Facebook Timeline: 9 things you need to know

    

   
  Facebook's long-delayed massive overhaul to user profiles, dubbed Timeline, is finally available for all of the social networks more than 800 million users worldTimeline, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg first showed off in September, is a complete rethinking off a user's profile page.It attempts to use the data already inside Facebook as a sort of digital scrapbook.Facebook users can now easily scroll back to previous years and see what they were saying and whatthey were doingFacebook Timeline has been on the back burner for months now, after it was first announced at the company’s f8 conference in September. Despite much delay, it is finally rolling out to the public, starting with New Zealand. That means it’s only a matter of days before it comes to you, so brace your News Feed, because the fans and protestors are coming in full-force. In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know abFacebook Timelineout

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New Features

The new features are significantly different than any other upgrade to Facebook before. Timeline presents a way to digitally document your entire life, from birth to present, via wall posts, photos, announcements and events. Consider it a neatly organized social scrapbook with a visually pleasing interface.If you haven’t already received an invite to Timeline, and don’t want to wait any longer, you can enable it now in eight simple steps.

Here's a look at nine things to know about the new Facebook.:

There's a seven-day review period. Once upgraded, Facebook users will be able to work through their Timeline and get things ready before it goes public. During the seven-day review period, the Facebook user will be able to publish it at any time. If he or she chooses to wait, it will automatically go live after the week is up.

Your cover photo is your chance to make a splash. The most striking feature at the top of the new Facebook profile is the cover photo, which stretches across the page's width. The Facebook user's profile photo, which is seen across the site, is now just a small square. Most are using this opportunity to make the profile photo a simple face shot and have used the cover photo to show something more personal, like a pet or favorite vacation spot.

No new information is being shared. Yes, Timeline is bringing back a bunch of old posts. But these posts have long been viewable on Facebook. Before, a friend would have had to go to a profile and click again and again for more posts, but would eventually travel back in time.

Your privacy settings on old posts will remain. A post shared four years ago that was set to be viewable to just friends will continue to be viewable to just friends. The only concern here lies in how a user's definition of friend has changed. A photo or status update that in college that was OK for friends might not be OK for friends now, which might include coworkers.

Posts can be expanded. Timeline already tries to guess which of your posts will be the most interesting and it makes those viewable. It can try and guess here by how many likes or comments a post has received. If there is a post that should be expanded and is not -- like a new job or college graduation -- you can expand it.

The Activity Log is the best place to edit a Timeline. Facebook has built a very helpful new page called the Activity Log, which can be accessed from a profile page, that shows every single piece of content Facebook has from a user. Each item can be deleted or tweaked from this page.

For your eyes only. If there is a post in your Timeline that you don't want to zap completely from Facebook, but don't want anyone to see, you can change the post's visibility to "Only Me."

Users can add other life events. Facebook is hoping that users flesh out their Timeline with information from B.F. (Before Facebook), too. Anything added to the Timeline can now be given a date. So, if a user uploads an old photo from summer camp, he or she can set the date to June 1995 so that it appears chronologically in the Timeline.

There's no sense in holding out. Facebook Timeline will eventually go live for everyone on Facebook, whether or not the user has taken the time to prune and optimize the Timeline view. It's best to be proactive and make sure what people will see is what should be seen.

Windows 8 Review

   You can customise both the image you see on the Windows 8 Lock screen and the details of unread emails and missed instant messages that it shows. And you can pin desktop apps such as Office or Task Manager, and even a link to the desktop, to the Lock screen.You can group tiles together - giving groups a name or leaving them blank - and make any tile single or double width. Just swipe the tile up a little to get the option to change the size, unpin the app or uninstall it completely.

You'll be able to do that for pre-installed Metro software too (which is what Microsoft is encouraging OEMs to bundle on new Windows 8 PCs).
As well as moving a tile to a new location by dragging it, you can also drag it up to the top of the screen with one finger and hold it there while you swipe across the screen to get to where you want to drop it - a much easier way of dealing with a long list of tiles.
Future builds of Windows 8 will also enable you to pinch to zoom out so you can see all the tiles on screen at once, and rearrange groups at the same time.

   Once you launch apps, you can use gestures to arrange them. Swiping from the left switches to the next app, but you can also swipe and drag to put two apps on a screen side by side - and one of those can be the Windows desktop.

There are only three window sizes for apps arranged like this (counting full screen), so that developers don't have to worry about making an infinite number of layouts look good. One app is a thin QVGA 'snap' view on either side of the screen, and the other is a larger VGA full view - which is why this only works on 1366-resolution widescreen PCs.

