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If sending virtual gifts like hearts, flowers and smiles on Facebook isn't your bag, you can send the real deal via RealGifts, a Facebook app that allows you to purchase real items and send them to your Facebook friends. Real gifts appear in Facebook's Gift shop and can be purchased through the Facebook credit system (10 credits = $1).

Some of the real gifts you can buy are chocolates, flowers, teddy bears, etc. The transaction is dead simple: type in your friend's name, choose the gift and then pay using your credit card. The entire process is contained within Facebook, making it a super convenient, no-shopping-cart-hassle experience. Your gift will be posted on your friend's wall and the gift is delivered by either Fedex, UPS or the USPS. If the gift is electronically redeemable, the recipient will receive a special link to redeem the gift.

No worries if you don't have a delivery address as the gift recipient can be prompted to enter it -- benign stalkers, rejoice! Delivery is limited to the U.S. and gift selection is limited, but will probably grow by leaps and bounds as more and Facebook users test the waters of buying real gifts within the Facebook network.

Sahil Lavingia has decided to do something a little different as he creates his next iPhone app: he's going to do it in public, and blog the process as he goes. He's also going to do it in a one-week marathon stretch, and has aptly named the project One Week App. This is both an interesting way for non-developers to gain a bit of an understanding about what goes into the app creation process, and a great way to get some relatively inexpensive PR for the new app.

The app Lavingia is creating is going to be called Dayta, which is a combination of the words "day" and "data". Although the functionality of Dayta hasn't yet been completely revealed, it's looking like a logger that lets you collect numbers based on the things you do in your daily life.

You can subscribe to the One Week App project via RSS or by following the @oneweekapp Twitter account. Here's hoping that One Week App doesn't turn out to be one weak app.

The folks at BaseKit think that the process of website creation is due for an overhaul -- and boy do I agree! The time for writing code in an editor, creating artwork in another app and uploading it all bit-by-bit is OVER. The folks at BaseKit pose a good question: why don't we make websites online, in the browser?

There are some nascent attempts, like the cheap-and-cheerful approach of Google Sites, but nothing that comes close to the simple, graceful beauty of BaseKit. For a start, you can import Photoshop PSD files! I can't begin to describe the pains I've been through, as a web designer, trying to implement PSDs in valid HTML and CSS -- but now BaseKit can do it for me, and the code it generates works in all modern browsers. It takes a little getting used to -- you need to name one of your layers 'Header', for example -- but overall, the process is very quick and very smooth. Check out the video on their homepage, if you want to see the PSD import in action.

Even if you don't want to import PSDs, there's lots of other shiny bits to lure you in. The interface is beautiful, like a marriage of everything good about Web 2.0. There is dragging and dropping, resizing, AJAX and widgets up the yin yang -- forms, date pickers, star ratings, imported Flickr and Twitter feeds -- it's all there. If you want to see what's possible, check out their showcase. You'll also notice there's no Flash (but they're working on including it... damn).

If I haven't won you over yet, I've saved the best, beardy-pleasing morsel for last: it generates W3C-compliant code!

Right now you have to sign up for a beta key -- and there are certainly some beta bugs that need ironing out -- but I will try to get some keys to hand out in the next few days over on our Facebook page!

Of all the sites a major mobile ISP could block, Verizon has probably picked the worst. Verizon mobile customers have found themselves unable to access 4Chan's infamous prank-filled, NSFW image board, /b/, and the ISP won't say why. 4Chan's founder, Moot, has even been unable to get a straight answer about the block. However, it's been confirmed that this was an intentional move by Verizon. At this point, it's only affecting Verizon's mobile customers, so you should still be able to see 4Chan using your home Internet connection.

This seems to be an utterly dumb move on Verizon's part. First, it opens them up to accusations of censorship. Why ban one specific site? There might be a reason, but Verizon's not giving it. Granted, 4Chan is known for occasional child pornography threads, but it tends to do a good job of self-policing those and deleting the offending materials ASAP. If that's the reason, Verizon isn't saying so.

The second reason an ISP might not want to mess with 4Chan is because bad (and sometimes hilarious) things tend to happen to those who do. There's an entire section of the 4Chan Wikipedia entry dedicated to 4Chan's various "Internet attacks." They might not be "hackers on steroids," despite one laughable TV news report to the contrary, but they're very good at posting porn in places you really don't expect to find it. It'll be interesting to see if there's any retaliation against Verizon, or if the block is peaceably lifted.

Update: Verizon will reportedly be unblocking 4Chan soon, if it hasn't happened already.

[via ReadWriteWeb]