Jeetu's shared memory

What is the first image that comes to your mind when you think of a QR Code? A confusing maze of black rectangular patterns arranged on a white background?

True, most QR Codes are available in black and white but they don’t have to be that way.

There’s an excellent online QR generator at qrhacker.com that lets you create colorful QR codes and what makes this tool different is that it provides you can option to embed photographs and logo images to your QR codes. You can even edit the colors of individual pixels that form the code.

To give you an example, here’s a QR code made using a picture of Zuckerberg and if you scan the code with an app on your phone, say Google Goggles, it should take you to Facebook.

Every QR code has a unique URL for easy sharing or you can download the image locally in PNG or PDF. Here are more examples.

QR Code made with a colored picture of Zuckerberg.

via How to Embed Images and Logos in QR Codes.

Fonetwish lets you access Facebook on your Mobile Phone Without Internet or a Data Plan in India for Rs 1 per day, unlimited

Do you have an old mobile phone, like the Nokia 1100, that has no browser and can do little more than make phone calls? Or are you stuck in some remote place where there’s no Internet or no other form of data (EGDE/GPRS/3G) connectivity is available?

Not a problem. You can still use your Facebook account in India by dialing *325# (or *fbk#) from your mobile phone – this service requires no data plan or Internet and it will even work on phones of the Stone Age. Here’s a quick tour:

Use Facebook without the Data Plan

Facebook India has partnered with Fonetwish to bring Facebook on every mobile phone without requiring any apps or even the Internet.

You dial the *325# number, then enter your Facebook username and password and you are in. You can then send number based commands to access various features of Facebook, chat with friends who are online, add new people to your friends list, and more.

I played with the service for some time and it was a nice experience overall. If there were a Unix-like shell interface for Facebook, it would be much similar. Fonetwish says that this service is currently available for Airtel, Aircel, Idea and Tata Docomo users in India.

It may be too much work to read your Facebook news feed stories one by one but this is a good option to quickly update your Facebook status or for chatting with friends who are online. The price is reasonable too – you just have pay a subscription fee of 1.00 per day for unlimited usage.

via Use Facebook on your Mobile Without Internet or a Data Plan.

“We’re at an inflection point”, eBay CEO John Donahoe said from the stage at Innovate, eBay’s brand new developer conference that launched today in San Francisco. “We’ll see more change in how consumers shop and pay in the next three years than we’ve seen in the last 15 years”.

Donahoe’s prediction for the future came as context for giving a more complete introduction today to X.commerce, the platform formed by eBay and its nest eggs PayPal, Magento and GSI — designed to create a robust, full-service and “open” eCommerce solution. The eCommerce solution “to rule them all”, one might say.

But the real kicker is that, as Leena wrote earlier today, what X.commerce really symbolizes is the first instance of eBay creating a business that truly caters to developers. In the past, eBay developers have been divided into the eBay marketplace, PayPal, etc., but now developers have all those technologies in one place, allowing them to create “new shopping and eCommerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools”.

One of the more anticipated announcements to come out of Innovate was a partnership between the world’s largest social network and eBay, which will see the latter integrating Facebook’s Open Graph (the tree of connections Facebookers create by sharing and interacting with friends and content on the social network) into its Magento and GSI global commerce platforms.

What does this mean? The partnership will basically give third party developers a bigger voice in the development of social commerce, allowing them to build new social shopping experiences for consumers and retailers, share their ideas, and create personalized apps for buying, selling, and sharing that have Facebook’s social features baked right into them.

While building Facebook’s features into eCommerce offerings may allow them to make shopping more personalized and display friends’ thoughts about products right in their eShops, the truth is that social commerce hasn’t exactly taken off over the last year. Merchants already have the opportunity to set up storefronts on Facebook to sell directly to their customers while they’re networking or surfing a brand’s fan page, but so far sales on the platform haven’t impressed.