   But if the Windows 8 desktop is in full view you can still use Aero Snap to arrange two windows, and if it's in snap view you get thumbnails for all the running desktop apps that you can tap to open.This is a good combination of enabling you to use two apps at once on a tablet. This is something only the occasional dual-screen Android tablets enable you to do, and then only for a limited number of apps. It also makes it easy to switch from Metro apps to desktop apps and back.

   Swipe in from the right of the screen and you get what Microsoft is calling the Windows 8 "charms": search and share, which work across different apps; devices and settings; plus a button for switching between the Start menu and the desktop. 

   The Settings charm gives you the settings for the current Metro application plus options for volume, brightness, notifications, networking, switching language and choosing to sleep, shut down or restart.

It's great to have one place to do that in every application. It's also a logical place for commands such as Restart that used to be on the Start menu, because there was nowhere else to put them. We kept looking in there for a link to the Control Panel, which is currently just a tile on the Start screen.

   It would be more logical to put a link here for more settings, in the same way that the friendly Control Panel interface organises the most common options clearly, with a link to the desktop control panel for other settings (and you can still search for specific control panels just like searching for an app or file).

   Open an app that needs the Windows desktop and you get the familiar desktop view with Recycle Bin, task bar and Start button.

 

   But the Start button opens the Start screen again - the Start menu is gone in Windows 8.The look of the desktop and desktop apps will change before the Windows 8 release date. We're expecting the new-look Task Manager to be a clue to the final interface style, but the ribbon makes an appearance in Explorer. This is always controversial, but we think it works well for organising options and tools together. 

                                       10 key features  

• Support for both x86 PCs and ARM tablet
• Touch-centric, Tiles-based User Interface (UI)
• CharmsSnap Multi-tasking
• WiWeb Navigation by Touchndows 8 Control Panel
• ‘ENative USB 3.0 Supportnhanced Copy Experience’ 
• Better Support for Multiple Monitors
• Better Support for Multiple Monitors

Social Media And Email Marketing To Top Online Marketing Initiatives

In the past few years, marketing has undergone a dramatic change. It has lead entrepreneurs to create better ways to reach their customers by engaging them with better content, rather than the like and dislike buttons in the digital marketing. The social media with 68.8 percent and email marketing with 53.1 percent, are going to be the top two online marketing initiatives that will see an increase in marketing investments in 2012, states India e-Marketing Outlook 2012, conducted by Octane.in. Octane.in is a provider of email services and creator of on-demand multi-channel marketing campaigns platform.

Indian companies have just understood the role of social media and online marketing in their eventual growth. This year several startup companies and even old school players such as cement, car, iron and steel companies, will be seen using digital marketing, specially social media for their business growth. “Startups who will allocate more of their budget for digital marketing rather than traditional marketing, which is an expensive way of marketing especially for startups, will see tremendous growth in their business. Among all the digital marketing methods, social marketing is free to some extent and can be aggressively used by them to create buzz among the target audience,” says Adhvith Dhuddu, Founder and CEO, AliveNow, a social media management firm.

The end of 2011 saw social marketing standing at a profound crossroads. Some organizations understood the importance of social networks and, as a result, increased investments in creative engagements, marketing and service programs. In 2012, the social media marketing will only continue to mature with a better understanding of what really works in social media. “Some of our clients have increased their marketing budget spend on the online, search engine marketing, email marketing and social media marketing. We have even seen our clients increasing their budget by over 100-150 percent exclusively for social media marketing,” adds Dhuddu.

Apart from the engagement that social media brings in, there are few other reasons for the companies to enter into the field. The executives of such companies are being compelled by the young generation to indulge in social media to ensure a much better reach to their target audience. “Several executives have started using digital media, especially social media, for the first time after being encouraged by their kids. Kids influence them to join their social media account and get a hang of it to understand its importance in the current market trend,” says Bhupendra, CEO, InRev Systems, a web-based product company.

The TRAI directive on usage of SMS for promotional messages has also compelled several companies to increase their email marketing budget by more than 11 percent in 2012. “India will see an increase in the digital users by 30-40 percent compared to what it was in 2010, thus inspiring the companies to indulge and spend more on digital marketing,” adds Bhupendra.

The most optimistic prediction about digital marketing investment in India is to increase it to a minimum of $1 billion by the end of the year, of which more than 20 percent of the contribution will be from social media. Initially companies used to create a web page, where after landing users were not able to browse other stuffs. However, today social media is used to engage customers to create brand loyalty. Customers have become more vocal. They share their thoughts, good or bad, provide a feedback and companies are eager to know what their customers like and dislike about them, thus helping the companies to provide better experience. We are in the social revolution: the reality of change is broadly accepted, but norms about fundamental issues still remain elusive.