With a bit of skill, imagination and the right tools, you can easily create your own custom wall posts and fake profiles. Have a look at what is possible and how to make it happen.

John Lennon

This fake Facebook profile documents the inception and rise of the Beatles, until the death of their manager Brian Epstein in 1967. Click the link above to see the full profile.

Ben Franklin

Benjamin Franklin’s fake wall explores some highlights of his career, such as writing the Declaration of Independence or inventing Daylight Saving Time. This is actually a fun way to learn about real history!

Martin Luther

This wall follows Martin Luther from a visit to Rome to the idea of translating the Bible from Greek to German.

The above Facebook walls were created using MyFakeWall, see details below.

Lebron James

Creating an entire profile is quite an effort. For a quick joke, you can use a different web tool to set up a fake a wall post. Here is an example of Lebron James with comments from Kobe Bryant, Delonte West, and Michael Jordan.

MacBeth

The MacBeth series of wall posts goes through the entire play. So this is not only suitable to teaching history, but also works for classic literature and culture.

Mario

Our favorite Italian plumber Mario is always good for a joke. How many times have you made him save the princess and did Luigi’s help really matter?

The three Facebook wall posts above were created using The Wall Machine.

The Wall Machine

The Wall Machine is the tool of choice to create a fun wall post conversation. Conveniently, you can connect using your Facebook account and get started right away with a post filled with placeholders.

Every item of the post can be customized. You can also create a sequence of posts with events or friendship and relationship statuses in between. More details can be seen in the demonstration video below.

The Wall Machine was also reviewed for the MakeUseOf Directory.

At the time of writing this article, MyFakeWall had very slow page loading times and although the tool as such appeared to work, uploading photos took longer than my span of patience. This is too bad because unlike The Wall Machine, it lets you create a Facebook wall, complete with profile information, pictures, and friends and the results as demonstrated above are of high quality and very convincing. If you are interested in the tool nevertheless, please see MyFakeWall on the MakeUseOf Directory.

By the way, if you are looking to report a fake profile located on the real Facebook, check out the Fake Profiles page. In this context, please see the following articles to protect yourself from Facebook scams, frauds, viruses, stalkers, and other issues:

• 5 Tips & Tricks To Avoid Facebook Phishing Scams
• 5 Ways Your Facebook Log-In Password Can Get Stolen
• How To Protect Yourself From The Facebook Stalkers Out There
• How To Protect Yourself From Facebook Video Virus, Scams & Pranks
• The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Guide

So did you ever create a funny fake Facebook wall? Please share it with us!

Sure, a lot of you are artistic as it is, and were designing their own beautiful websites long before Facebook came around, but for many people, Facebook is their official face on the web, and as such they try to make it as appealing and unique as possible. Some people even go out of their way to design something special, just for that huge central Timeline photo. But what if you’re not a designer? That’s what services like CoverCanvas are for.

CoverCanvas

CoverCanvas is a very simple web app which helps you create some interesting Facebook timeline covers which make your Facebook profile stand out. It uses pre-made designs and your profile pictures from Facebook. It’s basically a Facebook app, and requires authorization and access to your Facebook account, like any other app.

What it doesn’t require is any sort of sign up or setting up process. Simply click on “Get Started” and you’re on your way!

Designing A Cover

After you authorize the app to access your Facebook account, it will automatically pull all your profile pictures to use in creating covers. Unfortunately, you can’t use any of your other photos with the apps, only your profile pictures, so we’ll have to make do with these.

First, you get to choose what kind of cover you want to create. Under Custom Covers, you’ll find Photos And Name, Your Name and Your Photos. With these you can create a cover which includes either some photos and your name, only your name on a unique design or only your photos. For each one of these options, there are numerous different designs to choose from, which you can browse using the top bar.

Like I said, there are lots of designs to choose from here, and you can create covers with all kinds of different feels to them. Here is an example for a Photos and Name cover I created.

This is one of the “photos only” covers I created. There are many different designs here too.

And this is one of the “name only” designs you can create. As you can see, not all of them are that serious.

If you’d like to create something different, and not use your profile pictures, you can choose from the wide array of Static Covers. These are divided into categories such as Art, Love, Food and Drink, Movies, Superheroes and Cars. Most categories are also divided into sub-categories, which helps you zoom in on what you’re really interested in. Here is a food themed cover I created.

You can also create something with a darker feel, if you prefer. The number of options is not huge, but it should definitely appeal to a wide variety of different tastes.