It seems that consumers aren’t particularly jazzed about doing their shopping on Facebook — part of which may be due to the novelty of Facebook’s eCommerce or it could simply be a reluctance to embrace new commerce functionality on what is really a platform designed to share pictures and stalk former romances. It also may have something to do with the fact that many consumers are worried that their credit card and personal information is being scooped up by Facebook in the transaction process. Either buyers are redirected to a brand’s own online store, or they buy on Facebook and often have to accept an app request to make a purchase. That app request can give away a bunch of information on the user and it’s really something many consumers are still loathe to do.

Indeed, it’s a result of this that, as VP and General Manager of X.commerce Matthew Mengerink said today, online shopping remains “a very individualistic and lonely experience”. Which is a shame considering the fact that Facebook’s Director of Platform and Mobile Marketing Katie Mitic told the Innovate crowd that shopping is inherently a social activity and that the world is really just beginning to get a taste of “what’s possible with social commerce”.

Of course, to achieve what’s possible with social commerce eBay and Facebook need the developer community to get excited and want to be on board. Yet, as Reuters pointed out, some analysts and eCommerce experts were hoping for a deeper and perhaps more full-featured partnership between the two companies. And Mitic’s announcement was met with little to no applause from the 3,000+ developers and techies on hand.

This could of course be that they were tired, or that the recent changes to Facebook’s platform that took users beyond the “like” button to allowing them to share what they’ve “read” or want to “taste” just don’t sound that enthralling when applied to social commerce. With eBay’s new Facebook integration, developers will now be able to build social commerce apps that allow users to share what products they “buy”, “want”, “own”, or “recommend”. But is this enough to really change the face of social commerce?

Mengerink said that, in the market today, too many shopping apps target the point of sale, but that the real-life process of browsing, discussing what products are appealing or not, and trying different things on, for example, is inherently social, but it doesn’t always involve buying.

“What we’re encouraging developers to think about is to try out the more ‘pre-shopping’ social experience”, he said. Meaning that the process of joining friends at an online store, browsing, sharing, and chattering via enhanced social features is a way to encourage brand recognition, organic word-of-mouth familiarity with products — and is integral to making the online shopping experience more resemblant of offline shopping. And to grow online sales. The question is, of course, whether or not this is truly possible just with “want” and “own” buttons, and just how much these new pre-shopping features can boost a brand’s bottom line.

The virtual shopping experience is a long ways off from one that mimics its offline counterpart, and I’ve yet to be convinced that just because one of my grade school friends interacted with a product on Facebook, which then popped up in my news stream, that I’m more likely to interact with that product and buy it just because of some loose social connection manifesting while I’m in the process of turning off more Facebook sharing features. Yes, it adds to a brand’s network, and if I’m browsing friends’ profiles and see a product I want to learn about before buying, this is a great conversation starter.

What do you think? Is this a win for developers, consumers, eBay, or Facebook (or all of the above)?

Excerpt image courtesy of TechFouzan

American Express is going all in on the daily deals business, striking a deal with Facebook that is similar to the one it already has with Foursquare. Through a new Facebook app called “Link, Like, Love,” AmEx cardholders can link their cards to their Facebook accounts just like they can already link their cards to their Foursquare accounts. Once they do so they will get a dashboard of deals from brands such as Whole Foods, Dunkin’ Donuts, Virgin America, and Sports Authority. (These offers are different than Facebook Deals, which Facebook sources itself)

Unlike Groupon or LivingSocial, these AmEx deals don’t require anyone to pre-purchase anything or present any coupons to merchants. One of the biggest challenges for the daily deals industry is how to measure how many offers are actually redeemed at thousands of different participating businesses. But AmEx has an advantage here in that it is already a payment network that is set up and accepted in businesses large and small around the world. All people have to do is buy the deal item with their AmEx card and they will be credited the deal amount. The Facebook twist is that the deals you see are influenced by what you and your friends “like” on the Web using the Facebook like button.

Although many of the deals at launch are with national brands, AmEx is also leveraging its relationships with smaller local merchants. It is a launching a program aimed at them called Go Social which allows merchants to manage deals across both Facebook and Foursquare, with other social networks to be added in the future. Business owners will be able to create their own coupon-less deals in a self-serve manner that are triggered whenever someone with a linked account buys a deal item. Self-serve has been a challenge so far with local merchants, but AmEx can market to them through its existing channels.

