PhotoJacker: Photo Album Downloader for Facebook

Cease & Desist / Facebook Takedown Notice

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:22:00 -0500

Greetings,

Facebook has sent me a Cease & Desist notice (click here to view) stating that PhotoJacker/FacePAD violates Section 3.2 of their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities:

You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission. (Section 3.2)

PhotoJacker/FacePAD, is in some way, a scraper, since it allows the end-user to download photos (that the user can manually download by right-clicking on the photo and pushing saved target/image as…) from Facebook to their computer in an expeditious manner. For the record, scraping is a very loosely defined term, and not all definitions I’ve read make it sound like PhotoJacker/FacePAD is a scraper.

Moving on, Facebook is extremely upset that I can achieve this photo-downloading functionality without using their API. I like to think of it as getting punished for being clever (hehe). They also think that I am exploiting some type of loophole in Facebook, which I’m not. All I do is use a few XMLHttpRequests() and some built in Firefox functions to achieve the functionality. Anyone with a bit of AJAX knowledge will attest to there being nothing malicious or wrong with this method.

I was considering putting this code in the Public Domain, but even then, I’ll still be in some legal grey area, which is not somewhere I want to be. If someone can walk me through this procedure (and prove to me that I will not be approached again by Facebook or any other organization), I will happily release the code under any copyleft license. Contact me at arthur[at]lazyrussian[dot]com if you’d like to help.

(UPDATE: I spoke with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF - www.eff.org), and they have informed me that it would be in my best interest to not post the code anywhere in the Public Domain, for fear that I will still piss off Facebook, even though I’d relinquish my ownership rights in the process. Therefore, I have decided not to release the code to the public domain.)

Regardless, I am currently a full time student, and I really don’t have the time to deal with this problem. Therefore, I have decided to comply with Facebook’s takedown notice. The program has been removed from Mozilla, and therefore, it can no longer be accessed or downloaded.

Thanks for the last 2.5 years of fun, and for making PhotoJacker/FacePAD a top extension at Mozilla.

Peace.

PhotoJacker: What's Next?

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 13:28:00 -0500

Hi,

I will attempt to include and fix the following in forthcoming releases:

1. Localization to other regions/languages

2. Download >200 photos in Group/Event/FanPage albums

3. HQ/HD photo downloads

4. A progress/download meter

5. Port for Google Chrome

This is an important semester for me, so don’t expect those features, fixes, or another PhotoJacker update for a few months, especially since I’ve spent a lot of my free time in the last 3 months getting PhotoJacker to where it is today.

I’ll still respond to tweets, fan-page inquiries, and emails.

Till then, I bid you adieu!

Tutorial video for PhotoJacker v0.9.5+.Find out why FacePAD was...

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 02:15:21 -0500

Tutorial video for PhotoJacker v0.9.5+.
Find out why FacePAD was rebranded as PhotoJacker by reading this post.

PhotoJacker: FacePAD, Rebranded. (v0.9.5)

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:33:00 -0500

Hey everyone,

I received a letter from Facebook’s lawyers today stating that I must rebrand FacePAD in the next 48 hours, or I’ll be slapped with a lawsuit. I definitely don’t want that, so I’m enacting FacePAD: Plan B.

A few months ago I put together a contingency plan in case this were to happen - the plan was to rebrand FacePAD as PhotoJacker, or Photo (Hi)Jacker…I was feeling a bit nefarious at the time. Anyway, the site’s been rebranded (new logo, new colors, new name), and a new version of FacePAD has been released: PhotoJacker v0.9.5. Go ahead and download it now by clicking here.

The new links are as follows:

A new tutorial video will go up tonight.

Tutorial video for FacePAD v0.9+.

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 03:38:19 -0500

Tutorial video for FacePAD v0.9+.

FacePAD v0.9 Released!

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:44:00 -0500

Greetings,

FacePAD v0.9 has been released. The following updates were made:

Added support for “Tagged Photos of User” Albums
Friend/Tagged-Photo albums with 200+ photos can now be downloaded in full
Fan-Page/Group/Event albums are still limited to the first 200 photos (Server-side/Facebook issue that I cannot resolve)
Added ‘Support FacePAD Development’ link below ‘Download Album with FacePAD’ link in the context menu
New tutorial video coming soon to delineate how one goes about downloading tagged photo albums. Instructions can be found here.

