A Great New iOS4 Feature

There are a bunch of great walkthroughs of the new OS for iPhone. Probably the best and most complete is over at ArsTechnica.

I love tucking lesser-used apps into folders, I’m glad audio apps other than iTunes are now allowed to run in the background, and I’m happy to see how much faster the phone seems to be with the new software.

However, I stumbled upon a feature that I didn’t see mentioned in the Ars review.

This morning, I got an email from a business partner who proposed we have lunch on Thursday. The OS saw the phrase “lunch this Thursday” and automatically underlined it as a link.

Clicking the link offered to add an event to my calendar.

Of course, this is Apple, so it created an event on the right date (this coming Thursday) guessed that it would be at noon, and put the subject of the Email in as the event name.

Something very like this functionality exists in Apple’s desktop Mail.app, but it was a great surprise to see it appear on my phone. I’m still distressed to see that Apple hasn’t added a “mark all as read” function to the Mail application, but this new feature is a welcome addition.

Tags: Apple, iOS4, iPhone

Use Facebook Lists for a Cleaner Feed and Better Privacy

Now that Facebook auto-subscribes you to everything you “Like,” whether that’s via the button or just something you mentioned in your profile, your news feed can quickly become so cluttered that it’s difficult to know what update is coming from whom.

That’s where Facebook’s Lists become very helpful. If you group similar people together in a list, you can easily view news from only those sources, providing better context, more quickly, with more of the posts you actually want to see.

First, let’s create a list. Click “Friends” from the left column on the page. Then, near the top right corner of the main column you’ll see the button “Create A List.”

The first step is to give your list a name.

Next, pick the people you want to include in this list. For my “Cincy Network” group, I’m picking all the local people I’ve met at networking events. But you can also pick relevant pages, so in this case, I’m checking a few feeds that will keep me up to date on what’s happening in town.

Now when you want to check your feed for only that group, just click the “Friends” link in the left column, and the name of the group just below it. You’ll see a news feed you can quickly scan, knowing the context for everyone who appears on it.

Creating Friend Lists has another benefit as well. Say your friends from high school aren’t interested in industry-related links you’ll post for everybody else, or maybe you’d like to share some personal pictures with only your family and closest friends.

As you’re filling in a post on your wall, click the privacy pulldown menu (the padlock) and select “Custom.”

The next menu asks who should see the post. Select “Specific People.”

Start typing the name of your group, and a selectable group name should appear below the box. Save this setting, and your post will only go to members of your Friend List.

Like many things in Facebook, using Friend Lists can be a little cumbersome. It would be nice if it were easier to use. For example, the names of your Lists could show up in the privacy pulldown menu to save two steps. But once you get used to it, you can get more out of your Facebook experience by categorizing your connections.

Tags: Facebook, Friend Lists, How To, Networking, Social Media, Tutorial

Add the Facebook Like Button to your WordPress Blog

Adding a Facebook Like button to your blog can be done manually in just a few steps. There are plugins to manage this for you, but I wanted to aggregate all of my likes onto the the main blog URL, rather than splitting them up for individual posts, as is most commonly done in the plug-ins.

Getting the Like Button Code

To put the Like button in my sidebar. I took a screenshot and measured it to find out my theme has a sidebar that’s 250 pixels wide.

First, I visited the Facebook Like Button page to get the code. I put my blog’s main URL in the box, along with a width of 250. You can set a few other options such as whether or not to include pictures and which of the 6 available fonts you’d like to use.

Clicking the “Get Code” button brings up two text boxes with code to insert the Like button on your site.

The first box is an iframe. It’s a little simpler, in that you only need to insert one bit of code instead of two. But it’s worth the extra step to get the XFMBL code in the second box. This will do a better job of scaling the box vertically to match how much content is actually in it. The iframe code can leave a big gaping hole in your sidebar if you don’t have a long list of fans.

Using the Like Box Instead

If your blog already has a Facebook Page, people who “Like” your blog can automatically be added there in the way that used to be called “fans.” So they’ll get updates from your Facebook Page, and your existing fans will show up immediately in the box.

