Face Off With Facebook on Business Pages and Privacy

We coaxed our very own Jim Bail from the comforts of his warm and cozy cave and challenged him to create some Facebook business pages for us. This is his story...

Part 1 (of 2)

I recently spent some time setting up Facebook pages for Artgig and Artgig Apps. Although our original profile predates (I think) Facebook's policy, I discovered that it's an official no-no to set up your company as you would a personal profile. Facebook has “Pages” for that. Being one of the seven non-Facebook users on the planet, it turned out to be an interesting endeavor for me.

As part of the process, I needed to hide our long neglected personal profile. We still do use it from time to time for app development, so despite the fact that the content has little to do with Artgig proper, we needed to keep it around. We have some pretty interesting and entertaining friends, but unfortunately their updates don't make great fodder for a company presence aimed at marketing...so sorry, but you won't be seeing the breaking news on our wall when the Auto-Tune remix of Crazy Badass Honey Badger drops.

Setting up pages was a somewhat confusing process in of itself, which I won't detail here. But for those thinking of setting up a company page, I'll save you 10 minutes of searching for where to do it because it's not obvious: set up Facebook Pages

Once our company pages were in place ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Artgig-Studio/176154829099838 and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Artgig-Apps/183056311741030?ref=ts ) I turned my attention to hiding our original profile. That's where things really got interesting.

General Privacy Settings – Fine Grained Fun:

There are about 20 individual privacy settings available and no way to bulk update them aside from reverting back to Facebook's recommended settings. And it gets better. Not only do you have to set them all one by one, but opting not to share a particular item with anyone requires an extra step, as it's a custom setting. So with a few exceptions, setting each item requires going through two sets of drop down menus to turn sharing off completely i.e. 5 clicks per item. The end result is that 70+ clicks are required to turn off all sharing in your basic privacy settings. Of course you're probably still sharing all kinds of info despite all of that...

Stay Tuned for Part 2: Apps, Ads and Adventure...

Water Safety Games for Home Safety Council

This summer, teach preschool kids to stay safe around pools and water with our just-launched water safety game, Get Wet! or Not Yet!:

Play Get Wet! or Not Yet! on the Home Safety Council website

We also made an interactive activity for parents and caregivers to polish their water safety badges:

Water Safety Search on the Home Safety Council website

It's never too soon to teach safety so pack a towel and get started!

Introducing...Artgig Apps

Do you smell it?

Exhale...

Ah yes, it's the double pleasure of new logo and new website smell.

Allow me to introduce you to our new website, artgigapps.com.

Artgig Apps represents Artgig's commitment to mobile app development and we're really excited by the possibilities for custom development and expanding what we can offer our clients.

The site launches with the recent release of "Being Benny," a children's book app, and "Shake-a-Phrase," a fun language app for kids that is presently in Beta testing.

Coming from a background of educational game development, stretching way back to the good old days of Sunburst Technology, the educational kids apps are obviously a good fit for us.

And most importantly, we like doing it.

And if you're going to bust your ass doing something, it's really best if you like it.

So stay tuned - we've got plenty more up our sleeves and we're feeling inspired to do all kinds of cool things.

Oh, and please take a moment to check out Artgig Apps on Twitter and Facebook – that's where we'll post reviews, news and other insights into the fast paced, high octane world of app development.

Thanks!

And enjoy.

Check out artgigapps.com

@artgigapps on Twitter

Facebook, if that's your thing

JFK50.org – History Right Now!

You may recall we initially launched the JFK50.org site with a concept of select time-released events unlocking in "real time" on an interactive timeline in the History Now section.

Well, forget that.

We talked to the JFK Library and we all agree, the events are too important and too interesting and well, too cool, to hide from first time visitors and we all know how important it is to be "sticky" when you've got a content rich website.

So we just unlocked everything on the timeline.

Check out the 13 nail-biting days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, presented as an interactive graphic novel.
Or get a jump on the Bay of Pigs, with the anniversary coming up this weekend.

Remember you can dive in to individual cells to immerse yourself in the day and navigate frame-by-frame through the story.

We hope you like it.

Check out History Now at JFK50.org!

Artgig and Benny App in the News!

"Local Artists Create Digital Fun for Kids"

And the Benny story continues.
Had a nice sit down with Benny author/illustrator and Artgig pal, Dan Wetzel, and Lisa Buchman from the Bedford-Katonah Patch yesterday to talk apps.

Read all about it here.