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Find your friends missing since a long time on Facebook

2010-05-16T12:27:00.005+03:00

Find your friends missing since a long time on Facebook :

Facebook is now an essential unifying force in many people’s social lives — it helps friends arrange events, wish each other “happy birthday,” solidify communities and social bonds, and share recent memories with images.
All of that has been always possible by other, less convenient means, but Facebook helps us do one thing that’s unique to our time: Get daily updates on the lives of friends all over the world, in different walks of life.
In a way, that’s what the service originally was. Its name and college origins conjure images of a yearbook, intended not to keep up on what’s new but to act as a record of past relationships, associations and accomplishments. Facebook hasn’t forgotten that, so it provides tools for reconnecting with friends from your past — past schools, past jobs and even past e-mail exchanges.

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1 : Find Friends You E-mail
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Look in Facebook’s right navigation panel and you’ll see an area labeled “Get Connected.” It’s easy to miss, but this is where you’ll start when looking for old friends. Click “Find your friends” underneath “Who’s on Facebook?” and you’ll be taken to the “Find people you know on Facebook” portal.

The first option you’ll see is “Find people you e-mail.” Just type in your e-mail address here, and if your e-mail service is a popular one (like Gmail (Gmail) or Yahoo (Yahoo!)), a window will pop up that will log into your account and import all your contacts.

You’ll get a list of people you’ve e-mailed who have registered on Facebook using the e-mail address from your contact list. Check the ones you know and click “Add as Friends” once you’ve found all the folks you want.

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2 : Follow Facebook’s Recommendations
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Head back to that first page and look further down the options, below the e-mail one, and you’ll see a collage of profile pictures and names under the header “Suggestions.” These are people Facebook’s computers think you might know based on factors like whether or not you have lots of mutual friends.
If you don’t know someone on the list, click the “X” by that person’s name to make him or her disappear, and he or she will be replaced by a new possibility. If you do know the next one one, just click “Add as friend” and you’re set.

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3 : Find Friends By Name or E-mail Address
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In the bottom left of the “Find people you know on Facebook” page, you’ll see a subsection labeled “search for people.” There’s a simple search field where you can type in a name or e-mail address. Facebook will look for any users with that name or e-mail address, then give you the option of adding whoever it finds as a friend.

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4 : Find Former or Current Classmates or Co-workers
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When you don’t know your former contact’s e-mail address or if his or her name is so common that you can’t find him or her in the search, you can search based on school or workplace. You can only do this for schools or workplaces you’ve attended. Click on any of the links below the name and e-mail search field (such as “Find former college classmates”) to navigate to another friend-finding page.
You can type in the school name or the class year, then (optionally) a name to find a classmate. Alternatively, you can search by company and name to find co-workers and colleagues.

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5 : Find Friends You IM
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Step back to the main portal and look in the bottom right corner to find the IM option. It works just like the e-mail one, except that you have to select a service. For example, click on AOL Instant Messenger and type in your screen name and password to import all your AIM (aim) contacts. If your AIM buddies have Facebook accounts that list their screen names, they’ll appear in the results and you’ll be able to add them.

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6 : Use Facebook Search
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If none of the above options helped you find the person you’re looking for, you can really get your hands dirty by using Facebook’s more general search feature. The search field is always at the top of every Facebook page.
Type in a name, but don’t hit enter or return yet because you might get taken straight to a specific profile or page. Instead, click “See More Results…” at the bottom of the drop-down list that appears.
In the left navigation menu (the one that says “All Results,” “People,” etc.), click “People.” Now you can narrow your search by typing in location, school or workplace in addition to name.

For more Information, visit the main page

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Ways To Protect Your WordPress Blog

2010-05-15T19:47:00.006+03:00

Ways To Protect Your WordPress Blog

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for self-hosted blogs and websites. While WordPress is pretty secure out of the box, there are always going to be individuals who want to make trouble by finding a way to crack into accounts or sites to cause damage or inject hidden spammy links. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your WordPress installation is as secure as possible.

