Un Swissroll

pWhen we a href= »http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/06/friendfeed-now-6x-more-awesomer-with.html »launched FriendFeed themes/a we mentioned some improvements we wanted to make, and here they are!/p

pbChoose how people see your FriendFeed profile/b/p

pStarting today, people who visit your profile will see it in the theme you’ve chosen. If you’d prefer visitors not to see your theme, you can turn it off on your a href= »http://friendfeed.com/?settings=1″settings page/a. You can also choose themes for the groups that you’re an admin for (looks like the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/so-you-think-you-can-dance »So You Think You Can Dance/a admin wasted no time!)./p

div style= »margin:1em;text-align:center »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/611f280b5ca07d776b8f1e9de630afc67c0da890″ style= »width:485px;height:252px;border:0″//div

pIf you’d rather not see other people’s profiles, you can make that selection in your a href= »http://friendfeed.com/?settings=1″settings page/a./p

pbCreate your own themes/b/p

pOf course, we know a lot of users were looking for even more ways to express themselves, so we’ve added an option that lets you create a a href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »custom theme/a by uploading a background image and choosing a few colors. We want to add more options in the future, but hopefully, a href= »http://friendfeed.com/parislemon/63a15d43/remember-when-i-made-this-can-t-wait-for »this/a will give you some ideas for where to get started./p

pAs always, let us know of any problems in the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-feedback »feedback group/a and show us your stuff in the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-themes »themes group/a./p

pWe are happy to announce that a href= »http://www.facebook.com/ »Facebook/a has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…/p
div style= »margin:1em;text-align:center »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/0e65e849ffa91891c42628e7d586476dc7048b25″ style= »width:290px;height:112px;border:0″//div
pThe FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online./p
pbWhat does this mean for my FriendFeed account?/b/p
pa href= »http://friendfeed.com/ »FriendFeed.com/a will continue to operate normally. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop mdash; keep an eye on the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-news »FriendFeed News group/a for updates./p
pbWhat about the FriendFeed API?/b/p
pThe a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/ »FriendFeed API/a will also continue to operate normally. As above, we will let you know as we settle on our plan to more fully integrate with Facebook./p
pCheck out the a href= »http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=116581″official press release/a for more information./p

pTwo weeks ago, a title= »we launched » href= »http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/07/friendfeed-api-v2-real-time-oauth-file.html » id= »phf6″we launched/a version 2 of the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/ »FriendFeed API/a in beta. Since then, we’ve watched how developers have been using the API and collected a lot of a title= »their feedback » href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-api-v2″ id= »dgc9″their feedback/a. We’ve implemented some changes, and now, we’re ready to remove the beta label!/p

pIn addition to removing the beta label, we also added support for using OAuth in applications installed on a user’s desktop or device. The way it works is similar to Google’s a href= »http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/AuthForInstalledApps.html »ClientLogin for Installed Applications/a; read all about it in our a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/documentation#installed_app_auth »API documentation/a./p

pDuring the beta period, a number of developers took advantage of the new API to develop nifty applications. Some of the ones we found most interesting include:/p

ullia href= »http://dev.ctor.org/f2p/ »f2p/a: A FriendFeed mobile interface built by a href= »http://friendfeed.com/nahi »Hiroshi Nakamura/a./lilia href= »http://www.friendboo.com/ »FriendBoo/a: Post audio updates to your FriendFeed from your phone. Created by a href= »http://friendfeed.com/kinlan »Paul Kinlan/a./lilia href= »http://yungsang.com/friendfoo/v2/ »FriendFoo/a: A real-time FriendFeed interface by a href= »http://friendfeed.com/yungsang »YungSang/a./lilia href= »http://code.google.com/p/friendfeed-api-v2-php/ »PHP/a and a href= »http://code.google.com/p/friendfeed-java-api/ »Java/a libraries built by a href= »http://friendfeed.com/kordi »Nikolai Kordulla/a and Sean Sullivan respectively.
/li/ul

pAnd more are on the way! If you have feedback or thoughts on our API, let us know in the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-api »FriendFeed API group/a and be sure to join the a href= »http://groups.google.com/group/friendfeed-api »developer mailing list/a./p

