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How to Turn Off Automatic Sound on Facebook Videos

Did you recently receive this rather helpful message from Facebook’s mobile app?

“We’re always working to make Facebook a better place to watch videos. That’s why videos now play with sound on automatically. Use the volume icon on any video to make the sound right for you.”

Well it popped up on my screen and I sure do wish that I had clicked on that “Learn More” button because it might have spared me from what started happening about 4 days later: every freaking video I scrolled across began Continue reading How to Turn Off Automatic Sound on Facebook Videos

Welcome to Facebook Timeline (Panic!!)

There are a jillion articles out there about Facebook’s new Timeline format. Some good intros are on USA Today, PC World, and The Guardian. I recently activated the new feature and have a few notes for the rest of you, as everyone will be moved to this new format by December 22nd.

Sharing Photo Albums on Facebook

I’ve recently uploaded several albums to Facebook of fantastic weekend adventures with my supermodel bikini girlfriends and tonight I noticed a phenomenon that’s new to me… some of the girls have gone through and tagged dozens of photos with the names of people who aren’t in the photographs!! This puzzled me so much I got up and finished off the bottle of champagne from the Lear jet. While I was polishing off the caviar I suddenly realized that the reason my friends were tagging people who weren’t with us in Paris was because this was the only way they could figure out how to share the photo album with people they thought might like to see the albums! If only they’d checked with me first I could have shown them this very simple trick!

How to Manage Your Facebook Friends

Are you having a hard time using Facebook? Are posts by your favorite people being “covered up” by a tidal wave of crap from other friends who post stuff to Facebook every five minutes? Don’t be embarrassed, you’re not alone! Most importantly, don’t get so frustrated that you start unfriending people!! Keep reading to learn how to make custom “channels” on Facebook – from now on you’ll be able to “tune in” to see updates by the people you care about the most! (Trust me, I’ve made television shows!)

Now, before we begin let’s establish what I mean by “channels”….

Facebook Love

For over a year now I’ve been using a neat plug-in for my web browser which hides advertisements on websites, cutting out the clutter and increasing my surfing speed. However, several weeks ago I realized that this marvelous plug-in was causing weird behavior whenever I tried making comments on Facebook so I disabled it and was astonished to discover what I’ve been missing out on all this time: women!!! But not just any type of women; these are women who are looking specifically for guys who are 42 years old.

Make Facebook’s NEW Status Updates Group Your Default

Let’s face it, Facebook, you have managed to make me look like a fool twice this week and while that’s not terribly difficult to do, I’m getting tired of it. This time around I find out that you fulfilled my wish for a way to view status updates only. No application updates, no notes, no videos, no links to helpful articles like this one, just plain old status updates. So where did you put this fantastic new Feed View? Why, down at the bottom of my list of Feed Views. While this is probably not a big deal for most of your users, it’s a really big deal for me because I subdivide all of my users into different categories to help me wade through them a bit better. So, let’s see what we have to in order to see the Status Updates view as our default page view. (Thanks to Amber Ward and her list of friends for this tip)

Fix Your Broken Facebook Feed

Jeepers, people. Has Facebook gone wanky (again) or what? Don’t worry though, it’s okay, I have a fix so that your Live Feed works nearly like it did before the weekend of the Great Facebook Flop of Late 2009…… but before I get to the fix let me first mention that I found these instructions on Facebook… and of all people, it was sitting up on the wall of our friend Hollis Gillespie, a well known potty mouthed Atlanta author with movie deals and book deals coming out her ears. While I admire and respect Hollis’ creative skills it galled me that I, a graduate of Georgia Tech with a double-secret minor in computer technology, had to rely on a woman whose cellphone is held together by rubberbands (no offense Hollis).

Facebook’s NEW News Feed

(note: be sure to read my newest post about Facebook’s undocumented transition)
I got tired of not understanding the NEW version of Facebook’s News Feed and went all the way over to their help section (tiring, this) looking for answers. Why they didn’t send the explanation out to its users baffles me (I’ve re-posted their answer below for you lazy people).

How to Make a Photo Album on Facebook

Today I got an message from a friend over on Facebook saying that they couldn’t figure out how to create a photo album. From the description they left me I realized that they were confused by Facebook’s confusing interface so I decided to post an illustrated lesson here on my site. It’s really not as hard as you think!

First, look in the lower left corner of your browser’s window. See the icons down there? Those are shortcuts to some of the applications available to you on Facebook. Callout #1 is pointing to an orange icon with a person’s silhouette in it. This represents the Photos application (and will in fact alert you to that fact if you hover your mouse over it). Go ahead and click that icon….

Facebook’s Secret Control Panel

NOTE: Facebook has made changes and this option no longer appears to work as of September 2009. It was neat while it lasted!

Are you tired of seeing how all your “friends” are goofing off on Facebook? Do you really care if Sam Fiddlefark just took the “Which Piece of Cheese Do I Smell Like” quiz? Did you actually want to know that Finellopi Twankshaft just bought 137 people a Sexy Cocktail From Her Bellybutton or that Lorna McDufflebagg just scored 835 points playing KittenSmash?

Thought not.

I suppose then that you aren’t especially all that interested in attending the “Drive Your Pet To The Mall Day” except, perhaps, as a masked assassin atop a nearby bell tower with a high powered assault rifle and a 5-gallon bucket of armor-piercing bullets.

Thought not.

Don’t you love it when I post 20 minute long videos of myself listening to iTunes at work?

Thought not. (though I must say it hurts to actually hear you admit that you don’t enjoy them)

The good news is that Continue reading Facebook’s Secret Control Panel