Here are some of our tips for keeping your WordPress website or blog more secure and less susceptible to malicious attacks.
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1. Update
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No software system is immune to bugs and vulnerabilities. Security holes will be discovered and bad guys will do their best to exploit them. Keeping your software up-to-date is a good way to stave off attacks, because reliable software vendors will fix their products once security holes are found.

For web-based software, staying on top of updates is a must. Lots and lots of WordPress users learned that the hard way last September when a wave of attacks spread across sites not running the latest version of the software.

Fortunately, keeping your WordPress site up-to-date is one of the easiest things you can do. For the last few versions, WordPress has included the ability to install automatic updates. Not only that, but sites are notified every time a new upgrade becomes available.
If you aren’t running the latest version of WordPress, upgrade now. Leaving your site on an old version is like keeping your door unlocked when you leave for vacation.
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2. Use Strong WordPress Account Passwords
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In addition to adding a secret key to your wp-config.php file, also consider changing your user password to something that is strong and unique. WordPress will tell you the strength of your password, but a good tip is to avoid common phrases, use upper and lowercase letters, and include numbers. It’s also a good idea to change your password regularly — say once every six months.
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3. Use Secret Keys in your WP-Config File
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In WordPress, the wp-config.php file is the file that stores the database information that WordPress needs to connect its circuit, so-to-speak. This file contains the name, address and password of the MySQL database that stores all of your user info, blog posts and other important content.

Using a secret key, you can make it even more difficult for someone to gain access to your account.

Go to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ and copy the results into this section of your wp-config.php file if you haven’t already set up a secret key.

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4. Keep Your Htaccess File in Check
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Using a .htaccess file, you can set access limits to certain directories. You can tie those limits to a specific IP address, which means that only people from that location can access your information.

.Htaccess stuff gets pretty complex, but AskApache has the Ultimate Tutorial for all things .htaccess. This post from WPTavern also has some good tips (see tip #5).
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5. Know Your File Permissions
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Often, hackers are able to gain access to your site because you’ve left files or folders with permissions that are simply too liberal.

Depending on how you have installed WordPress, or the default practices from your webhost, the permissions for files and folders on your WordPress install may not be appropriate.

The WordPress Codex has an outline of what permissions are acceptable. File and directory permissions can be changed either via an FTP client or within the administrative page from your web host.

This page details more about how file permissions work and how to change them using a number of different systems.

For more Information, visit the main page

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WordPress 3.0 Most Important New Features

2010-05-15T19:25:00.005+03:00

WordPress has long been known as a dedicated blogging platform, giving users the tools they need to publish their message and interact with readers. However, with the official release of version 3.0, set to drop this month, the platform will be much closer, if not well within the territory of a content management system (CMS).
The list of new features in WordPress 3.0 isn’t very long in comparison to previous releases. However, the changes that are coming will certainly have a significant impact, particularly if you use WordPress as a CMS. Here is a rundown of the most important new features arriving in version 3.0.
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1. Custom Post Types
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By default, WordPress lets you publish two types of content: “Posts” and “Pages.” In version 3.0, you can define additional content types with their own attributes. For example, if you’re running a WordPress site for a design agency, you might create a custom post type to display portfolio items, another for employee pages, and another for client testimonials. From there, you can customize your theme to better suit each individual post type.

You might even want to turn your WordPress site into something more like Tumblr (Tumblr). This will be easy to do in WordPress 3.0 simply by creating custom post types for Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, and Video (video).

Thanks to custom post types, there are many new possibilities for how you use WordPress to publish any sort of content.
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2. Menu Management
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Menu management is one of the most exciting and talked about features in WordPress 3.0. This feature gives you full control over your site’s navigation menus. With an easy drag and drop interface, users can create menus that include any mixture of links to internal pages, external URLs, categories, you name it. Then you can embed these custom menus as a widget wherever your theme allows.

