What Apps - Reviews and profiles of social applications for Facebook, MySpace, and more.

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So you wanna see who’s online?

Who’s Online is not perfect, but it works well enough in determining who was online and when.

You won’t be able to get a real-time list of people that are currently online, but you can see who has been active in the past few minutes. The application will fade out your friends the longer they have been away from Facebook.

The profile box is slow to update (but it does update). Clicking on ‘See All’ will update your list.

One minor complaint I have is the application will spam your mini-feed every time it updates your list. But that’s easy to fix in Facebook’s edit apps page.

I currently have it installed and am still debating it’s usefulness. It’s worth installing and checking out for yourself.

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Raising the bar for Raising funds

Trying to raise some funds? It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to collect cash for a disaster relief fund, birthday present, community project, sponsored event, or to just line your pockets you still need a way to get the word out about your cause and a method for people to contribute. Sponsor Me, a remarkably well designed Facebook application by James Smith and Mat Clayton, is the perfect solution. The team of two claim to have written Sponsor Me in their free time and currently provide it as a free service. Now that’s charitable giving!

What garnered my attention at first with Sponsor Me was how well it was designed. The entire application seems well thought out and carefully implemented. The first thing you’ll notice with Sponsor Me is its friendly and informative landing page. Most applications force a redirect to their add application page for new visitors, but Sponsor Me provides a clean and informative landing page to help the user decide if the application is right for them or not and then provides a helpful link to their add application page.

The design is clean and a model of usability. In the standard view there are three tabs that give you access to friends’ campaigns, past campaigns, and popular campaigns. This allows you to keep track of your own campaigns as well as those of any of your friends whose causes you may wish to contribute towards. The popular campaigns page shows the top sponsored campaigns currently running in Sponsor Me to help spread the word of greater causes. To have a campaign displayed on the popular campaigns page it must have a minimum of 10 sponsors.

If I was going to put Sponsor Me through a real test I needed a cause. Sure I could try to raise funds to cure cancer or shelter the orphans, but I had a greater calling. I set my mind on the noble cause of ending hunger, at least here in the office. I followed Sponsor Me’s simple two step process for creating a new campaign. You can enter a title, description, and set a number of options including an end date, currency, target amount to raise, and of course the PayPal account where the funds should be deposited.

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The next step was to seed my campaign to a bunch of friends who would hopefully support it, contribute towards it, pass it on to their friends, and so on. I would be fine dining in no time! Thanks to Sponsor Me’s integration into Facebook this part was going to be easy. I selected a few friends hopefully not as poor as me and pressed the send button. Raising funds has never been this easy!

Honestly I didn’t think my campaign would have any takers. I let it age over a few days to see what would happen. Much to my surprise, day by day there was one, then two, then three sponsors. The sponsors kept trickling in. No one had opened their checkbook yet but they were at least rallying around my call! It was almost enough to make me shed a tear or two — almost.

The Result

Well to say the least, Sponsor Me hasn’t helped put any food in my belly or those of my fellow bloggers but it has shown me a level of quality in a Facebook application that has yet to be challenged. I continue to monitor my campaign through Sponsor Me by logging in everyday to see it progress towards the target amount and who’s supporting it. Soon I hope it will cross the magic threshold of 10 supporters to get listed publicly. Then the world is my oyster! Or is it oysters for lunch?

If you have a charitable fund or just looking to raise some extra cash you should definitely considering adding Sponsor Me to your profile. It’s incredibly easy to use. You’ll have your campaign up in a few minutes. With the viral nature of Facebook it’s only a matter of time before a noble cause strikes a chord in the heart of Facebook’s 50 million plus members.

The first reader to create a campaign for a non-profit charity contribution who invites me will receive a small donation.

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Mobile IM by WUPIMA.com provides 2-way messaging between your Facebook profile and your mobile phone in the U.S. and Canada (select carriers). The only fees are those associated with your mobile phone plan. The application preserves your privacy, never revealing your phone number to those viewing your profile (just sells them to telemarketers instead! jk). When you receive an SMS message on your phone, you can reply back directly to the Facebook user that sent the message.

Pretty straight forward: enter your carrier, number, and times when you can be contacted (EST). My first complaint is that it should let me select my timezone. Seems simple enough for them to do the calculation as it is for me.

After submitting, there was no pressure to invite friends. The navigation is straightforward: Compose/TextOUT, Inbox, Sent, Mobile Setup.

I like the feature of being able to send an SMS directly to another friend on Facebook by name and not requiring their mobile number. So, to test it out, I send a message to my friend Joel.

Unfortunately, off the bat, I was not lucky and the send failed.

My friend’s carrier is T-Mobile (U.S.). So, I’m going to try another number (my own) also on T-Mobile. Success!

