11–20 of 28 posts
Anil, why didn't you just ignore fields and attributes that were missing? So if education:concentration returns "CompSci" on the first call, but then is missing on the second call, don't treat that as a change. Don't consider the attribute changed until the it is present and different.
Anil, why didn't you just ignore fields and attributes that were missing? So if education:concentration returns "CompSci" on the first call, but then is missing on the second call, don't treat that as a change. Don't consider the attribute changed until the it is present and different.
Right, I also thought I could work around the issues by ignoring fluctuations in the data. The problem is knowing what is the correct baseline data. In your example, the education:concentration might be missing when you first start checking and only start appearing a long time later. Do you ignore the data when it first appears or report that the person just added another major at college (which may be true!)? This i…
I should say that I've been lurking on HN for quite some time and that this is my first post :-) One motivation for writing this post was that I was surprised to see how often the Facebook API will drop/omit data that exists and that you should be able to access. I specifically call out the Breakup Notifier app (which recently got a ton of buzz) because I don't see how apps like that can report accurate information w…
I should say that I've been lurking on HN for quite some time and that this is my first post :-) One motivation for writing this post was that I was surprised to see how often the Facebook API will drop/omit data that exists and that you should be able to access. I specifically call out the Breakup Notifier app (which recently got a ton of buzz) because I don't see how apps like that can report accurate information w…
When it comes back online, I mark it as not stale, and if it differs from the previous (non-stale) version, I send out an email.
There's a lesson here in marketing: can you predict which name will get more buzz, 'Breakup Notifier' or 'Friend Mail'?
There's another lesson in marketing - you sell the sizzle, not the steak, but if the steak is awful you won't sell very many for very long regardless of how sizz-tastic your marketing is.
I can't compare both these products - and I hope they're both solid.
I should say that I've been lurking on HN for quite some time and that this is my first post :-) One motivation for writing this post was that I was surprised to see how often the Facebook API will drop/omit data that exists and that you should be able to access. I specifically call out the Breakup Notifier app (which recently got a ton of buzz) because I don't see how apps like that can report accurate information w…
So this is how Breakup Notifier does it. It checks to see that the data is there. If at any point in time, the data I'm looking for is unavailable, I mark that field as "stale", don't vouch for the validity of its contents, and remove the ability for the user of the app to view that data. When it comes back online, I mark it as not stale, and if it differs from the previous (non-stale) version, I send out an email.
Nice post. Remember ChromeSpeed? Fancy seeing you here! http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~neeraj/projects/chromespeed/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, I also thought I could work around the issues by ignoring fluctuations in the data. The problem is knowing what is the correct baseline data. In your example, the education:concentration might be missing when you first start checking and only start appearing a long time later. Do you ignore the data when it first appears or report that the person just added another major at college (which may be true!)? This i…
I understand that having to work around fluctuating data might produce less than desirable results. But your users might find the feature useful anyway.
The documentation is sort of there, sometimes contradictory, and I always have to resort to reading their code examples in PHP to really figure out what data is expected, how to format it, and what I get back. None of their APIs are really well thought-out, they're all slapped together to sort of have all the relevant data. I understand that it's better to ship than not, but a little thought. Please?
The greatest irony though is that if you want to make a post asking for help in the official developer forum, you're met by this page:
http://forum.developers.facebook.net/register.php?agree=Agre...