Facebook Acquired FriendFeed

Yesterday, Facebook announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. Financial terms of the acquisition were not released. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founders. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Digital Sky Technologies Invested $200 Million In Facebook

Facebook today announced that Digital Sky Technologies (DST), one of the leading internet investment groups globally with significant stakes in Eastern European and Russian internet businesses, has made a $200 million investment in Facebook in exchange for preferred stock, representing a 1.96 percent equity stake at a $10 billion valuation.

In addition, DST has indicated that it is planning to offer to purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing common stockholders that would facilitate liquidity for current and former employees’ vested shares in the company. The details of the plan are expected to be announced to eligible participants during the summer. Consistent with Facebook’s practice with other recent investors, DST will not be represented on the Facebook board or hold special observer rights.

“This investment demonstrates Facebook’s ongoing success at creating a global network for people to share and connect,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We’ve worked hard to bring more than 200 million people – 70 percent outside of the U.S. – onto Facebook to share with friends, family and co-workers. A number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring – backed up by the impressive growth and financial achievements of their internet investments. We’re looking forward to working with the DST team.”

“Our investment experience in other regions reveals the tremendous value social networking companies create as they redefine how people communicate and interact,” said Yuri Milner, chief executive of DST. “By every important metric – user growth and engagement, technological innovation and financial performance – Facebook is on a similar trajectory, though on a much more global scale. We’re delighted to invest in Facebook, Mark and his management team as they make the world more open and connected.”

Based in London and Moscow, DST is a well-respected investor in a number of successful internet companies, holding significant interests in Russia and Eastern Europe, such as Mail.ru, Forticom and vKontakte. DST’s main assets account for over 70 percent of all page views in the Russian-speaking internet and its social networks are the market leaders in more than 13 countries, addressing a combined population of more than 350 million.

DST is run by its three partners who have complementary backgrounds in operations, investments and finance: Yuri Milner, previously CEO of Mail.ru, the #1 Russian language website; Gregory Finger, previously head of the Moscow office of NCH, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund; and Alexander Tamas, previously co-head of internet and software coverage in EMEA for the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. With its advanced understanding of opportunities in technology and social media, DST is a good fit for Facebook and an insightful partner that can help unlock additional growth opportunities.

Facebook Introducing It’s First Verified Apps

Facebook opened the program to interested developers several months ago. This Application Verification Program gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to providing trustworthy user experiences in your applications. Users of Verified Apps can feel confident that these applications strive to be transparent about how they work and respect social expectations between friends. Facebook today announced the inaugural set of 120 Verified Apps to Facebook users!

Users can easily find Verified Apps in new Application Directory, which also launches today. As a Verified App, you'll benefit from the following:

1. Badging in the Application Directory: Users will see a green "verified" check mark next to your application name wherever it is listed.
   
2. Priority ranking in the Application Directory: When appropriate, Verified Apps will appear before any applications that have not been verified yet.
3. Badging on your application profile: On this page, users will see the official "Facebook Verified App" graphic in the left column.
   
4. Allocation boosts: You will also receive a two-bucket boost in both notification and requests allocations. You can see your application's allocation buckets on the Allocations tab on the Insights page. These allocations will continue to be subject to our algorithmic reputation system which looks at various metrics and user signals.
   
5. Ad credits and discounts: You will receive $100 in credit to advertize with Facebook and discounts to paid Facebook events.

To help users discover well-designed and useful applications, Application Directory now also contains a "Featured by Facebook" section. This section will spotlight various Verified Apps, editorially selected by the Facebook team.

Take a look at below video which captures why friends make all the difference:

If you are interested in participating, navigate to your application in the Developer application, and click the Submit Application for Verification link.

Facebook Implemented OpenID Support for Automatic Login

Yesterday, Facebook announced that they are now supporting OpenID. OpenID is a free and easy way to use a single digital identity across the Internet. With one OpenID you can login to all your favorite websites, so you don’t need multiple username or log-in ids for different sites.

