Once again Facebook Inc. got sued for invading user privacy. This time a group of people sued Facebook for tracking its users even after logging out of Facebook.com. Generally when a user logs out of a website, that website automatically deletes it’s tracking cookies. but what Facebook was doing is to modify those tracking cookies rather than deleting them so that it can still track the users online.
This privacy flaw was claimed by an Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic after which public interest groups asked US Federal Trade Commission to investigate the way Facebook tracks its user. Also they asked the commission to look into the new Facebook’s Ticker and Timeline features and check if these features increased the risk of privacy of a user’s personal information as most of the content is easily visible to friends of friends.
Even the Facebook’s privacy and account settings isn’t simple and it’s not easy to keep profile information protected from friends of friends and everyone else except your friends. If you’re confused about privacy settings of your Facebook profile then read Best privacy settings for your New Facebook profile and keep you personal stuff protected.
After the launch of Facebook subscription button and Profile review option, Facebook completely changed its privacy settings again. And as expected these features are so complicated for a normal user. Also some of the privacy features are not given under privacy settings link. You have to edit your profile to change your content’s visibility. But don’t worry if you want to keep your content on Facebook protected, we will tell you how you can change your profile settings to get a good privacy for your content.
Best privacy settings for your Facebook profile:
First of all open the Privacy Settings page using the link given below,
Now for a particular option, use the following settings.
Control Your Default Privacy: Select ‘Custom’ for this option, after clicking on ‘Custom’ you will see ‘Custom Privacy’ options. Select ‘Friends’ for ‘Make this visible to’. Also select ‘Restricted’ for ‘Hide this from’ as shown below.
Please note that here Restricted list is a smart list by Facebook where you can add those people with which you want to hide your profile’s content. To add someone to your Restricted List read this article.
How you connect: Click ‘Edit Settings’ for this option and do the following changes. Here we have selected ‘Custom’ for ‘Who can see Wall posts by others on your profile?’ which means the Wall posts are visible to friends only except for those who are in ‘Restricted list’.
How Tags Work: Do the following changes. You can Switch On Tag and Profile reviews if you want people to ask for your permission before tagging you in a photo. Read more about Tag and Profile review here.
That’s it; you don’t need to save these settings as Facebook saves it instantly. By using these settings you can have decent privacy settings with user interaction and privacy of your content simultaneously. Profiles with everything locked in it looks too boring so it’s better to use this kind of settings.
If you like uploading your photos to online photo sharing websites just because they are safe and no one can save protected images from it then think before you upload. These websites are not 100% safe and anyone can save pictures from it as there are thousand ways to do that. Let’s take an example of one of the most famous photo sharing website Flickr by Yahoo. You have an option of disabling downloads of photos you upload. If you enable this no one can save your photo and it will show “The owner has disabled downloading of their photos” with that photo. Let’s see how you can save such photos.
How to save images from Flickr:
Firstly open the image you want to save and go to Actions>>View all Sizes, to view the image in actual size.
Now select the largest size. That largest size is the actual size of that photo.
Now simply press Ctrl+S to save the page and save it to your desktop or any other desired location. You can also save the link by clicking on ‘File’ on the ‘Menu Bar’ and click ‘Save Link as’.
This will save that page (link) and a Folder with that which contains all the images on that page. Open this folder and you will find the desired image in that folder.
That’s it; you can find your image in this folder, copy and paste it to anywhere else. You can also save an image by viewing Page Source (by pressing Ctrl+U) of the same page that we saved earlier. View page source and find the link of that image there. Click on that link and save the image.
[Image taken from Flickr belongs to juliusfrumble. All rights reserved.]
Amazon.com just launched its latest tablet Amazon’s Kindle Fire in market which could give a good competition to the top selling tablet PC i.e. Apple’s iPad 2. Kindle Fire is much cheaper than Apple’s iPad but with lots of limitations in hardware as well as in its software type. Let’s have a look at both of them and find out which one’s good for you.
