ThinkingNectar

I was at the Web 2.0 emerging industries series of panel talk organised by Startup@Singapore. Overall, the talk was interesting for beginners. For me, I found input from Vanessa Tan and Kevin Lim to be of more interest. To cut the chase short, I was very intrigued by the input from Kevin Lim.

As of any Web 2.0 talk will go, people will talk about money. I do not fault them as I am a firm believer that money drives the internet. Kevin did measure that as an individual, there are more than money at stake when it comes to Web 2.0. He suggested that we should consider more than a single “currency” while online.

There are the currencies of

• Reputation
• Social Good-will
• Social Well Being
• Social Need
• Pay If Forward

In his opinion, monetization is a “dirty” word. Not all might agree, but I do see an element of truth in what he said. He cited the example of Kiva.org, a micro loan site that engages users in the developed countries to make micro loans to poor African start-ups (those brick and mortar ones, mostly in trade and farming) so these business can get a head start. Improving the business climate of such countries will in turn improve the quality of life of such countries. Kiva make for a interesting read, and inspiring read also.

Kevin added the concept of Ithaca hour. What it does is that the currency of trade is measured in hours, or time, instead of money. For example:

A doctor attend to a sick child and spend an hour on the task. For his work, he is credited an hour currency. And when the need arise, he requires a plumber to fix his pipes at home and the plumber took an hour for the job and he will be credited with an hour currency. This hour currency is in turn passed around as and when the service provider gives or receives services and products.

In the above example, if the currency is in cash, the doctor may be paid $50 while the plumber $30. Hence there is a disparity in the currency exchanged. Not that there is anything wrong with it in a capitalist society driven by “free” market forces.

Now I extend the scenario by saying that the doctor is not local. He will take the extra $20 and maybe send it home or spend it elsewhere outside of the local economy. Such an act will result in a nett loss for the local economy.

The advantage of time-based currency like Ithaca hours is that it promotes local economical development as the currency hours earned have to be spend on local services and products. I may had simplified the concept, the pros and cons of it, but it make for an interesting discussion with like minded people.

Last but not least, the social currency of reputation, needs, good-will and pay it forward are important concepts that drives few of the most important sites on the web. Think Wikipedia, flickr and Kiva. Also I have to mention the open source movement. Without which, I cannot be running my system on the wonderful Ubuntu, and this post cannot be made on the user friendly (slightly bloated) Wordpress blogging engine.

Wired have a rather interesting, if not insightful article on why it sucks to be a engineering student. I am “formally” trained in Computer Engineering and does relate to the different points raised in the article. And this post should be informative to those who just attended the open house in NTU or NUS.

1. Awful Textbooks
Thick, dry, black and white manuscripts are rarely a source of inspiration and sometimes can cause loads of confusion. Often, the text is poorly written and interrupted by lengthy equations with symbols that are different from those used by the professor during lectures.

This is pretty obvious. Technical textbooks are hardly Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew reading material. (I digress but Encyclopaedia Brown is far better than the brothers and chick combined.) It takes plenty of focus to read and comprehend technical textbook. Time and effort.

And please do not tell me about speed reading. Try to pull that speed reading stunt on reading these textbooks? I yet to meet anyone who can speed read a page of equations or algorithms. In lesser textbook, you might just get lucky knowing that you can speed read some definition or theory.

To side track, and apologies to my non-local readers, Singapore is blessed with low priced edition of many established textbooks. We are a first world country enjoying developing countries when to come to textbooks. Compare the prices of textbooks in the local university campus book stores with those in Borders or Kino. For once, I can find an item that is affordable in the local education scene.

2. Professors are Rarely Encouraging
During each class, a professor that would rather be tending to his research will waltz up to a blackboard or overhead projector and scribble out equations for an hour without uttering a single sentence to create some excitement.

I came across certain Professors who are really helpful while some are simply too tied up in their research. I do know that professors are measure more in the number of papers they write than the ratings they get in their annual feedback. Hence some professors are more focused in their research than in their teachings.

I will judge a professor in the quality of delivery. If the notes are clear and lectures easy to understand, I will leave the excitement out. Just hope that the professors care about student’s opinion when mistakes are spotted.

Last but not least, I observe that investing seems to be a very popular topic with engineering professors during lunch time. True enough that they need to prepare for their retirement, but are not the local university paying them well enough so that they do not spend their specialised brain power in the stock market?