Facebook also streamlined the OpenID login process while maintaining security, converting the full-page redirect to a pop-up. They worked with the community to develop this pop-up extension to standardize the more streamlined user experience.

Now, users can register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts. This is a quicker, more streamlined way for new users to register for the site, find their friends, and start exploring.

Existing and new users can now link their Facebook accounts with their Gmail accounts or with accounts from those OpenID providers that support automatic login. Once a user links his or her account with a Gmail address or an OpenID URL, logs in to that account, then goes to Facebook, that user will already be logged in to Facebook.

Facebook Open Stream API

Facebook today announced an important step toward greater openness through Facebook Platform. For the first time, facebook is opening the core Facebook product experience - the stream - with the new Facebook Open Stream API.

The home page design centralizes the stream of information that tells you what's going on right now in the world around you. With the Facebook Open Stream API users will be able to use applications to read and interact with their stream. As a Facebook developer you'll also be able to access the posts you've published into the stream and display them in your application, whether it's on a mobile device, Web site or desktop.

To enable developers to access the stream, facebook has built the Facebook Open Stream API to include the emerging Activity Streams standard.

“Over the last several months, we've been collaborating with the community, hosting meetups at Facebook headquarters, and speaking at industry events about Activity Streams and the open stack. We think that working alongside our peers to create an open standard for accessing and consuming streams is the future. We'll continue to make contributions to the standards community and related technologies and are happy to be one of the first companies to implement Activity Streams at scale.” said Ray C. He on facebook news page.

In addition to the Activity Streams interface, the Open Stream API includes robust new APIs called stream.get and stream.publish and new FQL tables that enable you to directly access the stream. With these new methods, you can access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience. Other new API methods will allow users to both publish into the stream and to add comments and "likes" to posts in the stream.

All Facebook Platform terms governing data use apply and an application or Facebook Connect site can only access a user's view of the stream if the user gives the application permission.

Facebook created a sample client application, Facebook for Adobe AIR. It's built on Adobe AIR runtime and includes all of the APIs that released today. Before you can use the application, you need to install Adobe AIR. Then, you can either download the official Facebook for Adobe AIR application or you can compile your own copy, which is available in public repository.

You can get started by reading the documentation.

TweetDeck Integrates Facebook

TweetDeck announced the pre-release version v0.24 that includes the first elements of Facebook integration into TweetDeck. This integration consists of two elements.

Firstly you can click on the Facebook icon at the top and, once you have signed into Facebook and given TweetDeck authorisation, this will add a new column full of each of your friends most recent status update which updates automatically once a minute.

From here you can email the update out to anyone, tweet it out over twitter, view the users online status and if they are online right now click on their name (or the green online status indicator) to open Facebook chat right within TweetDeck.

The other element is the ability to direct your tweet/update to post to twitter or facebook or both directly within the tweet window. Note: direct messages will not be sent via Facebook even if you have the Facebook checkbox ticked.

This release is not being pushed out to everyone right now since it is still being tested.

One can install it directly from http://tweetdeck.com/beta/TweetDeck_0_24.air but be aware this is very beta software and is at your own risk.

If you are not comfortable with this then please wait for the next major release where this functionality will be rolled up and better tested.

About TweetDeck

Tweetdeck is a realtime application that allows users to monitor that information in a single concise view. Tweetdeck currently integrates services from Twitter, Twitscoop, 12seconds, Stocktwits and integrates functionality from a host of other services.

Seesmic Announced It’s Desktop Application For Facebook

Seesmic launches the first facebook desktop client application today. "Seesmic for Facebook" desktop application which is available from today as a free download. Based on the technology behind Twhirl, Seesmic for Facebook lets you keep track of your friend's Facebook status and easily update your own.

You will need Adobe AIR installed on your computer - available free from http://get.adobe.com/air/ open the Seesmic air file with Adobe Air when installed. PC/Mac.