Since most of us have a lot of profile pictures, you may want to see different designs with different pictures. You can’t tell CoverCanvas which photos to use, but you can click on “Remix Photos” again and again, and see the different designs with different photos each time.

When you’re satisfied with a design, click on “Make My Cover”. This will upload your new cover to Facebook and will automatically transfer you to your profile page where you can put the new cover to use.

Placing Your New Facebook Timeline Cover On Your Profile

So now you’ve been redirected to your profile page on Facebook, and you want to use your new cover. How do you do it? If you don’t already have a cover, you’ll see a “Add a Cover” button where the cover goes. If you already have a cover, the button will read “Change Cover”. Click the button, and from the dropdown menu choose “Choose from Photos”.

CoverCanvas will create a special album for you, where it will store all the covers you create, but the most recent covers will be available through Recent Uploads, without having to access any album.

If you can’t find the design you want, click on “View Albums” and choose the CoverCanvas album. You will find your design there.

You can now preview what the new design will look like on your page. Facebook will offer the option to drag the image around, but since the design was made specifically for this area, it’s already in its exact size and there’s nothing to move around. If you like it, click on “Save Changes”.

And there you have it. A unique, personal design for your Timeline profile, that people are just that much more likely to remember.

Note that CoverCanvas, like many other apps, will post a status update for you when you upload a new canvas through the service. The post includes the new canvas (so don’t upload ones you’re not sure you want people to see) and a link to the website. It looks like this.

Bottom Line

All in all, CoverCanvas is a great way to personalize your new Facebook Timeline profile. You can create many different designs, and switch them around whenever you feel like it. That way, you’ll never get bored with your cover, even if you use the same pictures over and over again.

Do you know of some more services which help you create your own customized design for Timeline? Did you create a cool design with CoverCanvas? Share in the comments!

Below are five other cliché profile pictures that are currently on the market, and let’s keep in mind that I am mostly describing them all at an extreme level.

The Casual Model

We all know that girl – the one who believes that she is the stuff. Whenever a camera is nearby, she jumps on the opportunity by instantly posing wherever she’s at. It could be a gorgeous building, and she’d strike a pose. It could be in front of a trash dump site, and she’d go Vogue on that mug. Nuclear wasteland, poverty-stricken village, gun-pelted warzone, homeless tent city – BAM, it’s time to attempt to look sexy.

The world is her photo shoot, and regardless of how awkwardly she places her hand on her hip or how painfully non-seductive she actually looks whilst attempting to give booty more boom, this girl is going to try and score one more for Facebook. Unfortunately, it rarely works for her.

The Attention Battle

There are a few of folks online that happen to have friends in the real world, and while out on their partylicious escapades, they will occasionally take group or pair photographs. However, you’ll notice something about these particular pictures. Sure, they may appear to be merely taking a friendly pic, but in all truth, they are battling for the viewer’s attention.

Sometimes, one will hog the screen while pushing the other to the side. Others, all participants will make the most ridiculous faces possible. Usually, these images result in cropped profile photos with comments such as “Thanks for cutting me out lol” – the most hate-filled “lol” of all time.

The Drunken Night

Practically speaking, if I had any, I simply wouldn’t put my drunken pictures online. Sure, it might have been the best night of your life – playing checkers with shot glasses, zooming down the bar like it’s a slip-n-slide, and singing a pepped-up version of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” on stage – but consider the consequences.

Sometimes, there are future employers out there who aren’t going to want a raging party animal like yourself. However, I guess that’s just too bad for them (thankfully, MUO isn’t like that – our New Year’s Party was a hoot).

The Overdone Edit

While others don’t, I love color grading on photographs and video. However, there is such a thing as too much color grading on photographs and video, and often, this is either done with Windows’ built-in photo enhancer or more commonly, phone apps. These photos typically result in over-exposed images that feature a race of nose-less human beings with black, soulless eyes.

The cringe-factor increases with friends who comment on these photographs, saying, “OMG u r so talented lol” and “this is so beautiful”. Granted, I’m not one to critique someone’s work, but sometimes, it’s just nice to see what a person actually looks like.

The Friend’s Camera

The phenomenon of this profile picture style has both perplexed me and humored me. Occasionally, there are people who will take these dramatic shots of themselves looking in the distance or perhaps staring out a window as rain gently slides down the glass pane, symbolizing the slow progression of grief in this long journey called life. They want you to think that they are deep and philosophical, but heck no, they aren’t.