You can download v0.9 by clicking here.

Ciao,
Arthur/Lazyrussian

FacePAD v0.9 - Tagged Photo Downloads

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:53:00 -0500

Hey hey!

First off, happy New Year to all the fans and users of FacePAD.
Now, to the point of this AWESOME blog post! The following two bullet points will no longer be true once v0.9 is released:

~~Only the first 200 photos in an album can be downloaded~~
~~“Tagged Photos of User” cannot be downloaded~~

Instead:

All photos in an album will be downloaded
“Tagged Photos of User” can be downloaded

I am currently beta testing this with a few close friends of mine. A new tutorial video will also be made upon releasing v0.9, since the process for grabbing tagged photos and photos in albums that have more than 200 pictures will be slightly different.

Stay tuned - this version will be released within 2 weeks!

Tutorial video for FacePAD v0.8.2+.

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 22:26:00 -0500

Tutorial video for FacePAD v0.8.2+.

FacePAD v0.8.2 Released

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:24:20 -0500

Greetings,

FacePAD v0.8.2 has been released. The following updates were made:

Massive source-code overhaul
Minor modification to the prompt/alert system
Minor modification to the photo renaming schema

You can download v0.8.2 by clicking here.

Ciao,
Arthur/Lazyrussian

The New FacePAD & Update v0.8.2

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:17:00 -0500

Greetings,

I’ve purchased a domain name for FacePAD - www.facepad.us.
I did this for the following reasons:

I am no longer developing five extensions; only one, FacePAD
I wanted lazyrussian.com to point to my flavors.me account

Next on the agenda, FacePAD v0.8.2. While I planned on adding HTTPS-Everywhere support in this update, I am sad to say that I won’t be doing this just yet. I need more beta-testers - if you’re interested, shoot me an email. Once released, v0.8.2 will include the following updates:

Massive source-code overhaul
Modified prompt/alert system
Modified photo renaming schema

Ciao,
Arthur/Lazyrussian

Browser Ports for FacePAD

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:50:00 -0400

I have gotten a slew of emails asking me if I plan on porting FacePAD over to Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and the Opera browser. This post will explain my future plans for the program.

I’ll begin by stating that I have been a Google Chrome user since February 2010, and I haven’t looked back since. I keep Firefox installed for the sole purpose of using, developing and testing FacePAD, and sometimes updating my other extensions, though development on the other four add-ons has pretty much ceased.

I spent the last week reading about the APIs for the aforementioned browsers. I also took a good look at the numbers included in the chart above, and I have come to the following conclusion on development:

Firefox: Yes: Development will continue.
Google Chrome: Yes:I will definitely develop for this browser.
Safari: Maybe:I will port to this browser if I can use the Google Chrome port without having to make too many changes
Opera: Maybe: Their API was just released, but it’s lacking the necessary functions.
Internet Explorer: No: I will never develop for IE. Even if I did, I have no way of testing it. I’ve been an Apple/Linux user for the last five years, and I don’t plan on going back to Windows anytime soon.

Now, here’s the catch. While I do plan on developing for Google Chrome, I can’t do it just yet because their API is missing a feature - the one that allows a program to automatically save files to the user’s hard-drive. This is the reason that many of the image and video downloading extensions available on Firefox have yet to be ported over to Chrome.

Now, from what I’ve read, it’s a piece of cake to port extensions from Google Chrome to Safari, so I’m banking on this being true for FacePAD. If it is true, then expect a Safari port soon after a Chrome port, otherwise, don’t expect a Safari port at all.

Opera released its API last week, but it’s lacking A LOT of features. Also, analyzing the graph above shows that Opera has had no growth this year, and analyzing the charts over the last decade, shows that it’s only gained 1% market share in the last 7 years. Therefore, it’s a maybe leaning to a no.

I hope that answers people’s questions! If anyone has more questions or concerns, please contact me on twitter (@lazyrussian) or via email: arthur@lazyrussian.com.

FacePAD v0.8.1 Released

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:59:00 -0400

FacePAD v0.8.1 has been released! Grab it here!

This release enhances the auto-renaming feature introduced in last week’s v0.8.0 update. Now, users will be able to save partitioned facebook albums (e.g., NewYears_Album1, NewYears_Album2, NewYears_Album3, etc…) into one folder on their desktop (NewYearsAlbum), using prefixes. Prefixes are user-specified/generated alphanumeric phrases in the photo filename, so downloading multiple albums into one folder is allowed.

