Now, I’m about to permanently leave the town which I’m living for 14 years and the university which I’m working for nearly 9 years, thought that I would probably need something more efficient than email and IM for keeping connections with my friends and colleagues. Since all of them are using Facebook (just like the rest of the world must I say, if we consider the network is dwarfing any other alternative with its 400 million users!), using it seems inevitable. So, I decided to came out of the rock I’m hiding under for years, and created myself a profile.

Since every once in a while I read about privacy concerns of Facebook users on the net, I was skeptical about how it handles the privacy, and this was on top of my list of reasons for not using Facebook. However, I found their way of handling privacy more robust than I imagened. It looks like Facebook listens their users voice (“scream” could be more appropriate here), and evolves with their needs, which is good know.

I still have few annoyances about the service though;

• Joining a network shouldn’t automatically change your privacy settings
  There are a lot of options that lets you fine tune your privacy at the privacy settings section, but you probably know that already :) Anyway, I tuned everything, than I joined the network of my university and – almost – every setting on that page automatically changed to allow the members of my university network to see everything on my profile! Approximately 1000 people are working in my university and more than 20000 students are having education. There is obviously no chance I’m knowing them all :) Also, since anyone can join the network even if they are not affiliated with my university in any way, anyone can see my full profile, wall etc., regardless what I set on the privacy section. What is the point of “friending” then? I don’t know.
• There should be a way to moderate wall posts before they get published
  I know, this may be a stupid wish for a network like Facebook, but I really would like to have more moderation rights on my wall. We all know that not everybody in our friend list is really our “friend” (who has 500+ “friends” in real life, right?). We sometimes add people we see on the corridor to our office or people in our neighborhood just to be polite, who we just say “hello” or “good morning” once in a while. Can he/she turn into a jackass one day? You can’t be sure. Also, you may have bad times with your real friends, who can post things you may not want to see on your wall after your argument. It’s possible to think more scenarios here. What I’m trying to tell is just being able to remove posts from my wall is not enough, I should also be able to approve posts before they show themselves up on my wall. Being able to customize the group of people allowed to post on my wall with lists (rather than all my “friends”) could also work, I guess.
• Navigating through pages are difficult than I thought
  I don’t know what it’s like before, but I found the new design difficult to navigate. I think clicking on the “Facebook” on the header should take me to the home page (or refresh the homepage, if I’m already there) rather than just refreshing my news feed. Also, I didn’t like pop-up boxes and I’d love to see a direct link to my friend list somewhere on the top navigation menu.
• Applications are not descriptive enough
  There usually are very limited information on the application pages about their functionality and how they are handling privacy.

I’m looking for a useful Greasemonkey script for Facebook, like to hear your suggestions. Also, I’d like to hear which applications you are using. Couldn’t find anything interesting by myself. Looks like there are tons of alternatives if you are MMORPG gamer, but there is nothing really interesting if you are not :)

Anyway, my account came with 20 invitations. Please leave a comment to this post if you are looking for an invitation. You don’t need to publish your email address at your comments body, I’ll send the invitation to the email address you filled in the comments form. Invitations will be send first come, first serve basis.

And, please don’t forget to come back and tell your first impressions about the Google Wave, I’d love to hear what yo think.

UPDATE: All gone, no invitations left, sorry. Please don’t post anymore requests!

Also, note that Google Wave’s invitation system is more like “nominating you for an invite” than “directly issuing you an invitation”. Since I “nominated” you for an invitation, it’ll take some time before you actually receive an invitation.

Here is what’s been told on my invitation Wave;

Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times.

Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

I’ll let you know if I receive more invitations. You can subscribe to my feed, or follow me on Twitter (@alikuru) for updates.

Disqus plugin tells Facebook Connect to look for the xd_receiver.htm at the Disqus plugin directory with the variable facebookXdReceiverPath. Problem is, Disqus plugin doesn’t ship with the xd_receiver.htm, and that’s why Facebook Connect’s attempts to reach this file are returning with errors, and causing statistics mess.

Here is my solution;

1. Remove the previous workaround code, if you’re still using it.
2. Download the xd_receiver.html file here (right click and save as) and change its extension from “.html” to “.htm”.
3. Upload the renamed file to your Disqus WordPress plugin directory (to /wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system).
4. You’re done.

Hope you find it useful.

Update: Disqus team repacked the plugin with the previously missing xd_receiver.htm. Just update the plugin and your problem will be solved.