Seesmic also makes the popular Twitter client Twhirl and soon release a client with both Facebook and Twitter integrated into one, Twhirl already supports multiple Twitter accounts, Identi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic videos. Seesmic for Facebook supports text for now but Seesmic will soon support posting pictures and videos and more.

Facebook Announced Facebook Connect For iPhone

Facebook today announced the launch of Facebook Connect for iPhone. Facebook Connect easily lets developers make their websites and desktop applications more social. This enables developer to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into iPhone app.

If you develop apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, you can now start making those apps more social. With just a few lines of Objective-C code, your users can log in to Facebook from within your app, find their friends, then share what they do in your app back on Facebook, which opens up exciting new opportunities for your users.

It enables your users to :

• Seamlessly connect their Facebook account and information with your iPhone app
• Connect and share experiences with friends who also use your iPhone app
• Share user information and actions on your iPhone app with friends on Facebook

Now your iPhone apps can enjoy the benefits that Facebook Connect sites and Facebook Platform apps already enjoy, including:

• Making API calls so your app can access users' profiles and share information on Facebook.
• Publishing to Facebook via Feed forms.
• Asking users for extended permissions, like offline access, so you can still interact with their data when they're offline.

To get started, download the Facebook Connect for iPhone code, read the documentation, and start coding!

Also, you can take 5 minutes to watch the video below, which shows how you can integrate Facebook Connect for iPhone with your app.

How To: Implement Facebook Connect on the iPhone in 5 minutes from Cat Lee on Vimeo.

Facebook Connect Got It’s First Social Widget, Comments Box

In last December, Facebook announced Facebook Connect, the next evolution of Facebook Platform. Facebook Connect lets users log in to a site using their Facebook account, bring their profile with them, easily find friends also using the website, and share information and experiences using the same features as they would on a Facebook application.

Since  the launched, over 6,000 developers make their sites more social using Facebook Connect.

Recently facebook launched first social widget for Facebook Connect, the Comments Box. The Comments Box is a great way for any website, blog or photo gallery to add social comments to their page in just a minute with a few lines of code.

With the Comments Box, Facebook users on your site can comment on your content, post those comments to their profiles, and share them with their friends on Facebook. The Comments Box allows non-Facebook users to make comments on your site as well. And via our APIs, you can access related comments made on Facebook as well to bring the conversation together.

To add the Comments Box to your site, follow these simple instructions:

1. Set up a basic Connect application. Take note of the API key and specify a callback URL to your website.
2. Download this cross-domain receiver file, and upload it to your website.

Add these snippets of code to each file where you want a Comments Box.

• Within the <html> tag, add: xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"
• Add the following code wherever you want a Comments Box to appear in your page. Replace '''YOUR_API_KEY_HERE''' with your API key, and include the path to the cross-domain receiver.

<script src= "http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php" type="text/javascript"></script> <fb:comments></fb:comments> <script type="text/javascript"> FB.init("YOUR_API_KEY_HERE", "<path from web root>/xd_receiver.htm"); </script>

That's it, your Comments Box is ready! For more detailed instructions, go to Developer Wiki.

The Comments Box comes with additional social features:

• Fully customizable: Specify background color, text color, and other attributes by providing your own custom CSS to incorporate this best into your site.
• Access to raw data: Query all comments via the comments.get API method or the comment FQL table.
• Administration and moderation: Manage the privacy and permissions of your comment boxes on an individual or global basis.
• Integrates seamlessly regardless of whether you do or don't have Facebook Connect already on your site.

This new Comments Box is just one of many social widgets that can help you easily integrate social features into your website with Facebook Connect. There are many more plugins and widgets available in Facebook Connect Plugins Directory that may also fit your needs, including plugins for Movable Type, and commenting systems by Disqus and JS-Kit.

To learn more about using 4th party plugins and widgets, check out Facebook Connect Plugins Directory.