Go Social will also allow merchants to put their locations on social networks like Facebook and Foursquare, and track their deal campaigns across those networks. Since AmEx has all the payment information, it can track deal redemption fairly easily. Closing the offer to redemption loop is the singel biggest challenge in the daily deals space. Even Groupon Now, Groupon’s mobile app with instant deals, requires participating merchants to have iPhones and train staff on how to redeem the offers. AmEx doesn’t try to change the behavior of the consumer or the merchant, other than give them an incentive to pay with AmEx versus cash or a credit card.

While it all sounds good on paper, the proof will be in the quality and density of deals that AmEx can procure. This will be a battle between local sales forces. But it looks like Groupon and LivingSocial finally have some serious competition.

As holiday shopping season ramps up, Amazon is announcing a new way to send a gift card to friends: Facebook. Now, when buying a gift card on Amazon you can connect your Facebook account send the personalized gift card to a Facebook friends (you can also send gift cards via mail, email and print certificates). The card will be posted on the recipient’s Facebook Wall.

Now on the gift card platform, you can choose to log-in to Facebook via Facebook Connect, which will allow Amazon to access your friends’ names and birthdays, and post the gift card to your friend’s Wall on the delivery date (Amazon says that user data and purchase history will remain private).

The sender can choose a gift card design, specify an amount up to $5,000 and provide an optional gift card message. Senders can schedule the gift card to appear on the recipient’s Facebook Wall up to a year in advance.

The gift card will be delivered via a post on the friend’s Facebook Wall (only the recipient can see the amount and claim code) And the sender can choose whether everyone can see the gift card message, or only the recipient. That’s actually an important feature because you may not want all of your friend’s Facebook friends to know you gave a friend a gift. As a buyer, I also wish that I could send the recipient a companion email, so that the he or she knows that I are giving them a gift on their Facebook wall.

To encourage shoppers to use the new feature, the first 10,000 customers who give an MP3-themed Amazon.com Gift Card to five different Facebook friends will get a $5 credit good for music downloads at Amazon MP3.

This integration with Facebook isn’t surprising. Amazon is increasingly turning towards to the social network to incorporate users’ social graph into their Amazon.com experience. A few months ago, Amazon rolled out a new social feature that allows users to receive recommendations based on information in your Facebook profile and friends preferences.

Ever since Facebook rolled out their Like button in April, it has been spreading over the web like wild fire. Since then, they’ve been tweaking it a bit here and there to improve the layout and functionality. Today brings more improvements.

As they note on their Developer Blog, the new Like button gains three things: the ability to like items within apps, the ability to link the Like button to Pages, and a new option to have a “box count” layout for the button that shows the number of likes above it.

The most interesting change is the first one mentioned. Previously, you could only like applications themselves, but now you can dig into applications and like elements within them. For example, you can now like virtual goods in an app like Farmville if Zynga implements this (which they undoubtedly will). You can also now like things like individual movies within entertainment apps, or causes.

The next change is a little confusing. Facebook now has a URL field in the Like button creation tool that you can use to link the Like button to that page. What this seems to do is allow you to create a Like button for something elsewhere besides the actual page you’re liking. So, for example, I could make a Like button for TechCrunch and include it on another blog.

Finally, Facebook has added a new view option for the Like button. The “box count” layout shows you the number of likes something has received above the button itself. This is a pretty standard view for sharing buttons on the web.

Update: Facebook clarified what they meant about the Like button linking a bit:

The URL field in the tool is not new and is for pointing to individual blog post URLs (TechCrunch actually does this with the Like button). The update is that you can now point a Like button to a Facebook Page, similar to how the Like box functions.

Last week, Facebook launched some major new products, including social plugins, its Like button for the web, and its Open Graph API. It also launched a product that has some serious privacy issues: ”Instant Personalization”, which automatically hands over some of your data to certain third-party sites as soon as you visit them, without any action required on your part. I’ve previously discussed at length why I think this could lead to a major backlash. And now four Democratic US Senators — Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Mark Begich and Al Franken — are calling on Facebook to change its policies.

