Event based Atlas tracking

So I ran into this issue where there was absolutely no documentation on how to handle Atlas tracking on non-page-load events. Typically Atlas would provide a tracking sheet with code snippets that you can add to your page. This is all great except these drop in code snippets really only fire at page load and not on an event.

What I originally received:

To turn this into an event based tracking tag you will need to use JavaScript and add the following:


function fireAtlasActionTag(uniqueActionTagCode) {
var atlasJavascriptTag = document.createElement('script');
atlasJavascriptTag.type = 'text/javascript';
atlasJavascriptTag.src = 'http://view.atdmt.com/jaction/' + uniqueActionTagCode;
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(atlasJavascriptTag);
}


and finally to call the tracking tag:


fireAtlasActionTag('SOME_TRACKING_TAG');


Facebook Authentication failing to pop up

Using the Facebook JavaScript SDK for authentication things have recently changed to OAuth 2.0.

Calls to FB.getLoginStatus are now different.

Old Method

FB.getLoginStatus(function(response) {
if (response.authResponse) {
// logged in and connected user, someone you know

} else {
}
}


New Method

FB.getLoginStatus(function(response) {
if (response.status === 'connected') {
// the user is logged in and connected to your
// app, and response.authResponse supplies
// the user's ID, a valid access token, a signed
// request, and the time the access token
// and signed request each expire
var uid = response.authResponse.userID;
var accessToken = response.authResponse.accessToken;
} else if (response.status === 'not_authorized') {
// the user is logged in to Facebook,
//but not connected to the app
} else {
// the user isn't even logged in to Facebook.
}
});


Posting to a user’s wall

Use the feed dialog

• Post to viewing user’s wall
• Use a friend-selector – requires page refresh – to send message directly to friend of viewing user
• Attempting to capture the data prior to page refresh has not worked thus far – still trying to figure this one out
• Unable to tag user’s in posts

Use the Graph API

• Requires user permission and requested extended permissions for stream publishing
• Seems that tagging MAY be possible via Graph API – see: facebook developer forum and tag user and doesnt seem to work
• Would post behind the scenes and not show a feed dialog

Developing on Facebook is Difficult

Changes
Facebook is constantly going through revisions and constantly dealing with new bugs that arise within their system. Developers back in the day had only one option for developing within Facebook. That was FBML which is a proprietary language specific to Facebook. In addition, Facebook also released FBJS into the wild which was a ultra trimmed down Javascript library for use in Facebook applications and application tabs.

EOL for certain code
In 2009 Facebook announced they would be deprecating FBML application tab support. They had already deprecated canvas applications in FBML a while prior. The interesting thing is that some FBML tags have been migrated to XFBML while others have not. Things such as fb:multi-friend-selector have not been completely ported to XFBML (unknown whether they ever will) and require the use of a clunky serverFbml tag.

Lack of documentation
Documentation on Facebook has been lacking and a point of emphasis for them currently. Functions are not documented and others are still buggy even though they are listed. The best resource for help on Facebook isn’t even their forum because it is dead, but rather Stack Overflow

How to: Enable NSZombie in Xcode 4

NSZombies are a great way for tracking down premature release of objects while coding Objective C. Here’s quickest way to enabling them:

Then uncheck the top check box so that you can add Environmental Variables then add NSZombiesEnabled and set its value to YES

UINavigationController + UIViewController + UITableView

For the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out how to do something similar to how Contacts on the iPhone handles display. I initially thought it was a highly customized UITableViewController but now I’ve figured out a way to do it with a UIViewController and an embedded UITableView.

I will post a tutorial shortly but here are a few screenshots.

Outklouted the CTO

Klout Kills…. but what it kills you decide.

It seems that klout.com has taken over our department. CTO + Klout have joined forces to potentially decrease productivity in the office by who knows how much. Me posting this post @ 10am on a Thursday also reaffirms that fact.

Is this scary? Yes. Does this mean we are less productive? Who knows. I’m no scientist. But below you can see my coworkers and myself and I have outlined the work hours in red.

Klout? How do I increase my Klout score?!

A little over a week ago the CTO asked me if I knew what my klout score was. When he first mentioned it I thought it was some sort of search engine that determined your online presence. What Klout really is is a measurement for your Twitter, facebook and (soon to be added) Linkedin social presence.

Klout doesn’t care that you have 1000s of followers. See: http://twitter.com/anthony He has a high number of followers but if you don’t get responses your klout score will stay low. http://klout.com/anthony

Klout doesn’t seem to care if you post often. You could post 100s of tweets a day, if no one reacts to your post then you’re actually diluting/decreasing your klout score. (Eg. http://twitter.com/SumoTheShibaInu – my friend’s dog twitter account has plenty of posts but no RTs or @mentions)

The biggest scorer is the RT and @mentions. A good example of this is my coworker’s twitter account which he hasn’t used in years. He doesn’t have much of a reach with only 42 followers. However, if you post quality content people will Retweet or mention you and thus interact with the content you’ve created. http://twitter.com/dhezl

The next month or so I will attempt to increase my social media influence and see where this experiment goes and will post here again with my findings.

Facebook Pages: Customized content for fans

Facebook provides FBML that allows you to serve content to fans by using fb:visible-to-connection

The issue with this solution is that there is no solid way of serving content to non fans. If you have noticed around facebook more and more Pages are serving content specifically asking fans to fan the page before retrieving the content. Like these following examples:

Gap

Chase – note how there are multiple locations that become activated after liking

Microsoft

Solution
This has existed for a while now and currently it is about to becoming deprecated by facebook. Facebook understands the importance of this so it seems that even though new functionality is disabling its function, facebook will work to keep this feature:

$_POST['fb_sig_is_fan'];

This will return a true or false depending on the current viewers fan status. The only problem with this solution is that it will not work with OAuth enabled. You must go into your application’s Advanced settings and disable it.