Dimensions: The weight of Kindle Fire is 413 grams whereas iPad 2 weighs 601 grams.
Screen: Fire’s screen is 7″ with multi-touch, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors. iPad has a 9.7″ display with multi-touch, 1024 x 768 pixel resolution at 132 ppi. Fire’s screen is anti-reflective and iPad’s screen is Fingerprint-resistant.
Memory: 8GB in Fire and 16GB-64GB in iPad.
Battery performance: 8 hours for Kindle fire and 10 hours for iPad under normal and continuous usage.
Processor: Kindle Fire has a Dual Core processor and iPad has a 1GHz Dual Core processor.
Camera: No camera with Kindle Fire whereas two (front and back) cameras with iPad 2.
Wi-Fi and 3G: Fire comes up with Wi-Fi only model. You have an option of either Wi-fi or Wi-fi+3G models for iPad.
Applications: Fire: Amazon Appstore, iPad: Apple app store.
USB Port: Fire: USB 2.0, iPad: No USB port, however you can buy an Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit.
Price: You can buy a Kindle Fire for $199. But you have to pay $499 for basic 16GB Wi-Fi iPad.
Verdict:
Amazon’s Kindle Fire is a great device and it’s good if you don’t want to pay much for a tablet PC. It’s a value for money device where you can get many features of iPad for just $199. But if you can afford an expensive tablet you should definitely go for Apple iPad 2. Great user interface, thousands of cool apps, better memory, faster processor and comes up with lots of other great feature.
‘Facebook pokes’, not a very popular feature but still people use it specially after Facebook started banning users to send friend request to strangers and even people you know personally. You can simply poke the other person if you cannot send them a request or message but there should be at least one mutual friend between two of you.
But it seems like Facebook is going to remove this feature completely. First Facebook removed the Poke button and now they stopped showing Pokes on your Sidebar. Rather pokes are shown as a notification which is a very ineffective way of informing profile owners and there’s no use of such notifications.
The problem with pokes as notification is that what if you missed a poke notification? You don’t know that your friend already poked you and the other person cannot poke you again as you haven’t replied his/her last poke. But this seems to be a strategy by Facebook to stop this poke feature completely.
But personally I like this poke feature very much as users stopped talking on social networking site these days so it’s better to poke someone rather than sending a ‘Hi’ in the message if you are talking after a long time. Let’s see what’s there on the mind of Facebook officials.
Do you poke your friends and strangers? What’s the importance of Poke button for you? Don’t forget to tell us!
“Anna Hazare”, one of the most trending and discussed topic of 2011 is going to be more interesting now as the Famous man himself joined the most popular social networking website Facebook and micro-blogging site Twitter. He also launched two of his blogs on blogger and wordpress each in order to reach as many Indians as possible and to stop any rumor spreading about him on internet.
“My voice has already reached the people through print and electronic media, and now, I shall try to get comfortable with Twitter and Facebook too. My blog shall be used for my official stand on various issues, and no one can publish on the blog without my permission.” says Anna.
Currently the blogs and social networking account will be maintained by Vijay Kuvlekar, chief information officer, Pune, and Raju Parulekar, a journalist. They are going to update the blog with latest news related to Anna and updates from him but everything will be published with the permission of Anna Hazare only.
The content on his blog is available in three languages, i.e. English, Hindi and Marathi. The twitter and the Facebook accounts are still not fully operational and having just 2-3 updates.
After launching new phones in bold and torch series Blackberry updated its Curve series by adding a new phone to it. RIM just launched BlackBerry Curve 9360 in India which is a 3G phone with HSDPA. Unlike other phones in this series 9360 is a higher end phone with price comparable to its Bold 3. This device has an 800 Mhz processor with 512MB Ram, a 5 MP Camera with VGA video recording, GPS, bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This phone runs on BlackBerry 7.0 OS which is the latest one. Let’s have a detailed look at the specifications.