Here comes the bad news; pricing scheme seem to be surfaced with the launch plan and there will be three plans available to the users. Which are; Free (on-line only, all information shared), Enjoy ($57 per year, only works online) and Pro ($160/year, on-line and down-loadable).

Sharing what you’ve created might not be problem for most of the users but being not able to download and use your presentations offline will definitely hurt free users. Anyways, Prezi is a really innovative tool for creating slick presentations and definitely worth a try.

Update: It looks like its not the presentations that free users are not able to download, but the new “offline editor”. See comments for details.

Although I hated the installer and its registering of Google Update both as a service and as a timed job, I liked the Chrome’s look since its first release. I’m a long time Firefox user and I usually spend 5 to 7 hours in front of it every day. Yesterday, I’ve decided to give it a chance and switched to Chrome and ditched the loving Firefox for a day. I did my usual browsing including some standard emailing, roaming, searching, reading my RSS subscriptions, banking and I remotely accessed to my lab PC via LogMeIn. Also, I’ve browsed our internal FTP server for updates.

Here are my thoughts after the day;

Pros:

• Overall design
  Chrome looks really sleek and, thank to overhead tabs design and hover only status bar, it gives you the maximal viewpoint. Never gets in your way while browsing, perfect.
• Fast
  It is not just feels fast, it is fast! You feel the difference especially on heavily scripted pages like AJAXified webware like Gmail, java driven banking pages and LogMeIn remote control (although remote controlling was laggy with sidebar, was ok in full screen).
• Handling of history
  Organization and accessibility of history is awesome, you can even text search in your whole history. Near perfect (see suggestions).
• Internal task manager
  Chrome has its own internal task manager, which allows you to manually kill unresponsive tabs or windows, or even just plugins! This is great since in other browsers when a tab or page stuck on a crappy javascript code or a PDF if you choose to kill the application, you lost every open page instantly. Having its own task manager may be the one of the best features of Chrome.
• Inline search has a counter
  Search as you type function also has a counter in Chrome and tells you how many instances of your search criteria are found on a page. Also Chrome highlights all matched text automatically.
• Paste and go
  Well, this is not new. Opera has it for ages, I know. Still happy to see that Chrome has it, too.
• Better pop-up blocking
  Looks like Chrome’s pop-up blocking is better than Firefox. Haven’t tested it extensively though. I’m frequently using a free web proxy to bypass great firewall of our university, and usually Firefox misses at least one of its pop-ups, which was not the case for Chrome.
• Source code viewer has line numbering and better code highlighting
  Using line numbers in source code viewer is great, makes it easier to reference a piece of code when needed. Every major text editor has this function, so why not your browser? Well done.
• Incognito mode is great for NSWF browsing :)
  Chrome has a mode called “incognito”, which can be described as “off the record browsing”. This is great for viewing NFSW stuff, you don’t have to clean your traces (history, cache, cookies etc.) after your visit; Chrome destroys everything right after you close the “incognito” window. Now, you can drop using an alternative browser as a safe house :)
• Detach tabs to create a separate windows
  Since they’ve built on the same technology (see WebKit), Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome has a lot of things in common, such as detaching a tab by dragging it from the tab bar creates a separate window for that tab. This is in my Firefox wish list for a long time, and glad to see it on Chrome.

Cons:

• Space bar checking “check box”s weird, because of “page down” action
  I usually use tab switching between input boxes while filling forms and use space bar to tick check boxes. In Chrome, when you jump to a check box with tab button, if you use space bar to mark that check box, space bar also sends you to lower sections of the page because of its primary “page down” function. Annoying.
• No deleting from recently typed URLs
  I use my recently typed URLs coming up as I type at the address bar frequently on Firefox, and I like to be able to selectively remove the addresses which I don’t want to appear on the suggestions list (hitting the delete key on the unwanted entry removes it). This is not possible on Chrome as far as I see.
• Didn’t like the highlighting of input boxes, selections
  I think using a orange colored border instead of a thin dotted border to show the which object you’re on is kinda overriding of designers choice of styling, didn’t like it.
• Can’t directly open documents and files; have to show some place to save first
  Well, I haven’t figured out how, if it is available :)
• Shift+Return triggers Google search, Ctrl+Shift+Return does nothing
  As I said earlier, I’m used to Firefox and I like its triggering of “www.google.com” after I write only “google” to the address bar and hit the Ctrl+Return, which also works in Chrome. I can also visit “www.google.net” by hitting Shift+Return, and “www.google.org” by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Return after I write “google” in Firefox, but not in Chrome. I know, they don’t have to support exactly the same keyboard shortcuts, they are different browsers, but I still expect these ones to work as other common shortcuts (such as Ctrl+T and Ctrl+W).
• Address bar suggestions are not accurate for direct IP inputs
  I sometimes use IP addresses directly to access content on the web (i.e. for accesing my webservers’ stats), and I found Chrome’s suggestions for IP address entries are less accurate than Firefox, even I have visited the IP I’m trying to access several times before I expect suggestions. It gets better if you opt out “Use a suggestion service” option at the settings, but still far from being accurate.
• No “about:config”
  Yes, Chrome has a lot of fancy “about:” pages, such as “about:memory”, “about:stats”, “about:network”, but it has no “about:config”, so no fine tuning. This is no good.
• Limited support for userscripts
  Glad to hear that it has support for userscripts, sorry to hear that the support is limited. Here is what Google System writes;

