But who offers such a service?   These tools are not normally offered in a very prominent place and you have to do some digging on each site for them. After some browsing, I found 5 services who offer secret email addresses for you to update while on the go.   There are probably many more but here are 5 of the top ones that a lot of people normally use.

Flickr

Flickr is the first service I found that supplies secret updating email addresses.   If you take a photo with your phone and you want to directly send it to your Flickr photostream then doing so is extremely easy.

Just go here to see your own updating address (Flickr log-in is required).   Then add that address to your email address book (you can even ask Flickr to send the address to your email address book if you are too lazy!).  You can also specify any default tags you want added to emailed-in photos.   Since I will always be using the email function with my mobile phone, I chose to have added #frommobile with these pictures.

Then in the future, when you take a photo with your phone :

• open a new email window
• add your secret email address
• add the photos as attachments
• put the desired title of the photo in the email subject line
• put any photo description in the body of the email
• tags can be put in the subject line or in the body of the email using the tags: title.

Or for those of you who like graphical explanations :

When I tested it, it took 15 minutes for photos to arrive on my Flickr photostream. So it isn’t an instant thing. But if you are out and away from your computer anyway, 15 minutes won’t make any difference.

If you think your secret upload email address has been revealed to others, you can also easily reset the address by pressing a button on your Flickr page.

As soon as the picture(s) arrive at Flickr, the site even offers to put them on your blog automatically.   Is there anything Flickr won’t do for you?

YouTube

This one is a bit redundant for me as my Android phone already has YouTube uploading built in.   But for those of you who haven’t got this feature by default, here’s a quick and easy way to send your videos to YouTube.

By going here (again, log-in required), you will see your secret uploading YouTube email address.  Now whenever you want to send a video to the site, just attach it as an email attachment and send it to your secret address.

Be aware with this one that virtually all email services have an attachment size limit.   Videos are normally huge in size so unless you keep the video clip small, you may have trouble getting your email service to accept it.  So no uploading Ben-Hur!  Keep it short, simple and small.

Facebook

The Facebook one seems to only allow the uploading of photos so no status updates or poking with this address.   But if you regularly upload lots of drunken party photos to Facebook then go here and find your secret Facebook uploading address.  Speed is of the essence if you want your boss to find out why you really took the day off sick.

Blogger

Blogger has two methods of letting you post content via your mobile, and of course, me being me, the first method didn’t work at all!  Typical.

The first method, which you can read about here, involves authorising your phone to send content to your blog.   But when I tried, I got an email back saying that my “device was not authorised”.   Wait a minute – a Google Android phone is not authorised to send content to a Google-owned blogging company?   Spot the irony there.

The second method is to set up a secret blogging email address.  Unlike the other services, you can choose what the second half of the address will be (so you can choose a secret word or phrase that only you will remember).   You can set this up by logging into Blogger then going to settings–>email & mobile.

The title of the blog post goes in your email subject line and all blog images go as email attachments.

Posterous

I couldn’t do a post like this without mentioning Posterous, the blogging site which seems to be doing surprisingly well.  The whole concept of Posterous is that you email in everything and it will be automatically posted for you – text, photos, mp3’s, videos, documents, the lot.

Just set up your blog, associate an email address with it and then send your blog entries with that email address to post@posterous.com .   It will then shortly appear on your Posterous page.  The simplicity of it is winning over a lot of bloggers and I have to admit, I am starting to weaken.

So there are 5 services where you can email in your updates.   Do you know of any more?   If so, let us know all about them in the comments so I can update my email address book…

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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This can take a while because the Android Market, which is the Google equivalent of the Apple iTunes store, has lots of good stuff. Granted not as much stuff as the Apple iTunes store, but it’s slowly getting there. So, just like a kid in a candy store, you are likely to start installing everything to see what it is all like.

But in the long term, you can’t install everything you find (phone performance would take a serious hit if you installed the kitchen sink) so finally you have to scale back to the best, most essential apps.

To help all you fellow new Android users out, here’s the ones I personally consider to be keepers. After less than a week, I am still looking and refining my phone but the following are ones I will find really hard to get rid of. To find them, just go to the Android Market on your phone and search for them.

Meebo

As someone who makes his living online, being able to chat to my colleagues and other contacts is a must. Pidgin is my favourite IM app but until they make a mobile version of their software, Meebo seems to be the best option for multi-client instant messaging.

An online account from the Meebo website doesn’t seem to be needed for this app. Just add your instant messaging ID’s and passwords and log in. You may be asked to confirm all your contacts again (it asked me to confirm 5 of my contacts who have been on my Pidgin IM list for over a year) and then you will see everyone in a neat vertical list.

If you are more of an AIM fan, check out the Android app Hi AIM. Yahoo Messenger fans can download Hi Yahoo, ICQ users have ICQLive (does anyone still use ICQ?) and Windows Live Messenger users can use Hi MSN Beta. But honestly, if you use more than one of these apps (and who doesn’t these days?) then Meebo is an easier tidier option.

Skype Lite

Another of my requirements, when buying the Android phone, was that it had to be able to run Skype. Not all mobiles can run the Skype Lite app (my partner bought a Palm Pre phone last week and then discovered that it doesn’t run Skype. Boy is she unhappy!).

The Skype Lite app (as it name suggests) is a slimmed down bare-bones app that allows you to call your Skype contacts via your mobile (so very useful for national and international calls). You can also instant message your contacts.

But what Skype Lite will NOT do (at least for me here in Germany) is allow me to send SMS messages, which is rather inconvenient as I am a big SMS sender.  You also can’t receive video.

Nevertheless Skype Lite is an extremely useful app to have on your mobile phone and absolutely essential if you need to make a national or international call (and you don’t want to pay your mobile company’s extortionate standard rates).

Twidroid

The next essential thing I needed on my phone was a good Twitter app. As someone who is really getting into the swing of twittering, I needed something other than visiting the mobile version of the site.  I needed a proper app which would allow me to follow / unfollow people as well as do other things such as make changes to my Twitter profile. I found it in Twidroid.

Twidroid allows you to do virtually everything you can do on the regular Twitter site, as well as give you a nice clean easy to navigate interface to read and respond to tweets. You can also read peoples profiles and follow / unfollow them.

If that wasn’t enough, you can also be notified on your Android desktop when new tweets have arrived (and you can choose what notification tone you want). But having this one is actually a battery drainer so I chose to switch it off. As well as a battery killer, it is also a productivity killer. I don’t want to be looking at my phone every 5 minutes reading the latest tweets. I can easily wait a couple of hours and then scroll through them all in one go.

Facebook

I am not THAT much into Facebook but every now and then I like to visit the site and see what my friends are saying. Android has a nice Facebook app which, like the Twitter app, puts everything into a nice compact easy-to-read format.

You can like / dislike entries, write on peoples walls, comment, upload photos, poke people, send friend and invite requests and much more.

One of the things I really like is that, to refresh the app, you just need to shake your phone! That’s right, find out who has just poked you by shaking the Droid.

Again you can be notified on the Android notification bar at the top when new updates come in (as well as get an unique sound to alert you). But once again, these features are battery drainers and if you have a battery which runs out after a day, then it would be best to switch off all the instant notifications.

Last.FM

The phone shouldn’t only be for work but also for play.  It should be able to relax you when you’re feeling a bit stressed out. Until Android develops a back massage app, then Last.FM is the best app for you to close your eyes for 5 minutes and unwind.

Just like the website, the Last.FM app allows you to

• Log into your account and listen to music.
• Choose a radio station (or start a new one),
• Say who you like listening to and the Last.FM app will find similar artists and play them.
• Like / dislike the currently playing song
• Skip to the next song

The quality of the music sound will depend entirely on your phone speakers but my Android phone came with headphones and the Last.FM music sounds fine through them.

In the next post, we will discuss the next 5 free Android apps you should be putting on your Android phone. In the meantime, what do you think of these 5? Do you have these ones or do you prefer better free alternatives? Let us know what you think in the comments, and stay tuned for part two.

[Update: 10 Free Android Apps For Your New Android Mobile (Part 2)]

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The first and quickest way to start is to simply use your status update feature to announce to all your friends that you have something to sell or that you are looking for a specific item. This is quick, easy, and painless. However, the audience is limited to your friends and you may not have too much success, particularly if most of your friends live hundreds of miles away and you are trying to sell a refrigerator.

The next place to go is the new or used Facebook Marketplace. This site was launched earlier this year and allows you to find items for sale or to sell your used stuff. The site is powered by oodle. Stefan covered oodle at length in his March 2009 article Oodle – Another Craigslist, But Slightly Better. To list items for sale, you have to allow Marketplace permission, like other Facebook applications. The site has four primary categories: items for sale, housing, jobs, and vehicles. Beside each category is a small “+ post” button for you to add a post.

Marketplace is as easy to use as Craigslist, and to me, easier than ebay, since you don’t have to bid and wait. Via the Facebook interface, you can comment and ask questions about the items up for sale. When you go to the main screen and begin browsing, you can set your location and search area to limit the distance you want to search. You may find a deal 500 miles away, but shipping costs or a trip to pick it up may make it less cost effective. Once you select your location, a section of the resulting page will show you pictures and a brief description of the latest items listed for sale.

If you choose to browse one of the four categories, the page comes up in classical Facebook interface style. The “type your status here” bar is replaced with a “Post in ___” bar (fill in the blank for the category). You are also provided a choice to “post” a listing or “find” an item.

From the main page, if you have clicked the “+ post” button beside a category, you are given the choice to “sell it” or “give it away”. Curb alert! Also from here you can post requests for items by clicking on the “ask for it” button.

You just can’t find what you are looking for in the Marketplace? Hunt up one of the Freecycle groups. If you’ve never heard of Freecycle, let me explain – at least a little. Freecycle groups exist in many locations and through various internet channels. Freecycling is simply giving away things that you would normally throw away or donate. A large majority of items are clothing related, but I have gotten some decent video games and books through Freecycling. Many people don’t have time or enough items to hold a yard sale, they don’t think the stuff is worth much money, they don’t live near an organization’s donation location, or they just don’t want to throw it away, so they list it through a Freecycle group.

Freecycle groups are accessible through Yahoo, Craigslist and Facebook, among others. On Facebook, simply go to “Groups” and in the “search Groups” box, type in ‘freecycle’. Numerous groups will come up and you can browse for one in your area. Join the group, and you will get status updates when items come available.

Some groups, like those on Yahoo, are set up to send an email alert every time something is listed. Be forewarned if you live near a metropolitan area, you may get swamped with emails regarding items you are not interested in. You may want to establish a separate email account tied specifically to the Freecycle group or you may want to use email filters set for a particular item you are needing. If you use a Facebook Freecycle group, your wall may end up being flooded with status updates about items as well, so you may want to turn these off and just go look at the offerings when you are looking for something in particular.

Yard Sale groups on Facebook are another way of finding good deals. Yard sale groups are relatively unexplored and there are only a few out there. Like the Marketplace, you buy and sell, but like Freecycle, this is done through a Facebook group.

I really like this concept, particularly if you have a group of friends who live relatively close to one another, but you just don’t have time to hold a yard sale or time to go to yard sales on Saturday morning. You can start the group, advertise via your status, and start a small local network of friends who can buy, sell, or trade items.

Do you have any other creative ways to use Facebook to find good cheap stuff?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Wouldn’t it be nice if your computer could just automatically do a Facebook login and provide you with an alert whenever anything new happens? Or wouldn’t it be wonderful to just pop open a little application on your mobile phone that would show all of your friends’ latest updates?

All of these things and more are possible – there are many ways to login to Facebook without going to the website, and in this post I’m going to detail four methods that you can use to do so. The four ways you can log into Facebook without directly navigating to the website and logging in is with your cellphone, with a desktop aggregator, with an Internet based aggregator, or through a desktop gadget.

1. Monitor Facebook on Your Computer With Digsby or Trillian

Since I spend a large majority of my time sitting in front of the same laptop while I’m writing articles, the ideal way for me to do a Facebook login without going to the website is through a desktop aggregator. Now, personally I use Digsby because I prefer the interface and I find it very easy to quickly update my status or add comments to my friends’ posts.

It saves a great deal of time because Digsby automatically logs into all of your social networks the moment you boot up your computer, and it immediately reports whenever there are any updates. You can review and respond to them right in the interface. If this sounds like the choice for you, make sure to check out David’s article on Digsby to learn more.

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to mention the PC aggregator method of an automatic Facebook login without mentioning Trillian. There are many people who prefer Trillian Astra over every other IM/social networking client, and for good reason.

Just like Digsby, you can set up Trillian to login to Facebook automatically, and all you have to do to see Facebook updates is hover the mouse over your Facebook connection. While I don’t personally prefer the Trillian interface, I can certainly see why it would be the preferred client app for many people. If this app appeals to you, then stop navigating over to Facebook to log in and instead read Saikat’s explanation as to why Trillian is the best IM client.

