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JISHOU, HUNAN — Facebook readers, after Nov. 22, if you want to read my blog, you will have to come here. Facebook in its ineffable wisdom is shutting off external feeds to Facebook Notes.
Here’s what I read today as I opened FB:
You currently automatically import content from your website or blog into your Facebook notes. Starting November 22nd, this feature will no longer be available, although you’ll still be able to write individual notes. The best way to share content from your website is to post links on your Wall.
Well, that’s just great if you have 24/7 access to Facebook, but I don’t. So, thanks for nothing, Facebook techs.
Maybe some clever coder will work up a WordPress plugin to at least post links to my FB status, but it seems FB is trying to close off all external access, except for approved apps and moneymaking links.
[Correction: I found Status Updater, a WP plugin, that can send a link for each post to my FB Status. Setting it up is not very straightforward; you have register it on FB as a new FB application. If it works, it will update my status every hour. We'll see.]
Meanwhile, my WordPress to Twitter feed is working fine (Twitter account liguy743), so I’ll explore a Twitter to Facebook feed. Surely, FB would not want to shut out another major player of the Internet.
(Incidentally, you can still subscribe to my RSS feed.)
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I’ve belatedly gotten around to allowing readers at the website to share posts with friends using Google+, Facebook and Twitter with three WordPress plugins. The buttons to click will be at the end of each post.
Since all three of these fine services are blocked in China, I need some feedback to see if the buttons look OK and their functions are working. My proxy connection comes and goes randomly.
One of the plugins also allows sharing with services like digg, del.icio.us and reddit. Pardon the dumb question, but in this Facebook-Twitter-Google+ age, does anybody really use those services anymore? I don’t want to clutter things up with lots of superfluous buttons.
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UPDATE 1/9/11 5:30 am ET — Nevermind. As soon as I wrote this post, by a corollary to Murphy’s Law, everything started working again.
JISHOU, HUNAN — My favorite method to climb the Great Firewall of China seems to no longer work. So, my only access to FB right now is eBuddy on my cellphone for Chat and this blog’s feed into Notes. I do get emails whenever someone comments on a note or sends me a message, though.
I had been using Ultrareach‘s Ultrasurf, a 1-MB program that sets up a proxy connection to “climb the Wall,” as they say here, and evade China’s Internet censorship. It establishes a proxy connection as before, but as soon as I enter a URL, the connection is lost. I suspect the Net Nannies here have gotten wise to Ultrasurf and figured out a way to block it, as they did the Tor proxy network two years ago.
So, if you’re expecting me to learn about news from family and friends via FB, think again. Ya might just have to write me an email once in a while.
Oh, and FB recoded their site again, so the plugin I have that pulls comments on FB Notes into WordPress is broken again. It uses the mobile FB site, so I have no clue what’s up with that.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — No more manual copy/pasting of comments from the mirrored posts on my Facebook Notes! I’m sure it will work until the wizards at FB jimmie the code and break everyone’s plugins again.
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LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — I bragged awhile ago that I finally had a plugin that would automatically post Facebook comments to my cross-posted entries here on the blog. Thanks to the wizards at Facebook (may they forever rotate in a rotisserie), the plugin stopped working about two weeks ago.
The developer is working on a fix to the plugin, but knowing FB’s habitual tweaking of, well, everything, the code will need to be revised — again — in the near future.
Grumble, grumble.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — A while ago, I linked this blog to my Facebook account. My posts here are automatically imported into my FB Notes. Once upon a time, I had another plugin that extracted comments to the imported Notes from FB back here. But it stopped working, and its developer gave up working on it.
But another developer stepped in to restore the functionality. Facebook Comments TNG works! I installed it just now, and it pulled comments from FB perfectly. Now, I may have to go through them and edit out duplicates, but that’s a minor irritation compared to having to manually copy-and-paste FB comments myself.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — It was bound to happen someday. I am now completely shut off from Facebook. So if you want to communicate with me, either use my blog here, IM me or send me an email.
China started blocking Facebook (and other sites) about a year after I arrived. Until recently, I had been able to use the Tor proxy network to “climb the firewall” and access Facebook. China’s net nannies had been blocking the IP addresses of public Tor connections, but I was able to get private bridge IPs by email.
Now even the private bridge connections don’t work. My Tor’s log reports “problem bootstrapping. Stuck at 5%” and there it stays. Apparently, China’s censors have found a way to render the Tor proxy network ineffective, thereby shutting us netizens in China out of the wider WorldWide Web.
Internet restrictions here typically get more severe as we approach significant anniversaries, such the Tiananmen Square protests by university students on June 5, 1989. In fact, I just discovered that just trying to visit sites (wikipedia, bbc.co.uk, etc.) that discuss the events is useless. It seems those are being blocked, too.
Sigh.
Perhaps the blocks will be removed after the anniversary passes. Or maybe not. Meanwhile, instant messaging and emails (and comments on this blog) are the only Internet ways to communicate with me.
By the way, Janice, the books arrived this week. Many thanks!
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