Category: Other

Six Degrees: come in, your time is up

From Facebook today:

We’re writing to inform you of a Facebook Platform policy violation within your application, Six Degrees.

Our terms and policies are in place to ensure that Facebook Platform serves users well, allows applications to thrive, and provides a great experience for all involved. Unfortunately, we have determined that your application does not meet our terms and policies.

Specifically, your application contains “Store my friend list” and “Keep up-to-date” functionalities that imply storing data in violation of our policies on this behavior. Whether you obtain user permission or not, applications may not store data obtained from Facebook for longer than 24 hours per section I.6.1 of our Platform Guidelines (http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Platform_Guidelines). This includes friend connections between two users, as mentioned on http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Storable_Data .

We request that you stop storing this data. As friend connections are crucial to your application’s functionality, we recommend that you prompt users to grant the offline_access permission and then query their friend list dynamically as required. For more information, please see http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Extended_permission .

Additionally, it appears that your application pre-fills text fields in the Settings section with user data, including but not limited to first name, last name, and gender. Data obtained and stored through these means of pre-filling is still in violation of our data policies, as explained in section I.14.2 of our Platform Guidelines. We request that you stop pre-filling these fields with user data.

Finally, your application publishes a one-line Feed story when users authorize it. These stories read ” has logged into the Six Degrees application” and are in violation of section II.5.1 of our Platform Guidelines. We request that you remove them from your application.

We trust and expect that all applications managed by you and your team meet our terms and policies, so we appreciate in advance that you proactively ensure that this is the case in the future.

Please make these requested changes by 1:00pm Pacific Time Thursday, 25 June 2009. When you have done so, please let us know by replying to this email.

We realize that this is a short timeframe, but it is important for the sake of our users and other developers that this issue is resolved quickly. If you cannot resolve this by the above deadline, your application may be subject to additional enforcement actions, including but not limited to being disabled.

The new Facebook layout: a step forwards, backwards or sideways?

A change of design for a site like Facebook is always a prompt for discussion and controversy. Facebook is so much part of many people’s experience of the web now that it’s like someone deciding that trees should be purple. Coupled with the fact that, in general, the reaction to change amongst the masses is negative (not always unjustly – they have a tool they know how to use, and somebody’s now making them re-learn). In general it’s also true that the negative comments are vocalised.

I was actually a fan of the last homepage design (July 2008). Not necessarily because it was a perfect layout, because I don’t think it ever quite came together in that sense, but because it was necessary due to the changing way that Facebook was working. The growth in “shared” information (or at least activity information) and the way applications that worked the system were degrading the experience for a lot of people.

This time, I’m not so sure. I think the concepts are definitely in the right area: the activity stream (even when it was called a newsfeed) was one of the most interesting things about Facebook and what struck me as a cornerstone of its success from the start. Below are a few thoughts about the new change of emphasis on positive and negative. (And I’ll just say “yes, it’s more like Twitter” and consider that the end of that comparison.)

An emphasis on who performs an action rather than the action type

The “old” Facebook newsfeed displayed a list of items each with an associated application newsfeed icon next to them. This made it easy to blank out e.g. all the news items from applications you had no interest in. The name of the user (or multiple users sometimes – there was aggregation of news items) would display as part of the story but it was easier to scan the “what” of the activity rather than the “who”.

This has all changed now. We have big, chunky photos, and at best a small application icon. It’s not about what you’re interested in it’s who you’re interested in.

There’s a lot to be said for this. The old newsfeed had a strong preference for showing me stories from Facebook’s own applications, regardless of the user involved. This didn’t always work for me, and studies have shown that we only have a handful of close contacts regardless of how big our friend list was. Emphasising the people rather than the activity helps me here.

Content creation rather than a stream of passively generated activity

This is a big gamble. The onus now is on each of us to want to “share” information, and it’s all part of Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the growth in sharing. I’m not sure how successful this is going to be; time and time again the internet has shown us that no matter how easy it is to be a content creator, the majority of people are happy just to be content consumers.

Facebook’s saviour here may actually be applications and the fact that, to grow, a developer really needs to push a user to finding an action they’ve just performed interesting enough to want to tell everyone about it. As an application developer, if you can crack that then you know your message will be seen. Possibly this will lower the content creation barrier to such an insignificant level that users will be happy to click the “Post to profile” button a few more times than they conventionally do.

This also reminds me of a point I read a while back as to why people in the internet industry like Google, but a lot of the public still likes Yahoo. People like me use the internet to (mostly) find information. We go to Google with a purpose, and Google generally gives us good results. A large number of people are not like that; they go to Yahoo because they’re bored, and because Yahoo shows them things to do. In a similar way, the new Facebook has shifted emphasis slightly from “entertain me” to “help me to entertain my friends”.

User filtering (by friend) rather than algorithm filtering

Almost since the beginning of the newsfeed Facebook have had an algorithm to present the user with the most relevant newsfeed stories. There have always been lots of guesses about how this works, and although it didn’t get it right it did do the job of filtering down thousands of newsfeed stories per day into a couple of hundred.

This looks to be changing, at least in the activity stream. Everything goes in here now, and if the user gets fed up with hearing about somebody then they can put their friends into different groups and filter by those groups. Will users do this? I’m not sure. It seems like a business analysts dream, but not necessarily a tool for a casual user.

We do have a version of the algorithm now, though, in the “Highlights” section of the right hand column. At present this is rather bulky and doesn’t update very often, but it could become an interesting take on the idea of a recommendation engine.

A step in the right direction?

For me, it remains to be seen. It’s a risk for Facebook to make such a fundamental change and although there will doubtless be thousands (millions?) of members of groups with titles along the lines of “Bring back the old Facebook”, I doubt we’ll see any kind of mass exodus. If a change comes then it will happen over time, and would need a viable alternative for the non-MySpace generation. Much as the comparisons between the new design and Twitter are made, I don’t think it’s going to be there. Or maybe Facebook’s changing just as users are evolving, and possibly the future is all about content generation and sharing.

It’s too early to tell whether it’s a step forwards or backwards, but I do believe Facebook just took a small step sideways.

Bigger ads or better ads?

There were two interesting pieces of news in the internet ad space this week. Yesterday, Google announced they’re rolling out behavioural targeting for Adsense. What this means is that they’ll look at what types of sites you visit (if those sites are running Adsense) and then ads will be targeted at you based on those sites.

The second piece of news was that a group of large traffic websites are trialling some new ad formats. US national newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and USA Today are running some huge ads. You can read more about them here.

To me, these two highlight stark contrasts in response to the problem of ad-blindness, and typifies an new media response vs an old media one. The old media response (the newspapers) is: “people don’t notice ads, so we have to make it so they can’t help but ignore them”. Bigger ads, more movement, and an “in your face” approach.

The new media response, from Google, is: “people don’t notice ads, maybe we should make them more relevant”. Nick Gonzalez at Social Media thinks that the bigger ads are the way forward. “Making ads more conspicuous is one way publishers can argue they serve advertiser’s interests better“. I can’t argue with that, but making larger ad formats just seems to be part of a never-ending arms race between blanking attention, growing monitor sizes and advertisers. Nick’s commentary on Google’s announcement is “What advertising needs … is improving the advertising experience, not targeting. Make ads better, not more targeted“. (The sentence starts with

Now it may be that Nick’s opinion tells us more about the direction of Social Media than anything else, but the aim of “make ads better” doesn’t seem to contradict the idea of “make ads more targeted”. Show me something I want to see and I’m more likely to think it’s better.

While internet advertising is taking a rare dip it will be interesting to see what future the bigger, and more intrusive, ads have vs the attempt to become more relevant. It may only be part of the picture but I know which direction I’d be backing.

Near Athens – the island of Aegina

Whether the island is actually spelt Aegina or not I couldn’t tell – it was spelt differently on every timetable and in every guidebook. But if fits for me.

