Good times at Facebook Developer Garage

On Monday night I hit up the local Facebook Developer Garage to demo an as yet unreleased EQO Facebook project called Vibrator. It was good times and really cool to hear the guys behind such widely installed apps as Hockey Pool and Are You Normal? share their knowledge. I definitely took something away from them towards making our app better. I also realized that I have an injured Sidney Crosby on my Hockey Pool roster...

My favorite app presented was Eat-a-Rama, a Yelp-style Google Maps mashup for restaurant ratings. It shows you restaurants within the map you've chosen and also shows ratings and reviews for each restaurant. The killer feature here is the ability to see what restaurants your friends have rated, adding an element of trust. I added the app as soon as I got home. The interface of the app is very slick and user intuitive, which was nice when it came to adding my favorite restaurants to their listings. My three favorite restaurants near my house weren't listed yet, weird. Don't worry folks, I've added the only three good restaurants in Cloverdale. The good news is you now know where to eat if you are ever in the hood. The bad news is that you would be in Cloverdale.

Another interesting presentation was that by Garth Shoemaker. His app, I'm Reading, was pretty sweet. I wasn't really into it because I get enough recommendations from people I talk to in real life that my "to read" pile is substantially large. I also don't need to show everyone how smart I am through books I've read, which is only moderately smart seeing as I count Harry Potter amongst my favorites. What really got me interested in this guy was his "protect the internet" rant urging us to be good netizens. He likened apps like Vampires and Zombies to the scourge of the internet. He urged us to be conscientious when releasing Facebook applications that might annoy him and other self righteous computing science graduate students. I imagine he wasn't a fan of Vibrator either. Personally I get a kick out of simple apps that are really just a bit of fun. Sending a SuperPoke! or biting a chump is a social interaction I liken to a physical nod, smile, or shove. These acts means something and if people want to do digitally do such things to eachother, who is this guy to say they shouldn't?

When it came time to present Vibrator I was rather more nervous than usually I would be in such situations. I generally consider developers to be amongst the smartest people in the world and I find presenting our app to them a bit intimidating. My nerves weren't aided by the error Facebook tossed me the first time I tried to do anything. I'm convinced it was Facebook's fault and not ours... The next action I took was error free, no harm no foul. Vibrator was received with the usual laughs and skepticism, but the proof will be in how many people end up using it. I hope lots.

All in all it was a good night. I learned much from the other presenters and from presenting myself. It was great to see the Handi guys, who helped build Vibrator, and ex EQOer Ash of PeerGlobe out there. Miss604 has a great run down of the whole night on her blog; I also was quite hungry. Looking forward to the next one...

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist