Facebook is an incredible website. The fact that it blew the frig up the same year I moved back to Canada was extremely serendipitous as I’ve mentioned before. I have gotten back in touch with kids I haven’t seen since 1986, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Two months ago, Facebook opened their doors to 3rd party applications – most of which are enormously stupid wastes of time. Many of which try to accomplish the same thing, leaving you confused as to which version is the better one. I’ve kicked the tires on quite a few of them, and here are my favorites to date. Click the links to learn more or install them yourself.
Red Bull Roshambo: A well done take on the classic “Rock, Paper, Scissors” game. You can challenge your friends and even make imaginary wagers. The categories, strategy and stat features are in-depth and enjoyable. This was the first app I really dug and it gave me hope for the future – after I’d been bitten by fecking zombies and werewolves 800 times.
Scrabulous: I never played Scrabble as a kid, and there’s been a learning curve (I have yet to beat anyone in 10 games) but this is a winner. You can play as many games as you like at once, which is a good thing as your opponent’s turn around time from move to move may be a couple of days. Hugely strategic and never, ever the same game twice. Great stat keeping and super ajax-based controls.
MyTunes: I wasn’t crazy about installing an application on my own computer in order to get this to work, but the results were worth it. If MyTunes is running in your taskbar, and you’ve installed the accompanying FaceBook app, anyone who looks at your profile can see what you’re listening to via iTunes in real time. Look at my profile for an example – it’s near the top of the right column under the news feed. As useful as tits on a bull, but for some reason I love it!
Flixster: A movie-based app that let’s you write reviews, talk about upcoming films and display a list of your personal favorites, Flixster is well-organized and handles a lot of info without making your profile look too busy. Most of the user-submitted reviews are similar to the point of being unintentionally funny (Ya, so, I liked this movie. It had a great cast, great writing and was really funny) but a few of them stand out, and the social aspects make the app stand out a mile over some of the other movie plugins.
I just wanted to point out that at the moment Google AdSense thinks this page is about thongs: my ads are for “Men’s swimwear and thongs” and “Thong Lingerie”. Curious.
I noticed that as well, Joel. I am hoping Adsense is still digesting the new design and structure – as opposed to looking through my closet.
I am going to move the ads to the individual post pages and take them completely off the main URL. Adsense on post pages is usually relevant. Otherwise, its an eyesore.