In reality, this person has extended their arm and taken this picture of themselves at least fifty times, trying to make it look just right. Their arm has likely been curved into an awkward U-shape just to avoid getting it into the frame. They will be going to the ER simply because they took this picture. There was no friend that captured this moment – it’s all a lie.

Conclusion

There are lots more of these cliché types of photographs, and I’d love to hear about a few more. Granted, I can’t say much for whether or not I would like to see them. However, faithful MUO readers, what I can say is this – moderation is everything.

What other types of cliché photos do you know of? Do you have any samples to share?

Image Credits: clarita, earl53, klk13, kconnors, mensatic, anitipatterson

Out of 353 voters, 54% gave an ultimate “Yes!” for Angry Birds, 42% made “No!” their final verdict, and a full %5 claimed they don’t know what Angry Birds is. We can only wonder if they were serious.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

Seems like MakeUseOf readers are deadlocked about Angry Birds. But who are these 17 people who’ve never heard of the game? I would sure love to have a small piece of their world.

This week’s poll question is: What Do You Think Of Facebook Timeline Profiles?

Facebook has announced its new Timeline profiles several months ago, but held the official launch up till this week. Now, everyone who wants Timeline can finally get it, and even evaluate for 7 days before everyone sees it. Timeline is a huge change from how the old Facebook profiles looked, and should potentially include everything you ever did up till the day you were born. Some think Timeline profiles are gorgeous, while others were dreading this day since it was first announced. So where do MakeUseOf readers stand?

What makes you love or hate Timeline? Is it the way it looks, privacy issues or something else? Let you opinions be known!

These days, there are countless websites that will let you create a webpage in mere minutes, without any knowledge of HTML whatsoever. We’d covered all sorts of websites and tools that you can use for this, like the four web design tools I wrote about, or other tools like OnePager or Zooloo. One of the fastest and quickest tools that I previously covered was Google Sites.

Fabricating Your Own Useful Dashboard

After using Google Sites for a while, I discovered some additional cool ways that it is integrated with other Google tools. That integration makes it a very powerful and easy way to put together your own personal information dashboard in no time.

To build your own person data/information dashboard, start by going to Google Sites and creating a site of your own. Give it a unique name, but at the bottom of the page, make sure to check off “Only people I specify” to make the site a private one.

This is important, because some of the information that you’re going to bring into the page may include personal details or statistics that are only for your information. This might include information you don’t want the public to see, like the Analytics data from your website, or the RSS streams you’re following to come up with new ideas to write about.

On the main page of your new Google site, click the “Edit” button at the top of the window.

This puts the page in edit mode. What many people may not realize is that there are a bunch of premade gadgets and widgets that can help you make a very dynamic website with very little effort. You can see those by clicking on the “Insert” menu item.

Then, click on “More gadgets…” to view the Google Gadgets database.

There are tons of really useful, high-quality gadgets listed in here. But, don’t get me wrong, there’s also a lot of junk.  Try to stick to the “Featured” category for the highest quality gadgets.

Embed RSS Streams To Your Page

One of the ones that I find to be the most useful is the “Google RSS” feed gadget. Choose that gadget, and then you’ll get to the Properties page.

This is where you can integrate an RSS stream widget onto the site that is tailor-made to provide you with a collection of information tailored specifically to what you want to see. How do you do this when there’s only one RSS feed URL field?

Easy, check out RSSMix, and use it to combine as many different RSS streams from around the net as you like into one core stream that you can embed on your own personal information page. Depending on the type of dashboard information page you’re trying to build, this stream can be a collection of whatever specific information that applies to the purpose of the dashboard. Is it your own finance dashboard? Collect relevant RSS streams from around the web and display that on this page.

Display Spreadsheet Data In Graph Form

The other really cool Gadget that you’ll see in the Insert menu is if you click on “Chart” rather than “More Gadgets“. The Chart gadget is integrated right into Google Docs. You can import any spreadsheet of data in your Google Docs account to create graphs of that data right on your new dashboard.

All I did to create this particular chart is export my Google Analytics website data to a CSV file (you can do this from inside Analytics), and then stored that CSV file in my Google Docs account. This allows Google Sites to see that data and import it into graph format.

Once you’re done laying out the data in the way that you want it to display in the graph, just click okay and now the graph is updated on your page. Pretty cool huh?

Display Dynamic Calendars On Your Dashboard

Another useful gadget in the “Insert” menu is the Calendar tool. This lets you insert any of your personal Google Calendars into your Google Site page. If you think about it, having a calendar embedded on a web page often takes a bit of work, because you need to use embed code to pull data from some calendar stored on another site, or a calendar app installed on your own server, in order to have a dynamic calendar.

