Editor’s note: Some savvy Facebook engineers rigged the NASDAQ button to automatically post “Mark Zuckerberg has listed a company on NASDAQ – FB” to the CEO’s Timeline as he rung the bell to open the NASDAQ’s day of trading. David Garcia, a senior software engineer at Facebook, explains how they turned the NASDAQ on to Open Graph.

It was a normal Monday. Nothing out of the ordinary other than that Facebook was set to go public at the end of the week. Camera crews were beginning to appear and NASDAQ was coming to campus so we could ring the opening bell together. Other than that, it was like any other Monday.

During lunch, some us started talking about how cool it would be if the second Mark rang the bell a story would post to his timeline to let his friends and subscribers know.

I was so excited about this idea that when I got back to my desk, I posted on Facebook: “We should totally hack the button so it pushes an open graph action, “Mark Rang the NASDAQ bell”.

The first person to comment? Zuck: “It would be epic if you pulled that off.”

I got to work that night.

The solution: connect the NASDAQ button to a mobile phone logged into Facebook to generate an open graph action. While this seemed simple, it would prove to be a little more complex in practice.

Step one was to hack the headphones of my mobile phone. Just like you use headphones to play or pause music, I wanted to get them to publish an action on Facebook. I grabbed a soldering iron and soon enough we had a way to trigger the phone to publish an open graph action.

Step two was to see how the actual NASDAQ button worked. By the time NASDAQ arrived on Wednesday, a few other engineers caught wind of the project and offered their help. So five of us headed over to the conference room to check out the button. NASDAQ was game and allowed us to dismantle the button, with only one rule: don’t break it.

As we unscrewed the cover and poked around inside, we discovered that it looked quite different from what we were expecting. While the system wasn’t too complicated (a touch pad, a light, and grey box containing some relays connecting to the power supply), our hack was going to prove a bit of a challenge. We plied open the gray box to test the various circuits and figure out exactly how they worked. After some delicate tests with a voltmeter, we came up with a solution.

A couple of us then headed off to Radio Shack to pick up a couple relays, capacitors, and resistors. A couple of hours later, we had built our hack. The finished product wasn’t exactly the prettiest thing, but hacks aren’t supposed to be. They’re just supposed to work.

We ran back to the conference room with the button to make sure it did.

We hooked up our hack to run at exactly the same time as Mark pushed the button to turn on the light and ring the bell. Then we attached a wire that hooks to the hack and into the headset jack of a cell phone. When the button was pressed, it sent a signal through the hack, and the phone got the signal that triggered the custom action through our Open Graph API, posting a story onto Mark’s Timeline. It worked.

“Mark listed a company on NASDAQ – FB – with Chris Cox (VP of Product) and 4 others [Sheryl Sandberg (COO), David Ebersman (CFO), Cipora Herman (Treasurer), and Dave Kling (Deputy General Counsel)”

In less than 3 days, an idea became reality, something that would be seen by people all around the world. So, like I said, it was just a normal day here at Facebook.

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How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

Tiny sidebar and news feed ads aren’t going to cut it. If Facebook wants to live up to a $104 billion valuation it will need bold new revenue streams. An offsite ad network, big glossy news feed ads, and payments for physical goods are a few ways it could boost its average revenue per user far beyond the puny $4.34 a year it earns today.

Facebook has a tough decision to make now that’s going public. It will have to strike a new balance between the good of its users, advertisers, app developers, and investors. If it refuses to explore new business models, its share price could sink. But if it strays too far in favor of making money, Facebook could lose its addictiveness and the faith of its users. Here’s the four aces Mark Zuckerberg could have up his sleeve.

The AdSense Killer

Most ads suck because most advertisers don’t know much about who you are. But Facebook does. What if any website could use everything Facebook knows about you to show you ads you’d want to click? Well, those sites would pay Facebook a lot of money. They also might use Facebook to replace Google AdSense, the current leader amongst ad networks, which analyzes a site and automatically displays relevant ads.

Facebook’s ad network essentially turn ad real estate on any website into places to serve the campaigns that advertisers buy for display on Facebook.com. Anyone currently logged into Facebook who visits one of these sites would be shown ads targeted by their Facebook information, such as age, gender, location, work and education history, interests, app usage, and friends. Facebook and the site hosting an ad would then split the money made on clicks or impressions.

Facebook has denied this product is in the works whenever it’s been asked, but last week it revised its privacy policy to expand its ability to serve ads to its user while they’re outside of Facebook.com. There’d be little reason to do this if something wasn’t in the works. The march across the web of its other social plugins such as the Like button have also paved the way for an ad network plugin. It might need to develop or acquire a company with expertise in analyzing site content so it could serve somewhat relevant ads to site visitors who aren’t logged in to Facebook.

