com/5504266/htc-desire-review-an-even-more-desirable-nexus-one

Weekly Round Up: Issue 1

I often hunt around on the internet for the latest information to do with Web Development. Most of the time it goes to my Twitter but I thought it would be great if I could start logging a collection of the best ones I read.

So if you enjoy keeping up with the latest trends, I hope you enjoy my information bites!

HTML5 won’t save the web
http://gizmodo.com/5461711/giz-explains-why-html5-isnt-going-to-save-the-internet

Facebook develop faster PHP
http://www.neowin.net/news/facebook-unveils-hiphop-for-php-039source-code-transformer039

IE8 now “most popular” version of IE
http://www.neowin.net/news/ie8-is-now-the-world039s-most-used-browser

Zend Framework 1.10 Released (and now with versioned documentation!)
http://devzone.zend.com/article/11727-Zend-Framework-1.10.0-STABLE-Released

PHP hates integers (64 bit)
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/03/27/integers-in-php-running-with-scissors-and-portability/

Yahoo Small Business hikes Domain Renewal prices

24 hours ago I received an email from Yahoo! Small Business stating my domain renewal quote. To my shock and horror there was an “important notice” stating that they were increasing the renewal price to $34.95!

Thats a whopping increase from $9.95 last year to $34.95. A dramatic 350% increase!

This is the contents of the email they sent me: Continue reading