Like many people, I can't be bothered using Facebook's mobile app. I live my life in the browser and don't need a battery-hungry, always listening, contact stealing app notifying me every five minutes. I check Facebook Messages when I want. If it's urgent, there are many better ways to contact me than Messenger. Until recently, […] Read More
Like a lot of you, my Facebook feed often fills up with dodgy adverts for discount sunglasses. In this case, Mark's account has been hacked and the spammers are tagging lots of his friends. The post then shows up on my feed as "look what your friend is up to!" Annoying. So, here's how to […] Read More
Last week I was on the In The Abstract podcast. I came up with a curious idea. If I were Tom Scott, I'd turn this into a performance piece - instead, here's a short and entirely fictional story. Facebook knew you were in love a long time before you did. It noticed you scrolling back […] Read More
Facebook rewrite URLs with Unicode in the path - this is not best practice and could be dangerous. It is possible to create a URL like http://bit.ly/😀 - the Unicode characters are valid in the path. The URL Encoded representation is : bit.ly/%F0%9F%98%80 Facebook mangles these URLs in such a way that it might be […] Read More
I've nothing against the Swedes. Lovely people. Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area. But I'm not from there. Neither, as far as I am aware, is Facebook. But Twitter seems to think so. When I share a link to Twitter on Facebook, this (sometimes) happens. And sometimes, I get this […] Read More
I got into an argument with a friend a few weeks ago. I was complaining that I really didn't like the spam that Facebook shoves into my newsfeed. His argument was - and I paraphrase... I don't mind the occasional advert - between the Farmville notifications and "inspirational" quotes, I barely notice them. For me, […] Read More
I'm really late to the party on this one - so this blog post is mostly an aide-mémoire. The web is built on three fundamental components: HTML - the structure of the page. CSS - how the page is styled. JavaScript - the interactivity. Typically, the website owner sets up the CSS to say links […] Read More
I've found (and disclosed) what I think is an interesting little security flaw in Facebook's Two-Factor Authentication usage. First thing's first, this isn't a show-stopping bug. It's more of a curiosity which shows how different providers treat the verification of Two-Factor Authentication. Details If you are a security conscious user, you should have set up […] Read More
Analysts estimates are always interesting to read - especially if you know the real statistics which they are trying to prophetize. Even when someone releases "official" statistics, they're usually hard to verify independently, and even harder to analyse by region. Benedict Evans - who I've had the pleasure of meeting at Mobile Monday - published […] Read More
I've moaned before about the crap adverts on social networks. Facebook has suddenly been getting a lot worse. Today they decided that it would be great to show me adverts for a steak restaurant. Which, would be fine, if I hadn't been vegetarian for the last 13 years... Facebook have been spamming my wall with […] Read More