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling
College students may not have a sense for how to build their resume and they might be clueless about the variety of career opportunities that await them. Unfortunately, some academic advisers do little more than post fliers about internships and hand out a checklist of classes to take. They should make some projections about the future job market, learn about the interests of each young scholar, and offer them tailored advice for how to best prepare themselves.

This is arguable. The local university curriculum does covers resume writing (mostly encapsulated in Technical and Business writing module in engineering courses). May not be comprehensive to ensure a job, but surely a start. Also, most university have a career placement office where students can approach to seek advice on such issues. But here, I will ask this question, how much does those HR trained career placement officers know about the engineering industry? Less the average pay scale and big name companies?

Once again, engineering, you are on your own.

4. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades
Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films.

Some professors view undergraduate education as a type of natural selection, but their analogy is flawed. Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores because they have a larger group of supportive friends to or more time to dedicate to studying.

Inflated Grades? A case of the grass is greener on the other side? I can say it is a big fat no. Given a fixed number of credits a module earned, most engineering modules will require more effort and work from the student as compared to business or other “softer” subjects. When it comes to engineering modules, your thoughts, feelings and insights count for nothing much as compared to the accuraccy of your calculations.

Offering alternative point of view for the sake of offering so does not go down well when your maths or logic fails to deliver. No point writing long winded essays if the technical argument is weak.

Education as a form of natural selection. That is a damn interesting way to put things. I cannot comment much on this point thou.

5. Every Assignment Feels the Same
Nearly every homework assignment and test question is a math problem. Only a few courses require creativity or offer hands-on experience.

This is pretty much true. Maths maths and more maths. For my case, it is at times, code, code and more code. That is the nature of engineering training. Application  I believe is important as engineering is about making things work. And of couse, creativity and hands-on will surely make the learning more interesting but the professors will need more effort in designing the assignment and grading them, refer to point 2 above.

And to add a few pointers of my own, and again localising to the local context here:

• Engineering is the dumping ground

Engineering in Singapore, sadly is seen as the dumping ground for students who had not fared well enough to get into med school, accountings or even business. This give engineering a bad reputation but it does not mean that engineering does not have its share of bright students.

Engineering bright students in Singapore are imported from overseas. That spells a gloomy picture for the locals. For a country that is proud of its Maths and Science education between the age of 6 to 18,  this is a very bad that the continuity is not there into tetiary education. Is it a issue with that system that younger students (6 to 18) does not have much choice but to take up maths and science but once the opportunity arise, they jumped onto subjects that are away from the maths and science fields?

And for those who are in engineering, braced yourself for competition with bright students from China and India, and our neighouring countries who are on our govertnment scholarship. After the degree is earned, again they are there to fight for the same jobs you are seeking. You have been warned. I am not too sure if the business schools have talent import from other countries in Singapore.

• Engineering does not pay well 

And last but not least is the issue of pay. Top engineers does not make the most money compared to those in the medical and law firm. Also include the banks and MNC people. Refer to this PDF. For a quick info:

Median Salaries of the Top 8 Earners in the 6 Professions in the Staff Grade I (MR4) Benchmark

• MNC 4.86 million
• Lawyer 4.65 million
• Banker 4.40 million
• Accountant 4.00 million
• Local Manufacturer 2.74 million
• Engineer 0.75 million

Overall, it is not too good to be a engineer now right?

Again, I do appreciate the engineering training I have. Just that the education system, the media and local universities are protraying engineering  as an attractive option to new A-levels holders who may not know the big picture of what they are getting themselves into.

Okay, I did a post about rednano just a post back. Seems it was nothing good to be said about it. But I did a bit more checks and search. The search results were still bad. And I did find a couple of items that should be of interest.

First of all, I was trying to look at the robots.txt file. Seems that it was not to be found. And the 404 page that appear comes as a surpise.

Nicely done.

Moving on, for those who wish to submit their site to Rednano, kindly go to their contact us page to get the necessary done.

Choose “I like to make recommendations about new URL” under Nature of Query.

The papers reported that SPH (Singapore Press Holdings) launched their and the local “first” local search engine. Going by the name Rednano. It can be found at Rednano.com and Rednano.sg.

I do like the idea of having a localised search engine. That will be really useful should we be searching for local history, local business or anything local.

First of all, I be nice and cover the marketing. Surely there is a lot of marketing to be expected from a media company. Great writeup can be found in their overview(about us) page. To selectively quote:

Red is the colour of blood cells, which carry life-giving oxygen round the body. And Rednano aims to rejuvenate people and companies fatigued by disappointment with other search and directory services. Users looking for things to do with the republic, and businesses eager to reach out to them, will find “red” carpet treatment from Rednano.

