Ben Ling just announced that the iPhone will be an official Facebook Connect launch partner. As I mentioned earlier, this is part of the developer course today. I’ll be staying tuned today to try and find out more information on how you can include Facebook in your iPhone App building process as the day goes forward.

In an announcement about the launch of FacebookConnect, and going head-to-head with commenting services such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and others, David Recordon from SixApart has announced the integration of MovableType comments with Facebook.

When commenting, the service recognizes your Facebook account and automatically takes the information from your Facebook account and posts it into your comments on your MovableType blog.

Your Facebook Photo gets automatically taken from Facebook and integrated right next to your comment. MovableType then links your comment back to your Facebook profile for others to learn more about you. Not only that, but SixApart automatically takes your MovableType comment and posts it back to your Facebook profile.

This is only the beginning of Facebook Connect and it will be interesting as you see more sites like Wordpress, FriendFeed and Disqus doing similar things. The Social Web is truly becoming transparent.

In a recent blog post announcing the developer track at F8, Facebook made brief mention at the very end of one simple, yet very significant announcement. From the post:

7:00-7:45pm Made for Mobile

Jed Stremel and Pedram Kayani (Q&A with Joe Hewitt)

Mobile is everywhere. On Facebook Platform, too. These devices are opening up and creating new opportunities to build Facebook applications that extend beyond the Web, for ten million mobile users and growing (fast!). Jed, Pedram, and Joe give insights into mobile application development and show you how to get started using Facebook’s new development framework for the Apple iPhone.

It seems I may have been right, and we’ll find out for sure today at Zuckerberg’s keynote, but Facebook may just be about to launch an entirely new mobile platform for developers, starting with the iPhone. Of course all this is speculation at the moment, and the above mention could be referring to something else, but it’s looking more and more like mobile is Facebook’s future.

I will be streaming the event live via my Qik streams through my cell phone throughout the day. I’ve syndicated my Qik stream to StayNAlive.com so you can just pay attention here and you’ll get all the latest, live updates from F8, including the Zuckerberg keynote at 1:30pm PST. (Please forgive the lack of titles - I’m still working on that!) You can also catch the keynote via Facebook’s official stream here.

Oh, and btw, I just got the very first printed copy of my FBML Essentials book - if you want to see it in person, come look me up!

The iPhone seems to have created a huge security and privacy problem recently that I think many more people should be watching. By launching a developer platform and SDK, Apple has essentially created one of the largest social network platforms in existence, bringing even more powerful and personal data than ever before to the developer. Apple is essentially enabling the developers themselves to create the iPhone social network with almost no power whatsoever given to the iPhone user on how to enable or disable that data.

I became amazingly aware of what a huge issue this is when I, like many other iPhone early adopters, downloaded the Loopt application from the iTunes App Store and signed up for their service over my iPhone. Before I knew it, I had realized I just SMS’d about half of the contacts on my iPhone, including important business contacts and more that I would just rather not have an Application have access to. I couldn’t necessarily SMS them an apology, as that would just add to the issue I had just created. In fact, my Mom, who doesn’t have an SMS plan on her cell phone called me later that day to ask that I not send her SMS text messages to her cell phone, when in reality, I had no idea it was sent to her! Loopt had assumed that it would be okay to allow their users to send their friends SMS messages inviting them to Loopt (in a very ambiguous manner), when after mass complaint, Loopt quickly retracted from their efforts.

I argue this wasn’t Loopt’s fault though. Of course, Loopt does have some responsibility to satisfy their users, but despite having to apply to be in Apple’s directory, there is nothing stopping them from being malicious with the way they are handling the data on your iPhone. I know Loopt had no ill intentions, but this could have been any App out there with ill, or even not-so-ill intentions. Apple has no privacy controls on the iPhone giving the user control over what Applications can and can’t access, and as we’ve seen already, this is coming back to haunt them.

The iPhone has some very powerful features, accessible via the API, that make it an extremely valuable and unprecedented Social Networking tool. I’ll list those here:

Location, Location, Location - the Profile

First of all, the iPhone has access to your location and where you’ve been, which, I argue, is much more valuable information than any other Social Network profile in existence can provide about an individual user. The iPhone makes the people in the “Social Network” real.