   

Facebook Connect Now Live

Facebook announced the general availability of Facebook Connect, the next evolution of Facebook Platform. Since May 2007, Platform has rapidly evolved from 100 early ideas to over 52,000 applications with 14 billion page views per month. Over 70% of Facebook users actively use at least one application per month, and over 4,200 applications have more than 10,000 users per month. All of these applications have been built using Platform’s core services. These services allow users to use their profile in applications, easily find their friends, and share information and experiences with their friends through Feed, requests, and more.

With Facebook Connect, you can take the same Platform features and tools that you’ve used to grow your applications successfully, and integrate them into your own website. Key features that you can now bring to your own website include:

• Trusted authentication: Offer Facebook users the option to log in to your site with one click.
• Real identity: Integrate your users’ Facebook identities into your site.
  Friend linking: Let your connected users find their Facebook friends on your site.
• Dynamic privacy: Enable users to bring their information and privacy settings with them to your site.
• Social distribution: Allow users to share actions and information from your site with their friends on Facebook including publishing Feed stories to profiles and sending requests.

In short, Facebook Connect lets users log in to a site using their Facebook account, bring their profile with them, easily find friends also using the website, and share information and experiences using the same features as they would on a Facebook application. Pretty much every feature that you can build with an application on Facebook can be offered through Facebook Connect.

Many sites are already live, including Citysearch (share reviews with your friends), TechCrunch (use your Facebook account to post comments), vLane (shop for cars with your friends input), and Howcast (comment and share how-to videos). These are just a sampling of the many sites that launched during beta period. Early results have been very positive: as many as 2/3 of users registering for the sites are doing so with their Facebook accounts and taking as much as 50% more actions on the sites.

You can check out documentation and sample site, The Run Around, and start Connecting!

Intel, Facebook Sign Infrastructure Solutions Agreement

Facebook and Intel Corporation will work together to optimize Facebook's hardware and software as the company builds out its datacenter infrastructure. With growing global popularity, Facebook plans to deploy thousands of Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers over the next year to help scale rapid global expansion and meet processing needs of the company's increasingly rich media applications that span videos, music, photos and more.

To maximize the return on this infrastructure investment, Facebook and Intel have signed a collaboration agreement that focuses on technology evaluation, benchmarking and optimization of software for Intel architecture. Intel will work to address Facebook's processing needs through assessment of various chipset and server platform configurations, delivery of the most energy efficient processors and allocation of software engineering to evaluate ways to harness the optimal performance from Facebook's servers.

"We are pleased to expand our relationship with Intel," said Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of Technical Operations at Facebook, "Intel has demonstrated that the performance of their systems can help Facebook scale our infrastructure and continue to deliver the best experience to users around the world."

"Intel is excited to engage with Facebook as they are a dynamic force in the evolution of the Internet," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "Facebook's selection of Intel Xeon processors for their next round of infrastructure growth is a testament to the performance, energy efficiency and technology benefits Intel can provide."

Over the past several months, Facebook rigorously tested and benchmarked a number of server platforms and scenarios, and ultimately selected the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series for its round of new deployments that begin in July.

"When you are responsible for providing a fast, high-quality experience to more than 90 million people worldwide, every ounce of efficiency matters," Heiliger said. "Intel's Xeon processors play a critical role in achieving our infrastructure efficiency."

Both companies envision that the collaboration may benefit not only Facebook, but ideally the Web 2.0 industry at-large. Intel plans to work with Facebook to evaluate ways to improve its software performance on Intel-based servers. Intel has a wealth of software engineering expertise as well as such tools as Intel VTune™ and Intel Thread Checker to help companies improve application performance on multi-core Intel processors. Since Facebook's applications are mostly built on open source technologies, the companies believe that some of the insights from this collaboration may be contributed back to the open source community, benefiting other companies that use similar underlying technologies.