Fatigued by disappointment with other search and directory services? Surely Google have yet to really disappoint me.

And:

Their joint venture, SPH Search, aims to provide the premier online tool for anyone seeking information about Singapore; its people and its businesses. It intends to respond to queries speedily. Most importantly, it plans to make relevance the hallmark of its answers.

Make relevance the hallmark of its answers. Relevance. A bold claim and I be happy to give it a test.

I coded for Ablewise Free Classifieds and hence I am more than happy to run a query for “Classifieds” into Rednano. Incidently, the online classifieds arena is where SPH have a direct competition with another local media giant. SPH runs ST701 while the other local media giant runs a “muscle powered” classifieds site.

The results in a screen shot: Taken 21st March 2008. Click for full size.

ST701 appear in number one spot while the other competitor is nowhere on page one, or top 50 search results for that matter. Not too relevance I will say. And I will place a huge question mark over the search results that Rednano returns in keywords or industries that SPH have a interest in.

Also taking a closer look, classifieds.singnet.com and classifieds.singnet.com.sg appears besides each other and both are exactly the same content, or rather same page. This points to rather unsophisticated search data handling. Also, it is in my impressions that great empahasis had been placed for sites with a .sg domain and have the word “singapore” in their domain.

It is still in beta but that should not be a excuse that I am disappointed with the checks I had done so far. And to finsh off, 2 more pointers:

Under their Terms and Condition:

you have read and agree to these User Conditions and our privacy policy and you are at least 21 years old and have the necessary legal capacity, right, power and authority to agree to these User Conditions;

You have to be 21 to use their service? Goodness, tell that to the schools now and everyone should be using Google to be safe. I think this terms and condition applies to users who submit to their data services. And the “catch all terms” style of writing freaks me out. Kids, stick to Google.

Under their updating of information page

Update your information with us and be connected at no cost.

If you are updating information about a registered company, click here to download the update form.
If you are updating information about yourself, click here to download the update form.

For goodness sake, you are running a search engine. Use a web form or something. Or even provide a email address so that business and individual can email back the form. Save some trees, save the mailing and fax.

I am not anti-corporate. Just pro usability.

First Impression: Not too good, but not disappointing as I had not expected much.

Other reports on the launch of Rednano: Here, here(NSFW) and here.

It came as much as a shock and as a surprise when the news reported that NTU (Nanyang Technological University is going to convert a third of their double rooms into triple sharing rooms.

Formerly from NTU, I am not too sure how the student body might react. But it should be the same story once again. As reported in the news:

SINGAPORE: Local universities are expected to admit a bumper crop of freshmen in 2008 and for Nanyang Technological University (NTU), it may face a shortage of hostel rooms.

So to meet the higher demand, NTU’s planning to convert up to a third of its double-rooms to house three instead of two students.

About half of NTU’s students are housed in its 16 residential halls.

In fact, NTU is the only university here to guarantee all first-year students, a place in its hostel.

However, this has become quite a challenge with more students coming in next year and the delay in the construction of new hostel blocks.

So NTU has come up with alternative plans.

It aims to convert some double-rooms to accommodate up to three students.

NTU has declined to reveal details, but campus paper Nanyang Chronicle has reported that the move is expected to create more space for 900 students.

Room rates are also still being discussed.

By adding one more person in the room, it would be quite a squeeze. When contacted, NTU said it is still at the proposal stage, and is currently getting feedback from students.

NTU has also created mock-ups in two of its residential halls to give students an idea of what these ‘new’ rooms may look like.

Channel NewsAsia understands that at least one in three double-rooms may be converted to accommodate an additional student.

Some students recognise that this may be the best immediate solution to increase supply.

But this doesn’t mean that they’re happy with it.

One student said: “One day we just read it on the Nanyang Chronicle that they’re going to have triple-sharing rooms. It came to us all of a sudden, we didn’t have much warning.”

“Too many people staying in the room, there would confirm be conflict,” said another student.

Meanwhile, under the so-called ‘legal squatting’ arrangement, the student simply has to pay the university S$7 a day.

Some students have also discussed the issue online such as setting up a group page on popular social networking site, Facebook.

NTU’s Student Affairs Office said a decision can be expected at the end of March. – CNA/vm

News From CNA can can be found on this page. A preview of what was reported was earlier on Asiaone.