The Contact List - your Friends

The iPhone has one of the most realistic contact/friend lists available in existence. The iPhone contact list contains information about people you actually talk to and interact with in real life. It also imports your other contact lists from other locations such as Gmail. No other Social Network in history has that type of completely real information about those you truly interact with on a daily basis.

Multimedia - the big picture

The iPhone has the most up-to-date photos, audio, and other multimedia in existence. Think about it — every social network you belong to currently probably has photos that originated from your iPhone or other camera. They are on your iPhone before they are on the Social Network. The iPhone also has real-time listening habits of users, along with your mail, your internet history, your stocks, the weather in your location — I could keep going on and on!

As you can see, the iPhone provides an extremely rich set of data integration points which any Application can take right now, and use as they please, and the user has absolutely no control over it (minus one prompt if the application is trying to get your location data). This is actually quite scary if you think about it!

Apple really needs to take a lesson from Facebook on this. One of my favorite features of Facebook is the fact that I can click on a single link and control all the information I save on Facebook right then and there. As a user, I can feel comfortable that no application I install will share my information in any way I don’t want Facebook to share it. Facebook takes pride in this, and it has even caused them problems as they have tried to fight this with the likes of Google’s FriendConnect to protect this data and keep it in the hands of their users if the users do not want it shared.

Never in history has there been such a phenomena as the iPhone SDK being opened. It’s brand new, and it’s unprecedented, so issues and flaws are to be expected. I only hope that Apple can, in the end, respect their users’ privacy and place a little more control over what data the Apps you install are allowed to access. Doesn’t this concern you?

I knew Twitter had hit mainstream when I was Twittering about speaking in Church awhile back, and the CIO of a major Church organization Twitter’d me back, wishing me luck, while he himself was in church. Both he and I some times Twitter about the current sermon or teaching going on in our individual congregations and more - it’s quite frankly, an excellent tool to share with others of like beliefs and even outside your faith inspiring things you may learn. I’ve seen this from others as well, across boundaries of many different faiths - it’s a very common thing to see on Sundays on Twitter and FriendFeed. On Sundays, Twitter often becomes, “Church Day”, at least amongst many of my friends of different Faiths on Twitter.

Many people may gasp at this idea, saying, “What? You use your cell phone to Twitter in Church?”, but I’m not so sure it could be such a bad thing for the reasons I mention above. True, some times it is easy to get distracted, check e-mail, or FriendFeed, or other things going on and that takes some control. I also have to remember to turn off the sound on my wife’s cell phone so if/when I Twitter her phone doesn’t go off in the middle of sacrament/communion because she receives my Twitters on her cellphone (true story!). I do find it an easy way to study the scriptures in church without having to bring a whole book with me. With the iPhone’s new 3G speeds it’s also a great tool to be able to cross-reference and research the topics I’m learning - I’m a stickler for ensuring only the facts are being learned!

However, as I said, without restraint, my cellphone can be a distraction. Not only that, but the mere appearance of me constantly on it can bring an irreverance to the service that perhaps shouldn’t be there. I still can’t help wonder if it may be better just to leave the phone at home. To figure this out, I asked my friends on Twitter and FriendFeed how they use their cellphones in Church. I got a variety of great responses:

jtzemp - I work with the youth, and so I don’t believe in setting a double standard. If they can’t use them to be checking sports scores, texting friends, etc. than I’m not going to either. I have five rules: 1.) It’s OK in emergencies 2.) If it is being used to enhance the experience we’re all sharing, it’s ok. (calling people to get them to activities, finding out if someone is up for a visit, etc). It’s not ok to isolate yourself from people present to have conversations with people who aren’t present. The people you are with right now are the most important people to you right now. 3.) Following up on assignments is OK. I participate in a lot of meetings, and I do text people to remind them of, and follow up on completion of assignments. 4.) It’s _not_ ok in very sacred settings. It takes your mind off the spiritual experience and leaves you spiritually distracted. 5.) If you use your PDA/iPhone to store scriptures/notes/etc. It is ok to use it for that purpose only in appropriate settings. My $0.02.

LdsNana-AskMormon - Calender items, notes and on occasion accessing the scriptures via the Internet….. but NEVER texting.

Justin Hileman - i think appropriate use of technology can be beneficial… i’m far more likely to remain engaged when i’m looking up supplementary material or cross-referencing scripture. with a phone/pocket pc/iPhone i can look up that quote that i can almost remember, i can jot down notes so i’ll remember later. and i’m far less likely to carry a pad of paper to church with me.

