Facebook launched its location-based service today, called Places. I’ve been reading about it on Mashable, TUAW and pretty much every other tech blog in my Google Reader for weeks, months even. So now that it’s finally here, I was excited to download the new version of the Facebook app for iPhone and give it a try. And this is what I found.

This feature will be available in my region soon? Thanks for nothing, Facebook. I hope they’re not taking time to add a bunch of locations before they launch – they should let users populate the locations, like Foursquare does. And on that note, apparently Places will integrate with Foursquare, Gowalla and other established location-based social networks. So if Foursquare has a litany of locations in my locality (aliteration FTW), why doesn’t Places feed from that? Foursquare has an API, after all.

Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. Until then, Facebook Places remains a much-hyped mystery.

It’s true – Facebook is turning six years old and to celebrate they are soon launching a drastic redesign of the site’s home page.

Every time Facebook comes out with a redesign of their website, cries from the huddled masses decree it to be the worst atrocity since Snooki was punched in the face.

Well, this time around I’m taking a preemptive strike. I’m calling out all of you who will undoubtedly whine and cry about the impending update to Facebook; start groups petitioning the admins to allow you to go back in time; and eventually come into the present with the rest of us kicking and screaming.  No matter what you do, it’s going to happen anyway, so I’m attempting to save you a lot of the time and effort you’ll waste railing against something you can’t change. Just suck it up.

The fact of the matter is Facebook is free for all and that means, although they’re incredibly receptive to the feedback of their users, they can pretty much do whatever they want with the site.

I believe web developers generally have the best interest of users at heart. They spend hours looking at research about how people use their sites so they can engineer better ways for you to interact. Faster ways. More efficient ways.

That’s a good thing. So cry if you like, but it’s happening.