I do not want to come across as NTU admin bashing here and it is not my intention to do so, but I do find the reported news very amusing. For example:

By adding one more person in the room, it would be quite a squeeze. When contacted, NTU said it is still at the proposal stage, and is currently getting feedback from students.

NTU has also created mock-ups in two of its residential halls to give students an idea of what these ‘new’ rooms may look like.

It would be quite a squeeze? Honestly I am not concern about it be a squeeze. Most of us will know Singapore does not enjoy the coolest of climate. Imagine this:

3 guys, 3 bit-torrenting CPUs working 24-7, 3 piles of unwashed laundry, 6 pairs of shoes and slippers, one bar fridge and no aircon.

We are talking serious hostel room warming here. I was from the beautiful Hall of Residence 6 and at times of the day, the spacious room was warm. And I was not even bit-torrenting the whole of the internet. Or Kaaza was it was known as then.

And they added: “is currently getting feedback from the students.”

Feedback? It is a take it and you cannot leave it. The demand for rooms are there and the report did not highlight any more details on any possible alternatives.

NTU has declined to reveal details, but campus paper Nanyang Chronicle has reported that the move is expected to create more space for 900 students.

NTU decline to reveal details while the local media are reporting it. Chances are the students have no choice but to accept the changes.

This reminds me of a particular incident when I was still there. It was election day and it happens to be on an examination date. So? Take the paper in the morning and then you go and vote. Strangely, election day was suppose to be a public holiday.

Baseline have a very interesting and if not, very entertaining slideshow on how the different gaffes geeks are making that are costing them not to be inside the boardroom. Yes, people are still superficial at times and impression still counts.

The list:

1. Mismatching Shoes and Belt
2. Tie and Short Sleeve Shirt
3. The One Binary Watch
4. Tight Black Jeans
5. Oversized Hawaiian Shirts
6. Socks and Sandals
7. Alternative Hairstyles
8. Concert T-shirts
9. A Closet of Vendor and Trade Show Gear
10. Stains

I am gulity of point 1 and 9. Surely Mismatching shoes and belt does not matter when you do not tuck in your shirt right? and number 9. I do not have a closet of those, but at times, vendor and trade show gear are pretty cool right? Cheap too.

Jokes aside, the slideshow was entertaining but geeks, or would I say the technically inclined show understand that image does matter in the boardroom.

Jason Calacanis wrote a arguably good article on how save money running a startup. He is the CEO of Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine. Mahalo has a great concept and I see it as a cross between Wikipedia and Squidoo, a little more biased towards Squidoo. So lets see what pointers he have on saving money running a startup. Plus a little of my comments from the experience I had.

1. Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department

Save money by buying Macs? I will suggest getting decent hardware and then have Ubuntu in those systems. For web developement or web applications, get one Mac, one Windows machine for user interface testing. Else I cannot see how Macintosh computers can save money much. Macs in Singapore are not cheap.

To add, a Machintosh is essential if the designer in the team requires it.

2. Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re getting 10-20x return on your investment… and you’ve got a happy team member.

This is a interesting point. First of all, I have no experience in using 2 monitors but do l understand that 2 monitors does help in increasing productivity and reducing carpal tunnel problem. Imagine the number of “ctrl+tab” you can save while you are viewing code and debugging.

But with 2 monitors come with desk space. And desk space relates to office space. Of course this can be countered with intelligent workspace arrangement. The number of 10-20x return does not see so attractive if space comes with a premium.

3. Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy. Going out for food or ording in takes at least 20-60 minutes more than walking up to the buffet and eating. If you do meetings over lunch you also save that time. So, 30 minutes a day across say four days a week is two hours a week… which is 100 hours a year. You get the idea.

I wil have to agree that Jason makes sense with this point. At certain stage of starting up, it is essential to keep the momentum going and cut down the time spend on non-productivity issues. But to save 100 hours a year, that means a lot of in office meals, and a lot less socialisation. Do that to your sales people and their performance will take a hit. And I am someone who believe everyone in the team is a salesperson for the startup.

4. Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters… invest in it.

I liked this point. Chairs are all important. A good chair can make or break the programmer’s stamina. At the same time, do place some consideration on lighting as well. Eyes are all important too to coders.

5. Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person… 50 people over three years? $75-100k

This is pretty simple. Leave the ego at the door and everyone shares a common line. Plus mobile lines that is paid for by the team members themselves.

6. Rent out your extra space. Many folks have extra space in their office. If you rent 5-10 desks for $500 each you can cut your burn $2,500 to $5,000 a month, or $30-60,000 a year. That’s big money.

