Obvious Ideas

I’ve been doing quite a lot of Facebook development in the last few months. At first I was using my own account to do most of the testings for the apps I was working on. I always have (at least) two versions of the app – production and development. The development version is marked as sandboxed, so any action I do in it (including posting to the newsfeed) isn’t shown to my friends.

At first I felt that this is enough, and didn’t feel the need for a test account. But after some time I realized that while developing, anytime I get to my profile or newsfeed, I get distracted by my friends’ posts. So I started using another account to do the testings. This way, whenever I get to the profile or newsfeed I practically see nothing there that can distract me from what I’m working on.

Another benefit of using a test account is that whenever you test something on the production (un-sandboxed) version of your app and need publish a lot to your newsfeed, you don’t spam your friends (or reveal upcoming features).

Of course, we can rely on our self discipline to avoid this distractions, but who are we kidding?

Arik

Lior Levin asked me today if it’s possible to create a Firefox extension, that will block Facebook part of the time. As a result, I created a Firefox extension (a compiled Greasemonkey) that blocks Facebook for 45 minutes each hour (form :16 to :59), i.e. blocking Facebook for 75% of your time.

This is a very rough alpha version. It will work, but it has a lot more to do with.

Will be glad to hear if you’re using it, and what you think of it.

Download extension | Download Greasemonkey Userscript

Arik

This morning I’ve received a notification email from Facebook, notifying me that my friend Asaf left me a new message on my wall. This seemed to be OK until I read the message:

“hello Arik, hehe.. you could be tht naughty i didnt knw..really hard to see tht from my eyes lol

have a luk urself…

http://www.google.com.id.ewv1g6d2.ij4s0h.2b99df1a.cn/gallery.php?id=dd83hikzt&auth=9490559&cyua=iy2qpfpelm

(click open or run when prompted)

The contents of the message was suspiciously similar to the Messenger virus messages. Another look at the URL gave out the fact that this is not a Google url, but a phishing site. Because I use Ubuntu at the moment, I wasn’t concerned too much of being hit by a virus, so I followed the link. The link goes to a download page of Picture_dl.exe, which I guess is some sort of a virus/worm.

I couldn’t find this message on my wall, so either Facebook removed it already or the email didn’t come from them. Either way, I’ve notified their support about that, and I hope they will act accordingly.

Bottom line – beware of viruses being spread via Facebook/look like Facebook notifications, and don’t click on every link…

Arik

Today Michael Arrington announced that Facebook lifted their 5000 friends limit. As a tech blogger, I bring you the “behind the scenes” view: the code change that was needed to be done to increase this limit:

For the non techies:

• line 3: commented out – the previous friends limit defined
• line 4 – the new friends limit

Shocking.

Arik