So let’s say you’re running a site which has several informational pages, plus a blog, featured video posts, and you also want to promote your social media presence. You can customize your main navigation to look something like this:

* HOME
* BLOG (blog) (links to the main blog page)
* VIDEOS (links to the video category, or post type)
* INFO PAGE
* INFO PAGE
o SUB INFO PAGE
* TWITTER (links to your Twitter profile)
* FACEBOOK (links to your Facebook Fan Page)

Changing the order, titles, and destination of these links is a piece of cake with menu management in WordPress 3.0.
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3. Custom Taxonomies
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While this new feature may seem a bit complex to non-developers, it certainly brings WordPress 3.0 closer to a true CMS. Custom taxonomies allow you to create additional pieces of meta information. By default, there are “Categories” and “Tags.” Now we can add additional types, with the option of being hierarchical or not.

So what does this mean exactly? Here are some examples of what you can do with custom taxonomies:

Let’s say you’re a film fanatic and you use your WordPress blog to post reviews and rate new movies. You can create a custom taxonomy for “Rating (Rating),” then add R, PG-13, PG, G to every review.

Another example would be real estate listing websites. In addition to photos and descriptions, you might use additional taxonomies to provide a list of specs on each property such as asking price, number of bedrooms, year built, etc.
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4. New Default Theme: “Twentyten”
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Twentyten is the long-overdue default theme packaged with new installations of WordPress 3.0. It features a clean, yet bold design and introduces some nice functionality not found in many themes. Two features built into Twentyten are particularly useful if you’re new to WordPress and don’t have the coding skills to customize your theme. They are:

Custom Header Image

The Twentyten theme gives you the ability to easily change your site’s header image. Packaged with the theme are eight interesting banner images to choose from. You can also upload your own image. This feature isn’t limited to the Twentyten theme. It can be activated and included by theme developers as well.

Custom Background Image

Another nifty feature found in Twentyten is the ability to upload your own background image for your site. You can also set a solid background color if you want. While this is likely an easy thing to tweak even for those with only light knowledge of web development, it’s certainly useful for those who don’t want to get their hands dirty and edit CSS. Again, custom background functionality can be included in other themes as well if activated by the theme developer.
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5. Multi-site
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You can’t discuss WordPress 3.0 without mentioning the new multi-site capabilities. That is, you can manage several different websites (with different domains and/or sub-domains) all with a single installation of WordPress. What was previously known as WordPress MU (Multi-User) is now merged with the core WordPress system in 3.0. Enabling multi-site capabilities likely isn’t something for the average user, as it requires some tinkering with the code and configuring server settings. That said, the average user likely isn’t interested in having multi-site capabilities.

So who benefits from running a multi-site installation of WordPress? It’s perfect if you’re running a blog network, or manage a large news organization with many different departments. Perhaps your business has each employee running their own blog with a unique design or even their own domain. These are situations where multi-site functionality can be useful.
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What Else?
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Here are a few of the minor feature enhancements arriving in WordPress 3.0:

Get Shortlink (with your own domain)

We all know how useful URL shorteners can be, especially for tweeting links. WordPress 2.9 gave you the ability to use the wp.me URL shortener. WordPress 3.0 takes this feature a step further by allowing you to get a shortlink for your post based on your own domain name. For example: http://mashable.com/?post=7127. You don’t need to mask your URL with other services like bit.ly (bit.ly). Now you can keep your branding intact when you tweet your links.

Author Templates

New in 3.0 is the ability to create unique author templates. This is great if you’re running a multi-author blog and you’d like to apply unique styles or layouts to individual author pages.

Select Username and Password During Installation

Before WordPress 3.0, new installations automatically set your master account to username “admin” with an auto-generated password. Now, you can define these during installation, saving you the hassle of changing them later. It also adds a new layer of security (Home Security). WordPress sites have been known to be compromised simply because they use the most common username, “admin.”

Get the entire list of new features and changes at the official WordPress Codex page for 3.0.

