technotik » tech

Facebook Offers are live in the UK!

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:07:31 +0000

I’m hoping to see some creative and compelling uses of the new feature to make it worthwhile checking in to Facebook places while I’m out. It’s very easy to set up an offer and simple for a user to accept and redeem as they just need to show the offer email that was sent when they clicked to claim.

To create a new offer click on the “Offer” link on the page, upload a thumbnail image to show it off, then add a headline, expiry date and terms.

Just click on an offer to claim and you’ll get an email to show to the business. Refreshingly simple ツ

More from the official Facebook help link

Five things that you can do to enhance your business/band/organisation/community presence on Facebook

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:54:45 +0000

Number One

Do you have a Facebook Page? Formerly known (ever so slightly embarrassingly) as a “fan” page. You’re risking the wrath of Facebook if you run an account as your business, rather than using your real name, as you’ll be in breach of the terms and conditions. There are also a few advantages to promoting yourself with a Facebook page. Here’s the official differentiation between the two – https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=217671661585622#How-are-Pages-different-from-profiles-%28timelines%29?

It’s a great way to drive traffic to your site from Facebook and also very simple to set up and use Facebook’s Social plugins to drive traffic from your website to your Facebook page.

Number Two

Did you get your short Facebook address? It surprises me how often people have overlooked this option but it will make your page far easier to remember and find. You used to need 25 “likes” on a page before you could get a Facebook username but that seems to have changed (oh no it hasn’t I read earlier too!), don’t forget Facebook is in a constant state of flux/forever evolving/bleedin’ nightmare – depending on your own perspective, I love it me

Choose a unique Facebook username and short address

Go to https://www.facebook.com/username/ and make sure that you’ve selected the correct page before you set the name.

Number Three

It’s a great way to separate your business self from your personal self. There are plenty of privacy options available now and with lists it’s possible to share selectively amongst your “friends” on your personal account. Your business (or whatever it is your promoting) page is a great way to focus on one topic though and will attract people to “like” it that might be unsure about adding you as a “friend”. Don’t forget it’s an extra feature too, you can still use your personal account to spread the word as yourself.

Number Four

Page insights (a simple kind of analytics for Facebook pages) are a great way to view how people interact with your page. You can see what content was the most compelling, when users interact (and possibly see the best time to post?) and they show demographics too. They’re particularly useful if you run Facebook ad’s too, so that you can monitor your ad spend more closely.

Number Five

OK so what if you’re convinced that you need a page but you’ve been running a Facebook account as your business for sometime and you’re wary about losing all of those contacts? You could create a page and then use that account to ask your account’s “friends” to “like” your new page. Or you could skip forward and convert your account to a page using Facebook’s own conversion option to convert a profile (now known as a “timeline” of course) to a Facebook Page. More here – https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate
If you take that route don’t forget to warn your profile’s “friends” first about the change over as once you’ve converted you’ll no longer have access to the old accounts messaging.
If you already have an account AND a page you can even convert the account to a page and then merge the two – https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=249601088403018#I-have-two-Facebook-Pages-for-the-same-thing.-Can-I-merge-them? – be aware that this can take quite sometime though and there are a few options that need to be set first.

If you don’t have a page yet but think it’s for you here’s the link – https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php – good luck feel free to give me a shout and share your new page.

Google+ Pages are live

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:55:26 +0000

They’ve been a long time coming but Google pages are live. Google Apps were updated recently so that they could also join G+ and that’s opened the way for pages.

I’ve set up a page for Technotik. It’s early days yet but I’ve got a good feeling about this. Like I said way back in the mists of time, who’d bet against Google?

Here’s the link to create a G+ page https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create.

And here’s the link to the G+ Page badge https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config

New SQL injection attack on Windows Servers in the wild

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:33:11 +0000

.NET programmers check your sites to make sure you’re not affected by this latest SQL injection attack.

https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/mass-injection-attack-targets-aspnet-sites-101911

“There is yet another large-scale injection attack going on right now, with nearly 200,000 pages affected so far. The compromised pages are serving visitors with malicious code that sends them off to a remote server for installation of malware.”

I’d still recommend Linux as a more secure platform wherever possible but good coding practise should prevent SQL injection attacks, whatever the platform.

Google Analytics Realtime

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:26:22 +0000

Just read about Google Analytics realtime today, signed up for the beta and it’s live already.

Well worth a look. If you use Google Analytics already switch over to the new version and apply to join the beta here – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/

Here’s Google’s own blog post announcing the new feature – http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html

Apologies for banging on even more about Google, they do make my life easier though.

Google Docs improvements

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:00:57 +0000

I like the new look Google Docs a lot and especially that text Documents now have a notification feature too. It was added to Spreadsheets way back but that’s a biggie for me and it makes collaborations far easier, which is something I use Google Docs for a lot.

I still highly recommend Google apps too if you need to collaborate a lot. Make sure you try out the free version first if you want to take a look – http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Facebook – we’re not sharing your phone contacts with the world

admin — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:34:43 +0000

This slightly belated message from Facebook wasn’t amusing at all was it

Following many rumours circulating that Facebook was sharing users phone contacts with the world Facebook released this yesterday – Wednesday 10th August

“Rumors claiming that your phone contacts are visible to everyone on Facebook are false. Our Contacts list, formerly called Phonebook, has existed for a long time. The phone numbers listed there were either added by your friends themselves and made visible to you, or you have previously synced your phone contacts with Facebook. Just like on your phone, only you can see these numbers.”

They could have saved a lot of bad feeling if they’d acted faster but at least it’s done and the word is slowly spreading.

Facebook can recognise your face in photos

admin — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:17:57 +0000

I first spotted the feature on my own account yesterday when I uploaded a few photos from a day out at the weekend. Facebook’s photo app suggested a I tag a few of my friends and the suggestions were right too.

It’s a potentially useful application of the technology but as always with Facebook there are privacy issues here too. It should be opt in and not opt out as it’s set up at the moment. If you want to opt out go to the top right menu, account >> privacy settings and click on “Customise settings”. Then click on “Edit Settings” next to “Suggest photos of me to friends”. Here you can choose to enable or disable the feature.

Here’s Facebook’s own blog post on the subject – https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=467145887130

Google +1

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:21:06 +0000

Google’s social search “+1″ just came out of beta and has to be worth a quick look. Users will need to be logged in to a Google account to register clicks but if they like your content they can give it a nudge and long term this is bound to affect site ranking. Certainly in the short term it should be a useful social search indicator.

Google don’t always get things right by any stretch of the imagination, Buzz, or Wave anyone but this is free and easy to add so pretty much a no brainer if you already use social bookmarks, tweet or Facebook buttons.

Here’s a +1 button with a Facebook like and send link.

More from Google here – http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

Facebook’s new Send Button

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:25:49 +0000

Facebook's new Send button

Facebook have added a new “Send” button that compliments the “Like” button or can be added on it’s own. It allows the page to be sent to Facebook users, groups or email addresses and is as simple as adding an extra ‘send=”true”‘ to your current code if you’re already using XFBML.

Here’s a couple of examples I set up today at http://www.bridgnorthmusicfest.com/ and within a Facebook application at https://www.facebook.com/bridgnorth?sk=app_194807670561047

More from Facebook here – https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/494