This is possible and I do co-share my office with another company which is of totally different business. But do consider the overhead in management the rental, tenants and stuff that comes with being a “landlord”.

7. Outsource accounting and HR—such a no brainer.

True. Accounting can be outsourced. For HR, outsourcing may not be all. Getting recommendations from team members for openings are important as they may know people who are capable and who they can work it. Very important. Just do not hire someone who you can not fire.

8. Don’t buy everyone Microsoft Office–it’s too much money. Put Office on three or four common computers and use Google Docs.

Not to sound anti-Microsoft. This is a good point. Go for OpenOffice if bandwidth is limited in the office.

9. Use Google hosted email. $50 or free per user…. how can you beat that?!?! Why screw with an exchange server!?!?

Again this is good advice. But bear in mind that employees need a “work” email. One that is separated from their person email.

10. Buy your hardest working folks computers for home. If you have folks who are willing to work an extra hour a day a week you should get them a computer for home. Once you get to three hours of work a week from home you’re at 150 hours a year and that’s a no brainer. Invest in equipment *if* the person is a workaholic.

This is questionable. If there is a workaholic, I will do suggest that he decide something else to do at home. But again there are people who enjoy their work that they do not see it as work. Getting hardware for workers who are on call is a very good gesture. Especially those helpdesk people and programmers who might be doing support and troubleshooting away from the office.

11. Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

This is where Jason sounded harsh. I believe he wanted to label these workers as passionate people, not workaholics. Morale is important in most cases and when someone burns out, it will hit the rest of the team. Workaholics may seems as competitive to others in the team as well.

In short, perspective and passion is top on my list. The person should have passion and be able to balance what is demanded now and what is required for long term well being.

12. Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office. Going to starbucks twice a day cost $4 each time, but more importantly it costs 20 minutes. Buy a $3-5,000 Jura industrial, get the good beans, and supply the coffee room with soy, low fat, etc. 50 people making one trip a day is 20 hours of wasted time for the company, and $150 in coffee costs for the employees. Makes no sense.

Coffee yes. I like coffee. But here in Singapore, I settle for instant coffee. Too bad not all in my office drink coffee.

13. Stock the fridge with sodas—same drill as above.

Word of caution. Regulate sugar intake. For the benefit when you get older. Also unregulated intake of sugary drinks may results in tides of sugar highs and lows which might be disruptive to concerntration. Sodas are not all evil on the other hand. Pulling a all nighter is always better with a fridge stocked with Cokes.

14. Allow folks to work off hours. Commuting sucks and is a waste of time for everyone. Let folks start at 6am or 11am and you’ll cut their commute in half (at least in LA).

This I agree. Travelling during peak hours kills energy and lowers morale. Getting stuck in jams does no good to the mind and body. Singapore peak hours are packed and expensive for cabs. (35% surcharge anyone?) Trying reaching the office at 11am for a change and give ERP a miss. Yes you might end real late like 8pm but too, you will miss the evening commute crowd.

Different people may come in at different time but that is fine as long as things get done. Also it might help to have a fixed hours of maybe from 2pm to 5pm where everyone is expected to be together so as to have face time for discussion or brainstorming.

15. Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off. If half of them say yes you’ll save 5-15% on fixed costs. People will give you a discount if they think they are going to lose the business.

I am not the best negotiator around but asking for the best price maybe a sound concept. I always believe in a good bargain. But do pay good vendors their value worth. What goes around comes around.

16. Don’t waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people–it works better anyway.

True. Word of mouth and recommendations could offer better choices without the attached price tag. This might contradict point 7 above. Again, never hire someone you cannot fire.

17. Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway.

PR is not my strengths. But I do remember this conversation some time back where the company should not confuse PR with marketing. Marketing is when you push hard to market (duh!) a product or service while PR is when the company have to react to adverse conditions from the market or competitors.

That sums up my reponse to Calacanis seventeen, or eighteen. Do read up on the different response to the original post at TechCrunch and at Signal vs Noise.

How to piss off your users and lose friends. A very interesting title to capture my attention.

Dale Carnegie could just turn in his grave.

Jokes aside. Here we are at the final presentation for the technical track. Kelly Choo start off with a video. A trailer for a movie titled how to lose friend and alienate people.

First he goes: Who is Kelly Choo? Teaching Assistant at NUS facebook development module. And he does go to the objective of his presentation. His insights into the whole facebook app thing! And to sidetrack a little, Kelly Choo is male if you yet to notice. He, not she.

Note this is a negative presentation!

