Facebook research continues in enhancing user experience with social network, as it is facing tough competition with other social network, Google Plus.  Facebook introducing new TimeLine feature which is going to be live on Facebook from 25th December, may be as Christmas eve gift to social lovers.  A time line is your collection of photos, comments, posts and apps that tell your story. So this where you’ll find all your info,photos,likes, apps and other stuff at single place. At present this feature is enabled only through developers page. so, those who enabled developer app can only see Timeline. However, Facebook publicly enable this feature from 25th.

How to enable this feature?

• Go to http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline 
• Click on “Get TimeLine”
• Hit the “Publish Now” on top, and start exploring new Timeline feature.

What happens when I upgrade to timeline? 

Once you upgrade, you’ll have 7 days to preview your timeline before other people can see it. You can use this time to add a cover , fill in life events, and star important stories. After 7 days, your timeline will be published automatically. Or, you can choose to publish your timeline at any time by clicking the Publish Now button at the top of your timeline.

Choosing your cover photo

You can pick a unique photo from your profile to feature at the top of your timeline.Your cover appears above your profile picture, and it’s the first thing people see when they visit your timeline and note that just like your profile pictures, your cover pictures are also public.

See everything in one place

A TimeLine is where you’ll find your info, photos, likes, apps and other cool stuff — all in one central place.

View your activity log

Your activity log will list all your posts and activity since you joined Facebook. Go here to review things you’re tagged in, change who sees individual stories and more.

Rediscover your memories from the past

This is your timeline. It’s your collection of your most memorable photos, events and experiences.

Scroll back to the beginning or jump to a specific time by clicking the dates along the right side of your timeline.

Highlight what’s important

Hover over a story and click the star ( star icon ) to expand it to widescreen. Or click the pencil ( pencil icon ) to hide or delete the post. Some stories on your timeline appear as dots ( dots icon ). Just hover over the dot to view the story.

You can add apps to your timeline, as it goes live from December 25th, you can expect something more from Facebook.

Get your TimeLine now http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline.

Google Plus, it’s  been hot now in the Social Media news. Unlike Facebook and Twitter Google Plus doesn’t  offer vanity URLs (aka short URLs) for your Google Plus profile. Previously, Google introduced, Profiles then we’d have created vanity URL for profile like this https://profiles.google.com/umashankar111.  Now this is taking to your Google Plus URL. Ah! that’s fine. If you want to share your Google Plus profile URL, Vanity URL comes in handy, rather than sharing a URL which includes big numbers,like this https://plus.google.com/100572954513245841769 which is even difficult to remember! Now I want to share the ways you can shorten Google Plus URL, so that you can share with friends,colleagues at ease.

1)  Gplus.to

Google Nick, Gplus.to, you can use this to shorten URL like http://gplus.to/umashankar . Unlike remembering big numbers, create a vanity URL like this, instead.

2)  Gotoplus.me

You can use similar one, Gotoplus.me which would yield your Vanity URL for Gplus profile as http://gotoplus.me/umashankar

3) Goplus.us

If you are residing in US, then, goplus.us would be an appropriate URL to share with. Note that all urls will be redirecting to your actual profile, https://plus.google.com/100572954513245841769 and do remember, these shorten urls from third party, not exactly from your Google!

http://goplus.us/umashankar

4) iGpl.us

iGpl.us

5) Some other you can try!

• http://gplusnick.com/
• http://plus.ly/

Although, all these for URL shortening from third party, we’d really like to see our profile url like https://plus.google.com/username rather than  https://plus.google.com/100572954513245841769. Hope that Google will introduce this in near future!

Google recently acquired two startup companies, Apture and Katango for an un disclosed amount. Apture offering toolbars for websites, to enhance user experience with the web. Apture founded in 2007, they transformed the web into interactive multimedia experiences. Apture toolbar enable readers  to see, hear and experience ideas over the web.While Kantago was founded little over an year ago. They develop social algorithms, that would enhance people’s online social interaction.

Apture reported that they would likely to join with Chrome team to work on user experience and Katango will be joining Google Plus team to work on social web experience.

After enhancing more than a billion pages with our products, we think now is the best time to expand our efforts with another team just down the road that shares our vision of making the web better. That’s right — we’ve been acquired by Google and will be joining the Chrome team

Kantago says ..

We’re excited to join the Google+ team and carry on fulfilling that mission.   Google+ is seeing tremendous momentum, so it’s a perfect time to join and make Circles smarter for millions of people.

Google just keep going on acquiring the companies, for the last one year they acquired roughly 60 companies for $500 million.

As I have moved my sites http://techiesteps.com and http://j2eedev.org to self hosted WordPress. I thought of sharing my older blogger template. TechieSteps blogger template is a two columns layout with sleek menu with shading effect. On the right sidebar it includes  Mashable style sharing social buttons. You can have summary posts in the index page. On the single post page, you will find trending story.Theme features include

• Sleek menu with shadow effect.
• Expanded summary posts.
• Styling classes for inserting code,quotations and article headings.
• Mashable style sharing social buttons.
• Author Biography box at the end of the post.
• 3-column Footer widget area.
• Facebook like button with in the single post.
• Trending Story option with twitter share button.

