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Facebook Timeline Is Now Available For Everyone; Here’s How To Get It For Your Profile

December 15, 2011 by admin

Back in September this year, Facebook announced the new feature called “Timeline” and made it available to the developers initially. Facebook Timeline is basically a new way to list your entire activity of your life in a Chronological order, right from your birth to the present moment. With a neat and visually appealing interface, the Timeline lists all your major events in your life in the chronology. No wonder some call it as your virtual biography (though we differ!).

The Timeline, which up until a few days ago was in “beta”, got its public rollout to the users in New Zealand last week. And today the social networking giant has announced that the Facebook Timeline will be available to the users across the globe starting today. The company has also said that those who activate the feature will initially get a 7-day review period during which they can review and choose what content should appear to their friends.

How To Get The Timeline For Your Profile:

We have published a detailed guide earlier on how to activate the Facebook Timeline for your Facebook profile. But this feature was in “beat” stage at that time and it we had to use a hack to get it enabled. Now that this feature is available for all, the process is much simpler and straightforward.

Navigate to this page on Facebook, and click the “Get Timeline” button that you see at the bottom. This will automatically activate the Timeline for your profile.

The next thing you have to do is to view your Timeline and manage the content that is visible to your friends. To do this, find and click on the gear menu which will be present near your profile name in the Timeline view. Select “View As…” from the dropdown menu. This will show how your profile will appear to a specific friend or public once it gets published.

Go through the events/posts on your profile. Should you decide to hide a particular post from your friends (or specific friends) or public, all you need to do is to click on the “Edit” pencil icon right next to that post and choose “Hide from Timeline”.

Supposing that you have activated Facebook Timeline today i.e December 15th, you are allowed to edit, finalize and publish your Timeline to your profile. In case you choose to wait, your Timeline will get published automatically on December 22nd (i.e., on the seventh day). If you feel your Timeline is ready to go public, you can always hit the “Publish Now” button to publish it.

We suggest you watch this video to make yourself acquainted with the features of the Timeline.

[Tip] How To Activate Facebook Timeline

September 23, 2011 by admin

Facebook has launched a new feature called Facebook Timeline, which is basically portrayal of your entire activity on the Facebook in a chronological order. This is pretty much different from the regular profile view and offers a new and interesting insight into what you have been up to on the Facebook.

Sadly, Facebook hasn’t enabled this feature for all the users right now. However, the feature has already been activated for the open graph developers. If you are a normal user like me on the Facebook, you may have to wait a few more weeks to get this feature enabled for your account. But if you are curious enough to get it immediately, TechCrunch has come to your rescue.

As there is no direct way of enabling this feature right now for your profile, we’ll have to use the workaround suggested by Greg Kumparak. The process involves enabling developer mode and creating a dummy developer app which will be accessible only to you. Though the entire process isn’t a single button-click-enable thing, but yes, it is very straightforward indeed. All you need to do is to follow the steps briefed below:

Steps:

1. Login to Facebook with your credentials.

2. Type “developer” in the search box and hit the first result (Developer, type: App) under the Apps section.

3. Click the “Create New App” button on the right corner of your screen.

4. Choose a display name and namespace for your new app. Keep in mind that the chosen namespace should be unique and is subject to availability (Don’t use words like ‘Facebook’ or ‘FB’ in the App Display Name as they are not allowed). Read and agree to the Facebook Platform Policies and click Continue, complete the security check to proceed to the next step.

5. Now you will be taken to the ‘Basic Settings’ page for the app. Look for “Open Graph” link on the left sidebar and click on it.

6. You will be then asked to edit the action properties followed by object type settings and another page to create an aggregation. Just keep the default values and in each one and proceed to the next step.

7. Now open the Facebook homepage and you will then notice an invitation to access Timeline.

8. You are done.

Your Facebook’s Timeline right now will appear only to you. You can always click the “Publish Now” button or wait for a week’s time for your timeline to go live. You cal also access your timeline by pasting the following URL on your browser: http://www.facebook.com/username?sk=timeline.

