Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need To Know



As we predicted, Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the f8 conference in San Francisco Thursday introduced some of the most profound changes seen on Facebook since its inception. So many changes, in fact, that it can be hard to keep track. So here’s a handy-dandy guide.

1. You’re going to get a Timeline — a scrapbook of your life. In a complete overhaul of its ever-evolving profile page, Facebook is introducing Timeline. This is a stream of information about you — the photos you’ve posted, all your status updates, the apps you’ve used, even the places you’ve visited on a world map — that scrolls all the way back to your birth. It encourages you to post more stuff about your past, such as baby pictures, using Facebook as a scrapbook.

The further back in Timeline you go, the more Facebook will compress the information so that you’re only seeing the most interesting parts of your history. You can customize this by clicking on a star next to a status, say, or enlarging a picture.

Timeline is in beta now, and will be opt-in to start. In the long run, it will become the new default profile page.

2. You don’t have to just Like something — now you can [verb] any [noun]. Remember when all you could do to something on Facebook — a video, a comment, a product, a person — was Like it? Pretty soon that’s going to seem laughably antiquated. The social network has launched Facebook Gestures, which means that Facebook’s partners and developers can turn any verb into a button.

So you’ll start seeing the option to tell the world you’re Reading a particular book, for example, or Watching a given movie, or Listening to a certain tune. In turn, as many observers have pointed out, this is likely to lead to an explosion of oversharing — and far more information on your friends’ activities showing up in your news feed than you probably cared to know.

3. Facebook apps need only ask permission once to share stories on your behalf. Although not as big a deal as the Timeline, this tweak may be one of the more controversial. Previously, apps had to ask every time they shared information about you in your profile. Now, the first time you authorize the app, it will tell you what it’s going to share about you. If you’re cool with that, the app never has to ask you again.

But you don’t have to worry about this app stuff clogging your news feed, because …

4. All “lightweight” information is going to the Ticker. Status updates, photos from a wedding or a vacation, changes in relationship status: these are the kinds of things you want to see from your friends when you look at your news feed. Who killed whom in Mafia Wars? Who planted what in FarmVille? Not so much. So that kind of trivial detail has been banished to the Ticker, a real-time list of things your friends are posting now that scrolls down the side of your screen.

5. You can watch TV and movies, listen to music, and read news with your friends — all within Facebook. Starting today, thanks to a whole bunch of partnerships, there are a lot more things you can do without ever having to leave Facebook. You can watch a show on Hulu, listen to a song on Spotify, or check out a story on Yahoo News (or Mashable, via the Washington Post‘s Social Read app). The ticker will tell you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading, allowing you to share the experience with them by clicking on a link.

The upshot: a brand-new kind of media-based peer pressure. On stage, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — a launch partner — revealed that he had only just decided to watch Breaking Bad because Facebook’s Ticker told him a colleague was watching it. Netflix’s own algorithm had been recommending the show to him for years, but that was never reason enough for Hastings.

6. Facebook has more users and more engagement than ever. We got two interesting nuggets of information out of Zuckerberg (and the Zuckerberg-impersonating Andy Samberg): Facebook has hit 800 million users, and most of them are active. The social network just saw a new record for the most visitors in one day: an eye-popping 500 million.

Indeed, the whole impression left by the event was that of a confident, fast-evolving company that is becoming ever more professional, and Zuckerberg’s stage show bore more than a little resemblance to an Apple keynote. It’s going to be interesting to see what Google+ can do to keep up.

More About: f8, f8 2011, Facebook, Google, mark zuckerberg


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Two-Stage, Clustered Water Rocket Reaches Over 800′


We’ve covered the water rockets of George Katz and Air Command Water Rockets before. Now comes this impressive video of another of his two-stage rockets with cluster motors achieving altitudes of over 800′! As usual, great slo-mo and on-board video footage. Since it’s Plastics month, and people are asking what fun, cool, useful things they can do with plastic water bottles, here’s something very cool!

There is tons more information available on Air Command about building such rockets, what parts you need, flying tips, etc.

More:

Hydrogen-Oxygen Bottle Rocket

Awesome DIY Water Rockets with Drop-Away Boosters

via MAKE
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Twitter Begins Accepting Political Ads


Twitter on Wednesday started accepting political ads and announced a sales team dedicated to the category.