In that case, you want the Like Box. Adding the Like Box is almost exactly like adding the like button, but it has a few more options. Just go to the Like Box page to get the code instead of the Like Button page above. In the end, this is what I decided to do, so that’s what you’ll see in my current sidebar.

Putting It In Place

Next, it’s a trip to the widgets page. This is located within your blog at wp-admin/widgets.php and can be found in the side navigation under “Appearance.” Drag the “Text” widget from the “Available Widgets” over to the spot on the Sidebar where you want it to appear. A box will pop open for the text you want included. Choose a name for the box and paste in the code from Facebook.

And Finally…

Now there’s just one step left. In order for the XFMBL code to work, you need to pull Facebook’s javascript onto your pages. You do this by adding a big chunk of code known as the Facebook JavaScript SDK. (Click that link to get the code).

The javascript command may take some time to load, so I recommend putting it in the footer of your site. That way the rest of your page will load without waiting for the Facebook SDK. To edit your blog’s footer file, go to the Editor under “Appearance.” ( /wp-admin/theme-editor.php ). From there, select the Footer (footer.php) from your theme files.

Now paste the Facebook JavaScript SDK code into your footer just before the tag, so it will be the last thing to load on every page.

Just hit the “Update” button to save the changes to the footer, and you should now see the Like button showing up on your blog’s sidebar!

Tags: Blogging, Facebook, How To, Like Button, Tips, Tutorial, WordPress

Facebook Turns “Fans” into “Likes”

Facebook will soon move the familiar “Like” function to fan pages, removing the existing “Become a Fan” call to action, according to a post by Inside Facebook. Facebook announced the change in confidential emails sent to ad agencies (and leaked to ClickZ and MediaMemo).

Given the audience for their email, Facebook was obviously upbeat on the benefits to businesses who put up fan pages (and buy ads to drive traffic to them). According to their internal data, users click “Like” links twice as often as “Fan” links. Using “like” makes it easier for someone to express their interest in a brand when “fan” may overstate their level of engagement. That sounds like a big opportunity to get a whole lot more fans.

It also sounds to me like an opportunity to breed ill will, especially if users are slow to realize the weaker wording doesn’t change the fact that they’re still giving the company permission to post updates to their news feed. Facebook optimistically projects that “users will understand the distinction through explicit social context, messaging and asthetic differences.”

I’m not so sure. Particularly when you look at the examples they give of the “Like” function in practice. It’s not a matter of just changing the link at the top of a fan page. There’s also a big change to Facebook ads. It’s now possible to “Like” an ad, which automatically enrolls you as a fan (in the old parlance) of the advertiser.

I’m all for friendlier wording. And I’d love to have more people receiving updates from the fan pages I administer. But I think it’s important to be transparent and honest. I’d prefer a term more like “follow.” It removes the “fan” label but still makes it clear what the result will be when you click that link.

The greatest strength of social media is inviting users to interact with you and share their experience with their friends. Replacing the old broadcasting model of shoving your message down the consumer’s throat is what’s so new, interesting and effective about it. Anything that seems disingenuous or makes the user feel tricked is destined to backfire.

Tags: Facebook, Marketing

Hide Games From Your Facebook Timeline

One of Facebook’s most polarizing features is the wide variety of time-killing applications. If you’ve visited the site lately, you’ve doubtless seen a number of items in your News Feed updating you on your friends’ progress in Farmville, Mafia Wars, and many others.

Did you know it’s easy to remove these updates from your timeline, without disconnecting from your friends? Just find one of these posts and click the “Hide” link that appears on the right when you mouse over it.

Facebook will then ask you if you want to hide the person or the application. Click the name of the game.

Success! You’ll now no longer see updates on the games your friends are playing on Facebook, and you’ll see more links, photos and status updates instead.

Update: It gets even better. (Thanks to techpp.com) Not only can you keep games and other apps out of your Live Feed, you can also exclude them from your Notifications. When a notification appears in the lower right of your screen, mouse over the upper right corner of the item to see the “X” appear. Click that, and you’ll be invited to hide all notifications from that application.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Applications, Farmville, Mafia Wars, Tips, Tutorial, Web 2.0