The Blue Talkz...

Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Out with the Facebook apps!

So that's it, I've just removed both the Facebook app and the messenger from my Android tablet. Goodbye and good riddance.

I've simply had it with the nonsense. The main FB app is a terrible battery sucker. I have plenty of memory on my device which is why I hadn't paid attention, but it also uses up faaaar too much memory. Then as of the recent versions you don't really have much of a control on what you're being fed. The feed is automatically set to show you what FB believes is most important, and you have no way of changing that. If you simply want to see the recent posts you have to specifically select a feed from the menu screen. And the list goes on.

Now of course to make things even better, FB recently decided that it wasn't enough that we have to deal with one power sucker, so instead they decided to force the users to install yet another one, in order to send and receive messages. This new app is simply useless. Half the time it doesn't give me any notification for received messages, and when it does, it's likely it won't actually show the new message [it doesn't update]. And it never shows if my message has been seen.

So at any rate, today I finally got fed-up enough to remove both from my Android device. Trillian will kindly inform me of new messages, and for everything else I'll simply use my browser. Of course for me it's more complicated than most, seeing that I don't use a cellphone and Facebook / email and few other things are my way of staying in touch with the world. So let's see how long I'll last.

Labels: Android, Apps, Facebook, Social Networks, Technology, Web

Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Facebook Patents... Wait.. What Exactly?

As I've been going through yet another one of those extremely busy periods, I've been out of the loop with some of the latest developments in the world of social networks and legal patents. So I hadn't read or heard about FB's recent work of art till today. Today I had a conversation with a Good friend, Twain, who kindly brought me in the loop with what's been going on. Apparently, Facebook has been awarded the patent for "Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network". Check this link, and this link for the full story.

Well, I'm honestly shocked at what they seem to be getting away with. Actually, on a second though, I basically don't think they'll be getting away with this. As I told my friend, I think this is very much like stealing a piece of the ladder that everyone is, or wants to be climbing. And a good number of online services out there have in fact been climbing this ladder as long as Facebook has, if not longer. Orkut is an example of a social network that's been providing the news feed for a long while now. There are also services with a more specific purpose that do the same.. Last.fm and Goodreads would be examples. And I could bring a dozen other examples just of the top of my head.

So, exactly how does Facebook think that they have a right to be doing this? How is it that they managed to get this patent? Oh well, I think there are reasons I don't get too close to the worlds of business and law. I'm better off with engineering, math and code. Things that make some logical sense...

But even though I don't have much of a view on the topic, I have a firm belief that other online services are just not going to accept this. I have a feeling that Facebook has just brought together the ingredients for an upcoming fiasco. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.....

Labels: Facebook, Technology, Thoughts, Web, Web Development

Saturday, February 13, 2010
Facebook Chat + XMPP

Nice, really really nice! =) Facebook finally did it. FB chat supports XMPP now, and with the latest Trillian release, you can now use Trill's Jabber / XMPP plug-in to connect to FB chat. All you have to do now, is to first make sure you have the XMPP plug-in added to your Trill, then introduce a new Jabber account, and log on with yourusername@chat.facebook.com. And by the way the username part is case sensitive... as in you have to enter everything in lower case for it to work. I set this up yesterday, and it works like a charm. =) Yaaaaaay!