But with Google Sites, it’s completely seamless.

Choose your calendar, click “Select” and you’re done. If you choose a two column layout for your page, you can easily lay out these gadgets side by side on the page.

Once you’re done integrating your Google services and embedding various gadgets onto your Google Sites page, save it and then check out how cool your new, dynamic webpage looks.

This is a lot like other dashboard pages like Netvibes, but it is more tightly integrated with your Google services. I’ve noticed that the gadgets here seem to work better and update faster than when you try to embed your Google information into a page like Netvibes. It’s also nice to quickly import docs, spreadsheets and charts right from Google Docs with just the click of a button.

If you’ve put off trying Google Sites, I highly recommend revisiting it, and trying out all of the cool integration tools that you’ll find in the “Insert” menu. You may be surprised just how dynamic and useful a dashboard page you can create for yourself.

Now, while the Facebook timeline looks fantastic, there are a few privacy concerns worth keeping in mind. For most people, certain things will need adjusting before you can be completely sure that your posts aren’t being exposed to the public unintentionally. We’ll take you through some of the major things you should check.

Note that even if you have chosen to use the new timeline it still needs to be published in order to be seen publicly. You can do this yourself after enabling the timeline, or Facebook will do it for you eventually. This gives you a chance to test your privacy settings before they’re live.

1. Testing Your Settings

There’s so many aspects of Facebook that can be controlled with different privacy settings that it can get a little bit confusing. Remember though, that at any time you can check how your Facebook profile looks to any person you are friends with. Simply go to your profile and click on the cog-like edit icon and choose “View as…” to choose a person to view the profile as.

If you’ve been setting your privacy settings by using custom filters, a good idea would be to check a family member, a colleague, a good friend and an acquaintance. This will give you an idea how these different types of people can see your profile. Check your profile like this before and after checking the following settings.

2. Limit Your Past & Future Default Post Settings

There is a way to limit the audience for past posts easily. If you think it’s possible you made some embarrassing public posts when you first joined Facebook and hadn’t yet friended your boss, this is the tool for you. Go to Home > Privacy Settings and find the section for “Limit the Audience for Past Posts“, clicking on the “Manage Past Post Visibility” link. Follow the prompts and confirmation to limit all of your “More than Friends” posts from your past to just your friends.

This will include public posts and friends of friends, so it should catch all those unexpected posts. There’s no way to reverse it with one click, so make sure it’s what you really want to do.

Also keep in mind that this setting is entirely different from future posts you make. If you want to limit default privacy for future posts, there’s a simple choice to make on your privacy settings page.

3. Manually Tweak Individual Items On Your Page

This is the tool for you if you’re fairly sure your privacy settings are what you want. For instance, if you’ve already viewed your profile as your boss and there’s just a few things you want to get rid of or feature on your profile.

Head to the box containing the post you want to feature or delete. You may realise in hindsight that the update was a little silly, or it might be an update that you want everyone to know the second they see your profile. The feature/hide buttons are right next to each other in the top right of every update.

4. Controlling Who Sees Things Others Post On Your Timeline

If you had previously controlled which of your friends can view posts on your wall, this setting will have migrated to cover your timeline. Sadly, Facebook won’t let you control which of your friends can post to your wall/timeline. It’s either all of your friends or just yourself. So, you need to instead control who can view what your friends write.

Head to Home > Privacy Settings > How You Connect and click on the control for “Who can see posts by others on your timeline?” to set things up properly. This is best controlled using custom friends lists to both nominate who can see the posts and who can never see the posts your friends make. Just think, your high school friends, relatives, boss and current friends can all write on your wall/timeline. Who do you want to see those messages? Who do you NOT want to see them?

5. Check The Privacy Of Your Contact Information

Now’s a great time to check just how public each bit of your profile information is. Go to your profile and click on “Update Info” to see your work history, education, relationships, contact details and other details. Each piece of information can be limited to friends, custom friend groups or just yourself. Who should know where you live? Your phone number? Edit the section, then click on the icon to the right of any piece of information in order to change who can see it.

Learn More About Facebook Privacy

If you’re keen to learn more about Facebook privacy in general (especially how to use custom friend lists to filter your privacy settings), then check out the Unofficial Facebook Privacy Guide.

