Okay it’s not that bad but I lately I have had the opportunity to get back into working with Facebook in several projects over the past few months. The good thing is that I’ve been able to work in almost all the ways you can interact with Facebook. I have worked on an external site using Connect and the Graph API, a page tab and a canvas page.

The bad part of doing things this way is that they are all done in 3 totally different ways. Just when I feel I’m doing well with one, another will come up and throw me in another direction. Good thing with that is that I’m getting the experience to figure all 3 methods out. Just with client timelines, it makes it fun when the same end functionality has very different implementation and I don’t have the time to make it perfect.

I do plan on posting some of my findings because I’ve personally had a tough time finding all the information I need online. Hopefully I’ll get a break in the action soon so that I can share.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about whether or not to have web sites support Internet Explorer 6. Personally I think we should get rid of it NOW. Out with the old, in with the new is how the phrase goes. Well in my mind, there is only one way to make users who haven’t yet switch to make the switch: force them.

We can easily get the browser info when a visitor comes to your site so I say if it’s IE6, tell them they can’t view the site until they get a real browser *COUGH FireFox COUGH* and try viewing your site again correctly. Or if that’s a bit too harsh, still code for something better than IE6 and give visitors a message to upgrade and show them the crappy version of your site.

Nothing will change until it is forced onto people. They will stay with IE6 because they are scared to upgrade, too lazy or some other asinine reason. Well enough! If everyone stops making sites that work in IE6, people will change. Plain and simple. Please join me in my crusade to rid the Internet of this horrible beast. Then maybe we can move to get rid of IE in general but that’s a rant for another time.

You can’t do anything online these days without hearing about Twitter.  I’ve written a few posts about it in the past (found here) and I have to admit that I am impressed with how it has been “blowing up” the past couple of months.  I have had discussions with friends and co-workers about the staying power of Twitter and wanted to share my thoughts with everyone else.

Twitter is a force; an unstoppable force I feel right now.  The only thing standing in its way is itself.  With its huge growth, it has hard times with big events that come with a lot of tweets at the same time.  For example, at the Macworld conference, Twitter experienced a few “Fail Whales” for a couple of hours.  The same with CES that same week.  Other times, it goes down without much of a reason.  But other than that, I really don’t see anything or anyone getting in their way.

I wrote a post comparing Twitter, Plurk and Pownce a few months back and since then Pownce has bowed out of the battle.  Plurk is still just a blip on the radar.  I have an account but don’t really ever use it.  It seemed like a good idea but I never could catch on.  Too many of my friends were on Twitter already and like most people I thought, “Do I need this twice?”

Twitter is not going away any time soon.  I have heard others say that they don’t expect to be on it in 2-3 years time but when I hear that, I can’t help but to think “what will you be on?”  To me, Twitter just has that “it” quality and will soon be mainstream.  I mean, even my mom has an account   I can’t think of anything taking its spot.

It’s one of those things I see people realizing how they lived without before it existed.  Kind of like me with my DVR, I don’t know how I ever was without it.  I feel the same about Twitter.  I have met a ton of people and learned a lot of interesting things in the time I have used it.  I think that Twitter has the power to be around for a while and only grow stronger, probably with the assistance of a bigger company buying them out.  I just hope that They stay true to their initial idea and only imporove upon their infrastructure and stop all of the “Fail Whales”.  Twitter can be a big force like a Google if it plays its cards right.  I guess only time will see.

I’m not sure which is more impressive. The fact that over 3 million people downloaded Firefox 3 today or the fact that only 1 person from Liberia did.

The internet community has been waiting for the anticipated release of the newest Firefox browser today for a few months now. Firefox even went so far as to attempt a world record for number of downloads in a day where people would pledge to download the newest version today.

Well that time has come and for me at least, and I don’t think that I am alone, the page, http://www.spreadfirefox.com/, is not loading for me. I find this very unfortunate for Firefox but understand that with all of the hype surrounding the release, that something like this had to be expected.

Let me know if anyone gets it working but for now, I’m in a holding pattern waiting to see how this goes.

UPDATE: Just got the Spread Firefox link to work but it directs me to download Version 2.

UPDATE #2: Mozilla just posted this blog about the server issue.

UPDATE #3: Just got it installed thanks to direct link from Chuck Reynolds. Seems to be working nicely. Now if I can just move some of these toolbars around and it will be perfect.

UPDATE #4: Mozilla just said that all is well now and download day has begun.

So it’s been about a week since the newest iPhone was announced and I’ve had time to think about the good and bad now. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned possibly getting an iPhone in place of my T-Mobile Dash. Well I decided a couple of weeks ago to get a Blackberry Curve and I love it. And now, looking back, I’m glad that was the decision that I made.

When I first heard about the iPhone possibly being $299 for a 16gb model, I thought that this might just work. But then reading up on the fact that you had to sign up with AT&T for 2 years made this not that attractive for me.

I really love the idea of the GPS included in the newest version. I like it more that the addition of the 3G network. To me, if the 3G is only 2 times faster, it’s not worth the extra hassle. But I am very interested in the GPS.

I also think that the quality of apps will greatly increase due to the iPhone SDK that’s been out for a while now. I’m also a fan of the Application Store. Gives the developers a chance to see some return on countless hours spent developing apps. It also gives them a wide user base to potentially sell their apps to. I think Apple did well with this.