Louis Gray - I used to bring the Treo, to have the standard works, hymns, lessons on. Now, I leave all the gadgets at home. You know I’d be Friendfeeding during communion and on Fast Sunday.

Ontario Emperor - If I am alone at church, I will occasionally tweet and/or friendfeed the highlights from the sermon. http://friendfeed.com/e/17edcd…

LGR - Occasionally, if I have the kids on my own in the parents room I will check email, and do some RSS reading while I am watching the kids. I can’t hear the sermon in the parents room unfortunately so I play with the kids and check things on my cell.

James Hull - Never. In the past I have used it to save notes or ideas that may pop into my head, but lately I turn the thing off on the way in and back on on the way out.

the JoshMeister - I like jtzemp’s comments. I carry 3 phone/PDA-type devices with me (yes, I know it sounds silly, but there’s a reason for each device). I use my personal PDA (not a phone) for notes, scriptures, lesson manuals, hymns, and my calendar. I use my Treo (my work PDA-phone which is Internet-enabled but not calling-enabled) to look up talks on lds.org during meetings when appropriate e.g. if a particular talk is the main focus of a lesson, and also for typing notes during General/Stake Conference…

…And finally, I use my personal cell phone only before/after church, or to add a church member’s phone number.

Harvey Simmons - This will probably blur the definition of “in church,” but I’m on the AV team, so we send texts from the sound board to the video room all the time. We just turn our ringers off. At the same time, we occasionally remind people that they could be on camera at any time, so they shouldn’t text or talk on cellphones during service. Last week, the Assistant Pastor’s phone rang during communion service. It was hilarious.

James Andrews - My church is wireless and I love looking up scripture in service, though my wife says it looks like i’m checking my email. My pastor is pretty progressive and I am sure knows what Im doing

klecu - I quite often use my pocket PC in church…to read the Bible of course

Jeff P. Henderson - Maybe there is an online church you could join. Then it would be totally appropriate to use your iPhone there
Akula - I occasionally check email although I shouldn’t. If I had an iPhone I’d probably use it too much at church.

This Twitter and FriendFeed Phenomena is still quite new. I’m sure as it pans out we’ll see more and better uses for it in Church. In the meantime I’m going to watch it with a close eye and see if I can figure out a middle-ground that keeps the sacredness of Church and still adds to it through use of new technology. With the new iPhone App store it could actually be quite interesting to see if any “Church-apps” come to fruition as more people use it. I’m a believer, that’s for sure!

We’re still discussing this on FriendFeed - you can keep contributing to the conversation here.

Photo Credit Peyton Knight

I’m proud to announce that this week, just in time for Facebook F8 and OSCON, my book, FBML Essentials, will be available for purchase in print at most book stores. You can purchase it on Amazon here (be sure to leave a review!). It is scheduled to ship this Thursday, July 24th. You can also check it out online right now via O’Reilly’s Safari book store.

Some of the biggest Facebook bloggers and experts in the industry have also contributed their thoughts. Nick O’Neill, of AllFacebook.com and SocialTimes.com, contributed the Foreword for the book. Rodney Rumford, of FaceReviews.com and Gravitational Media, contributed the Afterword for the book. Justin Smith, of InsideFacebook.com and WaterCooler, was generous enough to provide a quote for the back cover (we’re hoping it made it in - I’m told it has). I’d like to thank them for their contribution.

FBML Essentials is essentially a very simple “nutshell” book that should give you all you need to get started with Facebook development in the FBML tag language, minus the API itself. It covers a howto on creating Apps from start to finish, using simple HTML and FBML to get a simple App off the ground. I go over different quirks with HTML and Javascript in regards to how Facebook parses them. I also cover the way Facebook talks to your servers, and provide a few suggestions on where to host and how to get set up properly and make your App viral. The final one half or so of the book is a thorough reference of almost (Facebook just added 2 more tags last week) every single tag Facebook provides, including examples, sample HTML that Facebook renders, and more. I even cover some unknowns (while maybe not so useful, but fun regardless) such as the <fb:is-it-christmas/> tag, and <fb:is-it-april-fools/> tag. (yes, there are such tags, and as of the writing they work!)

