Without being too braggy I know our work is more than decent enough to run with the big dogs: it’s just so that reaching everybody is a hard job. It’s also noteworthy that not everybody you know is a fan of your work. The trick is too find all the people that would like your work and let them like your page.

A few things that have helped our cause are these:

Put it on your own website/mailsignature/msn window
Kind of logical, but often overlooked. Your friends and readers will only find it logical that there are links to your own company website. It’s what you do. As long as you do not jam it in their throat they will not take offence.

Invite your subscribers
If you have an email base which you use to send newsletters, let them know about it with a small infoblock. Most likely the receivers have Facebook and are more than happy to like your page to get more news from you.

Create an attractive page
Make sure your page looks okay: nice logo in the profile picture area, fangate that explains what you do and what you can offer, relevant information, well-designed and easy to understand subpages, etc… you could even ask us to do it for you.

Ask already-likers to join in on the quest for more likes
Why not organize an online “contest” that asks the users to tag your brand in their pictures? It generates buzz on their wall which might lead to more likes. If people see your brand on Facebook and like the product they will like your page aswell. You could do small contests, give-aways, … the fangate (ex.: like us and get the chance…) makes sure they like the page before they see the contest information.

Make a small print ad about the page in real life
A small sign in your office/store reminds the people that you have a Facebook page: if they remember this while they’re browsing Facebook they might add your page to their likes.


The growth will offcourse depend on what kind of company/product you try to like, but these small things could already help alot. If the people don’t know about it, they won’t be able to like it.

- one variable that represents a day (milliseconds times seconds times minutes times hours)
- two dates turned to milliseconds by “getTime()”
- the difference between those milliseconds

The result of that gets divided by the day in milliseconds and voila: a between days counter!

private function getDaysBetweenDates(date1:Date,date2:Date):int {
	var durationDay:Number = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24
	var date1InMilli:Number = date1.getTime();
	var date2InMilli:Number = date2.getTime();		    
	var differenceInMilli:Number = Math.abs(date1InMilli - date2InMilli)		    
	return Math.round(differenceInMilli_ms/durationDay);
}

<?php
 
require 'facebook.php';
 
$app_id = "your_app_id_here"; 
$app_secret = "your_app_secret_here";
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
        'appId' => $app_id,
        'secret' => $app_secret,
        'cookie' => true
));

After this all we really need is a parameter that tells us if a visitor likes the page he’s viewing or not. You can find this in the signed_request object, a Facebook object that holds various information about the page and the user. Get that object and read out the page_liked parameter:

<?php
$signed_request = $facebook->getSignedRequest();
 
$like_status = $signed_request["page"]["liked"];

When we have the like status inside a variable the rest is easy, a simple if statement will give us the ability to feed the visitor two content pages: one if the user doesn’t like our page yet and one if the user does like our page. That’s about it: easy peasy lemon squeezy! Just don’t forget to close the php code after the if and you’re all set:

if ($like_status) {
echo "<div style='margin-top:0px; position: absolute; top:0px;left:0px; width:520px; height:750px;'>
    <iframe src='HTTP://_THE_PAGE_THAT_NEEDS_TO_BE_SHOWN_WHEN_PEOPLE_LIKE' width='520' height='751' frameborder='0' scrolling='no'></iframe>
</div>";
} else {
echo "<div style='margin-top:0px; position: absolute; top:0px;left:0px; width:520px; height:750px;'>
  <iframe src='HTTP://_THE_PAGE_THAT_NEEDS_TO_BE_SHOWN_WHEN_PEOPLE_DONT_LIKE' width='520' height='751' frameborder='0' scrolling='no'></iframe>
</div>";
}
 
?>

Online you should now have atleast four files:

- the facebook.php file
- the fangate php file (index.php for instance)
- the file that people see when they’re not a fan yet
- the file that people see when they’re a fan

It’s that easy, really: so open up your favourite texteditor and start fan-gating away!

var APP_ID = "my_app_id_that_you_don't_get";
var REDIRECT_URI = "YOUR_PAGE_HERE";
var PERMS = "publish_stream"; //comma separated list, I only need publish

Now this will only work for one fan page, since we hardcode the fan page in the redirect uri. if others add the application to their page they will be redirected to your page instead of their own. Totally cool for you, but not so user-friendly. Offcourse, I have a solution for that too:

var APP_ID = "my_app_id_that_you_don't_get";
var REDIRECT_URI = document.location.href;
var PERMS = "publish_stream";

Much thanks goes out to my loyal testrabbit: Artcore Society‘s own Robby Carlier.

note: Accessing another domain from within an IFRAME is a security violation and will not be accepted by most browsers. You should disregard the last portion for now and insert the REDIRECT_URI hardcoded. I’ll look for a solution and post my findings.

- Giving back to the community and receiving eternal internet fame.
- Getting answers on questions that should be simple to solve but take me hours because some people simply neglect to document their code/api.

So, keep an eye open for Artcore news, snippets and examples. Oh, and like us on Facebook, too.

Cuz we’re totally kewl.

Check my link out over at the FPO blog.

My focus is expanding:
Where I was used to developing flash content for the interweb I now feel the need to write stuff for mobile devices aswell. I bought a HTC desire (phone) a while ago and I love it (for as far you can love a phone, ofcourse). It is now running android 2.2 (Froyo) which supports flash 10, meaning: a decent flash version for mobile!

I automatically started to try out some of the flash sites I developed for the web (aah, curiosity!) on my phone and even when it’s ment to just work in a browser it works great on the phone aswell, which is offcourse nothing less than awesome!

Show me some stuff!
Yeah yeah, ofcourse you want to see some stuff. Well, something not developed by me but still cool nonetheless: remote droid. What is it, you say? Well, it’s a mouse and keyboard for your computer ON your phone! Exciting, no?

It’s actually really easy: you download the desktop computer app/laptop app here, unzip it and double-click the “RemoteDroidServer.jar” file (you need a java runtime environment for that, which you can download here). Assuming you have an internet connection the app opens and says something like the following screenshot:

On your Android phone you just open up the marketplace and look for an app called “remoteDroid”. Installing it takes less than a minute and when you open it you just have to fill in the IP address the computer app says and you’re good to go!


Try it: it works like a charm!

// replace the capitalized variable with your unix timestamp
// multiply it with 1000 (remember my note above!)
var currDate:Date = new Date(Number(YOUR_TIMESTAMP_HERE)*1000); 
 
// trace out the humanly readable values			
trace(currDate.getDate());
trace(currDate.getMonth());
trace(currDate.getFullYear());

Done!


A real life flash example (DateDisplayer):

Download this wonderful widget here!

Go now, my young actionscript children! Feed on my example and make me proud! Soon the world will be filled with actionscript 3.0 vampires!

Check it out here (flashwork done by Murten Saerbi).