WebProNews » plug-ins

[Exclusive] Reload The Love! App Assesses Facebook’s Emotional Utility

Drew Bowling — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:35:02 +0000

Ever get caught in one of those moments when you log onto Facebook and felt yourself, maybe surprisingly, disappointed that you have zero notifications, zero friend requests, and zero messages? It’s like being the permanent resident of Lonely Town, Population: You. Loath to admit it or not, sometimes you experience a frisson when you log-in and find a new notification announcing that someone out there thought about you. Those tiny red word bubbles announcing “3″ can really make your day (for at least five or ten minutes). When you’re a silent witness to everybody’s fun life via Facebook, it’s nice to know that occasionally you’ve been included in those activities.

If you’re the type that waits with bated breath as your Facebook homepage loads in hopes that you’ll be greeted with some new notifications but sadly are met with a dearth of notices, Dr. Benjamin Grosser has got the cure for your social network malady.

Actually, he’s not really a doctor (as far as I know). He’s just an astute software developer with a mind for how we interact with software and the emotional effect it has on us.

Grosser has developed a plug-in for Facebook called Reload The Love!, a new application that will automatically inflate the amount of notifications you see when you log in to your Facebook account. Tired of seeing zero notifications? Reload The Love! will make sure you see plenty the next time you reload the page or log in. If you should receive any real notifications after Reload The Love! has inflated them, the count will automatically revert to the actual values. If you start feeling the tug of loneliness due to no new notifications after that, you can re-inflate them anytime by reloading the page to Reload The Love!

The project is equal parts social psychology experiment and software development ingenuity as it cleverly explores the value social networks have on a person’s self-esteem and how something as seemingly minuscule as red word bubble notifications can impact a person’s mood.

“Reload The Love! is first and foremost an art project for me,” Grosser told WebProNews, “so I do consider it within that context. As such, one of its purposes is to get people thinking about how Facebook’s notification icons function in their daily lives. How many times do you check those icons, hoping to find a new friend or message? How do those icons make you feel?”

The marketing value of such information, which Facebook is undoubtedly tracking, isn’t lost on Grosser, either, who has worked on other software systems for Facebook and Google. “It’s important to remember that Facebook’s value as a company is in the breadth of its data,” he said. “The source of that data is unwaged free labor contributed by us, their users. How do those icons prod us to keep generating more of that free data? As you mentioned, are we feeling happier when we see everyone else’s activities, or does it make us sad when we inevitably compare them to our own?”

Grosser’s Reload The Love! application turns the value of those notifications on its ear as it “nullifies those icons by turning them into a perpetual positive indicator.” So far, the response has been well received although, although since the application is very new it’s only been installed 366 times (wink, wink, hint). “When I show it or talk about it with people I get a variety of reactions,” Grosser said. “The first is humor – many people find it quite funny. But others find it sad and talk about their own emotional connection and/or reliance on those icons.”

And there’s the rub: people experiencing emotional distress over lack of attention and involvement on Facebook. Has social networking really moved beyond a fun pastime distraction to being a legitimate utility in our everyday lives? That’s one of the complexities that Reload The Love! exposes to ourselves – but not to Grosser. Yes, rest assured, he has zero ways of tracking any of your information through the use of this application and he was delightfully up-front in stating he wouldn’t want to even if that was a possibility. “I wouldn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy with that,” he said. “The source code is freely viewable so that users can verify for themselves that nothing nefarious is going on.”

Take that, Facebook.

But back to the existential question that Reload The Love! points at us: are we really that reliant on being noticed on Facebook? Maybe. Grosser admits that such questions are what drive his interest in software. “I am obsessed with how software functions to force us into certain types of behaviors or to see the world in certain ways.” He adds, “Software is a designed object, and even though we can’t hold it in our hands or pack it in a box, it has a profound effect on our daily life. These are the interests that led me to create Reload The Love!”

Reload The Love! isn’t a Facebook app that works within the Facebook UI itself but rather must be installed as a plug-in on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers (don’t worry, it’s a piece of cake to install). You will need to get an extension for Firefox (Greasemonkey) and Safari (Ninjakit) but Chrome runs the app on a native browser extension. Installation is very user-friendly and you can find instructions on how to integrate Reload The Love! on your Facebook account here. If you’re so inclined to give Reload The Love! a try, let us know what you think in the comment section below.

