LiveSide - News blog : Facebook

NBC Prepared For Winter Olympics, Adds Silverlight Player And Facebook Connect

Sunshine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:40:17 GMT

Are you ready for the Winter Olympics? With the Olympics still 100 days away, NBC sure is. They made some changes to their site, NBCOlympics.com, for that.

Just as last year with the Summer Olympics there will be a Video Player based on Microsoft Silverlight which will deliver full HD videos. But that’s not all! This year the video player will have DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them. How awesome is that? But wait, that’s still not all, the video player also incorporates Facebook Connect, so you can immediately share your favorite videos with your friends.

More share options are: Windows Live, Twitter, Digg, De.licio.us and Reddit.

As you may have noticed in the screenshot above, International users may be disappointed as due to Olympic broadcasting regulations, NBC is only allowed to show Olympic competition video on the internet to users in the United States and U.S. Territories (including Puerto Rico). Users outside of those locations will still have access to an extensive set of non-event video content on NBCOlympics.com though.

The site, according to TechCrunch, will also include Deep Zoom photo galleries and slideshows, so you can zoom in to every detail you’d like to see. I have yet to find out where those are, found pictures and slideshows yep, but zoomable ones…nope. Maybe that part hasn’t been updated yet? What I see sure differs from the screenshot at TechCrunch.

Also on site are Medal Counts, TV listings, headlines etc. etc. So yea, even without the competition vids there’s enough to see for international users too. Go on, have a look, the site went live today! Oohh, and ehh if you do find those zoomable pictures, let us know in the comments below.

Publish Your Photosynth To Facebook

Sunshine — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:10:58 GMT

So you got good at creating Photosynths. To share you can send the link to your friends or embed it into your blog but now there is one more: MySynth, a new Facebook app that publishes Photosynths right onto your Facebook profile page.

After you’ve added the application you can go ahead to the MySynth application page and fill out the form.

Title: the name you wish to give the Synth.
Source URL: the URL of the Synth taken from the address bar or from the embed code of the synth.
Thumbnail Image URL: the URl of the thumbnail.
This is not so obvious. Where do you find the thumbnail and its URL? You can find this by going to the user’s collection of Synths, right click the thumbnail of the Synth you wish to use and choose properties. Copy that URL.
Thumbnail Description: a short description that will be shown next to the thumbnail on publishing
Long description: will be displayed in the Synth view.
Location: where the Synth is taken.
More info URL: URL for linking to a page with more info on the URL. Example: website of the owner. this will be shown at the end of the long description.

Now make sure the checkboxes you want are checked and grant permission for Feed Publishing by clicking the link beside that checkbox, if you want it to be published to the feed. Done, click Add Synth.

Should you wish to edit or remove the Synth later, just go to the application page and click on the View/Edit Synths tab. This app can also publish Synths of others to your Facebook page if you want to share a nice one you saw.

MySynth is created by Speaktech and uses the latest cloud service features in Microsoft Azure for storage.

Source: Publish Your Photosynth to Facebook - Bing Maps Blog - Bing Community

Windows Mobile Facebook Application Update

Sunshine — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:52:33 GMT

The recently released Facebook Application for Windows Mobile already got an update. The team heard there were users having problems with installation, so they addressed this in a new version of the app. The update fixes hanging errors and most importantly it should help anyone who got a “cannot install due to insufficient privileges” error.
More screenshots over at LiveSino.Net

Before you install the new application, please uninstall the old application and make sure that facebook.vol and fbmail.vol are deleted from the root directory of your Windows Mobile phone.

Ready to get this new version? The new .cab file is available at at the download center or from your phone.

Microsoft releases official Facebook for Windows Mobile app

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:42:13 GMT

Just out is the official Facebook for Windows Mobile app, available for installation on Windows Mobile 6 phones. Features include:

Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.

Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.

Send messages or call people in your Friends list.

Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

Tips for adding Facebook Web Activity on your Windows Live Profile

damaster — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:44:00 GMT

Windows Live Profile was just recently updated with the ability to add 20 new Web Activities, and one of which includes Facebook. Like many people (including readers on LiveSide and Windows Live Wire’s team blog), I have had problems getting my Facebook updates on to my Windows Live Profile (Note: NOT Windows Live Home, see later). It seems like there’s a few things you need to set on Facebook’s end to get it working. Here’s Windows Live team’s response when we enquired about why it wasn’t working the first time we tried it:

The types of Facebook updates that you should be seeing on your Windows Live Profile are: Status message, Photos, Videos, Links, and Notes (but not comments about those items).

If you’re still not seeing these updates, one other thing to check is your privacy settings on Facebook. If you use the default settings for status updates, “Everyone” (or “My Networks and Friends” for Status and Links ONLY), then you should be fine. If you’ve changed these to more restrictive settings, then updates will not come over to Windows Live.

What this means is that besides adding the Facebook web activity, you will also need to configure your Facebook privacy settings such that it can be fed to your Windows Live Profile. But for those who knows a bit about Facebook will realise that there’s hundreds of privacy settings across Facebook, so which one will you need to change? We at LiveSide have gone through the trouble and will show you where exactly to change your privacy settings so that it’ll show up on your Windows Live Profile. So here it is:

To share your Facebook Status or Links on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=profile
Look for “Status and Links” and set that to either “My Networks and Friends” or “Everyone”
Notice that your Facebook Profile privacy settings can remain restricted to “Only Friends”
Update your Facebook Status message or post a Link
It should now show up on your own Windows Live Profile (and also your Windows Live friend’s What’s New feeds if you’ve allowed them to see it)

To share your Facebook Photos on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=photos
Select the album you’re like to share with Windows Live, and set the privacy settings to “Everyone”. Alternatively, you can create a new album and set its privacy settings to “Everyone”
Upload your photos to the album you just created or edited in Step 2
The photos you just uploaded to Facebook should now appear on your own Windows Live Profile (and your friend’s Windows Live Photos)

To share your Facebook Videos on Windows Live Profile

When uploading your Video to Facebook, you’ll be able to set the privacy settings for that particular video. Make sure you set it to “Everyone”
When the video has been uploaded to Facebook, it should also now appear on your own Windows Live Profile

To share your Facebook Notes on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=notes
Under “Who can see your Notes?” make sure you set it to “Everyone”
Create a new Note on Facebook
When publishing your note, double check and make sure you set the privacy setting for that particular Note to “Everyone” (it should be the default if you’ve done Step 1 and 2)
The Note you just posted should now show up on your Windows Live Profile

The Windows Live team also wrote the following in response to many users expecting to see their Facebook news feeds (or even wall posts) to show up on their Windows Live Home:

Once you add the Facebook web activity, your updates won’t appear to you on Windows Live Home, just on your Profile (and on the Home pages of people in your network on Windows Live). This is because the Facebook web activity pulls over updates about things you have done, but nothing about what your Facebook friends have done, unless they’re also Windows Live friends, and they’ve also added the Facebook web activity. You can invite all of your Facebook friends (or just the ones you want) to join your network on Windows Live by going to http://profile.live.com/connect.

Oh and also note that there might be a slight delay between when you update your Facebook and when the activity will appear on your Windows Live Profile. And for those wondering, we do believe that you shouldn’t have to share your Facebook Photos and Videos with the public to get it appearing on Windows Live (particularly if you’re restricting the Facebook Web Activity to be shown your friends only on Windows Live), it completely makes no sense to us. However, we understand that this is a limitation on Facebook’s side and Microsoft is in the talks with Facebook to work out if a solution is possible. Let’s all hope that this will be changed soon in the future!

Nevertheless, hope this clears up some confusion and solves some of your problems with the Facebook Web Activity!

Office Live Workspace Provides Resumé Help (For College Students) On Facebook

Sunshine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:19:57 GMT

So you’ve graduated, or are close to graduating, and on your way of landing that first job. But to do so you need to write something lots of people dread: a resumé! To help you with that the Office Live Workspace team created an Office Live Workspace page on Facebook just for college students. I believe anybody who needs to write a resumé can profit from this though, and it’s not like you’ll be chucked off the page if you aren’t a student :P

On this Facebook page you will find tips, advice, videos and more brought to you by resources like Monster.com and the Microsoft Office Online Career Center. Kevin Connolly, Eric on Entourage, tells you the top 5 most important things to include if you want a killer resumé in the somewhat humorous video right here (bah, no embed code).

Still doubting or just like your resumé to be reviewed by a professional? Enter the My Resume Talks Sweepstakes:

Official Rules / Privacy Policy / FAQ

This is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are at least 18 years old at the time of entry. 500 winners will each receive a private resume consultation from a Professional and Certified Resume Specialist. Drawings will be held on or around April 14, April 21, April 28, and May 5 and the winners will be notified via the contact information provided upon registration. You can enter once per day until May 4th and can only win once.

Good Luck!

CTIA Keynote Preview

RyanRCRea — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:04:52 GMT

On April 2…. yes April 2nd ,Robert Bach will take to the stage and make the day 2 keynote at CTIA’s 2009 trade show.

He is president of the Entertainment & Devices, a group that includes Zune & Windows Mobile. You can expect the usual dog & pony show for Windows Mobile 6.5 and its upcoming app store.

According to sources close to MS, You can expect at least one surprise announcement related to Windows Live wave 4. Which is due this fall

The announcement may be the long rumored Windows Live-Facebook integration. Which would allow users to link both networks together and view Facebook’s updates on www.home.live.com.

It would seem Microsoft is very intent on making Windows Live a one stop social gateway. With the ability to view Tweets from Twitter & now with the addition of Facebook updates, You have a very well rounded social experience.

Keep a close eye on the keynote.. you’ll be glad you did.

Windows Live / Facebook integration coming in April?

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:10:50 GMT

Another day, another gem coming from Twitter. This time, TechCrunch found a tweet by a Microsoft Advertising marketing manager for Southeast Asia (since taken down), which appears to reveal the timing of Facebook integration into Windows Live:

Facebook will be added in the Windows Live activities in april, I just heard!

Adding Facebook to the list of activities available on Windows Live was something that was announced by Steve Ballmer at CES in January, but we haven’t heard much about it since. Windows Live has been promoting coming availability of “over 50 activities”, including Facebook, but as of today there are only 12:

so maybe we’ll be seeing a flurry of new activities in April. TechCrunch speculates that Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco (Mar 31-Apr 3) might see Windows Live / Facebook announcements, but at this point there’s no official word of that.

Facebook comes to Windows Live FrameIt, PowerToy now available for download

damaster — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:02:52 GMT

A few days ago we just reported that FrameIt received the latest Wave 3 update and gave you a preview of what the new FrameIt Client PowerToy will look like. Today Windows Live FrameIt just got updated with Facebook integration – now allowing you to import your albums on Facebook into your FrameIt collection. Let’s see how this works:

Firstly we can see now that FrameIt supports importing photos from a variety of online photo sharing sources: Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug and Microsoft’s very own Windows Live Spaces. It is frustrating to see that Windows Live Photos integration is not here yet though, but trust me, it is coming. Clicking on Facebook on this page allow you to add this source to your collection:

Integration with Facebook is done via Facebook Connect, and upon clicking the Connect button, the Facebook log-in page will pop-up and asking you to allow FrameIt to access your Facebook photos and albums:

Provided you have allowed access, you will be able to select where to source your Facebook photos from. There are two options: either select all those photos that you’ve been tagged in, or select from either one of your uploaded photo albums on Facebook.

You can then configure any of the settings provided with FrameIt, such as number of images, display order, age of images to display, and the display schedule. You can then preview what the source will look like on your computer first, and then subscribe to your Collection on any of the supported FrameIt devices. Alternatively, you can also download them locally onto your computer and share it others using Live Mesh, or even use them as your screensaver using the newly released FrameIt Client PowerToy. The best thing is, as your Facebook albums gets updated (or when people tag new photos of you), this will be automatically synced and updated! Talk about convenience! Microsoft is truly providing a seamless integrated photo sharing experience to everyone!