2. Check Facebook on the Web With Online Aggregators

Now, if you don’t want to download any software to your computer, there are still ways that you can login to Facebook without having to navigate to the website all of the time. You can do this by using an online aggregator of all of the social networking tools that you use. These usually not only include Facebook, but also things like your IM accounts, blog accounts and Twitter or Myspace.

One of the oldest portals is often also an overlooked approach to logging into Facebook automatically – iGoogle. When you search iGoogle for Facebook gadgets, you’ll find a number of them. Most of them are similar and work fine.

For example, the gadget I chose above works well, and it lets you login to Facebook directly from your iGoogle page.

Now, if you prefer an online portal that aggregates all of the social networks you use (in addition to Facebook), there are two very popular options. If you’ve been following along here at MakeUseOf, then you may know what they are. First, the one that’s my own favorite – Zooloo.

Once you’ve got the widget set up to automatically log into your Facebook account, all you have to do is set Zooloo as your home page and it’ll log you into Facebook every time you load up your browser. Mahendra covered Zooloo in excellent detail just recently. It’s definitely an option people use to connect to Facebook that’s worth checking out.

A very close second favorite is a site Daniel covered called Second Brain, which organizes your online networks into interesting “collections.” Either approach you take, the online approach to logging into Facebook allows you to check your Facebook account from anywhere, possibly even if Facebook itself is blocked by a firewall.

3. Login to Facebook From the Vista Sidebar

While this approach is limited to Windows Vista users, it is another convenient method you can use to receive notifications of Facebook updates. I covered a few of those Vista sidebar options a while ago.

Of the available options, myFacebook is my favorite because it offers more information than other widgets, such as a scrolling update from your friends’ status comments. This widget automatically logs into Facebook when your computer boots, and you receive notification of private messages, pokes and friend notifications.

You can download MyFacebook from the Windows Live gallery.

Just keep in mind that when you do install it, you need to go through a few steps to confirm authentication with Facebook, including obtaining and entering a special login code, and clicking on a link in Facebook that allows the application to access your account details.

The good news is that the widget wizard goes through the setup process in a few very simple, easy-to-follow steps.

4. Accessing Facebook From Your Mobile

The fourth and most commonly sought-after method to access Facebook is with a mobile device. Whether people use a Blackberry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device, they want to login to their Facebook account while on the go. The good news is that there are several ways to do this, depending which mobile device you’re using.

My personal favorite that I’ve been using for some time is F’im, a Windows Mobile based app for mobile Facebook. With that said, if I was running Windows Mobile 6.0, I would probably download Microsoft’s official Windows Mobile Facebook app.

While the user online status screen looks pretty cool, many of the screens just look like straight Facebook mobile screens. However, what F’IM lacks in terms of creativity for status screens is the software’s ability to automatically post images from your phone to your Facebook account.

Do you have a favorite way to log into your Facebook account other than going to the website? Which solution do you prefer, mobile, desktop aggregator, desktop widget or online aggregator? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Some people consider it annoying, others consider it as a form of flirting, and others just use it to get their friend to wake up and start posting updates again. This means that at the moment there’s no real accepted “poking etiquette,” and people are pretty much making up their own rules. In simple technical terms, a “poke” is a link that you click on under someone’s profile picture in order to post a message on their Facebook page that you’ve just poked them. That’s really all there is to it – it’s simple. Or is it?

Since “poking” is basically the process of posting a message to your friend’s wall to wake them up, flirt or annoy – why couldn’t you do the same thing with a simple message? The fact is – you can. And message “poking” adds a bit of flexibility and fun to the process.

How to Poke a Friend

Experienced Facebook users can skip over this section, but I’m including it for those of you who are very new to Facebook and you’ve never used the poke feature before. This explanation strictly the Facebook “Poke” feature – not the message approach. First, go to a friend’s profile and take a look under the profile picture.

Underneath their photo is where you’ll find the “Poke <name>” feature. Poking someone is as simple as clicking on that link under their photo. Once you do this, a new window pops up asking you to confirm.

Once you click the “Poke” button – the person will receive a poke notification on their wall and they’ll see that you just poked them. As you can see – there’s no way to tell a person why you just poked them – so it’s up to the other person to read into your motivations, and of course this can lead to misunderstanding and confusion. But then again, isn’t that the fun of a social network? Don’t worry though, this is only the very simplest version of “poking” on Facebook. There are lots of other ways to do it that are a lot more fun.

2 Cool Ways to Poke People on Facebook

For experienced Facebook users, the standard Poke feature is old hat. If you want to take the “poking” approach to get your friend’s attention, you’ll want to install the Facebook Superpoke! application.

The Superpoke! is a much more interactive method you can use to send over the kind of pokes that’ll leave very little room for misunderstanding. For example, go ahead and blow a kiss at the girl you’re trying to date. Send a high five poke to a friend who just aced an exam. Or maybe even dropkick someone for saying something stupid. Once you’ve installed SuperPoke!, all you have to do is go to the person’s profile and just under the status box, you can click on the “more” drop-down arrow. If they have SuperPoke! installed on their profile, you’ll see the option there.

Even if they don’t have it installed – have no fear, you can still Superpoke! a friend – just go back to the Superpoke! app and on the right side you’ll see a box where you can select who to superpoke from your list of friends.

Go ahead and superpoke anyone you want. As you can see, this version of poking lets you add a message to your poke. The odds are that they’ll find it so funny they’ll probably install the app and poke you back. Beware – superpoking is addictive!

The second form of poking that some people use is ASCII art pokes. Instead of using any sort of poke feature, you can send someone a message in the form of a poke in ASCII Text.

You can do quite a bit with ASCII art, if you know how. If you’re curious how you can create images with simple ASCII keys, check out Saikat’s article on keyboard techniques to create cool symbols. You can really go crazy with ASCII art (and a lot of people do!)

So, what does it mean to you when you poke someone on Facebook? Hopefully, these two new methods to poke your friends has inspired you to prod those friends into becoming a little more active and posting some fresh new updates to their status. Do you know of any other cool ways to poke people in Facebook? Share your own techniques in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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At the time of writing, the plugin, which is called SignatureProfiler has been updated for Snow Leopard but for the last couple of months, I’ve reverted to using good old reliable text as my email signature — until today.

I recently found out how to spruce up emailing by using my Facebook profile badge as a signature. It’s pretty neat and like all Facebook badges, you can easily customize it to your liking. We’ll go through the steps required to make it in a little while. Right now, I’d like to point out a few things.

Firstly, this trick is meant to be used in Mail, Mac’s default desktop mailing application. It works without the need for any addition plugins but you are required to set up your email accounts in Mail. Secondly, you also need to pair the account with a signature — just text will be fine at this point, it doesn’t really matter since it’s about to be replaced. Lastly, you’ll need TextWrangler, a free HTML-capable text editor or any other HTML editor.

Let’s get started, log in to your Facebook profile then scroll down until you see this link:

If you have never created a badge before, then go ahead and create one. It’s very simple and you only need to follow the on-screen instructions. A horizontal badge works best in this situation. Add whatever you like into the badge: your name, your profile picture, your status, your websites, anything! When you’re done, preview your badge. If you’re happy with your creation, click on Save. On the next screen, you’ll be presented with the sharing options. Click on “Other” and the badge’s code will appear. Click on it once and press Command+C to copy it to the clipboard.

Open up TextWranger or any HTML editor of your choice and paste the code in a new document. It should look something like this:

Notice that I’ve selected a part of the code which is actually not necessary for your signature. It adds a link to your profile and another link for others to create their own badge. It won’t look very pretty so we’re going to delete it. Here’s how it should look like after removing the useless bits.

Alright, now we’re going to add a space above the signature just for the sake of convenience. It’s much easier to add a space at this point, which will go between your email message and the signature; rather than having to press the Enter key several times after composing your email. Add <p>&nbsp;</p> to the beginning of the code, like this:

We’re almost done. All we need to do now is to remove the width and height attributes from the code. By leaving the attributes there, we are telling Mail that no matter what, the signature has to be that width and height. In actuality, the Facebook badge changes in dimension depending on your status, links, etc. So remove this part of the code:

Finally, we’re ready to save the HTML file. Click on File, then Save As. Type in any name followed by “.html” as shown in the screenshot. Select the Desktop as the destination and click Save.

Double-click the resulting file and it should open up in Safari. Check if everything is in order then save it as a Web Archive — click on File, Save As and select Web Archive as the format. Again, make sure that the Desktop is selected as the destination and click Save.

Just a little bit more and we’re done. Remember when I mentioned earlier that you should already have a signature attached to your email account in Mail? Well, if you haven’t created one, I suggest you do it right this instant because we’re going to look for it. Open up a new Finder window and delve down to ~/Library/Mail/Signatures. There should be a minimum of 2 files there if you only have 1 email account set up. One file should be formatted as .webarchive.

To check if it is indeed your email signature, double-click it and it should be displayed in Safari (Snow Leopard users can use Quick Look). Once we’ve determined that this is the signature we want to replace with the Facebook badge, copy the file name. Mine looks like “FED17D3A-AC4C-490D-93CB-80634BD2A114″. Use this to rename the webarchive file which you’ve just saved on the Desktop. After you’ve renamed it, click and drag it into the Signature folder. Finder will ask you if you’re sure you want to replace the existing file, click Yes.

And we’re done. Relaunch Mail and give it a whirl. Compose a new mail and your signature should show up.

How easy was that? No plugins, additional software or expert skills required! For our non-Mac friends who also want to use their Facebook profiles as email signatures, I’m sure Saikat’s post will teach you a thing or two about integrating HTML into Gmail.

What do you use as your email signature?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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An idle time game is what it says. It’s a game you play in your idle time. The beauty of idle time games is that they are designed to provide you with some down time away from the game too. Certain components require specific time frames to complete with no interaction from you, thus leaving you time to go back to doing other stuff.

When you have a break from email, work, and checking out all the other MakeUseOf tips, programs and websites, log in to Facebook, click “Applications”, and check out the top five most popular idle time Facebook games.

On top of the list is FarmVille, by Zynga, with nearly 60 million “active monthly users”.

A similar game by Slashkey, called Farm Town, ranks fifth, with nearly 18 million users.

These two top Facebook games are very similar, allowing me to kill two digitally rendered, unreal virtual birds with one stone.

Both games provide a chunk of cyberspace upon which to grow “crops”. You’re a farmer (customizable avatar) with a small farm and a few coins to buy seeds with. You plant crops, which have varying times to maturity, and wait for them to grow. Later, you come back and harvest them to earn coins. You then plow the land to prepare for more crops. Harvesting and plowing earn you experience points which help you “level up”.

Barns, pathways, water features, and fences are just a sample of the items available for purchase with your earnings to personalize your farm. As you progress in levels the items you can buy get more enticing and more profitable seeds are available. You can also increase your farm’s size.

There are a few differences in the two games which may determine which you prefer. Take both for a test drive and decide for yourself. You might get addicted to both, like me. Farm Town allows you to earn coins and experience by helping other farmers who aren’t your neighbors and includes chat features. Both games have animals you can purchase, but only FarmVille allows the animals to be “harvested”. Cows give milk, sheep give wool, and so on.

Mafia Wars, another Zynga game, boasts 26 million users. If you’re in the mood for stealing, robbing, or icing someone in cyberspace this may be your game. It’s a dashboard-only game, meaning you do not have an avatar or a character to move around. If you want to do a job, you click a button, and the results are displayed. Many other idle time games are designed this way, and as someone used to Grand Theft Auto action, I personally don’t enjoy this type of game.

You earn money for doing jobs which include robbing a pimp, collecting on a loan, and other mafioso tasks. You recruit friends to be part of your mafia, and you can fight other people’s mafias. Websites outside of Mafia Wars have popped up where you recruit people other than your friends to be in your Mafia. The more members you have, the more successful you are. You can purchase items, and you level up by building experience with jobs and fights.

Energy, stamina, and health are important, as jobs require varying levels of these traits to perform. This is where the game invokes idle time. Once your resources are depleted, a clock is displayed and you have to wait it out until they begin being refilled.

Pet Society by Playfish is a cute game that seems to be designed for the younger crowd, yet it claims fourth place with 19 million users. This game allows you to have a customizable pet that interacts with the environment. The pet has a home and a community to explore. The community includes a home improvement center, a cafe, and a grocery store, among others. You can decorate your home, play with your pet, and feed your pet.

This game has a mini-Sims like feel as it has three status bars you try to keep maxed out to ensure your pet is healthy, happy and clean. The feel is cartoon-like, but it’s is a relatively simple and safe game for children if you allow them to use the computer during your idle time.

Similar to Pet Society, YoVille is an interactive community with people-based avatars, but this game includes chat features. You work at a “job” to earn coins. You can only work so often and at specific intervals, thus the idle time feature. Your character is given an apartment to live in and you recruit your Facebook friends to be your neighbors and coworkers.

