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• How Facebook's Ad Bid System Works

  - by pnongrata

  When you are creating an ad on Facebook, you are provided with a "suggested bid" range (e.g., $0.90 - $2.15 USD). According to this page: The suggested bid range is there to help you pick a maximum bid so your ad will be successful. It’s based on how many other advertisers are competing to show their ad to the same audience as you are. I'm interested in understanding what's actually going on (technically) under the hood here. Say a user logs into Facebook. On the server-side, it the HTTP request that the user's browser sent (as part of the login) is handled, and the server needs to figure out which ad to display back to the user. I assume this is where the "bidding" system comes into play? Say that, based on this user's demographics, and based on the audience targeting that several competing advertisers designed their campaign with, let's pretend that Facebook sees a pool of 20 different ads it could return. How does this bidding system help Facebook determine which of the 20 ads it returns to the client-side? I'm guessing that advertisers who "bid more" get prioritized over those who "bid less". But when does this bidding take place? How often does an advertiser need to re-bid? How long is a bid binding for? Once I understand these usage-related concepts behind ads, it will probably be obvious between which of the following "selection strategies" the backend is using: Round robin Prioritized round robin Randomized (doubtful) History-based MVP-based Thanks to anyone who can help point me in the right direction and explain what these suggested bid systems are and how they work.

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• What are all the components of a "Facebook App"?

  - by pnongrata

  I am a developer who has never personally partaken in social media (in any form) for reasons completely outside the scope of this question. I am "off the grid" (no Facebook, Twitter, etc accounts). I'm currently building a web app and would like the app to have a presence on Facebook, and possibly even "port" my app over as a Facebook app. My understanding of Facebook Apps is that they're just normal web apps that get <iframe>d into a Facebook page. The app is actually hosted on your server (not FB's servers). But this got me thinking: Don't Facebook Apps have "profile pages"? Is there anything developers can do to customize the behavior of their own profile pages? Do apps have the ability to do things like MySpace themes used to do (i.e., customize and interact with User profile pages, Groups, etc.)? Do Facebook Apps gain any sort of extra capabilities (inside of Facebook) that a normal web app would not have? It seems to me like if all a Facebook App is, is an iframed-web app, that it would still need to communicate with Facebook via its many APIs, just like a normal app would have to, right? If it's not possible to write an app that can customize the UI or behavior of user profiles and other pages, then how do games like "Farmville" interact with User profiles so that you see updates to profiles like "John Smith reached level 2 of Farmville"? Basically, I'm asking any battle-worn Facebook app developers if my understanding of Facebook Apps is correct, or if I'm missing anything big here. It's my understanding that for security reasons (obviously) Facebook doesn't allow apps to customize anything outside of the iframe it lives in. So if I want my app to appear like it's "interacting" with its Facebook users, it looks like I just need to publish stuff to the users' news feeds to try and encourage people to use my app (please correct me if I'm wrong here!). Thanks in advance for any corrections, clarifications, advice or suggestions!

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• Windows product key is valid but wont activate

  - by pnongrata

  Last month, I needed to install Windows XP (Pro Version 2002 SP3) from a Reinstallation CD a co-worker gave me, and with a product key the IT team told me to use. Everything installed successfully and I have been using the XP machine for the last 30 days without any problems; however it kept reminding me to activate Windows, and of course, I never did (laziness). It now has me locked out of my machine and won't let me log in until I activate it. So I proceed to the Activation Screen which asks me: Do you want to activate Windows now? I choose "Yes, let's activate Windows over the Internet now.", and click the Next button. It now asks me: Do you want to register while you are activating Windows? I choose "No, I don't want to register now; let's just activate Windows.", and click the Next button. I now see the following screen: Notice how the title reads "Unauthorized product key", and how there are only 3 buttons: Telephone Remind me later Retry Please note that the Retry button is disabled until I enter the full product key that IT gave me, then it enables. However, at no point in time do I see a Next button, indicating that the product key was valid/successful. So instead, I just click the Retry button, and the screen refreshes, this time with a different title Incorrect product key Could something be wrong with the Windows XP reinstallation CD (do they "expire" after a certain amount of time, etc.)? Or is this the normal/typical workflow for what happens when you just have a bad product key? I ask because, after this happened I emailed IT and they supplied me whether several other product keys to try. But every time its the same result, same thing happening over again and again. So I guess it's possible that IT has given me several bad keys, but it's more likely something else is going on here. Any thoughts or ways to troubleshoot? Thanks in advance!

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• V4L2 and ALSA: Kernel SPI or User API?

  - by pnongrata

  I'm trying to understand what Video for linux and ALSA are (exactly), and I can't discern whether they're APIs for Linux application to use (the userspace) or if they are backend services that are only available to the Linux kernel (sort of a kernalspace SPI). Or, if they are something entirely different. On one hand, those articles make it sound like its an API for applications to use. However, on the V4L2 page it has a section title Software supporting Video4Linux... So is V4L2 a library that applications use, or is it a module that "snaps into" the kernel? I'm so coonfused, thanks in advance.

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• Is it possible to "virtualize" an existing PC?

  - by pnongrata

  I'm running Ubuntu Desktop 12.04, and I was wondering if it was possible to somehow take my whole filesystem (everything under /) and create an ISO from it. Then, perhaps, use that ISO as the file system of a VBox VM (obviously, it would have to be Ubuntu, and probably 12.04). Basically, I've spent a lot of time configuring my development machine, but need to be able to work on it from whatever computer I happen to be at. VMs seem like the perfect solution. Thanks in advance!

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