See Your Facebook Friends Locations On Google Maps

March 2, 2011 by bharath

With the growing popularity of Facebook daily, there has been noticeable surge in Facebook related mobile and web applications. Developers are coming up with innovative ideas to build their apps. Once such app that I found lately is, WhereMyFriendsBe, a web based application that shows the locations of your Facebook friends around the world on Google maps. We had earlier covered about Bing Facebook for similar purpose. However, the subtle difference between Bing Facebook app and WhereMyFriendsBe is in grouping the friends map. While Bing app shows your friends profile pictures on their location in the map, the later will list the names of your friends located in a particular area.

As you can see the app will visualise your Facebook friends on Google maps, based on their location in Facebook profile. If you hover over any of the pins, names of all of your Facebook friends located in that city/location will be displayed. That said, I would still prefer using Bing Facebook map because once you use the WhereMyFriends app, your friends map becomes public. It’s rather surprising that not too many apps exist in this category.

via Labnol

[Tip] Disable The New Photo Viewer In Facebook

February 20, 2011 by bharath

Facebook has recently introduced a new Photo Viewer (called ‘Photo Theater’) last week. It has become a topic of debate among the Facebook users since then with most of them not supporting the initiative from Facebook to introduce the new theater version of the Photo Viewer. The new Photo Viewer is all about popup slideshow covering up almost the entire Facebook page in black background. If you are one of those that doesn’t like this annoying Photo Viewer, you might want to disable it and revert back to the good old Facebook Photo Viewer. These are the set of workarounds to get rid of the new Facebook Photo Viewer.

Using F5:

Facebook appends the URL of a photo in Facebook with this “&theater” parameter to the URL to trigger the new Photo Viewer instead of the old one (You can manually delete the “&theater” tag from the URL and hit enter to load the photo in the old viewer). But it is found that refreshing the page loads the same photo in the old Photo Viewer. So all you have to do is to press F5 button and the photo should load again in the old Photo Viewer instead of the new one and you will see the rest of the photos in the album in the old Photo Viewer. However, this is not a permanent solution, and you might want to automate the things for you, and this is why you should scroll down to the next workaround.

Using Browser Extensions:

If you are using Firefox, you should first install the Greasemonkey add-on and then use the following Facebook Photo Theater Killer script. This script works in Google Chrome too. Alternatively, if you are on Google Chrome, you can install Revert Facebook Photo Viewer extension for this purpose.

[Tip] Hide Your Facebook Updates From Specific People

February 11, 2011 by bharath

Facebook can be a place for lot of fun. It has some annoyances too. It all depends on how you use it. Have you ever wondered whether you can post a private post or status update on your post that appears only to certain people and is hidden from other friends? Advanced users of Facebook might very well be aware of how to do this. But if you are relatively new user or never had a clue that such a feature existed in Facebook that allows to set a private post or status update on your wall, read the following guide to quickly learn how to do this:

1. Login to your Facebook account, and start post your status update. Click on the small “Padlock” button that is placed just before the “Share” button.

Click on the “Customize” button that appears in the dropdown menu list.

2. In the next window, you will be presented with privacy options for your current status update. As you want only specific people to see your status update, choose “Specific People” from the list under “Make this visible to”.

3. You can either choose your friends from Facebook manually or you can create custom friends lists to choose from. To create a friend list quickly, go to your Facebook friends edit page and create a list with your specific friends. If you had already done that, you must now be able to choose a list by typing in the name of the list.

4. Now your status update will only be visible to the people from your chosen list. Or if you want status update to be hidden from few selected friends of yours, you need to enter the names of those friends or friend list under “Hide this from” as in the previous case.

Click the “Save Setting” button once you are done. Your status update will now be visible to specific people or friends and will be hidden from other friends. You may also check the “Make this my default setting” option to set it as your default setting for other future updates.

[Tip] Enable Secure “HTTPS” In Facebook

January 28, 2011January 26, 2011 by bharath

Facebook has just announced the availability of HTTPS/SSL all the time on the Facebook. If you enable HTTPS mode, all the data beginning from the password you type at the login page would be encrypted when it travels between the browser and the Facebook server, offering a more sophisticated security for your stay on Facebook. HTTPS mode isn’t new, you might have seen this while doing any transactions on the internet. A similar HTTPS/SSL mode is also optional on Gmail and Hotmail.