  A recent build of Chromium, the open source project behind Google Chrome, added support for user scripts. For now, the support is limited: Chromium reads the scripts from the hard-coded directory c:\scripts and it ignores the @include metadata which restricts scripts to one or more web addresses.

• Firefox still has the best full screen reading
  Chrome’s full screen mode is nice, but not nicer than Firefox. Couldn’t find a way to recall the address bar for a new entry. Have to use F11 for new address input, even opening a blank tab with Ctrl+T didn’t help.

Here are my suggestions; Chrome needs a styling for feed and FTP browsing, and I wish if they had a mouse-over drop down address bar on full screen mode. Also, maybe I’m asking too much but I wish they had a OCR text recognizing mode for the history, which will allow user to do a text search for the images at the visited web pages. Evernote has this feature for your notes containing images, I’m sure you get the idea if you are using it. And, most importantly, Chrome needs extensions. It is obvious that there is no other way for stealing Firefox users :)

As for final thoughts; Chrome is cleverly designed, feature packed and innovative in many ways. You should at least spend a day with it, and then switch back to your favorite browser.

Curious about its performance against other major browsers? Here is a recent review for further reading.

There is a solution posted on the Disqus blog and I’ve got a tip for you if you are using WordPress, which will allow you to include the given xd_receiver.html on your blog only when necessary, to reduce the front page size.

If you wrap the given code on the Disqus blog with the WordPress conditional tag is_single(), mentioned xd_receiver.html (and the javascript that its calling) will only included in your post pages, where the comment form should appear. See the code below;

<?php if (is_single()) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
var facebookXdReceiverPath='http://alikuru.com/wp-content/files/xd_receiver.html';
</script>
<?php } ?>

If you are allowing your visitors to comment on your WordPress pages too, you might want to change the is_single() with is_singular() ;)

Update: Disqus has launched an update and Facebook Connect caused messy statistics issue seem to reoccur. Here is another workaround.

Prezi is a new Flash based online presentation tool from Zui Labs, which lets you create extra ordinary “zooming” presentations.

With traditional presentation tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, you have to work slide by slide to create your presentation. With Prezi you have only one slide to work with! But rather than thinking your working space as a “slide” in Prezi, you should think it as a big (actually limitless) scientific poster.

I know, you probably started thinking that “How is a gigantic scientific poster is more interesting than a ordinary scientific poster?”. I totally agree, scientific posters are usually boring if not horrible, but this is not the case for Prezi. With Prezi, your scientific poster becomes a magical space where you can zoom in and out as you want to focus a piece of information on it, and where you can organize the transitions between these information holders to create the flow of your presentation. Also, because your presentation has the feeling of deepness, thank to ability of zooming in and out, you can even create presentation that feels like they are three dimensional. Please click on the image above or check the video below to see a living example.

Prezi lets you control everything either with the menu at the top left corner of your screen, which consists of a bunch of hierarchically connected circles in different sizes, or with keyboard shortcuts (i.e. pressing “b” chooses square frame, and CTRL+Z undoes your last action) while editing.

When you click on the “Place” circle in the menu (or simply press “p”) and click on an object on your presentation, a circular zebra pattern appears on top of your object, which helps you to move, rotate or resize the object with your mouse. Again, please check the video below for the usage.

While presenting, you can control jumps between zooming sections via menu at the right bottom of the screen or use your keyboard. You can also reach a timing menu if you click and hold the right arrow on the navigation menu, where you can choose between 2, 10 and 20 second intervals.

