Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
Subsume: Facebook updates via Growl and Address Book
If you're looking for the 'next thing' with which to boost your Facebook ninja status, Subsume just might be it. Right now it's an alpha so it's a little rough around the edges, but it primarily displays updates from your Facebook friends with Growl, a TUAW favorite that allows applications to display useful popup alerts when something happens (your song changes in iTunes, new email arrives, a buddy goes offline, etc.). Setting up Subsume is easy, just like with any other app that hooks into Facebook; you're taken to a Facebook login that prompts you for your credentials (if you aren't logged in already), then Facebook asks you to authorize Subsume to display your info. At an interval that Subsume's site doesn't describe yet (remember: it's an alpha folks), the app will check your Facebook account for any status updates from your friends, then display them in Growl's handy, unobtrusive update alerts. For the Facebook obsessed, this could turn out to be a great app that keeps you on top of what's going on without having to keep some kind of a window always open and taking up space.Subsume is provided as free for now at subsume.info. I should note that the developer, Jacob Jay, developers one of my favorite picture sharing utilities: PictureSync, which we've mentioned on TUAW a few times before.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
clintobean said 5:21PM on 8-26-2007
fmenu is definitely better than this. it does growl notifications and shows alot more than just status updates
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Finney said 5:50PM on 8-26-2007
go fmenu!!
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CHris said 8:24PM on 8-26-2007
i would love to try this, but it keeps crashing on my mac. oh well
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Jonas Wisser said 8:37PM on 8-26-2007
The Facebook toolbar for Firefox (http://developers.facebook.com/toolbar/) can also do Growl notifications, and has been around for some time.
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Jacob said 5:43AM on 8-27-2007
Note that Subsume isn't release-worthy for much more than experimentation, indeed with it I'm just hacking around with various concepts of tying people's disparate online presences together. (It actually does more than just Facebook status updates, it's also a Bonjour network scanner, and ties into your Address Book very closely, even Adium; tracking of MySpace and other sites may follow).
It is not an alternative to FMenu (except for just status updates) and will probably not ever support that degree of functionality, Subsume's purpose is to monitor what other people are doing, not what is being done to you (as it were).
Hopefully I'll get the crashing sorted soon. For those who do like to tinker, check out the preferences file, there's a bunch of currently hidden options.
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Jacob said 4:53PM on 8-27-2007
That crashing issue has now been fixed, along with some other bugs.
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