All of these games share common traits. You earn coins and experience to purchase cooler items and to level up. They encourage your friends to play as well, as some features can’t be unlocked unless you have a certain number of neighbors, co-workers or mafia members.

Each has a gifting feature where you can choose a gift to send to your friends or neighbors. The gifts are items they could eventually buy within the games, but they may not be at the level where the gift is unlocked. If you just don’t want to wait on a harvest or a job, you can use real money to purchase game money. However, all games are free to play.

Most of the games are beta, so you may have some connection issue or other issues from time to time. The biggest drawback to these games is their addictive nature, turning them from “idle time” to “all the time”.

Which Facebook game takes up all your time?   Let us know all about it in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Social sites like Facebook are built around communities. In the real world, a community is a safe haven, but it’s not so in the digital world because of its faceless nature and facebook impostors. Social hacking is a term that was born from this very phenomenon. Just to give you an example…

You get a link on your profile from a friend (or a username which sounds like a friend). It’s just a casual click on that link which lures you to a web page asking for some personal details. A person who is not aware of terms like phishing or malware falls prey to this cleverly disguised scam attack from Facebook impostors. Malware links can even infiltrate your accounts and leech away profile info like passwords and addresses. Or even more seriously, bank account numbers. That itself can set of a domino effect as the others in your contact book start getting attack mails from your account.

Social networking sites like Facebook have a huge user base. Facebook alone has more than 300 million users. Even if a small percentage of infiltration attempts succeed (and they do), you can do the math.

Protecting your Facebook profile from scammers and spammers requires serious ammo. The first fortifications are of course the security firewalls and countermeasures employed by Facebook itself. But just like any other war, the foot soldier is the most important piece around which the battle can turn. The foot soldier is you and what you do to protect your account. Facebook gives you some privacy controls to help you thwart spammer snoops.

Here’s the checklist on how to configure your profile to protect yourself from scammers –

Stop Facebook Impostors – Configure the Privacy Settings

This is the first port of call. After you log-in, on the top right corner of the blue bar you will see the Settings link. Hover over it to get the dropdown and the Privacy Settings.

The Privacy page is all about allowing or disallowing others from looking at all the information on your Facebook page. Information can be broadcasted from your profile, a Facebook search result with your name, what gets written on Wall Posts, news feeds of your recent activities, and from the applications you authorize to pull information from your page.

The great thing about Facebook is that it allows us to configure each small part of our profile (see screenshot above). This is what we should be aware of.

Be aware of your friends

• Social sites make it very easy to add friends with a click. Soon enough we have an unmanageable bunch. Organizing friends into groups or Friend Lists is one way. Profile views can be set for Everyone, Only Friends, Friends of Friends or customized for specific Friend Lists. You can also exclude certain friends/Friend Lists.
• On the Privacy page, click on Profile. Control who gets to see each bit of information by clicking the dropdown and selecting one. You can also click Customize to further fine tune the selections. Never set it to Everyone – that’s like opening the front door. Also, remember that your friends might have other friends who are absolute strangers to you.



• One absolute area that you should keep private is the Contact Information. You can set it to No one.
• Save all changes.

Be invisible – remove yourself from searches

Given Facebook’s high search listing, anybody (say, scammers) searching for you or some area of related interest would find it easy. When you sign up, the default setting allows everyone to search for you. Later, one way to discourage that is by removing yourself from public search listing and also controlling your visibility from within Facebook.

• From the Privacy page, click on Search to access the settings for search. Under the heading Public Search Listing, deselect the option to create a public search listing of your profile.
• To cloak yourself further, you can control your search visibility from within Facebook by selecting Only Friends for Search Visibility. And then tighten up security by setting what they get to see in your public profile.

Caution with applications

Third party applications have given Facebook a good name and sometimes have left it red faced too. Third party applications with doubtful roots could be spyware by another name. Applications which you authorize need your profile info to work and sometimes that of your friends in the network (that also goes for apps installed by your friends). To cite another example, quizzes and puzzles are fun but they can influence you to reveal some personal information. So, tread on the side of caution.

• From the Privacy page, click on Applications. The Overview describes the situations in which an application accesses your information. From the Settings page you can checkmark the types of information your friends can see about you through applications.
• You can also go to the Applications page (click on Applications on the foot bar) and edit the privacy settings for each individual application. A privacy setting controls the status display on your Facebook profile page.

Screen your messages

A scam behind a Facebook impostor’s message is the oldest trick in the scammer’s book. Beware of messages which ask for personal information or cash/donations. Even if you receive a message from a pal asking for sensitive information or monetary help, verify the request with a phone call. You can also do an authenticity check by asking questions which can be back-checked.

Be wary of direct links

Don’t click on direct links that you get in messages or wall postings especially from unknown sources. They could be a ruse to malware sites or fake login sites. Look at each link carefully before being trigger happy with your mouse. A genuine link can be made out by looking up the domain name with a Google search. Though with a shortened URL, it could be a problem. Many links direct the user to a fake Facebook login page which can compromise your password. Facebook usually never asks you to log-in again to view another page.

Community rip-offs

Joining a community may get you a bunch of contacts in one go. But it can also be a scam trap if the community is a sham. Fake communities could serve as marketing gimmicks, often with the intent of building mass mailing lists. Select your community and look around the member profiles before jumping in.

These are just some of the ways we can guard against scam attacks. The best way of course, is to click logout and pick up the telephone. But that’s like picking up paranoia and ditching the fun of social networking. Simple precautions like choosing a secure password, familiarity with all the security options and safe browsing habits can keep us protected. For more Facebook security tips, check out Mahendra’s post – 10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy.

What other tips do you think can help to keep our guard up? And leave the scammers dry…

Image Credit: Jesse Gardner

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Firstly, you don’t sign up a school on Facebook as you normally would when making a Facebook page for a school. Although you do need to have a normal profile to do so. On the homepage, when logged out, there is a link underneath the normal ‘Sign-Up’ option pictured below. Click on it.

This will take you into the registration process which will ask you to name the institution and give other details such as the location. Make sure you select ‘Education’ from the drop-down menu when asked for the type of organisation you’re registering. The reason why you must click on this particular link is because Facebook’s name recognition technology won’t allow you to enter in a school’s name on a personal profile. Another reason is because much of the personal aspects of an organization’s page is taken away and replaced with more formal functions such as the ability to be a fan of the organization’s profile such as that of a band or a club – or in this case a school.

Once you have entered in all the required information, you can save it.

This will then take you to the administration page which will be bare. See ours (The MUO Academy) pictured above. Your first steps will be basic and should be focused on improving the look of the page. First, add a profile picture by placing your mouse cursor over the picture area. Then click ‘Add picture’ when the button appears. I suggest uploading a picture of your school or its coat of arms. Next, add a little bit of information about the school in the area below the picture.

Then, click ‘Edit Page’ underneath the photograph. This will bring you to a page with options to alter pretty much anything about your page. For a school on Facebook, perhaps you would want to place a location or age restriction on the site for security reasons. Or maybe add a discussion board for the pupils and staff to chat. All of this can be done here. You can also set up your mobile version to publish status updates (I think this is aimed more at celebrities), and add notes, events, pictures and videos to your profile.

Clicking on the ‘Ads Manager’ button near the top of the page will bring you to the page where you can view your current advertising performance on Facebook. In the top right-hand corner there is a ‘Create an Ad’ button which will allow you to create advertisements to be displayed on Facebook for your school as seen below in the screenshot. However, these do cost money.

Do one last check over your page and ensure that you have everything there that you think will be needed. Find pupils and staff on Facebook by searching for their names and add them. Then, when the page is ready to go live, click ‘Publish Page’ at the top of the home screen. Your school’s page is now available for all to see.

Here, we come to the final, major pitfall that Facebook refuse to fix – logging back in. Because the School’s Facebook page must be associated with a person’s profile (i.e. yours), there is trouble logging in. When you enter in your e-mail address to sign in it will take you to your personal page. Facebook offers no link on their website to allow companies to sign in. I suspect this is to maintain the more ‘people orientated’ style. You can only sign into your school’s page on Facebook to edit it via this link: www.facebook.com/pages/manage.

For the remainder, it’s all the same as using Facebook normally. There are small differences between business pages such as those for schools and pages for ‘Groups’. Groups are intended for websites and the likes where as pages for business are intended to have a large following of ‘Fans’.

One piece of advice I’ll give you is to ensure that you have permission from the proper authority within the school to make the Facebook page. Some schools don’t like being associated with social networking because of cyber-bullying and some even look down on schools making profiles as unprofessional within their field.

Is your school on Facebook? Is it a useful for an institute to be “socially available”? Think aloud in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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If you are like me, you want to download and backup your Facebook data just in case. Here is a simple way to backup and archive your Facebook information using the ArchiveFacebook Firefox extension.

Archive Facebook is an experimental Firefox extension that allows you to backup Facebook data on your local hard drive. You can browse your archive as if it were your local copy of Facebook. Facebook does not let you upload this data in any way, so you cannot use it for restoring anything in case you delete your data or account in Facebook.

Archive Facebook backs up the following from your Facebook profile:

• Photos
• Messages
• Activity Stream
• Friends List
• Notes
• Events
• Groups
• Info

Note that your friends activity or data is not included in your archive. Also, if you prefer using a browser other than Firefox, you can use this extension by installing Firefox just to backup Facebook data, and then uninstall Firefox. Your backup will be usable from other browsers as well (see last section below).

Disable or Uninstall Scrapbook

Archive Facebook causes instability if the Scrapbook Firefox extension is installed. You should not run both of them simultaneously, so if you have installed Scrapbook, disable or uninstall it.

Get a Facebook Username

As of version 1.0, Archive Facebook works only if you have a vanity URL for your Facebook profile. If you don’t already have one, get a Facebook username for your account here. Once you can access your Facebook via http://www.facebook.com/your_name you are all set.

Install the Extension

To get started, install the Archive Facebook extension from the Mozilla Firefox Addons gallery. This is an experimental extension, so you will need to enable the option to allow you to download and install it.

After restarting Firefox, you should see a new menu item “ArchiveFB” in Firefox between the Bookmarks and the Tools menu.

Backup and Archive

Login to your Facebook account. You should be able to browse in Facebook before you start the archive process.

Go to ArchiveFB > Show in Sidebar and open the sidebar.

While you are seeing Facebook open in your browser, select ArchiveFB > Archive. You will automatically get redirected to your Facebook profile page and see the following dialog box:

Select OK to start the backup process. Cancel will not start any operation. Once you start the archive process, ArchiveFB begins to retrieve your Facebook stream in reverse chronological order. You will see a series of dialog boxes displaying how far back it has progressed in the retrieval process.

If you select Cancel on any of these dialog boxes, your archive will extend back in time only till that date and time stamp.

Once the retrieval process is complete, ArchiveFB will start downloading your Facebook data to create your backup archive.

The process may take several hours depending upon the speed of your connection and how long and extensively you’ve used Facebook.

Be patient, but if you find that the process is stuck on one particular item in the list, click Pause and then Start to resume. I found that this trick worked when ArchiveFB seemed to get stuck on a few items in the list.

Once the backup and archive operation is complete, you can see a new entry in the sidebar “Facebook | username date” with your username and the current date. This indicates that the operation was successful.

Browsing Your Archive

Just like any data backup software, you can have multiple sets of your Facebook archive made at different points in time, which will all appear in your ArchiveFB sidebar. Clicking on any of the entries in the sidebar browses that archive set, starting at your profile page.

Observe the browser address bar URLs when browsing your Facebook profile archive. It will show “file://” instead of “http://” indicating that you are browsing a local copy on your hard disk. You should be able to view your photos, friends list, notes, etc. from within your local copy.

You will see an Annotation Bar at the bottom of the browser. It has highlighting and annotation tools with which you can make notes about any of the items in your Facebook archive.

For Advanced Users and Other Browsers

ArchiveFB stores the copy of your Facebook data within your Firefox profile by default. You will find an ArchiveFB folder created inside your Firefox profile folder, where the archives created by this extension are stored.

What if you normally use a different browser? In the ArchiveFB sidebar, go to Tools > Options. In the Options dialog, go to the Organize tab. In the Location to Store Data, you can specify a different location for your archive.

From any archive set, you can open the “index.html” file to open and browse your Facebook archive data from within any browser.

Before you run off to backup your Facebook data, you might also want to check out our popular Facebook Hack Codes and Privacy Tips!

Were you able to backup your Facebook data? Feel free to share your experience in the comments!

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By using simple pieces of Javascript code, or by applying Firefox Greasemonkey userscripts, users can change the appearance and workings of Facebook themselves.

Learn how to hack Facebook accounts for fun, or tweak something useful. Believe me, it really is all in your hands.

Facebook Account Javascript Hacks

In these following hacks we’ll be using basic Javascript to toy around with Facebook. Note that we’re not going to hack into Facebook accounts, or anything of the like. Most of these ‘hacks’ are temporary and will disappear once you refresh the page. They also won’t be visible to users on other computers. So why are we doing it? – Because it’s fun!