Tip #1: Do not brother with a nice logo, app description or feeds, citing app fatigue.

Tip #2: Change the feature of the app silently and hopefully the users does not see it.

Tip #3: Customer service is not important as you can always attract more users to mindlessly add your app.

Here he show a script that automate the process of adding friends. Not recommended.

Tip #4: Put more ads into the canvas pages as you need to feed yourself and not starve.

Tip #5: Release a semi or non-working app and pretend it works

Tip #6: Do not bother about doing market research on exisiting App.

Tip #7: Force your users to spam their friends in order to use your app as this will help make them more popular.

Here he display the negative usage of a Nexus wheel.

Tip #8: Do no listne to what your user’s want in your app as they do not know what they are talking about.

Tip #9: Do not bother about security, there is nothing worth protecting anyway.

Tip #10: Utilize users’ sensitive information to sell them more stuff.

Here he again show a batch that OCR the email graphic that comes with each user profile.

And to end off his rather informal and entertaining presentation, he is showing the famous web2.0 bubble clip that can be easily found on youtube.

Moving on, we are moving on the the presentation by Adrian Quek and Chee Tji Hun, both CodeCrew from Ablewise.com Free Classifieds. Chee for one is wearing singlet while Adrian is busy setting up the laptop.

Firstly covered are the prerequisites for creating a facebook app.

• A facebook account
• Add the developer app at http://facebook.com/developers/
• A web server to host the app

With the developer app added, claim a new application and filled in the call back url and the canvas page url. At anyone time, the developer can return to change the necessary variables.

Getting the API

• Download the facebook platform tar. Google that and you shall find. http://developers.facebook.com/clientlibs/facebook-platform.tar.gz
• Extract the tarball. (Duh!)
• From the extracted file, just get the 2 files facebook.api and a facebook_api_php5_restlib.php into the application vendors folder in your cakephp setup. This is a talk is about developing a facebook app with cakephp remember?
• And in the App_controller, declare a vendor call to the facebook/facebook vendor file and the cake setup is ready for calling the facebook api.

Adrian then touch upon the 2 necessary client functions:

• facebook->require_login()
• facebook->require_add()

Chee takes over form Adrian now and he breaks down the general facebook setup to a MVC pattern.

• Logic: facebook api call
• Model: FQL
• View: Facebook markup language

He going on to explain how the breakdown will help developers who is intending to use Cakephp to divide up the work and modularize their development effort.

Useful client functions:

• api_client->friends_get();
• api_client->friends->getAppUsers()
• api_client->friends_areFriends($uids1,$uids2)

Also for the third function, and according to facebook. you are not a friend with yourself. (Some laughter please)

Next he covers the FQL, a SQL styled query language that developers can use to query for data that is not covered in the basic api calls. And the structure of FQL is very much similar to SQL.

Lastly, he touch upon the facebook markup language which allow developers to create the interface that the end users see. And most of such interface are highly reusable across different apps.

• Advantages of FBML
  • preserves the look and feel of facebook in your app
  • shortcuts to a lot of facebook information and functions
• Disadvantages of FBML
  • subject to changes by facebook
  • less control over HTML actually displayed

He then used the invite page as an example. The reusable elements are the display friends’ pictures, the invite button and the skip button.

Of course, a plug for the app that these 2 gentleman had done. Check out “theman” app on facebook.

We hereby move to the technical track. The first presenter is Jocelyn from Microsoft.

She will cover facebook app development with .Net, especially facebook developer toolkit.

She will cover 2 type of facebook apps. One that sit on top of facebook api. And the another that stands alone but uses facebook data.

She now demonstrate a download for Outlook that allows user to check facebook notice, all from the comfort of your Outlook. Jocelyn then show some code for the desktop application. New to me is this feature in Visual Studio 2008, pardon me if gotten the name wrong, called LIQL. In short, it is a wrapper that allows developers to query for different data be it XML, FQL or SQL or any other data format you can name.

Next we were shown CodePlex where the facebook developer toolkit was briefly shown.

She does a overview of what technologies that .Net have and can encompass, which includes SMS, GPS to name a few.

Finally she move into simple code that shows the creation of a facebook canvas page object. An interesting note is that XML is deemed a data type in VB9. Pretty interesting and high level I say.

Moving on, the code covered are highly abstracted that hides a lot of implementation details away from the programmer. The code have a InviteControl which can be instantiated by one object creation call. At this point, I cannot rate much on how nicely .Net can be used to develop a facebook app given that the focus of the presentation is mainly on what the toolkit and IDE can do.