Facebook Talk

The video below is a teaser trailer for an upcoming Facebook Documentary centering on what happens when crazy people get on Facebook and start issuing fatwa’s against their sister’s boyfriends. Or something like that.

I like this guy already. This is somebody I could hang out with. What? There’s a bounty on my head? People are trying to kill me? Sweet, this is gonna make a bitchin’ story. Let’s make a movie out of it!

It does seem to center on a pretty big issue, which is the majority of people not thinking about the photos they place on Facebook. I’ve written about this ad nauseum though and there’s not much more I can say. It’s gotten to the point now where I hear about somebody who had their lives disrupted due to something they did on Facebook and all I think is really? This is news to people still? It’d be like people getting shocked and amazed if they heard that somebody had their arm chewed off after sticking it into a shark’s mouth.

The only thing I worry about this movie is that we’ll probably never see a picture of the chick that started this whole thing, which is a downright sad. How are we, as the viewing audience, supposed to pick a side if we don’t know how hot the chick was in the first place? Oh crap, I better shut up, I don’t need to add to my own collection of people out to kill me.

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