21% of voters said they don’t check facebook at home or at work so I’m guessing they don’t have an account?  If you don’t know what facebook is and would like to find out more check out our post on it from back in 2007…Facebook – What’s it all about?

Don’t forget to become a Fan of Brandstar on Facebook!

As you can see from the pie chart above Facebook chat is more popular with our readers than MSN.  Is this a sign that MSN is on its last legs and will soon be unused by many?

Don’t forget to vote on this months poll…’How many computers are in your house/office?’

In fact I have three wordpress blogs! Brandstar, PCToolbox and a Personal Blog. I also have a personal and business twitter profile and I was thinking, there must be a way of linking all this! After a bit of digging I found, there is!

Basically I decided that I want to get information, updates and more off the WordPress and Facebook accounts and published on Twitter. It seems like the logical way round to me.

The key tool for doing this is TwitterFeed as it makes it nice and easy with just these steps

Register for a TwitterFeed account (you only have to do this once and you can then link lots of RSS feeds to twitter through your TwitterFeed account.)

• Link to your Twitter profile, (make sure twitter is open in another tab), then in TwitterFeed choose ‘Create New Feed’ and choose Connect your feed to your Twitter account
• Give the Feed a name
• Link to the RSS Feed of where the information is coming from!  (more info below)

Ok, so the last bit might be the hardest for some people I admit. On WordPress you just have to look for the icon that looks like the orange one to the right (some themes have varied the style and colour but should be recognisable) or you can go direct to the feed by typing /feed after the blog address … e.g. for PCToolbox it is www.pctoolbox.co.uk/feed and the brandstar.co.uk feed is www.brandstar.co.uk/wp/feed  (the wp is teh directory wordpress is installed in).

Facebook doesn’t make finding the feed that easy … so follow these instructions and you will be away

1. Log into Facebook
2. Click notifications in the bottom right hand corner of the screen
3. Press ‘See All’ when the notifications pop-up appears
4. Under all the tick boxes you will see ‘Your Notifications’, click that
5. You will then see a big list of ALL your notifications, this could be the feed you want, but if you just want YOUR status updates like I did then keep reading
6. The URL in the address bar at the very top will read something like “http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=123456789&viewer=1234567891&key=t4654562v&format=rss20″
7. You need to change the word ‘notifications’ that I have bold-ed above to read ‘status’ so the URL reads similar to this “http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=123456789&viewer=1234567891&key=t4654562v&format=rss20″
8. Hit ENTER and that will show you all your Status updates, copy that URL from the address bar and that is you FEED when you are setting up TwitterFeed to send info to Twitter!

I hope that helps, enjoy, have fun and stay connected!

Grae.

1. Film Trailers – Watch the film trailers on the Apple website of the newest films released or coming out soon!
2. XBox Live – Make the most of your XBox and your internet connection
3. How Stuff Works - Find out how virtually anything works!!
4. Facebook – Share photos and messages with all your mates – possibly the biggest time waster on the web.
5. YouTube – Amongst a fair amount of drivel there is a load of amusing stuff on You Tube
6. BBC iPlayer – Watch the last 7 days ofBBC TV!

Let me know if you have a better suggestion!

So, two quick ways:

1) VSO Image Resizer – using Windows 2000, XP & Vista

This one is as simple as select all the photos you want to resize, right click on the selection and choose VSO Image Resizer and then just select the size you want and the location of the files, then off it goes.

2) XP PowerToys Image Resizer – Windows XP Only

This one is just as simple, select the images, right click and choose Resize Images. Set your preferred options and off it goes.

One thing to note is that I would never overwrite the originals, always make copies!

Enjoy

On their website, www.facebook.com, Facebook describes itself as ‘a social utility that connects you with the people around you,’ which pretty much sums it up, Facebook is a website for socializing and browsing. By socializing I mean commenting and playing games with friends, and by browsing I mean looking at pictures and friends profiles. Although Facebook is advertised as a socializing website it of course is only a social networking site, designed to keep in contact with mates and family, sharing photos and organising events, so not quite as social as actually meeting up with mates and family!

What is Facebook used for?

Profiles

A profile is the part of the site which you are in-charge of. You can upload photos, contact friends, comment friends, add applications, your interests, email, contact details, education history and much much more! For more info check out the info on profiles on the Facebook site!

Photos

Originally Facebook was designed for sharing photos and then over time it expanded. Facebook is ideal for uploading photos and sharing them with friends, however to upload the photos and view them you must be a member and logged into Facebook. It is quick and easy to upload photos and view your friends photos. You can also ‘tag’ the photos, so that when you browse over the faces in a photo it tells you who they are. All photos are organised into albums for easy use. For more information on photos on Facebook visit the photos part of the Facebook site tour, on their website.

Messaging

Facebook has a very good messaging service, you can either message using the mailing system (similar to emails) or write on people’s facebook wall. The mailing system works very simply, all you do is select a friend you wish to mail, type in your message and click send. This is a very good way to contact people when you want your message to be private or if you want to have a group discussion about something. On their profile everybody has a wall, this is simply a place to leave messages for your friends. All messages are visible to anyone who is a friend of either person.

Event Organising

It is extremely easy to organise an event on Facebook, (by organising an event I mean inviting people, not booking a table or cinema tickets etc). All you do is click events, create an event, fill in the details and invite your friends. You can make the event with the option of your friends inviting their friends along, so they can add themselves or so that the event is secret and only those who are invited know about it through Facebook.

Groups

You can create groups on Facebook, which is basically getting people together to support something, some more serious than others, for example, ‘Jeremy Clarkson should be Prime Minister,’ ‘Stop the Traffik,’ ‘It Was Try,’ ‘It isn’t Christmas until the Coke advert is shown on TV,’ and ”Harold Bishop – Legend’.

Who uses Facebook?

Facebook is used by thousands of people of all ages all over the world but originally Facebook was used by the younger generation of people to keep in contact with mates etc. Although people of all ages use Facebook, it is prominently used by those of the younger generation.

Why is it popular?

Facebook is so popular because it is so easy to use and also a simple way to keep in touch with friends from work, school, college, university etc, and of course the beloved family. It is also a great place to keep in touch with friends and family from other parts of the world, sharing photos and seeing what they are up keeps you in touch! Also compared to its competitors Facebook is far easier to use and get to grips with.

Why Facebook?

Like most companies there are competitors, the main to competitors for Facebook are ‘Bebo‘ and ‘MySpace‘. I am registered to all three and am fairly experienced on all of them. I personally consider Facebook to be far better than Bebo and MySpace for many reasons. Firstly the layout on Facebook is far simpler to use, and recently MySpace and Bebo have realised this and re-arranged their layout along with copying many of the features from Facebook. Also the general running of the site is much quicker, for example on Bebo you can only upload 5 photos at a time and it will take a minute or so to load those 5 photos, and on MySpace it takes a few minutes to upload up to 5MB of photos, where as on Facebook it will take about one minute to upload 60 photos!

Security Advice

Here are 3 tips that I use to help make sure my details I put on Facebook are secure:

• Don’t add anyone you don’t know.
• Be careful with what information you share.
• Be careful what photos you add- perspective employers have been known to check social networking sites before they interview someone, as are universities.

For more suggestions about security on Facebook check out their Site Tour Privacy Section!

To borrow the words of a well known telecomms company “It’s good to Facebook!”