Installation

Login to Blogger account, go to Design—>Edit HTML. Before you change your blogger template, make sure that you have a full backup of recent template. Now download the TechieSteps blogger template, browse for the downloaded XML blogger template to upload.

Menu Configuration

Check for below code in the template and change menus accordingly.

<div class=’ddsmoothmenu’ id=’smoothmenu1′>

For Expanded Summary posts.

while posting, you just need to keep summary post content between <span class=”fullpost”> </span> tags

<span class=”fullpost”>Here goes your summary for the post</span>Expanded post…..

Author Biography box

Check Expand Widget Templates, search for below code in the template and change Author information related to you, change the Author thumbnail image source location to your image location.

<div class=’author_info’>

Mashable Style Sharing buttons

Check Expand Widget Templates, search for below code in the template and change social sharing urls to yours.

<div id=’subscribe’>
<ul class=’subscribe_icons’>

For Inserting code to your posts. Use css class “codeview”

For Heading in the post, use css class “h1java”

For Quotations to insert in the post, use css class “”bullerview”

TechieSteps Blogger Template DEMO :::  http://codeyourprogramme.blogspot.com/

Mind what you say through Facebook comments. Google will now be indexing your Facebook comments and showing as part of their search results. Few months back, Facebook released commenting system for websites and weblogs, this enables Facebook users to drop comments on blogs and websites using their Facebook account. Third party commenting systems like Disqus, Intense Debate enable users to comment on the websites. These commenting systems are implemented using JavaScript and hence, comments may not be indexed by Google previously, but now,

Google will index JavaScript content also.

Google Bot crawls POST Requests

There are two primary requests on the web which initiate the web, one is GET and the other is POST. In simple words to say, GET request is used for reading data, and POST request is used for changing or adding data. Search engine bots like Google crawl the pages using GET. Now that, Google bot is no more passive. Google is now crawling POST request data.

Want privacy? how to stop indexing from Google

Well, indexing Facebook comments or any other third party commenting system may create SEO juice for  website owners.but, for those who want to maintain some privacy for content, and if you’d like Google Bot to stop indexing, you specify the same in robots.txt file. to disallow the GoogleBot.

Google India, in association with Hostgator,(Webhosting company, widely used by wordpress users) ICICI bank launches a new venture,http://www.indiagetonline.in/ . As part of this, Google offering, free .in domain and hosting space absolutely free for the first one year. As part of this, Google also offering Email Addresses in the name of your domain, According to Google

Across India, more and more people are connecting with local businesses online. Make sure they connect with yours with a free professional website. Help customers find you easily and be where they are. It’s easy. Really fast. And absolutely free. So get your business online.

you can have look @ implemented sites with success

http://www.khoslaprinters.in/ and

http://www.vijashiviinternational.in/ . Register your own free .in domain and hosting space now

Skype Instant Messenger has got it’s new release 5.5 beta with a feature as Facebook chat client. From now on you can chat on Skype with out having to go to Facebook website. Simply install Skype 5.5 beta, connect Facebook account with Skype, then it will show you a list Facebook friends in a tab to chat. You can respond to your friend’s wall posts by commenting and ‘like’ing right from Skype.

Other features include, you can make video calls to three or more people all at the same time as Skype thinks group video calls are the perfect way to bringing people from all over the world. Major feature change, the integration of Facebook with Skype, let’s us to go social easily.

You can download Skype 5.5 beta here.

Spice up your website with new eBuddy Gadget by embedding in your website. Let your friends, visitors of your website can chat right from your website. Friends, visitors of your website avail this to get in touch with friends instantly.Well, are you now looking for how to embed this into your website / blog? Here goes simple steps.

• Copy paste following code, where you want to show eBuddy Gadget on your site.

It will look like this, make sure that your code goes tosection of your website.

If want to customize this widget with selected chat clients you can do so @ here

May be Google facing fierce competition from Facebook and Twitter for social promotion, following them, introduced a +1 button like “LIKE” button of Facebook. I don’t know how many people use this, but time will tell us for sure. Here tutorial for adding +1 button to both your blogger and WP blogs.

• Logon to Blogger with your Google account, select your blog, if you have multiple.
• Go to Design and select “Edit HTML” and check “Expand Widgets” now add the below code before tag.

• Now search for data:post.body in the code add following snippet before data:post.body

• That’s it save your template, you’ll find +1 button on every post

• Place the below script in your header.php file

• and place the below code, where you want to render +1 button.

social networking site Facebook now, offers financial incentives to their 600 million users for watching certain ads on the site. Facebook reward the users who watch ads, with Facebook credits. As Facebook earn more money from the users, being loyal to users and is giving something back to users they’ve introduced this.This new feature will currently only work in Game such as Zynga, Digital Chocolate, CrowdStar are the top ones who’ll be participating in this new feature and giving out free credits to users.

The move comes after Facebook expanded its Credits program last week to let consumers use the Credits to buy real-world goods advertised in Deals. Previously, the credits, which were awarded for consumers who signed up for various programs (like magazine subscriptions), could only buy virtual goods.