Microsoft Using Scare Tactics For Google Browser Extension?

Chris Crum — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:26:49 +0000

Update: Not long after MIcrosoft talked about Google making IE less secure with its Chrome Frame plug-in, Google came out and contradicted the notion. From eWeek:

"While we encourage users to use a more modern and standards-compliant browser such as Firefox, Safari, Opera or Google Chrome rather than a plug-in, for those who don’t, Google Chrome Frame is designed to provide better performance, strong security features and more choice to both developers and users, across all versions of Internet Explorer," a Google spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that accessing sites with Chrome Frame brings the Chrome browser’s sandboxing and malware protection features to IE users.

Original Article: This week Google released the Chrome Frame, which is a plug-in for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that enables the browser to run HTML5, and (probably more importantly to Google) Google Wave.

Google and Microsoft are of course direct competitors in a variety of markets, most notably search, and more recently, web browsers. Google’s Chrome hasn’t been around that long yet (over a year), but it has already made a fair impression on the market. Microsoft still largely dominates this market though, and the company doesn’t appear to be too thrilled with the concept of Google penetrating it right from within, via a plug-in.

Microsoft told Ars Technica that the Google Chrome Frame makes Internet Explorer less safe for users. "With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."

Ars notes that Microsoft has a point in that plug-ins can create security issues because they typically remain unpatched longer than the browsers themselves, but the company is probably off the mark with regards to Google’s Chrome Frame in particular.

"As for IE + Google Chrome Frame potentially allowing for double the damage because the browser mutant would be open to a wider range of attacks, we’re going to have to call foul," says

Ars Technica’s Emil Protalinski. "Somehow we doubt there is a significant amount of malware specifically targeting Chrome, and for whatever exists, we’re pretty sure most would fail when encountering IE + Google Chrome Frame. These Web attacks would be written to be able to circumvent Chrome’s security measures and would simply not expect Internet Explorer’s security layers."

Given that Microsoft has the much larger market share, malware distributors have more of a reason to go after IE rather than Chrome. Furthermore, Microsoft mentioned security issues with "Chrome in particular" and after patching some initial holes after Chrome was first launch, the browser has maintained levels of security where other browsers (including IE) have failed.

Is Microsoft really concerned about the security of its users in this case, or is it just trying to dissuade people from using a competitor’s plug-in? If the latter is the case, perhaps they should get in gear and support the latest technologies. Browsers are one market where Microsoft still dominates over Google. They don’t want to lose that share.

Google Makes Sure Wave Can Run Properly on IE

Chris Crum — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:06:03 +0000

Google released an early version of the Google Chrome Frame today. This is a plug-in for Internet Explorer, which lets the browser use HTML5 and…Google Wave (starting next week when the product’s preview is extended).

"We’re building Google Chrome Frame to help web developers deliver faster, richer applications like Google Wave. Recent JavaScript performance improvements and the emergence of HTML5 have enabled web applications to do things that could previously only be done by desktop software," Google says on the Chromium blog. "One challenge developers face in using these new technologies is that they are not yet supported by Internet Explorer. Developers can’t afford to ignore IE — most people use some version of IE — so they end up spending lots of time implementing work-arounds or limiting the functionality of their apps."

Google says it will encourage IE users to install Chrome Frame, once the Wave preview is extended, and IE users will see the following message when they login to Google Wave. Then they will be running Wave in a speed that equivalent to that of Google Chrome.

"Google Wave depends on strong JS and DOM rendering performance to provide a desktop-like experience in the browser. HTML5′s offline storage and web workers will enable us to add great features without having to compromise on performance," says Google’s Wave Team. "Unfortunately, Internet Explorer, still used by the majority of the Web’s users, has not kept up with such fairly recent developments in Web technology. Compared with other browsers, the JavaScript performance is many times slower and HTML5 support is still far behind. Likewise, the many different versions of IE still in use — each with its own set of CSS quirks and layout limitations — further complicates building rich Web applications."

