Views: Alan Partridge and Gene Hunt Quotes TV Soundbox

After the success of my fonejacker TV Soundbox on Facebook, I decided to try out the same with
two of my favourite characters.

Alan Partridge is a legend... pure and simple. Also, running through his tv shows - The Day Today, Knowing me Knowing you and I'm Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan has blessed our screens with a character that delivers some of the best comedy quotes ever!
Perfect for an Alan Partridge TV Soundbox...

The next character is Gene Hunt from the shows Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Both show's have proved to be the best thing to come out of the BBC drama vault in years and Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt doesn't only deliver a cracking performance in each episode, he also delivers a plethora of quality quotes.
So again... Gene Hunt lends himself perfectly to a TV Soundbox application.

As I have used Widgetbox to make these applications, you can install them on any social networking profile or add them too your own website.

Check them out here...

Gene Hunt
http://www.neilsmithdesigns.co.uk/genehunt.html
Alan Partridge
http://www.neilsmithdesigns.co.uk/alanpartridge.html

Fonejacker
http://www.neilsmithdesigns.co.uk/fonejacker.html

Views: Widget box - fonejacker tv-soundbox

After my initial blogs about Widgetbox and creating a facebook app (Pitch to the Dragons). I thought I'd investigate what sort of fun widget I could create using flash and Widgetbox.

I love fonejacker - It's one quality program with some excellent characters. It's also a tv show that lends itself to a little application that lets you here from all the best characters on the show. So I set about creating a flash app that lets the user select a character and then play a series of sound clips from the show.

Once complete I set this up as a facebook widget through using Widgetbox. Once again the process was very easy and within minutes (although the flash app took me several hours!) the widget was up and running.

So... five stars again for Widgetbox.

If you have facebook you can add the fonejacker tv-soundbox to your profile.

It contains all the best characters such as Terry Tibbs, Brian Betonde, The mouse, George Agdgdgwngo, Mr Doovde and the Chinese lad who likes to pirate dvds! I only added this to facebook and promoted it in a few fonejacker groups a couple of days ago and it has already surpassed the dragons app I did weeks ago.

If you haven't got facebook, you can take a look and play around with it here.

I've also included some code on the page incase you would like to embed it in your own website.

Views: Use Widgetbox to promote your blog

I came across Widgetbox when I was looking into developing a Facebook widget I had an idea for. As with most bloggers I want as many people as possible reading my posts, so I look into every avenue of marketing my website. The social network boom has made this an obvious place to look, with every person having so many friends viral marketing has never been able to spread so fast.

For my Facebook application I delved into FBML and already had knowledge of php so was able to develop my widget in about a week. However when I came across Widgetbox it looked on the surface like I could have saved time simply registering and going through their wizard.

That wasn't quite the case although the features it does support are still quite impressive.
With php and mysql you can obviously create a far superior application than what is basically possible on Widgetbox. But it does let you interface with Flash and Javascript so there is scope to make a decent application.
As it interacts with Flash there are already loads of games that have been made into Widgets.

However the quickest and easiest way of creating a widget is by first creating a Blidget. This is a Widget of your Blog.
Widgetbox guides you through the process seamlessly, even loading Facebook within a frame to enable you to set up the necessary parameters.
You can then promote your new widget through Facebook, through a blidget promo badge you post on your website or on other social networking sites such as MySpace or Bebo.

You see, even though I've banged on about facebook, Widgetbox supports the OpenSocial container as well. Although Facebook is not developed on the OpenSocial platform and is at the moment the most used platform, OpenSocial is Googles attempt at standardising social networking... and I wouldn't bet against Google winning in the long run, would you?

So all in all Widgetbox is a great tool for developing a widget to promote your blog really easily.
Infact you can install my Widget to have a look at what it's like by clicking on the "Get My Widget for your site" on the left hand side of this page.

It looks like this...


I've only touched the surface of what Widgetbox can offer, but I can see that it will help loads of people out there spread their hard work to a far reaching audience.