You can now download the new FrameIt Client PowerToy from this page.

Connect your Photo Gallery people tags with Facebook contacts: LiveUpload 2.0

damaster — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:35:10 GMT

When the new Windows Live Photo Gallery Wave 3 beta was first released, we gave you a review of the new features and one of those was the ability to add plug-ins for the application. One of the first 3rd party plug-in developed was the LiveUpload to Facebook plug-in, published on the Windows Live Photo & Video Blog, that allow users to directly publish their photos in Photo Gallery onto Facebook. One of the advantage of this plug-in was that it takes advantage of the people tagging feature in Photo Gallery and publishes this information onto Facebook as well. However, the first release of the plug-in had one shortfall – the people tags published from Photo Gallery had nothing to do with all the contacts you’ve already got on Facebook.

But fear not, as this is no longer a problem. The latest release of LiveUpload to Facebook 2.0 introduces the ability to link your Photo Gallery people tags with Facebook users! Better yet, these links are actually saved so the next time you upload the same people tags onto Facebook from Photo Gallery, it will automatically link that tag with the Facebook user! Here’s a screenshot:

What this means is that if all the people tags in your Photo Gallery are actually linked from your Windows Live People contact list (including those in your Messenger list or added to your Profile Network), you’re essentially linking your Windows Live contacts with your Facebook contacts – through Photo Gallery!

Although this is a 3rd party application, we’re seeing that Windows Live is having closer ties with Facebook. We’ve already seen the ability to import your contacts from Facebook into Windows Live (and vice versa), and we saw the announcement at CES 2009 that Facebook has signed on as a Windows Live feed partner, meaning that you’ll be able to get content posted on Facebook, including photos, directly in your Windows Live What’s New feed. What’s also coming in the future is that the upcoming update to FrameIt might see some integration with Facebook photos. As the two competing social networks are becoming closer together, the potential there for both Microsoft and Facebook is enormous. It’d be interesting to see how this relationship develops in the future.

Live Search comes to Facebook with custom search page

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Mashable just spotted the new implementation of Live Search integrated into Facebook. According to Mashable:

The implementation is fairly straightforward: in the search box on the top right of Facebook, which is also used for quick access to your friends’ profiles and intrasite search, there is now an option to “Search the Web,” which in turn triggers a query of Microsoft Live Search. Results then display within a custom interface designed for Facebook.

Satya Nadella announced the upcoming feature in July, although no timetable was given at that time. Branding on the new Facebook search page is understated, to say the least, with no indication until you begin a search that web search is available, and only a small text link to Live Search itself for “advanced” search. It also doesn’t appear from first glance that Facebook has included any of the search verticals like Image, Maps, or Video, which could be accessed from the Live Search page, opening a new window.

UPDATE: Here’s the Live Search blog post on “Live Search “friends” Facebook”, which includes a link to the Facebook blog, although Facebook doesn’t appear to have actually posted yet at the time of this writing.

Windows Live On Facebook

Sunshine — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:20:00 GMT

On Facebook there are some applications about making use of Windows Live Services. I’d like to take a moment to highlight some of them.

Windows Live Messenger
With over a million users just 4 months after its launch, probably the most known of all. This one recently got a big upgrade. One of the most exiting new features is the possibility to update your Facebook status message from Windows Live Messenger! You can now set your Facebook status with your Messenger personal message. All you have to do for that is to allow this in the Messenger application's setting page:

I seem to have some problems with this feature, as in it’s not working on the new Facebook….could be just me, let me know your experiences with it….

