Ken's Tech Tips

Facebook have just made it possible to access Facebook Chat service from desktop and mobile instant messaging clients. The new service is called “Facebook Chat Everywhere” and means you can instant message your friends even when your browser and the Facebook website are closed.

How does it work?

Previously Facebook Chat was only accessible through Facebook.com. The service is well known for being unreliable and always breaking when it was most needed!

Facebook have now launched a new interface to the Facebook Chat service, implementing the Jabber/XMPP protocol. The fantastic thing about this new interface is that you can now use any Jabber-supporting instant messaging programme to access Facebook Chat. Your contact list and groups are kept synchronised with the Facebook website. Your chats are even kept in sync with the Facebook website: any messages you send will appear on Facebook.com Chat too.

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photo: Lincolnian

Some fascinating research by mobile communications company O2 found that the six degrees of separation (the theory everyone in the world can be linked in six steps) have fallen to just three due to modern telecommunications and social networking. However, instead of simply looking at the networks of friends, family and work, O2′s study also considers shared interest networks.

All respondents were asked to make contact with an unknown person from destinations selected at random from across the globe using only personal connections. By using their shared interest networks the participants were able, on average, to make the connection in three person-to-person links.

For example, one of the respondents Katrina, 27 from Brighton, is a classical musician and leads a jazz band. She was asked to make contact with a Japanese jazz singer, Natsuo Murakami, halfway across the world. She contacted her record producer in Berlin via an email. He called his opposite number in Tokyo who had a register of all jazz singers in the country. Therefore making the link from Katrina to Natsuo in three personal steps.

According to O2, email and mobile phones had the most significant impact in reducing the degrees of separation to three.

photo: saschaaa

Great research. I must admit I’ve been astounded by some connections I’ve discovered over the last year or two. My summer job boss happened to be one of my physics tutor’s PHD supervisors. My previous boss was the PHD supervisor of one of my physics teachers when they were at university a hundred miles away. My previous boss was also working with one of my university astronomy lecturers. A flatmate of one of my best friends at university (about 250 miles away) happens to be a friend of mine and they certainly didn’t meet each another through me!.

Thinking about my own networks – having met many politicians including Boris Johnson, I’m no more than two steps away from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, the Queen and so on. I certainly have Vladimir Putin, George Bush and Sarkozy in my three degrees of separation. Celebrity wise: I’m no more than two degrees of separation from Kylie Minogue, Tim Henman, Hayden Panettiere, Emma Watson, David Tennant… again, it’s quite concievable that a large number of actors and celebrities are within my three degrees. Pretty amazing.

photo: David Prior

I think it’s fascinating how instant messaging and SMS text messaging is changing the way that we write. The general consensus is that they’re bad for language.

In February of this year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said (though presumbly in French), “Look at what text-messaging is doing to the French language. If we let things go, in a few years we will have trouble understanding each other.”

SMS text messages have a limit of 160 characters and teenagers send billions of them every month and it’s increasing by a good 10% every month.

IM must also have some interesting effects on language. According to an article at LiveScience:

But a recent study of IM-ing by college students found that the communication was more formal – in use of vocabulary and abbreviations – than might be expected in a speech-like medium. The research also uncovered significant differences in how men and women use the medium.

… When divided along gender lines, the messages between females were more formal – with fewer contractions and better punctuation – than those between males.

“The female IM looks more like a written genre, while the male IM looks more like a spoken genre,” Baron told LiveScience in a telephone interview.

Overall, though, the messages surprised Baron with their level of linguistic sophistication – considering that IM gives the impression that it is something you do “as fast as you can,” she said.

photo: fazen

It’s an interesting debate to be had over whether this is a good thing for language or not. There are those who will say that we should communicate in the letter of the Queen’s English. It’s the way that English is meant to be.

The opposite argument is that language exists simply as a way to communicate: there is nothing wrong with inventing new words and new ways to communicate in more efficient and concise ways.

I’m personally a fan of the second view. Language simply evolves in a way which makes it as efficient and useful as possible, hence reducing the costs associated with communicating and the possible ambiguity which could result from using older and less precise language. Science and technology are examples of fields where we always coin new terms: how could we describe a “podcast” using the Shakespearean English?

What is certainly true is that IM allows us to communicate in a much more efficient way. I noticed yesterday that I had six concurrent IM conversations going on at once and within each conversation we often had several threads of discussion going on. This is something only the medium of IM would allow; it is impossible to have several conversations at once in real life, let alone be talking about multiple different things in each one.

Certainly, I think IM and SMS have led to large changes in the ways that people communicate. Many people seem to disapprove of it, but are they the same people who don’t like using computers and technology? Will we really reach the point where we no longer understand each another?

I’ve noticed that this evening some mystery white boxes have begun to appear in Windows Live Messenger beneath display pictures. It’s just a strange white square which doesn’t seem to do anything.