So, no conclusions can be made of a test with 2 text messages, but that it works and doesn’t work at the same time. The second SMS message sent to my own personal number worked. The message formatting is a little bit cryptic:

1234@m.wupima.com / / FR: First Last Name MSG: This is the message. [wupima.com]

To complete the test of 2-way messaging, I reply to the message wait about a minute and the following shows up in my MobileIM Inbox.

Clicking on the [x] removes the message. Click on the from loads the user’s profile, if there is one.

The application works as advertised.

Installed

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Since Flirt Wall and Secret wall are so similar, I decided to write their reviews together…

Both of these walls allow your friends to write anonymously on your wall. They both share a very similar feature set. One wall seems to encourage flirting, while the other just secret posts.

They both require writers to install the wall — which I didn’t like.

No pictures or videos on either wall.

Flirt Wall has a few extra features like private posts (invisible to everybody but you), it will show your sent flirts, and you can view your friends flirt walls.

Well, these walls aren’t a replacement for the wall you currently are using, but if you want your friends to flirt or write anonymous message to you, they’re worth checking out.

Crap Wall

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Crap Wall is just like your favourite wall application, but without any of the functionality.

Things you can’t do:

• Leave messages on a friends wall
• Share videos
• Spam the newsfeeds of yourself and your friends
• Anything at all, except look at the wall
• New! You can now write on your own wall. But it’s still crap!

Crap wall is obviously a joke. It’s kinda funny.

Summary

Well, I reviewed quite a few walls over the past few days. We’ve seen some good and we’ve seen some bad. If you’re looking for a replacement for the default wall facebook provides, you should check out either Fun Wall or Advanced Wall. I liked both of these, but ended up going with Fun Wall.

The downside to replacing your default wall, is you’ll no longer see your default wall (and all the comments) or you will have two (or more) walls.

Also, when your friends try to write on your wall, they will be prompted to login — unless they also have the wall installed. This can be annoying, but I’m pretty sure all Facebook users are used to seeing the login box by now.

• The 12 Walls of Facebook — Part 1
• The 12 Walls of Facebook — Part 2
• The 12 Walls of Facebook — Part 3
• The 12 Walls of Facebook — Part 4

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More Friends by Chris Lee helps you find the most common 2nd degree friends in your social network.

How does it work?
It’s simple. This application will get a list of all your friends’ friends (second degree friends) and count who appeared the most. You can then use the application to discover those common friends that are not on your list. However, there’s one catch: You’ll have to get your friends to add this application, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to find their friend lists.

I really like this idea. Facebook already does it to an extent, but only shows you friends you have directly in common when you view a particular person’s profile (see picture). If you have tons of friends, this could be tedious and you may never realize that some of your friends are mutual. More over, if many of your friends share a common friend, there’s a good chance you might know that common friend too. Unfortunately, More Friends is limited by Facebook’s FBQL restrictions on pulling friend lists only of those that have the application installed. This is awesome for More Friends (since it forces you to invite everyone you know), but too bad for me, because I can’t go about inviting my friends to install every application I test. And mind you, I test a lot of apps! I compliment them for being so up front about this from the get go, even before installing the application. To kick the wheels, I invite a few of my close friends that are used to my Facebook request spam.

I wait a few minutes for the app to update, as it appears that it does not get updated in real-time.. When it does update, I have new results under the “More Friends” tab.

Sure enough, it found a friend Rusty that I haven’t yet added to my contacts. Caveats aside, I think this is a great tool for finding lost contacts. I am tempted to invite spam everyone, to see who’s on Facebook that I haven’t yet befriended.

Installed

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Truphone by Alistair T Campbell and Dean Elwood offers a Call Me button on your Facebook profile. Anyone viewing your profile can call you directly via their computer. Your telephone number will be held confidential and they promise not to sell your number to telemarketers. Best of all it’s free*, as in not for long. December 31st it switches over to a premium service. Hurry up and get your free calls in to select countries! They do their best to hide how much the service will cost after December 31st. Personally, I hate this tactic.

My first impressions after installing the app is the nice presentation.

They clearly indicate how many steps are involved in the process and best of all, haven’t skimped on the documentation. Everything is explained in great detail (except for prices after Dec 31st!). I find that most Facebook applications fall short of helpful FAQs.

Entering your number(s) is easy, but their language wasn’t immediately obvious. I kept on entering my telephone number in the field where it said “Truphone Number” and it kept saying the number didn’t exist. After paying a little closer attention, I realized I needed to enter my number under “World Landline or US/Canadian Mobile.”

They also have advanced options for adding your Grand Central, SIP, or Google Talk address.