Specifications and Features:
CAMERA: 5MP with flash and VGA video recording, Face Detection, Geo-Tagging and Image stabilization. As usual no front camera is there.
MEMORY: 512MB of RAM and 512MB for application storage. A SD memory card slot expandable up to 32GB.
SCREEN: 2.44″ and 480×360 pixels LCD screen with 246ppi.
BATTERY: Lithium ion. Talktime up to 5 hours and standby time up to 14 days for a GSM network. 25 hours of Music and 6 hours of Video playback.
Blackberry launched curve 9360 at a price of 19,990 INR. The BlackBerry curve seems to be a good and a value for money phone. The features are good and everything is there except the front camera for video calling which is not available in any phone by BlackBerry in India. If you are planning to buy a BlackBerry you should definitely check this out.
What do you think about this phone? Don’t forget to tell us your reviews, drop a comment below.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced something unusual in order to control spam SMSes and calls you got from different telemarketing firms. Rather than limiting these firms SMS limits they put a limit to every cellular user in India that no one can send more than 100 SMS per day for prepaid users and 3000 per month for postpaid users.
Well obviously TRAI is trying to do something good because these SMSes are so annoying but their way of spam control is not good at all. 100 SMS per day is nothing for a normal user specially when you have so many SMS cards in the market with more than 20,000 free SMSes per day. Even I personally send 200 to 300 SMSes per day as these messages are a good and important way of communicating and a part of life now. You can’t talk on phone every time and everywhere so it’s better to inform somebody something by Texting.
Also Do Not Disturb (DND) policy will be more strict now and you won’t receive unwanted calls and SMSes once registered for DND service. To register yourself to DND service use any of the following methods:
This is a good initiative by TRAI but I would prefer to receive 1-2 spam SMS everyday rather than this limit of 100 SMSes per day. People will start using instant messaging services like BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and Whatsapp more if this limit continues.
What do you think about this SMS limit? Tell us your views in the comment section below.
Facebook introduced something new for Facebook page owners and admins; it’s a new tab on the Facebook page’s sidebar ‘Friend Activity’. This tab is visible to page admins but a normal member can also see it. This tab shows you how your friends are interacting with you Facebook page. This feature is useful for you if you have so many friends as fans of your page.
You can find out the new tab on your sidebar of your page. When you click on this tab it will show your friend’s likes and comments on your page. This feature will allow you to easily reply to comments made by your friends. Also you can see the content your friends like so that you can post more relevant and interesting content.
Please note that this tab won’t be available for you if you are using Facebook as a page rather than your original profile. Also this feature will be available to every admin of a page not only to the owner of that page.
Are you admin of Facebook page? Read more about Facebook pages and cool tutorials here.
With the recent official announcement of Facebook Timeline profiles, a rumor is spreading rapidly on Facebook that Facebook will no longer be a free services and users have to pay for using it. Another rumor spreading on Facebook is via Facebook statuses that you have to update a status that Facebook is paid now, but if you update this status it will be free for you. That status is:
FACEBOOK JUST RELEASED THEIR PRICE GRID FOR MEMBERSHIP. $9.99 PER MONTH FOR GOLD MEMBER SERVICES, $6.99 PER MONTH FOR SILVER MEMBER SERVICES, $3.99 PER MONTH FOR BRONZE MEMBER SERVICES, FREE IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. WHEN YOU SIGN ON TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL BE PROMPTED FOR PAYMENT INFO…IT IS OFFICIAL IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY
Well let us tell you that all these information are fake and Facebook is free and will remain free even after the launch of its newer version. So there nothing like a paid Facebook membership as there’s no official information regarding the same. Also it’s not possible to make Facebook paid, if they do so most of the users will stop using it as they don’t like it personally and they login just to check what their friends are up to. So be cool for the moment and enjoy Facebook for free without updating any useless statuses. 😉