A social advertisement works in a very straightforward way: if you, by a coincidence or whatever reason, have liked a Facebook page or ad, your friends will see your “like” next time they see the same advertisement. You might feel comfortable with that, however most people are not aware of the fact that by simply “liking” something (and thus expressing a passive form of appreciation), they also start recommending the same thing to their friends. LinkedIn launched a somewhat similar form of social advertising this summer.

Another disturbing thing is that in both systems, you find yourself automatically “opted-in” the social advertising system. Yes, you can opt out, but only if you know about the system and can spend a little effort and a few minutes of your time to do a quick research on how to disable it for your profile. So here’s a quick guide for those who feel they don’t want to participate in social advertising at LinkedIn and Facebook.

Opt out of Social Ads at Facebook

Facebook social ads show an advertiser’s message alongside actions you have taken, such as liking a Page. This means that if you have liked a page which is being advertised through Facebook, your friends will see that you have once liked that page (and may feel more likely to do the same):

We have mentioned how to stop appearing in social ads at Facebook in our extensive guide on safeguarding your Facebook privacy. However Facebook is in a good habit of constantly moving privacy settings all around and now the necessary option seems to be in a completely different section.

To find the way to opt out of Facebook social advertising, click a tiny arrow next to “Home” link in the upper-right corner of the screen and choose “Account Settings“. There click “Facebook Ads” in the left-hand panel.

Now, scroll down to the second option, read about the social ads and, if you are still not convinced that you want to participate in them, click “Edit social ads setting”.

There you can at last set whether you want your friends to see your name in an ad or whether you prefer to opt out:

Note: Independent of this setting, you may still see social actions in other contexts, like in Sponsored Stories or paired with messages from Facebook.

Opt out of Social Ads at LinkedIn

LinkedIn took a step further in social advertising: it shows your photo alongside an ad. Here’s an example of such an ad from the official LinkedIn blog. As far as you can see, people who have been following a company group, are now unwillingly advertising their services:

To opt out, you need to login to LinkedIn and click this link. There click “Manage Social Advertising” and un-check the option allowing LinkedIn to use your name and photo in social advertising:

Do you feel inclined of opting out of Facebook social ads? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

** Editor’s note : This is Ann’s last post with MakeUseOf after exactly three years writing for us.  She is leaving to pursue her own projects and will be greatly missed by everyone here.  Please join me in wishing her all the very best for the future. **

I, for one, am excited about these new developments and can’t wait to change how I’ve been using the service, but I know there are a lot of you out there that can’t stand even the minor tweaks that have been made by Facebook. If you happen to be a Google Chrome user, I’m about to buy you a little time.

Facebook News Ticker Remover

I wrote an article recently entitled Create A Better Facebook Chat Experience With fTalk For Desktop [Windows]. In it, I mentioned how important I felt Facebook’s chat feature was and I alluded to the changes Facebook had been making to its chat bar and how most people hated it (which is why I pointed to fTalk as a chat alternative).

Fast forward to the present time (one month later) and you’ll see that Facebook has changed its chat setup again. This time, they elected to add a “news ticker” to the top half of it. Similar to the News Feed, this shows every Facebook action being performed by those your friends with and pages you’re subscribed to.

While I feel this does provide some value in helping us see what our friends are doing while browsing other Facebook pages, many are frustrated with this new feature. There is the option of resizing the news ticker to make it less visible, but what if you want it gone completely?

The answer: Install Facebook News Ticker Remover. As soon as you install this Chrome extension, simply refresh your Facebook page and your chat sidebar will be back to how it was, without the news ticker. This should give you back a few hours that you normally spend gazing at your news ticker.

Unannoying Facebook

The second Facebook tweak I can help you put an end to is the omnipresent or “fixed” header. Currently, whenever you scroll down a page on Facebook, the header will stick to the top of your screen, allowing you to run searches and see your messages, alerts, etc. whenever you want without having to scroll back up to the top of the screen.

Again, I tend to like this new feature, primarily because it has already proven to save me a decent amount of time, but if it’s something you would rather have turned off, install the Unannoying Facebook extension for Chrome.

As soon as you install the extension, your Facebook header will move back to the top and stay there, which is right where many people feel it belongs.

Conclusion

We will undoubtedly be seeing a lot more changes being announced by Facebook. In fact, the social network could look and function entirely differently a few weeks from now for all I know. Some of you will like the changes, some of you will not. In any case, you can take solace in the fact that whatever Facebook does can most likely be undone with just a few lines of code.

Where do you stand on the whole “Facebook’s changing everything” front?

Not everyone has the timeline design yet and you may have to wait up to several weeks for it.  However, if you’re curious about how it looks on your profile and you want to try it out now, then here is how to do it.

