Faves.com Wiki - Recently Updated Pages

FAQ

mckoss — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:43:23 CDT

If there are more things you'd like to know about Blue Dot, please send mail to feedback@bluedot.us. If you have more tips about Blue Dot, please feel free to add to this Wiki.

Features for Power Users:

Advanced Searching
Search by rating, user, tags, etc.

Permissions
Creating faves that can only be seen by certain people.

Developer Information

This page contains information for developers who want to build tools to work with Faves.com data.

Import Bookmarks from MyWeb
We don't specifically support importing bookmarks from Yahoo MyWeb, but there is a way to make it work with what we have.

Mobile Access
Need access to your Faves from a cell phone? Connect to our mobile site at http://faves.com/m and you can search your Faves and your Friend's Faves in a pared down low-bandwidth version of the Faves search engine.

Using Hot Keys to browse Faves pages
Some keyboard shortcuts that can make your reading faster:

Alt-SHIFT-N: Go to Next Page.
Alt-SHIFT-P: Go to Previous Page.
Alt-SHIFT-S: Select the search box.

Create a Holiday Wishlist
Learn how to make a wishlist of items from all over the web so your friends and family will know exactly what to get you this year.

Add "Fave It!" Button to your Website
Get the link on your website to help increase exposure and drive traffic to your website or blog.

How do I delete/cancel my Faves.com account?
Just send mail to feedback@faves.com from the email account that is registered on Faves.com, and we'll remove your account for you. Any faves you've created to date will be removed from our system.

How do I edit my profile/picture?
Click User's Faves tab, and then on the right hand side, click "Edit my profile" or "Upload New Photo"

How can I create a Friend List to share faves with a subset of my friends?
Not only does Faves.com let you share dots with Everyone, Your Friends, or keep them private to yourself, but you can also share faves selectively with just a smaller group of your friends. To do this, you first have to create a Friends List:

Click on People
Click on the "My Friends" tab
In the right column, type the name you want to associate with a subset of your friends (e.g., Family, Work, Club, Church, or Frat Brothers).
Click on "Create Friend List"
You'll go to a page where you can check a box next to each of your Faves.com friends to add them to this friend list.
Click Save Changes

Your new Friend List will now show up in the "Share with" dropdown the next time you create a new Dot. Any dots shared with a Friend List will only be visible to the friends in that list and invisible to everyone else.

I don't have time to join yet another web site. Why should I bother?
This is a valid complaint - we realize that people are pretty inundated with services and may not feel they have time in their life to add yet another. But there are some great time-saving reasons to use Faves.com instead of simply emailing links to your friends each time you want to share something.

Searching for something you found in the past is fast and simple from Faves.com. Without that, you have to go to google and perhaps do multiple searches to find something you found interesting in the past. Faves.com is a very quick way to mark the pages you want to recall for yourself, and you can add comments and tags to help you make it easy to find in the future.
Keep your inbox clear. Email discussions tend to become fragmented, and further pollute our already crowded inboxes. Some of your friends actually don't appreciate getting more email in their inbox. Giving them the option of seeing your links on their own schedule and keeping these out of their inbox can be helpful in maintaining your friendship :-). Faves.com discussions are also easier to follow because they are all stored in one place in one thread (unlike fragmented replies to your message in your inbox).
Don't interrupt your friends. Over time, Faves.com users build up a database of a wide variety of their favorite web sites (including favorite restaurants, movies, books, news articles, reference material, web tools and services). Faves.com is a great way for your friends to access that knowledge without having to bother you. They can easily go to your user profile and search or browse your dots to find the information you've already identified as useful.

How can I Advertise on Faves.com?
Faves.com uses Google Adsense. You can place your ad on Faves.com by bidding for advertising space. Your ad will compete with other advertisers based on the highest bid. Note that Faves.com currently uses these ad units: the 125x125 Button, the 200x200 Small Square, the 468x60 Banner, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper. We accept both text and graphical ads (including Flash - except the 125x125 Button which is text only). To sign up, and place an ad on Faves.com go to our Adsense page.
UPDATE: With the new Faves Buzz, you can target your ads to pages by subject matter (e.g., http://faves.com/buzz/seattle/real%20estate).

Home

mckoss — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:21:08 CDT

Faves.com is a Social Bookmarking website that helps you find web sites you'll love, from people like you.