Prezi definitely has a learning curve for a PowerPoint or a Keynote user, but it is not steep one. It feels like the user interface cleverly designed with simplicity in mind, and when you get used to its controls and the concept itself, it literally frees you in space :) Prezi supports the special characters of your alphabet, or at least the ones we use in Turkish. Don’t sure if it supports languages like traditional Chinese or Russian.

Presentations you’ve created with Prezi are also ultimately portable. You can download and run your presentation as a flash projector executable on any computer running Windows or OSX, even presence of flash on that computer is not necessary!

Prezi is currently in private beta status (invite only), and maybe because of this, it is lacking some crucial features like Microsoft Excel support and copy-paste. Themes are limited in quantity and you can’t tweak the designs. Also, currently you can only use flv videos, according to FAQ. I wish they offer a stock image library like Slide Rocket, and I’d like to see importing of .swf files (which will let me use the charts I created with Swiff Chart) (my mistake, it is possible).

I’m using Prezi not for a long time, but liked it a lot. I have tried other online presentation tools, including Google Docs, Zoho and Slide Rocket. Prezi is far more creative and innovative than any other tool I’ve used, and I’m sure they’ll change everyone’s mind about other presentation tools when they decide to open their doors to the masses.

I strongly suggest you to get your email enlisted for an invitation, here.

Apparently, Google Calendar has an offline mode just like Gmail. Although I didn’t like the way Gmail handles your offline data, since it dumps every mail and attachments’ to your hard disk in an un-encrypted fashion, I like the idea of always accessible Google Calendar.

As always, you’ll need Google Gears to be installed in the first place.

[via: siberkültür]

What makes Ginx attractive is that it handles conversations in a threaded fashion. This makes easier to track people’s replies to each other, hence improving overall Twitter experience. Ginx has another usability feature which is about shortened URLs; it automatically converts shortened URLs to longer ones for preview, you don’t need a browser addon or a user script to do that. It also adds target web pages’ favicons next to the links and, especially if the link is pointing to an image, creates thumbnails (unfortunately, Ginx only takes care of the first one if there are more than one links in the tweet).

System also converts your long URLs to shorter ones while you are updating. Most beautiful part about this conversion is you don’t need to think about the 140 character limit while typing, since Ginx only adds shortened URL character count in the total! Just trust the counter, they say :)

Ginx is handling hashtags internally, too. #Hashtags are clickable and every hashtag has its own dedicated timeline in Ginx.

Although Ginx is not interested in your favorites at the moment, it remembers the updates of your friends which you’ve clicked the included links, and lists them in your “clicked” tab on your Ginx home. This is awesome if you have a fishy memory like me, it makes it really easy to find the links you were interested in, and in my opinion it is better than Twitter favorites.

These are the details that makes you feel the front-end offered by Ginx is more “complete” than any other tool. But there are some other things that make you feel “incomplete” about it, too. Such as;

• Limited support for direct messages.
  You can send direct messages via Ginx by “d user message”, but you can’t currently view your inbox at Ginx, you have to visit the Twitter or use another front-end that supports it. Good news is, as @ginx told, they are working on it!
• Lack of link stats.
  I know, most twitterers don’t care about how their links are performing, but there are a lot of people using Twitter for marketing purposes or to spread ideas, and they care about link statistics (actually, they are the ones who are seeking advanced tools). They want to be able to see how many people clicked on their links, when that clicks happened and where in the world were the clickers etc. There are a lot of URL shortening services around and few of them support these kinds of statistics. For example – my favorite – bit.ly has “live stats”.
• Manual updates of user timeline.
  You need to update your timeline by clicking “Sync now” link on the sidebar. I’m guessing that this method is chosen for limiting unnecessary API requests, but I also feel that it has to be changed. Twitter is all about live web and, I think, an AJAX’ified front-end, which checks updates in a given interval, would better serve its users (even Twitter is thinking about AJAX).

Twitter is saying that their API traffic is twice as much as their web traffic. Meaning; most of their users are connecting the service through third-party tools. This also indicates that how strong is the competition between Twitter API developers.

As I stated in the beginning, Ginx’s status is currently not even “alpha”. Everything can (and probably will) change till they reach a stable release but, even in this initial stage, Ginx is distinguishing with its clever features, and it is obvious that it is not just “yet-another” Twitter front-end.

Want to get invited to Ginx? Reply to @ginx, and make sure you are following them, so they can send you a direct mesage with the invitation code. Don’t forget to give your feedback, they are listening :)

Company profile at CrunchBase: Ginx.