Facebook's "like" feature has been around since February, but the massive social network never provided users with a way to quickly voice their opinions going the other way. French developer Thomas Moquet took matters into his own hands by creating a cute (albeit useless) Firefox extension that adds a dislike button to Facebook, letting users who have it installed mark things they don't like.
In order to make the tool work, Moquet had to use his own servers, which keep track of every item that's disliked as well as who clicked it. Any other Facebook users who have the extension installed can then see who disliked it right next to the usual like list.
Feeling grumpy? Add a "dislike" button to Facebook.
(Credit: CNET)There are a few very clear downsides to this system, one being that if the dislike servers ever go down, you won't be able to see what you or others have marked as not liking. It also cannot be seen by other users who don't have the extension installed. Nonetheless, it fits in quite well with the rest of the Facebook interface, peacefully coexisting alongside the likes while adding a bit of snark.
It's worth noting Facebook's exclusion of a dislike button was under the pretense that likes were added as a quick way to replace simple one-word comments. By adding a like button the hope was both to better surface content in its news feeds, as well as cut down on throwaway comments like "this is great!" or "cool."
Facebook dislike is an experimental add-on, meaning you'll have to grab it from Mozilla's add-ons site. See also the competing Facebook Dislike Button add-on, which goes one step further and will actually send the person who's news item it is a Facebook note saying that you didn't like what they posted. Ouch.
This week we got a sneak peek at a new social tracking site that's launching a little later this year. Called Strings, it's made up of tools that let you passively share your various on- and offline activities with others online, all in the hopes of both getting and giving recommendations from its online community.
In many ways Strings feels a lot like FriendFeed. For example, just like FriendFeed you're able to tie Strings into to various services you're using like Amazon, Netflix, and social-bookmarking tools so that it can implicitly share information about what you're doing on each of those services with others. And like FriendFeed, this information can be tracked and filtered depending on what type of content it is, and what group of friends it's coming from.
Where it differs though, is that this data feed begins with complete anonymity; nobody ever has to know it's you who is feeding the site. If and when you decide you want to start identifying data as your own, Strings has a very deep set of privacy controls to protect what other people can see.
... Read the full post at CNET's CES 2010 blog
Remember MeetWays, that tool we covered that would let you find the exact mid-point between you and someone else? There's now a competing service that does the same thing on your iPhone.
MeetMe, from Basara ($1.99 Yelp, and can be filtered from a large directory of categories. In my go with the app, I used the directory to find restaurants, hotels, and bars. There are also more specific things like day spas, specialty coffee shops, religious organizations, and various health care institutions.
Along with using contacts from your address book you can also type in a starting/end point, or use the iPhone's GPS to figure out where you are. It also has a list of favorites which users can add and use for frequent addresses like home, work, and school.
This application works really well, although it can be a little on the slow side if you're not on a great connection. On 3G it pulled up results quite quickly, but attempting to change the meeting point to be closer to the other party took anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds to refresh the results. There was also the occasional crash, and lag in the destinations directory between when I pressed what I wanted, and when the results screen came up.
Faults aside, if you're a frequent Craigslister, or have a fetish for making geographically-important stops during a long road trip, this app can be invaluable. Its simplicity and capability to create "fuzzy" stop points during a journey in progress is really well done, and actually fun to use--even if you're not planning to go on the trip you're scouting out.
You can also go with the iPhone app from competitor MeetWays, which costs half the price of MeetMe, at $0.99. Unlike MeetMe, it lets you drop pins to mark locations you like, or that you want to start from. However it doesn't let you filter the types of places you want to stop, or see how they've been rated on Yelp, which can be pretty useful if you want to avoid having a bad meal or staying in a rat trap after a long drive.
(Credit:
JaJah / eHarmony)
Online dating services eHarmony and Match.com on Thursday plan to begin using a special version of JaJah that lets users make anonymized voice calls to people they're interested in.
Unlike streaming video, which is a hot trend in online dating sites, users are limited to standard telephone communication like voice calls, SMS, and voice mail. Both sites are using a version of JaJah that's focused specifically on privacy permissions. Users can't just call someone without the person on the other authorizing it first. The same goes for both voice and text messages. Also, neither party gets the other person's real phone number, meaning you can safely use your regular phone without worrying about your number getting in the wrong hands.
Along with the security features that let people connect for the first time, it's also simple to cut off communication entirely. If either party decides that they no longer want to talk to the other person, it's as simple as de-authorizing them. This keeps them from being able to call again, and relegates them to using the dating service's standard messaging tools.
JaJah says the service has been in limited beta testing on Match.com since early March. Several other dating sites are also providing it for some of their members, although those sites have not yet been announced.
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