The company ran its first such ad today, a Sponsored Tweet from GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. (See below.) Romney is one of a small group of candidates and national party committees that Twitter is working with on a pilot program for the effort. Those partners will also run ads in coming weeks. The ads will be distinguished from other advertising by a purple “Promoted” icon and a Federal Election Commission disclaimer.

Twitter’s new political sales team will be run by Peter Greenberger, who until recently ran political sales for Google.

The 2012 presidential election has gotten under way in earnest. The FEC estimates that candidates for the 2008 presidential election spent $1.8 billion on ads.

What do you think of Twitter’s decision? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Shawn Campbell

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Tweeplayer Showcase: SXSW Presentation #Twesearch By Rey Junco - TweePLayer Blog

This is the first in a series of posts we will be making to showcase TweePlayer’s different tools and the variety of content TweePLayer can be useful for.  This showcase series will have content from conferences, TV shows, online webcasts, and more.  Today we are showing off the TweePLayer embeddable widget.  This widget can be used on most blogs and pretty much any site that you have direct control over the layout.  This Social Video Widget is also compatible with many web based ad networks.  

Todays Showcase

The Showcase for today is a presentation by Rey Junco, a college professor and researcher who studies how social media use affects college students.  He took the audio recording of the presentation he made at SXSW in March and added the slide deck from his presentation to the audio.  TweePLayer harvested the Tweets using his hashtag #twesearch during his presentation.  The online conversation is active and engaged throughout the presentation.   

Please login with your twitter credentials at any time and tweet into the conversation.  Your Tweets will go out to Twitter immediately and can include a link back to the conversation here.  If you click on the links that Professor Junco has highlighted below you will be taken the presentation hosted on our main TweePLayer page.  Those links will take you to the specific moments in the presentation he has highlighted.  If you Tweet while watching the presentation from those links your Tweet will have a direct link to that moment within the presentation you were Tweeting about.

Suggested Links 

The links for later in the video may take a while to load since the Vimeo video must from the beginning.  Other video players like YouTube, and others can jump right to the direct moment in the video.

 

My reading guide for Larry Niven's Known Space novels (Sci-fi)

There is a Science Fiction series of stories written mostly by Larry Niven that are collective known as being in the "Known Space" series.  They have had two major bursts of writing associated with them from Larry Niven, the 60's to late 70's and mid 90's to present.  There were a very large number of short stories in the intevening time mostly publishe don the "Man-Kzin War" series of anthologies.  

This later series of novels is quite good and feels like a return to form for Larry Niven.  My father has heard me talk about the new stories and how they cleverly fix, sidestep, or completely retcon some of the older problems of the earlier stories.  The pervasiveness of computers now and in any likely Known Space universe seemed to be missed completely by the early stories.  The new stories sidestep this by pointing that computers are practically as uiquitous as air and therefore leaving out references to them in the older stories is the equivalent of not describing the electrical outlets in a room.  In some of the newer stories computers are actually plot points and therefore get to be spoken about.

So, after hearing me talk about the stories, my father wants to reread the older stories and then the new stories but in the best order.  There are a lot of cross references in the new and older stories. Some of the new stories show the events in 30-40 year old stories from two or more different character's perspectives.

There are a few possible good reading orders for core Known Space novels and major collections.

( Mostly) Chronological order:

  1. Protector
  2. Fleet of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  3. Crashlander (collection)
  4. Juggler of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  5. Destroyer of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  6. Betrayer of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  7. Ringworld
  8. Ringworld Engineers
  9. The Ringworld Throne 
  10. Ringworld's Children

That order is good for people who have read most of the older Ringworld stories once before. The in jokes and veiled references to other events in the "...Worlds" series will make sense.

A cross referenced reading order:

  1. Protector
  2. Ringworld
  3. Fleet of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  4. Crashlander (collection)
  5. Juggler of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  6. Ringworld Engineers
  7. The Ringworld Throne
  8. Destroyer of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner) 
  9. Betrayer of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)
  10. Ringworld's Children

This is a reading order that jumps back and forth chronologically but addresses certain interelated ideas and plot points in order.  There is also the problem that "The Ringworld Throne" in my opinion and a lot of others is the weakest novel of any of these by a large margin, but so many plot points about the Ringworld and main characters are addressed it really can't be bypassed.  This reading order has three nearly self contained stories for the first three, then starts to show the interconnectedness of the series in "Crashlander" and "Juggler Of Worlds".  It then goes back to the Ringworld so that much of the backstory and details about the events in the last three novels all connect well together.

