Facebook Talk

Would you believe that Facebook has finally given people the option to ignore any and every future application invitation from specific friends? Let me guess, you just checked your ass to see whether or not monkeys were flying out of it. Don’t worry, the apocalypse hasn’t come just yet.

It only took Facebook, what, 10 months to get on the ball with this? Whatever, I’ll give credit wherever credit is due and right now, I owe about 15 dump trucks worth of credit to Facebook right about now. It’s not the sweeping “Block ALL Application Invites” setting I was hoping for, but this will do for now.

I love the fact that the Top 10 Facebook apps have all seen a significant drop of active users recently, because it only further hammers home my point that Facebook apps are nothing more than a flash in pan fad. Sure, they’ll still be around for years to come, but anybody who thought they were the revolutionary wave of the future before needs to seriously rethink their original position.

And even better piece of news gleamed from the article above is Ignore All. While there has been rumors that Facebook is installing an “Ignore All” option when you get a ton of app requests, it’s yet to show up on my Facebook account and thus this site steps in. Basically, you drag the link from Ignore All’s page up to your bookmark bar and then click it while on your Facebook app invite page. Suddenly, all the app invites are ignored and you can go on your merry way. There’s a video tutorial on the site in case you need a little more explanation, but trust me, it’s easy and it works. Finally.

Facebook, applications

Finally. Finally, finally, finally! It seems that Facebook woke up this morning, looked around, and realized that a few things on their site seriously sucked. One glaring area of sucktitude was the inability to ignore all application invites with just the click on a button - but that’s now a thing of the past! And I for one couldn’t be happier, as I’ve been ranting and raving about the application spam for months now. Kudos to Facebook, though, for finally stepping up to the plate and creating a seemingly small and insignificant feature that I promise many people will love and appreciate.

Now if Facebook would just update their privacy settings and stop telling me all about the applications my friends add!

I also bet this guy is sincerely happy about the new feature.

Facebook, application, ignore

While messing around with the App In A Box feature that I wrote about a few days ago, I got to wondering: How exactly do you create a Facebook application? I’m no coder, as I’m sure the layout of this website shows, but I still like learning new things especially when it has to do with Facebook.

So after googling around for a minute, I found a great article written, by Gareth Rushgrove, that breaks down how to build a Facebook application. In all honesty, it’s pretty long and in depth, so you might want to grab a refreshing beverage and soft chair before you settle in and start reading. As for me, I’m off to work on creating a few apps now!

Facebook, tutorial, application

I recently stumbled across a website called App In A Box, which basically claims to help people set up basic Facebook applications in only 5 minutes. With my curiosity peeked, I decided to give it a whirl and see how well it worked.

Right off the bat, I noticed that the site was “clean,” in that there wasn’t much clutter on the pages, which I absolutely loved. There’s little more on the pages than the information you actually need and the step-by-step walkthrough in setting up your app couldn’t be simpler. It’d be nice if the tutorial had a few more actual demos showing the full power and range of app in a box and the contact link is a direct link to an e-mail address instead of a link to a contact page. But other than those two minor items, there weren’t many qualms I had about the site.

Once you’ve got your app set up, you can log into your Facebook account and basically edit it to contain anything you’d want. Pictures, videos, whatever. The interface on your app is broken down to be user friendly by app in a box, so even if you don’t know what you’re doing, app in a box still walks your through the process of uploading content to your new application and getting it all set up. At times it got confusing as to what type of content or information I was supposed to be putting in each box, but after a quick few trial and errors, I had a basic understanding of what was going on.

Obviously, when creating a new application on Facebook, the possibilities are endless. Apps aren’t just for big companies and popular websites. If you make tons of funny videos for you and your friends, it’s not that difficult to use app in a box to set it up so that your videos are pulled from your server and displayed in a box on your Facebook profile. Or if you take home photos of your family and pets, you could easily set it up to pull and show a random photo from a large batch of them every time a profile page is reloaded.

If you’re looking to make millions with Facebook applications, then app in a box is going to be far too basic for you. But if you’d like a guiding hand to learning how Facebook apps work and operate, then you might want to give App In A Box a shot. You might learn a thing or two and if so, you even have the option of taking your application off the app in a box service and making a freestanding application on Facebook where you have full and total control over it.

Facebook, application, app in a box

With just under half a million members, the Facebook group this has got to stop is for anybody dedicated to getting rid of the Facebook application spam invites. Naturally, I’m now a member and anybody with half a brain should be as well.

Facebook, application, spam, groups

If you can ignore the crappy video quality and slightly annoying, yet thankfully low volumed, music in the background then watch the video below. Some guy let all the Facebook Application spam invites add up and then filmed them for our viewing pleasure.

And this came from only a grand total of 142 friends. Ouch. A list of all the app requests can be found after the jump.

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