These Javascript snippets, which we’ll supply below, simply need to be pasted into the address bar. Hit enter, et voila!

Changing Profile Colour

This will change the colour of your Facebook bar to a color of choice.

Just paste the following code in your address bar and hit enter. You can replace ‘red’ with any color you want – black, white, green or even orrange. If you want to reverse the effect, press Ctrl+F5 for a hard reload of the page.

javascript:void(document.getElementById('fb_menubar').style.background='red');

View Chat History with Offline Friends

Unfortunately, you can’t normally view the chat history of online friends. If you’re trying to remember something that was said, waiting for them to come back online is one hell of a bother. Instead, you can just use this – pretty useful – Javascript hack.

First of all, we need to get your friend’s Facebook ID. When you visit his page indirectly (through your friends list or by using the search engine), you’ll be able to see it as a number in the address bar.

Another way to retrieve someone’s ID is by going to the Friends widget on their page, and right-clicking See All. Then you’ll have to copy the link location and paste it in your address bar.

Once you’ve got someone’s ID, simply paste the following code in your address bar, replacing 1122334455 with the relevant number.

javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(1122334455);

Other Javascript hacks

The preceding two hacks are without doubt the most impressive or useful ones. Below are some of the other tricks you can pull off by using Javascript. We’re not going to deep on this because they’re all things you can do manually as well.

Change chat status to invisible:
javascript:statusControl.sendVisibility(false);

Change chat status to visible:
javascript:statusControl.sendVisibility(true);

Close all chat windows with person 1122334455:
javascript:chatDisplay.tabs[1122334455].tabXOnClick();

Open application tab:
javascript:applicationDock.toggleTab();

Bring up notifications:
javascript:presence.toggleTab('chat_status_control','chat_status_control_tab');

Bring up friends list:
javascript:buddyList.toggleTab();

Facebook Greasemonkey Hacks

Greasemonkey is one of the best firefox add-ons in existence. By using ‘userscripts’, you can customize nearly every website. Read more about Greasemonkey in .

Facebook Auto-login – One of the simplest, but perhaps also one of the most useful userscripts you’ll find. This one will automatically log into Facebook, as long as Firefox remembers your password, saving you a lot of hassle.

Auto-Colorizer for Facebook – This script will recolor your Facebook page by applying the color scheme of the most dominant picture currently showing on the page. As you can imagine, this can create some exciting, and also ambient effects.

FacebookDeletes – If you want to get rid of a lot of people at once, this is your man. This script can bulk delete friends, making the masacre all the easier.

Remove All Facebook Ads – Adblock still tends to miss a lot of Facebook ads. This script, frequently updated, will remove all thinkable Facebook ads, creating a completely click-safe Facebook environment.

External Apps Blocker – One of the most irritating things on Facebook are the abundance of quizzes, quote generators, and the like. Filtering all external app ’stories’ from your homepage will be a lot easier if you use this script.

Want some more? Userscripts hosts 1112 Facebook related userscripts at the time of writing. Check it out and have a blast!

If you know any other cool Javascript tweaks, or Greasemonkey hacks, feel free to mention them in the comments section below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The Unique People Focus

While handling all your email and social networking communication from one place is a no-brainer, there is a tremendous benefit of using Threadsy that is not readily apparent before you use it. Imagine you’re responding to a friend or colleague’s email discussing a specific topic. With your regular webmail, you will simply respond to the topic being discussed in the email, right?

Now, in Threadsy, while you are replying to her via email, you see her Facebook status or recent tweet – “Just got tickets for the U2 concert!” – and you just might add something to your email. Threadsy makes this possible via the automatic Profile View, which you shall see below. In this way, Threadsy lets you focus on people, not the medium of communication you or they might prefer. You don’t miss a person’s recent status updates just because you don’t use Facebook or Twitter often enough.

The Integrated View

Threadsy keeps it simple by showing all your email and social networking communication in two columns or streams. The Inbound column has messages specifically addressed to you. This includes Email, Twitter @replies and Direct Messages, and your Facebook Inbox. The Unbound column shows feeds that you follow, such as your Twitter stream and Facebook friends’ status updates. You can adjust the width of the Unbound column using the arrow sliders in between the two panes.

Note that Threadsy is not a Personal Information Manager. If you want calendar, notes, RSS feeds, etc. all in one place, check out Life.io. Threadsy focuses on communication and excels by keeping it simple. At present, you need to add a webmail account to use Threadsy, so for example, you can’t use it with just your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Adding Accounts

Adding your email and social networking accounts is as easy as pie, but you do need to provide your login credentials to Threadsy. Twitter OAuth is coming soon and you can use Facebook connect after you have logged in. For webmail accounts, Threadsy supports AOL, Gmail (and Google Apps), Hotmail and Yahoo! US.

Inbound: What’s Sent To You

The Inbound column shows all your messages in a chronological sequence, whether they are email, Twitter replies, or Facebook messages. Icons at the right of each message help you quickly identify the type of message. You can quickly filter messages by type using the tabs at the top for your webmail, Facebook, and Twitter.

Simply hovering your mouse over a message without actually opening it gives you options to quickly reply, retweet, delete, favorite or archive it. Click an email or Facebook message to open and read it.

Unbound: What You’re Following

The Unbound column displays your Twitter and Facebook feeds also in chronological sequence. You can filter the stream using the Facebook or Twitter tabs at the top. You can post your own Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets from within the box at the top.

The Chat tab in the Unbound column allows you to use Instant Messaging with your IM contacts.

Twitter Stream

The Twitter stream in the Unbound column shows pictures and videos inline. This allows you to play videos without leaving Threadsy.

Hovering your mouse over a tweet brings up quick Reply, ReTweet, and Favorite buttons.

Facebook Feed

Like many desktop clients, Threadsy has inbuilt support for interacting with your Facebook stream – without installing anything. You can like items, view comments and enter your own comments.

View Profiles Automatically

Whenever you click on a tweet or view an email message, Threadsy shows you a profile snapshot of the person in the right Unbound column. I found it a quick and easy way to connect with people on other networks. For example, here is a profile view of Kristen, one of our new writers at MakeUseOf:

Threadsy collects information from dozens of sites; and shows you a bio, recent photos, and recent status updates on Facebook and Twitter. This is incredibly useful as it provides the context for you to respond appropriately to the person. You can directly jump to the person’s profile on any of the listed networks to connect.

Want to start using Threadsy right away? Click this link to get an instant invite, exclusively for MakeUseOf readers. Don’t forget to give us your feedback in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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I’ve previously written a couple of articles here about Facebook, such as the controversial method on how to view private Facebook profiles, or how to email mobile photos to your Facebook account. However, in addition to those tips, there are other codes and features that aren’t immediately obvious to most users – so I wanted to provide a list of the top 6 of my favorite Facebook “hack” codes and tips to other Facebook enthusiasts out there.

#1 – The Konami Code Lens Flare Hack

This is a rather silly hack, but if you’re visiting friends who may not be very computer savvy – this is a very easy way to impress them with your hacking skills. Borrow their computer (or bring your laptop), log into your Facebook account, and then on the computer keyboard just type the following key sequence of arrows and letters exactly: UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-RIGHT-B-A-<Enter>

Then, click around on your Facebook page, or scroll up and down the page (this seems to work best), and you’ll discover a pretty cool display of lens flare effects.

Oddly, the effect isn’t horribly annoying because it disappears pretty quickly when you really need it to. It isn’t the most impressive hack though, because it’s probably the most common one mentioned across the net – but it’s still kind of cool and fun to play around with.

#2 – Aye, Make Yer Profile a Pirate’s Page You Landlubber!

The second profile hack is also one of the easiest to implement. Facebook offers users the ability to transform their Facebook pages into any language that they like. If you scroll down to the lower left corner of your profile page, you’ll see your current language setting. Click on this, and you’ll have a list of all languages available to you. Notice the English Pirate option?

Ahoy matey – yer now a Cap’n! Now as you go through your profile page you’ll notice some pretty hilarious pirate variations.

Now, the wall is the Plank, your profile is the Cap’n’s Log, and you can now either click a post as pleasin’ to me eye (like) or blabber t’yer mates (comment).  It certainly removes the “boring” factor from your old standard Facebook pages.

#3 – Upside Down Status Updates

If you’ve been on Facebook long enough, you’ve probably noticed a few people posting upside down status updates. They sure do think they’re clever don’t they?!  Yes, you too can be the envy of all of your friends and family by posting your updates so that people have to look silly by tilting their heads upside down so they can read it.

Most of the people you’ve seen doing this have likely installed a Facebook app just to do so. However, I dislike installing apps because you always have to provide permissions to those applications to access your profile. A better approach is to use the free online application at FlipText to generate your upside down status update.

Simply copy the upside down text from the lower text box, paste it into your Facebook status box and post!

#4 – Download Complete Photo Collections From Your Friends’ Profiles

If you have a lot of friends on Facebook, you may not have the time to keep up with all of the new family photos they’ve posted – but you are very interested in them and would love to have them stored in your own private photo collection to review later. Well, thanks to a very cool FireFox plug-in called FacePAD, you can do just that. The add-on is awesome, and I would recommend that anyone with the resources to do so should send in a contribution to Arthur Sabintsev for his efforts.

After you install the FacePad plug-in, make sure you select Tools->Add-Ons, and configure the options for FacePad so it has your correct Facebook language. Then, all you have to do is go to your friend’s photo albums, right-click on the title and select “Download Album With FacePAD.”  That’s right, you’re not downloading a single picture – but an entire album.

Once you do, FacePad downloads every single image within that album into the download folder you’ve configured in FireFox. Don’t forget to organize all of those photos using JetPhoto, as recommended earlier by Jeffry.

#5 – Schedule Facebook Status Updates With Sendible

Do you like to keep your Facebook profile active, but you’re coming down with a cold and may be offline for a few days?  Maybe you’re taking a trip and won’t be anywhere near a computer for a week. Or maybe you’ll be playing hooky from work and traveling, but you want your colleagues and boss to think you’re stuck at home sick. Accomplish any of these wishes by using Sendible to schedule your Facebook status updates. This is an application Daniel covered earlier, so check out his article for more details.

But for Facebook specifically, once you sign up with Sendible, just click on Facebook and provide your Facebook login details. Sendible connects directly with your Facebook account. The, under “New Messages” click on “Status Updates“.

On the next page you can schedule out as many updates as you’d like! This service is awesome – and you can distribute scheduled updates to a number of social networks including MySpace, Blogger, Twitter and more.

#6 – Hide Your Online Status From Certain People

Look, don’t feel bad about it. When I first joined Facebook I left my online status wide open. After a couple of weeks of getting inundated with nonstop chat requests, I simply turned off my online status completely. Problem solved. Except, there really were certain people I wouldn’t mind hearing from – is it really fair for a few chatterbox buddies to ruin your chances for communicating with everyone? Well, there is a way for you to selectively block your online status from certain people.

All you have to do is open up your chat icon in the lower right corner of your Facebook display, click on Friend Lists, and create a new list called “BlockList.” Make sure after you create it that it’s configured under “Display these lists in Chat.”

Now, all you have to do is either click “edit” and add the friends you want to block, or if they’re already online, just click their name and drag them under this new list. Once you’ve got everyone there who you want to block from see your online status, hover your mouse over the green dot to the right and click on “Go Offline.” Now, you appear offline to only those certain friends.

Facebook, unlike MySpace, is not really easy to tweak – which is actually a good thing. Gone are the days of those horrid eye-bleeding pages with pink flashing backgrounds and instant music that you can’t turn off. However, the tweaks and plug-ins in the list above offer at least a few ways to customize your Facebook account and usage to suit your life and your personality.

How do you use Facebook? Are there any hacks or add-ons not offered here that you especially like to use? Share them in the comments section below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Why Lifestream?

There are different incentives for lifestreaming:

• Most people use lifestreaming to present a unified view of their online activities to their friends. Those who subscribe or view your lifestream do not need to visit different websites to see your pictures, writing, videos, etc. Your lifestream is your “Centralized Me” on the web.
• Lifestreaming is also a way to permanently backup your online data. Your tweets get archived automatically. Your photos get backed up, just in case. Your blog posts get backed up, in case your blog is hacked.
• Lifestreaming can be a way to maintain an active blog when you don’t always have time to write blog posts.
• Create “stories” about an event. Let’s say you went on a weekend trip during which you tweeted, uploaded a few photos to Flickr, and a video to YouTube. Your trip can be easily shared as a “story” without searching for the content on different sites.
• Some people use lifestreaming for personal recollection and memories. What did you do on the web on your last birthday or anniversary? Your lifestream will show it to you.

How do you start lifestreaming? Let’s find out.