Which feature are you most excited to get your hands on in WordPress 3.0? Let us know in the comments!

For more Information, visit the main page

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The top five ways to send gifts to your friends on twitter

2010-05-15T18:47:00.004+03:00

The top five ways to send gifts to your friends on twitter:

The online nature of Twitter means that it’s highly unlikely you know the physical addresses of many of the people you follow, which if you want to send them something in the real world, could be problematic.

Whether it’s a Twitter buddy’s birthday, someone’s a little under the weather, you want to say thank you, or just be awesome, there are a variety of services out there that can help you out in such a situation.

We’ve pulled together a list of five websites that, utilizing just a Twitter handle and a credit card, will have actual gifts winging their way in the real world to your online friend in no time at all.

The first way : ParcelGenie

Perhaps aimed at the younger Twitter user, ParcelGenie offers affordable gifts across the categories of “fun,” “flirty,” “cheeky,” “cult” and “celebratory” with Love Hearts and strawberry lip gloss the current most popular items while we were visiting. Basically, if you’re looking to send a Twitter contact a Whoopee cushion, or a badge that reads “boob inspector” then this is your new go-to place.

Once you’ve signed in via oAuth, the site auto-selects a gift and someone from your followers to send it to as a kind of demo. This is unnerving at best, and frankly terrifying at worst as you sit petrified, scared to move the mouse as the site lines up “After Dinner Willies” for your boss, complete with an auto-generated message. Obviously you have to actually add the item to your cart before anything really happens, but it’s a point worth noting for the faint of heart.

On the practical side of things, you can only send gifts to people that are following you. Once you have selected an item and a recipient, you choose whether you want the gift to be public, private or anonymous, after which ParcelGenie messages the giftee asking for an address and, assuming your buddy provides the requisite info, the parcel is then sent.

Delivers To: The U.S., Canada, UK, Australia plus some European countries
Gifts Available: Keyrings, badges, candy, drinks, mugs, magnets, various other low value items

Second way : Tigerbow

This good-looking site offers a more grown-up selection of giftery with books and movies catering to any get-well soon scenario, flowers and food great for thank yous, and comedy tees. There’s also a card-sending service which is available worldwide (unlike the gifting that’s currently U.S.-only), with the nifty option to design your own.

Once you’ve registered, verified your email and selected your gift, it’s just a matter of signing in to Twitter, selecting a contact from the list and then adding a Twitter message (there’s a separate option later in the checkout process to add a message to go with the actual gift). At this stage you can chose whether you want the recipient to be able to see the gift they are getting, or keeping it a surprise.

The giftee then gets a message from Tigerbow, can view your message on the site and then decide whether they want to accept, and if so, where they want the parcel sent. If the recipient refuses the present, then you won’t be charged and at no point is any address info shared.

Delivers To: The U.S. only for gifts, cards worldwide
Gifts Available: Flowers, cards, foodie items, t-shirts, books, movies

Third Way : Twitgift

Twitgift currently offers a very limited selection of items made up of mostly cookies and a few geek-themed phone cases and jewelry. However, the site is actively looking for suppliers with “interesting, unique or tasty” products, and is supposedly making plans for expansion to other countries, so it’s definitely worth bookmarking.

Boasting a super-simple user experience, you simply sign in via oAuth with your Twitter account, select the gift you want to send, enter the Twitter name of who you’re sending it to and enter payment info.

The recipient then gets a tweet that is customizable, but along the lines of: “I just bought you a @twitgift! Claim your @twitgift at http://twitgift.me/claim/” The recipient can then visit Twitgift to add their shipping details (at which point the service tweets you to let you know the gift has been accepted). Alternatively, if the gift is not claimed in a week, the order is canceled and nothing is charged to your card.

It’s worth noting that unlike other services, the @mention nature of the notification means you can use Twitgift to send gifts to people who don’t follow you.

