"For example, a desktop application geared toward small business owners could enable users to check their company’s Page stream, as well as read messages and receive notifications, all from their desktop," explains Facebook’s Ben Hiller.

In addition, Facebook has announced a new stream attachment for apps, which lets developers create attachments that users can share with friends via Facebook messages.

"The new Inbox incorporates the same Publisher used to publish to the streams on the home page and profiles," says Hiller. "We’ve enhanced the Publisher so it no longer requires you to create template bundles — you can now use the simplified attachment model that stream.publish uses. As we roll out the new Inbox over the next few weeks, we’ll deprecate the old message attachment process."

To integrate your apps into the new inbox, Facebook provides the following instructions:

1. Create a Publisher endpoint and enter its URL as the Attachment v2 Callback URL you specify on the Advanced tab in your application settings.

2. In your Publisher integration, specify "attachment" for the content parameter, instead of "feed".

3. Test your attachments today with your test accounts on www.beta.facebook.com.

Facebook is still supporting existing Publisher integrations that use the "feed" content type, but they say the flexibility of stream attachments is easier to use, and are more universal throughout Facebook.

For more on the new APIs, check out this blog post from Hiller.

Call it the new Whoopie Cushion. Recently released from Apple banishment, iFart wafted up to the top spot Christmas Day as almost 40,000 techno-chic iBrats immediately sought 21st Century methods of embarrassing their sisters.

Or perhaps to save themselves when unable to reproduce a sound made by a scooting chair or some flatulent vinyl.

iFart’s popularity overshadowed the potential irony we’d all have enjoyed if it settled at number two. Alas, since Apple loosened restrictions (standards) on third-party apps, iFart will likely break a $100,000 windfall in less than a month for the one who dealt it—after Apple cuts one small percentage, of course.

Sorry about all the obligatory fart puns. I’ll try harder to cut the cheesiness.

iFart ripped through competition like SimCity and Tetris, and iPhone users demonstrated their commitment to staying classy by making iBeer the number eight most popular app on the list.

Still in Apple iPhon- application-Purgatory are sexually suggestive and/or pornographic apps, including the highly coveted iBoobs, a non-nude addition to the iPhone good for at least ten minutes of juvenile hilarity. Though many have lobbied for iBoobs’ release, Apple’s response has been silent and most certainly deadly.