If you have not yet gotten acquainted with HTML 5, Google has uploaded a 40-minute introduction to the technology to the Google Code YouTube Channel. You can view it below.

API Released for Second Life Plug-Ins

Chris Crum — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:18:00 +0000

You don’t hear as much about Second Life these days as you did several years ago. For a while, articles were being written left and right about how to leverage this virtual world from Linden Lab as a business tool. Lately, not so much.

It is possible that that will soon change, as the LLmedia API has been released to developers. This API lets developers create plug-ins for the Second Life viewer to bring more media-rendering capabilities to the virtual world. Linden explains on the Second Life Blog:

Currently, Residents who own land have the ability to specify a select set of media types to be used on their parcel through the Land Management settings. This allows Residents to do interesting things like watch videos, show Web pages to visitors, or just add ambiance to inworld spaces with streaming music. However, the types of media that could be used inworld has been limited to only those that could be rendered by the set of media rendering engines embedded in the Second Life Viewer, such as Apple QuickTime movies.

The LLMedia API will change this by enabling developers to create media rendering plug-ins for the Second Life Viewer. In the future, by installing these plug-ins, you’ll be able to enjoy a wider range of media inworld, without having to download new Viewers to do so. For example, when a plug-in is developed for rendering an additional video format, you’ll be able to view media in that format inworld after downloading and installing that plug-in, without having to wait for a new version of the Second Life Viewer that includes this rendering engine.

Is this going to create the buzz for Second Life that once existed in the days when it was even getting mentions on NBC’s The Office? I’m not sure I would go that far, but APIs tend to open up lots of room for improvement, and this one appears to be a step in the right direction for usability of the virtual world.

Linden says it’s going to take some time for Second Life to get to where it needs to be, but considers this an "important step" in the right direction.

Microsoft Puts Out New Version of Silverlight

Chris Crum — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:26:17 +0000

Microsoft has launched Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 today. Silverlight is a browser plug-in that enables companies to design, develop, and deliver web apps. Expression is a set of design tools and technologies.

The new Silverlight release in particular is big news. Over 1/3 of Internet devices have installed version 2 since its launch less than nine months ago.

Microsoft also announced that MGM and NBC Sports are using Silverlight for different forthcoming video efforts.

"NBC Sports has evaluated many different technologies for delivering high-quality experiences online, and none have delivered the video quality, scalability and business value that Microsoft Silverlight has consistently brought," said erkins Miller, senior vice president of Digital Media at NBC Sports. "As we look forward to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver as well as other major championships in 2010, we will be using Silverlight as the preferred technology to deliver the best in next-generation online high-definition video experiences."

Microsoft says it has over 300 partners in 30 countries helping customers design and develop with Silverlight and Expression. These include leading content delivery networks, solution providers, and independent software vendors.

"Silverlight and Expression fill a clear need in the marketplace for a complete end-to-end solution that makes it easy for development teams to work together effectively, from concept to deployment, to create the types of rich interactive experiences today’s users expect," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft.

New features with these releases of Silverlight and Expression include:

- Expression SketchFlow. Available to customers just four months after its initial debut at MIX09, SketchFlow provides development teams unrivaled capabilities to rapidly prototype applications and take their ideas from concept to reality.

- Out of Browser. Silverlight 3 provides the seamless ability to add out-of-browser, connected and disconnected scenarios for cross-platform applications, radically improving the productivity and capabilities over traditional RIAs.

- IIS Smooth Streaming. As part of Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Media Services and combined with Silverlight 3, IIS Smooth Streaming enables the industry’s first HDTV-quality (1080p) video experiences with rich interactivity for both on-demand and live video.

Silverlight 3 can be downloaded immediately. If you already use Silverlight, you should be automatcially upgraded. Expression 3 should be available in the next 30 days.

New Sharing Options About to Be Rolled Out to 80,000 Sites

Chris Crum — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:34:40 +0000

ShareThis, creator of the ShareThis widget that allows for the easy sharing of content via your favorite social networks, has announced a new version of the widget with some added features. I just chatted with CEO Tim Schigel about it.

