Nice piece about the networking being more about civil decency and respect than playing any kind of game.

Jonathan Fickies/Bloomberg NewsGlenn Britt.

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AirPlay, a software tool included with Apple’s iPads and iPhones, is widely viewed as being potentially disruptive to the cable industry, because it makes it easy for people to view a broad variety of Internet content on a television. Time Warner Cable’s leader, however, hasn’t heard of it.

Glenn A. Britt, the company’s chief executive, said in a group interview on Friday that the challenge for digital video was that there was no simple way to get Internet-based video onto the television screen. He wasn’t familiar with AirPlay.

“I’m not sure I know what AirPlay is,” he said, though he noted that he was an enthusiastic Apple customer. “Today we want to be on every screen. Today it’s a little bit clunky to get programming from the Internet onto the TV — not so hard to get it on your iPad. What’s hard is the plumbing, what wires do you connect, what device do you use. So the current Apple TV, the little thing, the hockey puck, really doesn’t do anything to help enable you to get Internet material on your TV.”

Apple pitches AirPlay as a way to make it easy to get Internet video from an iPad or iPhone onto a television, among other uses. A user can press a button while watching video to stream it wirelessly to an Apple TV box connected to a TV set.

AirPlay also makes it easy to push pirated video available on the Web onto the television, which could lead some people to drop their cable subscriptions. And it opens the door for content providers to circumvent cable and offer their own channels as apps. That gives them a direct relationship with the customer, as well as the opportunity to try new ways to increase revenue or ad sales. The Discovery Channel, ABC and PBS offer AirPlay-compatible apps. AirPlay will be coming to Apple’s computers too, in the next version of the Mac operating system, due out this summer.

Of course, while many people own iPhones and iPads, Apple TV has not been as popular; Apple sold 2.8 million of the boxes in the year that ended in September. Requiring two pieces of hardware isn’t as straightforward as getting all the content right there from the TV.  Mr. Britt noted that he felt smart TVs — Internet-connected televisions that include computer chips and software — would be better than requiring an extra box to view Web content. “I hate set-top boxes,” he said.

But with many reports speculating about a coming release of an Apple-made television, AirPlay seems like something worth following.

You kind of hope this guys wasn’t hijacked, but as the head of a cable division, to not know about Airplay is a pretty poor show.

If Facebook sold 1 ad, per person, per day for a year…with 900m users, that equates to 182.5 BILLION ads per year…at only $20pcm that would generate $3.6 BILLION in revenues…yowsers.

I got with the same problem. After looking for a solution I found that FB silently killed public RSS support. (see this post from Jesse Stay)

I understood that I needed to call the API myself and construct the feed (I also need the feed to be parsed by a WP plugin and other stuff.

So, first of all get an API key (also called app id) and download the PHP Facebook SDK.

Then download the Universal Feed Generator PHP class. It will generate all the required headers and xml for you.

Your php script will be like this:

require('lib/facebook.php'); // require your facebook php sdkinclude("feed_generator/FeedWriter.php"); // include the feed generator feedwriter file$fb = new facebook(array(    'appId' =>  'YOUR_APP_ID', // get this info from the facebook developers page    'secret'=>  'YOUR_SECRET_KEY' // by registering an app));$response = $fb->api('/spreetable/feed','GET'); // replace "spreetable" with your fb page name or username// create the feedwriter object (we're using ATOM but there're other options like rss, etc)$feed = new FeedWriter(ATOM);$feed->setTitle('Spree Table'); // set your title$feed->setLink('http://spreetable.com/facebook/feed.php'); // set the url to the feed page you're generating$feed->setChannelElement('updated', date(DATE_ATOM , time()));$feed->setChannelElement('author', array('name'=>'Spree Table')); // set the author name// iterate through the facebook response to add items to the feedforeach($response['data'] as $entry){        if(isset($entry["message"])){            $item = $feed->createNewItem();            $item->setTitle($entry["from"]["name"]);            $item->setDate($entry["updated_time"]);            $item->setDescription($entry["message"]);            if(isset($entry["link"]))                $item->setLink(htmlentities($entry["link"]));            $feed->addItem($item);        }}// that's it... don't echo anything else, just call this method$feed->genarateFeed();

I know this is a bit nerdy but i really miss the simple things from the old Facebook Pages like RSS feeds.