Facebook Unveils New Site Design

Facebook® yesterday released a new, cleaner and simpler design, along with the opportunity for users to preview and test the next-generation features and functionality. The company is inviting people to use the new design and try out the improved features by navigating back and forth between the new and current versions of the site. Access to the new design will be limited at first and gradually become available to all of Facebook’s more than 80 million users over the coming days.

“We’ve made the changes rolling out today in order to highlight the most recent and relevant information that users value, give users even more control and ownership over their profiles and simplify the user experience,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Facebook’s new design makes it a lot easier for users to share information, and we encourage them to check it out.”

The company has been developing the new design since early this year. Over the past six months, more than 100,000 Facebook users offered constructive suggestions on the layout and features, many of which were included in the final version.

The Power of Feeds

Facebook uses feeds to deliver people news and information in a social context. The evolution of the site design focuses on integrating powerful feed technology and the Wall, a forum for users and their friends to post comments, photos, videos and more, including content from third-party applications. The Wall now surfaces more current and pertinent information, or “stories”, about a user and their friends’ on Facebook.

New Types of “Stories”

Users have complete control over the stories published on their profile. They also have the ability to adjust the size and prominence of stories and can choose between having one-line stories, short or full stories. One-line stories are one sentence long, while short stories include thumbnail photos or content, and full stories display large, noticeable images.

Publish More Content

Located on the Wall tab, the Publisher feature enables users to create more content than ever and in a centralized place. From the Publisher, a user can add photos, upload video, or write notes, rather than navigating to each individual application. Similarly, users can add content to their friends’ profiles through the Publisher on their profiles.

Easier Site Navigation with Tabs

The top menu is similar to the old design and allows users to access their Profile, Friends, and Inbox. The left hand applications menu has been moved to the ‘Applications’ link on the top of the menu screen. The Profile is now split out into tabs:

• The Wall tab displays the most recent and relevant information both about the user and by the user;

• The Info tab shows information about the user that doesn’t change frequently;

• The Photos tab shows photos of the user as well as their albums;

• The Boxes tab features all of a user’s existing application boxes.

Users are also able to add individual tabs for their favorite applications. This gives users greater control over their own profiles and makes navigation faster and easier.

Applications and the New Design

Third-party applications are more tightly integrated into Facebook in order to make using applications simpler and more seamless. Users will have the option to interact with an application before adding it, grant it access to their information, and decide where they want it placed, if at all, on their profiles.

Privacy Controls

On Facebook, users choose what information they put in their profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups they join. And they control the users with whom they share that information through the privacy settings on the Privacy page of their profile. The new design does not change any of the privacy settings previously selected by the user. The new Facebook design will be made available to users at http://www.new.facebook.com. In the coming weeks, all Facebook users will automatically default to the new site design when logging in at http://www.facebook.com.

New Facebook Profile Design Focusing More On Feeds

Recently facebook released it's beta sandbox to all users so they can start testing their applications with the new profile design. One of the most significant changes to the profile - the greater focus is on Feed.

The Feed tab is the first tab users will see when viewing their profiles and represents their recent activity. So creating compelling Feed stories that relay your users' engagement with your applications becomes even more important. It is giving you new options to create richer Feed stories that will appear front and center on your users' profiles.

Feed stories come in three sizes: one line, short, and full.

One line stories say what they have to say briefly and concisely, in just one line of text, like "Jan reviewed a movie."

Short stories are more involved than one line stories. Short stories are rendered in various predefined layouts; currently there's one default layout, but more are coming soon.

Full stories provide you with the opportunity to make your stories as expressive as possible with few limitations, similar to how Wall attachments work today. But given their size (500 pixels wide by up to 700 pixels tall), users will probably display short stories in many cases, so make sure your short stories are just as engaging.

All Feed stories are template based. You need to provide at least a one line story template, but it is good to create templates for all three sizes for the best user experience. This way, your users can decide how big of a story they want to show on their profiles. If you don't supply a story size, that size never appears as an option to the user.

It will aggregate one line and (if possible) short stories, but due to their nature and size, full stories won't get aggregated.

