Ali Kuru

Although I had an account at Facebook for quite some time, using it never really interested me before.

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; (more…)

Yesterday Disqus commenting system has launched an update, and previously reported Facebook Connect caused messy statistics issue showed itself again with upgraded WordPress plugin. Since workaround offered at Disqus blog is not working anymore, I’ve tried to fix things manually.

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.

Twitter is testing a new AJAX-based interface which updates users’ time-line automatically, according to a post at RWW.

Although two places differ from each other distinctly, there is obviously a competition between Facebook and Twitter, and this competition probably increased after a recent buying offer came from Facebook.

I don’t think Twitter actually worried about Facebook. Since this attempt of adding features to its interface came after their rumored fund raising effort, they might up for creating a monetization method after almost 3 years of existence without a proper business model.

[via digg]