If you are a web developer considering learning Facebook development, this book is a great start, and should point you in the right direction on where to go afterwards. If you’re already a Facebook developer, this book will be a great addition to your book collection, and you should be able to refer back to it often as a reference as you see need.

I imagine with today’s launch of the new Facebook design many may be wondering if the book is already out of date. Actually, I was able to get some of the last minute changes in response to the new design out in just the last 2 weeks, so this book is very up to date - O’Reilly has been wonderful to work with for this project.

Looking to learn how to write software on Facebook? FBML Essentials is a great start - pre-order yours now! Look for me at Facebook’s F8 conference this Wednesday - I’ll be shooting video, qik’ing if possible, and live-blogging where I can. Say hi if you see me around!

I was just writing a post about my new book on Facebook development, FBML Essentials, being released, when I realized Amazon’s problems right now are much bigger than S3. Previously, if I did a search for “Facebook“, an entire list of books would display, including my first book. Currently, it returns nothing. Searching for “I’m on Facebook–Now What???” also returns nothing. At this point, I’m not quite sure what gets returned via search on Amazon.

Amazon is currently losing I’m sure thousands of dollars in sales as their site is having some unknown, perhaps S3-related issue. The problem is, not only are they losing money, but so are the authors and distributors selling through their site. It’s my hope that they get this resolved soon and can get things back in order. Is anyone seeing other things that are down related to this outage?

Update: it appears to be back up again, so the outage seems to be sporadic, perhaps a caching issue?

“I’m noticing a trend lately which started several months ago, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was causing it. It seemed as though many of my friends and others that I esteemed as good bloggers were getting tired, and were posting much less frequently, or not at all. Many of these people were part of the reason I became an entrepreneur and it was disappointing to see them stop posting. It seems as though those blogging are getting tired, or just see it as a waste of time.”

You can read more of my guest post over on LouisGray.com - thank you Louis for allowing me to post!

I’ve been searching for a good mobile solution for my iPhone for close to a year now to no avail, and now that I’ve got the new phone I thought I’d do another search. For my old iPod, I own a Monster Cable iCruze, which integrates with your car stereo to attach directly to your iPod and you can then control the playlists on your iPod via your car stereo’s controls. Currently, it is serving as a great car charger for my iPhone, and that’s about it.

So I decided to do a search for an iPhone compatible version of the iCruze today, and was surprised to find that the king of all cables, Monster Cables itself’s, own website is completely inaccessible from Google, or any Firefox 3 user because of supposed “malware”. Currently, if you do a search for “Monster Cable” via Google, you’re presented with a link like below, warning you that the site “may harm your computer”.

Click on that link, and you’ll go to a page like this, completely preventing access to Monster Cable’s website without explicitly copying and pasting Monster cable’s URL in your browser:

Explicitly entering the URL, if you are in Firefox 3, takes you to the following page, which gives you the option to continue, but throughout the site this page appears again and again, making it extremely difficult to navigate. Firefox 3 seems to rely on Google’s own malware reporting, which is the reason for Firefox’s error.

The Google “Safe Browsing Diagnostic Page” for MonsterCable.com seems to indicate that the error is most likely being generated by third party scripts that are “hosted on 9 domain(s), including hdrcom.com, gbradw.com, bkpadd.mobi”. Google seems to indicate that this has been happening over the past 90 days.

It goes without wonder why such a large profile cable company as Monster Cable could not notice such a decrease in traffic from pretty much all of Google, and why if they have noticed, they have not taken action. We clearly know that no one at Monster Cable seems to be a Firefox 3 user, and if they do, they definitely don’t visit their own site, because you think that it would be fixed by now.

Can anyone figure out what the scripts are that Google claims to be malicious?

I am an original iPhone user, but I only did so on condition that I could remain on T-Mobile. I unlocked and Jailbroke my first generation iPhone, and loved every bit about it! Now that the new iPhone is out and my T-Mobile contract is approaching its end, I decided to buy the new 3G iPhone and give AT&T a try. At the same time, for the last few days I left my T-Mobile phone running. Here are the results of my findings:

Network

The first thing I noticed when I turned on my 3G iPhone on the AT&T network is that I have only about 1/4 the bars I do on T-Mobile on average. It seemed to vary depending on my location, but overall AT&T, at least in my area, seemed to have a poorer signal.