# Who Should Consider HTTPS Secure Mode For Facebook?

Facebook suggests that if you frequently use your account at public internet access enabled places coffee shops, restaurants, airports, libraries and schools etc.

# How To Enable The HTTPS Mode In Facebook?

Open your account settings page and click on the “Account Security” section. You will find the “Secure Browsing (https)” option and check against “Browser Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible” and click Save.

Can’t find the option in your account? You may have to wait! Facebook will rollout the option for all the users in the coming weeks starting from today.

When you enable the HTTPS mode and log back into the Facebook, you will see this in the address bar.

# What Are The Downsides?

While you press hard for enabling more secure HTTPS mode, you might have to compromise on the page load speeds part. Facebook alerts users that enabling encryptions mode means that pages take longer than usual time to load. Also many third-party applications are currently not supported in HTTPS mode.

# Social Authentication

Besides this, Facebook has one more interesting feature announcement about using Social authentication. Facebook is now testing this feature which now lets users to authenticate by using pictures of their friends (like the one shown in the screenshot):

[Via] The Facebook Blog

Upgrade To Facebook New Profile

December 6, 2010 by bharath

Facebook has finally decided to give a facelift to the Facebook profiles. The new Facebook profile page will have basic information like where are you from, where you studied, your work location etc. Below that, there are some recent pictures where you have been recently tagged.

Below your profile pic, you will find some of your featured friends. Facebook lets you to choose the features friends from your list of friends, whom you feel are more important to you. You may create new groups of friends or may also choose to feature existing friend lists.

The new Facebook profiles also enables you to share your interest and activities. You can list the projects that you worked for your employer (you can also tag co-workers who worked with you!), favorite music bands, sports teams, political affiliations, and your favorite people you admire etc.

Facebook’s new “infinite scroll” feature lets you easily browse your photos. You can now search in the Friends page with number of dimensions like: search by name, hometown etc.

How To Start Using New Facebook Profile ?

1. Go to facebook.com/about/profile and click “Get the New Profile” button.

2. The page will list some of your information that Facebook already has. Click the “Edit Profile” link to add some more details about you.

When you are done, your new profile page will look like the one shown in the above pic, and all of your friends will be notified showing that you now have the new profile.

Please note that once you upgrade to new profile, there is no option to get back to the older version of the Facebook profile as of now. All the Facebook profile pages of your friends will be shown in the newer format no matter whether they are using the new profile version or older one.

via Facebook blog

[Tip] Download Your Entire Facebook Data

November 16, 2010 by bharath

What’s the point of any service where you don’t have control over the data you add through it? This is the first and foremost point that every user considers before using any service and the service provider must be up to it to provide users with full control over their data. Being the most widely used social networking website on the internet, Facebook is no exception. Facebook has recently added a provision through which the users can download their entire personal information that you have posted on Facebook including messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information etc. You can download all this data with a single click.

Follow these steps to download all your information on Facebook:

1. Login to Facebook and click “Account Settings” under Account.

2. Locate “Download Your Information” in the Settings tab and click “learn more” link present right next to it.

3. In the next page, you will receive a brief message about what the tool exactly going to do along with a brief warning message. Click on the green “Download” button to proceed to the next step.

4. A pop-up window (“Request My Download”) appears now. The window tells you to wait till Facebook gathers all your photos, wall posts, messages and other information. Click on the Download button again to proceed.

5. It may take a little while for Facebook to gather all your information and you will eventually receive a mail containing a download link for the zip file containing your Facebook account information.

You need to verify your identity by entering your account password before you can download the zipped file.

In the next page you should see a download button along with showing information about the size of the file you are about to download. Download the .zip file and unzip to see the contents of it. You should see sub-folders like photos, html along with index.html and readme files.

