iphone.facebook.com

One of the very first web apps for the iPhone and one that Apple has promoted during it’s Keynote addresses – Facebook had a good start in providing a great experience for iPhone users. The only problem is that they haven’t updated it in forever. This interface is lacking so much I’ll simply have one wish. Update it please!

The Facebook iPhone application

Without a doubt the Facebook iPhone application is one of the best designed iPhone applications available. It was also one of the first. Overall it is a fantastic way to access Facebook on the iPhone. However, here are my suggested additions:

1. Likes and comment notifications should link to the appropriate item. As it stands the app let’s you know that someone commented or liked something you’ve shared – but it doesn’t tell you which thing they like or commented on. Annoying.
2. Facebook’s “like” feature needs to be accessible from the app.
3. Support for Pages, Groups, and Events would be nice.

Facebook proper

While I’m jotting down my demands, I might as well put these few things in:

1. Referencing people on Facebook is simply not possible. I suggest that Facebook add the ability to add your Twitter username to your preferences. That way @cdevroe would actually be linked to my Facebook profile on Facebook and my Twitter profile on Twitter.
2. An obvious future feature is search. Not just people, event, group, and app search (that is already there), but searching through public status updates, wall posts, links, etc.

You have to wonder if Facebook was a more open platform, like Twitter is, from the beginning would some of this work have been done for them?

(Yes I typed this entire post on my iPhone.)

Random 60: Holding onto wishes | Favorite on Viddler.

Do you hold onto wishes, or things, too long? I do too. There are boxes and boxes worth of stuff floating around in our apartment that I wish I could use, learn to use, or have the hope of using in the future.

Perhaps we’re holding onto these things too long and should just focus on the things we have time for right now. Then, when our interests move on, we can move on too.

What wishes are you holding on to?

Sure I could just get a Library card but how much more fun would it be to actually live, survive, suffer, or thrive in a time period rather than just read about it?

I used to say to people, on occasion, that I wished I lived before the technological boom. Before all of these distractions. And that may sound odd coming from someone who makes a living using these technological distractions, and perhaps I’m overstating my desires a little because, all-in-all, I don’t mind living in this little slice of the human effort – it is just that I’d love to experience the times that have already past.

What times would you choose? If you could only choose one, what would it be? I’ll try to answer these, but maybe you could too in the comments.

There are so many time periods that interest me and probably an incalculable number of time periods that I know absolutely nothing about. My first choice in time periods would probably be to see ancient Israel in all of its glory. Perhaps Babylon before it was overthrown. Or visit parts of China before it was covered in cement and footprints. To live in times before electricity. To make camp outside the city walls of Jericho before they fell. To watch how people reacted when the first horseless carriage drove through the streets of New York City, making the over one million horses shake in their shoes. To buy a plot of land in the Nevada desert sometime in the 1800s for two quarter-horses and a new gun. Or listen to Aristotle become one of the most respected philosophers that ever walked the earth before his theories began to be picked apart in modern-times. Or visit the Colosseum in its hay-day.

I’m rambling but there are many more that I can think of without any hesitation. The fact is, there is such a rich history in mankind that it would make it very difficult to choose just one.

If I had to choose one, though, my spiritual side immediately thinks of the privilege of those in attendance for Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or his baptism by John. Talk about wishful thinking. But then my intellectual side calls to mind the day man walked on the moon (or did they? *chuckle*), or the day Columbus felt sand between his toes for the first time in months (not because he discovered the country in which I live, kinda, but because this proved false the theory that the world was flat even though the Bible had stated it for thousands of years prior), or (recalling Bible stories again) the day Moses walked on dry ground between walls of water that stood nearly 3-miles high with millions of Hebrews while fleeing Pharaoh and his army.

Ok, I could go on forever. Suffice to say – this will never happen. But I enjoy thinking about it once in a while. Have you ever thought about going back in time? Where would you go?