# Friend Photosaver for Facebook

> By now everybody who knows what Facebook is, knows they announced an open platform for integrating with it. Interestingly enough Microsoft was a launch partner of theirs so…

URL: https://jdconley.com/blog/friend-photosaver-for-facebook
Published: 2007-06-20T17:26:00.000-07:00
Updated: 2011-07-22T00:59:26.920-07:00

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By now everybody who knows what [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/) is, knows they announced [an open platform](http://developers.facebook.com/) for integrating with it. Interestingly enough Microsoft was a launch partner of theirs so there is also a shared source .NET API layer available. We decided to jump on the opportunity and published [SoapBox for Facebook](http://soapbox.net/facebook.aspx). Chris mentioned this in his [announcement blog](http://www.coversant.com/Coversant/Blogs/tabid/88/EntryID/43/Default.aspx) earlier.

But, as with anything that goes to production, adding cool features quickly turned into fixing uncool bugs, scope discussions, planning sessions, and then it became work.

I had a bit of a realization yesterday. I hadn't written code for the sheer fun of it in a really long time. Don't get me wrong, I love the stuff I do (almost) every day. We're coding cutting edge stuff here and it's a blast. But, I wanted to do something for me! So I wrote a screensaver.

Strange, huh? The guy that writes blogs on memory management, async programming, and other maddening things decided to hack together a screensaver. You'll just have to get over the shock of it all... Research was done, scope was decided, fingers flew. A few hours later, I had a screensaver! At 2am I decided on its name (probably a bad idea), [Friend Photosaver for Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2466327790), whipped up an installer and submitted the app to Facebook. Catchy isn't it? Yeeeah. Anyway, though the name stinks, I think it's a pretty cool screensaver.

It aggregates the list of all your photos with all of the photos of your friends, and picks them at random. It then stuffs the photo in a random spot on the screen where it will be visible. Right now it only displays on the primary screen. Secondary screens are blank. Here's a little preview:  
  
Image unavailable: Screen Saver ([original source](http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v43/1/718761709/app3_718761709_2466327790_7506.gif))

If you're a Facebook user you can login and [install my screensaver](http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2466327790). The rest of you... well, this is pretty useless. But you should be on Facebook too. Oh, and (shameless plug), don't forget to use [SoapBox for Facebook](http://soapbox.net/facebook.aspx). :)