For example, the first photo of three different facebook albums being downloaded to your desktop will looks like this:

prefix1_1.jpg (photo 1 from album1)
prefix2_1.jpg (photo 1 from album2)
prefix3_1.jpg (photo 1 from album3)

A video tutorial delineating this in full detail will be available late Tuesday night (EST) or early Wednesday morning.

FacePAD: ‘Tech Tip of the Week at New York Times’

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:44:00 -0400

FacePAD: ‘Tech Tip of the Week at New York Times’

FacePAD v0.8.0 (October 21, 2010) Download FacePAD v0.8.0...

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:38:00 -0400

FacePAD v0.8.0 (October 21, 2010)

Download FacePAD v0.8.0 here!
Rewrote file-saving mechanism.
Users can now specify a custom download directory.
Photos will be numbered in ascending sequential order (based on upload date).
Changed MinVersion from Firefox 2.0 to Firefox 3.0.
New tutorial video http://bit.ly/facepad-vid
Like it? Make a small donation!

FacePAD hits the 1-million official downloads mark!

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 10:05:22 -0400

FacePAD hits the 1-million official downloads mark!

Mac Software I Love!

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:49:00 -0400

I use these three awesome programs. If any of you guys sign up or purchase any of these programs I get 250mb free space (from Dropbox), $5.00 (from Spanning Sync), and/or $10.00 (from TuneUp). Please make sure to use the link exactly as it’s printed so I get the perks for referring you. So, instead of donating $$$ for my firefox software, sign-up/purchase these awesome programs and have them pay me! Remember, my software is always free, but as a (poor, starving) graduate student, donations are always welcome!

Dropbox (http://db.tt/75mhSQT) - FREE
Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.

Spanning Sync (http://spanningsync.com/?r=6UVC88) - $20.00
Spanning Sync 3 is the one app that syncs both iCal with Google Calendar and Address Book with Google Contacts. It gives you even better control over how your information syncs, and is now up to 10x faster!

TuneUp (http://tuneup.tellapal.com/a/clk/Zv2cm) - $29.99
There’s nothing more annoying than a music library littered with “Unknown Artists”, “Track 01s”, or the same artist labeled multiple different ways, i.e. “Led Zepplin vs. LEDZEPLIN vs. zePPlin”. Clean is the must-have tool for anyone with missing or inaccurate tags in their music collection. TuneUp will automagically fill in missing metadata like artist, song name, album, release year and genre.

FacePAD v0.7.5 Released!

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:38:00 -0400

FacePAD v0.7.5 has been released! Grab it here!

This release fixes the current ‘infinite thumbnail downloading’ issue that’s plaguing FacePAD users. This began occurring because Facebook began rolling out a new album-layout/database/schema to users this week. I have fixed this issue and left the original code in tact for those users who haven’t been migrated to the new album system.

FacePAD v0.7.5 - Coming Soon!

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:57:14 -0400

FacePAD v0.7.5 fixes the current ‘infinite thumbnail downloading’ issue that’s plaguing FacePAD users. This began occurring because Facebook began rolling out a new album-layout/database/schema to users this week. I have fixed this issue and left the original in code in tact for those users who haven’t been migrated to the new album system. Also, I’ve taken the opportunity to make FacePAD compatible with Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 (Pre). Again, as I stated in my previous posts, my other extensions will get an update to Firefox 4.0 closer to Firefox 4.0’s release date.

More info here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8442/

New Facebook layout and FacePAD

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:16:42 -0400

Hi,

It has come to my attention that Facebook has once again changed their layout scheme (that’s three times in 9 months). This has rendered FacePAD inoperable for those FacePAD users who’s Facebook accounts have been migrated to the new photo-album system. Since my account has not been transferred to the new format, I can not yet fix the issue that is occurring with FacePAD, but rest assured, once it has been migrated, I will mitigate this issue.

FacePAD v0.7.4 Released

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:00:40 -0400

FacePAD v0.7.4 is a service release that allows FacePAD to be used with Firefox 4.0 Beta 2 (Pre). As I stated in my previous post, my other extensions will get an update to Firefox 4.0 closer to Firefox 4.0’s release date.

More info here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8442/