Views: Attract more visitors by developing a facebook application

Why are you here?
What, out of the millions of web pages on this ever growing beast that is the internet made you click on a link or type in an address to arrive at this page? It may be coincidence and you were searching for something totally different, in which case you are unlikely to have made it to this point in the post.
Hopefully this is not the case. Hopefully you are here because you want to read about why I have developed a facebook application, how I went about doing so and what lessons I learnt that I can pass on to you.


>> So why did I develop a facebook app?

For the very point I was making at the start of this post. To attract more visitors to this site. To gain more exposure and in turn encourage more users to sign up to this blog. In my view there is no point blogging to an audience of 1.

There are over 35.3 million Weblogs on the internet, so to make yours the one that a visitor reads means you have to do more that just post your articles and think the magic of the internet will do the rest.
Facebook is the web app of the moment. It comes and goes in phases, first it was Myspace then Bebo now Facebook. Surfers are fickle creatures that will set up a new profile on the next big social networking site at the drop of a hat, leaving their existing profiles frozen at a perticular point in their lives... sad, but true.


But facebook is where it is at the moment and one of the main reasons behind this is because they have given the power of evolving this network socialising tool to the community that use it.
They've done this by allowing developers to build "widgets" that can be installed in users profiles and these "widgets" can be anything the developer can dream up.

It obviously hasn't taken long for developers to realise that through these widgets they can reach a massive audience faster than ever before possible. Word of mouth is the most powerful viral marketing tool available and this platform gives a perfect way of starting that marketing. So this is the reason I set about developing a facebook app, I wanted more visitors to this website and hopefully, as you are reading this... that's already started to work!


>> How did I build the facebook app?

First of all I needed an idea for a facebook widget. If you're a user of the site, I'm sure you will have noticed there is an absolute deluge of widgets that let you see how you compare to your friends, how popular you are or even what object such as car, vegetable or animal you are like. These are all good fun and have their place.
But I wanted to create something that users could get involved with and hopefully get a little more out of using.

I looked at my interests and the fact that I was trying to come up with an idea to engage more people with my website. One of my favourite shows on the box is Dragons Den, so I wondered if I could develop an app based around this show. "Pitch to the Dragons" is what I came up with. Where facebook users can pitch their idea to their friends for them to comment on and rate.


Fortunatly I have a background in php, which is one of the primary languages you can use to develop these widgets. The other language you need to become familiar with is FBML (Facebook Markup Language). This is where I really have to take my hat off to the developers of facebook. They have created an evolved subset of HTML which allows you to hook into the users profiles, mini feeds etc... and display elements in a facebook style in-keeping with the site.

I'm not going to go through the coding of my application, but I will say that with a sound knowledge of php it took me approx 18hrs to develop. Obviously this wasn't continuous I was doing it in my spare time.
That said, I am now familiar with FBML and the anatomy of a facebook app, so the next application should be a lot quicker (depending on complexity!).

>> What did I learn that I can pass on to you?

First of all that you need to download the PHP (4 and 5) Client Library. This includes many facebook functions that you will need to develop you app. One lesson here was to make sure you know the version of php your using and therefore use the correct library.

Once you've uploaded the correct library, you may come across this error when trying to access it...
Fatal error: Failed opening required 'IsterXmlExpatNonValid.php', this is because you also need an XML library that can be found here Make sure you reference it correctly and the error should disappear.

The second lesson I learnt was using the Default FBML which is in your applications "Edit Settings" page.
I was trying for ages to get the actions I wanted in the users profile into this box. Unfortunately its rather restricted and you can better configure what the user sees in their box through the set up when they install your app.

You really need to setFBML for the users profile. To do this in php build what you want the user to see in their profile into a variable then call your facebook api client profile_setFBML function, e.g. $facebook->api_client->profile_setFBML($markup); //where $markup is what the user will see in their profile.

Aside from these two issues, everything really did run smoothly. My only other suggestion would be to use the FBML code as much as possible to make your app look like a facebook app.

So, has it worked? Only time will tell. I will post a follow up to let you know the difference it has made... At the moment I'm just hoping the next killer social networking application isn't going to spring up tomorrow!