The chat box, so people can chat with you from your Facebook profile, isn’t added automatically in the new Facebook either. To get the box (in “Boxes” tab by default) you will have to navigate to Applications > Edit All Applications, click All Applications in the left pane, then click the pencil icon behind the Messenger application an choose “Edit Settings” and on the Profile tab click “add”:

Quite some workaround…..Facebook hasn’t gotten any easier with its new lay-out :(

Photozoom
Make your Photo Albums Zoom. PhotoZoom creates zooming albums from your photos, using Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom technology. PhotoZoom automatically imports your Facebook photo albums each time you visit the settings page. On this settings page you can also tell the application which albums you would like to show on Facebook. You can create additional albums, upload high resolution pictures, import your photos from other photo sites and more at the PhotoZoom website or you can be in control of the layout and create your album with the Deep Zoom Composer (which also uploads to the Photozoom website).

MapMate
MapMate utilizes Virtual Earth and allows you to see where your friends are based on where they say they are, right down to street level! In order for this to work your friends, who also have Mapmate, will need to specify where they are. So no, it doesn’t use reverse IP or anything of that sort. How to specify your location: on the map navigate to where you are and right click on your location, a red pin with a pop up will then ask you if you wish to update your status. Click save and that’s it, all done..now your friends can find you! Don’t forget to update your location when you move again, else your friends might just turn up there and find you are not there anymore…. Beware of stalkers!

Aerobis, Train social
Another app that makes use of Virtual Earth, this time to organize and analyze your sport. With a route planner, a Sport-log and a Sport-Report. The sport profile uses the metric system (kilograms, centimeters), so that might take some calculation. An easy way to do this is to use an online converter such as Common Lenght and Distance Converter and Common Weight and Mass Converter. Even without the profile you can upload a route (KML or GPX) or create one by clicking on the map and have the application draw the route and calculate the distance for you. You can also allow others to see your routes and search routes that have been published by others. More info at the Aerobis web site.

StarFactor
Check your StarFactor. This Facebook Application created by Microsoft will tell you if you are you a Mr/Ms. Nobody or real star material! The more gossip you create on Live Search, the higher your score. Try to beat your friends, boost your buzz and enter the world of Glitz ’n Glam.

More read of interest:
Windows Live Messenger Developer Blog
Matt Augustine Tech Blog (Photozoom)
Virtual Earth Blog - Virtual Earth Applications on Facebook

For all previous LiveSide posts about these subjects and more, take a look at The List.

Have you noticed we are also on Facebook?

Edit: added StarFactor, thanks Kris Hoet for reminding me :)

PhotoZoom Updates and Facebook Application

Sunshine — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:59:00 GMT

It's little over a month now since PhotoZoom got released. Matt Augustine let's us know about the updates PhotoZoom got since then.

Where previously you had to upload your pictures (jpeg) one-by-one, if you didn't already have them in a feed, you can now upload several at the same time. To do that, select multiple pictures after you click the browse button on PhotoZoom album page.

Also, in a previous article we told you how to embed your album with a little trick. You can forget about that trick, the code you need is on the album page at the bottom.

So it's just a matter of copy and paste now. You can change width and height to whatever you like.

And last but not least of the updates, performance changes have been made so your albums should be processed faster. The photos are viewable immediately but the album is not zoom-able till it's processed. Large albums may still take some time though, more improvements will be made in the future.

PhotoZoom Facebook Application

Are you on FaceBook? Matt has created a PhotoZoom application for Facebook that you can install. It imports and updates your Facebook photo albums automatically each time you visit the Photozoom settings page on Facebook (click the PhotoZoom icon in the applications list). You can select which albums you want to show on your profile. Albums you created within PhotoZoom are also available, new ones you created there will also be shown on your next visit of the settings page.

The cover photos of the albums will show up in the PhotoZoom box. Clicking on one loads the Deep Zoom album in the canvas page.

Side note: no, I do not own 2 cars. It's the previous and current one.

You can view the album in full screen mode by clicking the link above the album. This will load the album in a new, full screen, browser window.

You can not edit your Facebook albums directly in PhotoZoom. If you look at such an album there, instead of the Upload Control you will see this image which includes a direct link to your albums on Facebook.

PhotoZoom is an experimental site developed at Microsoft, running on the Microsoft Live Labs Incubation Platform. It uses the Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight 2 Beta 1 to create photo albums with user uploaded photographs.