We started off at Piraeus, the port that’s virtually a suburb of Athens now, and went to “Gate 8” as directed and bought a ticket. We followed signs for the passenger terminal, thinking that it would be an ideal place to wait for the fast boat. How wrong we were. “Gate 8” was in fact a stretch of dock probably totalling about half a mile in length, if not more, from which about 15 boats departed. It was as much use as saying “your boat leaves from Spain” in terms of directions, and so we missed it by about 5 minutes while we were trying to find the right one. Still, it actually worked out for the better, as instead we caught a regular slow ferry (which is only just over an hour anyway) and got a much better view.

It was also a nice day, so there are some nice photos too:

Nothing seems amiss in this photo, does it? Apart from a boat name that consists mainly of symbols. No reason to be alarmed at all:

But this is the front. Thankfully, our Poseidon adventure didn’t end up with our boat being upside down. Nor was there a Gene Hackman nor (and this would have been really bad) an Ernest Borgnine onboard:

The ship’s mast, and a blue sky:

One of the main old boats we saw on our way out. Piraeus was a very busy port:

Maybe the other passengers were more freaked by getting on the Poseidon as the top deck was empty. Surprisingly, it was also the warmest deck on the boat (bar sitting inside, of course, which was thick with cigarette smoke, as the whole of Greece tends to be):

Looking back towards the mainland:

Leaving Piraeus behind in our wake:

Ann on the empty deck:

Blue sea and into the mountains which were all around with the craggy coastline:

A smaller island we passed on the way:

A view of Aegina island:

The port of Aegina town was rather small, and our large ferry very much stood out:

A strange fortified building in the town, possibly from the late 18th century, although some thought older:

We had an excellent lunch at one of the seafood restaurants next to the fish market. They attracted their fair share of rather well-fed stray cats, such as the one below:

A small stretch of beach on the island:

On the way back we saw God in the distance peeking out from behind a cloud:

As usual with that kind of excursion the journey was half the fun, but the island was quite a pleasant place to be, and provided excellent food (at a cheaper price) than Athens.

Athens – some modern stuff

Athens has a strange history of very ancient architecture, a bit of development with the Romans, and then not much for a very long period of time. Most of the city looks very 20th century, and not particularly well done at that. However there are a few large modern buildings. Unfortunately, somehow they don’t seem particularly well integrated into the rest.

The New Acropolis Museum was supposed to be finished quite some time ago. A lot of the building structure seems finished but there are cables everywhere and the main entrance is fenced off for some reason I couldn’t discern. (There’s a side entrance.) The building is very late, yet there were no signs of anybody working on it to try and finish it off. Anyone else would attempt to finish the thing by getting more people working on it but I guess that’s not the Greek way:

This is the current approach to the museum. It’s currently free to get in, owing to it having nothing on display (unless you like looking at hanging electrical cables). Actually, there were a few displays, and the text was heavily laced with “give us our Elgin marbles back” messages. Really, though, it’s just not a very nice building:

The other major modern pieces in Athens are obviously around the Olympic stadium. It was very desolate there and, although some of the structures are impressive, and the stadium roof itself quite elegant, there was a certain air of desolation. It starts with the arch structures by Santiago Calatrava:

The journey to the site on the metro made me think that perhaps the commute from central London to Stratford won’t look so bad in 2012. The transport was good, but it certainly didn’t feel like being in the heart of Athens. This is a plan of the Olympic site. :

The velodrome was another interesting structure, at least from the outside:

Some of the other structures were just existing ones given a new lease of life (apparently). They provided ample pigeon resting spots, as you can see from the piles of crap along the walkways:

The stadium with the mountains and clouds behind. Although London may be able to compete on venues the setting will be nothing like the same:

The stadium arch:

The stadium’s huge roof structure anchors, with Ann providing scale:

The inside of one of those anchors:

And all the screws to hold it down. I couldn’t work out how to loosen any, unfortunately:

This is one of the existing terraces, that of bird-crap-terrace fame:

