Category Archives: Facebook

From “Launch” to “Garage”, techy event speaking.

Posted by Megan on January 28, 2008 2 comments

The Kinzin team spent the better part of their Friday evening at Launch Party Vancouver 03, showing off the application These Are My Kids. If you haven’t read or heard what this latest app is all about, please read more here.

It was a fantastic evening, to say the least. Michael, Frank, Julie and Paul held court all night to the many new fans wanting to find out more, take a look at the interface and have a spin for themselves. We are extremely grateful for the interest and enthusiasm for These Are My Kids from those of you who attended, and we very much appreciate the time that each person gave to learn more about it. It is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have such a great tech community come to such an event and to support the work that is being produced. It was inspiring and exciting.

A quick, but very necessary thank-you to the organizers of LPV: Maura, Danny, Dimitri; and to the sponsors as well: Sun Microsystems, Strutta, Techvibes, Layer7, QC Docs and Growthworks. This event is a treat. Looking forward to the next.

And onto the next…

Monday night, Michael Fergusson will be at the Vancouver Facebook Garage Event at the Vancouver Film School. There may just be a little room left on the event page, so add your name and come check out Vancouver’s newest and hottest Facebook applications. There are amazing things happening in this city, and this event shows off the best of what’s being developed for Facebook, and beyond…

And if you can’t make it out, just follow along on Miss 604’s live blogging rendition, and watch the night unfold before your very own monitor-watching, live-streaming eyes.

xposted from blog.kinzin.com

All You Parents Out There! Check Out Kinzin’s Latest Application: “These Are My Kids”

Posted by Megan on January 20, 2008 1 comment

Kinzin’s newest application, “These Are My Kids”, is ready. Almost. The latest app from Kinzin is currently in the Beta phase, soon to make the leap to full launch. The app is quite stunning as-is in every way, in design and technology – it’s easy, efficient, creative, useful, private and fun – but we’d like to perfect it, so we need your help and your feedback.

A Little Bit About The Application “These Are My Kids”:

In a few points, or less, here’s what the app is all about:

Resolves all of your photo headaches and problems of multiple publishing networks and accounts – it’s an all-in-one!
Easy access to your personal photos by invite only – no sign-ups, no accounts, no hassle for the end user (your defined friends)
It’s Private – Only those friends explicitly invited to view your photo books will be able to see your content
You’re creating beautiful photographic books of your children’s lives to keep forever (soon to be available to print as well!)
Photos and Comments are delivered to all of your loved ones with the greatest ease, inside of outside of Facebook, and even in the mail (coming soon!)

Add “These Are My Kids” here and let us know what you think! You can comment within the application (there is a prompt along the top of the app), or join the Beta Testers Group for the app and comment in the Discussion Board.

Joyent Accelerators Work: Kinzin’s Proof Is In The App

Posted by Megan on November 15, 2007 No comments

This week Joyent announced their new Facebook developers program, Joyent Accelerators. Kinzin is well acquainted with Joyent’s infrastructure – it’s what has made the scalability of the “Are You Normal?” Facebook application manageable and successful. The app has jumped to half a million users in a month, has been one of the top apps on the “Recently Popular” Facebook list (more than once), and continues to add tens of thousands new users every day. Joyent’s full case study and more details on the app can be found here.

Joyent Accelerators is “free, fast and scalable hosting”, as quoted by Facebook Senior Platform Manager, Dave Morin.

Joyent has partnered with Facebook and Dell to deliver this sophisticated, scalable, on-demand infrastructure. For developers, it means a quick and efficient launch of Facebook applications that are capable of scaling to millions of users – FOR FREE.

You can read plenty more about this announcement and partnership on a number of our technologist friends’ tech news sites: Read/Write Web, Innovation Creators, Rootly, Social media today, Information Week.

Thank-you to Kristie Wells, Mark Mayo and the Joyent Team.

Kinzin’s Paul Prescod At Vancouver’s First Facebook Developers Garage

Posted by Megan on October 24, 2007 No comments

xposted from Kinzin’s Blog.

Last night was all about the app.

Vancouver, or more recently referred to as “Techcouver”, held its’ first Facebook Developer Garage event downtown at the Vancouver Film School. The event was completely “sold-out” by over double the capacity of the space, so there wasn’t a seat to be had. Once the Nazi-tech guy made his way from the floor back to the booth for the main event to commence, people began to fill the isles and find space wherever they could. It was a packed house.

There were about 9 Facebook applications in all that were on display over the 3 hours. Each developer, or team of developers, grabbed the spotlight for a 10-minute overview of their respective app and covered any technical aspects worth mentioning and sharing, followed by a brief Q and A for each. David Morin, Senior Platform Manager for Facebook (nice title buddy) was meant to be joining us in the flesh for our inaugural evening, but had to cancel 48 hours in advance due to some “big meeting” at HQ. But he was kind enough to take a few minutes out to appear via Skype Video, as he said a few nice words, opened it up to the floor for some questions, when sadly, the connection was lost.

Paul Prescod, ‘DAD’ at Kinzin, shared the “Are You Normal?” app with the crowd. When he gave the current-users statistics (now over 114K in 3 short weeks), there was a gasp as a hush fell over the room. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But nonetheless, impressive stuff! Johnny Bufu and Boris Mann wrapped the night with a few words on the open web. Facebook? Open??

There is a complete breakdown of each presentation on the live blog post from Miss 604, and on Roland Tanglao’s Jaiku Channel.

Are You Normal? OVER 30K in 2 Weeks!

Posted by Megan on October 16, 2007 2 comments

Just wrapping week 2 since launch, and “Are You Normal?” is one of the fastest growing Facebook apps cookin’, from this northern hub of “Techcouver”. Recently added is a new, fresh design and more surveys will be added each week.
Kinzin wants to involve the online community and Facebook users, asking for topic suggestions on the quizzes. Here’s the x-post from the Kinzin Blog and how to submit your ideas:

Would you like to write for one of the fastest growing Facebook applications?

We are going to release a new quiz on our “Are You Normal?” application each week, and we’d like to get your brilliant and creatively entertaining input. Here’s the deal:

We regularly post topics to Upcoming Topics on our discussion board on our About Page and on the discussion board of the Kinzin Builders group
You create the quiz, suggesting questions and answers, being as normal, or not so normal, as you like (or you can suggest topics as well…)
We reward you and your creative savvy on our application and LINK to your personal Facebook profile, if that is kosher. If not, just let us know you’d rather remain unlinked.
You become part of this great story and community of a fun time well wasted with friends in this Facebook machine of “Are You Normal?”

I Got Kicked Off Of Facebook

Posted by Megan on October 12, 2007 9 comments

So I’ve been hit by the Facebook Nazis. “No Facebook foh YOO!”

And I got the boot with pretty minimal activity. I’ve heard about other people who have had similar experiences, but I was under the impression it was to do with blasting your whole contact list at once, hence the rule to invite only 10 friends a day into an application.

I was ‘facebooking’ a detailed note, work related, to about 15 people. Yes, I understand the “share on facebook” method, and yes I get you can forward one note to a lot of people. But I wanted my note to be BCC’ed. Something I don’t think Facebook has the capabilities of just yet. And if they do, boy did I miss that day at school. I’m assuming that they do have some sort of “make this private”, but I never dreamed a handful of notes would cause such a ruckus.

I threw open a bunch of tabs in Firefox, copied the note into all contacts and started hitting send rapid fire. Unbeknown to me, as each tab closed and the next note was sent, one after the other, I was quickly raising the red flag, agents were racing to their stations and bells were sounding all throughout FB HQ. After about the 11th shot, a big red box appeared with big red text and screamed at me: “You Have Been Kicked Off Of Facebook!!” Or, at least that’s what I saw. I think it read something like, “Your account has been terminated” or “Your life is over”. Something to that effect. (Should have grabbed that screen shot.)

Anyhow, I fired an email off to the support people and got a lovely note back saying my situation is being reviewed, with a case number and all. And so I wait. Feeling like a criminal. Perhaps now I can get back to those things I turfed aside due to my 2007 addiction.

Facebook App Are You Normal? Day One: 52% Normal

Posted by Megan on October 3, 2007 No comments

Ok all you weirdos and freaks out there on Facebook – get out there and take the Are You Normal? survey so I can at least seem a *tad* more normal! Please?

Here’s a cool Facebook Application, just launched today, released to the masses, that you should most certainly add and play with. I’ll tell you why you should:

It’s good, clean fun that’s entertaining and all about connecting with those people online you love (and love to poke fun at) the most: your close friends and family.

I’ve had a really great last several weeks. I’ve been working with the Kinzin team here in Vancouver to help market and promote this application, and you know what? It’s an easy thing to talk positively about because of what is at the heart of this App: a company that truly believes in working towards finding positive ways for families to connect online. This application is a quirky and whacky way of doing just that.

I had zero to do with building it, designing it, or even conceptualizing it; wish I had. But I do have a thing or two to do with the tail end of tweaking it, looking at what’s down the road, and spreading it out to the masses… and this is part of that.

And please, if you run into *ANY* issues, bugs, concerns: feedback is very much appreciated and welcomed anytime!!

megancole.org