Jerome's TOTs

Today, new improvements have been pushed by Facebook for applications. The About pages are now promoted to the functionality of Facebook Pages and developers get improved statistics with graphs.

About Page

Since the About Pages now work like Facebook Pages, the About Page has gain new features:

• The Review section has been converted to The Wall
• A new Review section now uses the Reviews widget so that users can write reviews giving 1 to 5 stars to the application with a textual review. As the Wall was previously used by users for everything and anything except reviews, Facebook has answered developers complaints with a separate review space.
• It is now easier to promote an application through advertising
• Users can now become fans and developers can send updates to their fans
• The developer’s view is different: developers cannot write reviews and they have additional buttons to edit the application, view statistics, send updates to fans and other management facilities
• Since it is now a Facebook Page, developers can add applications to their About page

To see an example of the new About page, I invite you to visit my application’s about page: Status Competition.

Improved Statistics

The new statistics page, now called Insights displays nice-looking graphs:

For the graph, you can select different statistics:

• Canvas Page Views
• Unique Canvas Page Views
• Average HTTP Request Time on Canvas Pages
• Average FBML Render Time on Canvas Pages
• Unique Adds
• Unique Removes
• Unique Blocks
• Unique Unblocks
• API Calls
• Unique API Calls

As previously, the statistics are still compiled daily from midnight to midnight Pacific time so you cannot see statistics for the current day.

On another tab, you still get a sample of HTTP Request Statistics and on yet another tab you get the previous Add/Remove Referrer Statistics.

What’s unclear for me, since my first public application, Status Competition, was only published 20 days or so weeks ago is that I only can see the last 2 weeks of statistics. I hope statistics are not limited to only the previous 2 weeks. One thing I think is missing is the ability to export the statistics for spreadsheet mashing.

For more information on the changes to the About Page and the statistics reports, you can read “Changes to the Application About Page“.

It is official now! Jerome Paradis and Kim Vallee are proud to announce that their first public Facebook application has been approved.

Why the wait to talk about it?

We wanted to wait until we received the approval to write a post about it. We invited some friends to play and they tipped Heri of Montreal Tech Watch. Another friend, Duncan Moore told Tris Hussey of MapleLeaf 2.0. We have been scooped twice but really we do not mind.

Our goal with the application

For our first application, we decided on an exercise of simplicity in design. The interface had to be simple and fast to use. I am sure it happened to you when reading your friends’ status updates. You get an instant emotion or a feeling.

The Status update rapidly informs your friends of what is going on with your life. Kim likes updating her status several times a day. Jerome imagined this concept because he saw the viral potential of the Status Updates. As a gamer, Jerome designed the application as a game-like utility. Together we refined the concept. Kim worked on the interface.

The application makes the most of psychological behaviors. When your friends vote on your status updates, it proves you have been read. By voting, your friends are telling you how they feel about your status updates. It gives instant gratification. And voting has a reciprocal power.

How Status Competition works?

Status Competition is a fun way to stay connected with your friends. It is fun to see how people use your creation. So far, we have seen friends who challenged themselves and entered into a sprint of Status Competition voting.

To climb the leader board, invite your friends to participate into a friendly Status Competition. Make your own opinion about our game. Try Status Competition and see how fun it is!

About the guest blogger: Kim Vallee is an Entertaining Expert and Tastemaker. She is happily married to Jerome Paradis. She produces At Home with Kim Vallee, a blog on stylish living and entertaining.

First, Happy New Year 2008 everyone!

No, I’m not going to say I’ll blog more, because I don’t know if I will be able to follow through.

All my resolutions for 2008 have the goal of making my life simpler and easier.

My first step is to start with emails to stop the information overload. I’ve been using Outlook since 1996. My PST file was now over 5 gigs!

First thing is that I’ve put this file aside and it’s now an archive. I am starting with a blank slate. Then, I imported my contacts for the old file and I will have to delete a few outdated contacts. I also imported my tasks and I them cleaned up so that I only have a few future tasks to do. For the inbox and email folders, I did not import anything. I really want to start fresh. If I ever need something from the past, I will search my archive.

I’ve  also set up my email account so that emails stay on the server for 2 days. Over the holidays, I configured GMail to fetch emails from my server. I already have a Web mail access, but it strains under the load when I keep too many messages. I plan to gradually migrate to GMail to archive my emails instead of using Outlook. This way, I’ll have everything available online. That’s why I’m keeping my emails on the server for 2 days: it is to be sure GMail fetches them.

I’m also continuing to unsubscribe from every newsletter. All of them! I use RSS feeds with Google Reader instead. This way, I will read what I want when I want instead of having my Inbox fill up with things I don’t really need to be distracted with. My goal is that the only emails I eventually see will be from friends and business contacts.

To free yourself from information overload, I recommend reading this post from Tim Ferris: 12 Filtering Tips for Better Information in Half the Time: RSS, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon