You can export your photos, videos, friends, notes, messages and other information from Facebook easily. A week ago, my friend Heather asked me “How can I download my photos from Facebook?” and I had no answer. She did a little digging on her own and came up with the answer and it’s really quite simple. The best part is that you get more than just your photos.
How To Export From Facebook
While I was dreaming up ways to use third-party APIs to get photos out of Facebook, Heather found that everything can be downloaded in a few easy steps. That’s what I get for over-thinking it. If you want to export all of your information from Facebook, here’s all you have to do:
1. Go to your account settings – In the top right corner of Facebook, you’ll find an “Account” drop-down menu. When you click that, you will see an “Account Settings” option. Click that as well.
2. Click the Download link – At the bottom of your settings screen, you should find a link that reads, “Download a copy of your Facebook data”. Click it to get to the download page.
3. Click and confirm – There’s an obvious green “Download” button (as seen in the image above). Click it and then click it again when it shows up in a smaller box. This will get the process started.
4. Wait – Wait for a bit. The more photos and videos you have to export, the longer this could take.
5. Check your email – Eventually, you’ll get an email from Facebook. This will have your download link in it.
6. Download your stuff – The email will link you to a page with a download link. Click it and save the .zip file to your hard drive. My download was 105 MB and downloaded pretty fast, taking only about 60 seconds. Your results may vary.
That’s it. Once you’ve downloaded and unzipped the file, you’ll find a bunch of folders and some HTML files. Just click the index.html file and you can view all your wall posts, messages, notes, photos, and videos.
Thanks again to Heather for pointing that out. If you have a tip I should write about, just let me know.
Reviews are not uncommon on JoeTech.com and some reviews I get paid for. This is the story how a company called FutureMedia Studio is intent on making sure they don’t honor their business agreements.
For the uninitiated, here’s how paid reviews generally work: A company (or an agent company) contacts the blog about a paid review. A price is agreed upon and money is paid to the blog (or agent company). Then the review is completed and published. I make a point to personally use or try anything I review, whenever possible, in order to provide a complete and honest opinion based on actual experience. This takes a lot of time but is a necessary part of the process.
What I Get Paid For
One common misconception is that “paid” means “positive”. There may be a couple blogs that will guarantee a positive review, but I guarantee an honest opinion. When I provide a paid review, the payment is for my time and honest opinion. This was the case when I provided a generally positive Infinity Control iPhone game review as well as my even more lucrative Boost Mobile review, in which I devoted half the review to relaying my horrendous activation experience.
Bad Business With FutureMedia Studio
Historically, I’ve done well with a review agent company called IZEA and their review service, Social Spark, which has pioneered the paid review process. Now and then, companies skip the middle man and come directly to me for a review. Recently, I was emailed by a new company called Review Roster that brokers reviews for Android and IOS apps and decided to try the service out.
My first review opportunity with Review Roster was FutureMedia Studio’s iPhone and iPad app, Perfect Reader. I provided the review as agreed (seen here) and waited for payment. As a new paid review business, Review Roster had not been collecting payment before reviews were completed. I discovered this after they informed me that my payment was delayed due to trouble getting payment from FutureMedia Studio. Review Roster now collects payment in advance. What struck me as odd was that the app got some great remarks from me, so it couldn’t be that they were unhappy with the tone of the review (although that shouldn’t matter). As it turns out, it seems FutureMedia Studio just didn’t want to pay.