Many of these newly added features were by popular request of users, try them out and keep the feedback coming.

Microsoft partners with Facebook, Bebo, more to exchange contacts information securely using the Windows Live Contacts API

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

In a blog post this morning, John Richards, Director of Windows Live Platform at Microsoft, announces a set of new partnerships signed by Microsoft and 5 major social networks: Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged, and LinkedIn. From the blog post:

Starting today, we will be working with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn to exchange functionally-similar Contacts APIs, allowing us to create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services. Along with these collaborations, Microsoft is introducing a new website at www.invite2messenger.net that people can visit to invite their friends from our partner social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

So what does this mean? Currently, in order to populate a social network with information about your friends from say your Messenger buddies list or your Windows Live Hotmail account, you would need to provide your user info (email address) AND your password to the social network, which would then store in some fashion for some length of time that information as it logged into your mail or messenger account and imported your address book. Not an inherently safe operation, but that's the way it has been done. As an example, here's a screenshot of the current method for importing addresses into Tagged:

and the same for Bebo:

However now, using the Windows Live Contacts API beta in partnership with Microsoft, Bebo or Tagged (when it is implemented) or one of the other sites will instead take you to http://login.live.com, where you will log in, and permission will be granted for the site to gain access to your contacts. The site itself will never see your password. This functionality should be live today for Facebook and Bebo, with the others to follow along in the coming weeks and months. All of the contracts have been signed, it is just a matter of implementation on the sites' part, and their providing Microsoft with APIs for the export capabilities. Microsoft is apparently not done partnering, either. In a phone conversation with Richards today, he mentioned that these partnerships were with "5 of the 6" major social networks, and that there would be more to come. Will MySpace and others get on board? There certainly doesn't seem to be much downside.

The partnerships also allow for accessing your social networking contacts information, and moving it into your Windows Live Messenger contacts store. This action requires each networking site to provide Microsoft with APIs for gaining that information in a similar safe way. At launch today, only Facebook will have this functionality, but all of the services have agreed, and will be announcing availability in the coming months. By logging into www.invite2messenger.net, you will be presented with a list of services that you could import contact information from:

If this service looks familiar, we told you about an early version of it running in the Netherlands. That system allowed you to invite contacts from Windows Live Hotmail or Outlook, etc to your Messenger buddy list:

The Dutch site (www.invite2messenger.nl), basically a trial for the new site, was launched last November.

Richards also talked quite a bit about "dataportability" today. We've commented before on where Microsoft seems to be going with dataportability, and it does seem to be making an effort to promote safe secure use of not only its data, but the data of other social networks as well. Microsoft has taken a firm stance against "screen-scraping", and drilled in the necessity for security in dealing with contacts at a number of sessions at Mix08. While there might be some advantage to partnerships such as these being in effect promotions of the Windows Live services on other sites, the security gained by doing the right thing here is to be commended. Hopefully this kind of secure exchange of contact and other information catches on.

Is Live Search coming to Facebook?

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:20:00 GMT

Hot on the heels of today's Microsoft buys a share of Facebook announcement comes some speculation from Search Engine Land, that Live Search may soon make an appearance inside of Facebook. The speculation, from Greg Sterling:

During this afternoon's Microsoft-Facebook conference call the question was asked whether the new deal would include paid search. Microsoft's Kevin Johnson and Facebook's Owen Van Natta declined to directly answer the question and made general statements about future collaboration and that the deal a "win win win." Nobody listening was really all that clear on what it might mean as a practical matter beyond traditional display ads and hypothetical Facebook-specific ad types soon to be announced.

However if one steps back it seems that one thing is fairly certain: A Live Search box and related ad inventory is almost sure to make its appearance on Facebook in the near term.

Sterling goes on to describe how Facebook is without web search from within the application, and that both MySpace and Bebo utilize search bars. While it may be going pretty far out on a limb to say "one thing is fairly certain", including Live Search in Facebook would seem to be a positive move for both sides.