I had a good day yesterday. After spending almost six hours debugging a problem with Internet Explorer (yeah, old news) and a Drupal based Facebook application we're writing for 49st I finally found a solution.

However, this morning I found that the same code that was working yesterday showed some nasty error message. What now?

I recently posted a few ideas on the opportunities for web developers in Facebook.

I decided to use DynDNS for creating a host name for my local DSL connected Ubuntu box, it's easier editing and making changes that way instead of using the other servers I have in a couple of data centers. I used the hostname as a callback url for a Facebook test application. Facebook saw my host and the application worked as expected.

A couple of hours later I disconnected from the Net to take a break, when I got back received a new IP address from my ISP's DHCP server and DynDNS updated my host information to point to the new IP. Unfortunately now Facebook can't find my callback url anymore. I tried editing settings and changed the host name to the new public IP address to discard, still no luck and I'm getting this error:

The URL http://xx.xx.xx.xx/facebook/application-name/ did not respond.

There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of application-name are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

Is Facebook caching my older IP address? That was my first thought but even putting the actual public IP of my box in the callback url didn't work.

Is this a temporal glitch in the Facebook Platform or am I missing something else?

I'll keep testing but if you have any ideas I'd love to know.

Fixed: I'm an idiot! I forgot changing the IP address of my database server, also in my local box. Now everything's working again.

I've been in the social networking scene for some time already, I know the power of connecting with the right people and I love to be a part of the online society, gosh, I have a good life thanks to that! but I didn't realize how big all the Facebook frenzy was and the many new opportunities there are for us, web developers, until I started playing with the Facebook Platform.

A cool project in which I'm currently working involves some Drupal modules talking to Facebook and it's a great opportunity to explore new directions in the development of online projects.

As many of you may know (let's imagine you're a regular reader, if you aren't what are you waiting to grab the feed?), I'm a big fan of Second Life, so it was big news when I found a cool group of residents in Facebook, I've just joined.

I'm sure we'll see many new projects involving metaverses like Second Life and social networking platforms like Facebook sprouting online quite soon. Yeah, social networking platforms, not simply sites anymore, Facebook have changed it all.

There're plenty of opportunities for people creating online experiences and if you thought there were already too many fields in the web development arena think again, soon we'll see Facebook apps experts and Second Life experiences builders along with Drupal hackers in web teams.

Gosh!, these are really exciting times for those of us who love this stuff.

So, where do you think you're heading as a web developer? If we can call ourselves that way any longer.