Introducing “Facebook Desktop” – A Lightweight, Unobtrusive Notification Engine for Facebook Built on Adobe AIR
Disclaimer: Facebook Desktop is a personal project. It is not sponsored by or affiliated with either Adobe® or Facebook®.
Once upon a time, I was involved in a project here at Adobe called “Project San Dimas“. That project eventually grew into a full-fledged product called “eBay Desktop” which enjoyed some impressive success. I was lucky enough to be part of the protyping, designing, and launching of the very first version, and it was very exciting. More recently, I’ve thought about doing something similar. Introducing, “Facebook Desktop“!
So, what is Facebook Desktop?
Facebook Desktop is a notification engine that gives you updates about your Facebook friends in real-time! Whenever someone posts a story, comments on your photo, tags you in a status-update, whatever…Facebook Desktop will let you know. It gives unobtrusive messenger-style toast messages whenever you have a notification.
Why build Facebook Desktop?
I moved away from my home in Vancouver for work and so Facebook has been a great tool to help keep me in touch with everyone. I found, though, that the browser metaphor for the Facebook “stream” just wasn’t working for me. I didn’t like refreshing my home page constantly to see what people were up to. I also didn’t like keeping a browser open whenever I wanted to read some of my friends posts. So, I made a simple AIR app that hits the Facebook APIs, grabs the latest posts, and delivers them to me in an unobtrusive way. I ended up finding it so useful, I started adding more and more features, like the ability to pause/resume, replay missed notifications, update my status, etc. Eventually, I was encouraged by a friend to polish it up and release it for others to use, and so here we are!
Anyways, if you’re interested in trying it out, install it here:
http://www.facebookdesktop.com/
You can also keep up with the project and reach out to me on any of our community pages:
- Facebook Page – http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=95615112563
- Twitter Page – http://www.twitter.com/facebookdesktop/
And definitely, let me know what you think! Your feedback helps me make Facebook Desktop better and better. Until next time, happy Facebook’ing ;)
Charles