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   Facebook Integration Comes to OS X

   Michael E. Cohen

   Unlike some cats you might know, Mountain Lion is a sociable beast, and
   with the 10.8.2 iteration it has become even more so by adding Facebook
   integration to its collection of big cat toys. This integration gives
   you the capability of making Facebook posts from Mountain Lion's
   Notification Center, from Safari, and from Game Center, as well as
   seeing all of your Facebook friends in your Contacts app ' if you so
   choose.

   To bring Facebook into your OS X environment, take a trip to System
   Preferences and open the Mail, Contacts & Calendars preference. There
   you find Facebook as one of the account types listed on the right side
   of the preference pane. Click the Facebook logo in that list, enter
   your Facebook username (the email address you use to log into Facebook)
   and your Facebook password, and then click Next.

   When you do that, you see a list of all the things you can do with
   Facebook. These include the following:
     * Download and integrate your Facebook friends into the Contacts app
     * Post Facebook status updates from Notification Center and post
       links from Safari
     * Enable other Facebook-savvy apps on your Mac to work with your
       Facebook account ' only with, Apple is careful to point out, your
       consent

   Following that list are various caveats and additional items of
   interest concerning the integration. For example, Apple points out that
   you can approve or deny any app's request to use your account, you can
   review what the requesting app purports to do with your account, you
   can grant the app permission to use information available to the app on
   your behalf in Facebook, and you can see (and specify) whether that
   information is available to just your Facebook friends, just you, or
   the entire Facebook community.

   [1][tn_facebook-caveats.jpg]

   In the fine print, Apple also points out what granting Facebook access
   to your apps could entail; this is well worth reading and considering
   if you are at all concerned about maintaining a modicum of privacy
   while interacting with Facebook from Mountain Lion. But, if the fine
   print doesn't scare you off, click Sign In and you're ready to
   go...almost: the preference then presents a pane showing you the apps
   that have requested Facebook access. In my case, the only app listed
   was Contacts, and the default was to allow Facebook access to my
   Contacts list (I immediately unchecked it). Even if you don't allow
   Facebook access to your Contacts, you can still have it look through
   your Facebook contacts and bring profile pictures from Facebook into
   your Contacts app and assign them to matching contacts if you like.

   Posting to Facebook from Safari is much like posting to Twitter: click
   the Share button on the Safari toolbar and choose Facebook from the
   menu, compose your post, and click Post. Your post, along with the URL
   of the page you are viewing, are published as your current Facebook
   status. Similarly, posting from Notification Center is much like
   posting to Twitter from there; in fact, the Click to Tweet button at
   the top of the Notification Center now shares space with a Click to
   Post button for Facebook.

   [2]Image

   In both these cases, and, I imagine, in other situations where you can
   post to Facebook from a Mac app, you see a small pop-up menu at the top
   of the posting pane from which you can choose who gets to see your
   post. Choices include Public (i.e., everyone on Facebook), Friends,
   Only Me, Friends of Friends, and various other Facebook groups to which
   you may belong. In fact, this menu seems to me more obvious and
   informative than the one lurking at the bottom of the Facebook posting
   pane in Facebook's Web interface.

   Facebook integration also includes notifications: when someone comments
   or likes a Facebook post of yours, or sends you a message via Facebook,
   Notification Center lets you know about it. You can open the
   Notifications preferences in System Preferences to choose how you get
   notified ' None, Banners, or Alerts ' and you can specify how many
   Facebook items are listed in Notifications Center.

   The integration that Apple and Facebook jointly provide in OS X 10.8.2
   seems to me to offer a good balance of utility and security. Whether
   you are only an occasional Facebook user or a complete Facebook addict,
   I suspect you'll like what the cat dragged in in the latest OS X
   update.

References

   1. http://tidbits.com/resources/2012-09/facebook-caveats.png
   2. http://tidbits.com/resources/2012-09/facebook-notification-post.png

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