I keep pretty busy, so I set the experience aside, got assurance that payment for future reviews would be pre-collected, and provided two subsequent reviews for Review Roster. I was paid for these second and third reviews without much concern and it wasn’t until recently that I thought again about the Prefect Reader review while reviewing traffic logs. I decided to throw out a tweet to FMS and RR and see if I could provoke a resolution to the problem. Here’s what my tweet read:
Still curious why @perfectreader never paid for the @reviewroster review I completed. #badbusiness
Keep in mind, this is after several emails with Review Roster months before to resolve the issue quietly. Sometimes you need a megaphone to get a company’s attention. This was clearly the case with FutureMedia Studio as they replied a couple days later with the following:
Someone at Review Roster contacted Tim at FutureMedia Studio and eventually got a response that was emailed to me a couple days ago. After reading the response, I knew immediately that I would turn down the proposed resolution to my complaint, but I decided to think it over before I responded. Essentially, RR forwarded the offer Tim made:
“I’m ok to pay that invoice as it comes from our team member. but could you please ask JoeTech to remove the old review as I really don’t need it. In exchange, I’d like JoeTech to review our popular book – MS Office 2010 Professional Handbook…Otherwise, I am not paying.”
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. FutureMedia Studio acknowledges that they agreed to pay for a service that was provided, refuses to pay, and now wants me to just delete my hard work and do another review just to get paid for the first one. I replied via email with a resounding NO, of course, adding that the offer is just insulting. Holding payment for a provided service ransom to squeeze additional work out of me is bad business.
What do you think?
Am I wrong? Do you agree with me? Would you be insulted by this response? Chime in and let this company know what you think about how they conduct business.
NOTE: While Review Roster stumbled a little at first, they’ve always had great communication and worked with me to resolve this.
UPDATE 07.28.2011: This morning, I’ve been informed that payment was made for my work and that Tim fired the guy who originally initiated the work. This is a horrible outcome, in my opinion. It’s great that the payment was eventually made, but I was far past expecting the payment and and to fire someone else for the negative press Tim caused is wrong. If you’re the guy who got fired or if you want to hire the guy, email me at joe@joetech.com. Maybe I can help.
Have you ever wanted a car that none of your friends have? How about one that you helped design and build and is super rare? A car company by the name of Local Motors has combined web technology and real-world micro factories to provide us with the most interactive and unique car buying experience I’ve seen and they invited me to tour the Arizona micro factory and talk about how it all works.
The car shown above is LM’s Rally Fighter, the first in what Local Motors hopes will be a growing line of kick-ass cars that turn heads.
Design Your Dream Car Online
When asked, most people can tell you, without much hesitation, what their dream car is. Mine’s a Ferrari F430, but I have always loved the concept cars I see at the auto shows every year. Unfortunately, most of the concept cars remain just that… concepts. This is where Local Motors has found a niche.
Rather than creating concepts and never building anything, Local Motors decided to open the game up to the public to come up with the next winning car design. You start by joining the Local Motors website and if you’re creative enough, you can submit your own original car design. From the submitted designs, the community votes on what should be built. The most popular ideas then move on to co-creation, where the community helps decide the body, interior details, etc. Together, the community of site members design an awesome car from the ground up.
Even if you don’t plan to buy one, there’s plenty of incentive to join in and contribute. Local Motors hosts design contests in which the winners can win prizes or cash amounts up to $20,000, which is a great start towards buying the car you design or can just pay some bills.
Own One
When Local Motors decides to build one of the community designed cars, they begin accepting reservations. A reservation requires a $1,000 deposit, and gets your name on a list of future owners. When it’s your turn, you give them another deposit, this one for $5,000, to lock down your build date, and the remaining balance is due when you arrive to start building. After the two weekends of building, you get to take your car home with you.
At the time of this writing, the Rally Fighter, the first car available from Local Motors, is priced around $60,000, but I’m told this may go up with a move to higher-end parts being included next year. The cost, well above your standard sedan, buys you a car that looks like no other and is limited to only 2,000 built. To make your car even more unique, you’re encouraged to design a custom skin for your car. This can be accomplished solo or with the help of a Local Motors designer. This car is for the collector or enthusiast who wants something truly unique.