Why am I making a post about such a seemingly banal thing you ask? Well…

It’s not in all conversation windows. And I’ve heard that certain people using Windows Live Messenger 9 see a Microsoft Office icon rather than a blank square.

The reason why this is possibly significant is because it could hint that Microsoft is launching a way for people to collaborate on Microsoft Office documents through Windows Live Messenger. A way to collaborate on work through WLM and Office certainly seems a lot more natural than using Google Docs.

I had a phase where I developed a few small applications which integrated with Windows Live Messenger and there was definitely a hint of future Office integration in there. In the “What am I listening to?” music feature, changing one argument in the API function call would give you the Office logo instead in the message

My prediction is that Microsoft is just about to launch a feature where you can collaborate on documents. The only thing is there doesn’t seem to be any logic in which contacts the white box appears with. I thought it might have been visible for people who used Office 2007 but that doesn’t seem to be the case, nor does it seem to matter whether the other person has a copy of Office running.

Watch this space…

photo: jenn_jenn

A few years ago, Microsoft introduced the ability to “hide” on Appear Offline on MSN Messenger and to keep talking to people. This is quite a useful feature for the anti-social types who really don’t want anybody to talk to them!

I’ve noticed some interesting trends since this feature has been introduced. The people who used to have their status stuck on “away” now use appear offline. This is perhaps frustrating when you then end up calling or texting at extortionate rates your friend instead whilst you’re actually both sitting at your computer!

The reason why people use “appear offline” is so they can be selective about who they talk to. Fair enough. But when other people also use “appear offline”, it doesn’t work. This could be illustrated using a bit of game theory.

Initially, lets say that both persons A and B gain 2 units of utility from being online in MSN Messenger. This utility could be in many forms: pleasure gained from sharing gossip, money saved in not having to text or time saved. The exact form of the utility isn’t important.

Let’s go into hiding… 

photo: striatic

Now lets say Person A decides to “Appear Offline” but Person B is still “Online”. Person A will only talk to Person B when it is beneficial to him. Person A will still gossip with Person B but only in times convenient to himself and when he’s stuck on his particle physics essay, he can still see when Person B is online and get help from him. For this reason, Person A’s utility increases from 2 to 3.

But Person B won’t derive any utility. When he needs somebody to talk to, or has run into a brick wall upgrading to Service Pack 3, he won’t be able to get through to Person A on MSN Messenger. Instead, he might end up calling or find a more sociable person to talk to! Hence Person B derives no utility from this arrangement.

Notice that the payoffs are symmetrical. If Person B decides to “Appear Offline” but Person A doesn’t, Person B will gain 3 units of utility whilst Person A will gain nil.

The fourth possible situation is when both Persons A and B decide to “Appear Offline”. Neither persons derives any utility from this arrangement as they’ll never talk to each another. They might as well actually be offline.

The best arrangement 

photo: J. Random

As we can see, in this analysis the best possible outcome is that both persons A and B are online. They both derive 2 units of utility from this arrangement and 4 units of utility are gained in total.

Person A or person B could seek to increase the utility they gain by appearing offline. This increases their own utility to 3 units. Would they do this in reality? Rationally, probably yes.

If person A decided to stay “online”, person B would gain 2 units of utility from staying online and 3 units from appearing offline. So in this situation, person B should appear offline to maximise their own payoff.

If person A decided to “appear offline”, person B gains no utility either way. So it really doesn’t matter whether person B stays online or appears offline. But they don’t lose any utility by appearing offline.

By considering all the possible outcomes, person B will rationally choose to appear offline to maximise their payoff. As the situation is symmetrical, person A should also rationally choose to appear offline. The outcome? Both persons A and B “appear offline” and nobody gains any utility.

Back to the real world…

In this discussion and game theory model, I’ve abstracted from reality. Of course, it isn’t true that everybody on MSN Messenger appears offline these days. But I will say that amongst my contact list, I know quite a few people do and it has lead to some annoying situations. I’m even guilty of “appearing offline” on many occasions without realising the person I want to talk to is also appearing offline and waiting for me to come online.

Facebook Chat is currently being launched – it has been rolled out to the first networks this morning according to Inside Facebook. I previously reported on this and linked to a video which showed Facebook Chat in operation.

From the screenshots on Inside Facebook, it looks like a fairly simple browser-based IM client which works very similarly to Gmail Chat. There is a bit of convergence between Facebook and Gmail in that both try to build a browser-based IM system on existing social networks and both are planning or have implemented Jabber/XMPP.

It looks like a really nice way to communicate and quite a few people have said that this will encourage them to leave Facebook open all day. Chat API is set to be added in a future update to Facebook chat (applications can’t integrate with it yet).

I’d be really interested in hearing what people think of Facebook Chat when it’s rolled out to their account. I’m quite convinced that Facebook will become a major player in IM simply because of the quality of the friends list. But I could be wrong; it may simply be more a reflection on how I use Facebook than others.

I love instant messaging for it’s speed, low costs and ease of keeping in touch with others. But here’s my wishlist:

• Facebook Friend List: The main reason I use MSN Messenger because all of my friends live on it. Not because MSN is a superior network; in fact it can often be frustrating when the MSN network goes down across the world. It really doesn’t matter how technically superior your protocol or client may be – it’s whether you can actually get the job done: to chat with the people you want to. Saying that, my friends list does not live on MSN – in fact my MSN contact list is a small subset. Instead, it lives on Facebook. For me, the perfect IM client would allow me to everybody on my friends list – not just those on the MSN list. So support for the Facebook Friends list.
• Distributed Network: Nothing is more frustrating than MSN Messenger downtime. It’s true that in many ways it’s positive: I wouldn’t be surprised if GDP and grades would double overnight if MSN Messenger went down. But there are the times you really need it and it’s just not working. Jabber/XMPP has a distributed network but it falls short on the lack of a decent client and users.
• Integration with Social Web: I often get invites to events via Facebook these days and many of my friends also maintain blogs or “Twitters”. It would be great for these to be integrated into IM: after all IM is a social utility.
• Selectively Online: Until recently, it has been impossible to talk to people on MSN Messenger without first coming online. That means when you just want a bit of help with your maths homework on matrix transformation, you open yourself up to conversations with the people you met at summer camp five years ago or a distant cousin, who as much as you’d love to chat to, the assignment is due in in a couple of hours. It’s why college students both love and hate IM as it is built for procrastination. These days, you can “appear offline” in order to achieve the same effect, but wouldn’t it be great if there was some way of appearing online to just your maths class?
• Smarter Statuses: You might be reading about the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands or the history of the Circle Line on the London Underground. Or perhaps you’re filling in a tax return online and setting up direct debits on your bank website. In the first case, you probably don’t mind being distracted, but in the second case it could be a costly distraction. It would be fantastic if a smarter IM programme could try and work out whether you want to be distracted. If I’m working on a 10,000-word essay due in tomorrow morning, the IM programme could be more subtle: silencing alerts and displaying messages as a system tray icon rather than a flashing taskbar item perhaps.

The Economist runs a fantastic article this week about online social networks. The article compares online social networks today to web-based email services last decade.

I think it’s interesting how Facebook isn’t actually worth much; the biggest asset of Facebook perhaps is the social graph. This is the “web” of connection between different people. I’ve discussed this in the past, my online social graph lives on Facebook. This is why I would instantly switch to an IM client which utilised Facebook’s social graph with a seamless interface to other IM networks.

But it is true that the quality of social graphs tend to decrease over time. It takes time and effort to update your social graph which nobody does. I’ve actually seen it in my usage of Facebook applications. Some applications will ask you questions about your friends and probably more often than not, I barely even know the person it’s asking me about.

But it looks like the guys at Mozilla Thunderbird have a fantastic new vision for e-mail as an online social network:

“E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network,” says David Ascher, who manages Thunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail application, for the Mozilla Foundation, which also oversees the popular Firefox web browser.

That is because the extended in-box contains invaluable and dynamically updated information about human connections. On Facebook, a social graph notoriously deteriorates after the initial thrill of finding old friends from school wears off. By contrast, an e-mail account has access to the entire address book and can infer information from the frequency and intensity of contact as it occurs. Joe gets e-mails from Jack and Jane, but opens only Jane’s; Joe has Jane in his calendar tomorrow, and is instant-messaging with her right now; Joe tagged Jack “work only” in his address book. Perhaps Joe’s party photos should be visible to Jane, but not Jack.

He goes on to talk about privacy:

This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.

From Inside Facebook, “Facebook chat launching in the coming weeks. We’re opening up a new communication channel and enable real time conversation on the site.”

The Chat UI appears at the bottom; looks and works pretty similar to Gmail Chat. You can also pop conversations out into new windows, and possibly in the future there will be Jabber support as well as on-site messaging.

If Facebook could exploit the contents of your MSN/Yahoo/AIM address fields to build a seamless interface to these IM systems but using Facebook friend list, this would be an instant killer app. As it stands, I reckon Facebook IM would probably displace a good proportion of my IM usage.

People across the world have been reporting that Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail and Windows Live sign-on is down across the world. Web Messenger also seems to be down, although Live Search still works.

I get the following message:

We were unable to sign you into Windows Live Messenger at this time. Please try again later.”

Don’t worry, it’s not you… its Microsoft! It does make me wonder whether we put too much trust in Microsoft and one centralised IM server – maybe something decentralised like Jabber is a much better way forward, especially with critical and important IM.

Oddly enough, I found out about the downtime when I saw the traffic from my blog doubling in one page and a few hundred pageviews on one of my old blog posts about MSN Messenger Downtime.

In the mean time, it’s a fantastic time to catch up on work and those tax returns