The biggest obstacle, and likely the reason Facebook hasn’t already launched an offsite ad network, is that the world might not be ready. People are already skittish about Facebook using all their personal data to target them with ads when they’re on its site. Even though Facebook wouldn’t technically be “tracking” user web browsing history to power ad targeting, seeing offsite ads targeted from their onsite data might cause some people to have an all-out privacy meltdown. But if it worked, the ad network could double or triple Facebook’s ad revenue.

PayBook

Facebook has its own virtual currency called Credits that’s typically used to let gamers make in-game purchases like powerups, clothing for their characters, and of course, cows for their farms. Users buy the Credits for $0.10 each, and when they spend them Facebook gives 70% to the game’s developer and keeps the other 30%. These in-game payments are a healthy business for Facebook, and they’ve made game developers like Zynga rich because creating and selling virtual goods is cheap.

The problem is that the 30% tax is too high to for people to sell physical goods for Credits. And while Apple also charges 30% to sell music, games, and in-app purchases through iTunes and its App Store, it has a tight grip on the digital media market. Facebook allows media sales with Credits, but only a few developers and content producers are experimenting with it as the tax is prohibitive.

But if Facebook wanted to get serious about making money on payments, it could reduce its 30% tax for digital media and physical goods. In fact, its S-1 filing to IPO noted that “In the future, if we extend Payments outside of games, the percentage fee we receive from developers may vary.” That could turn Facebook into a competitor to Amazon for the huge market of physical goods, and pit it against Apple, Google, and Amazon for selling music, films, and more.

The real power of Facebook Payments comes in its tie in with Facebook Connect. Together they could one day let you make a purchase and fill in your shipping info anywhere on the web with just a click or two. Before privacy fear-mongers in the media and congress made Facebook retreat, the social network briefly allowed apps to ask for your home address, aka your shipping address. Eventually Facebook will bring this back. Then this frictionless purchase system could increase conversion rates for ecommerce stores enough that they’d gladly implement Facebook Payments and Connet…

Charging For Apps For Your Identity

There were over 550,000 apps and integrated websites on the Facebook platform as of a few years ago. Many rely on Facebook’s identity system to replace or provide an easier alternative to signing up for an app-specific account complete with another password to remember and profile to fill out. This service saves app developers from having to build their own identity system, and primes users for social sharing that can drive crucial referral traffic to apps.

Could Facebook convince some of the developers to pay either a subscription or per-user fee? Yes, but the price would have to be steep to make it a serious revenue stream. If it got 300,000 apps paying $100 a month each it’d still only be make $360 million a year. $100 a month could be a bargain for popular apps, but it might discourage smaller developers from signing on. Meanwhile a per user fee would disincentivize growth, and force apps that suddenly get popular to abandon Facebook’s identity platform.

Charging for identity has potential, but it could also backfire and send developers fleeing to Twitter and Google’s free identity systems. That’s a huge problem because Facebook relies on third-party apps to contribute content to its news feed which Facebook monetizes with ads. So instead I think Facebook’s best bet to boost revenue in the short-term is…

Big, Glossy News Feed Ads

Advertisers don’t want to have their message crammed into the little sidebar ad boxes. And while they’re happy to have their ads made social as Sponsored Stories and injected into the news feed everyone reads, they also want less subtle marketing options. Facebook is trying to be flexible with the launch of Reach Generator and the big logout page ad unit, but advertisers want a louder marketing channel within the core Facebook experience. But beyond advertisers and investors looking to make a quick buck, nobody wants to see more ads on Facebook.

So the trick is for Facebook to make ads seem like content instead. Content we actually want to consume. Tiny boxes don’t do that, but large, high-impact full screen or near-full screen ads could. Flipboard and some other mobile apps have been experimenting with these big, glossy ad formats in their mobile apps.

Imagine scrolling down your news feed on the web or mobile and when you got to where there’d be a “More” button or fold (if Facebook didn’t have infinite scrolling), you’d see a large or full-screen ad. You could scroll right over it, or Facebook could make it snap into place for a second before you were free to move on.

These ads could be clicked to open an advertiser’s presence on Facebook such as their Page or App, or to open the buyer’s website. Facebook could even require the ads to be social, essentially creating a glossy Sponsored Story format that could only reach you if you Liked the advertiser’s Page or your friends had interacted with or Liked the brand.

As Facebook’s user base is quickly shifting to mobile where it only shows a few Sponsored Stories ads a day rather than multiple ads per page on the web, glossy ads could let Facebook make more money on mobile without having to show ads too frequently. Users might complain at first, and it could make people slightly less likely to visit the news feed. Still, Facebook could watch the data and manage rate limits to show these glossy ads only occasionally, and less often to users who immediately leave the site or app when they see them.

