We’ve recently rolled out four new FQL tables, added a new field to a fifth table, and released new features giving users more control over their privacy on Facebook Platform.

New FQL Tables and Features

FQL is a powerful, flexible, and faster way for you to get Facebook data to your applications. We’re always looking for more ways for you to query for the data you need instead of calling the RESTful server. We’ve released some new FQL tables recently and have updated the album table.

privacy: This table returns the user’s privacy settings for a video, note, link, photo, or photo album. See below for more details.
like: This table returns a list of IDs of the users who like a video, note, link, photo, or photo album.
developer: This table returns a list of application IDs for your user ID.
permissions_info: This table returns more descriptive information about an extended permission.
Also, we added the can_upload field to the album FQL table. This lets you check to make sure the user can upload to a given album before you try uploading a photo on the user’s behalf.

Platform Privacy Settings

Users can now set privacy for content they post through your applications and Facebook Connect implementations with the same detailed level of control that they have with Facebook itself. These privacy controls are available in your Publisher integrations and Feed forms.

In addition, you can prompt users to set the privacy for content that differs from their default settings when your application, on behalf of a user:

Publishes directly to the stream with stream.publish.
Uploads videos with video.upload.
Creates new albums with photos.createAlbum (users can now customize the visibility of content beyond friends, friends-of-friends, networks, and everyone).
Users always have control over who their content is shared with via “Posts by Me” in their privacy settings and through the Publisher and Feed forms for specific pieces of content. When you want to display content a user has created, check the privacy for the content by querying the object_id in the privacy FQL table or by calling privacy.get.

By giving users greater control over how they share from your applications we hope they will feel more comfortable sharing a wide variety of content with the audiences of their choice, and begin sharing even more. These controls extend to applications and Connect implementations of all kinds, including desktop applications like Seesmic. In the coming weeks, Seesmic will be adding additional privacy controls to Seesmic Web and Seesmic Dektop.

Stay Informed

Keep checking the Developer Roadmap so you can have advanced notice of what we’re releasing for Facebook Platform. We also publish a weekly article that lists each week’s code check-ins that impact Platform.

We hope you start using these features and we welcome your feedback on the Developer Forum.

Pete, a technical writer in the Facebook Developer Network, wants you to embrace FQL queries.

Read more…

If you’ve been on the search for a powerful comment box for your blog/website (like I am  continuously) you might be amazed by what you’re going to find here.

DISQUS pronounced as “discuss” and no, not from the word “Disgusting”. DISQUS is a service and tool for web comment and discussions. DISQUS comment system can be plugged into any website, blog or application. It makes commenting easier, and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

In my previous post “Tweak that comment box” I suggested, and recommended to tweak it up into a Facebook <script> file with a xdreceiver that automatically syncs with your Fan page and as good as that was, while it lasted (2 days) it was not good at all – and you might ask yourself why

1. No comment moderations
2. It sometimes did not load
3. Disencourage non-facebook members to write
4. “Facebook Connect” icon was too small and people did not leave
5. A lot of people do not want to use Facebook connect since Facebook is indeed, an intimate social network.

Also, and should have been the first, it didn’t have the “comment count” on category.php // index.php and in addition to that you never really knew if people left a comment on your site and where they left it. So by now – we agree that Facebook Comment was not the best idea.

Let me express it with a photo:

Here is by far, the best comment box for your WordPress. Say hello to DISQUS.

What is DISQUS? – A comment system and moderation for your website, track and manage your own comment on the web (regardless where you comment) includes a Facebook Connect + Twitter + many many more features that will stun you. The best thing about this plugin is that it syncs with your old WordPress comment, and will automatically migrate them into the DISQUS plugin. And if you need Support, God, they are the best. I was trying to import some 300 comments into the DISQUS comment plugin and failed, I just submitted a question in the forum and not even an hour later, someone replied to me “Can you forward me a copy of your comments export? WP Admin > Tools > Export (all authors)” not one hour later, all my comments appeared on the site – and showed in the category.php comment counter, index.php comment counter, pretty much – everywhere. DISQUS WordPress plugin seamlessly integrates using the DISQUS API and by syncing with the WordPress comments.

DISQUS for WordPress

1. Uses the DISQUS API
2. Comments indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
3. Support for importing existing comments
4. Auto-sync (backup) of comments with DISQUS and WordPress

DISQUS Features

1. Threaded comments and replies
2. Notifications and reply by email
3. Subscribe and RSS options
4. Powerful moderation and admin tools
5. Full spam filtering (works with Aksimet)
6. Support for DISQUS community widgets
7. Connected with a large discussion community
8. Increased exposure and readership.

How to import WordPress comments to DISQUS Comment

Yes, it’s that easy.

How does it look in MySQL?

DISQUS also replaces your back end of WordPress Comments, to a fancy layout that will look like this:

More documentation go to http://disqus.com/docs/wordpress