2009 April - Programming Blog

Archive for April, 2009

30 Apr 2009

Google announced today that it has expanded the beta testing for the new AdWords interface. It is now available in ten languages to most active AdWords accounts.

While Google promises that more languages will be added in the future, the ones that are currently available include:

- English
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Italian
- Dutch
- Hebrew
- Simplified Chinese
- Japanese
- Brazilian Portuguese

Users who have been added to the beta test can get to the new interface simply by logging in, though the old interface is still able to be viewed by using the "new interface (beta)" and "previous interface" links at the top of the page.

To get familiarized with the new interface Google has provided a microsite full of videos and a how-to guide that should serve as helpful resources. Videos cover topics like faster account navigation, tracking performance efficiently, finding new optimization opportunities, and spending less time making changes.

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Tags: beta test, beta testing, english spanish, french german, helpful resources

BuddyPress Launches: May A Thousand Social Networks Bloom (Someday)

In: web resources

30 Apr 2009

picture-153 BuddyPress, the side project of blogging powerhouse WordPress, has just hit version 1.0 and has officially launched. It’s basically a social layer that you can lay on top of your WordPress account or blog to give it some of the social network features that you’re already familiar with from larger social networking sites.

Here’s what version 1.0 features: Extended profile, private messaging, friends, groups, “the wire,” activity stream, blog tracking and forums. Yes, that’s a lot of stuff in a first version. All of these features should be relatively straightforward from their names, except “the wire,” which is basically like your Wall on Facebook. People can come here and leave messages.

And slated for release in 2009 are yet more features, including: Status updates and photo albums. Sound familiar?

While WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg is quick to point out that BuddyPress is not meant to be yet another stand-alone social network in your life, his post about it seems to poke directly at the larger networks like Facebook and MySpace. “I mean all your friends are already on Myspace, but if you wanted to start something new maybe with more control, friendlier terms of service, or just something customized and tweaked to fit exactly into your existing site, then BuddyPress is a great framework to use. Maybe even someday you’ll be able to connect your BuddyPresses to each other and to the existing monolithic social networks,” Mullenweg writes.

That reads a lot like, “hey a lot of people are pissed off by the big social networks terms of service issues, and their set ways of thinking, why not use BuddyPress?” And depending on how well this impressive feature set works, some people just might. But there’s also a catch for the time being: To install BuddyPress, you have to be using WordPress MU, the multiple-user variety of the blogging software that is a bit more complicated to set up and used much less than traditional WordPress.

activity

forums

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Facebook Makes Friend Organization Easier

In: web resources

30 Apr 2009

If you go to Facebook.com/friends, you can create friend lists on Facebook and organize your friends into different categories. This is good for organization, privacy, and for simply controlling what you see on your home page. This clip pretty much explains what it’s all about:

You can separate your co-workers from your family and your best friends from the people you went to high school with but don’t really stay in touch with anymore. Luckily nobody can see your lists besides you, so you don’t have to worry about someone who thinks you’re their friend finding out that you really just view them as some guy from high school.

Since the redesign of Facebook, there has been a virtual flood of information running through the stream. Putting your friends into lists can help you organize all of this information. It has not been incredibly easy for people to figure out how to utilize these controls, so Facebook is making it easier.

"But something else really interesting that Facebook is doing is that it is now auto-populating some lists for you, if you don’t have any," notes MG Siegler. "It’s doing this by using the details you entered when you confirmed a friendship with someone — the “How do you know this person?” question. This auto-generation of lists will no doubt spur more usage of them and will hopefully help less savvy users figure out how to use them to make the site more manageable."

If you go to the link that says +Create in the left-hand menu on your home page, you can create a new Friends list. Your lists will appear in that menu as you create them.