Delivers To: The U.S. only
Gifts Available: Cookies, phone cases, jewelry

Fourth Way :Twegistry

Once you’ve oAuthed the sign-in on Twegistry, you can browse the online present selection which includes some nice gifty bits as well as some sexy underwear – so, clearly ideal for the stalker market.

Simply enter your recipient’s Twitter name and select the gift (prices include both shipping and taxes) and then checkout via PayPal.

Twegistry will then send a message containing an @mention to the person you’re sending the present to with a link so that they can either accept or decline. Like Twitgift, the way this system is set up means the person you want to send something to does not need to follow you back in order to generate the message.

If they do decline, then your purchase will be refunded, otherwise the gift will be sent off to them pronto.

Delivers To: The U.S. only
Gifts Available: Flowers, candy, cakes, teddy bears, saucy undies

Fifth Way :SendSocial

In addition to being UK-only at this stage, SendSocial works on a different principle than the services outlined above as it does not restrict your choice of gift. It’s more a social delivery service that will help you send anything to a Twitter user.

Just sign in with your Twitter ID via oAuth, enter your name, email and address info (and go through the email verification process) and select the Twitter name of the person you want to send something to.

The service then generates a tweet along the following lines “@[recipient] I would like to send you [item], via SendSocial. To accept, go to http://sendsocial.com/r/[unique link]” Once the receivee accepts and enters their address, SendSocial creates a barcoded address label (so the actual location is not revealed at any stage) for you to print out, stick to your parcel and wait for the courier to collect.

Pricing is worked out on a weight basis, with anything up to 2kg costing just £3.99 (around $6) to send and the service takes between three to five days once the parcel has been collected.

Delivers To: UK only
Gifts Available: None – send your own

For more Information, visit the main page

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Spindex Is A Social Aggregator Tool From Microsoft

2010-05-14T20:31:00.003+03:00

Spindex Is A Social Aggregator Tool From Microsoft:

Here at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Microsoft has announced its newest social media project: Spindex, a tool that aggregates social information from Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Evernote and RSS.

The application, which is only available in limited preview to attendees of the Web 2.0 Expo, is an attempt to “make sense of your social overload” by giving you the ability to glance at what is hot in your social networks. It is a project of the Microsoft FUSE Lab, whose goal is to create new products that deliver a better social and real-time experience.

At first glance, Spindex sounds similar to FriendFeed or even Google Buzz, but in reality the project is an experiment that is still in its early stages there is no indication that Spindex will become a core Microsoft product.

For more Information, visit the main page

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A new service from Google Reader support HTML5

2010-05-14T20:21:00.004+03:00

A new service from Google Reader support HTML5 :

Google Reader has released a slew of new updates today, the most prominent being support for HTML5-powered videos and audio.

As HTML5 gains steam, partially due to Apple’s war against Adobe Flash, more and more websites are switching to HTML5 interfaces that work on both the desktop and mobile phones. Google (Google), understanding this reality, has intelligently responded by adding HTML5 support for the video and audio HTML5 tags within Google Reader (Google Reader).

That’s only one of many changes the company announced today. Google Reader has added a new link at the bottom of recommended items, “Not Interested,” which gives you the ability to hide recommended stories that miss the mark and provides Google with more data to give you better recommendation results. Reader Play has also been tweaked with more options, such as hitting the space bar to move between posts and new options to personalize the interface.

Google Reader tends to release these types of small updates often, so it has also added a prompt to refresh whenever Google Reader is updated. The HTML5 additions are the big updates of this release though, and while Google is currently supporting Adobe Flash in the face of Apple’s assault, the reality is that HTML5 is rising as the primary alternative to Flash. Expect to see more and more websites adopt the standard.

For more Information, visit the main page

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2010-05-14T20:11:00.003+03:00

Upgrades Your Social Calendar On MySpace:

If you’re one of those people who scribbles your plans for a given week on the back of the junk mail in your purse (totally not me…), then you could probably benefit from MySpace’s new platform.

