Tag: API

Facebook

A year with Facebook by Nitin Khanna (nitinkhanna.com)

All this stopped on August 1st. The declaration came in the form of a blog post by Facebook on their developer portal on April 24th. It was hidden between a bunch of other deprecated APIs, which I’m sure broke a lot of other things for other people.

Most of my traffic in the past has come from Facebook. Back before Facebook deprecated the API, my photography posts would be automatically cross-posted to Facebook. Friends and family could see my travel or other photographs. Some clicked through to the blog and left comments. Many clicked liked or left comments on the Facebook itself. When I started using IndieWeb plugins I could even pull these responses back to my blog. All that stopped when Facebook deprecated the API. Traffic to the blog has fallen off and I don't make the effort to manually post a link to Facebook.

But what happened when the posts stopped? Nothing.

Same. I am not sure anyone notices that I don't post to Facebook. Is that the algorithm at work or do people just not care?

I’m tired of being Facebook’s fix. I don’t care for it any more.

What took you so long? Facebook only has the power we cede to it by using it. I am no longer angry at Facebook. Facebook is Facebook in the same way my wife is my who she is. Expecting here to change to meet my expectation of who she should be in foolish. Better to accept her as she is and learn to love her as she is. Or leave. Same for Facebook. Leave. Delete the account. I told my friends who complain about Facebook to put up or shut up.

While the company has morphed and plundered and established itself as the place to go to steal access user data, it should know that its main platform is tired and done for.

I don't think so. You are not the majority of Facebook users. When I log into Facebook, the complaints I see about Facebook are from tech geeks. The regular people have spoken. They like Facebook.

I know a lot of people have done this in 2018, but I still have derived some utility from it, so I’m sure it’ll feel somewhat bad to do so.

Define a lot? How did you do this analysis? I think this "Facebook is dead" talk is from a small group of tech nerds who are all in one echo chamber. Facebook is not in decline. Neither is Apple or Google. If you have actually analysis and data to back this up, please share. I have stopped using Facebook as much. My friends continue to use it as heavily as before. I see their timeline posts.

I specifically made it a point to uninstall Facebook (it came preinstalled for some reason), while I did install Instagram.

Facebook owns Instagram and has integrated all the data and analytics into its platform. So how are you signalling Facebook by using Instagram? Do they care about the usage pattern of the singular data point that is Nitin Khanna?

I have a question. What is it that Facebook could do to make money while doing nothing of the things that offend you? Is what you want the same as what the majority of Facebook users want?

Facebook had killed off an ugly experiment it has forced me to be a part of two years – the Facebook marketplace and Video tabs.

And how were you forced into this experiment? You also admitted that you've never used them.

I hope this does not come off as a defence of anything Facebook has done. I'm just trying to understand.

When I have a party at my house I hope that my invited guest understand that they must follow the rules of my house. If they don't like the rules, they are free to leave at any time.

Running a business from an iPhone

I've just stepped back into independent consulting and need an invoicing solution. I started looking at curdbee but also tried Harvest and FreshBooks and Outright. I'm not sure what is the best solution for my needs and these all seem capable. This is my first time consulting after 10 years and the market for small business services has exploded with options.

While Curdbee is inexpensive, its lack of an API has eliminated it as a choice for me. I want to integrate with Google and tax planning software etc.

FreshBooks_logo

I singed up for the 30 day trials of Harvest and Freshbooks. Even after a month I still couldn't decide. I think the features sets are comparable but Freshbooks seemed to have more integration options. Harvest is cheaper ( $7/month less ) and I don't need most of the integration options at this time but I felt that FreshBooks was the better choice. For now. I upgraded to the basic account for a year. The thing that sold me on FreshBooks over Harvest is the invoicing. While Harvest has more invoicing templates, FreshBooks has a feature that notifies me when the client has viewed the invoice. No more client excuses about not receiving invoices.

outright_logo_web_large

Outright has tax related and business accounting features that I wanted and integrates with FreshBooks. I linked my Outright account to my business credit card account. By linking my bank accounts I can track my business expenses by importing credit card transactions. My local business checking bank isn't supported as yet, which is unfortunate. I had hoped to pull in transactions to manage my cash flow. Fortunately, FreshBooks supports my local bank and I can pull in transactions that way.

By using Outright I can keep all my income and expenses (including mileage ) organized and categorized. I'll be ready to go at tax time; just print my Schedule C worksheet. Outright also provides estimates quarterly tax reports so I'll have no surprises.

I am using iOS apps for FreshBooks and Outright to management my business right from my iPhone and iPad. I can enter mileage, create invoices, track cash transactions etc. How cool is that!

Twitter's New Terms of Service in easy to understand language

http://blog.twitter.com/2009/09/twitters-new-terms-of-service.html

Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.

Ownership—Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.

APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We’re also working on guidelines for use of the API.

SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we’ve been operating under for some time.