The new widget is currently available in limited Beta, but will be rolled out to general availability in the coming weeks. Once that happens, expect a lot more sharing to happen on the web."We see that sharing frequency increases >5x when users leverage tools like ShareThis with access to their contacts and friends," Tim tells me [emphasis added].

"Sharing is good!" he exclaims. "I think the growth of services like ShareThis demonstrates the importance for publishers, and people will be sharing more and more."

ShareThis is featured on over 80,000 publisher sites including ESPN, MTV, NFL, Wired, TechCrunch, Mashable, and many more. The new widget can be seen in action right now on the beta sites including: AccessHollywood.com, Boston.com, Dogtime.com, Elle.com, and FoxNews.com. Check out this video to get a feel for what’s new:

ShareThis Widget 2.0 from Dave Donohue on Vimeo.

New features in the beta version of the widget include:

- ShareBox v.2.0 – Users can now save content directly to their ShareBox through a link in the widget, allowing for easy access to previously shared content.

- Contact Manager – Users can now import access contact names and email addresses directly to the widget from the largest webmail providers through ShareThis’ new contact manager, allowing for easier sharing to all contacts without ever leaving the website they are visiting.

- Smarter Widget – The widget will automatically display the last three email addresses used, providing an even faster and easier way to share content with the relevant contacts.

- Improved Design – ShareThis completely redesigned the widget to be tab-free. The once separate Social Web and Post tabs are now merged together.

Tim says the release represents a lot more to come, and that it is a platform on which they will continue to expand. For example, preparing for further integration with other social web services, and leveraging APIs to do more with less effort.

For new users looking to use ShareThis, setting it up on your site is easy and could take minutes, depending on your site and CMS. Plug-ins are available for WordPress, Blogger and TypePad. ShareThis originally launched the button for publishers in November 2007. They have yet to realize a monetization model, but Tim says they have some ideas.

4 Helpful Firefox Add-Ons for AdSense Publishers

Chris Crum — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:24:12 +0000

Google has highlighted a few Firefox add-ons that could be of great use to AdSense publishers. These include:

- Colorzilla
– MeasureIt
– IE View
– WebDeveloper Toolbar

"Do you regularly work with your webpages and AdSense implementation, tinkering with HTML or PHP and creating images and code on the fly?" asks Laura Prado of the Inside AdSense Team. "If you do, Firefox add-ons can help streamline the process of creating webpages."

THE ADD-ONS

Colorzilla

The Colorzilla add-on allows you to get a color reading from any point within your browser. You can then paste this color into another program.

MeasureIt

The MeasureIt add-on allows you to draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. It will allow you to define how much space you have left for your AdSense ads.

IE View

The IE view add-on is great for cross-browser compatibility testing. It lets you load pages in IE with a single right-click, or mark certain sites to always load in IE.

Web Developer Toolbar

Finally, the Web Developer Toolbar add-on adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools such as JavaScript display, form and CSS elements, screen resizing, HTML validation, etc.

What About Chrome?

Prado says that hopefully Google will soon have a similar set of add-ons for the company’s own Chrome browser, but until then, these Firefox ones should do nicely. Although it is interesting to see Google promoting the use of a competing browser.

A Delicious New Add-On For IE

Chris Crum — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:36:34 +0000

Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer, and del.icio.us social bookmarking now have a new add-on to enjoy.

Nick Nguyen, senior product manager of del.icio.us announced on the del.icio.us blog the release of the "Delicious Bookmarks" add-on that brings with it features from the Firefox add-on, plus some new stuff.

The add-on was released in beta last month, but is now apparently finalized.

As noted in the initial announcement, features include:

- Near instantaneous searching with very large accounts (over 10K bookmarks)

– Full del.icio.us sidebar and toolbar implementation with bookmark sync and typedown search

– Toolbar indicators for new network activity and links for you

It’s compatible with Internet Explorer 6,7, and 8, on Vista as well as XP. It is not compatible however, with all users.

The announcement was met with a few complaints in the comments section of the blog.

One complaint is that it is not functional with the IE sidebar like the Firefox version.