Jon Bon Jovi Dead – No, He Isn’t!

(source: kffm.com)

So often you’ll see reports of someone dying but your only trusted source is your buddy who heard it from a friend who saw a shared link on Facebook. Jon Bon Jovi, as in the lead singer of Bon Jovi, isn’t dead. Many of these news stories come from an automated feed that generate fake news, then leave it up to the facebook shares to get the word out, and to get hits on their website. Don’t worry, Jon Bon Jovi isn’t dead. In fact, if anything, he’s the opposite, still touring, making money and rocking your face off.






Star Smile mad

Privacy-protecting Facebook Disconnect app is downloaded 152,000 times

(source: dailymail.co.uk)

Facebook's reassurances about its privacy policies don't seem to have calmed people's fears of the internet giant - as users flock to shield their browsing histories from its all-seeing eye.
Facebook openly admits to tracking your use of other websites while you are logged in to the site.
But the site's attempts to reassure people that its use of their web browsing information is innocent don't seem to have had the desired effect.
Facebook Disconnect - a browser extension which prevents Facebook 'seeing' which other sites you visit online - has been downloaded 152,000 times.
The software works in Google's Chrome browser and automatically blocks web traffic between other sites and Facebook, so the social network can no longer 'look at' your browsing history.
'Facebook is notified whenever you visit one of the more than one million sites on the web that use Facebook Connect and has a history of leaking personally identifiable information to third parties,' says the official Facebook Disconnect page. 'Turn off the flow of your data to them!'
Privacy advocates have voiced concerns that the information could be used for 'targeted advertising' in worrying ways.
Unless you take steps yourself, the social network watches most websites you visit while logged in.
Facebook's own 'privacy' pages are largely targeted towards protecting your data from other people - not from the social network itself.

Users seem delighted with Facebook Disconnect, even though it blocks some functions of Facebook such as photo links.
One user commented, 'Keep your data private folks! The tools are there to keep your browser safe, use them.'

 

The extension has been such a hit that its creators have unveiled an upgraded version, entitled Disconnect, which also protects users against tracking from Google and Twitter.
Disconnect also works in Apple's Safari browser and Mozilla's Firefox.
Google in particular has access to a huge amount of information from its users, from the contents of Gmail emails to web browsing history to the videos they watch and upload on YouTube.
'If you’re a typical web user, you’re unintentionally sending your browsing history with your name and other personal information to third parties whenever you’re online,' the company says.
A spokesman for Facebook said: 'If you're logged in to Facebook and visit a website integrated with Facebook, your browser sends us information, including your browser and operating system information, and your Facebook user ID.
'We use this information to help show you a personalized experience on that site. For example, when you go to a website with a Like button, we need to know who you are in order to show you what your Facebook friends have liked on that site.
'Regardless of whether you are logged in or not, we do not use the information we receive when you visit a site integrated with Facebook to track activity around the web.




Star Smile mad

How To Enable Facebook Timeline

(source: techcrunch.com)

This morning Facebook announced Timeline, a crazy (and kind of creepy) omnibus look at everything that has ever happened in your Facebook lifespan. It’s like a story book of your life — or at least the online, documented parts.
Facebook said that Timeline would be on the way for everyone sometime in the coming weeks… which is great and all, for everyone else. You’re the type of person who reads TechCrunch, and are thus likely the type of person who likes their new and shiny things right now.
That’s okay. We can make it happen.
Fortunately, enabling Timeline a bit early isn’t too difficult — but it’s not at all straight forward, either.
You see, Facebook is enabling Timeline early for open graph developers. You, too, can be an open graph developer — even if you’re just looking to dabble.
A few things to note:
- You probably don’t want to do this unless you’re actually a developer. Expect bugs.
- Only you will see your timeline at first (unless you decide otherwise), but it will automatically go public after a few days. My timeline was automatically hard-set to go public on September 29th.
- It seems that if you login into Facebook on another machine, Timeline gets disabled automatically on all of your machines. With that said, it seems you can get back to your timeline (but ONLY after following the steps below) by navigating to http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAMEHERE?sk=timeline
- You’ll need to have a “verified” account for one of the steps, which means you need a credit card or phone number attached to the account.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Log into Facebook
2. Enable developer mode, if you haven’t already. To do this, type “developer” into the Facebook search box, click the first result (it should be an app made by Facebook with a few hundred thousand users), and add the app.