At this point, it loads a Java applet and shortly thereafter you receive an automated phone call validating your telephone number. After pressing ‘1’ it disconnects and you’re instructed to click the “Activate” link that appears on the current page.

After completing the last step, I become concerned that something is wrong. The fancy progress bar hasn’t changed and I wait for it to update. After all, shouldn’t the little gray dots turn to green or some sort of validating color that each step has been completed? Well, don’t wait around. You’re done as soon as it shows one active telephone number.

Now, a button will appear on your profile that anyone can click to call you.

Of course, the review wouldn’t be complete without a test. I click the button and it takes me to an application page which immediately initiates a phone call. I answer it and everything sounds great.

The program couldn’t be much easier to use. If you are interested in receiving phone calls from your friends on Facebook, this is not a bad way to go. One caveat is that they never give you the option to restrict the hours/days of the week you wish to receive phone calls. Don’t be surprised if you receive an unexpected phone call at 4am. Cheers!

NOTE: If you are a lucky GrandCentral user, I suggest you try out their Call Me button since it’ll be free for much longer that December 31st. Don’t have an account yet? Try InviteShare to find an invitation. Sorry Truphone, I’m going to install their button instead.

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It’s Hangman. You know the rules.

That’s the slogan to the Battle Hangman application by Scott Agass and Richard Matthews that brings the classic game of hangman to Facebook. They couldn’t be more right! Battle Hangman is exactly that.

It’s just like you remember it, you think of a word or phrase and have a friend try to guess it one letter at a time. For each correct guess you fill in all the characters of the word where that letter appears. For each wrong guess you draw another stick figure limb hanging from a noose. First the head, then the torso, followed by the right arm, left arm, right leg, and finally the left leg. If they guess the entire word or phrase before you draw their entire body then they win. Otherwise they get “hunged” (hanged).

Have no friends? Well you probably don’t belong on Facebook but you can still enjoy Battle Hangman by playing against the computer. Soloists aside, this is actually a great way to build up your score.

Battle Hangman provides the person being challenged with a hint by requiring the challenger to choose from a select group of topics that include; Movies, Books, Song Titles, Bands/Musical Artists, Famous People, Places, Landmarks, Catchphrases, TV Shows, and Sports. Obviously if you’re a cut-throat winner who wants nothing but points you can cheat and throw in random words, misspellings, or off-topic answers — but that wouldn’t be much fun would it?

The point system works like so. Challenge a friend and if they don’t solve it, you get 10 points. Solve a challenge and you can earn up to 20 points or as low as 5 points, depending on how many limbs you have remaining. You can also earn a bonus 50 points per friend you invite, but that seems a little bit unfair.

The game is well developed. We didn’t run into any technical issues trying to use it. The interface is a little cluttered but not enough to stop you from being able to navigate your way around. The game has cute little stick figure animations that are a nice addition beyond the classic hand drawn game of hangman. You can also keep track of your score versus your friends or compete globally on the leaderboard for the most points.

The Result

If you like hangman you’ll probably enjoy Battle Hangman. I probably won’t keep it installed just because I haven’t played hangman since about the 4th grade and there is kind of a reason for that. There is some fun in the nostalgia of it though. We had a few laughs in the office trying to solve each others puzzles. I definitely suggest checking it out. At least until 6pm when you clock out of work.

_ _ i n s _ a _ _ e d

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Ayos iShare by Sphorium Technologies provides a file sharing service with unlimited download limits and 500MB of Free Storage. By default, the 500MB is divided into two parts: 100MB of Personal Storage, and 400MB of Shared Storage. How you allocate it is ultimately up to you. But more than just file sharing, it provides extended features like searching your files, tracking revisions, organizing files, and sharing a common work space with your friends. There are tons more features that I left out, which you can view here.

Ayos iShare came at just the right time for me. I have been looking for an unrestricted file sharing program for Facebook. First thing I wanted to do was to upload a file. It took me a few seconds to find the link, it was hidden under “Options”. Personally, since this is a service all about file sharing, I think “Upload File” should be prominently featured.

Uploading a file went smoothly. I would have liked to see some sort eye-candy such as an AJAX indicator and for kicks an upload progress bar.

After uploading, I tried to use the search functionality to find my file. At first, a simple search for a keyword in the description produced no results. After about 1 minute, it did however turn up. I haven’t yet figured out how to view the description, just edit the description. I would prefer if there was some way clicking to get the description of the file inline.

You can also move files around, but I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t create a folder inline as you do with most file explorers.

The business model is straightforward: upsell user on greater storage capacity with a monthly subscription fee starting at $3.99/mo. As much as I like 100% free services, I do support companies rolling out subscription models since in the end the only sustainable business is the one with cash flow.

