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Cool Facebook New Profile Picture Hack
By now, most of you might have come across this new and creative way to style-up your Facebook profile picture as shown in the image below.
In case you don’t already know, the credit for this hack goes to a French artist named Alexandre Oudin who used his imagination and found an original way to jazz up his Facebook profile after Facebook rolled out the new design earlier this month. Oudin demonstrated that even Facebook’s simple blue and white layout can be more personalized. Whilst it might not be the same over the top personalization of sites like MySpace and Bebo, Oudin’s hack showed that there are still new, innovative and creative ways to express yourself on Facebook.
For the impatient among you, here is how to do it:
1) Take a screenshot of your current Facebook page.
2) Create a new Photoshop doc.
3) Grab the Slice tool (same family as the Crop tool) and select around the pictures.
4) With the Marquee tool, select around the sliced areas.
5) Bring the image that you want on Facebook into Photoshop and position it roughly the way you want it.
6) Drag the image layer under the Facebook layer and refine your positioning.
7) Go to “File,” select “Save for web and devices,” select all your document area, click “Jpeg, set the quality to 100% and save. Under slices select “All user slices.”
Upload your pictures to Facebook and tag them from last to first. When you get to the first picture click “Make this my profile picture.”
Or if you are not too good with Photoshop, try PicCut.com which will do all above work for you in less than a minute. More similar tools can be found here.
5 Facebook Hack Codes & Tips To Show Off Your Geeky Skills
#1– Aye, Make Yer Profile a Pirate’s Page You Landlubber!
The second profile hack is also one of the easiest to implement. Facebook offers users the ability to transform their Facebook pages into any language that they like. If you scroll down to the lower left corner of your profile page, you’ll see your current language setting. Click on this, and you’ll have a list of all languages available to you. Notice the English Pirate option?
Ahoy matey – yer now a Cap’n! Now as you go through your profile page you’ll notice some pretty hilarious pirate variations.
Now, the wall is the Plank, your profile is the Cap’n’s Log, and you can now either click a post as pleasin’ to me eye (like) or blabber t’yer mates (comment). It certainly removes the “boring” factor from your old standard Facebook pages.
#2 – Upside Down Status Updates
If you’ve been on Facebook long enough, you’ve probably noticed a few people posting upside down status updates. They sure do think they’re clever don’t they?! Yes, you too can be the envy of all of your friends and family by posting your updates so that people have to look silly by tilting their heads upside down so they can read it.
Most of the people you’ve seen doing this have likely installed a Facebook app just to do so. However, I dislike installing apps because you always have to provide permissions to those applications to access your profile. A better approach is to use the free online application at FlipText to generate your upside down status update.
Simply copy the upside down text from the lower text box, paste it into your Facebook status box and post!
#3 – Download Complete Photo Collections From Your Friends’ Profiles
If you have a lot of friends on Facebook, you may not have the time to keep up with all of the new family photos they’ve posted – but you are very interested in them and would love to have them stored in your own private photo collection to review later. Well, thanks to a very cool FireFox plug-in called FacePAD, you can do just that. The add-on is awesome, and I would recommend that anyone with the resources to do so should send in a contribution to Arthur Sabintsev for his efforts.
After you install the FacePad plug-in, make sure you select Tools->Add-Ons, and configure the options for FacePad so it has your correct Facebook language. Then, all you have to do is go to your friend’s photo albums, right-click on the title and select “Download Album With FacePAD.” That’s right, you’re not downloading a single picture – but an entire album.
Once you do, FacePad downloads every single image within that album into the download folder you’ve configured in FireFox. Don’t forget to organize all of those photos using JetPhoto, as recommended earlier by Jeffry.