#1: Add Sources for your Lifestream

After you sign up and verify your email address, set your time zone. You can then choose the sources to add to your lifestream. There are 16 sources supported, from Facebook, RSS Blog Feeds and Flickr/Picasa photos to Twitter, Last.fm/YouTube, and social bookmarking sites like SumbleUpon/Digg/Delicious.

You do not need to supply any passwords because StoryTlr will simply pick up what is already publicly available via your profile on the various services. With Twitter, you can hide your @replies so that conversational tweets don’t clutter your lifestream. Once StoryTlr has collected all your information you are ready to personalize your lifestream.

#2: Select a Theme

On the Configure > Design tab, you can choose a theme just like you do for a blog. There are 8 pre-built themes ready to be used.

You can also choose a custom background and header image.

#3: Select Pages

StoryTlr creates a full lifestream view, but also lets you create custom pages with filtered sources and more. Go to Configure > Pages, and choose the number and type of pages you would like on your site. A Dashboard page provides an overview of recent activities, while photo/video pages provide a gallery with slideshow.

You can drag and drop to change the order of the pages as you like. At any time, use the View tab to see how your website looks.

Your lifestream is ready! Use the View tab to see your lifestream. You can change your theme and tweak your pages any time you want. Your StoryTlr website is also like a blog – you can update your status Facebook style, write a blog post Blogger/Wordpress style and get comments on your posts.

For more advanced customization, see the next steps. All the following steps are optional.

#4: Customize Avatar and Widgets

It’s a good idea to display your own avatar and introduce yourself with a bio. Go to Configure > Profile to do this.

In the Configure > Widgets section, you can select which widgets to display in your sidebar. If you have setup your avatar, choose the Avatar and Profile widget.

#5: Create Stories

You can automatically “pluck out” a certain time period of your lifestream to create a story. This works best when you make a trip, attend a conference, go on vacation or attend an event like a wedding. On the StoryTell page, choose the time period and select the sources to build your story.

Some interesting events have been captured as stories in StoryTlr, like for example, the Hudson river plane crash story above.

#6: Advanced Customization

If you are geeky enough, there is more you can do with StoryTlr:

• Use your own domain (or subdomain) for your lifestream
• Setup Disqus commenting on your StoryTlr site
• Create your own CSS to customize your site
• Automatically cross-post your lifestream to Twitter

What are you waiting for? Go to StoryTlr and start lifestreaming! Oh, and don’t forget to share your lifestream and stories with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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It became very clear to me that Facebook was not your high school teenage fad. I found folks from my old home town – some of them well into retirement age – happily posting status updates about their daily activities, struggles, joys and thoughts. This, I thought to myself (and still do), is something that’s going to have major social ramifications. I’m not really sure what they are going to be, but the proliferation of Facebook throughout the world and throughout most industries completely fascinates me.

However, there is this one little thing that absolutely annoyed me about Facebook. You have to go to the site, do the Facebook login, and keep it open in order to receive status updates, notices or alerts about what’s going on. Sure, you could configure your profile to send notifications to your email address, but then you have to constantly check your email – and who wants an email box completely spammed by Facebook notifications? So, after buying a new PC with Windows Vista installed – complete with neat desktop sidebar applications – I started looking for a way to do the Facebook login automatically and receive instant status updates directly to my desktop, without having to log into Facebook all the time.

During that search, I discovered two perfect free Facebook login tools – the Facebook Sidebar Gadget, and MyFacebook. Just to save you some time – I opted for MyFacebook because it offered more interactive features. If you’d rather go for that, scroll down to the MyFacebook section. However, I also wanted to review the Facebook Gadget as well – and since that’s the one I tried first, I’ve reviewed it first.

Automatic Facebook Login With The Sidebar Gadget

For widgets and applications that automatically connect to your Facebook account, you need to acquire and configure a special number that gives that application “permission” to check your Facebook account for you. When you download the gadget and click on the file to install it, it’ll place the gadget on your sidebar as shown here.

When you click on “Login” the app automatically opens to your Facebook page, where you’ll need to do the regular Facebook login if you haven’t already. There, you’ll see this window.

Just click “Get login code for” and on the next screen click “Generate” and you’ll finally receive the magical “one-time” code to provide your gadget so that it can automatically do your Facebook login for you automatically.

Copy the code, and then go back to your desktop sidebar and click on the little “wrench” icon to the right of it. When you do that, the window will pop-up for you to enter your super-secret Facebook code.

Enter in the code, and now you’ll never have to do another manual Facebook login in your life.

The gadget displays your profile picture as well as your current status, and small icons and associated values next to them for how many pokes, events, friend requests, inbox messages, notifications, invitations, and group requests!  This is all fine and dandy, but I have one problem with the gadget. You don’t actually receive any realtime information from Facebook, it only provides you with the number of each item, and when you click on the little icon, it opens up a browser and takes you to that specific Facebook page. This is cool – but what if you just want to keep an eye on what your friends are up to without having to open up your browser?

In order to accomplish this task, I went back to Windows Live Gallery and downloaded the other Facebook sidebar gadget called MyFacebook.

Automatic Facebook Login With MyFacebook

When you download and install this sidebar gadget, the first thing you’ll see is the same request for the Facebook code. You’ll need to obtain the code the same way as described above.

Just click on the link and go through the same steps – click “Get Login Code” and then “Generate.” Copy the code and then go back to the gadget and click on the “wrench” icon. You’ll notice that in this case, the form looks just a bit different.

These additional fields are required because this particular gadget has more functionality than the one above. It will automatically provide you with your friends’ latest status updates and picture gallery photos (if you want). I’m not really interested in the albums, but I do want the friend updates. If you only want your “notifications,” but not specific content from your friends’ walls, you need to find the notification feed. Not sure where to find it? Just click on the link above where it says “you can get the feed url from here.”  You’ll be taken to a notifications page. Scroll down and on the right you’ll see “Your Notifications” – click on it.

This will take you to the actual RSS feed page for all of your notifications. All you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into the form on your sidebar gadget.

Now, getting your friend feed is much easier. In the sidebar gadget, just click on “click this link to enable Friends feed,” and then click “Allow Access” on the Facebook page that comes up – it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

The setup is similar to the previous gadget, except now that you have a real-time scrolling update of your friends’ status, the app feels much more interactive and always connected. Now, you can instantly update your own status, or you can just glance to the right and read the status updates of the latest few friends – and you don’t have to set foot inside any browser to do it!

Again – the links to these two apps are MyFacebook (my favorite), or Facebook Sidebar Gadget if that’s what you prefer.

Did you find either of these sidebar gadgets useful? Do you know of any other great social networking Vista sidebar gadgets? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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As if it wasn’t enough that I kept being bothered by emails every time my friends decided to comment on my status or tag me in a photo, Facebook has now completely ruined my life and brought my productivity down along with it. They’ve introduced a new menubar application exclusively to Mac OS X — it’s called Desktop Notifications. And it does exactly that.

Like all Mac apps, installing is a piece of cake: drag it to the Applications folder.

Setting it up takes a few more clicks that usual because it requires you to authorize the app to access your Facebook profile.

Then I noticed something, perhaps one of the features that will be implemented in the future?

Once the setup process is through, the app will sit quietly on your menubar until an activity in your Facebook account triggers a notification. The Facebook icon will turn blue if there are unread notifications.

Currently, Desktop Notifications has only 2 purposes. Obviously, one of them is displaying notifications. Whenever a friend pokes you, sends you a game invitation, a message or a gift, asks you to join a network, a clan or be his/her neighbor in Farm Town, etc; you’ll receive a Growl notification. Unlike TweetDeck (an Adobe AIR application that connects to Twitter and Facebook), Desktop Notifications will not display your News Feed i.e. your friends’ status updates, posted pictures or videos, that sort of thing. This app is streamlined to showcase you. Your notifications. Your messages. Your profile. Your status.

Secondly, it will allow you to update your status from your desktop via a global hotkey, which is set by default to Control+Option+Command+Spacebar. Convenient as that is, it’s not really a breakthrough feature. But let’s not be pessimistic, keep in mind that Desktop Notifications is currently only a beta.

As you can see from the screenshot above, clicking on the menubar icon will bring up a list of recent notifications. Also, it will display a few messages from your inbox. And if any of them are unread, they will be labelled with a blue dot.

If you notice, there are options to read your News Feed, browse your profile and compose a new message but they are basically links. Clicking on any one of them launches your browser and brings you to the appropriate page. I’m actually hoping that the developers will allow us to browse the News Feed (at the very least) in the next version.

After scrutinizing it, I actually like Facebook’s Desktop Notifications, not mention grateful that they haven’t forgotten about us Mac users. The idea as a whole is great and this is definitely an attempt to hook us on Facebook all over again.

Try it out for yourselves! What would you change about the app? Any missing features? Facebook needs your feedback to ready the app for the world.

Lastly, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that we’re on Facebook. Check out our fan page and if you’re a fan, join us!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy.

1. Organize Friends in Lists

What do you do when your boss, mother-in-law, or a casual web acquaintance sends you a friend request on Facebook? Use Friend Lists. Friend Lists are the foundation of your Facebook privacy settings. Select Friends from the top menu, and use the Create link to create friend lists like Co-workers, Family, College Friends, etc. Your friends can’t see your lists, so you can name them whatever you like.

Tip: On your left sidebar, all your friend lists may not show up by default. Click More to see all of them, and drag and drop those you want above the separator.

2. Customize Profile Privacy

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile. Select which parts of your profile will be seen by whom.

If you choose Customize in the drop down, you can be more specific. This is where the Friend Lists you created before become really useful.

Also go to the Contact Information tab and choose how you want your contact information to be shared on the Internet.

3. Set Facebook Privacy Level of Photo Albums

On the Photos tab of your profile page, click Album Privacy. Here again, you can use your Friend Lists to set the privacy for each photo album.

Note that your profile pictures go into a special album that is always visible to ALL your friends.

4. Restrict Search Visibility

Click Privacy > Search to set your visibility when someone searches Facebook for people. This is an important way to safeguard your Facebook privacy.  You can also select what will be visible in the search results.

5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates

Your actions in Facebook such as comments, likes, appear as highlights on ALL your friends’ home pages. You cannot use friend lists here, only turn them on or off.

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall and choose whether you want your boss or ex-girlfriend to know that you’re in a relationship.

6. Set Facebook Wall Privacy

Go to your profile page, click Options > Settings under the status box.

Here you can control whether your friends can post to your Wall, and who can see the posts made by your friends.

7. Avoid Appearing in Advertisements

Facebook has two types of advertisements: third-party and Facebook. Third-party advertisements are currently not allowed to use your pictures, but there is a setting to disallow it if it is allowed in the future. Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads tab to turn this off.

The Facebook ads shown to your friends are about ‘social actions’ like becoming a fan of something. You can turn this off at the bottom of the page.

8. Protect Yourself from Friends’ Applications

Go to Privacy > Applications, and click the Settings tab and uncheck all the boxes. These settings control what information about you is visible to applications installed by your friends. By default, these are set to visible. This means that your religious, sexual, and political preferences, pictures, etc. are readily available to one of the million worldwide Facebook application developers, each time any of your friends takes a quiz, plays a game, or runs any other Facebook app. This is obviously a Facebook privacy issue.

This is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of Facebook privacy. These settings control what applications installed by your friends can see about you, even if you don’t install the application yourself.

Why is this important? Because these settings will not change anything about what you are sharing with the applications you install yourself. For that, go to the next step.

9. Privacy from Your Applications

There is no way to control what applications see about you; it is an all-or-nothing affair. Take this quiz developed by the American Civil Liberties Union to check what anonymous application developers can know about you and your friends each time you take a quiz.

The Burton Group’s Identity Blog features the Facebook Privacy Mirror, an application that you can use to find out what applications know about you and your friends. If you really want to see exactly what profile data of each of your friends is visible to application developers, Privacy Mirror shows it in detail.

The only thing you can do is to authorize only those applications you require and trust. Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu. Change the drop-down from Recently Used to Authorized. Here you can see all the applications you have authorized to get access to ALL your profile information. Remove the ones you no longer need.

Also check the list of applications Allowed to Post and Granted Additional Permissions to remove unwanted ones.

10. Quitting Facebook? Delete, Don’t Just De-Activate Your Account

You can easily deactivate your account in Facebook from the Settings page. But deactivation will retain all your profile information within Facebook, including pictures, friends, etc. If you want to permanently delete your Facebook account, click here to submit a deletion request. Note that:

1. There is an unspecified delay between submitting your delete request and actual deletion.
2. If you login to Facebook, your deletion request is automatically cancelled.
3. There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm that your request was completed.
4. Even after permanent deletion, Facebook says that copies of your photos may remain on their servers for technical reasons.

Also, note that once in a while, there is news of a Facebook hack or leak that can expose your information on the Internet. It is better to be safe than sorry by avoiding using Facebook for anything that may embarrass you.