This morning the senators sent a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg that details these issues (they’ve also separately reached out to the FTC, urging it to establish more rules around social networks). Here are the senators’ three main concerns, along with my own commentary:

1. Publicly available data. Facebook’s expansion of publicly available data to include a user’s current city, hometown, education, work, likes, interests, and friends has raised concerns for users who would like to have an opt-in option to share this profile information. Through the expanded use of “connections,” Facebook now obligates users to make publicly available certain parts of their profile that were previously private. If the user does not want to connect to a page with other users from their current town or university, the user will have that information deleted altogether from their profile. We appreciate that Facebook allows users to type this information into the “Bio” section of their profiles, and privatize it, but we believe that users should have more control over these very personal and very common data points. These personal details should remain private unless a user decides that he/she would like to make a connection and share this information with a community.

The senators are spot on: Facebook has been systematically stripping away users’ privacy one item at a time and adding it to the bucket of information it considers publicly accessible. It’s debatable whether or not a user’s list of friends, or Interests and Activities (which recently could be made private but are now all public Fan Pages) really constitute sensitive information. But the fact of the matter is that people built their profiles under the impression that they were private, and users don’t stand to benefit by having their control over this data reduced.

2. Third party data storage. Previously, Facebook allowed third-party advertisers to store profile data for 24 hours. We are concerned that recent changes allow that data to be stored indefinitely. We believe that Facebook should reverse this policy, or at a minimum require users to opt in to allowing third parties to store data for more than 24 hours.

I’ve heard from multiple sources that Facebook had almost no way to enforce the 24 hour third-party data storage policy, and that many developers routinely ignored it and kept data for longer than 24 hours. The big guys — Zynga and the like — have to keep everything above board, so this change is probably primarily directed at them. Comforting? Not at all. But regardless of Facebook’s policy it will have a hard time enforcing this.

3. Instant personalization. We appreciate that Facebook is attempting to integrate the functionality of several popular websites, and that Facebook has carefully selected its initial partners for its new “instant personalization” feature. We are concerned, however, that this feature will now allow certain third party partners to have access not only to a user’s publicly available profile information, but also to the user’s friend list and the publicly available information about those friends. As a result of the other changes noted above, this class of information now includes significant and personal data points that should be kept private unless the user chooses to share them. Although we are pleased that Facebook allows users to opt-out of sharing private data, many users are unaware of this option and, moreover, find it complicated and confusing to navigate. Facebook should offer users the ability to opt-in to sharing such information, instead of opting out, and should make the process for doing so more clear and coherent.

Again, spot on. The thought of a future where the Web is more social and customized to your interests is really cool. The fact that Facebook decided to enroll all of its users into this new futuristic web without asking them to opt-in is ridiculous. And while Facebook is restricting this program to only three services for now — Pandora, Yelp, and Docs.com — it obviously hopes to expand it.

Elliot Schrage, Facebook VP of Global Communications, responded to the senators with his own letter (embedded below). One key passage (emphasis mine):

Specifically, these new products and features are designed to enhance personalization and promote social activity across the Internet while continuing to give users unprecedented control over what information they share, when they want to share it, and with whom. All of Facebook’s partner sites interact with a user’s consent.

The problem here is that Facebook definitely did not get users’ consent to do this. Yes, there’s an option to turn off Instant Personalization in Facebook’s privacy settings. And yes, whenever you visit one of these Instantly Personalized sites there’s a bar at the top of the screen that you can also use to turn it off. Unfortunately, most people have no idea what any of this means.

Let’s get one thing straight: Facebook does offer quite a few privacy controls, and it offers a wealth of information describing them. In fact, it offers so much control and information that it is utterly overwhelming to most users, who simply don’t bother with it. Facebook knows that people don’t necessarily know what’s going on, but that hasn’t stopped it from racing forward at a clip pace. The social network may not like it, but it’s probably a good thing that these senators are looking to put a few speed bumps on the way.