#4 – Schedule Facebook Status Updates With Sendible
Do you like to keep your Facebook profile active, but you’re coming down with a cold and may be offline for a few days? Maybe you’re taking a trip and won’t be anywhere near a computer for a week. Or maybe you’ll be playing hooky from work and traveling, but you want your colleagues and boss to think you’re stuck at home sick. Accomplish any of these wishes by using Sendible to schedule your Facebook status updates. This is an application Daniel covered earlier, so check out his article for more details.
But for Facebook specifically, once you sign up with Sendible, just click on Facebook and provide your Facebook login details. Sendible connects directly with your Facebook account. The, under “New Messages” click on “Status Updates“.
On the next page you can schedule out as many updates as you’d like! This service is awesome – and you can distribute scheduled updates to a number of social networks including MySpace, Blogger, Twitter and more.
#5 – Hide Your Online Status From Certain People
Look, don’t feel bad about it. When I first joined Facebook I left my online status wide open. After a couple of weeks of getting inundated with nonstop chat requests, I simply turned off my online status completely. Problem solved. Except, there really were certain people I wouldn’t mind hearing from – is it really fair for a few chatterbox buddies to ruin your chances for communicating with everyone? Well, there is a way for you to selectively block your online status from certain people.
All you have to do is open up your chat icon in the lower right corner of your Facebook display, click on Friend Lists, and create a new list called “BlockList.” Make sure after you create it that it’s configured under “Display these lists in Chat.”
Now, all you have to do is either click “edit” and add the friends you want to block, or if they’re already online, just click their name and drag them under this new list. Once you’ve got everyone there who you want to block from see your online status, hover your mouse over the green dot to the right and click on “Go Offline.” Now, you appear offline to only those certain friends.
Facebook, unlike MySpace, is not really easy to tweak – which is actually a good thing. Gone are the days of those horrid eye-bleeding pages with pink flashing backgrounds and instant music that you can’t turn off. However, the tweaks and plug-ins in the list above offer at least a few ways to customize your Facebook account and usage to suit your life and your personality.
How do you use Facebook? Are there any hacks or add-ons not offered here that you especially like to use? Share them in the comments section below!
Facebook Promotions No Longer Need Explicit Approval From Facebook
This morning we were forwarded an email from a Facebook sales representative which suggested that new Facebook Promotions guidelines will soon be released. In contrast to before, where promotions would need to be explicitly approved, promotions will no longer need prior written approval from Facebook.
While the email claims that the promotions must still follow the company’s Promotions Guidelines (found here), the changes have not yet been reflected in those guidelines. We’ve reached out to Facebook for confirmation, however it would seem strange that this Facebook sales representative would misrepresent the new changes. Here’s is the complete email that was sent from a sales representative:
We have some exciting updates regarding the administration of Promotions, Sweepstakes and Contests on Facebook that will help to streamline the process and make your lives a bit easier:
- We no longer require prior written Facebook approval to administer a promotion on Facebook.
- We no longer require a minimum media spend investment to support the promotion.
This means that you are not required to have a media campaign on Facebook to run a promotion, nor do you need to ask for approval on the contest T&Cs from the Facebook team. Please note that all promotions are still subject to our Promotion Guidelines (http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php) and Facebook Platform Policies (http://developers.facebook.com/policy/), and that brands are responsible for ensuring that all contests fall within those guidelines.
In November of 2009 Facebook first announced changes to the promotions guidelines, requiring any company to get explicit approval from Facebook first. This does not mean that promotions which were previously rejected can now operate. As such, the following types of promotions are still not allowed:
- Photo contests which require profile photo manipulation
- Status update contests which require posting status updates for entry
- Contest entries once a user has become a fan
While we have no idea when these changes will take place, we’re assuming it’s imminent since this email was sent out this morning. We’ll have further updates once we hear back from Facebook.
Update
We’ve confirmed with Facebook that the new promotions guidelines have gone into effect and that the terms will be updated soon.
REPORT: One In Ten Of Your Friends Will Not Be Human By 2015
Human or bot? That will be the question to ask about your friend lists online. By 2015, about 10 percent of these contacts will be nonhuman, predicts the Gartner Group.