6. You are done with downloading your information from Facebook!

Watch the below to video to follow the above steps:

[How To] Turn Off Facebook Group Notifications

October 8, 2010 by bharath

We have just covered a tutorial on how to get started with the Facebook revamped groups features. Even though they are good if we consider the fact that you will get notifications whenever a member of your group perform actions like someone ‘Adds you to a Group’, ‘Posts on the wall of one of your group’, ‘Makes you group admin’ etc. But if the group that you have joined has huge number of active users and this can generate too many annoying notification mails. If you want to get a way around to block all these annoying notifications from groups, follow this step-by-step guide:

Disable Notifications For Individual Groups:

1. Go to the group page for which you want to turnoff notifications.

2. Click “Edit Settings” button found on the top left.

3. In the popup window, uncheck “Email notifications to:..” and click “Save Settings”.

[You can also visit this groups notifications settings page to quickly disable settings for individual groups.]

This will stop all notifications being delivered to your email for that particular group.

Disable Notifications For All Groups:

If you think that you have had enough with the annoying notifications and want to disable all such notifications from all the groups for which you are a member, follow these instructions:

1. Go to this Facebook notifications page. (You can also get to this page via > Account> Account Settings and choose “Notifications’ tab.

2. Under the groups section, you will find “Groups” section displaying all your current notification preferences.

Uncheck against all the options to completely disable notifications from all the groups you are part of.

That is it. You will no longer receive notifications from Facebook groups.

[How To] Getting Started With New Version Of Facebook Groups

October 8, 2010 by bharath

Facebook has recently announced the revamped Facebook Groups feature, giving you more control over the group interactions that you would like to make. Suppose you are just back to home after a holiday and you want to share the wonderful photos that you had taken during your trip to your other members of the family via Facebook. Unfortunately whatever photos or other media you share was visible to your entire friends in Facebook. With the launch of new version of Facebook Groups, you can create groups for your family, club or work etc. Once you have created the groups, you can select content that you share to be visible to only a particular group of people. This is not exactly a new concept, something of this sorts already exists in Google’s Orkut. But with Facebook groups, users can make a group chat, email subscriptions for updates from the group, collaboration features etc.

Let’s see how to get started with Facebook groups:

1. To create a group, you can visit facebook.com/groups. Alternatively, you can find groups link on the left sidebar along with “Game Requests”, “Application Requests” etc.

2. Click on Create a group link to start creating a new group.

3. Give the new group a name (suggestions: Family, Work, Club etc.). You can add members from your friends list. Just type the name of the person that you want to add to the group, Facebook will automatically suggest people from your Facebook friends list who possess that name. You can add as many people as you can in the Members field.

And beneath the Members section, you will have “privacy” settings for your group. There would be three options to choose from: Open, Closed and Secret.

Open: If you set your group privacy setting to Open, it means that anyone on Facebook can view the Group and its content and can join the same. The group will also appear in search results.

Closed: If a group is set to “Closed” under privacy settings, it means that anyone in Facebook can view the name and members of that group but can’t view its content. Only members of the group will have access to its content. These groups can be found in Search results though (content will not appear in results).

Secret: Secret groups can’t be found in searches. And it’s absolutely invisible to non-members of the group. Non-members can’t even see the name of the group, its members list and of course the content as well.

By default, Privacy will be set to “Closed”. You can always change it to any of the above three options discussed.

Click on “Create” button to finish creating the group.

4. Now that you have created a group, go to the groups tab, click on the group that you have just created and click “Edit Admin Settings”.

Basic Information:

You can now edit the basic information like Description and Email address for your group here:

If you want a special email address for your group, click on “Choose for Group” next to the “Email Address” tab, these email addresses end with @groups.facebook.com. You can choose an email address depending on the availability.

Profile Picture:

To add a profile picture to your group, click on the “Profile Picture” link on the left sidebar:

You can either upload a picture from your computer or take a new snapshot using your webcam.

Sharing Content:

You can share a text post, link, photo, video, event or a document with the members of your group. Go to the your group page and these options will be listed below the group name.

Group Chat:

Clicking on “Chat with Group” option will let you chat with the members of the group.

Leave The Group:

Finally if you want to unjoin from the group, just click “Leave Group” link that can be found under the group page.