Schrage letter via CNN.
Top photo by Steve Maller Photography

Well I bet they didn’t quite expect that. In the wake of Facebook’s F8 conference this week, where it apparently bid to become the new Sheriff of the Internet, Facebook’s plans to effectively put ‘social’ into the very structure of the Web has a few people a little concerned.

The main issue is that there are concerns that Facebook, by default, now opts you in to allowing third party sites like Yelp to ‘personalise’ your experience, and there are questions about how much information is given away.

The result is that lots of geeks are considering leaving Facebook, and perhaps even more interestingly, veritable droves of Google software engineers are among them.

See our live notes from today’s Google Buzz event here.

Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even Twitter. Today, Google may have just solved their social problem.

Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.

FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone.

Fundamentally, Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.

Yes, again, it sounds a lot like FriendFeed. But it has a critical component that FriendFeed never had prior to its acquisition by Facebook: a massive installed user base. Maybe you missed the key bit of wording above: it resides inside of Gmail. Rather than trying to build its own new social service from scratch, Google is making Buzz a key part of their email service (right below the Inbox tab) that 176 million unique visitors each month, according to comScore.

Social Curation

Buzz also wants to differentiate itself another way: social curation. As Mike wrote about the other night, the social web right now is largely a mess. There’s simply too much going on, and no one is really working to sort it all out. Google is trying to do that with Buzz by allowing you to import items from services like Twitter, but only show you the best ones. For example, Google says it will hide quick messages like “brb.” The plan is to also auto-collapse items that don’t have a lot of comment activity.

For now, this data is sadly only a one-way street. That is to say, you won’t be able to update your Twitter account from Google Buzz, we’re told. But Google seems to be indicating that this functionality will be included eventually, and that overall they’d like the product to be as open as possible. And yes, there will be plenty of APIs. But one company noticeably absent from all this talk of importing and exporting data is the 800-pound social gorilla in the room: Facebook.

The Big Mobile Social Play

Listening to Google tell it, you’d almost think Buzz is just as much of a mobile product, as a social tool inside Gmail. And it just may be. Google is heavily touting the ability to use Buzz immediately on the mobile web if you’re using an Android phone or an iPhone. The reason they’re singling out those two phones is that their HTML5-compatible browsers support location. Location is a big component of Buzz on the go because Google not only want users to update their statuses, but to tag them with where they are when they leave it.

And while Google has its own location app, Latitude, Buzz works a lot more like Foursquare in that you select places to say where you are rather than a specific coordinate. This is an extension of the Places pages in Google Maps that were launched late last year. The use of Buzz alongside these locations make them ever more powerful. You can search to see only the Buzzes written from certain places, for example.

Buzz will also work within the Maps app on certain phones (such as Android phones, but not the iPhone — at least, not yet). And it will work inside the Google Search apps on the iPhone and Android. Perhaps the coolest thing about that is that you can use the voice search functionality to speak your buzz update if you just say “post buzz” and then say your buzz out loud.

Social Issues

Some big question marks remain for Google. First of all, one big reason they’ve flopped in the past with social implementation is because they seemed to have fundamentally flawed views about what a social graph should be. For example, when they first tried to make Google Reader more social, they automatically ported over your Gmail contacts to give you friends. The problem with this was that they auto-chose people who you were in contact with often based on emails and IMs. But in some case that may be your boss, or someone else that you’re not actually friends with.

With Buzz, Google is giving users more granular controls for friend settings, but they’re still suggesting people based on your Gmail social graph, which may or may not reflect your actual desired social graph.

Also, believe it or not, there are plenty of people without Gmail accounts. Are they going to sign up and start using an email service just because of Buzz? People certainly haven’t started using Yahoo Mail just because it added social features.

The One Stop Shop

Another problem Google has had when it comes to social elements is that they’ve never really had one place to let users share all their social data. Now they have that with Google profiles, which apparently, Google Buzz will be built into. Still, because Profiles are separate from Buzz in Gmail, it might be a little tricky for some users to figure out.