A Faves.com Fave is more than just a bookmark because:

You can create a comment on the web page. A Fave is about your opinion and recommendation.
Faves.com lets you pick an image from the web page to be a thumbnail in your Fave.
Your friends and discuss and respond to your Fave by adding comments.
You can add 'tags' to Faves to make it easier to find them, or to view all similarly tagged Faves on one page.

Faves.com is a great way to:

Save web pages for yourself. Never forget a web site again. Each time you read a useful article, interesting news story, product you want to buy, funny video (i.e., anything on the web), just click the Fave It! toolbar button in your browser, type in any comments you have, and click the Publish button.
Share web pages with friends, family, and co-workers. Not only can you save your own private bookmarks, but you can share things your finding with your friends. Just invite them to join Faves.com and they will see a daily digest of all the latest web sites their friends are sharing. You can make your dots public - so anyone can see them, or you can share them just with your friends or co-workers. Faves.com is a great tool for sharing information on competitors and other information you want to keep confidential.
Find the best of the web. Faves.com lets you search the entire (public) dot database by tag and by keyword. Just click on "Everyone's Faves" to find our what people are finding and sharing with their friends.
Keeping in touch. Keeping in touch with friends and family can be hard. t's not very often that we make the effort to send email out of the blue to an old friend - we may not have that much to talk about that would warrant an email conversation. With Faves.com, we get to casually share your interests, without the obligation to keep a conversation going. Faves.com is a great conversation starter and great way to keep in touch.
Building a personal Knowledge Network. Your friends (collectively) find many more things on the web than you do. Many of them may be experts in some area you're interested in. Now you can tap into what they know, to help you be smarter. Unlike other social networking products, Faves.com is not a time wasting activity, it actually helps you learn and be more productive (it's also good for time wasting too ... lots of funny videos to watch when you have some down time).

For more great ways to use Faves.com, see our FAQ.

Want to hear more from the Faves.com team? Visit (or subscribe) to the Faves.com Blog.

JSON API Description

rob@faves.com — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:27:13 CDT

This page documents the client-side API used to create the Faves widgets.

JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight data-interchange format aimed at easy use in browser-based code, as well as in most desktop or server-side programming environments. In fact, our official browser-based widget uses the JSON feed under the covers.

The Request

Request Type	Url	Description
My Faves	http://faves.com/users/<login>/json	Get your (or another user's) most recent Faves optionally filtered by tags.
Friends' Faves	http://faves.com/users/<login>/friends/json	Get your (or another user's) friends' most recent Faves optionally filtered by tags.
Everyone's Faves	http://faves.com/json/buzz/<tag1>/<tag2>	Get the recently popular Faves optionally filtered by tags.

Query Parameters

All parameters are optional.

Name	Type	Default Value	Description
callback	String		The function that will receive the response.
count	Integer	3	The maximum number of Faves to return. Note: No more than 10 Faves will be returned.
widgetId	String		Use this to specify a CSS id that gets passed back to your callback function. This is useful if you want to use the same callback function to render multiple widgets on a page.
hideNote	Boolean	false	If specified and set to true, this will omit "n" from the response.
hideThumbnail	Boolean	false	If specified and set to true, this will omit "tIU" from the response.
hideUser	Boolean	false	If specified and set to true, this will omit "uN", "uU", and "uiU" from the response.
st	String		The tags to filter on. Must be of the form: st=tag:"apple" or st=tag:"apple" tag:"microsoft"

The Response

Name	Type	Description
moreCount	Integer	The number of additional Faves (i.e. those not included in the response) satisfying the request.
faves	Fave	An array of Faves satisfying the request (see below).
widgetId	string	The widgetId that you specified when making the request.

Fave Return Type Description

Name	Type	Description
s	String	The Fave subject, often the title of the referenced page.
u	String	The URL of the content the Fave references.
n	String	The user's personal note on the Fave.
tIU	String	URL containing a thumbnailed image.
uN	String	The authoring user's first name.
uU	String	The URL for the authoring user's page on Faves.
uIU	String	The URL for the authoring user's thumbnailed image.