Get Your Hands Dirty
For some, the experience is pretty much complete at the time of purchase. For others, a big part of the experience is building the car yourself. While you don’t have to spend weeks painstakingly sweating over every little nut and bolt or even weld, part of your purchase is the experience of the build, itself. Over two three-day weekends and with the assistance of a builder, you put it all together in a Local Motors micro factory.
Local Motors provides a cafeteria, RV parking, the space, parts, and tools, and all you bring is some elbow grease and a desire to be immersed in the process. They encourage you to bring a friend, too, to help build and join in the experience.
From the outside, it looks like just a big warehouse with a car painted on the side, but inside is a well-lit, air-conditioned shop with all the tools and tech needed to get the job done. In addition to the human help, there’s also a couple large screens connected to computers with a specialized wiki detailing every step for your particular car.
Conclusions
As huge as the Rally Fighter is, it’s not very practical, but would make a great toy. The next car, I’m told, will be an electric vehicle, and I’m hoping it will be based on the Miami Roadster. For the auto enthusiast, this is a great package and unique experience, but the cost will leave the rest of us designing.
I’ve reviewed iPhone apps here, but I’ve secretly wanted to be on the other side of the fence. As a developer, I’ve looked up what I would have to do and wondered how it would turn out. What I didn’t think about was what I shouldn’t do and other pitfalls to watch out for when developing an app. I just got this ebook, How Not To Write An App, emailed to me and it answers questions I didn’t know to ask.
Avoid App Development Mistakes
The title of this book tells a lot about what you’ll find in it, but the specifics go a lot deeper. Detailing everything from what you should do to what you shouldn’t, Rodney D. Cambridge provides the aspiring app developer with the one thing that a first time developer can’t buy: experience. To give you an idea of what you can find in the book, Rodney permitted me to share a section of one of the book’s chapters.
Think outside the box
For some people, creative thinking comes easy. If you are accustomed to ‘thinking outside the box’ then chances are you can come up with a worthwhile idea for a smartphone app. If thinking outside the box is not your thing, then you’ve got a difficult task ahead of you.
With over 350,000 apps in Apple’s App store, over 200,000 in the Android Marketplace, 10,000 in the Windows Marketplace, etc. yours has got to be something special to stand out. Don’t just write ‘another (insert your own generic app type here) app’; that won’t get you many column inches. To coin that old Apple marketing term, Think different. Think unique, but also think obvious. Many of the successful apps in the app store are pretty simple in nature, not too complex and are the type of thing that gets people saying “I wish I’d thought of that!”
Well here’s your chance. The more thought you put into your app in these early stages, the more chance there is of you producing something worthwhile and something that’s capable of generating buzz in the media as well as interest in your potential customer base, which will hopefully translate into a successful launch of your app.
Make me laugh
Looking at the types of apps which go viral extremely quickly, it’s obvious that apps that make people laugh are constantly at the top of the charts. Everyone loves a laugh and so if you’re not quite sure of the app you want to write or the direction you want to go down, give some serious thought into this area. But remember – farting apps are so passé now, darling. So don’t even go there.
Apps that make people laugh are more likely to spread virally by Social networks and services such as Twitter and Facebook, driven by the feel good factor they provide. If you believe you have what it takes then what are you waiting for?
Win A Copy
The cost of this ebook isn’t high at all, but there’s no better price than free, so I’m giving away three copies. The ebook sells for $4.99, so instead of cash, I’m looking for 5 total comments, shares, +1s or tweets per copy. Any combination will do. For example, let’s say you share a link to this post on Google Plus (worth 1) and Facebook (worth 1). If you get one comment on Facebook (worth 1) and two +1′s on Google Plus (worth 2), that’s 5 social points and a free ebook for you. If you post to Facebook and get 4 comments, that’s good enough, too. They’re first come, first served, but if there’s enough participation, I might give out more copies.
Buy A Copy
If you don’t want to wait, you can buy a copy right away. It’s $4.99 and after reading it, I can say it’s worth every penny to anyone looking to build and market an app for iPhone or other platforms.