As simple as it was, being able to see a simple wordle.net word cloud of a page made a huge difference to the overall picture of popular content.

Sure, there are other ways to see the information now, but don’t forget, a good way of being able to see all your pages is by sticking all the RSS feeds into google reader – a handy way of being able to keep track of things

Sure, this will always grab the headlines, but $10m is a toe in the water. I cannot believe that they were ever expecting to generate direct sales from ads, but they MUST have played a role in generating traffic to their Page(s).

Do Ford now consider that they actually have ENOUGH fans that they don’t need to generate any more fans – but activate the ones they DO have?

Nice to see the continual development and launch of timeline apps. Anyone else see where it’s going yet? Apps disappearing off the main page and new timeline apps appearing all the time…

CNN Money looks at Top 10 brands doing great stuff in social media at the moment. The great thing is, it’s not all big social networks.

Interesting piece about how the failings of Web 1.0 companies (the aggregators) failed to recognise the opportunity that the creation of communities around these grouped interests could hold…and, moving on several years later, how the Web 2.0 companies are failing so miserably at *their* next evolution – mobile.

Some argue that the purchase of Instagram is Facebook’s play, whilst the latest evolution of Google+ mobile, is Google’s…but is that enough when emerging, dedicated mobile platforms are emerging all the time?

Here’s a recipe for success: Take two of the hottest, fastest growing websites in the world and mash them together.

That’s exactly what Pek Pongpaet, 35, and Brandon Leonardo, 28, did this week when they launched Pinstragram, which uses the famous waterfall layout of Pinterest to create a platform for viewing your Instagram photos on the web.

“I think Pinstagram fills an important void because Instagram never focused on the desktop experience,” says Pongpaet.

There are plenty of third-party apps that allow you to view Instragram photos on the web, but we suspect that none will have the success of Pinstragram, which has already made quite a splash with thousands of visitors to the site. Aditya Herlambang, an iOS developer, has also just joined their team and is building a Pinstagram iPad app.

Pongpaet and Leonardo say the idea for the project was actually kind of a joke that only came to them last Friday. Over lunch the pair, who are also co-founders of the start up Tapisto.com, said they were joking about the famous “X for Y” pitches that often happen when companies are pitching venture capitalist firms. Take Spotwag, for example, which could be called an “AirBnB for dogs.”

They were playing around with combinations and came to the pairing of “a Pinterest for Instragram.”

“We thought it would be hilarious to combine them because they are two of the hottest and most valuable companies on the planet,” Pongpaet says.

While it remained a joke for a while, Leonardo says that he saw something click in Pongpaet and later that day and the wheels started turning.

“The idea really took hold of me,” says Pongpaet.

The next morning Ponpaet got it touch with Leonardo.

“He was like dude you’ll never believe what I built,” says Leonardo.

It turns out Ponpaet had spend a chunk of the night developing their concept and already had a functional site that had brought their idea to life.

“I’m sort of a shoot first ask question later kind of guy,” Pongpaet says.

After Pongpaet’s original draft the pair continued working and on Wednesday morning the site went live.

So far they say the response has already been overwhelming. They haven’t been contacted by Pinterest of Instagram, but all the feedback they’ve gotten has been positive.

They’re not sure what the future holds, but say they want to continue working on it and seeing where it goes.

“We enjoy using it ourselves and want to continue to provide an optimized way for users to view their Instagram feed on the web,” Leonardo says.

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Like Instagram but frustrated at the lack of web interface? Love Pinterest but sick of people posting boring images?

Pinstagram is the answer!