Example

Request:
<script src='http://faves.com/users/mohit/json?callback=favesWidget.render&widgetId=faves.2008.3.4.13.42.6.55&count=2'></script>

Response:

favesWidget.render(
{

widgetId:"faves.2008.3.4.13.42.6.55",
moreCount:3536,
faves:[
{
s:"Starbucks | We\'re doing something big at Starbucks. Like Venti big.",
u:"http://faves.com/users/mohit/dot/113341166932",
n:"In addition to the quoted event, there is a surprise event at the Pike Place Market Starbucks at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8th.\n\nQuoted: We\'re doing something big at Starbucks. Like Venti big. We can\'t tell you what\'s going to happen because that\'ll ruin the surprise. Just come to any U.S. Starbucks on Tuesday, April 8 at noon Eastern / 9 a.m. Pacific, sharp, to celebrate something big.",
tIU:"http://i.faves.com/01/54/4514/3e17eb5e/7750f09648db5f7bca_2.jpg"
...
},
{
s:"Board Café",u:"http://faves.com/users/mohit/dot/113294455066",
n:"This site was highly recommended by the instructors of the SeattleWorks Bridge course.\n\nQuoted: Board Café is the electronic newsletter exclusively for members of nonprofit boards of directors. Short enough to read over a cup of coffee, Board Café offers a menu of ideas, information, opinion, news, and resources to help board members give and get the most out of board service. There are over 90 great issues in the archive!",
tIU:"http://i.faves.com/01/b4/a5e5/13955cea/e5e9f45d0e005f33bd_2.jpg"
...
}]

});

Advanced Searching

mckoss — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:35:39 CDT

One of the reasons to use Faves.com is the ability to organize and find your Faves once you've created them. Faves.com search allows you to find your Faves, your friends Faves, or search Everyone's Faves. All the text in the title, the notes, and tags are indexed to help you find something (as of this writing, comments on your dots are not searchable). In addition, Faves.com supports some advanced search terms to help you narrow down your search by user, tag, rating, or web site:

Search for Faves rated with x stars:
rating:x (where x is # 1-5)
Example: rating:5

Search for all Faves with ratings from x to y stars:
rating:x-y (where x and y are #'s 1-5)
Example: rating:4-5

Search Faves from a particular user:
user:username
Example: user:mike

Search Faves from two (or more) users:
user: user1 user:user2
Example: user:mike user:x

Search for a tag (single word):
tag:tag
Example: tag:video

Search for a tag containing spaces:
tag:"the tag"
Example: tag:"video games"

Search for multiple tags:
tag:tag1 tag:tag2
Example: tag:video tag:music

Search for all Faves from a particular web site:
site: sitename.com
Example: site:www.youtube.com
Favelet:Site Faves *

Show Faves for the current page:
Favelet: Page Faves *

Any combination of above searches
Just put them one after the other, in any combination or order.
Example: rating:5 user:sung tag:movies tag:review

Google Search
Another way to search Faves.com is to use our Faves.com Customized Search engine. You may find better results using Google as the results are sorted according to Google's ranking of popularity. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

* Favelet installation instructions:

Favelets are buttons you can place in yourbookmarks/links toolbar.

Firefox:

Make sure your Bookmarks toolbar is visible (right click any toolbar and and make sure "Bookmarks Toolbar" is checked).
Drag the link from the web page (above), and drop it in your Bookmarks Toolbar.

IE:

Make sure your Links toolbar is visible (right click any toolbar and make sure "Links" is checked).
Right click the favelet link from the web page, select "Add to Favorites" and Create in: Links, click Add.

Widget

rob@faves.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:46:20 CDT

This section discusses how to get the most from your Faves Syndication Widget.

The syndication widget layout and markup has been designed for flexibility. It uses a liquid layout so there is no width specified. It will expand to fill the width of it's container. So if you drop it in your sidebar it will become the width of your sidebar. If you drop it in a post then it will be the width of your post. It can function embedded directly into your page or embedded into an iframe. This allows you to either embed the HTML directly into your blog, or build up your widget using a service like Widgetbox. It can either use predefined themes or you can define your own CSS rules by using the "No-Style" theme.

This section describes:

Will the Faves Widget work on my blog?

rob@faves.com — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:10:33 CDT

The current version of the Faves syndication widget will only work with blogs, blogging platforms, and blog hosting providers that accept javascript code. Here is a list of compatible and non-compatible providers and platforms.

Blog Hosting Providers

Faves currently works on providers: Blogspot.com, Blogger, Blog-City, DiaryLand, GeekswithBlogs.net, Movable Type, ThumbBlogger.net, TypePad.com, VOX, and Yahoo! GeoCities.com.
Faves currently does not work on providers: MySpace.com, LiveJournal.com, Friendster, Multiply.com, Windows Live Spaces, WordPress.com, Xanga.com, Yahoo! 360 and MyBlog Yahoo!.
We are working on adding more right now.