Today, MySpace (MySpace) continues on its quest to distinguish itself as a place for entertainment and socializing with the addition of what is essentially a calendar (Calendar Tweet) that combines your events, your friends’ events, concerts and shindigs put on by your favorite artists and even events from your Facebook (Facebook) account. You can also buy concert tix from band pages and pages of other entertainers.

While the service itself could be a source of revenue for the company — advertisers can now buy sponsored event space inside the calendar — we’re not sure how much utility it will add for users.

Although MySpace does have a wide selection of events — nearly one million listings for 2010 — and is, in my opinion, the best place to check out bands, a tricked-out calendar just seems like another addition to an already crowded site.

What do you think? Will you use this service to get your life in order? Or will you stick to scrawling stuff on junk mail?

For more Information, visit the main page

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Facts about Facebook for the first time you know

2010-05-14T19:47:00.004+03:00

Facts about Facebook for the first time you know:

Did you know that the second most popular Facebook Page is that of Homer Simpson, right behind Michael Jackson? Or that the overall amount of time spent on Facebook each month is 8.3 billion hours? (We shudder to think how much of that time is spent on FarmVille).

If you ever want to impress anyone with your knowledge of Facebook miscellanea, below is the ultimate cheat sheet in the form of a very large infographic. Enjoy!

For more Information, visit the main page

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Protect your Account on Facebook by Getting ANotification When Someone Hacks Your Facebook

2010-05-14T18:40:00.005+03:00

Protect your Account on Facebook by Getting ANotification When Someone Hacks Your Facebook:

Facebook just announced a tool that notifies you by e-mail or SMS text message when someone logs into your Facebook profile from an unknown computer.

The idea is to help you recognize when a hacker has broken into your account so you can respond quickly by either changing your password (if that’s still possible) or contacting Facebook.

Once you enable the notifications, you’ll be required to identify each computer you use to log in when you first use it and choose whether or not it’s a private or public machine.

You’ll be able to see a history of registrations from machines potentially used by hackers, and of course those hackers will be forced to type something into the identification field to get in, so you should be able to tell whether it was just a login that you forgot or not.

Here’s a quick guide to turning this feature on and using it.

First Step : Go to Account Settings and Enable Notifications:

When you’re logged into Facebook, you’ll see the word “Account” in the top right corner of the browser window. Click there to get a drop-down menu of options, then click on “Account Settings,” as pictured below.

You’ll end up looking at a page that lists ways you can customize your account, including “Name,” “Password,” “Linked Accounts” and “more.” As long as you don’t navigate away from the “Settings” tab, you’ll see “Account Security” close to the bottom of the list. Click “change” on the right to show the following option:

Check “Yes” when you see the prompt, “Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?” Then click “Save.” The feature is turned on. Now we’ll show you how to use it.

Step Two : Log In and Register Your Computer:

The settings won’t be customizable until you register the computer you’re logged in with, so you’ll have to first log out and then log back in. You can do this from the “Accounts” button in the top-right corner, as we mentioned before. When you log in again, you’ll see a screen titled“Register this computer.”

Type the name of the computer in (it can be anything you want as long as it’s something you’ll recognize and remember), and choose whether you want Facebook to remember this computer or not.

Facebook suggests a good rule of thumb: If the computer is a public one (like one you’d use at a library, a shared work computer or a machine in your school’s computer lab), leave the box unchecked so it will have to be registered each time a new login occurs, leading to an email or text notification.

If it’s a machine you use every day, then go ahead and check the box; you probably don’t want to receive an email every time you log into Facebook from a safe place.

Now that your computer is registered, you can see more options when you revisit the “Account Settings” page where you first enabled the notifications. You’ll see a history of registrations; it won’t record every time you log into a computer that’s already registered, but it will record every new registration, which should include at least the first time any hacker logs in.

You can check or uncheck the option to have the immediate notifications sent to your cell phone via text message in addition to the basic email option.

For more Information, visit the main page

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