My overall impression of the app is positive. It works as advertised and is easy to use. There are many more features I didn’t explore, such as the versioning and calendaring system. To be fair to Ayos, it is not just a file sharing application. It’s more of a collaborative content management system for the Facebook platform. My 3 star rating describes its effectiveness as a purely a file sharing application, and doesn’t take into consideration these other features.

I do expect certain usability improvements, however, before I would start using the app regularly. Most of them I’ve already mentioned. As a matter of personal opinion, I’m not a big fan of context menus/drop downs for web apps unless they are used to mimic the behavior of existing, well known applications (e.g. File menu in Windows). I think menus should be used to hide more obscure or advanced features away from regular users, but not used for all features.

In order for a file sharing app in this category to get my vote of 5 stars, it would have to mimic the behavior of a normal file explorer (e.g. Mac Finder or Windows Explorer). This is a reasonable expectation as I’ve seen the functionality implemented with Flash and even AJAX (as in some of the Web OS implementations). My justification for this is users shouldn’t have to learn yet one more interface to accomplish the simple task of file sharing. A file explorer’s interface is intuitive and works.

Update 2007-12-06:

Ayos iShare announced today that they now allow users to collaborate on group items. You can access this feature by clicking on the new tab called Group Items. Down the road, they say to expect a WebDAV capabilities, which will enable you to mount your files locally on your computer.

Installed (for now)

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Spotlight by Peopleized enables you to conduct interviews of your friends on Facebook. The idea is intriguing to me, because I rarely get around to interviewing my friends. After thinking for a few minutes, all sorts of questions and interview topics came to mind. I thought it would be interesting to interview some of my close friends in order to get to know them little better and to see if we share any common ground.

After installing the application, you’re prompted to enter the names of up to 5 friends to interview, the title of your interview, and the ability to ask as many questions as you like.

After entering the first question, click “Add Question”. Each question you add is appended to a list below.

I like how easy it is to add, edit, delete, and sort your questions. It just worked. My only recommendation would be some sort of preview mode to see what the interview will look like to the recipient.

When proceeding from this step, you’re prompted to send an email to your friends asking them to be interviewed. This step is optional. If you decline, they will just be notified via Facebook requests.

When they complete your interview, you’re notified via email. Personally, I don’t like this because I already get spammed by so much automated mail, I don’t need anymore; it should be a feature when I setup the interview to be notified via email. Interviews are displayed in a clear fashion with speech bubbles. Once you’re done interviewing your friends, you can ask them to interview you. I expected to be able to specify the topic of the interview, but didn’t see the option. There are some more features of the application that I invite you to explore.

Installed

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Social Networking before Social Networks

Before there were social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster we had to network the old fashion way. You know the one I’m talking about, it’s the sole reason you have (or had) a liver. That’s right — it’s time to get our booze on. Now someone pour me another Dark and Stormy!

The Bar|Book for Facebook tries to bring back the good old days by getting us offline and back into the scene. Created by a team of four alcoholic developers, Erik Ober, Will Chu, Paul Kowssari, and Mike Weber, the Bar|Book helps you connect with other Facebook members who are self described regulars at your favorite local bars and clubs.

The Bar|Book has a clean interface that is simple to use and more refined than most Facebook apps. The first thing you do once you install the Bar|Book is set your location if it hasn’t already detected it for you. For me it immediately knew I was in Los Angeles, CA. Once your location is set you can begin browsing bars and clubs in your area. Each listing has a photo and description that you can click for more information or add it to your scenes.

Each scene lets you browse a list of regulars by photo, leave comments, and receive events. It is a great way to keep up with what is happening at your local favorite hot spot. There is also a central news feed that keeps you up to date on other things happening on the Bar|Book, including your friends and what’s hot.

The Result

If you’re heavy into the nightlife the Bar|Book is a great addition to Facebook. You can connect with the regulars from your favorite spots. They’ve recently added a new feature for friend spotting that allows you to keep a history of all the times and places you’ve run into your friends at local watering holes. Just for fun you can send friends virtual drinks, which is similar to some of the other Facebook apps like Booze Mail. The difference being that this is just a feature of the Bar|Book rather than the entire application.

A weakness of the Bar|Book is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to easily track your friends. It would be a lot more useful if they provided a tab with your Facebook friends so you can browse their favorite scenes and coordinate your bar hopping. It is probably less useful for those who don’t live in major metropolitan areas though as the ratio of regulars to population is fairly low. Luckily for me there were already over 3,000 in Los Angeles, and 4,000 in Hollywood at of the time of this review.

Overall I think the Bar|Book is a great application for Facebook because it helps people with a common interest connect both online and offline. That should be the ultimate goal of any social application, to facilitate and enhance human connections.

Installed, see you at The Father’s Office in Santa Monica!