Facebook hires Mobile Video And Image Editing App Developer

It looks like Facebook has just acq-hired mobile video and image app developer Digital Staircase, according to a blog post on the startup’s site. According to Facebook, Digital Staircase’s team will be joining the social network but Facebook has not acquired any of the technology assets from the startup.

Digital Staircase has developed a number of apps for video recording, image editing and more. MovieCam, which is available as an iPad and iOS app, is a camcorder app that provides recording features like 8x digital zoom, pause-and-resume recording functionality, and contrast enhancement. The app also allows you to add 18 movie effects and filters while shooting video.

iPhone app StereoCam aids in the quick creation of stereo image pairs. A stereo image pair consists of two specially designed images that are placed side-by-side to allow viewers (employing an appropriate viewing technique) to see the depicted scene in full.

Another iOS app SmartSplice uses advanced graphics algorithms to improve the speed and ease of creating high-quality image selections and provides image filters and a way to create professional-looking image effects.

From the post, it appears that the development team may be adding some of these functionalities to Facebook itself. Unfortunately, Digital Staircase will be removing its apps from the Apple App Store.

Facebook for iPad

If there's an app that qualifies as the Holy Grail of iPad apps, then this is it. Facebook was the one app that iPad users wanted and didn't get - till just recently. The official version isn't a whole lot different from the one that tech journos found hidden in the iPhone app code last June. Rumours of a product delay because of iOS 5 integration - which didn't happen - notwithstanding, the app is finally here and so are we with our review.
 

Usability:

At the core, Facebook for iPad offers very similar functionality to its sister iPhone and Android apps, but what separates it from its small screen siblings is that the user-interface is optimized for the iPad 9.7-Inch IPS display.
 
At the heart of the user interface Facebook has applied elements reminiscent of the iPad Twitter application. Just like Twitter on the iPad, we get a homescreen pane of the left hand side of the display, which displays options such as News Feed, Messages, Nearby, Events, Friends, Groups, Apps and Account settings. This whole pane can be hidden once we swipe the chosen option towards the pane which would then overlay it, hence hiding it. However, with equal ease, we can get it to return to its normal view with a swipe towards the right hand side.
 
It's quite evident Facebook decided to use swiping gestures to give the interface a cleaner and simplistic feel.


 
On the top header we get the standard Notifications, Messages and Friend Request drop down menus alongside one button which hides the left menu pane, a secondary option for many who would rather not use the swiping gestures.  On the top right corner of the header we noticed an option specific button: for instance, in the News Feed we were offered the All Stories option, while in Messages it gave us options for writing new messages or marking old messages as spam, unread or archiving them. While all these are expected standard Facebook features, presentation is key and Facebook for iPad nails it.


 
Indeed, the interface is sublimely intuitive and reminds us of the website itself. With this, Facebook has ensured that its users are already familiar with the app, because it's so much like the website.
 
Yes, Facebook has still not managed to transition its Timeline interface to the app, but that is something, which Facebook can achieve via an update. While this disappointed us as we were early adopters of Facebook's Timeline interface, there are many people yet to make the jump and we think Facebook will wait till most of its user base shifts to Timeline before they update the app with it.
 
Previously, iPad users resorted to using third party Facebook chat apps or the iPhone app for Facebook chat as the java script for Facebook chat was not available on the mobile Safari on the iPad. Facebook has expectedly added chat to the iPad which is not too dissimilar from the iPhone functionality.


 
With Photo Galleries, all we need to do is swipe through images and the app offers buttons on the top right corner for us to comment on or like the images. All this is very simple, perhaps simpler than browsing the website itself, and certainly way simpler than the mobile apps which are limited by screen real estate.
 
Verdict:
 
It was in the works for more than a year, and in spite of Mark Zuckerberg calling the iPad non-mobile device when it came out in January 2010, we have an app dedicated to the device. That fact in itself says volumes about the worthiness of this app. It brings no innovative functionality to the table, not even Facebook's game-changing Timeline interface, but to put it simply it is the simplest way to access the social networking giant, perhaps even the best way to do so, especially if the iPad is your primary device.

How to Write a Facebook Application in 5 minutes

The Plan: We'll write a basic Facebook app that will have links to our social profiles and a Google site search box. Later, you can expand the idea to build slightly more complex applications that contain RSS feeds, video clips, etc.
Things you need: You don't have to be a "geek" for writing basic Facebook Applications. All you need is some knowledge of web programming languages and some free space on a web server where you'll host your Facebook app (which are nothing but simple PHP files).

Step 1. Assuming that you already have an account on Facebook, add the Developer application to your Facebook profile and then click "Set Up New Application".


Step 2. Give your new Facebook App a name, agree to the terms and then upload some image for your application logo.


Step 3. From the Application settings, choose Canvas and set FBML as the rendering method. The other option is IFRAME but we'll use FBML for the moment to keep things simple.


Step 4. Using any WYSIWYG HTML editor (or even notepad), write the content that you want to display inside your Facebook application.



Step 5. Log in to your web server where you'll be hosting the Facebook App and create a sub-directory called "facebook". So if you domain is example.com, the Facebook app can be accessed from example.com/facebook.


Under the facebook directory, download (wget) the application template and rename the file to index.php. Replace the API Key and the Secret key in index.php with real values and also copy-paste the HTML (that you created in Step 4) into the index.php file.


Step 6. While you are inside the "facebook" directory, download the Facebook library (through wget) and extract the files in this archive via gunzip and tar. Now execute the following command to move facebook.php and other library files outside the facebook-platform subdirectory.


Step 7. We are almost done. Go back to your Facebook Application page in the browser, click "Edit Settings" and set the values for Canvas.

• The Canvas Page URL - choose a nice vanity URL for your Facebook application. 
• The Canvas Callback URL - location of the web service where your files are hosted (in our case, this will be example.com/facebook). 

That's it. Anyone can now add your Facebook app to their profiles either in the Boxes tab or in the sidebar of the main profile page.

Five Popular Apps On Facebook

Here are the five most popular Facebook applications, as of this morning.

1. iLike integrates the music social network and recommendation service into your profile (see my previous coverage of iLike). Adding music-based social networking to Facebook makes perfect sense, and is something they could have easily done themselves. That’s what makes the company’s Platform strategy so intriguing. Mike Arrington (over at TechCrunch) also notes the omission of Last.fm which is arguably the best-of-breed of music-based social networks.
2. Horoscopes (by RockYou!) adds twice-weeky horoscope readings to your profile.
3. The Compass (by the Washington Post) involves taking a survey that determines your political compass. The results are then displayed on your profile. It’s a fun idea, but hardly qualifies as an ‘application’.
4. Games adds multiplayer web-based games to Facebook: “Play games and meet new people in your networks! Add the Games application to get access to a constantly changing selection of fun multi-player games, all right in your browser.” Pretty obvious but neat idea that has the potential to take traffic away from dedicated web-based gaming social networks. If the games are any good that is.
5. Picnik adds basic photo editing functionality to Facebook. Considering that the social network has been reported as the largest photo-sharing site on the web, giving users the ability to re-size, crop, and enhance their photos without leaving the site is a smart move. Although again, it seems like the kind of thing Facebook should have done themselves.

As you can see from the above list, two of the apps barely qualify as widgets (Horoscopes and The Compass), whereas iLike and Picnik add very powerful features which enhance Facebook’s values to such a degree that it’s a statement of intent that Facebook didn’t choose to roll their own or achieve the same end through acquisition.