Don’t misread “nonhuman” here. We’re talking about bots. Right now companies employ humans to promote brands through profiles and pages. By mid decade, this will get fully automated.
Like “Gartner’s Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2011 and Beyond: IT’s Growing Transparency” explains:
By 2015, efforts to systematize and automate social engagement will result in the rise of social bots — automated software agents that can handle, to varying degrees, interaction with communities of users in a manner personalized to each individual.
This trend may seem harmless on its own, but not when security issues enter the discussion. If one in five users have encountered malware on Facebook already, in half a decade bot friends might unleash more widespread damage.
Today the average user has about 100 or so friends, and that’s supposed to reach 500 in the not-too-distant future. The typical Facebook account could have 50 bots mixed in with real human contacts. That could open a big can of whoop-ass if people don’t learn to screen friend requests.
Certainly, bots could hold great promise for viral marketers, especially with Facebook rejiggering word-of-mouth promotional features just when they’ve built up momentum.
Companies that bot themselves might build more trustworthy brands by avoiding the use of malware and possibly disclosing that to the public.
Bots as profiles might also become a frontier for privacy debate if the automation ever includes the ability to chat with other users as way of gathering demographic data.
Of course, this is all hypothetical because none of this technology has been invented yet, as far as we know. Readers, what do you think about Gartner’s bot prediction? Have you been involved in any developments that head in this direction?
Foursquare: Despite 5 Million Users, It’s Still Dumb
Oh, did you really just eat lunch at Subway? Why the hell do you think anybody cares to know that? Foursquare is one startup that’s fueled by the idea that sharing the mundane details of our lives makes us feel more connected. Here’s a shocker for those who continue taking photos of their burger: nobody cares.
I apologize up front to my friends that checked in today on Foursquare: I still love you all. Trust me, I understand what it’s like to feel lonely sometimes. I have all these Facebook “friends” who take photo-ops with Princes and subsequently post those photos to Facebook to make me feel bad for having such a mediocre life. If you haven’t seen my office, let me paint a picture: I’m sitting at a desk by myself with nobody else around and a tear is dripping down my face as I sit in self-pity.
O.k., maybe my life isn’t that bad, but social media has gone too far. There are now countless tools that cater to people who are unable to have real social experiences. Let me paint you another picture to illustrate this. On Sunday I was sitting at brunch with my girlfriend when I noticed someone I knew sitting outside with his friends. In the midst of his conversation he stepped aside to take a photo of his coffee and post it to his numerous followers on Instagram. Are you kidding me?!?! This is not normal human behavior.
The latest social media “innovations” have gone too far in the wrong direction. Granted, Facebook was built so we can see how boring everybody else’s lives were, however at this point it has become a joke (hint: the real way to use it is as a photo album to share memories). Social media is not actually helping us become social. I’m happy saying that Foursquare is probably the most useless tool I’ve ever used because I know that there’s a bright future beyond the self-absorbed present that we live in. Read my lips (or my fingers that are typing this text): in the next 12 months we will see a massive wave of new “social” technologies that actually make us more social.
Foursquare is not one of those technologies. Oh, you’re getting on a plane at the airport? Great! I’ve done that too. You’re checking in to a coffee shop? Cool, thanks for sharing (not). I don’t mean to bash all my friends who are competing to become mayor of some random venue, but if you know me well enough you know that I’m happy to tell you to your face that you’re wasting your time. Yes, the company now has 5 million users! However if Foursquare is really as magical as so many think it is, why doesn’t the company share their 7 day and 30 day usage? Hint: nobody is using it.
Free Download New Facebook 1.9 for Blackberry
Some time ago version 1.9 of Facebook for BlackBerry was only available to beta testers since Beta Rim Zone. But for the rest of us waiting is over. Now we can update our Facebook applications to version 1.9 from the World App.
