Calling Facebook Users

Over the last couple of days I've been trying to come up with a simple facebook app that might help draw attention to Friends for Peace. So far, I haven't had much success at coming up with a good idea that works.

I've created a very simple app that will display a picture on the users profile page. I had wanted to have that image change to a new random page every time you reload your profile, but it turns out that Facebook's cacheing mechanisms don't make that easy (if someone knows a good way around this I'd love to hear it).

My other idea would be to create an app that would allow users to sent pictures to each other, similar to the gifts apps that are so prolific on facebook. That's a lot more involved of a project, so I'm stalling in the hopes of getting another better idea. Are there any facebook users that have a better idea, or that would be willing to help create an app?

Aaron
Coding for Peace


Update 10/11/2007:
I was able to figure out how to do the random image changes, so there now is a Facebook application called: Friends for Peace. I'd love to have a bunch of people add the app and give me some feedback about what we can do to make it better. -- Aaron

Update 11/8/2007:
Facebook users can find the app here. -- Aaron

Mapping

For a while now we have been wanting to get images from Friends For Peace onto maps...we finally have it.

Before you get too worried, no, there is not going to be a point on your house from your image (more on that in a minute).

There are two places you can see maps, first is on the browse page where we have put a menu of states. If you want to see all the pictures submitted from people in Ohio, just select Ohio from the menu. The second place is on the search results page. So if you do a search for "dog" you can now see a map of all the dogs. Google Earth users can also pull those results into Google Earth, which will update the search results so you can see them over time.

Now, for those of you concerned about (or interested in) how the points are placed, let me explain how I set this up. First off, all points are generated using the location of the zip code covering the city provided when the image was uploaded (for cities with more than 1 I calculate their average location). From that point I then randomly shift the location just a little (within a couple minutes of the original point), so that they aren't all stacked up on top of each other. I also located the markers 8 KM off the ground; while Google Maps doesn't currently respect this last setting, when you look using Google Earth you'll see the points move around a bit as you zoom in, and after a while they will fly past you, making it even more clear that they aren't exact locations.

Take the dog search for example. My dog Patrick lives with me in Claymont, DE. While the marker does appear somewhere generally over Claymont, frequently the random shifting causes him to be located on one of the nearby highways...I can assure you that he's not an outside dog, and lives mostly on my couch, not the highway.

Aaron
Coding for Peace

Better Image Browsing

Most people probably haven't noticed, but everyone couple of days we post a few updates to FriendsForPeace.org. Mostly they are small changes like bug fixes, and minor tweaks, sometimes they have been big (like when we added slideshows) and I make a point to bring them up here. Today's update was about 1/2 way between the two. While most of the changes were small design improvements, there are two changes I wanted to point out.

First, you can once again get the recent images from the home page with 1 click. If you click "Browse more photos" you will be taken to the new browsing page, which starts with a slideshow of the recent images. Right now that page doesn't have any new features on it, but it creates a space for us to provide more ways for to explore the pictures. We are kicking around ideas like: showing the most popular tags, slideshows by city and state, popular searches. We're not sure which we'll do in what order, but stay tuned to see what we come up with. If you have ideas please let us know and we'll add them to the mix.

The second improvement today is a small improvement to the search engine. If you enter a US state, you will get only images from that state. So to see all the images from Colorado search for CO. Hopefully this will make it easier to find images that are interesting to you.

Your input is always welcome.
Aaron
Coding for Peace

Friends for Peace Slideshows on your own blog

Last Friday a poster asked about embedding a slideshow in other blogs. Since Friends for Peace uses Flickr as a backend this is not only an option, but there are several tools to make it easy. Most sources I found referenced Paul Stamatiou's blog, but there are plenty of others. Using Paul’s technique the final code should look something like this (your mileage may vary):

<iframe align="center" src="http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?user_id=81805697@N00" frameBorder="0" width="500" scrolling="no" height="500" />

To control which images come up you can use the “tags” variables described in the article I linked above. If you create something like this, or use Friends for Peace images in some other way, please let us know by leaving a comment on the blog.

Aaron
Coding for Peace

Friends for Peace Slideshows

You asked for slideshows and now we have them! Anytime that a slideshow is available you will see a link labeled "Open Slideshow" under the main image; click on the link and the sideshow will start in its own window.Please let us know how this new function works for you by leaving a comment on the blog.

We are currently working on other ways for people to look at Friends for Peace images. If you have an idea about new features you'd like to see us develop, please let us know by commenting on this blog. We can't promise to do them all, but we're always looking for more ideas.

Aaron
Coding for Peace