div style=’float:right;margin-left:25px;’img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/254b527999c2d411ffb8aabcc9aa1262356450f6″ title= »Ben Darnell »/divpWe’re very excited to have a href= »http://friendfeed.com/bdarnell »Ben Darnell/a joining the FriendFeed team starting today! Not only is Ben our newest employee, he’s our first new employee in over a year!/ppI had the honor of working with Ben on the Google Reader team and I’m thrilled to have him bring his ninja-fu data-storage and scalability skills to FriendFeed./ppOf course, now that we’ve hit 13 employees we’re beginning to face the inevitable ‘big company’ problems. With the addition of Ben Darnell to the team already populated with the illustrious Ben Golub, we’ve now encountered the ‘Two-Bens’ conundrum./ppWelcome, Ben Darnell, to the FriendFeed Family!/p

pAs a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend »Recommend friends/a feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them./p
pVisit a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend »http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend/a, and you can recommend subscriptions to any of your friends. I found out my dad wasn’t subscribed to a number of our family members, so I sent him ten recommendations:/p
div style= »margin:1em;text-align:center »a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/6fc0ba677a911f4e1cdbe233157296bbccfbd0ff » style= »border:0″ alt= »Screenshot »//a/div
pWhen you send friend recommendations, your friend will get an email with all of your recommendations, including a link to subscribe to all your recommendations with a single click. (This is the best part for me mdash; it lets me do all the work for my dad, and he just needs to click a single link to get his account in good shape)./p
pYou will also find « Recommend friends » links in the popup bubbles that appear when you hover over someone’s name:/p
div style= »margin:1em;text-align:center »a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/0b9054be966ae55248efd712086ff785ebdab57e » style= »border:0″ alt= »Screenshot »//a/div
pAnd you will see them on profile pages of your friends who joined the site recently:/p
div style= »margin:1em;text-align:center »a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/4bd6592d9223e5056bff1110339b8bfd07480c27″ style= »border:0″ alt= »Screenshot »//a/div
pYou can currently only recommend friends to people who are also subscribed back to you. Let us know what you think in the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-feedback »FriendFeed Feedback group/a./p

pToday we are launching a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/documentation »version 2 of the FriendFeed API/a for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features:/p
ul
li style= »margin-bottom:0.5em »bReal-time APIs/b – utilize a href= »http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology#Long_polling »long polling/a to get feeds in real-time, including search!/li
li style= »margin-bottom:0.5em »bFlexible sharing options/b – Direct message users. Share to multiple feeds./li
li style= »margin-bottom:0.5em »bFile attachments/b – Attach images, pdfs, spreadsheets, etc./li
li style= »margin-bottom:0.5em »bOAuth support/b – a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/register »Register your application now/a./li
li style= »margin-bottom:0.5em »bSimplified response format/b – Your application doesn’t need to know the difference between users and groups, how « friend of friend » works, or deal with hidden entries until you want to. We provide the HTML for representing entries so you don’t have to construct it. Authenticated responses include a list of possible commands on every feed, entry, and comment so you don’t have to do the detective work./li
/ul
pDocumentation is available at a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/documentation »http://friendfeed.com/api/documentation/a. A Python library that implements the new API methods and OAuth support is available at a href= »http://friendfeed-api.googlecode.com/files/friendfeed-api-v2-beta1.tar.gz »http://friendfeed-api.googlecode.com/files/friendfeed-api-v2-beta1.tar.gz/a./p
div style= »margin-top:1.5em; margin-bottom:1.5em; text-align:center »a href= »http://friendfeed.com/api/documentation »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/896607384f89bfe772bac42381fc2106fad15055″ alt= »Screenshot » style= »border:0″//a/div
pYou can play with a sample application that uses OAuth and the new API methods at a href= »http://friendfeed-api.appspot.com/ »http://friendfeed-api.appspot.com//a. The complete source code for the sample application is available at a href= »http://code.google.com/p/friendfeed-api-example/ »http://code.google.com/p/friendfeed-api-example//a./p
pSend us your feedback in the a href= »http://friendfeed.com/friendfeed-api-v2″FriendFeed API v2 group/a. We are looking forward to using your new apps!/p

pVariety is the spice of life, and we know you like some spice when you ‘feed, so we cooked up a href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »a few more themes/a to please your palette./pdiv style= »margin:0px; text-align:center; »a href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »img src= »http://friendfeed-media.com/47117bbd8c4c5b90f3b558eb02fa301da9c4c6fe » border=0 alt= »Four new FriendFeed Themes » width=471 height=137/a/divpa href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »Grasslands/a gives a breath of country air to the FriendFeed experience and, if higher altitudes are your fancy, we’ve got a href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »Orion/a (thanks for the pic, NASA!) a href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »Knot/a brings a little bit of elegant decoration, and be sure to grab your goggles and brandy snifter to enjoy a href= »http://friendfeed.com/settings/themes »Steampunk/a!/p