I fully expect another story or two to fit between Betrayer of Worlds and Ringworld and the Ringworld's Children, but for now this is a the reading I am recommending for the main novels.  I hope that the Worlds series will involve the Thrint so that will be an excellent opportunity to go back and read World of Ptavvs too.

 

 

5 Chrome Extensions That Improve Google+

Already using Google+? Follow Mashable News for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as our top social media and technology updates.

Google+ has launched to great aplomb, but its “project” status means some tools have yet to be developed. While Google works on adding more features, some available Chrome extensions can fill the functionality gap.

Whether you want to get better notifications, enjoy improved sharing options, or scroll through your stream more quickly, there’s an extension available — for free — to help.

Take a look through the gallery for five tried and tested picks that will help you be more productive on Plus. Let us know in the comments about other Chrome Extensions you’ve found useful — they may end up in a future gallery.

View As Slideshow »
1. G+ Count in Title: Add a Notification Count to Your Google+ Tab
2. G+ Extended: Add Shortcuts
3. Helper For Google+: Get Desktop Notifications
4. +Comment Toggle: Hide Comments
5. Extended Share For Google+: Share Plus Posts to Other Networks

TweePLayer Launches with LaunchRock

TweePLayer just launched it's invitation page using LaunchRock.com.  Over the past year we have been archiving Tweets about TV shows, sports, political events, conferences, and more.  We will be harvesting Tweets for as many SXSW sessions as we can.  If you are there, and can't be in two places at once, Tweet "help" to @TweePLayer and you will get a response telling you how to start harvesting tweets from the event you are missing.  If any sessions have videos up on YouTube you will be able to see the Tweets synced with the video of the event.

If you are a TV addict missing the live Twitter conversations about your favorite shows, you can relax, because we are harvesting conversations for all of the most popular TV shows in the US. You will be able to watch the show on your DVR or Hulu later and take part in the Twitter conversation on TweePLayer.com just like you were on Twitter live during the show.

My First TextMate Blog Post

TextMate for Everything

This is my first TextMate blog post. I am using TextMate for more and more these days and I wanted to try this out. Posterous handles MarkDown and there is a nice little TextMate bundle on GitHub that will push a posting up to Posterous. There is a second bundle that does a similar process with a few extras here by Jarrett Gossett. We will see how well this posts and if it needs much editing after the fact, since I am newish on learning Markdown as well.

P.S.

TextMate has a very nice little Markdown bundle that lets me see the MarkDown in a browser before uploading it too.

Pixability draws $1M from nine angel investors


Congrats to Pixibility!

My buddy Apollo Sinkevicius of theLean Startups Blog has been running operations there for a while now, and I am really happy for them that they have picked up the funding. I know they have been doing a ton of work and Apollo almost fetishizes effectiveness, regardless of any other trappings that signal "possible" effectiveness. He sees through wardrobe choices, work schedules, personality quirks, use of buzzwords, and any of the other shortcuts that people use to misrepresent themselves as effective.

I have known Apollo for several years now, and we instantly got along after meeting at a entrepreneur meetup group here in Boston. I had a earlier startup blow up in my face, and was just hetting back into the startup scene with a new project. He was following his wife from Chicago to Boston as she got a new job working on major cancer research at Harvard. He left his lead operations job at development office Geneca in Chicago just after two years of 600% growth as the economy was starting to hit some real problems. He dove right into the startup community in Boston and helped out a bunch of people, including me, and finally settled down at Pixibility last year.

Knowing his finely tuned BS meter, his nose for effective operations, and hearing the great things that he has to say about his CEO Bettina Hein and the team at Pixibility, this is very smart money being put on a New England startup.

Bettina Hein, founder and CEO, Pixability

Friday, February 18, 2011

Pixability draws $1M from nine angel investment groups

By Michelle Lang

Digital video startup Pixability Inc. has raised just over $1 million in an angel round of funding led by Launchpad Venture Group, CEO Bettina Hein said.

The financing, which Hein said is possibly the “most widely syndicated round in New England ever,” has investors from 10 angel groups involved, including Launchpad, Race Point Capital LLC, Maine Angels, eCoast Angel Network, Angel Investor Forum CT, Beacon Angels, Walnut Venture Associates, North Country Angels and Boston Harbor Angels.