The fact is that Facebook is responsible to its outside shareholders, even if they don’t have enough voting rights to forcibly change the company’s course. If investors are smart, they won’t grumble if Facebook doesn’t immediately flood the site and the rest of the web with ads, payments, and subscription fees. Facebook got us all to connect. Now its biggest challenge is to remain cool while making more money. If Facebook expands its revenue streams slow and steady, it will have an ocean of users to draw from for years to come.

–

More Big Facebook News

Facebook Will Have The Biggest Tech IPO Ever, Raising $16 Billion With $38 Share Price

Here’s What Could Kill Facebook

Zuckerberg Will Ring In Facebook IPO From Menlo Park HQ On Friday

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The Google AdSense Killer And 3 Other Ways Facebook Could Make A Lot More Money

The Wall Street Journal made waves yesterday. Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reported Apple is ordering larger touchscreens for the next iPhone. Now, citing its own unnamed sources, Reuters somewhat confirmed the reported. Prepare yourself, iPhone diehards. All signs point to a larger iPhone.

The thought of a larger iPhone clearly scares people. Read the comments on my post yesterday, “It’s Time For A Larger iPhone.” They say 3.5-inches is the best size. You don’t have to move your thumb to navigate the whole screen, they say. A phone with a 3.5-inch screen fits in my hipster jeans!

But really, the main underlying thread seems to be some people are afraid that, just perhaps, Apple will adopt something from Android like the trend of a larger screen. Scary, I know.

Change is hard. Apple has used the same form factor for 4 iPhone generations spanning 5 years. The iPhone 4, and the 4S for that matter, is still one of the best looking phones on the market, with an impossibly thin design and stunning good looks. But it’s time for a change. Besides, logic and other credible rumors point to an internal change that might be forcing Apple’s hand in using a larger screen.

Along with a larger screen, the next iPhone is said to have 4G data connectivity. This requires a new mobile chipset, which, as proven by the new iPad presents a new set of challenges. Instead of growing the iPad’s height and width (and therefore the screen size), the new iPad was made a bit thicker to accommodate the larger battery needed to power the 4G chipset and retina display. Apple doesn’t have that luxury with the iPhone. The next iPhone cannot be thicker than the current iPhone. But it can be taller.

4G chipsets are generally not as mature as their 3G counterparts. They require more power and thus require a larger battery. Instead of making the iPhone thicker, logic suggests that Apple would then make the phone a bit taller, making room for a larger, likely retina, display.

This change will likely upset the Apple diehards. As the screen size increased on Android phones, iPhone users took to Internet comments and forums to defend the smallish iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen. It seems sooner versus later now, Apple will use a different screen for the iPhone. Change is hard.

[image via Mark Wilkie/Flickr]

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Reuters Agrees: The Next iPhone Will Be Larger

Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter.

This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience.

The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in.

It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project.

Project Page

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DIY Doorbell Will Send Pictures Of Your Guests To Your iPhone

Researchers at the Braingate2 consortium have made a breakthrough that allows people with spinal cord or stroke injuries to control robotic limbs with their minds. The original project allowed subjects with motor cortex-implanted chips to move cursors on a screen with their minds, but they can now command DEKA and DLR mechanical arms to grasp foam balls and sip coffee. Researchers noted that dropped objects and missed drinks were frequent, but improved brain sensors and more practice by subjects should help. To see the power of the mind move perhaps not mountains, but good ol’ java, jump to the video below.

Continue reading Mind-operated robot arm helps paralyzed woman have her cup o’ joe (video)

Mind-operated robot arm helps paralyzed woman have her cup o’ joe (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 10:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mind-operated robot arm helps paralyzed woman have her cup o’ joe (video)

Samsung started making 2GB low-power mobile memory last year, but as the 1GB-equipped phone you likely have in your hand shows, the chips weren’t built on a wide-enough scale to get much use. The Korean company is hoping to fix that now that it’s mass-producing 20-nanometer, 4-gigabit LPDDR2 RAM. Going to a smaller process than the 30-nanometer chips of old will not just slim the memory down by a fifth, helping your smartphone stay skinny: it should help 2GB of RAM become the “mainstream product” by the end of 2013, if Samsung gets its way. New chips should run at 1,066Mbps without chewing up any more power than the earlier parts, too, so there’s no penalty for using the denser parts. It’s hard to say whether or not the 20nm design is what’s leading to the 2GB of RAM in the Japanese Galaxy S III; we just know that the upgraded NTT DoCoMo phone is now just the start of a rapidly approaching trend for smartphones and tablets.