I hope this article gives you a better understanding and insight into Facebook’s privacy. Have any questions or concerns? Liked the post? Please tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Really, what do you do with the number one social networking site after you’ve added so much crap, like Facebook Apps, Facebook Ads, more quizzes than you can shake a stick at, Farmville, YoVille, Whateverville.  People in general seem to love all those bells, whistles and doodads. If they didn’t, would Facebook and the independent developers keep putting it out there?

Well, there are some, myself included, that miss the Facebook we signed up for. It seems like just three years ago, you could use Facebook to send simple notes to all your friends. You could look up old friends. You could share a wee little part of your daily life with old and new chums. Facebook seemed to be to the Internet what party lines were to the phone world – a quick way to catch up on the gossip.

For whatever reason, Facebook has decided that the newest thing they could do is to give us something old again. Introducing Facebook Lite Beta. Why not? It worked for the Ford Mustang and the Dodge Challenger.

The first thing you’ll notice when you sign in is, well, nothing. Lots of nothing. Lots of white space. You can actually focus on what your friends are saying, again. The signal-to-noise ratio is definitely favouring signal now.  Begone pesky mobs and vampires!

Look at that profile. All you are getting there is pure, unadulterated, me. No hatching eggs or drinks or pinches. No silly animations or untasteful pictures. You’ve got my Wall, my Info, my Friends and my Photos & Videos.

The interesting thing about being in the FacebookLite version is that anyone else’s profile you view, you’ll see the FacebookLite version. It separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Do you really need to know what my Redneck Name is? I’m from Alberta. My Redneck Name IS my name!

I suspect that the Facebook developers are also going to streamline the Settings as well. Hopefully, this will be done in favour of privacy. It seems to me that as Facebook grew and grew, more things were defaulted to public settings. If any FacebookLite developers are reading this, I suggest that the settings be defaulted to the most private settings possible.

At the time of writing this, most of these settings were unavailable to use. Facebook Lite is still in the beta phase. Which seems odd, since this was done once before, wasn’t it?

The new Events page also receives a big thumbs up from my tired, overworked eyes. Even after a 15 hour work day, I can look at it and know what’s going on. Which is good because I like to know what I’m missing. Remind me to send belated birthday greetings next week. The brilliance is in the simplicity, once again.

If you get the chance to login to the Facebook Lite beta, I encourage you to invite friends to it.  Keep in mind that the beta is only available to the US and India right now. Yet I live in Canada and I’m on it.

Send feedback to the Facebook Lite developers. Let them know that you enjoy the simple life of Facebook Lite. It appears that the intent is to offer both versions, so it wouldn’t hurt to encourage the release of Facebook Lite for all your web friends, like me, that are sick of the clutter we were trying to get away from on MySpace by going to Facebook.

Have you tried the Facebook Lite beta? How do you like it? What would you like to see differently? Please share with our other readers in the comments below.

Join MakeUseOf on Facebook, follow us on our fan page where you will be able to interact with our writers and provide us with feedback about the site.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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By having a Facebook page for your blog, you can set up your RSS feed so your new posts appear on your fan page. Facebook members can then become a “fan” of your posts and comment on your posts inside Facebook.

In short, you can:

• create a mini community of loyal blog readers inside Facebook.
• encourage them to click through to your blog and sign up for the proper RSS feed.

So, are you interested in getting your page set up?   If so, here’s how to get it set up quickly.

1.  Sign up on Facebook

First you have to have a free Facebook account.   If not then go here and set one up.

2.  Click zee link

Then click on this link to get your fan page going.   Here is the page that will then appear :

If you are creating a page for a blog / website, you will need to choose “Brand, Product or Organization”.   Then from the drop-down list, select “website”.

Enter the name of your site (or whatever you want your page to be called) in “Name Of Other Business”, tick “I am authorized to create this page” (assuming of course you ARE authorized), enter your name under “Electronic Signature” and then click “Create Page”.

3.  Customize Your Page

Your page will now be set up and you will be taken straight there.

Here are some of the things you can do to customize your page :

Customize your image :

The first thing your page obviously needs is an image.  For blogs, the obvious image to first consider is your logo.

To upload an image, just point your mouse to the image area and a menu will pop up with various options.

You can either upload a photo, take a picture with your webcam or choose from a Facebook album.

Customize your site information :

In the “Info” tab, you can type detailed information about your site such as the URL, the “overview” (so this would be a good place to enter any tagline or motto that your site has.   MakeUseOf’s is “Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips”).

You can also enter information such as when you started the site  and if you have any “products” you’d like to talk about.

In short, use this section to blab away about your site.

Set up your blog RSS feed to show your new posts in Facebook

This is, I think, one of the most important aspects of a blog fan page.   If you are unable to show your new posts, how can you possibly persuade people to come to your site and sign up for the RSS feed?

• First, click on the “notes” tab at the top of the page.



• Select “Import A Blog” in the Notes Setting section. You can only import from 1 RSS feed at a time. Simply “Stop Importing” if you want to change the RSS feed.



• Enter the RSS URL in the box provided. Check the box next to the statement that you actually own the content. You cannot import RSS feeds from websites that are not your own or that you do not have permission to reproduce.



• Click the “Start Importing” button. Facebook will import the content of the RSS feed for you to preview. If everything looks OK, then go ahead and press the “Continue” button. Your RSS feed will now be automatically imported into your “Notes” section.
• After that, everytime you publish a post on your blog, a summary of the post along with a link will appear on your Facebook page.

4. Publicise Your Page

Now that your Facebook page is all set up, all that remains to be done is to publicise it to your readers so they can “fan” you.  Some methods to get the word out there include :

• Writing a blog post about your new Facebook page (don’t forget to link to it).
• Putting a prominent link at the top of your blog or in the sidebar.  Just grab a Facebook logo from Google Images and then link it to your page.
• Sending out an email to all your Facebook friends and telling them about your new fan page.  If they were interested enough to become Facebook friends with you, I’m sure they will be interested in your blog too.

Do you have a Facebook fan page for your blog?  If so, how successful is it in getting new RSS subscribers for your site?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Su.pr is currently in private Beta mode. If you like to test drive the service, you must first have a StumbleUpon account, then follow the official SU twitter account and wait for them to release the beta code. I was lucky to receive the beta code the moment I followed SU, but I have seen others waited 5 days for the code. Your waiting time could vary. Once you obtained the beta code, simply enter into the input field at the Su.pr homepage.

At the homepage, you can see a textbox where you can enter your text message and link. Just like Twitter, you are only allowed 140 characters and all links within the text will be shorten with the Su.pr prefix.

From here, you have several options. You can either:

• Post your text message to Twitter or Facebook (or both)
• Schedule it to post at a later date (like Tweetlater)
• Just use the URL shortener service to translate your long URL

Is that all about Su.pr?

You bet! That is only the tip of the iceberg. Every post message or link that you submit (or create) via Su.pr will be tracked and recorded. You can view real time analytic result of your posted items and see how popular it gets. Statistics that you can view include the number of retweets, number of StumbleUpon reviews, number of click through and even traffic source. You can view stats for the past 12 hours, past 7 days, or even past 30 days.

More surprises

Suggested posting time

Based on your submission on Su.pr and the statistics, Su.pr will analyze your data and suggest the best time to post your stuff. This should help you to gain more exposure for your submissions.

Promoting your website

If you are looking to gain more traffic for your site, here is a good way to promote your site. By submitting your websites (you can enter up to 3 websites) in the Promote Website field in the Settings page, Su.pr will analyze your site(s) for the most popular content and promote them via StumbleUpon.

Su.pr bookmarklet

Su.pr is not yet integrated in the StumbleUpon toolbar. Users who wish to have quick access to Su.pr services can drag the bookmarklets (located at the bottom of Su.pr homepage) onto your bookmark bar.

Launching of API key

StumbeUpon has released the API for developers, so we should be able to see more third party apps that integrate with Su.pr in the near future.

How does StumbleUpon play a part?

Until now, it seems that everything is about Su.pr and there is no mention of StumbleUpon playing a part in the process. So how does SU play a part in Su.pr?

This is where SU comes in. When your readers/visitors/followers click on your link to reach the destination page, a StumbleUpon toolbar will show up on top of the page. If the page is not yet submitted to SU, a Discover button will be available for the user to submit to SU, else a thumb up/down button will show. This is very similar to the Digg bar, except that it is more user-friendly and maintains the usual high standard of the SU toolbar.

What Su.pr is lacking at the moment?

There are several functions that are clearly missing in Su.pr right now. The inability to post tweet to multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, inability to edit scheduled post (except for deletion), inability to post to Facebook page/group, not integrating Su.pr into StumbleUpon toolbar are some of the features that are missing and are highly requested by the community.

Noting that this is still a beta version, I am confident that the StumbleUpon team will get all this ironed out in the final release.

Meanwhile, if you have not tried Su.pr, do follow Stumbleupon (on Twitter) and grab the invitation code now.

So what do you think? Thumbs up or down? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Track Your Short URL Links With tr.im (10)
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Without wasting any time, let’s start it off! Here are 10 really cool free Blackberry applications.

1. Pandora Mobile

Pandora, reviewed in the past by MakeUseOf, has a great free Blackberry application which allows you to do almost everything you can do on the desktop version except right on your phone. You can create new stations, listen to already created ones, rate songs and more. Download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.pandora.com.

2. Neosistec CarFinder

Can’t remember where you parked your car in that large parking lot? When you leave your car, open CarFinder’s simple menu and mark your location through your Blackberry’s GPS. When you need to find your car (or another specific point) again, pull up CarFinder and it will guide you back via a compass or the Blackberry Maps application. You can also send your marked location to a friend. Download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.neosistec.com/carfinder.

3. Qik Mobile

As I’ve reviewed before on MakeUseOf, Qik, which allows you to stream live video from your phone to the internet for free, has a great mobile application for Blackberry. With it, you can stream video online from your device for anyone to see, or limit access with a password. But as the service implies, your Blackberry must be a model with a camera for Qik to work. You can download Qik by going to their website on your Blackberry’s browser here: http://qik.com/m/dl/brands.

4. Google Maps

Just like the popular online maps site, Google Maps offers a great Blackberry application which allows for most of the same features on their site, except again, its running on your phone. You can get directions, get maps in satellite view and watch traffic and see your location (which can work even if your Blackberry doesn’t have GPS, but works better if it does). View a real-time online demo of Google Maps Mobile here or download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://m.google.com/maps.

5. Palringo

If you like instant messaging, you’ll love Palringo. It is a mobile instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk and more, all in one piece of software. You can also chat with other users of Palringo (on a desktop, Android, iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile or Symbian phone) via text chat, voice or pictures. Palringo’s voice capabilities make it a great almost push-to-talk (PTT) software and a great piece of software to talk to your friends online or on their mobile phones due to its wide compability. Download Palringo from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.palringo.mobi.

6. Boopsie

Through way of different “channels”, Boopsie lets you intelligently search for content or articles on sites like IMDB, Wikipedia, Amazon and more. When you use the application, you can pull up your favorite channel and then search for content on it and live results will appear on your screen for the content you selected. You can view an online demo at their website, or you can download Boopsie from your Blackberry’s browser by going here: http://www.boopsie.com.

7. Viigo

Viigo is a feature-rich application which lets you view news & RSS feeds, audio clips & podcasts, stocks & money data, weather and more. From the one application, you can do a lot of things and browse many blog RSS feeds, see sports scores, view local weather, and even read books. Viigo also bills their software as “the one app you’ll never want to be without” because of its wide range of features it makes available to you. You can download Viigo from your Blackberry browser here: http://www.getviigo.com.

8. Blackberry Appworld

Made directly by Blackberry, Appworld allows you to browse through a wide variety of many other Blackberry apps and download and install them on the spot from the application. Many different developers contribute their applications to the library that’s available for download. The limitation to this application is that you must have a free PayPal account in order to get through checkout of some apps. You can download Appworld from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.blackberry.com/appworld

9. Facebook For Blackberry

We all know what Facebook is- the online utility which lets you share pictures, messages and online applications with friends.  Well, now they have a handy Blackberry application which lets you do almost anything you can do on their desktop site, on your Blackberry. A really neat feature of this app is their recent update which allows you to automatically link Facebook profile pictures of your friends with their contact entry in your Blackberry’s address book. You can download Facebook for Blackberry on your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.facebook.com/blackberry.

10. Twitterberry

If you use Twitter and have a Blackberry, then Twitterberry is for you. With it, you can send out Twitter updates quickly and easily as well as see your friends timeline, view replies to your Tweets and direct message your friends. Download Twitterberry here: http://orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/.

Almost all of these applications require an unlimited data plan from your Blackberry data/phone provider due to the amount of bandwidth they consume while in use. You may also read other MakeUseOf posts on Blackberry here.

Do you have a favorite Blackberry App? Let us know in the comments, or share your experience with any of the ones posted here! MakeUseOf also has a mobile site where you can view this article and more at http://m.makeuseof.com.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The idea of OrSiSo is to organize, keep track of and communicate with all your friends across all these networks. I certainly have been looking for a program which does just this.