Complexity

Speaking of complexity, overall it’s another issue that Google Buzz may run into. Twitter works because it’s so simple, if you have a public account, your tweets go to anyone who is following you. Buzz is not that simple. There can be public or private buzzes. The plan is to also have buzzes for enterprise and educational users. In those cases, public buzzes may only be available within your company or school, while private would still be private to other individuals in your network. You can see how the social graph is starting to get a little more complicated.

Another thing is if someone comments on one of your buzzes, it will leave the Buzz area of Gmail and go into the Inbox area of Gmail, so you know someone is talking to you. That actually sounds pretty cool, and even better, you can reply right from there (another feature taken from FriendFeed), but I could also see that getting a bit confusing for some users.

The Battle

Without having had a chance to play with it yet, it would seem that the core idea behind Buzz is to take on Twitter and Facebook as the easiest way to share content online. Google is offering a number of compelling features such as smart curation (it gets better as you tell it what you like and what you don’t), and a rich mobile experience including location.

Because of the features it adds on to what Twitter does, and its overall look, it’s hard not to compare Buzz to FriendFeed. That service was arguably the better product than Twitter, but never took off in the same way for whatever reason (though I would argue that simplicity was a big factor). You could say the same thing for Twitter rivals Pownce and Jaiku (which Google actually bought) in the past. But by adding it to Gmail, Google is giving Buzz a great weapon to succeed where all of those others could not.

The big question is: will Gmail users buy into this quick sharing? Google thinks so because it’s a part of the evolution from email, to IM, to status updates. It’s also, in their eyes, a part of the evolution to the next step, Google Wave. So far, the public has proven to be not ready for Wave yet. But Buzz might be the perfect tool in getting people to think about communicating in a way beyond email and IM. Or it may be another misstep in Google’s social quest.

When Facebook acquired FriendFeed last month, everyone knew it was getting some pretty impressive technology along with the obvious talent in the company. What people probably didn’t expect is that Facebook would open source a portion of it. But that’s what they’re doing today with the release of Tornado, a real-time web framework for Python, onto the web.

Another new Facebook addition, Dave Recordon, explains the open-sourcing today on Facebook’s Developers blog. That Recordon is the one doing this post isn’t all that surprising given his central role in the open source community. Here’s how he explains Tornado:

Tornado is a relatively simple, non-blocking Web server framework written in Python, designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections, making it ideal for real-time Web services.
…
While Tornado is similar to existing Web-frameworks in Python (Django, Google’s webapp, web.py), it focuses on speed and handling large amounts of simultaneous traffic.

FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor has more on his own blog. He notes that in open sourcing Tornado, FriendFeed and Facebook hope that others will use it to build their own real-time web services. They have set up a demo of how it works at its most basic (commenting) here. As you can see, it looks a lot like the FriendFeed commenting system (pictured below).

Taylor lays out three key parts of Tornado:

All the basic site building blocks – Tornado comes with built-in support for a lot of the most difficult and tedious aspects of web development, including templates, signed cookies, user authentication, localization, aggressive static file caching, cross-site request forgery protection, and third party authentication like Facebook Connect. You only need to use the features you want, and it is easy to mix and match Tornado with other frameworks.

Real-time services – Tornado supports large numbers of concurrent connections. It is easy to write real-time services via long polling or HTTP streaming with Tornado. Every active user of FriendFeed maintains an open connection to FriendFeed’s servers.

High performance – Tornado is pretty fast relative to most Python web frameworks. We ran some simple load tests against some other popular Python frameworks, and Tornado’s baseline throughput was over four times higher than the other frameworks:

But there’s more. Buried in Recordon’s explanation is the following:

Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed’s real-time functionality, which we plan to actively maintain.

I’ve bolded the key part there. That would seem to suggest that Facebook is now committing to activity maintaining FriendFeed. While the FriendFeed co-founders have more or less said that the service would live on despite the Facebook deal, Facebook has been pretty mum on the topic up until now. Of course, Facebook could simply be saying that it will maintain the technology (for its own uses), and not the service.

Next question: How long until Twitter starts using some components of Tornado?

You can download and find out more about Tornado here.

[photo is an altered version of the great Toronado bar logo]

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