The diagram of things that you can’t do inside the Olympic complex area. I’m not sure if the giant green cross now means that you can do those things or not. I particularly liked the two descriptions for flags (one limiting the size of the flag, one the size of the pole) and the restriction on taking your pet budgie to watch any of the events:

There was also a large screen, but I have no idea what it was there for. I’m sure there was some use for it at the time:

I don’t know if the area in front of the stadium is ever inhabitated now, but somehow I doubt if it’s ever crowded:

The arch again, reflected in a pool:

More from inside the arch:

The site was interesting, but I can’t see how this offers any kind of the legacy for the city that the Olympic organisers are always interested in. So far I’ve visited this and Barcelona and, although not perfect, the latter did seem to have had some effect on the surroundings. As I live about a mile away from the 2012 site I get a lot of the plans relating to the area through and I do think the London developments will make more of a difference once the games are gone than the few monumental structures that have been left behind in Athens.

Athens – various old stuff

Athens is full of old stuff. You can’t help seeing it everywhere, and they can’t help but finding it every time they want to build something. As a result, there are quite a few museums of old stuff, or places to wander around ruins. In fact, I’m sure you could just start building a museum anywhere and by the time you’d finished the foundations you’d have found enough to fill the museum anyway.

So, we saw museums, and ruins, and probably even some ruins of museums. Who knows. Some of them had vague promises of being open one day, or at least getting some exhibits togther. There was an admission fee for most of the old monuments, but since a 12 euro ticket covered all the main ones (including the Acropolis) and lasted for 5 days it was hardly a big lay-out. If you’re really a cheapskate then you could just stand outside the gate and look in for free; most things are so big that they need to be seen from afar anyway. Certainly the forum was interesting from the outside alone.

The Panathenaic Stadium, which isn’t actually an old thing but is a reconstruction of something old. You can’t get into it though.

At one end of the Panathenaic Stadium, with the Olympic Rings. Although impressive I’m not sure it’s used for anything and apparently the curves in the running track are too tight for modern races. I’m sure “It’s a Knockout” could make use of it, though.

There were quite a few Byzantine churches around Athens. This one had an interesting belltower separate from the main body of the church:

A view of a Byzantine church inside the area of the Roman Forum:

The ruins of the gateway to the forum on a cloudy day:

The forum gateway on a much nicer day:

Inside the forum:

One of the many column capitals inside the forum grounds. A lot of the buildings have collapsed over time but there are fairly intact pieces still remaining:

The porch of the church inside the forum:

The ceiling of the church porch inside the forum area:

Ann at the forum:

One of the ancient carving things in the excellent National Archeological Museum, which I think was from Neolithic times. To me it looked like a Newcastle United supporter:

And one of the more amusing reliefs of two men being interrupted by a horse with an important message:

Another quaint little Byzantine church:

A view of the Temple of Hierocles from the direction of the Acropolis:

The east front of the Temple of Hierocles from inside the Agora complex:

One of the more interesting finds being a “wild” tortoise (if a tortoise can ever be described as wild) inside the grounds of the Agora:

The Temple of Hierocles is one of the best preserved in Athens and quite photogenic with it, particularly shown nestled within the greenery around the Agora:

It’s still impressive close-up:

The ceiling of Temple of Hierocles:

Even though the temple isn’t particularly high up there are still good views around and through:

A column showing some wear and tear:

The Temple of Heirocles in all its glory:

The main market building of the Agora is a reconstruction, and quite impressive too. There’s a small(ish) museum inside which, I have to admit, I didn’t pay too much attention too. I’d seen far too many old pots by this point so I just sat outside and admired the view for 10 minutes:

A column capital inside the Agora:

On the other side of the Acropolis from the Temple of Heirocles is Hadrian’s Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The temple apparently took quite a few hundred years to build, mainly because no-one could be bothered, it seemed. (And why did we doubt the Olympics would be ready?) It wasn’t until Hadrian came along that it was topped off and he also had an arch built for himself, shown below:

