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A few days ago, my fiancee and her mom were talking about setting up a nice guy with my fiancee's sister. Unfortunately, said guy is in a relationship. My mothe

A few days ago, my fiancee and her mom were talking about setting up a nice guy with my fiancee's sister. Unfortunately, said guy is in a relationship. My mother-in-law to be suggested it would be nice to know when the relationship was over (jokingly). I blurted out that I could make something that could do that in a couple of hours. By then, I knew I had to do it. The application was built on Google Appengine, Django, and the Facebook Graph API. I'm checking for status changes every 24 hours, and am using the Appengine mail service to send emails whenever I notice that a relationship status has changed. Seriously, this is mostly a joke. But enjoy, if you do choose to use it for real.

phirephly 16y ago
Only every 24 hours?!? But when the window is open, you RUN! Did Ted Mosby teach us nothing?
- zalew 16y ago
  +1 for HIMYM reference, I thought the same :) 24hrs is not 'be the first to know', probably all her/his friends will know that before. When I changed status I had a dozen comments in SECONDS.
dacort 16y ago
Would you be able to use real-time updates for this to avoid polling? http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ I'm not sure if it notifies you on friends changes or just the user that authed your app. I assume the latter.
- oceanician 16y ago
  By the time the status changes it's probably too late for a significant number of cases, whereby 2 weeks later the status is 'in relationship' again. However, there's probably some worthwhile activity in monitoring wall posts from ex's in the period running up to the status change? Humans are completely unpredictable mind... haha :)
jbrun 16y ago
I will have to add an API to my site http://makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com http://makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com so people can track for breakups as well. Great idea though, definitely relationship 2.0
JonLim 16y ago
Hah! Love the idea and story behind the building of it. Thanks for all the details about how you are sending out the mail. I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp, would you mind if I sent you an email about how Appengine's email service is working out for you?

phirephly 16y ago

Only every 24 hours?!? But when the window is open, you RUN! Did Ted Mosby teach us nothing?

zalew 16y ago
+1 for HIMYM reference, I thought the same :) 24hrs is not 'be the first to know', probably all her/his friends will know that before. When I changed status I had a dozen comments in SECONDS.

dacort 16y ago

Would you be able to use real-time updates for this to avoid polling? http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ I'm not sure if it notifies you on friends changes or just the user that authed your app. I assume the latter.

oceanician 16y ago
By the time the status changes it's probably too late for a significant number of cases, whereby 2 weeks later the status is 'in relationship' again. However, there's probably some worthwhile activity in monitoring wall posts from ex's in the period running up to the status change? Humans are completely unpredictable mind... haha :)

jbrun 16y ago

I will have to add an API to my site http://makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com http://makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com so people can track for breakups as well. Great idea though, definitely relationship 2.0

JonLim 16y ago

Hah! Love the idea and story behind the building of it. Thanks for all the details about how you are sending out the mail. I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp, would you mind if I sent you an email about how Appengine's email service is working out for you?