SuperHappyDevHouse 17
Well, I've obviously not done a very good job updating this blog. It's funny how work and life take over the things you wanted to do... But I wanted to put up a post to talk about SuperHappyDevHouse, an event that takes place periodically in the Bay Area and that I'll be attending in a couple weeks. It's a "private productive party" for hackers/developers/designers, a chance to get together with like-minded people to work on new ideas. Check out the website for more info.
I hope to get some work done on some ideas I have to develop an application on the Facebook development platform. There are a lot of different things you can do with the API they've exposed, but I think a lot of the applications currently found in the directory add little to the Facebook experience. The conclusion I've come to is that the best use of this API will allow a secondary community to form and interact in new ways alongside Facebook.
Currently one of main obstacles I see to the success of such a scheme is the difficulty of integrating Facebook applications with Facebook itself in a way that makes the transition between the normal UI and the application (in both directions) simple and obvious. There's no way for a Facebook user to list in his or her profile what applications they like or use; they would have to put a link somewhere else, which is simple, but not obvious. To get back to Facebook, you can redirect to a Facebook page, but you can't send any information to Facebook (probably for good reason).
Still, I think a lot can be done with the platform, and I will be exploring that over the next few weeks and at the event on Cinco de Mayo.
