An emerging trend in Social Networking sites and Web portals is the opening up of their APIs to external application develop- ers. For example, the Facebook Platform, Google Gadgets and Yahoo! Widgets allow developers to design their own applications, which can then can be integrated with the platform and shared with other users. However, current APIs are targeted towards develop- ers with programming expertise and database knowledge; they are not accessible to a large class of users who do not have a programming/database background, but would nevertheless like to create new applications. To address this need, we have developed the AppForge system, which provides a WYSIWYG application development platform. Users can graphically specify the components of webpages inside a Web browser, and the corresponding database schema and application logic will be automatically generated on the fly by the system.
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Facebook is one of the most popular Internet sites today. A key feature that arguably contributed to Facebook’s unprecedented success is its application platform, which enables the development of third-party social-networking applications. Understanding how these applications are installed and used is important for the function and utility of web-based online social networks, e.g. to better engineer them and/or to design advertising campaigns.
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Electronic communication has been redefining the ways in which people communicate with each other since its wide-spread introduction in the 1990’s. E-mail, instant messaging, internet forums, and social networking have added entirely new meanings to interpersonal interaction and community. Through time, internet based communication has developed its own set of non-verbal communication (emoticons, select usage of certain punctuation, chat speak, etc.) Like all other communication technologies, it has also been adapted into everyday life and everyday communication (by those that have access of course).
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Facebook applications are programs developed to make people come close, interact, have fun with friends and others and earn money. These applications are designed to make people stay up-to-date of what is happening around, like, a user can find out when his/her favorite band is launching new album? Or, has Marks & Spencer launched its new designs?
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Facebook Open Platform (fbOpen) is a snapshot of the infrastructure that runs Facebook Platform. It includes the API infrastructure, the FQL parser, the FBML parser, and FBJS, as well as implementations of many common methods and tags. We’ve included samples and some dummy data to help you get started fast. Facebook Open Platform also has extensibility points built in so you can add your own functionality, such as your own FBML tags, API methods, and so forth.
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Here’s how much of a Web 2.0 guy Mark Zuckerberg is: during the weeks he spent working on Facebook as a Harvard sophomore, he didn’t have time to study for a course he was taking, “Art in the Time of Augustus,” so he built a website containing all of the artwork in class and pinged his classmates to contribute to a communal study guide. Within hours, the wisdom of crowds produced a sort of custom Cliff Notes for the course, and after reviewing the web based crib sheet, he aced the test. Turns out he didn’t need to take that exam, anyway. Zuck (that’s what the cool kids call him) dropped out of Harvard later that year.
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Social networking websites have been steadily gaining popularity over the last few years. A recent OFCOM report (OFCOM, 2008) demonstrated that 22% of adults in the UK had registered with a social networking site (the figure is highest for 16-24 year olds and decreases with age). Facebook is, at present, the most visited social networking site and has over 130 million active users (Facebook, 2008a). This article shares the experiences of University of Wolverhampton’s pilot project into the use of Facebook pages for academic libraries.
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The tone of recent news stories about the dangers of Facebook has been quite hysterical and many IT directors can be forgiven for feeling under threat from the phenomenon. But is a blanket ban for the site the best approach or merely a knee-jerk reaction, perhaps a more tailored approach with network management tools is appropriate?
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