With now over 400 Million members, Facebook is the Number One social network world wide. However, it’s far from being perfect- there are tons of forums, blogs, and web sites out there discussing how to improve Facebook. Luckily, there are some easy ways to customize Facebook’s look-and-feel, and sometimes even to add new options and features. All you have to do is install the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox.

Then, just download some of the web browser applications, and there you go! In case you’ve never heard of Greasemonkey or userscripts before- Greasemonkey is basically the plugin that enables Firefox to use userscripts. These are little web applications that enhance your browsing experience. Got it? It’s that easy. And now, let’s see who unfriends you on Facebook, start to manage your Farmville wall, get a MafiaWars alphabetic member list, or even integrate Google Calendar into your Facebook page.

1. Facebook Unfriend Finder

If you’re posting too much, or too much useless stuff, your Facebook contacts might get annoyed and consider you more a spammer than a friend. Result: Less friends. Or, after the last fight your partner (with whom you were friends on Facebook, regrettably) decides to delete you as a Facebook friend even before telling you that the relationship is over. Whatever the reason might be to have a -1 on your friends count,  you just want to know who dropped you, unfaithfully. With the Facebook Unfriend Finder Firefox plugin, it’s easy to track. After installation, you’ll find a new tab in the upper menu – “Unfriends”.

2. Farmville Wall Manager

Are you a Farmville fanatic? Then, trying out the Farmville Wall Manager is a must. The script automatically accepts/grabs bonuses, bouquets, animals, eggs, fuel, presents, mystery boxes, and collectables. Additionally, it lets you choose which animals you want to adopt, which eggs you want to hatch, and much more… pretty useful stuff, eh?

3. Facebook MafiaWars Alphabetical Member List and Auto Helper

Mafia Wars can be both addictive (for those sending out invites) and uber annoying (for the ones receiving all these invites). In the latter case, block the application. But if you’re part of the MafiaWars gang, check out the MafiaWars Alphabetical Member List plugin. It lets you sort and display the members list in Mafia Wars, produce a leader board, and a Top Mafia list with bonuses. You can also install the Mafia Wars Wall Auto Help that helps you to do friends jobs, and gets you free boosts and helps in mafia declared wars.

4. Facebook Fixer

This is really powerful stuff. The Facebook Fixer plugin adds some shiny little features to your Facebook page, such as a big profile picture, bigger album pictures, video download links, localization, translation, age and sign, Google Calendar integration, keyboard shortcuts, and some more homepage customization. Don’t believe it? Run in the install and see.


5. Remove Recent Activity

Since the latest security and privacy update in 2009, all of your recent activities on Facebook will appear on both your wall and your friends news feed. Facebook has ways to customize what actions you’ll share with others, but you cannot prevent all of your actions from appearing in ‘recent activity’. The Remove Recent Activity plugin simply adds another button right below your profile picture with which you can erase your recent activity completely.

Last week, Yahoo! introduced some improvements to their search marketing, making it easier for advertisers to better target their campaigns on either Yahoo! Search or the Yahoo! distribution network, plus providing the ability to import Google AdWords campaigns. More flexibility for campaign management is definitely an enhancement Yahoo! advertisers have been waiting for.

1. Network Distribution: Choose where your ads appear

With this new feature, you can make your ads appear on either the Yahoo! search result pages, on pages of Yahoo! partners, or on both. The Sponsored Search Help Section on Yahoo! gives you more detailed information, including information on how to utilize tools such as the Network Distribution Performance Report or the Conversion-only Analytics for your campaigns.

2. Importing Google AdWords data

If you’re running similar campaigns on both Google and Yahoo!, you might have missed an import function. This new feature finally allows you to grab your Google AdWords data and import it into the Yahoo! Search Marketing interface. You can import your file by selecting the “Import Campaigns” button, which is located on the Dashboard and the Campaigns tabs, or by selecting the Import tab.

Check out the New Year, New Search Enhancements @ Yahoo! Video that visualizes the new features.

It has been in the works for a while but now Google officially released the “Near Me Now” feature for mobile search. If you have the “Location” function enabled for your phone, the new feature automatically grabs your location and offers you more information about businesses like bars, restaurants, coffee shops, or dry cleaners, on your exact location. It also displays different places that are nearby- if you don’t like that cafe here, go to the next one just around the corner.