As an instant-messaging client, OrSiSo doesn’t offer many options or frills, but does well as a chat client, especially with a combined buddy-list from all your networks. It’s worth noting that hyperlinks aren’t yet supported in the chat; I hope that this is fixed in a future release.

Pop-up alerts are per network, and are treated like pages which you can flip through if you wish. Hyperlinks work here, and updates can be paused if and when you’re busy.

Photo albums can be viewed from within the program; there’s no need to open a new browser window or tab. That’s definitely convenient.

The best and most unique features of OrSiSo are so-called the Social Craft and the Social Firewall. These settings let you organize your various “circles” of friends through drag-and-drop lists, and then customize which updates you see. In the example above, I’ve organized everyone into one of four circles, with the fourth circle reserved for persons from whom I don’t particularly care to hear from (I find myself regretting the mass-follow I did a couple months ago). You can filter received messages and updates by social circles just about anywhere in the program.

OrSiSo’s makers promise that their program will let you Organize, Simplify, and Socialize. I’ve found it easy to learn, use and is very well-rounded with features. Does it do the trick for you? Let us know in the comments.

For more cool Adobe Air applications, check out these posts:

• 8 Adobe AIR Apps that DON’T Suck
• 5 More Cool Adobe AIR Applications
• 8 Useful Adobe AIR Applications That Work In Linux
• 4 Adobe AIR ToDo List Apps For Managing Your Tasks

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Facebook applications hopped on the fame bandwagon. Little nuggets of code built on the Facebook platform by third party developers that helps unsocial web creatures like us to be more social. There are multitude of applications, some gems and some duds.

Adding an application is a two-click process but as you go further down the Facebook highway, you will find that you don’t have a need for some of the apps. Or, you just might be peeved at all the annoying alerts and emails bombarding your account.

It’s time to nuke them! But how?

Here’s how…

User feedback says that removing an app from the vintage Facebook was child’s play. The revamped look calls for a bit of looking around.  But it’s not a pain in the wrist at all.

1. Login to your Facebook account.
2. The Applications menu is located on the bottom left of the screen. Click on it to bring up the menu.

   

3. Click on Edit Applications. Alternatively, click on Settings – Application Settings located on the top blue Facebook bar.

   

4. The Applications Settings page opens up with the recently used apps listed in order. Click on the drop-down menu and select Authorized to view all your applications.

   

5. To remove an application simply click on the little blue cross on the right. To confirm the deletion click Remove on the confirmation dialog which pops up.

   

If you are just vexed over the annoying emails, then you can click on Edit Settings – Additional Permissions and deselect the options.

The application now stands deleted from your Facebook profile. You’ll not be able to use it again unless you add it to your Facebook profile all over again.

Some apps might continue sending you information to your email account registered with them. To de-authorize yourself completely, you might have to follow any cancellation link provided in the email.

Facebook’s proprietary apps like the Wall, Events or Notes etc. are needed for full functionality of the service. They cannot be removed but there settings can be adjusted through the Edit Settings option.

Removing unused apps or apps which you added for a lark helps to keep your Facebook page clean. After all, who wants to lose touch with a friend amidst all the clutter of an application’s message feed.

Finally, if you are really pissed off and want to delete the whole account, read this post by Charnita.

Do you keep Facebook apps which you no longer have any use of? When was the last time you took the pain to wipe out the excess baggage of unused Facebook apps? We want to know!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Is It Possible to View Private Facebook Profiles?

I like Facebook – it’s a great social network that MakeUseOf has covered in detail, such as my last article on how to email mobile photos to Facebook, or Tim’s great article on how to “friend” someone on Facebook and hide it from your status updates. What I learned during my nightly hacking sessions is this – whatever sort of hack you uncover today, Facebook will have it patched tomorrow. Early on there were different methods how to view private Facebook profiles by typing a URL using just the right format and code, and inserting the person’s Facebook ID into the URL. However, every time one method worked, it only took Facebook a few weeks or less to patch up the hack.

Why would anyone want to spy into someone else’s private Facebook profile?  If you think about it, there are lots of valid reasons.

• You have a crush on a really hot girl. You’re pretty much a stalker, and you’re okay with that.
• You suspect your daughter is dating an axe murderer and you want to check out his Facebook profile for evidence.
• You discovered your significant other is cheating on you, and you want proof.

Regardless your reason, whether moral or not – many people find that they have a need to peek into the private world of someone’s Facebook profile. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s no easy way to “hack” into someone’s profile. Even if there was – it wouldn’t work long enough to be useful. However, thare are ways to work your way into someone’s private profile, but it takes a little bit of patience, and a lot of unique social engineering techniques.

How to View Private Facebook Profiles With Social Engineering

When I realized that it’s virtually impossible to peek into someone’s Facebook profile using my programming knowledge, I decided to borrow a chapter from the psychology class I took Freshman year in college. Social engineering is essentially the use of psychology to get someone to comply with your wishes. In this case, you want the person to grant you access to view their private Facebook account.  Before you make things too complicated, the first and easiest way to access someone’s private Facebook profile is to simply send them a message and hope they reply.

Whenever you click on someone’s picture or name, whether it’s someone on your friends’ list of friends or search results from the Facebook database of users, you’ll find that you have three options to the right side of the person’s bio photo. You can either send them a request to add you as a friend, send them a message, or view their friends. Obviously the first option won’t help you much right now. However, you can use the second option, “send a message,” to work your way into the person’s private Facebook account. How does it work?  Well, Facebook’s help section states that anyone who you add as a friend or send a message to “…will have temporary access to view a small portion of your profile. They will see Basic Info, Personal Info, Work Info, Education Info and Friends.”

1. Send them a message like, “Hey! We went to school together, do you remember me? I think we sat together in Geometry.”

2. They may respond with something like, “I don’t know who you are, get lost.”

3. You now have temporary access to view their profile.

The James Bond Approach to Accessing Private Facebook Profiles

If the person doesn’t reply to you, there’s still hope. This next approach makes use of of a form of social engineering called, “demand characteristics.”  This is where you set up a group situation where the person adds you as a friend just to “go with the flow” because everyone else has.  First, you need to create an identity that the person will recognize.  Click “View Friends” in the bio preview box, and scroll through their friends to find someone who doesn’t have a profile picture loaded.

This person is someone who you know is a friend of your target, and the fact that they haven’t loaded an image means they may not use Facebook often and rarely keep in contact with your target. It also means that you can present youself to your target as this person, and they’ll never know the difference. You should also make note of at least 20 or so of the other friends on her list. Next, go to Facebook’s main page and sign up using the same exact name of the friend you found without an image.

Make sure to sign up with an anonymous email account. For help, check out the MakeUseOf review of MakeMeTheKing, or the review of noSPM.  Once you get into this new “fake” Facebook account, ask the 20 friends of your target to add you as a friend.

Carefully add all twenty or so of your target’s friends to your friends list by using the approach above. Nine times out of ten, it’s human nature to assume that the message they’re receiving in Facebook is from the person they know, and they’ll always click “Add Friend.”  Once you’ve accumulated a good list of mutual friends with your target, you’re ready to go in for the big win.  Go back to that person’s profile on the search page, click “Add Friend,” and write one of the most convincing notes you can muster.

The reason you spent so much effort getting her friends to show up on your fake account before you contacted her was to make your “fake” account look far more convincing. She’ll see the number of mutual friends, the sincere plea for help, and just as group psychologists predict – she’ll “go with the flow” and add you as a friend just like everyone else did. The moment she does, you have access to her employment information, school information, photos and anything else she’s added to her account. With a bit of social engineering, you’ve gained the keys to her private Facebook profile.  Well done.

Do you know of any other ways to view private Facebook profiles? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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As Gmail’s getting bigger and bigger, there are more and more gadgets popping up – little applications that live in the sidebar of Gmail, and add tons of functionality to Gmail and the rest of your Web life. Some are made by Google, and an increasingly large number are not; more and more people are realizing how useful these gadgets can be, and third-parties are starting to build them for Gmail.

Social networks, where many of us spend a good deal of time, are no exception. There has recently cropped up a number of social networking-based Gmail gadgets, letting you manage everything from Facebook to Twitter to MySpace right from within Gmail. Here are the best three I’ve seen:

Social Bookmark Gadgets

Okay, I lied. This one’s two gadgets, both doing essentially the same thing. One, from Digg, lets you quickly see what’s popular on Digg, either by category or in total. You can also use your username to find out what your friends are Digging – awesome for being ahead of the Digg curve.

The other social bookmarking gadget is from Delicious, the popular social bookmarking service. The gadget lets you either manage your own bookmarks, or see the popular bookmarks on Delicious from around the Web. Delicious’ popular bookmarks acts as its own version of Digg, and is a great spot to find cool new things to check out – not to mention it’s in Gmail!

Facebook Gadget

Seriously, these application names are awful. But, as with the TwitterGadget, the Facebook Gadget is pretty great. The gadget lets you receive Facebook notifications (friend requests, wall posts, etc.), as well as see your friends’ latest updates and photos. You can even search from within the gadget, and Facebook opens on a new page for you.

As with most Facebook applications other than Facebook, it’s not terribly full-featured (it’s tough – Facebook does a LOT), but it does a great job of keeping you on top of Facebook without having to constantly have the page open.

There’s no website to speak of for this one, only the gadget URL. We’ll get to instructions on how to add it in a second.

FriendFeed Gadget

Friendfeed, as some have said, is “the coolest application no one uses.” Numbers say otherwise, and given how cool FriendFeed is, it may be headed for great things. With the Friendfeed Gadget for Gmail, you’ll be able to see updates from all your friends on FriendFeed, all in one place. The neat thing about FriendFeed is that it aggregates information from a bunch of other sites, so it’s almost like having an RSS reader, a Twitter Stream, and an IM network all in one.

You can’t, sadly, update FriendFeed from within Gmail. You can, however, read all your friends’ updates, follow links, and stay constantly updated right from within Gmail.

To install any of these gadgets, click the Labs icon in Gmail (the green beaker at the top right). Make sure the radio button “Enable” is selected next to “Add Any Gadget By URL.” Then, at the top of the Labs page, click “Gadgets.” Then, add one or all of these URLS to enable the various gadgets:

Digg Gadget: http://digg.com/goog/ig.xml

Delicious Gadget: http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/delicious/delicious.xml

Facebook Gadget: http://www.brianngo.net/ig/facebook.xml

FriendFeed Gadget: http://friendfeed.com/embed/googlegadget/spec

Click “Add,” then go back to your Inbox. In your Gmail sidebar, you’ll see the gadgets! Log in as needed, and get to socializing!

Many people leave their email open all day – I know I do. With these gadgets, Gmail’s getting one step closer to being the only page I need open all day.

What’s your favorite Gmail gadget?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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I guess it’s because they want us to stay forever but sometimes you just really don’t like the site or maybe you are trying to clean up your accounts (because you have so many all over the net).

Whatever the reason may be, I’m sure you’ll find that this little cheat sheet will make deleting those unwanted accounts quick, easy and painless.

Yahoo

There are two ways to delete your Yahoo account. The first way is to totally abandon it for at least four months. Inactive Yahoo accounts are deactivated after four months so if you’re in no rush to get rid of it, you can simply stop using it.

The other way to delete your Yahoo account is to visit the Account Termination page.

• Log into your Yahoo account. If you’re already logged in you may have to re-enter your password just for verification purposes.
• Click here to get to the Account Termination page.

Facebook

Facebook offers two options. You can either deactivate your account or permanently delete it. Of course, the deactivation method is much easier to find than the permanent deletion option. One thing you should know is that if you deactivate your Facebook account, your profile information will still be saved such as your friends, photos, interests, etc. On the other hand, permanently deleting your account will remove all of your information from Facebook and nothing will be saved.

To deactivate your account:

• Hover your mouse over the Settings menu in the top right of any Facebook page and click on “Account Settings”.
• Click on the “Deactivate Account” link at the bottom of the page.

To permanently delete your account:

• Click on Help at the bottom of any Facebook page.
• Search for “delete account” in the search box underneath the Help Center heading.
• Click on the “I want to permanently delete my account” link and read the 2 paragraphs there.



• Click on the link at the end of the last paragraph, read what’s there and then click the “Submit” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

MySpace

MySpace makes things a little bit easier, no searching needed.

• Click on “My Account” in the top right corner of any MySpace page.
• Click on the “Account” link.
• Click on the “Cancel Account” link at the bottom of the page.
• Select the reason why you want to cancel your account, and then click the “Cancel My Account” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Ning

One thing about Ning is that even when you delete your account, the content that you’ve added to any social networks you were a part of will remain on those networks. If you don’t want your content to remain, you’ll have to delete it yourself. An easy way to do that is to simply leave each network you belong to separately before deleting your actual Ning account.

