Primary Features

The Documents To Go® Premium application is an ideal travel companion for the tech savvy businessperson. It allows users to save, retrieve, edit and build new document files quickly and efficiently. This feature is accessible through the Microsoft PowerPoint®, Microsoft Word® and Microsoft Excel® programs.

Another application worth mentioning is the BlackBerry Messenger 6 program. This unique tool enables the user to network your business and emphasize social connectivity amongst peers. Some of the program’s main highlights include the ability to integrate reinforced collaboration with numerous third-party applications and the sharing of such information as voice notes, files, location and more.

BlackBerry® Balance™ Technology is a new feature that will automatically distribute the management of personal information and work on your smartphone. With this application, you will be able to maintain and wipe corporate information while any personal data is kept separate. This easy-to-use tool safeguards both your personal and corporate details, making the BlackBerry a practical and convenient solution for IT managers.

Do you find yourself constantly rushing to read through all of your work documents while on the go? Do you have a whiteboard up on the office wall? If so, try taking a high-resolution picture of it after strategy sessions instead of just rushing to jot notes down. The Liquid Graphics™ Technology application is both fun and practical for situations just like these, and, best of all, its high resolution photos eliminate the need for squinting eyes! Its crystal-clear picture quality will be sure to dazzle even the most picky BlackBerry readers.

The BlackBerry 7′s Voice-Enabled Universal Search feature is extremely useful. It gives users the power to conduct web-based searches on song titles, contact names and e-mail messages through search engines and other third-party applications. It is one of the most convenient features to be found on the new BlackBerry OS 7, and ideally, this tool is best used in conjunction with a headset or Bluetooth® earpiece.

The BlackBerry Legacy

The BlackBerry has been a leading figure in the advent of cellular technologies over this past decade. The fact of the matter is that BlackBerry smartphones are a revolutionary product. These phones have forever changed the face of communication in the modern world, and with the newest assemblage of BlackBerry 7 smartphones, users will be able to enjoy even greater accessibility to the lives of their co-workers, friends and loved ones. Thanks to BlackBerry, getting connected has never been so easy.

Facebook Timeline is the latest addition and one of the most awaited features in the history of Facebook. It is still in beta and available to developers, but will soon be rolled out to all users.

Facebook Timeline is a new way to show your profile and as the name suggest it changes your profile in a time driven series. Basically, it is a story of your life that is visible to both you and your friends. It changes the default profile from a list of your most recent updates to a complete summary of your entire life since birth. The default Facebook profile page newsfeeds have evolved to be a stream of your entire life.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Facebook Timeline is that it can tell a detailed story of your life on a single page. Imagine the possibilities and history if facebook is still around in 20 years!

There are two main parts of Facebook Timeline replacing the old default Facebook profile page that present updates in a chronological order. The upper portion of the Facebook Timeline is called the cover and contains your personal information along with your friends, photos, pages you have liked, statuses, and recent activities.  Below the Cover is the Heart of the Timeline. It is divided into two main columns and it has a line in the middle representing the passage of time.   By using Facebook Timeline on your profile page, your friends can now choose a specific year and month and quickly access all your activities and content for that specific time. As you scroll through the page, you are presented with updates that are relevant and important. The more wide you make the timeline, the finer the filtration gets so that only the most important stories of your life will be displayed. You can even add more information about yourself to make your timeline more informative, meaning the new timeline can be as detailed or as vague as you like

Or so we thought.

I’ll start by prefacing this with two recent developments. The first is that Facebook is now one of Americas most trusted companies, and the second that around 65 million users are now accessing Facebook from mobile devices. It’s these two factors that make the following so concerning.

Have a look at the privacy settings below:

These settings allow friends to see wall posts with the exception of the “Employees” group. This group has specifically been removed rights to see wall posts. Or so the setting says…

This setting is does not work correctly and does NOT work at hiding any wall posts made from Facebook mobile (including the Facebook iPhone app). This bug is a massive privacy concern.

A friend of the above account in the “Employees” group could not only see wall posts from mobile devices, but also post to the wall, clearly against the privacy settings that were in effect. Wall posts from non-mobile devices were not visible.

The following screenshot shows a wall viewed from an account which has been added to the ‘Employees’ group with the privacy settings as above.

We have no way of proving we haven’t ‘shopped the screenshots above but feel free to try the settings with a friend to prove it to yourself. We also hope the previous hole we uncovered should give some credibility to our claims.

So there you have it. If you have your boss hidden from seeing wall posts, you’d better stop your friends posting on your wall from their phones…

On a side note, the privacy setting does work for status updates made from mobile devices. For concerns about your social networking posts showing up on search engine results, you may want to look into a service like Reputation.com which can help clean up your personal image

You can use this emoticon with the following combination: <(“)

We’re unsure of the reason for penguin love at Facebook, but they also had an unbranded free penguin gift back in July.

For more, check out our full guide of Facebook Chat features.

FBHive have noticed two mysterious new features on Facebook Product Designer Alexandre Roche’s profile. The first is a News Feed filter with a lab beaker icon labelled “Outside World”. The second is a plus (+) icon and number next to the Comment and Like numbers for a video in the Highlights section.

