Friday, November 7, 2008

How to Hide Your Facebook Online Status

Here’s a simple tip that I just figured out myself the other day: hide your online status on Facebook! Why is this useful? Well now that Facebook has built chat into the online interface (kind of like Google Talk running in Gmail), your friends can start chatting with you at any time once you log into Facebook.

Personally, I never wanted to use Facebook as an instant messaging program, that’s why I have a separate IM program (though I do enjoy using Gmail from inside Facebook)! Thankfully, Facebook has made it very easy to change your online status so that people cannot see you are online.

Of course, if you go offline, no one will be able to see you are online, but you will also not be able to see which of your friends are online. It’s not like the Invisible feature in Yahoo Messenger

Here’s how to quickly go offline and hide your online status:

Step 1: Log into your Facebook account

Step 2: Click on the chat icon at the bottom right of the browser screen. You’ll get a list of some options and you’ll see a link that says Go Offline.

hide online status facebook

That’s it. Now you are offline and you will no longer see the list of online friends. As long as you are offline, you’ll see a red icon next to the chat icon.

Send Pictures From Your Cell-Phone/Mobile to Facebook

Just about everyone has a cell phone with a camera on it these days, which is great for capturing moments instantly, but it’s rare for those photos to ever be seen by anyone else. Getting photos off your cell phone and to an online account like Picasa, Flickr, etc can be a real pain.

Facebook, however, makes it a lot simpler to transfer photos from your cell phone to your Facebook account with their Facebook Mobile service. Basically, how it works is that you email a photo from your cell phone to Facebook and then login into your Facebook account and confirm your cell phone. After that, you can send photos directly to your Facebook account from the phone.

Step 1: First, find the picture you want to upload to Facebook on your cell phone and find the option to send the photo in an email. Or you might first have to choose that you want to send an email and then you can pick a picture.

Step 2: Now send the email to mobile@facebook.com. Make sure the picture is included as an attachment to the email.

Step 3: You can put a title for the photo in the Subject line.

Step 4: Send the email and wait until you receive an email back from Facebook stating that the upload was successful. At the bottom of the email will be a six character code which you will need in the following steps.

Step 5: Now go to Facebook and log into your account. Then go to the URL below

http://www.facebook.com/mobile

and click on the Activate Facebook Mobile button.

Step 6: At the bottom left of the page, you will see the Activate Facebook Mobile heading. Under the Activate button, click on Already have a confirmation code? link.

Step 7: Type in the confirmation number that you had gotten in the text message from Facebook. You will then get a message saying Your mobile phone has been confirmed.

That’s it! You should now be able to send photos from your cell phone to mobile@facebook.com and have them show up in your Facebook profile! Enjoy!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Google Starts Indexing Scanned Documents

Google has begun indexing scanned documents using the Optical Character Recognition technology that helps the company in converting ‘a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words’. According to Google, “This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful.”

“In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn't be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document-- so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe’s PDF format,” Google said .

Friday, November 7, 2008

How to Hide Your Facebook Online Status

Here’s a simple tip that I just figured out myself the other day: hide your online status on Facebook! Why is this useful? Well now that Facebook has built chat into the online interface (kind of like Google Talk running in Gmail), your friends can start chatting with you at any time once you log into Facebook.

Personally, I never wanted to use Facebook as an instant messaging program, that’s why I have a separate IM program (though I do enjoy using Gmail from inside Facebook)! Thankfully, Facebook has made it very easy to change your online status so that people cannot see you are online.

Of course, if you go offline, no one will be able to see you are online, but you will also not be able to see which of your friends are online. It’s not like the Invisible feature in Yahoo Messenger

Here’s how to quickly go offline and hide your online status:

Step 1: Log into your Facebook account

Step 2: Click on the chat icon at the bottom right of the browser screen. You’ll get a list of some options and you’ll see a link that says Go Offline.

hide online status facebook

That’s it. Now you are offline and you will no longer see the list of online friends. As long as you are offline, you’ll see a red icon next to the chat icon.

Send Pictures From Your Cell-Phone/Mobile to Facebook

Just about everyone has a cell phone with a camera on it these days, which is great for capturing moments instantly, but it’s rare for those photos to ever be seen by anyone else. Getting photos off your cell phone and to an online account like Picasa, Flickr, etc can be a real pain.

Facebook, however, makes it a lot simpler to transfer photos from your cell phone to your Facebook account with their Facebook Mobile service. Basically, how it works is that you email a photo from your cell phone to Facebook and then login into your Facebook account and confirm your cell phone. After that, you can send photos directly to your Facebook account from the phone.

Step 1: First, find the picture you want to upload to Facebook on your cell phone and find the option to send the photo in an email. Or you might first have to choose that you want to send an email and then you can pick a picture.

Step 2: Now send the email to mobile@facebook.com. Make sure the picture is included as an attachment to the email.

Step 3: You can put a title for the photo in the Subject line.

Step 4: Send the email and wait until you receive an email back from Facebook stating that the upload was successful. At the bottom of the email will be a six character code which you will need in the following steps.

Step 5: Now go to Facebook and log into your account. Then go to the URL below

http://www.facebook.com/mobile

and click on the Activate Facebook Mobile button.

Step 6: At the bottom left of the page, you will see the Activate Facebook Mobile heading. Under the Activate button, click on Already have a confirmation code? link.

Step 7: Type in the confirmation number that you had gotten in the text message from Facebook. You will then get a message saying Your mobile phone has been confirmed.

That’s it! You should now be able to send photos from your cell phone to mobile@facebook.com and have them show up in your Facebook profile! Enjoy!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Google Starts Indexing Scanned Documents

Google has begun indexing scanned documents using the Optical Character Recognition technology that helps the company in converting ‘a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words’. According to Google, “This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful.”

“In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn't be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document-- so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe’s PDF format,” Google said .