The business information and details you’ll be able to see include address and user generated ratings to help your decision-making. Wait, user-generated ratings? Some may remember that a  possible Yelp! acquisition by Google made headlines all of a sudden in December. Shortly before Christmas, the $550 Billion deal apparently busted. Yelp! will remain the largest site for independent user generated reviews, while Google relies on the data that’s already available for Google Maps. If the deal is completely blown off or just postponed remains unclear at this point.

“Near Me Now” is available in the US only, but I’m pretty sure it’s only a matter of time until it reaches the UK and the continental European market.

Have you ever tried to edit the mp3 tags of your songs in your iTunes library, only to discover that your album name, artist information, year, and track numbers won’t be saved? Common problem, but simple solution! Although you should make sure to always use the latest iTunes version (in the “Help” menu -> “Check for Updates”), the problem usually stems from music files or whole directories that are set to ‘read-only’.

To change the properties of these files, open the Windows Explorer or your File Manager and locate your music files. You can also choose the upper main directory where all of your files are located in (e.g., My Music/Albums). Right click on that directory or your mp3 files and make sure the “Read Only” box is unchecked.

Now cleaning up your iTunes library should work without hassle!

Right click on the song or song selection will open up the above screen where you can edit the song information.

In Windows Explorer, right click on your media file to open “Properties” and uncheck the Read-Only box.

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December 2009 seems to be the month of Google innovations- the new Google Android visual search called Google Goggles has been made public earlier this month (check out the YouTube video and listen to that Google engineer guy talking – his heavy German accent is worse than Guido Westerwelle‘s).

Google search now also embeds realtime search elements with snippets from Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. This works for the most trending topics. Try it out by searching for “Obama” or “Michael Jackson“. You will see a scrolling box in the middle of the search results page, with changing headlines, derived from various news sources.

This might all be great news. However, to make the homepage look more slick and slight, Google made a tiny design change. If you open the Google homepage, the toolbar elements will fade-in after a few seconds. According to Google Blog, the engineers at Google became to like it. User reaction tends from neutral to being seriously annoyed. Whether the Google homepage fading effect harms your search experience is totally up to you- but here are some ways to get back to the old Google homepage, without blending effects and fade-ins:

1. Turn Off Fade In With Firefox

The easiest way to disable the Google fade in with Firefox is to install the Greasemonkey plugin. After installation, just install the Disable Google Fade-In script from userscripts.org. This little script sets up a little code snippet to disallow the Google homepage from blending in the toolbar.

2. Disable Fade-In with Google Chrome

The Greasemonkey extension for Chrome is still under development, therefore you have to perform some steps manually. Keith Dsouza of TechiBuzz gives a nice little tutorial on how to run user scripts with Chrome.  Once you get this going, use the same user script as pointed out for Firefox.

Or, if you don’t care at all, use the Google search bar within your Firefox toolbar to perform Google searches, or just turn off Java Script (not without lowering your overall web experience though).

I was late, like always in life. Everything I started was late. In my own view, I never run after things, I just took my time. No wonder that I read all about Google Wave and the invites that have been floating around for a while now. Mashable even stated desperate people paid money just to get a GWave invite. Geez. I wasn’t that desperate but curious. As I checked my Facebook this morning and saw a friend posted he had some invites to throw out, I was quick to reply. A couple of minutes later I got hooked up and- joined the wave. 11/23/09, 11:57am.

First impression?

Simple screen, pretty much Google-like. I actually like that about all the Google products. Simple design, nothing fancy, lots of text elements, but clear and usable. If you already have a Google profile it will be used for your Google Wave account. You sign in with your Google user name plus password and receive a new email address yourname@googlewave.com

For those of you who are yet unfamiliar with the whole GWave concept: imagine you’re in a meeting with 10 people, and you need to crank out an idea within 10 minutes. What is happening is you are communicating, arguing, discussing, bringing in ideas, throwing them out, listen, talk, and ‘digest’.

Now let’s say you’re not in a meeting, but in your office cubical, or somewhere else. You can send out an email to everybody you want to be involved in the brainstorm and collect answers. Or you can open an IM session and collect ideas there.

Google Wave lets you communicate in real-time. All you do is choosing the people you want to join in and get a conversation, or Wave, started. Like in a chat, people can reply, like in an email, people can edit what has been said, and like in a blog, people can share and implement multimedia elements like pictures, videos, mp3s, or plain links. That’s what makes communicating with GWave so fascinating, you literally see your talk partner typing in the characters in real time and can react instantly.

I started only a short Wave with my friend but will see who’s online tomorrow. I’ll dig deeper and post more!