Blogging Platforms

Faves currently works on WordPress hosted on your own server (not by WordPress.com)
...more to be added...

Styling your Widget with CSS

rob@faves.com — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:10:10 CDT

Customizing your Faves Widget using CSS

You can customize the appearance of your Faves widget using CSS. This is more work but gives you much finer control over the appearance of the widget on your site.

To embed your widget on your site and edit it's styles use the following steps:

Go to the Faves widget designer at http:faves.com/widget and select the "No Style" theme.
Copy the code snippet from the widget page.
Paste the code snippet into your site. For example, if you are using Blogger then choose "Layout" then click on "Add Page Element". Click on the "Add to Blog" button under the "HTML/Javavscript" heading. Do not add a title but paste the code snippet you copied into the Content panel and click on "Save Changes".
Preview your site to see if you need to make any changes in the appearance of the widget. If it looks good then you're done!
To add CSS rules go to your Styles template and insert them there. For example, if you are using Blogger then select "Edit HTML" from the Layout screen. You'll see all your other CSS rules there. Just add the new rules immediately following the CSS rules that are already there.
Go to step 4.

Writing your CSS style rules:

To write your own rules you'll need to know how to select the elements within the widget. All Faves widgets share the following HTML structure:

<div class='favesWidget'>

<h2>Widget Header Title</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<h3><a><span>Fave Image</span>Fave Title</a></h3>
<div><img src='User Picture' />User Name</div>
<p>Fave Note Text</p>
</li>
...
</ul>
<div class='favesFooter'>
<a>More and Get Your Own Links</a>
</div>

</div>

You can use the following CSS selectors to add styles to an element of the Faves widget:

.favesWidget h2	The widget header
.favesWidget h3	The fave title
.favesWidget li div	The user name
.favesWidget li p	The fave note text
.favesWidget ul	The body of the widget containing all the faves
.favesWidget .favesFooter	The widget footer

For example if you wanted to make your header white with a blue border and blue text you would add the following rule to your template:

.favesWidget h2 { background: white; border: 1px solid blue; color: blue; }

Import Bookmarks from MyWeb

mckoss — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:25:07 CST

This uses the browser favorites importer to get your MyWeb bookmarks onto Faves.com:

1. Go to MyWeb, Click Tools
2. Scroll down to "Export your Bookmarks" and click the "here link"
3. Save the file to your desktop or whatever.
4. Log in to Faves.com
5. Click Tools
6. Click Import Bookmarks/Favorites
7. Ignore all the instructions on the top, Browse to the file you just got from Myweb, choose a tag/permission setting for all the dots (optional), and click "Import Bookmarks"

Permissions

mckoss — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:19:20 CST

There are three default permission settings when creating a dot.

Share With: Everyone
The Dot will be completely public, anyone who comes to Blue Dot can see it.

Share With: Friends
The Dot can only be seen by your friends.

Share With: Me (Private)
You are the only person who can see the Dot.

Publish dots to a smaller group of friends (to a "Friend List)

Click the People Tab.
Click My Friends, just below the People tab
On the right hand side of the page is a box labeled "Organize Friends." Type in a name for the Friend List and click "Create Friend List"
Go down the list of your friends and check the boxes next to the names of the friends that you want to include in your Friend List, and click Save Changes.

Now, when you are creating dots, in addition to Everyone, Friends, and Me (private) the name of the Friend List will appear in the Shared With: list. If you choose to share with a friend list, only people in that Friend List can see and comment on those dots.

Developer Information

mckoss — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:18:39 CST

This page contains information for developers who want to build tools to work with Faves.com data.

APIs

Faves.com offers two different APIs with similar capabilities.

SOAP API
The SOAP API is a simple API designed for developers accustomed to working with SOAP. A WSDL file is available to enable easy integration with tools.

del.icio.us v1 REST API
Faves.com also provides a del.icio.us v1 compatible API. This API layer is especially useful for developers who have built tools to work with del.icio.us data, or simply those who prefer the flexibility of working at a slightly lower level.

RSS
Every Faves.com query is available as an RSS feed. This includes the (public) dots of any user, or any tag or keyword search. Simply execute a search on Faves.com and click the RSS link at the bottom of the page to get the correct URL to insert in your reader.

Faves.com also supports an authenticated feed to your friends dots (both public and shared only with friends) so you can read all dots shared with you in an RSS reader that supports authenticated feeds (e.g., FeedReader). Simple point your reader at http://faves.com/rss.