The temple must have been particularly impressive in its time as it was certainly the largest around. Only a handful of columns remain and even they’re impressive enough:

This photo with Ann standing near one gives you an idea of just how big they are:

The temple with the Acropolis in the background:

Capital columns and the frieze:

A few columns stand alone or in pairs. I’ve no idea how half of it could fall down without bringing the rest with it, but I’m glad there’s something left to see:

One of the last columns to collapse during a storm in the 19th century. Personally, the fact that a column hang around for the best part of 2000 years and then decided to fall over suddenly makes me slightly anxious about hanging around them on a windy day. This one also reminded me of an opened pack of rolos

So those are all the ancient monument warm-up acts out of the way. But, of course, the crowing glory of Athens is certainly the Acopolis itself. Don’t worry, I’m coming to it soon enough. It’s getting a whole post to itself.

Athens – about the town

I’m just back from a long week (if such a thing exists) in Athens. It’s certainly a bustling city, and one that never seems to stop completely. Cafe’s especially were populated at any hour that I was ever likely to be about and people think nothing of dropping into a restaurant at midnight.

Having booked through lastminute.com it was all fairly cheap and I was interested to see what a five star hotel was actually like. The answer was: it was okay. It’s actually made me think that perhaps there was some kind of “self-certification” going on, or else star ratings are just something I don’t understand. The room was nice and big anyway and had an interesting view of a pleasantly dodgy area of Athens known as Omonia Square. Much fun could be have just watching the comings and goings of various misfits.

Anyway… onto the photos.

The view from the hotel room balcony. Traffic in Athens would certainly give London a run for its money. What it may lack in volume it more than makes up for in chaos. I was surprised to see how many large motorbikes there were around too as some of the twisting streets didn’t seem particularly conducive to a 1300cc Hayabusa. Athenians also have a laissez-faire attitude to motorcycle helmet wearing and it’s not unusual to see someone bombing along the road with either no helmet or, even more strangely, one hooked over their arm instead of on their head.

The view south from Lysicrates Hill (the highest point in Athens, from what I could tell) shows just how far the concrete jungle extends. Buildings are rarely very high rise, although often still 7 or 8 storeys, but they extend in all directions. Around a quarter of the population of Greece apparently lives in Athens, which explains the traffic somewhat:

At odd locations around the city there are rocky outcrops such as this one:

Athens is in a basin formed by three mountain ranges which makes for some good views, especially as the sun goes down:

Then, amongst the urban mayhem, the centre of Athens is a green oasis of plants and ruined temples, such as the Hierocles Temple inside the Agora below:

Lysicrates Hill, the place with the best views, is one of the islands of green as enforced by its steep sides. There’s a small white temple at the top and one of many varieties of street sellers. This one will take your photo for you for some unknown fee. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him that digital photography is going to be making his little polaroid camera somewhat obselete.)

Lysicrates Hill in the midst of the concrete of Athens:

Lysicrates Hill itself was remarkably windy. Here’s Ann “enjoying” the view:

Although almost everyone in Athens seemed to speak excellent English the different alphabet can make things interesting at times. Looking at the street signs I constantly had the feeling that I was inside a Playstation game:

Greece is, of course, the birthplace of democracy and political thinking is obviously still at the cutting edge:

Leading away from the Acropolis some of the axial streets cut a very impressive swathe along the city:

Athens is also home to a large number of stray dogs (apparently in the thousands) although none of them cause any trouble at all. It’s almost as if they’ve been abandoned by individual owners and instead have been adopted by the community. In fact, most of them were quite healthy looking as well as being quite receptive to a stroke on the head. Cats were also in abundance, although not to the same degree, and seemed to have a very amicable relationship with the canine strays:

And of course, there’s the ever-present views of the Acropolis. Well, not quite ever-present, but views do appear at all kinds of odd moments as you walk around the centre of the city. This view from Lysicrates Hill is one of the best aerial shots you can get of the Parthenon on its rocky outcrop and has the port of Piraeus and the sea beyond: