Virus going around on Facebook. Here is what it looks like:

Says something about a Home Film in someone’s status update and is usually accompanied by a message to you from that person on Facebook that says other abnormal things. Obviously, don’t click this link and delete the message. If you already did, run Spybot Search & Destroy (or something like it) ASAP. The virus disguises itself as anti-virus, so you’ll probably get alerts from it telling you that you have a virus.

Others have commented saying that it’s affecting anyone who logs into facebook with a .org or .net account. So if you are one of those people, changing your password may be a good idea.

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I read a study from CNET today indicating that young adults (18-24) haven’t warmed up to Twitter. It got me to thinking about why and also wondering why I personally use Twitter.

A little over a year ago I signed up for Twitter. March 20, 2008 to be exact, I looked. Just over a week later I was ready to bail on it. I said, “I don’t really like it/see the point of it.” For the next week or so I looked for ways that it could be useful. A couple weeks later I figured out that I could update Twitter and my Facebook status together, which seemed somewhat useful, but I still didn’t really “get” Twitter. It took several months actually of flirting with it, but I still wasn’t sold on it or ready to commit to being a Tweeter. Then one day it hit me. I was doing it wrong.

At least it was the wrong way for me. I had basically been using Twitter like a Facebook Status update, except most of my friends are non-geeky by nature and don’t use things like Twitter, so it seemed pointless to put my updates out there for random spambots that wanted to follow me. I’m not saying this is the wrong way to use twitter, but it didn’t work for me.

I started following people on Twitter. Not people that I was friends with, but people who had blogs that I read. People that I network with online. People and organizations who were doing things that I was interested in. All of a sudden Twitter became less about what I was doing and more about what other people in the world were doing. People and things that I cared about. I could even care about things that maybe I wasn’t aware of before, but suddenly feel prompted to donate money for things like bed nets to prevent malaria in Africa. It was basically taking everything I like about the internet, finding new information and people, and putting it all in one place. Feed readers do similar stuff, but Twitter made it easier to get through because of the 140 character limit. It takes all of 2 seconds to read someone’s tweet.

It doesn’t stop there. The information in Twitter is instant. I could literally find out what Ashton and Demi were doing at that very moment if I wanted. I could find out the latest score from whatever game was on. I didn’t have to wait for a blog or newspaper to publish a story. It was there in all of its raw and unedited glory.

The biggest thing I use Twitter for now is networking. I also think this is why Twitter is more popular with the “older than 24″ crowd. 18-24 year olds don’t care about networking as much. People who have careers do.

Like I said, I follow people with similar interest and with Twitter, I now have access to people I didn’t previously have access to. If I have a problem with my WordPress theme, I can reply to the developers directly and usually get a response within a few minutes or hours. You also learn a more human side to these people, be it celebrities, people who run websites you read, or just random people out there. After a while people actually start to become real people again and not an idea of what you think they are or should be. Sometimes that is good, sometimes that is bad. The point is that it is real.

You also sometimes get to put a face with a name. Case in point: This past weekend I went to WordCamp in San Francisco. Some of the folks that I follow on Twitter and read their blogs were there. You get to see the real person that they are. I actually got to meet one of those people when she randomly sat down next to me out of the 700 + people in attendance (by the way, you should check out her blog, Sleepless in NY, it’s quite good).

So, that’s why I use Twitter and find it useful. I also think most people that have any desire to learn new things or have causes they want to help could find these reasons useful as well.

If you are interested more in Twitter, here’s a link to a video explaining Twitter and some recent statistics on Twitter users. I think once you start doing it right, you’ll like it.

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I love computers and the internet. I really do. But I understand it fails sometimes. Some services fail a lot. So much that they have to have a fail whale. Some really disrupt my day and send me into fits. But usually those outages don’t last more than a few minutes to a couple hours. This post isn’t about Gmail or Twitter though.

Facebook has been out all day for me and several other users according Twitter search. It’s down for maintenance. Whatever that means. It says it’ll be back up in a few hours. It’s been a few hours. It’s been more than a few hours. It’s been 8 hours at least right now, and counting. It was out when I woke up this morning, so who knows how long it was out while I was sleeping.

A few hours is one thing. An entire day is a whole other thing. Yes, I know Facebook is better than Myspace, but I never remember Myspace going out for an entire day. Twitter probably has, but that’s expected from them.

I wonder how long before I bail on Facebook altogether? It’d take a lot, but the thought is dangling around in my head right now.

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I feel like I’ve been telling a lot of people how to do this lately, so figured I’d do a blog post about it in case anyone else finds it useful. I’m sure there are others out there, but I’ll try to keep this in plain English as much as I can.

Here is a screencast I did if you’d rather just watch. It’s my first screencast, so be gentle with me :) Otherwise, read on below the video.

So Facebook is cool in that it allows you to set your privacy settings on nearly every part of your profile. You can make things viewable to the following:

1. Everyone: Anyone. Friend or some random stranger can see your profile and whatever details you have made public.
2. My Networks and Friends: All of your Facebook Friends and those people in your Networks. So if you are in the Monterey Bay network, everyone there can see your stuff. If you are in Salvation Army network or whatever your employer is, they can see your info as well.
3. Friends of Friends: People on Facebook you are not friends with, but you have a mutual friend with. So if you are not friends with your boss, but your co-worker, who is your friend, is friends with your boss, then said boss can then see your profile.
4. Only Friends: Only people who you have accepted friend request from on Facebook can see the info.
5. Customize: This is where you can select certain people to not see certain things…I’ll get more into this in a bit.

So, lets get into how to set those privacy settings.

Go to your Facebook Home page. In the top right corner, next to the search box on the blue bar, you’ll see “Settings.” If you hold your mouse over it, you’ll get a drop-down menu. Click on “Privacy Settings.”

From there you’ll select “Profile.” This controls who can see what on your profile.

This is where the “Customize” option comes into play. On this page you’ll see different elements that you can control the privacy of under the “Basic” Tab.  If you don’t want someone to see your status updates and posts, then select the drop-down box next to it. Select “Only Friends” and then at the bottom where it says “Except these people” you type in the name of the person or persons you don’t want to see your status updates. Select “okay” when you are done.  If you selected more than 2-3 people it will probably ask you if you would like to create a group. This makes it easier to limit that group of people in other sections if you want.

Once you are done selecting who you want to limit go to the bottom of the page and select “Save Changes.” When you do that, you will get a confirmation message in yellow at the top of the page saying your changes have been saved.

Now, here is the important part to make sure you blocked the information you intended to block. Right under that yellow box it will say “See how your friend sees your profile,” and will give you a box to type in someone’s name to see your profile as they see it. This is always good to make sure you blocked the information you intended to block.

You can block contact information as well as application information, etc… All by selecting “Privacy Settings” like we did at the beginning. Search through there and you’ll find Facebook allows you to control a lot of areas of your profile and information.

Below are some screenshots to help walk you through the process.

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UPDATE: If you read through the comments below you’ll see a explaination of the bugs and a possible fix. The script listed below does indeed work better and I’ve updated the link in this post to reflect that.

If you hate the new Facebook Highlight section like me, then you might enjoy this easy fix to remove it. It requires the Firefox browser, but if you aren’t using it by now, then you probably like the Highlight section anyway.

1. Download Firefox if you haven’t already.
2. Install Greasemonkey Add-On if you don’t have it. Make sure to enable it from Tools > Options.
3. Install this Greasemonkey Script: Remove Highlights (about half way down under Install Options it says “Load as user script.”
4. Voila! It’s gone.

It looks like this.

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WKU Fight Song

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