Continue reading Samsung mass-produces 4-gigabit LPDDR2 memory, aims to make 2GB a common sight in smartphones

Samsung mass-produces 4-gigabit LPDDR2 memory, aims to make 2GB a common sight in smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 12:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung mass-produces 4-gigabit LPDDR2 memory, aims to make 2GB a common sight in smartphones

Students. PCs. Free Xbox 360. The Redmond team’s at it yet again. Similar to last year’s deal, Microsoft’s hooking students up with a 4GB Xbox 360 if they drop some cash on one of its Windows machines. It’s simple: shell out over $699 on a PC, or $599 if you’re in Canada, and you’ll be walking out with a shiny new console free of charge — naturally, you’ll have to do so at participating shops such as Best Buy, Fry’s, Newegg, Staples, The Source and, of course, Microsoft’s own stores. The promo is set to kick off here in the States on May 20th, while those living in the True North can take advantage of it starting today. And before you ask — yes, you will need to show your scholar credentials to get in on the bargain.

Microsoft encourages students to buy a PC, gives them a free Xbox 360 in return originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft encourages students to buy a PC, gives them a free Xbox 360 in return

It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is probably the single most important app discovery mechanism for most iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to rank in the top 25? Mobile app store analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answers just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free iPhone apps and 3,530 for paid iPhone apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2,280 downloads for paid apps.

For free apps, other competitive categories include ‘entertainment’ (6,700 daily downloads), ‘social networking’ (5,800), ‘lifestyle’ (3,900) and ‘music’ (3,900). Interestingly, in the paid app charts photography apps rank just behind games and entertainment apps. Still, it currently only takes about 270 daily downloads to rank in the photography top 25 for paid apps.

These numbers, of course, are always changing and this just represent a snapshot of what Distimo found when it compiled this data last month.

Update: We just talked to one source with a lot of experience in building mobile apps and who also currently runs a top App Store app. According to this source, Distimo’s numbers are too low and may just represent data from a relatively small number of apps. Keep that in mind as you read Distimo’s data.

Given the popularity of games on iOS, Distimo also took a closer look at the various gaming subcategories. Here, arcade and action games lead the pack:

This is the first time Distimo is releasing a detailed set of these numbers. It’s worth noting, though, that at the end of 2011, the company reported that it still took about 45,000 daily downloads to rank in the top 25 of most popular free apps. Since then, though, Apple has been working hard to shut down various scams and bots that automatically downloaded apps and allowed developers to rank in Apple’s charts without having a real user base (then, once you are in the top 25, of course, real users will automatically find you, of course). Judging from Distimo’s latest data, these efforts are starting to pay off and will hopefully make life a little bit easier for legit developers.

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How Many Daily Downloads Does It Take To Reach The Top Of The App Store? [Updated]

afabbro writes “Verizon mentioned in an investor conference that it will be eliminating unlimited data plans, even for those it grandfathered in. From the article: ‘Speaking at the J.P Morgan Technology Media and Telecom conference today, Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo told investors that the company’s 3G unlimited data plans that customers were allowed to hang onto last year when Verizon switched to a tiered offering will soon go away entirely. Instead, the company will migrate its existing and new 4G LTE customers to a new “data share plan.”

The company has yet to announce the details of this new plan, but it has said previously that the data share plan will be introduced in midsummer. The plan will allow people on the same family plan to share buckets of data each month, much like they share voice minutes and text messaging. It will also allow individuals to share data across different 4G LTE devices. ‘”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Verizon To Kill All Unlimited Data Plans

This one goes out to all the Bonds in the world. RunCore, a Chinese company specializing in the production of solid state drives, has cooked up a SATA II solution that should satisfy even the most guarded of privacy fanatics. Living up to its grandiose InVincible moniker, this aptly-named SSD’s built to endure extreme temperatures ranging from -45 to 95 degrees Celsius (or -49 to 203 degrees Fahrenheit), read / write data at speeds up to 240Mbps / 140Mbps and protect your 1s and 0s from prying, less-than-reputable eyes. How so? Well, the drive’s actual pièce de espionnite aiguë (that’s fancy for paranoiac fail safe) incorporates a dual-button scheme for clearing away data. Users, much like Neo in ye ‘ole Matrix, will have two colored choices to make: select the green button for “intelligent elimination” (aka overwriting of data) or opt for the “less subtle method” offered by the red button which applies a current to the NAND flash memory for actual physical destruction of your data. So, whether you’re a high-ranking government official, a spy unlike us or just someone who can’t help but look over his / her shoulder, rest assured your secrets can now be safely disposed of. Jump past the break to check out the outfit’s informational video and its woefully out of sync audio track.

Continue reading RunCore InVincible SSD wipes data away with the click of a button

RunCore InVincible SSD wipes data away with the click of a button originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RunCore InVincible SSD wipes data away with the click of a button