Top Facebook Applications

What are the best Facebook applications?
good question. Seeing as how there are at least 50 new ones every day, there is no way that this page can ever stay up to date. Also, applications should only get more intricate as we go along.
So, put a comment to this post your favorite application and what makes it so good. Let’s all learn from eachother. Thanks!

Demonstration of an Interlaced Video and a Deinterlaced Video

Do I need to deinterlace my video? What does interlaced and deinterlaced mean? Why do I get these jagged lines on my video?

I recently uploaded two versions of the same video to my facebook page to demonstrate the visible difference between a video that is interlaced and one that is deinterlaced or scanned progressively. I have attached a couple stills from each clip to demonstrate the point. You can see artifacts in the first video. This is the combing or “mouse teeth” effect that can occur with interlaced video. It is always more apparent when you watch an interlaced video on computer monitors because they natively use progressive scanning. Notice that you don’t see artifacts in the second still, that is because I deinterlaced this version.

For those of you who do not know what interlacing is, I will give you a brief description. There are basically two methods of scanning when a video is played, interlace and progressive scan. Interlacing involves the displaying of even horizontal lines of resolution followed by odd lines of resolution in a single frame of video. Whereas, progressive scanning, involves displaying a single frame of video by scanning horizontal lines of resolution from the top to the bottom of the screen. This translates into a smoother and crisper video especially when there is a lot of motion being displayed, particularly in sports broadcasts, which is why some HD stations choose to broadcast major sporting events in 720p as opposed to 1080i. They are willing to sacrifice the higher resolution for a more clean look. It is still open to debate, however, whether the tradeoff is worth it.

As demonstrated by the pictures, interlacing can lead to some bizarre results. You might be inclined to ask why this method is even used. The answer is because it is the standard used by television sets (CRTs) and has been for many years. Nonetheless, when we display our videos online or just keep them on our computer, it is usually wise to deinterlace them when possible because there aren’t the same standards and restrictions in the computer world as there is on a standard NTSC broadcast. Therefore, we should take advantage of the freedom we have in displaying our videos on sites such as youtube and facebook, so that our videos look as good and as sharp as possible.

How do I insert a video into facebook?

Heres a question that has totally been under the radar:
How do I put a video onto facebook?

The book barely mentions this, but it is possible! Heres how you do it:

First things first, you must have the video already hosted by another website. So this means they are basically giving in to what the people want (post videos on their profile), rather than inspiring creativity like myspace might be doing by hosting their own videos. thats fine. I just wanted to point that out. maybe its better this way. its very clean here.

click on Posted Items on the left side
Now, you copy the URL of the video you want to insert into your profile.
paste that link into the Post a Link field on the right.

It will now appear on the Posted Items or Mini-feed section on your profile

These videos actually work well and look great on the site. kudos to facebook for making it simple like this.

also, I hear there are sites that have a button to “share on facebook” where you can share straight from their site. they use the word “partner” in the description, so that makes it sound boring. But look out for that.

You can press the share button to send the video to your friends too

also, they made a bookmarklet function. you install it by dragging the icon to your bar ( which is pretty cool actually ). I haven’t done it because I dont want any more crap on my machine. but this is just another option with this share function.

The other blog listing

How do I put a link into myspace comments? or put a URL link anywhere?

MYSPACE CHANGED THEIR CODES SO THAT LINKS NOW GO THROUGH THEIR SITE. This is supposed to protect you from spammers or other malicious individuals, but I think it just reduces your accountability on the internet. People should be able to see the link they are clicking on….
That being said..

There are no stupid questions, only stupid people. I can see how people come about my blog page, by what searches. There has been a number which came about by the search “how do I put URL into myspace?” which I interpret as people wanting to know how to put in a link on a myspace comment or any other site.

IF YOU WANT TO COPY AND PASTE THE CODE, CLICK THIS LINK

BELOW IS A VISUAL EXAMPLE ONLY. WordPress messes up the quotes and this will not work unless you replace the quotes.

<a href=”http://orlickenterprise.com”>my site</a>
will give us: my site

If you want the link to open in a New Window – this is nice, you probably do…
<a href=”http://WEBSITE URL” target=”_blank”>TEXT TO DISPLAY</a>
Which will yield:
my other site

you can use that code on most social networking sites (myspace, not facebook). its html.

A trick I have been doing is that all the code I frequently use to write comments on profiles and blogs I put in a notepad file on my desktop for easy access. In that file, I have some numbers I have to enter frequently like some long PIN numbers and also the code for inserting a picture and the code for linking.
It is code, and it is fickle. You won’t leave room for mistakes if you cut and paste from your notepad file. And its quick!