My wife was aghast when she found out from a friend that KIN is not being sold through Verizon as of July. I think her specific quote was “WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY?”, and then her KIN’s Loop started acting up. We love it anyway.

I explained that Windows Phone 7 is getting traction with developers and has similar “loopy” people-oriented features, so KIN sales were destined for a certain brevity of life… not necessarily ended by July, but by October-November. I think we agreed it doesn’t really matter to us; her KIN should keep working within contract.

One thing I couldn’t explain is what might happen to KINs, if there were any, that weren’t sold between July and October-November when the new Windows Phones can be bought.

Whenever anyone uses the KIN to post to Facebook, there’s a link to the KIN ‘proxy’ Facebook application on the post. Applications on Facebook have a monthly-active users metric. I can’t find any details on how that Facebook metric works, but assume it’s an average of the number of people who used the application at least once in the prior 1 month.

Through June and July the number was approaching 10,000. (This was reported thoroughly around July 8.)

Now look at it. Today it’s nearing 40,000. It’s August 17, more than one month after July 8, and so totally encompasing whatever Facebook’s concept of “monthly” might be in that difference.

What could have happened?

• Facebook application monthly actives is a garbage metric, at least for this application.
• 300% more users in July-August figured out they could get their Facebook on from a phone that’s pretty much designed & marketed for that use case specifically, than in June-July
• 300% more KIN devices are in users hands July-August (so, since the phone was no longer sold by Verizon) than June-July

I don’t know which, if any of these, are the case. I think it might be some part of all 3.

People are starting to realize it’s wise to backup information stored on online services like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Just as backing up family photos stored on your home PC to a separate disk is a good idea, so is backing up family photos stored on the internet to a disk that’s in your control.

Why? No, your home computer isn’t as reliable as Facebook or Google’s or Microsoft’s servers… but these services “crash” in ways your home computer can’t:

• Your information’s used in a way you didn’t expect & you want to quit
• Business changes occur you don’t agree with & you want to quit
• Online applications you hoped would stand forever disappear& you’re forced to quit

Keeping your information backed up along the way makes it possible to deal with all these scenarios.

Here’s a way to back up contacts from Facebook into a CSV file (“comma separated values”.) We’re using Windows Live to import contacts from Facebook, then exporting from Windows Live to CSV file. The CSV file is convenient because you can open it in Microsoft Excel or any text editing program. Email applications can often import CSV files as well.

A warning: Using this technique, as far as I know, will send an email to each contact’s address inviting that person to also use Windows Live. This appears to be its cost. This is not stated clearly by Windows Live, so I’m warning you here, and I’m hoping Windows Live clarifies & provides opt-out option in the future. I still think it’s worth doing.

Here are the steps:

1) Sign in or sign up at http://people.live.com.

2) On the main screen at http://people.live.com, click “Add People”

3) Select “Facebook” from pull-down list, then click the big arrow.

4) A window containing a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/login.php…) appears asking for your permission to read contacts from Facebook. Yes,  this is what you came here to do, and if you did these steps, yes, that’s really Facebook, not a malicious site.

5) You may have to repeat step 3 and 4; I’m not sure why.

6) Windows Live itself breaks import into 3 Steps, 2 of which are easy: click “Next” on Step 1 of 3, and “Next” on Step 2 of 3.

7) In Step 3 of 3,  I recommend unchecking “Add these people to Windows Live Messenger” and “Also show these people on my profile page”. These options have benefits, but you can always go back into Windows Live contact list & do these things later once you understand what they mean. Regardless of what you check, this is the step that may “Send Invitation”  emails to your friends. Click “Send Invitation” once everything’s just so:

9) If this isn’t the first time you’ve done this, or you use Windows Live for contact management already, now’s the time to use “Merge” (under “Manage”) to merge any duplicates created by the process back into single contacts. I’ll leave this step up to you; Windows Live makes it easy.

10) Now to export your Windows Live contacts to a CSV file: Click “Export”, under “Manage”:

11) Pass the “are you human?” test:

13) Save the CSV file.

There may be some other technique, but this is what I do. I’d love to hear how you do it.

Hot off my mention of the Live Search application for Windows phones comes “the” Facebook application for Windows phones. I say “the” because similar applications exist, but never were they called “Facebook” (see FriendMobilizer and SkyBook.)

I use http://m.facebook.com right now, which is a trimmed-down Facebook experience, for a 30-second peek into what my family & friends are up to, and to misspell status updates while trying to walk.

This application’s way more, including inline comment balloons & photo/video uploads… a book in the face, if you will… you’ll be spending way more than 30 seconds with this thing.

What I can tell you so far is it does not help with spelling, nor walking. Test results follow:

Anyway, it’s a free download at the Microsoft download site.

Still haven’t figured out how to install applications on a Windows phone? Yeah, neither have the foremost scientists. You can do it. Download & open the file ending in “.cab” from your phone. (Tip: email the link to the .cab file to yourself, then open the message on the phone and click the link.)

Here’s a more in-depth, more serious review: http://www.mobilityminded.com/807/microsoft-facebook-application-for-windows-mobile-phones-step-by-step-overview