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

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Export Photos by Calen Michael Fretts allows you to download all your photos or photos that others have tagged you on Facebook as a ZIP archive. I like this because My Photos are my photos; I should be able to easily download them and take them with me. There’s not much to the application and that’s exactly what I would expect. It does what it says it does and nothing more.

• Step 1: Select whether you want to export photos in your own albums, or photos you appear in.
• Step 2: Select the album you want to export (in the case of my albums).
• Step 3: Download the album.

Minor Usability Issues

• Cannot download a single archive with all photos you’ve been tagged in. Instead, you must download each archive individually.
• No thumbnail previews of the albums or link to open up album.
• Formatting a bit rough around the edges; it could be cleaned up with some minor CSS enhancements.

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Ranging from masterpiece paintings to the random scribbles in your notes, we all like to draw. Whether you’re good at it may be a different story, but everyone can relate to the basic desire to doodle. Take all of this into account and give it a digital medium accessible to the millions of Facebook users and you have Graffiti. 

With 234,239 daily active users only 4% of total, creators Mark Kantor, Tim Suzman, and Ted Suzmanhave created one of the most popular applications on Facebook. Kudos to them, not only is it popular, but its fantastic usability and functionality create for a bonafide interactive utility.

Basic Facebook Settings

As with most apps on Facebook, Graffiti comes with its own settings. They do a great job of keeping it nice and simple giving you 4 different options to modify.

• Number of Graffiti to show on your profile – presently you can only place Graffiti in the main column of your profile and not the left column
• Email Notification of new Graffiti
• Who can see your Graffiti Wall
• Who can see the page of graffiti drawn by you

The Interface – Lets Draw with Graffiti

It’s simple, you have your canvas and below it are your drawing tools. There isn’t a lot of complexity to it which I like, it is in fact pretty intuitive. You get to use and choose from 216 available colors, about 9 different brush widths, and the option to choose the opacity of your strokes. There is a simple preview of your brush size and color so you know what you’re working with before you hit the canvas. Made a mistake? Well that’s okay too because they have an undo button that retains virtually the entire history of your strokes, allowing you to go back quite far if necessary, there will be no fait accompli here! If all else fails, you can simply start over with a click of a button.

Once you’re finished with your Graffiti piece you simply click Done and voilà! The coolest feature hasn’t even been unveiled! All things final, you can watch what you created in replay mode unveiling the work of art step by step before your very eyes. I don’t know about you but I love time lapsed viewing. Like what you see? Take one for the road, Graffitiprovides you with an option to print from the screen. Like all things great in Facebook you can always “share” it and post it to your profile.

There isn’t much missing from the bare bones aspect of the application. It gives you all the essentials you need to get in and start drawing. The developers stay very active with their users and are quick to discuss what they’re working on. Here are a few important features coming soon:

• Save Button – presently there is no save so you create long pieces of work at your own risk, if for whatever reason you lose the page, you lose your work.
• Comments – everyone loves to leave their own words behind wherever they go. Great way for users to offer praise, disapproval , or feedback. Don’t we all just love interaction and social contribution?

Features I’d Like to See

I would love to see an option for different brush shapes, and even a shape marquee would be interesting. While the native tools are probably more than enough for the more talented users the option to have pre-established shapes might prove useful for the less skilled. I’d also love to see a color wheel to have colors beyond the provided 216. Lastly, I’d love to see a type tool. While I know the idea is to draw your message or your picture, sometimes it would be nice to be able to have some type in there that looks better than a 2 year old writing with his left hand.

Community & Contests

With a Public Gallery generated from content submitted and rated by Graffiti users, not to mention sponsored prize winning contests, a community of contributors and artists alike have helped turn Graffitifrom just an app you install on your Facebook page to an app that comes with a large collection of talent, artwork, and collaboration. To me this is what interactive usability is all about.

With over 5,500 entries and 500,000 votes cast, Graffiti completed its first “Monsters” contest with prizes sponsored by Wacom. Among the community of Graffitiusers battles wage between those who draw with a mouse, and those who have aid via Pen and Tablet or Tablet PC’s. There’s even emergence of the touch-pad users who boast skill using an unconventional mouse solution for artists. Regardless of the methods used by the creators, the coveted grand prize was an Intuos3 Special Edition Tablet and several Wacom Bamboo Tablets for individual category winners.  Users voted for their top 150 entries and a panel of judges chose the final winners.

Best Overall	Scariest	Cutest
Funniest	Creative	Most Teeth

Among your friends or among strangers, the ability to share creations gives depth to the user-base and substance to the application beyond just number of installs. Take a look at some of the top rated submissions from Graffiti users

Graffiti will be implementing a Wall of fame in addition to new contests. Nothing like incentivized participation to spark the creative engine in everyone for either a physical prize or bragging rights and notoriety. If you don’t have Graffiti installed yet, get to it and get your doodle on!

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Just because you can’t see the app doesn’t mean it’s not there!

Close your eyes and try to imagine this. You visit a friend’s Facebook profile and stumble across a new application. Is the profile box in the narrow column or the wide column? Next you click on the profile box and are taken to an add application page. Do you add the application?

If you imagined the profile box was in the narrow column it means you are narrow minded. If you imagined it was in the wide column it means you are open to new possibilities.

If you pictured yourself adding the application it means you are secure and confident but reckless with your friends and often take advantage of them by flooding them with notifications and requests. If you didn’t picture yourself adding the application it means you are insecure about the lack of friends on your Facebook profile page and would be more comfortable on MySpace.

Now imagine an application for Facebook that tests your imagination and psychoanalyzes your answers through a series of similar questions. Is the application in your mind named CitF Test?

If you imagined it was then you are genius and may skip the rest of this article!

CitF Test, short for Cottage in the Forest Test, is a quaint little psychological analysis test for Facebook. A take on the old “imagine yourself in a forest” quizzes found in lonely dark places of the Internet and the back pages of teenie bopper magazines.

Created by the imaginary mind of Oliver Staunton, CitF Test guides you through a series of 15 questions in 11 imaginary situations. Using your mind as a cheat sheet you select one of several multiple-choice answers per question. I say cheat sheet because there are no wrong answers. Just go with the first answer that best matches how you imagined the situation in your mind.

Once you complete all of the questions you are given your analysis broken down into a bunch of short paragraphs explaining each question and what your answer represents in regards to your personality.

The Result

CitF Test is mildly entertaining. I’m sure by now you’ve completed at least one of these types of quizzes in your life and are familiar with them. The answers are amusing but should probably be taken with a grain of salt in much the same way as a horoscope should.

If you have trouble staying focused in today’s attention based economy though you might get a little restless half way through CitF Test. I myself became frustrated wondering when the questions would end. This could probably be alleviated by numbering the questions and informing the reader of how many questions to expect but the not knowing made me anxious thinking I would be spending the next hour or two answering trite questions.

I felt CitF Test was a bit lacking in the social aspect though, there is little if nothing to do with your friends except to invite them to take the quiz themselves. I’m not sure if you can see the results of each others quizzes though since there doesn’t appear to even be a way to view your own test results again. Some users have also complained in the forums that it doesn’t appear in their profiles. The only way to currently access it is through the Left Nav.

So now that I’ve taken the test and there isn’t anything more to do, no saved results, and no profile box, it’s pretty safe to assume I can uninstall it.

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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.

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