Here is a picture of my original iPhone on T-Mobile - notice all 5 bars:

Here is a picture of my new 3G iPhone on AT&T - notice only 2 bars!:

However, during some tests I did later, I noticed that when I turn off 3G on my new iPhone, the AT&T iPhone goes back up to 5 bars. It seems that the 3G has some affect on the phone signal - something to remember if you need a stronger cell phone signal. Here’s my new AT&T iPhone with 3G turned off:

Speed

The obvious difference currently between AT&T and T-Mobile is that T-Mobile has not yet converted to the coveted 3G network in the United States. They will be rolling out nationwide in September we’re told, but at the moment, Edge is your only option. So speed is certainly a difference between the two phones. I decided to try an experiment to see if Edge on T-Mobile was as fast as Edge on AT&T. You can see my findings in this video:

As you can see, there really is no difference in Edge performance between the two networks. In the example I showed, AT&T performed a bit faster, but what I didn’t show is that right before this I did the exact same experiment and T-Mobile came up first. It seems despite some latency issues at times, the two networks are essentially just as fast, which would make sense considering it is the same technology.

I also wanted to see the differences in speed between 3G and Edge. So I took the same video like I did in the above example, and ran the video in Edge on the old iPhone at the same time in 3G on the new iPhone. Here you can see the results:

As you can see, 3G truly is almost exactly twice as fast, just as Apple says. So speed truly is a matter of “What you see is what you get.”

Price

Now for pricing. I decided to take my existing family rate plan on T-Mobile, add unlimited data to both mine and my wife’s accounts, along with unlimited text messaging, at 700 minutes per month. Granted T-Mobile does not have rollover minutes, but let’s just try to compare apples to apples.

Taking the exact same 700 minute family time plan on AT&T and comparing it to T-Mobiles and what we are paying currently, based on my last bill, AT&T will end up costing me almost exactly $40 more per month than T-Mobile does currently. The added advantages I get from AT&T from a service perspective are rollover minutes and 3G, so I guess it’s up to the individual to determine if it’s worth it for higher speed and re-usable minutes. For me that 3G is crucial so at the moment that will be the choice for me.

Now, the other little known fact about pricing is that, should you go with a T-Mobile contract, T-Mobile charges you $200 per line to terminate your contract early, and it is not pro-rated. So I get charged the same $200 per line now with only 2 months left as I would have at the beginning of my plan, costing me a total of $400 if I were to terminate now with T-Mobile. So I’ll be left to reducing my T-Mobile plan to the very cheapest plan available and letting it run out. Not a wise plan on T-Mobile’s part if you ask me, since I have to make the choice between them and AT&T.

AT&T’s early termination fee is $175 per line. However, their plan is pro-rated to $5/month. Therefore, if I terminate early now I pay $175 per line, but if I decide 2 months from the end of my plan, I pay next to nothing. Because of that, IMO, AT&T is much less of a rip-off. These early-termination fees alone could make AT&T the actual cheaper choice.

Hassle

Hassle is obviously an important factor between AT&T and T-Mobile for the iPhone. Obviously, unlocking the iPhone 3G for the average Joe is not quite possible yet, and therefore it is absolutely not possible to use it on T-Mobile. However, when it is available, it’s simply a matter of running a simple Mac or Windows program and voila, your iPhone can now run on T-Mobile along with the ability to customize your iPhone beyond what its current capabilities provide. I argue though that having to re-do this every time Apple releases a new software update does add quite a bit of Hassle, and you have to weigh that.

With my AT&T phone, while I do have the hassle of dealing with a closed system and relying completely on Apple for the updates I need, I do not need to worry about re-updating for each software update provided. True, I could also jailbreak my AT&T phone, and in that case the hassle would be the same between the two.

Features

As far as features go, the only difference between T-Mobile and AT&T on the iPhone is that AT&T provides Visual Voicemail, and T-Mobile doesn’t. I really like the Visual Voicemail feature thus far, but I really don’t use it much. I generally forward my calls through Google’s Grandcentral so not many people actually call my direct cell phone number. This makes that feature mostly useless for me.

So in the end, the major difference I’ve discovered between having an iPhone on AT&T vs. T-Mobile is the price. AT&T is quite a bit more expensive on a month-to-month scale, however, if you ever need to cancel your plan, T-Mobile will leave you hanging. Other than that, the two are exactly the same.

Have you run your original iPhone on T-Mobile? Are there any other differences you have noticed?