But the one stopping point for me is the fact that you have to get the iPhone activated in an AT&T store, thus removing any reason to jailbreak it. That is unless you don’t mind sending AT&T a check every month for services you might not use if you switch to a different network. That makes it really hard for people like me who might be locked into contracts with other carriers.

Overall, I really like the changes made to the new iPhone 2.0 but I think that the lock downs make it more unattractive to me as before. What do you think?

About a year ago, I wrote that I was checking out the latest and greatest Web 2.0 tool out there, Twitter. Well everyone said it was so great but I wasn’t sure. I gave it a good run but eventually it just died out and i went months without even thinking about it. But recently, I decided to go back and check it out.

I’ve had some friends recently get involved with Twitter so I think that helped me go back. So I started writing what I was doing, or feeling, or just whatever. So it’s been probably 2 weeks that I’ve been back to using it and I have to say that this time is much better than before.

One main reason is the fact that I have several friends who use it now and it’s fun to pseudo-chat over it as we have done a few times. I also have it hooked up to my phone so that I can send and receive messages via text message on my Twitter account. I also have it on my iPod Touch. Makes it so I can have access to Twitter basically whenever I want.

So check me out. Here’s my Twitter page:

http://twitter.com/digijustin

Follow me and then you can have another insight in what makes me tick.

The couple of weeks ago, I see a link on Digg about a cool new online storage site called Dropbox. I click it since it’s the top one at that time and was amazed at what I found. It is a revolutionary new way of online storage. If you’ve worked with Subversion, you’ll find that some of its features are in Dropbox. Basically, it acts like this:

• You install their software on any machine you use and it will set up a folder in your My Documents folder called My Dropbox.
• On the web site, you add that computer to your account by name (i.e. My Work Computer).
• You can then copy any file or folder into your My Dropbox folder and it will upload to their web site what was in that folder.
• Go to another of your computers with Dropbox installed and open your Dropbox folder and it will get those new files or folders off of their site automatically.
• If you make a change to a file in your My Dropbox folder, it will be uploaded upon saving and the old version will be stored if you ever would like to revert back to it.
• You can also share folders with anyone else. For example, if you and a friend are working on a job together, you can both place assets up there to use but make it private for just those on the project.

I am really excited about this site. Not very often am I blown away by a new Web 2.0 application but I really think that this one is great in all senses. Unfortunately they do not have a way to invite people but once they do and I get some, I’ll post that I have those available. But do what I did and just hit up Google and do a search for “Drop Box Invites” and see what happens.

So it’s been a while since I wrote but it’s partially because of stuff I’ve been doing with Facebook. That and I’m lazy. I’ve worked on teams that have released 3 applications and in the process of finishing 1 at work right now. Along with those, I’ve personally released 1 and have 2 that I have in the works. So lots of apps in my head right now.

The first app we did is called Finders Keepers. It is a really cool wishlist site where you can keep products on your Wishlist, send your friends items for their Wishlists or buy products. It was my first adventure into a real, fully functional, Facebook application. It was tough but it all came together thanks to a great team and I am proud to say that I worked on it. It is going through some major revisions so keep an eye out for those in the upcoming weeks.

The second app we did was for the Pontiac Game Changing Performance. We worked with ESPN for the College Football season and just last week released the new version for College Basketball just in time for March Madness. We implemented a really nice recruiting component for it that I think helps out with the social aspect that all applications strive to find.

The third application is one that hasn’t been fully released yet but I used the new Facebook JavaScript Client Library. Using this allows you to write applications that do not need to live within the Facebook site. Now any site that can use JavaScript can use it. Really nice and once more documentation shows up, it will get only better.

Personally, I released an RSS reader application last October while I was trying to learn just how the API worked. You can find it here. Simply put, the user adds the feed that they want, how many items, and there it is. Still has some issues with it I am finding but not too bad for a first time app I think. Add it and let me know what you think.

So pretty much since October, I have been working on Facebook apps. I’ve done some in ASP.NET C# and a couple in PHP. I gotta say that each has its pros but being a .NET guy, I had a bit of an easier time with those. But that’s the beauty with the Facebook apps. It doesn’t matter what your comfort level is. You can do it in any language it seems. Facebook releases theirs in PHP and Java but there are many APIs written in whatever language you want. At Terralever, we wrote our own API for the .NET framework and I find it really easy to work with.

So if you’re wanting to get into writing your own Facebook app, it’s really easy to get started. There is a lot of people out there to help now. So do what I did and build a dinky little app and go from there.

So today I’m looking at Digg and I see an article for 100 Essential Resources for Web Developers and I check it out because I am a web developer and these things interest me. I click the link and see quite a few links for cool resources. One thing glares out at me and that there are barely (I think I counted 3 or 4) .NET references on there. Being a .NET guy made me wonder why. I am a big fan of Digg and all that it does for the online community but it seems that this Web 2.0 is going in a direction away from .NET and towards more open source languages like PHP or Ruby on Rails. Those are fine languages (I’ve even worked a lot in PHP) but so is .NET.

So this made me think, why not make my own list? There are a lot of places that I look for resources so why not share? So here they are in no particular order:

• MSDN
• 4 Guys From Rolla
• ASP.NET
• Code Project – I always end up here with the help of Google
• ScottGu’s Blog
• GoDotNet
• EggHeadCafe
• DevGuru – Not so much for .NET but I end up using it a lot

It’s not very impressive but these sites can do for me what 25 PHP sites will do for the normal PHP guy. If you have one that I didn’t include, send it to me. I didn’t include it because I don’t know about it.