So what exactly is this new Facebook Messages anyway? To me it sounds like what Google Wave and Buzz tried to be.

Texts, chat and email together in one simple conversation.

• Include email by activating your optional Facebook email address
• Control who can send you messages through your privacy settings

• No need for subject lines or other formalities (Google Talk with Conversation History)
• Easily leave large conversations that no longer interest you

• Messages from unknown senders and bulk email go into the Other folder
• Spam is hidden from view automatically

If you want to try Facebook Messages request an invite here.

Notice how Facebook dominates the English speaking wwworld.

via Huddlemind

The rumors have been flying over what’s going on over at Facebook headquarters. The word has been that a PHP team was brought in and made to sign non-disclosure agreements before discussing a PHP project that has been in development for the past two years. Alex Handy, senior editor of the Software Development Times Blog, predicted last Saturday that Facebook “has rewritten the PHP runtime from scratch,” and several sources have confirmed for us tonight that Facebook has indeed been making some changes to the basic PHP runtime environment.

According to our sources, Facebook has been working on a PHP compiler that will
increase speed by around 80% and offer a just-in-time (JIT) compilation engine that will offer a number of advantages. The project is very similar to Google’s Unladen Swallow project, which rebuilt the Python compiler, boosting the speed fivefold and opening the door for multi-language integration.

Richard Crowley, an engineer at OpenDNS who is familiar with the project, told us that David Recordon, an engineer at Facebook, invited him to come to Facebook’s headquarters Tuesday morning but wouldn’t give a reason. Crowley mused to us that it was likely his PHP skills and personal connections that got him through the doors and clued us in on what he thinks will be going on behind them.

Read more at ReadWriteWeb

Facebook has rewritten the PHP runtime from scratch. This coming Tuesday, they will make a big announcement around this project, and will make it available as open source software. I’m not really sure of any of the details of the project, but I do know that Facebook hired someone two years ago to do this, and I’m relatively sure this was a one-man project during that entire time.

So, why has Facebook rewritten the PHP runtime? Because PHP is obviously too slow for their tastes. A few years ago, I had a coffee meeting with some of the folks from Zend. When they asked what I had been hearing about PHP in the market from my sources, I hemmed and hawed, then told them that I had heard people complaining about how slow PHP was. Now, I don’t personally consider PHP slow: it is simply not a language designed for the sorts of workloads that Java and .NET are.

But that still doesn’t change the fact that PHP can be a tad pokey on the server. Well, when I said this to the Zend folks, their immediate reaction was similar to that of a gestapo officer looking for a spy: “What? Who said that? Tell us their name!”

Read more over at SD Times.

Join the Web AddiCt(s); Facebook Fan page

Have you ever been accused of being on Facebook when you were not? In a meeting, unable to take a call, and when you call them back explaining why the other person says… “But you were on Facebook!” even though you know you were not. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. The times of my Facebook activity never reflects the real times of my actual activity online.  Here’s why…

It’s all about the way you aggregate your activity on other social networks in facebook. The MXit Evo blog post, that got its first comment at 4.24pm yesterday, was picked up by feedburner (The RSS management service) a few minutes after it was actually published.

This blogs RSS feed is then aggregated by Friendfeed which then is fed into my facebook notes via RSS along with the RSS feed of all the other social networking sites I use that have RSS feed (almost all of them).

So…

1. You are active on a social network
2. That activity is aggregated by Friendfeed (after a time delay of up to one hour)
3. The friendfeed RSS is then imported into my Facebook notes after yet another time delay (anywhere up to 6 hours)
4. Facebook then shows that you are active on their site at a time many hours after your were actually active on the original site.
5. Your Facebook friends think you are on Facebook when you are actually not.

Facebook says you shared a note 3 hours after you actually did

Next time your Facebook friends say “but your were on Facebook!” when your  know you were not you can explain how the feed aggregation/import notes via RSS process works on Facebook and the resulting time delay.

Has this ever happened to you?

1. Join the Web AddiCT(s); Facebook fan page.
2. Add your comment on the “30 more Google Wave invites. Comment with your gmail address here” update.

Easy as that, I’ll send your Google Wave invite to the first 30 Gmail addresses in the comments on the Facebook update.

1. Sign in with your Facebook account using Facebook Connect.
2. Sign into your twitter account using oAuth.
3. See a list of all your Facebook Friends who are on Twitter and follow those you aren’t following yet with an easy click.

Another cool way to easily find people to follow is using find2follow, Read more about it’s recursive graph algorithm.

TED Facebook app allows you to share your favourite talks with your facebook friends

If you have never watched any TED Talks before could you really call yourself a Web AddiCT? Not only are the talks inspiring but the ideas shared are definitely worth spreading. Share your favourite Talks with your friends on a profile tab and if they are using the ted talks app you can see exctly what your friends favourite ted talks are. That reminds me…are politics and religion technologies?

We’ll give you free stuff. Spread Web AddiCT(s); to your Facebook Social graph and win R400 Google Adwords vouchers. Winner will be announced on the Facebook fan page tomorrow evening.

You can see the FaceBook fan box just below Google Friend Connect in the sidebar. What is a Facebook Fan box? The Fan Box lets you:

• See how many users are already fans, and see some of their friends who are
• Become a fan with 1-click without needing to visit the Page

There is a new look Web AddiCT(s); coming soon, the ThemeSmith is hard at wwwork right now.

Why in Facebook's name launch Facebook Lite in the US and India?

Facebook Lite is a faster, simpler way to keep in touch with your friends. If you like it, you may choose to use it instead of the regular Facebook. We still have work to do before it’s done, but we’d love to get your feedback on what we’ve built so far.

Seeing that Winston the Pidgeon is Faster than broadband here in South Africa this should be welcomed with open arms anywhere you internet connection is slow or bandwidth is expensive. Like here in Silicon Cape.

Facebook Lite Profile page preview

Visit lite.facebook.com to view Facebook Lite for yourself.