Creating Templates

Once you have ideas for the kinds of stories you want to create, you should create the templates for them. You can create a template for each of the three sizes and register them all ahead of time with one call (feed.registerTemplateBundle). This call returns an ID for the template bundle, and when you publish a Feed story, you just supply this template ID.

You can create and register as many template bundles as you want. After you register your templates, you publish user stories with feed.publishUserAction, specifying the template bundle ID at that time.

Mandatory Changes for Your Applications

Once the redesigned profiles go live, It will begin deprecating the existing Feed publishing API methods (feed.publishActionOfUser, feed.publishStoryToUser, and feed.publishTemplatizedAction). The existing API methods will continue to work during the transition period to the new profiles, so you can publish stories using either the existing API methods or feed.publishUserAction.

During the transition period, you should only publish the story once, so you should make use of the old methods or the new methods, but never both. If you are still using the existing Feed methods once the new profiles are launched, stories posted via those methods will only appear as one line stories to News Feed and the Feed tab on the new profiles.

Cut-off date will be announced soon - after that date, the existing methods will no longer be able publish stories to Feeds. You will have plenty of time to update your applications to use the new Feed API calls.

More detailed information is available on the Facebook Developer Wiki. You can read about Feed stories in general and the new API calls in particular.

The Sandbox For New Facebook Profile Design Is Now Open

Facebook today opened up it's beta sandbox for the new profile design. It is expected to come out of beta next month. Users have enough time to test the new design with their applications.

"We believe that the new design makes profiles cleaner and simpler, gives users more control over their profiles, and emphasizes recent and relevant information. We hope that as you try out the new application integration points, you'll start thinking of ways you can engage your users more meaningfully. We expect applications that engage users with rich content and great experiences will thrive with the new design.

We'll be announcing several related changes over the next few days. Plus we'll be giving you greater insight into the various integration points and user migration details, so stay tuned to this blog for more details." said Pete Bratach.

Accessing the Sandbox

The sandbox is located at www.new.facebook.com/profile.php.

To start testing, you need to download the new version of the Facebook PHP client library. It's available from

svn.facebook.com/svnroot/platform/clients/php/branches/redesign-changes/.

If you want to take the new design out for a test drive before changing your own applications, you can tinker with the MySmiley application. With it you can test all the new integration points (like create different-sized Feed stories, use the Publisher to create Feed content, add an application info section, place a box on the Boxes tab or left column, and create a custom application tab). You can use the test application at apps.new.facebook.com/mysmiley and view the application source code at svn.facebook.com/svnroot/platform/samples/smiley/.

Remember this is a beta sandbox for the new profile only, so some features are not necessarily enabled and others are still in flux. So you should expect some changes from what you see right now before this goes live. However, the features that are relatively stable and ready to test, explore, and comment on are the specific APIs and integration points, including:

• New Feed story sizes and types – including the template bundles
• Adding application tabs, and how application tabs function
• Publisher integration
• Setting up the new “main profile section” and adding those to profiles
• Application info sections

You can check the status of known issues and changes in the sandbox on the Facebook Developers Wiki.

Facebook acquires startup Parakey

Facebook, the Internet’s leading social utility, announced on july 19 that it has acquired Parakey, a startup run by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, co-founders of Mozilla Firefox, an open-source and non-profit web browser. Ross and Hewitt will join Facebook’s team to work on the development of Facebook Platform and the company’s website.

Ross and Hewitt are best known as the co-founders of Firefox, which has been downloaded more than 300 million times by people worldwide. Hewitt went on to build popular web development tools such as Firebug. In early 2006, Ross and Hewitt founded Parakey to build a platform bridging the gap between information on the web and the desktop.

About Parakey

Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop applications, these applications work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites, run quickly, and integrate with your computer and its devices. But like Web applications, they are also more creative, visually alluring, accessible from anywhere and potentially accessible by anyone. In short, Parakey apps are designed to be both useful and social, a combination that is too rare today.