A new home page for Twitter

Twitter introduced a new, more dynamic home page earlier this week and it seems as if Twitter is differentiating itself from other social networks by positioning their network as the foremost source for real-time updates.  This is reflected in their new description of their service:  “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.”  The new home page include has a scrolling list featuring trending topics, a constant stream of tweets from random Twitter users and a box featuring current Twitter users inviting visitors to “See who’s here.” Do you like the new home page?

Facebook bug reveals private email addresses

For about 30 minutes on 30 March a bug made private email addresses public information on Facebook.  It seems as if the error occurred during a “regular code push” and thus far there has been no official explanation from Facebook.  In an online world where we’re all concerned with privacy this is a big blunder from Facebook’s side.

Posterous adds easy custom domain registration

Earlier this week Posterous announced their new one-stop domain registration feature.  With the new feature Posterous will take care of all the “geeky details” – all you have to do is register your personal domain and link it to Posterous.  The new feature integrates with Google and you can set up Google Apps like email, calendars and so forth easily on your domain.  At the moment only .com, .net or .org domains can be registered through Posterous.

Whilst updating the FormFunction fan page I came across a few interesting Facebook applications for fan pages and profiles you might find useful.

• The News24 app helps you stay up-to date with the latest breaking news from News24.com.
• Want to connect with others who enjoy reading and writing about the same topics as you? Join Networked Blog’scommunity for bloggers and blog lovers to promote your own blog and discover new blogs.
• Testimonialsis a handy app that gathers your professional, academic and personal references in one place.
• The Slideshare app adds all your SlideShare presentations to your Facebook fan page and you can upload presentations from either Facebook or SlideShare.
• Want to know how your fans feel about a certain matter? The Poll app allows you to customise polls and shows you graphs of user responses.
• Make the most of your current network and add a LinkedIn badge to your Facebook profile. The LinkedIn Profile app links to your business profile from Facebook.
• The EasyCV app allows you to insert a summary of your CV onto your profile page and will link to a more detailed version on a dedicated page.

Are there any other Facebook applications that you use and find worthwhile?

Many Facebook users have complained in the past about Facebook’s limitations on picture size and many have asked Facebook to upload photos near full resolution. Users will be happy to hear that Facebook announced yesterday that they are slightly increasing the size allowance for photos that are uploaded. On the other hand, they are decreasing the size of profile pictures.

The roll-out of the new features will start today (Wednesday, 20 January) and according to Facebook all users should have access to these features within the next three weeks. The size of the largest photo a user can upload will increase from 604 pixels to 720 pixels and the dimensions of profile pictures will be decreased from 200 pixels by 600 pixels to 180 pixels by 540 pixels. However, even though the size of the images has increased, they will still be too small to print decent quality photos.

What does this mean for developers?

If you developed a Facebook application that queries the photo FQL table or are using photos.get to return information about photos you will need to update your styling to suit these new sizes.

What do you think about these changes?