Monetizing a Facebook Application

Posted on February 11, 2008 by James Schumann

I’m not sure how I wound up here, but I found a site for buying and selling Facebook and Open Social apps. It’s called Appbid, and looks kinda cool. I’m sure there must be others out there.

That, in turn, led me to AppHire.com. They’re more a blog/news site for Facebook developers. They’re doing some pieces on Facebook advertising…

Which seems to be the business of AdChap, a company that’ll help you monetize your Facebook application through advertising.

All of these look worth a bit of exploration. We’ve had more than one good idea for a Facebook application around here. Might be time to make some money by actually working on one. Or at least selling an idea…

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Twitter Primer

Posted on February 8, 2008 by James Schumann

New to Twitter? Just mildly curious? Never even heard of it? All you need to know about Twitter is for you.

I’m not a Twitter user myself. Yet. Until I read this, I thought it was mostly for SMS kiddies and Crackberry addicts. Guess I was wrong. There seem to be (good; business) uses for the service, and even fire departments are getting on board.

Recommended. Good, quick read.

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WordPress Guestbook

Posted on February 7, 2008 by James Schumann

I’ve got a client who’d like a guestbook for his WordPress site. In the world of WordPress, what this amounts to is creating a page called ‘Guestbook’, adding a bit of text to encourage people to comment on the page, and then enabling comments for the page. Presto! One guest book.

There can be a bit more to it, though. In putting this together, I came across these two pages. The first walks you through creating a template for the guestbook page and making some changes to closer mimic the guestbooks of old. The second is for a plugin which aims to automate those same steps.

Enjoy!

How to Create a WordPress Guestbook Reloaded
WordPress Guestbook Generator Plugin

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Canadian Rails Hosting

Posted on February 6, 2008 by James Schumann

Sure it’s an ad, but it’s interesting and possibly useful:
Ruby on Rails Web Hosting for Canadian Sites

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25 Ruby and Rails Cheat Sheets

Posted on February 6, 2008 by James Schumann

A cheat sheet for every occasion:
Ruby and Ruby on Rails cheat sheets.

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Ubuntu Tweak

Posted on February 6, 2008 by James Schumann

Here’s useful little utility program for making those little changes to your Ubuntu system that really make it your own, like changing your splash screen. It’s called Ubuntu Tweak, and it exposes hidden or hard to find settings in the Ubuntu desktop.

Ubuntu Tweak is a tool that lets you change hidden Ubuntu settings, for example: hide or change the splash screen, show or hide the Computer, Home, Trash, and Network icons, change Metacity, Nautilus, power management, and security settings, etc.

Being able to make little changes like these to your own system, and thereby creating the right user experience for you, is, for me, one of the greatest benefits of using Linux. You just can’t customize Windows to the same degree.

Note: It only supports the GNOME desktop. (That’s the default desktop ‘system’ for Ubuntu, but not Kubuntu or Xubuntu.)

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The Programmer’s Prenup

Posted on February 5, 2008 by James Schumann

Came across a cute page today. It’s a prenup for people considering marrying a programmer:
The Programmer’s Prenup

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