How to delete a Facebook app from the Facebook Developers module
In their wisdom, Facebook have once again moved around the link you need to remove an app that you have created using their Facebook Developers module.
At the moment, the way to delete a Facebook app is to take the following steps:
1. Log in to the apps section of the Facebook Developers back end module
2. Choose the app you want to delete from the left hand menu marked 'recently viewed'
3. Click the 'Edit app' button in the top right hand corner
4. Click on the 'Delete app' link in the left hand column marked 'Related links'
Your app will now be removed from your developer profile. Bear in mind that this will also remove the app from any Facebook Pages that have it installed so be careful with that delete button!
Why Radiohead need to nail digital distribution
This article was published in February 2011 on ORG Zine.
Image: PaKKiTo (Flickr)
Yesterday Radiohead announced that they were releasing their new album, 'The King of Limbs', on digital download on Saturday 19 February. Moving away from the pay-what-you-want pricing model of 'In Rainbows' they are offering their new album for £6 as well as £30 for a print copy with assorted goodies.
I really applaud what Radiohead are doing here. In the age of free access to millions of tracks, both illegally and increasingly legitimate, they know that the price for digital content had to be low. They also know that their fanbase is sufficiently rabid to swallow £30 for special artwork to help fill the band's coffers.
The problem, however, comes with their method of distribution. When it comes to handling thousands of payments and downloads on Saturday morning they might find they're without sufficient server capacity to handle it as happened with their release of 'In Rainbows' and the digital release of Saul Williams' last album.
The problem is that their website will not be the only place the download will be available on Saturday. Within seconds of the first downloads the album will be up on BitTorrent and people will be faced with the choice of a crippled official download server or a super speedy and, let us not forget, free BitTorrent download. Of course some will wait and pay but more will flock to torrent the album and that means lost revenue.
Perhaps I am not giving the band's digital team enough credit and they will nail the distribution by temporarily renting extra capacity at a data centre or even using BitTorrent itself to ease the pressure on servers; a method used to great success to distribute massive Linux ISOs.
That said I look forward to seeing how it all turns out on Saturday morning and, of course, listening to the tracks but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find fans grabbing the torrent that’s quicker and easier to get hold of when it comes to crunch time.
Not for profit thoughts on the new Facebook Pages
Image: smemon87 (Flickr)
We just enabled the new look Facebook pages for Alzheimer's Society and have been playing around with it this morning. I like the new design but there are some issues for charities that are going to have to be overcome. Let’s look at the good and the bad.
The good
1. Post everywhere as the brand
You can post as your Page on other Pages and profiles which means you can now do outreach using your Page and drive engagement by traveling to the mountain instead of waiting for it to come to you. If you have more than one related Page you could also cross-post and cross-promote which will be very useful for organisations that have separate Pages for events or local areas.
2. Notifications for your Page
Once you’ve clicked ‘use Facebook as Page’ you’ll be able to see notifications where people have interacted with you. This will be especially important to monitor now as you can post away from your own wall and this will be the only way of monitoring those external communications.
The bad
1. The photo carousel at the top
Carousel is, unfortunately, the right word. Unlike user profiles, the order of these photos is randomized every time you reload the page. This means you can't do any clever branding with it or use it for any kind of promotion. Bad for us page owners but good for Facebook who will see more advertising revenue as a result.
2. No more chronological posts
At the moment posts on a Page's wall are now ranked using a similar algorithm to the newsfeed. This means that the most recent post by you or a user may not appear at the top. This could lead to a situation where an old post languished at the top of the wall (making your page look stale) or a post promoting something important was pushed out the way for something else.
It's worth noting that you can see a chronological ordering of posts in the 'admin view' option but this won't display for users.
3. Your website's gone
The old page design showed your web address in the info box under the Page's picture. Now the info box has been relegated to a tab only accessible by the left-hand menu. I don't suspect that the URL in it's old place ever drove too much traffic to our website but it'll be driving even less to it now.
The round up
Facebook has a well established history of not rolling back design changes so these are undoubtedly here to stay. I think the design looks a lot fresher but it could definitely do with a few tweaks to make it even more useful for organisations and brands to get their message out there.
Doritos & Guitar Hero’s ‘Alan’ – The best ad of 2009
In 2009 there was one ad that dominated the awards and impressed consumers and critics alike. It was, of course, the behemoth of Compare The Meerkat that rightly deserved all of its praise for a fantastic campaign that was funny, engaging and, most importantly, put a new spin on the uninspired dirge of comparison site ads that we'd been forced to endure for years on end.
However, as good as VCCP's offering was, my ad of the year is actually a fairly low-profile but totally brilliant ad for a Doritos / Guitar Hero tie-in. It follows the life of a wannabe rockstar called Alan from birth to .. well, you'll have to see for yourself.
And yes it is 4 minutes long but it's the best 4 minutes you'll ever spend watching an advert.
So why is this my ad of 2009? Well, for me that's simple; it's because I watch it for my own amusement. I don't passively consume this ad, I actively seek it out and show it to other people. Undoubtedly it hasn't become the viral hit it was meant to be but in the more-art-than-science world of the viral video I'm not sure too much blame can be leveled at the AMV BBDO team that came up with it.
It also doesn't shy away from having fun with the brands. The stage dive into the Dorito's box is a genius bit of product placement and the overriding message that Alan is a bit of a loser but even losers can rock out on Guitar Hero plays up to the public perception that the game is just for people that weren't good enough to learn a real instrument.
It's fun, it's funny and the chorus still hasn't left my head since I first saw the ad in October last year.
So come on everybody, sing with me: "Alan you are a guitar hero! Trapped in the body of a rock n roll zero!"
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About
Tom Hubbard-Green is the E-marketing and Social Media Manager at Alzheimer's Society and a freelance technology journalist.
His articles have been published in a variety of magazines and industry publications including Figaro Digital, Org Zine, O2 Venue magazine and The City magazine.
The views expressed on this blog are his own. Obviously.
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Tutorial: how to create text boxes with the content automatically selected
If you need your audience to copy a specific bit of text or a URL you’re going to want to make it as simple for them as possible. A great way of doing this is to create a text box that automatically highlights the contents when a user clicks on it. This is easy to achieve with a just a few lines of JavaScript.
First of all you want to create your text box. This can be easily styled with CSS for this example we’ll just use a plain box with a size of 2 rows and 40 columns. The code you’ll need is:
<textarea rows="2" cols="40" name="share">This text will be automatically highlighted when you click on the box
</textarea>
This creates the text area and the content but it isn’t automatically selected when you click in the box. To do that you just need to add a few bits of JavaScript:
<textarea rows="2" cols="40" name="share" onclick="this.focus();this.select()">This text will be automatically highlighted when you click on the box
</textarea>
By adding onclick="this.focus();this.select()" the content inside the text area will now be automatically highlighted when you click in the box.