My iPod was doing a curious thing lately. Every now and then, it’d make a low pitched sound, then skip to the next track. Sometime it would do it in quick succession. I’d try to go back to the previous track, but no dice. Most confusing. I was getting really worried that it was a problem somewhere – iPod screwed, was it a couple of tracks in my library… what was causing it? It was a mystery… until I did what most people never do… read the manual. (Well, more accurately, I fired up ye olde Google.)
And… it’s actually a feature called “Shake to Shuffle” which is OS3.0 is switched on by default.
So if your iPod Touch or iPhone is acting a bit odd, fear not… you can turn it off.
If you’re in the process of developing a new website nowadays, chances are you’ll want to link it to Facebook in some way. Facebook Connect is the Web 2.0 API style way of doing things, if you’re willing to get handy with yet another markup language… FBML. I’ll leave you to work out what it stands for*.
But anyone trying to get started is likely to stumble over two of the most bizarre, yet simple errors, right off the bat. I was trying to get things working with one of my sites, Saint Saviours Cricket Club, when I encountered these two errors:
1) Facebook Connect “Invalid URL” message
Crazy. You can try every version of your URL which you know is correct:
http://www.mydomain.com
mydomain.com
www.mydomain.com
http://mydomain.com
etc.
What works?
http://www.mydomain.com/
Notice the trailing slash. That they didn’t include a little bit of help on that is ridiculous.
2) Facebook Connect signup page closes out to a blank page
You get the page to submit, but nothing happens, and you just get a blank page. This is most likely due to a problem with the site name you’ve specified. I haven’t worked out exactly what causes the error, but it might the existence of spaces in the name. You can get through it by picking a random number (e.g., 6 digits from your mobile number) – that worked for me. And you’ll then notice that all your other attempts to submit actually got through – and you’re free to use them (and delete all the ones you don’t need).
I’m gobsmacked that there are such weird little bugs in such a big system. Have they not tested these things?
* Footnote: if, like me, you’re doing this on a Wordpress install then be sure to check out the Simple Facebook Connect plugin. He’s done *all* the grunt work for you – you’ve just got to turn it on!