In order to leave a social network on Ning:

• Sign into the network.
• Click on the “My Settings” link in the top of the right hand column.
• Click on the “Leave (Social Network Name Here)” link at the bottom of that page.

To leave the Ning network altogether you will have to contact Ning by clicking here. There is no option in the “I have a question about” menu for deleting an account so you will have to pick which one you think fits best.

MSN

Just like Yahoo there are two ways to delete your MSN account. You can either stop using your account for 30 days or delete it manually. After 30 days of non-use your MSN account will become inactive and after 90 days your passport will become inactive.

To manually delete your MSN account:

• Click on the little arrow next to your name in the top right corner of any Hotmail page.
• Click on the “View Your Account” menu option.
• Click on the “Close Account” link at the bottom of the page.
• Read the info, enter your password to verify your identity and then click on the “Yes” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Twitter

Note: If there are issues with Twitter, the option to delete you account will be disabled and you’ll get an alert message like the one picture below. So, hopefully Twitter is in good shape if and when you try to delete your account.

• Click on the “Settings” link in the top right corner of any Twitter page.
• Click on the “Delete My Account” link at the bottom left side of the page.
• Confirm that you want to delete your account.
• Click here for the easy route.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is another site that makes you do a little searching before being able to delete your account.

• Click on the “help” link at the bottom of any FriendFeed page.
• Click on the “Using FriendFeed” header to expand it.
• Click on the “How do I delete my account?” link which will be the last link under that section.
• Enter your password in the first box, type the word “delete” in the next box, enter the reason why you’re deleting your account in the last box.
• Click on the “Permanently delete my account” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Jaiku

Jaiku has the account deletion option right where you’d expect it to be.

• Click on the “Settings” link in the top right of any Jaiku page.
• Click on the “Your Profile” link under the Account heading.
• Click on the “Want to delete your account?” link at the bottom of the page.
• Click on the “Goodbye Cruel World, Goodbye” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

If there are any other websites that we haven’t mentioned here, why don’t you tell us how to cancel an account on that site?

Image Credit : Gaudium De Lingua

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The Facebook addiction is an interesting one. First, you start out providing general updates like, “Ryan finished off two projects today!” Eventually, you start adding multiple updates every day like, “Ryan just had a steak and cheese sub for lunch and boy was it good!”

The obsession takes hold, and the next thing you know you’ve resorted to installing Cellspin or Fring to your mobile phone so that you can check your friends updates or post your own constantly throughout the day, even when you’re away from a computer.

So what’s the next level of this Facebook addiction? Well, one of the coolest things about Facebook is the ease with which you can distribute photos via your page so that all of your friends and family can view them on your Facebook “wall.” The obvious evolution of that concept is posting photos from your mobile phone – no computer or broadband connection needed!

How is this possible? Two words – Facebook Mobile. Facebook offers a mobile feature where you can simply email photos from your mobile to your Facebook account.

This article will guide you through the process. But keep in mind, there’s a common problem people have when Facebook doesn’t “recognize” your mobile device – this article provides you with a workaround for that as well.  So bookmark this page, and pass it around to all of your Facebook friends so that they can start posting Facebook photos from their mobile phones too!

How to Email Photos From Your Mobile to Facebook Account

Setting up your mobile phone to send pictures to your facebook account is very simple – if everything goes smoothly. The setup process takes place when you send your first photo to Facebook. After that, the process is as simple as emailing your photo to a special email account, and it instantly gets posted to your Profile.

Step #1: Choose a photo to send to your Facebook Account

As an example, I attempted to post a picture of my daughters that I took during our latest visit to the local Children’s Museum to my Facebook account. On your mobile phone, when you view the photo, there’s typically an option on your mobile device to “Send Photo” or “Email Photo.”

Once you get to the screen where you can enter the email details, fill out the address field with “mobile@facebook.com” and fill in the Subject field with the title you’d like to show up with your photo in Facebook.

Once you’re finished, fire off the email to Facebook Mobile, and wait patiently.  After a few minutes (hopefully), you’ll receive a confirmation email with a numerical code. Make note of the code!

Step #2: Submit The Confirmation Code

Either from your mobile phone or from another computer, go to Facebook Mobile.

On this page, enter the confirmation code and click “Confirm.” At this point, you will receive a confirmation page that your mobile phone is confirmed. Once your phone is confirmed, you can email as many photos as you like to mobile@facebook.com and they’ll instantly publish to your profile.

Unrecognized or Unsupported Address – What Do I Do?

Of course, if you are one of the unlucky souls (and there are many) who receives an email back from Facebook that informs you that your device is unrecognized, don’t give up hope. For a true geek, with your mind set on accomplishing something, there’s always a way.

This is apparently a common error that a great number of Facebook users receive in response to the mobile@facebook.com email. If you’ve received this error back (as I did), one good workaround is to install the Zannel application to your Facebook account. Zannel does what Facebook developers apparently can’t, by “funneling” the photos, videos or text updates to your Facebook profile for you.

When you install Zannel on Facebook, you’ll need to create a new Zannel account – just choose an ID and password. Once you register, click on the “enable” link to post mobile pictures.

Once you’ve set it up, Zannel will provide you with a private email address where you can send your photos to in order to post pictures to your Facebook account.

The amazing thing about this approach was that the instant I sent this email, the picture immediately showed up on my Facebook wall, as well as in my Facebook photo album under a “Zannel Photos” category – no confirmation code required, no rejected email, and no glitches.  Zannel is a beautiful thing.

More About Facebook Mobile

Keep in mind that if you can’t send emails with your mobile phone, you can still access your friends’ Facebook updates, and update your own status by using the text messaging feature of Facebook, available from the Facebook Mobile web page.

Another easy way to check out Facebook while you’re on the go is via the mobile access portal at http://m.facebook.com from your Internet enabled mobile device.

While Facebook is certainly not a perfect, it is clearly the current leader in social networking. If you want to stay connected to family and friends, even when you’re mobile, Facebook is the way to do it. And now, you can even take a snapshot with your mobile phone and instantly show it to all of your Facebook friends. Now, how cool is that?

What tools do you use to stay connected to Facebook when you’re mobile? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

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Today, I’m going to put in my own plug for Digsby, an application I use every day, by showing you six things Digsby can do that will save you time, energy, and RAM space.

Digsby has come to replace my use of several other applications – no longer do I need a Gmail window, Twitter window, Facebook window, and IM window open all at the same time. Instead, I just use Digsby!

Here are five features that make Digsby the only application you’ll want to always be open, besides just being the best multi-IM client out there:

Email Checking

Got a POP or IMAP email? Of course you do. That means you can use your email with Digsby. Setting up Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo with Digsby is incredibly easy; others are a little harder, but still entirely possible.

Once you set it up (under “Digsby” and then “My Accounts”), Digsby lets you check, read, and respond to your email without ever leaving your IM window. Mark emails as read, write them, or just head over to your Inbox to check them out- all using Digsby. I used to always have a Gmail window open to make sure I never missed critical email – now all I need is Digsby.

Twitter

After spending forever looking for the perfect Twitter client, I’ll tell you this- it’s not Digsby. But what Digsby is perfect for is reading Tweets. It’s a great way to stay on top of your replies and direct messages, as well as write tweets quickly. Digsby’s not the solution for power Twitter users, but it’s a great way to stay on top of all the Tweeting you do on a daily basis.

Facebookery

Just for the record, I love the new Facebook layout. But that’s beside the point. Using Digsby, you can do just about anything you would on Facebook, from right within the Digsby interface. You’ll be alerted when you have a new message, wall post, alert or notification. One click in Digsby, and you can see all the things waiting for you on Facebook. One more, and you’re sent right to a Facebook window within the Digsby application. Update your status easily, answer your wall posts, and stay on top of your social networking, all from within Digsby.

One of Digsby’s newest features is the addition of Facebook Chat. Now, you can chat with all your online Facebook friends from within Digsby. I love the idea of Facebook Chat (being able to connect in real-time with your friends on Facebook, which I have more of than IM buddies), more than I like the execution on the Facebook site itself. Digsby does a great job of using your friends list, and integrating it into its fantastic IM client to make chatting with your Facebook friends better and easier.

Socializing

Digsby’s options for social networking go far beyond Facebook. You can use Digsby to check your LinkedIn or MySpace account, and receive notifications, send messages, and interact with your network right from within Digsby. Each account gets an icon in your Windows system tray, and one click brings up a pop-up window letting you manage your social networks just as you would in a browser.

Got a new message? Digsby tells you about it, then lets you respond to it all without leaving the Digsby interface. It’s simple to use, not a memory hog, and an awesome way to manage multiple online identities from one place.

The Little Things

My favorite thing about Digsby is that its team pays such close attention to the little things: the small features that you never noticed before, but can’t live without once you start using Digsby.

My personal favorite is the pop-up notification box: when you get an IM, a pop-up comes up. Not exactly revolutionary, but what IS awesome is that you can respond from within the popup. No switching back and forth between IM windows and other applications – just type in the popup, and it goes away once it has been idle for a few seconds.

There are tons of features like this within Digsby: mass-changing of your status and away message, easy hiding and showing of the application, and endless customization of how it looks. I spent a while getting my Digsby to look exactly how I want it to, and big props to Digsby for giving you so many options.

What’s your IM client of choice? Why?

Photo: BigBlue

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For me personally, that’s no big deal. I’m fairly open about my online activities. Everything I write, Digg, or otherwise share goes through my FriendFeed to my Twitter then ultimately onto my Facebook (my, that sounds naughty). Besides that, just about everyone I’d consider a co-worker is already on Facebook, and would have little issue about my other Internet activities.

Putting all that aside however, imagine for a moment that I worked at Domino’s Pizza and that I don’t want my boss to know that I just became a fan of Papa John’s (writing this one’s gonna make me hungry). Here’s what I would do to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to my closer friends:

On your Facebook home page, you should see the ‘Settings’ menu close to the search field on your upper-right. Open that menu and go to ‘Privacy Settings’.

On the next page, you’ll have four choices: Profile, Search, News Feed, and Applications. What you’ll want to edit here are your Profile privacy settings.

By default, everything on your profile is limited to your Friends and your Networks (your first Network is likely your city of residence, but you may have joined more). From the screenshot above, you can see that I’ve limited everything on my profile to my Friends and their Friends. Anyone else who visits my profile will only see that I have a profile, but will not see what’s on it.

In my example, you’re going to want to edit the setting on your Status Updates, since you don’t want your boss to know that you’ve “fanned” the competition. Click that dropdown menu and then select ‘Customize’.

You may want to tweak your overall privacy setting here, but what we’re aiming for is the “Except These People” list at the bottom of this dialog. Type out the name of any of your Friends to restrict that person from viewing anything in your Status Updates.

For all you faithful Facebook fans, we’ve got a lot of tips and tricks on how to make the most of the site. If you have any privacy tips or concerns to share, please drop them in a comment. I’m off to order pizza.

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To explain it clearer, Google tries to guess what other type of information the surfer would also like see based on his or her search query. For example, for “Britney Spears” you’ll see images and videos blended within the search interface and for “downtown Los Angeles” you’ll get local search results (i.e. maps.google.com).

The idea of pulling more data by one-click searching can be expanded. You do not have to limit yourself to the Google search engine only. This time I am listing a few cool FireFox addons that show you more relevant information based on your search query and provides you with more opportunities to browse through.

Add Multiple Search Engines to Google Search Interface

WebMynd offers to search a wealth of search platforms simultaneously with your Google search, by default: Twitter Search, Amazon, YouTube; but you can also add numerous other search options (e.g. Flickr, Wikipedia, Digg, LinkedIn, CNN, etc). The search results will appear right on Google’s results page in the right sidebar:

Additional great features of the page:

• send Tweets directly from your search results asking your friends advice related to your search;
• user-friendly interface: add/hide engines with one click, drag-and-drop ordering of pages.

Integrate Amazon.com and eBay Search:

GoogAzon adds the first ten search results from Amazon and eBay in a collapsed orange bar to the top of your Google results page (works also for Yahoo or MSN / Live search). The results include the title, price, and a mouse-over thumbnail image.

You can also quickly share the results with friends and access the actual Amazon / eBay search results.

Add Reference Information

Google Search Sidebar for FF3 (Greasemonkey plugin) adds relevant results from Wikipedia and Dictionary.com (as well as Flickr, and YouTube) :

See Your Browsing History

Infoaxe is a browser addon (both FireFox and Internet Explorer versions available) that will show your browsing history results based on your Google search term.

Note: it requires registration and access to your private data, i.e. browsing history.

See What Your Facebook Friends Have to Say:

SideStripe offers a handy Google Gadget that integrates with the Google search results page and searches your friends list for your search query.

The tool offers some more functionality (e.g. it invites you to ask your friends’ opinion on what you are searching) but I didn’t invite my friends to use the application, so I can’t say if it works. The search functionality works pretty well though:

Would you like to add more searching functionality or do you think “plain” Google is all you need? Do you use any tools that make Google better? Share your thoughts!

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