Please note however that your new timeline page will only be viewable to those who also have the timeline design page.  Those who still have the old page design will continue to see your old page design until the timeline feature goes mainstream for everyone.

Step One – Authorise Facebook Developer To Access Your Account

The first step is to sign up as a Facebook developer. This involves enabling and authorising Facebook Developer to access your Facebook account.  Just go here and click “allow“.

Create A New App

The next step is to create a new app.  Don’t panic, you’re not actually going to create one.  On this page, in the top right hand corner are two buttons – “edit app” and “create new app“.  Click “create new app“.

This is the box that will come up next.  Simply put whatever you want into both boxes.  It doesn’t matter, as long as someone else hasn’t reserved the name.  It should also be at least 7 characters long.  As you can see, I put “coolmuoapp“which was the first thing that popped into my head.  Now click “continue“.

Clear The Captcha

Now you have to prove you’re human and not an automated bot.  Enter the captcha and hit “submit“.

Define An Action

OK, you’re almost finished.  In this final screen, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is the “Open Graph” link in the top left hand corner of the page.  Click on that and you will get this :

All you have to do is choose an action in the first text field and choose an object in the second text field.  So I chose “watch” in the first text field and “movie” in the second.  Now press “get started“.

After processing that, Facebook will flip back to the Open Graph page (you may even get an error message) but you can now ignore all of that and head towards your Facebook profile.  Within a minute or two, you should receive an invitation to try out the timeline profile.  Click on that and you are in.  Here’s mine :

At the top, where I have chosen to upload a Highland cow (one of my favourite animals) is the area known as the “cover”.  This is where you can upload your own photo and really personalise your page.  You can let your imagination go completely riot and choose something that reflects your personality and who you are.

On the whole, the timeline profile is an interesting development but it is a radical departure from what the profile used to be like, so I am sure there will be lots of people who will vehemently hate the design.  But I would say give it a chance. 

As the name “timeline” implies, you can move the slider back over every year you have had the Facebook profile and see all your old status messages.  I found it fascinating seeing what I posted years ago and laughing at some of the bad jokes that I posted (and some of the good ones too).

Let us know in the comments if you have any problems getting the timeline page, and also let us know if you either like or hate the new design.

However LinkedIn isn’t only good for networking: those who maintain detailed LinkedIn profiles can turn them into informative online resumes to jump start their job search.

There are a few handy tools that will both allow you quickly import your LinkedIn professional summary, help make it look neat and professional and even let you host your resume for free.

Here are a couple of great options:

Resume Builder

Resume Builder is by far the quickest way to turn your LinkedIn profile into a professionally looking, minimalist resume. It was created as part of LinkedIn Labs and the whole process takes no more than a few minutes:

1. Start here and sign into your LinkedIn profile;
2. Look over your professional summary and edit / delete any information you need;
3. Pick a resume template that best suits your style: clean, modern, business, gray, law and more.

Now you can download your resume as PDF, print it, share online (via email, Facebook or Twitter). Note that you will need to set the resume as public to be able to start sharing it.

You can also use the “outline” mode to change the look of your resume: just remove or drag-and-drop the sections you want to change:

2. DoYouBuzz

DoYouBuzz is an excellent and very user-friendly website that lets you quickly build a detailed resume by fetching your professional information from your LinkedIn profile.

It has both free and paid plans (the latter has a few more appealing templates but I never needed them as the free version has proved absolutely complete).

The process is very well organized – you will be surprised how smoothly you are being moved from step to step until you have the resume ready:

1. Sign up for n account and conform your email;
2. Import your LinkedIn profile;
3. Edit / remove any sections that have been fetched from your LinkedIn profile (or add new sections)
4. Choose and customize your template (you can choose a design and then select your own color palette):

As a result you get a free online Linkedin profile resume that you can both link to or download to send to a potential employee:

Privacy settings and notes:

If you care about your privacy, there are a couple of notable things to mention here:

1. Your resume will have “nocache” header tag which will prevent Google from saving it in its cache. This means that your future employees won’t be able to access the resume previous versions and will only be able to see the current one (this is a very smart feature by the way)
2. There are a few privacy settings inside that allow you to hide your resume from public view, exclude it from DoYouBuzz search results or hide it from everyone.

Note: There’s another similar tool called Comoto but it is not that usable.

Are you aware of any other tools that make it easy to re-package your LinkedIn profile and turn it into the detailed resume? Please let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by michaeln3