If you’re fortunate to live in a big city you are witnessing everyday insanity on the streets. That stupid Toyota Camry driver cut you out, the Dodge Ram idiot changed lanes without the turn signal, or the Ford Mustang jerk didn’t see the stop sign? Don’t bite your wheel but instead turn to these great sites that allow you to release your anger. Of course, you don’t have to sit in traffic to get upset- cruising the parking lot sometimes is enough to seriously raise the question how drivers licenses are being given out. Don’t keep your anger- share it!

1. You Park Like An Asshole

This fabulous site lets you print out notices to put on the windshield of the a-hole that takes two parking spots at the same time, as a friendly reminder. You can also browse user-submitted pictures in the “recent asses” category. Priceless.

2. LA Can’t Drive

You might have assumed that before but this website states the fact and is totally admitted to it. You think LA has the worst drivers on this planet? Stop by and check out the “idiocy” and “asshole meter”.

3. New Jersey Driving Sucks

If you sit in traffic anyway, why not making any use of it? This funny blog must be from somebody who experiences NJ/NYCtraffic on a daily basis. Hey, kinda looks like LA. Updated frequently with videos and pictures.

If you’re having a Halloween contest running at work where the department with the craziest Halloween costume gets the price, you’re at the right place- we’re here to help you out! In the first part of the “Halloween Costumes For Groups” series, we bring you some cool ideas how to make this Halloween stand out.

The great thing about a “Dead Hollywood Celebrities” theme is that it’s relatively easy to prepare. All you need is to do some brain work on who is acting as which dead celebrity, and on how to stuff out the office area. The Hollywood theme calls for some street signs like Vine or Sunset, some stars on the ground, and the Hollywood sign surrounded by cobwebs. You can also create a Hollywood Celebrity map to lead visitors the way through your own dead Hollywood office space. Do you need some visual inspirations? Check out our pictures below.

Think of recently died actors, singers, and celebrities, you will find someone for everybody in your department. Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Al Martino, Patrick Swayze, or Billy Mays? Just some ideas on dead Hollywood celebrities for Halloween.

This Anna Nicole Smith costume for Halloween is pretty easy to prepare.

Almost real: The Billy Mays costume for Halloween. Including the cleaner.

This unique Michael Jackson mask comes with tousled hair and a lower body as an extra option.

You’re the king of your Halloween party if you manage to hire a make-up artist who makes you look like Heath Ledger.

Guys, I came across this error message recently when I tried to install a WordPress Plugin that required to upload a larger database in order to function. As the WordPress plugin installation proceeded, this error message appeared:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24 bytes)

I googled and looked up different forums like the one of my provider Bluehost, the WordPress Support Forum, and the forum at XML Sitemaps. To make all the info more accessible, I compiled a brief guide on how to solve this fatal error message.

1. Why do I get this error message?

Drupal, a software package for content distribution, automatically sets a PHP memory limit of 16MB (32MB is recommended for Drupal 6). If your application needs more memory, follow the next steps to increase the PHP memory limit from 16MB up to 100MB.

2. Increase PHP Memory via php.ini

Making changes to the php.ini will affect all websites and PHP scripts on the server. Open the php.ini and find the following line in the code:

memory_limit = 32M  ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (32MB)

You might want to change the “memory_limit = 32M” to either “memory_limit = 64M” or even higher. After saving, reload your web site and the effect should have taken place immediately.

If there is no section already for this, you can place the above line at the end of the file.

3. What if php.ini doesn’t exist on my web server?

If you’re working with Bluehost the php.ini file probably won’t exist from the start. To create the file, follow these steps:

• Go to the cPanel and find Software / Services, select PHP Config
• Select the “Install Php.Ini Master File” button to create a file called “php.ini.default” in your public_html folder
• Select the “PHP5 (Single php.ini) to use” option
• Hit “Save Changes”
• Go back to the cPanel, open the File Manager and click on the public_html folder
• Find the “php.ini.default” file and rename the file to “php.ini”
• Click on “Edit” and find this entry: memory_limit = 32M

• Change the 32M to 64M or higher
• Hit “Save Changes”

4. Increase PHP Memory via .htaccess

Locate the .htaccess file in the root directory and find these lines:

# Override PHP settings. More in sites/default/settings.php
# but the following cannot be changed at runtime.

Right after these two lines, insert

php_value memory_limit 32M

5. Increase PHP Memory via settings.php

With Drupal installed, you can easily edit the settings.php in sites/default. Find the PHP Settings section in the file and add this line at the end of the section:

ini_set('memory_limit', '32M');

You’re all set. These ways all worked great for me, if you have any suggestions get back to me!