3. Jump into the developer app (if Facebook doesn’t put you there automatically, it should be in your left-hand tool bar)
4. Create a new app (don’t worry — you wont actually be submitting this for anyone else to see/use). Give your shiny new app any display name and namespace you see fit. Read through and agree to the Platform Privacy agreement. This is the step you need to be verified for.
5. Ensure you’re in your new app’s main settings screen. You should see your app’s name near the top of the page
6. Look for the “Open Graph” header, and click the “Get Started using open graph” link.
Create a test action for your app, like “read” a “book”, or “eat” a “sandwich”

7. This should drop you into an action type configuration page. Change a few of the default settings (I changed the past tense of “read” to “redd” — again, only you can see this unless you try and submit your application to the public directory), and click through all three pages of settings
8. Wait 2-3 minutes
9. Go back to your Facebook homescreen. An invite to try Timeline should be waiting at the top of the page
And you’re done! We’ve seen this work quite a few times now, so it should work without a hitch for just about anyone.



Star Smile mad

10 Ways to Embarrass your Kids on Facebook

(source: dslserviceproviders.org By: Laura Backes)

If you have a teenager on facebook, and you do not want them on there anymore, it is pretty easy to embarrass them enough to get them off. You may even have an adult child whom you wish to seek a little friendly revenge on, to get them back for all the times they embarrassed you in public. Whatever your reason, there is plenty of ways to embarrass your kids on facebook. Listed below are the top ten.

1. Add Their Name to Yours. You have probably seen how some women put their maiden names in parenthesis to help old friends identify them. Instead, put your kid’s name in the parenthesis instead. So your name is now Suzie (Johnny Smith’s) Mom. Be sure to be on their ‘friends’ list to get the full effect.
2. Profile Pics. Posting their childhood photos to your photo albums just isn’t good enough. Find the most embarrassing photo you can of them as a child, and use it as your profile pic. Make sure to include a note to the photo telling how it came to be.
3. Friend Their Friends. In order to properly embarrass your kids, you need someone to embarrass them in front of. Go ahead and friend request all of their friends. You will not only have an audience, but you can keep tabs on your younger kids’ friends this way as well.
4. Day to Day Conversations. Instead of picking up the phone, or talking to them in person, use facebook as your new medium for keeping in touch. Post embarrassing conversations on their wall such as, “Johnny, please remember to put the toilet seat down when you are finished, I fell in this morning, AGAIN!”
5. Fan Pages. Find some outrageous fan pages and like them. These will pop up on your kids’ news feeds and the feeds of their friends that you friended. Remember your child’s name is in yours, so now it will say “Suzie (Johnny Smith’s) Mom Likes Women with Flatulence Problems”
6. Like or Comment to Everything. Anytime your kids post a photo or status update, make sure you click like and comment on it. If they post a photo of themselves rock climbing you might respond with “That looks dangerous honey, did you get scared? It looks like your pants are wet.”
7. Suggest Dates. Anytime someone of the opposite sex posts on your kid’s wall, take advantage of it. Comment after theirs saying, “You seem like a nice boy (girl), why don’t you and my daughter (son) get together for a date?”
8. Use Shorthand Aggressively. Using text speak SMS shorthand comes in handy when sending a text, IM’ing or for a quick response online, but can get real annoying if you over use it. So go ahead and LOL, TTYL and CYL8R all over your kids facebook page.
9. Intercept Messages. If one of your teenage kids gets a message on their wall from another friend to call, text or message them, you have a chance to really embarrass them. Reply back for them saying, “Sorry Sally, but Johnny is grounded and will not be able to meet you at the movies on Friday.”
10. Threats. This is a great one for dad’s to use on their daughters. Anytime a guy posts something to your daughters’ wall, make sure you add your comment to it. If a guy comments on a photo saying “You look hot” you can respond back with “Dear guy friend, have we met? If not, we need to, SOON.” A profile pic of you holding a shotgun will add well to the embarrassment and fear factor of this type of comment.

I would highly suggest using a few of these ways to embarrass your kids on facebook, but not all. Unless of course, you are wanting to alienate them or remove yourself completely from their lives.


