facebook 501 -- setting up facebook with your cell phone

one of the great things about facebook is that you can set it up to send you text messages for certain things on your cell phone (standard text messaging rates apply). here is how to set it up:

1. from facebook, click on account settings from the settings menu on the top facebook toolbar (by your name).
2. click on the mobile tab under my account.
3. enter your cell phone number and select your carrier from the drop-down list and click on activate.
4. you will then receive a text message on your phone with a confirmation code that you will need to enter on the same page. enter the confirmation code and click on confirm.
5. you will then receive another text message saying that your phone has been confirmed.
6. by default, the texts are off, so you will need to select on to turn the texts on and then you can select which texts you want sent to your phone.
7. once you are done, click on save preferences.

facebook 403 -- uploading videos

so, now you've got some friends on facebook and you have some pictures of them up, but what if you have some videos that you want to share as well. it is very easy on facebook and not something that you should be afraid of. here is how to do it:

1. from your facebook page, click on the video camera on the left-hand side of the lower facebook toolbar.
2. click on upload on the upper right-hand corner.
3. click on browse to browse to where the video is saved on your computer. read the information under the filename field regarding file size and other important information about uploading videos.
   
4. click on ok.
5. your video will then start uploading. while it is uploading, you can add the information about the video (i.e. title, description, and the privacy settings)
6. be patient, depending on the size of your video and you connection speed, it may take a little while for the video to upload.
7. you will then have you edit video window appear, where you can tag anyone that is in the video and choose which thumbnail from the video that you want shown.
8. then simply click on done. the thumbnail that you choose for your video will now show on your wall and your friends homepage, they can click on the thumbnail to view the whole video.
   

see, wasn't that easy!!

facebook 402 -- adding captions and tagging your friends in your pictures

so, now that you have friends on facebook and pictures on facebook, you probably want to tag your friends that are in the pictures that you have on facebook and you may want to add captions to help explain what is going on in the picture. here's how:

1. from your main facebook page, click on the photos tab or click on the photos icon on the bottom left hand side toolbar.
2. your albums will be listed on the bottom of the page. click on the album with the pictures that you want to tag your friends in or add captions to.
3. click on "Edit Photos" above the box of pictures in your album.
4. all the pictures for your album will then be listed on the page with a box on the left-hand side for you to type your captions into and the picture on the right-hand side where you can tag the people in the picture.
5. to add a caption to the picture, simply type what you want the caption to be in the caption box on the left-hand side.
6. to tag someone in a picture, click on them in the picture on the right-hand side.
7. a box will pop up with a list of all your facebook friends. click the check-box next to the friend's name that is shown in the picture.
8. click on tag. the person's name will now show up in the "In the Photo" section under the caption box for this picture and this picture will now show up on you friend's wall, stating that you tagged them in a picture.
   
9. you can repeat steps 6 to 8 for all the people in the picture.
10. repeat steps 5 to 9 for all the pictures in your album.
11. once you are done, click on "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.

see, wasn't that easy!!

my new laptop, it's pink!

after working with mike's cool new acer mini laptop, I decieded that I really wanted one too! so my wonderful husband got me one and it came in today and it's pink!! I have been playing with it all night and I really like it. I will probally still use my big laptops for somethings, but for everything else (including traveling, this one will be great).

update 9 february 2009, here are links to 2 great tech republic posts on this:
the acer aspire one
geek gifts 2008: the acer aspire one

CHANGE YOUR TWITTER PASSWORD!

twitter got hacked today and is sending out bogus direct messages from some tweeple's (twitter people) accounts.  while no one seems to know what started this, the only way to ensure that your account is safe is to change your twitter password.  unfortunately will all the twitter apps out there, most of the people on twitter (myself included) are giving their twitter passwords out a little too freely.  chris brogan wrote a great post today with step-by-step instructions to change your twitter password.  here is the link to his blog post, it's great and all the tweeple out there should read it!
Log Into Twitter and Change Your Password -- Chris Brogan

facebook 401 -- creating photo albums and uploading photos

now that you have made some friends on facebook, you probably want to share some of your photos with them. personally, this is one of the things that I use facebook for the most. there are two things that you will need to do, create a photo album and upload pictures to that album.

creating new photo album:
you can create as many photo albums as you want to, but you can only put 60 pictures in each album. I typically create an album for each month and add the pictures that I want to share during the month (I find the 60 picture limit keeps me from boring my friends with too many pictures). I will create a separate album for special events (i.e. kids birthday parties, Christmas, etc.)

1. from your main facebook page, click on the photos tab or click on the photos icon on the bottom left hand side toolbar.
2. click on "create a new photo album" on the top right hand side of the page (right under your name).
3. give the album a unique name and add a location and description if you want to.
4. set your privacy for this photo album, by default it is set to let everyone see your photos. (I usually set mine to only let friends of friends see my albums)
5. click on create album.
6. if you want to start adding photos to this album now, start with step 4 on the instructions below.
   

adding pictures to a photo album:

1. from your main facebook page, click on the photos tab or click on the photos icon on the bottom left hand side toolbar.
2. your albums will be listed on the bottom of the page. click on the album that you want to add the pictures to.
3. click on "add photos" or "add more photos".
4. you can browse to the folder where the pictures that you want to add are located using the folder list in the left hand side of the screen.
5. you will then see the pictures that are in that folder in the right hand side of the screen. click the check-box next to the pictures that you want to upload.
6. once you have chosen all the pictures that you want to upload from that folder, click on "upload" (you can only upload pictures from one folder at a time).
7. the pictures will then be uploaded to facebook.