Star Smile mad

How to Turn Off the Photo Viewer in Facebook

(source: MakeUseOf.com)

Facebook can be met with as much excitement as rejection. It’s hard to think of any one change that Facebook has made that hasn’t been criticised in one way or another.
The latest of these changes that hasn’t gone down very well is the new Facebook photo viewer, in which photos are displayed in a somewhat clunky lightbox. There’s no way any change made to a site like Facebook is going to please every single one of its millions of members, and most of the time, there’s an add-on to get things back exactly the way they were.

While the concept of a lightbox isn’t a terrible idea, Facebook’s execution certainly leaves something to be desired. If you want to get rid of the lightbox and revert to the more simple display, there are two ways to do this – you can manually refresh the page, or install an add-on. While doing it manually is tedious, when installing an add-on, you have to grant access to your Facebook profile – so both solutions do come at a price.

The Manual Solution

If you would rather not install anything at all, and grant an extension access to your Facebook profile, there are two ways to manually remove the lightbox. First, refreshing the page will display the image the good old fashioned way minus the annoying lightbox. The second way is to remove ‘&theatre’ at the end of any URL of an image on Facebook. Removing that text will remove the lightbox.

The disadvantage to either of these methods is that you have to do it manually for every single album you open, which can become a bit tedious.

Revert Facebook Photo Viewer (Chrome)

Chrome users can install the extension, Revert Facebook Photo Viewer which will automatically display images without the lightbox. The extension runs silently in the background and doesn’t need to be set up. Simply install and refresh.

Of course, installing this extension will grant it access to your Facebook data.

Facebook Photo Fix (Chrome)

Another option for Chrome users is Facebook Photo Fix which alters the appearance of the lightbox rather than remove it. Facebook Photo Fix moves the image down 40 pixels, and changes the background color from black to grey.

If you’re not averse the idea of a lightbox, this extension definitely makes it a lot more visually appealing, and of course, installing this extension will grant it access to your Facebook data.

Facebook Lightbox Killer (Chrome, Firefox & Greasemonkey)

Chrome, Firefox and Greasemonkey users can use the add-on Facebook Lightbox Killer to disable the lightbox preview. After installing the add-on, there’s nothing to configure. Just refresh Facebook and the changes will take effect.

The way that Facebook Lightbox Killer works is that it automatically refreshes the page the minute you load a picture, so it isn’t the smoothest way to deal with the issue, but is at least an automated alternative to manually refreshing the page.

Better Facebook (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome & Greasemonkey)

Better Facebook is an add-on which does more than just remove the annoying lightbox. In fact, some might argue that it does far too much.
Better Facebook adds themes, tabs, allows you to mark items in your news feed as read, mute notifications from follow up comments, remove recent activity displayed in your profile, and much much more. When you first install the add-on, it will take you through a setup wizard determining and introducing you to some of the more prominent features.

You can always access the complete settings at any time from the options button on your Facebook page, which is where you can toggle the lightbox feature on and off.

Facebook Lightbox Killer is actually derived from Better Facebook, so like the previous add-on, it works in the same way, automatically refreshing the page once you open an image.
What do you think of the Facebook’s new photo viewer? Do you like it? Is it annoying enough to have to install an add-on to get rid of it?

Charlie Sheen Not Dead, But Virus Spreads On Facebook 

(source: The Huffington Post)

Be careful. A virus is spreading rapidly, primarily through Facebook, claiming that Charlie Sheen is dead.
The dangerous posts, which have also popped up on Twitter, typically start, "Exclusive Video," "RIP!" or "Breaking News." They go on to say "Charlie Sheen found Dead at his House" or some variation and include a link to a site that appears to be fueling the rumor.
Even ZDNet appeared to be victimized by the scam, tweeting yesterday, "Exclusive Video: Charlie Sheen found Dead at his House! http://zd.net/fOpMY2" That link now goes to a dead page.

ZDNet later followed up with info on the virus. According to ZDNet:

Just like the previous “likejacking” scams (a play on the term clickjacking, which means prompting a victim to click something while a different action is taken behind the scenes) any of the above will lead you to a fake YouTube page such as TouTube or FbTube. Clicking on play prompts you with the following message: “Please complete a 30 second survey to verify that you are human.”

CNET reported that a number of the suspicious links seem to no longer work.
As of the time of this writing, Charlie Sheen has not yet addressed the rumor on his Twitter page.

Star Smile mad