Screenshot and our thoughts after the jump.

So what could these mean?

Our guess is that “Outside World” is referring to the world outside of Facebook (a.k.a. the rest of the web) and that the filter itself would show you all the non-Facebook content you’ve subscribed to. Yes, subscribed to. We believe it’s highly possible that Facebook will introduce the ability to import RSS feeds into your News Feed and group them just like friends and Pages. This would be a very powerful feature and could prove to be a significant competitor against other web-based feed readers like Google Reader. But don’t just think blogs: every Twitter user has an RSS feed you can subscribe to. Imagine being able to check recent posts from blogs, Twitter users and of course, Facebook friends, all from the one website. Facebook would (potentially) become your one-stop hub for recent news and information.

While there is a chance this could just be a third-party application filter the user has installed, given its highly preferential position in the filter list and the fact that there are no other third party applications, we feel this is unlikely. More significantly, the beaker icon itself appears in a Facebook sprite image, and it most likely indicates the feature is still experimental and has not had an official icon designed yet.

Now, on to the second feature. In the profile’s Highlights section there’s a video, posted by Helen Minn (who also happens be a Facebook employee), that has 9 Likes, 11 Comments, and 5 “Pluses”. Hmm, that green plus icon looks familiar… Hang on, isn’t that the Facebook Credits icon? Yes, it is! See for yourself in the Facebook Help Center, next to “Credits”.

We suspect that Facebook has a feature in the works that allows users to give Credits to content. If opened up to the public, this feature could prove to have some incredibly powerful microeconomics. Directors and musicians could be tipped for their videos and songs that they post on their Facebook Pages. 3,000 users giving just 50 cents (5 Credits) to an artist once a week would be enough for someone to live off. With Facebook’s users numbering a quarter of a billion, this is no pipe dream.

So, what do you think? Do you agree with our speculation? Let us know in the comments or twitter us @FBHive.

Update: TechCrunch picked up our article and contacted Facebook about it. Facebook have since responded and explained that the “+” is indeed Credits given to a video and is a feature Facebook has been testing since April that allows users to give credits to each other for content they share. “Outside World” has a less exciting explanation: apparently it’s a feature for Facebook employees that allows them to filter out the streams of other Facebook employees and see only the streams of their non-Facebook friends. Mystery solved, gang.

At present, Facebook Pages fall under two categories:

1. Pages for legitimate businesses, celebrities, artists, organisations and products
2. Pages for activities and objects people are “fans” of

The first is the reason Pages were created, and allows groups and organizations to keep in contact with their fans through publishing events, news, notes and interacting through their fans with comments.

The second is proving more popular to Facebook users as they wish to display their love of activities like “walking on the beach” and “steamy sex” as well as generic products like “chocolate”. These activities and generic products have no legitimate need to contact their fans, leading to the underbelly of spam and advertising we discussing in our previous post.

This leads us to an area of Facebook profiles that seems to be receiving little attention from Facebook these days: the Info tab. The Info tab contains an area for “Activities” and “Interests” – what a fantastic coincidence! This provides users of the site with a way to display these activities and interests without receiving the spam.

We think Facebook should take a simple two step approach to fixing the problem.

1. Ban outright generic products and activities from pages
2. Increase the publicity of “Interests” and “Activities” on Facebook profiles with a ‘Me Too’ function

The ‘Me Too’ function would allow users to easily add activities and interests to the Info tab of their profile.

At the end of the day, this would increase the quality and exposure of legitimate Pages for businesses and other interest groups, as well as better exposing users’ interests on their profiles.

The introduction of Facebook Pages in November 2007 added a whole new level to this “real connections” model and has become a great way for businesses, bands and celebrities to connect and interact with their fans. Unfortunately, it has also become a cesspool for spam, ridiculous Pages and unrelated advertising.

A quick skim through the biggest Facebook Pages shows a high number of generic Pages (such as “Pizza”, “The Beach” and “Massages”). A lot of these Pages – while against Facebook’s Terms of Use – are harmless, but there are also many that have been using (and abusing) their large fan bases to advertise tenuously related websites or products.

In May it was reported the creator of the “Kisses” Page auctioned off and sold the Page (and it’s one million+ fans) for an undisclosed sum. The winning bidder, OraBrush, has now turned it into an advertisement for stopping bad breath, the emphasis on kissing now just a memory.

Two weeks later, Facebook decided to tackle these generic Pages head-on by taking away their ability to update their statuses. Whilst it was great to see Facebook finally take some action, it was too little too late, and they’ve failed to follow through since with unscrupulous Page owners still breaking the Terms of Use.

The minor offenders simply encourage their fans to join their other Facebook Pages, but the worse offenders have completely changed their Pages from everything to do with the original topic, with only the name remaining.

We don’t expect Facebook to police every page created, but some of these Pages have fan bases in the millions. Facebook needs to spend some time cleaning out these Pages that are now exploiting the fan bases they’ve built up with unrelated advertising.

To be clear, the purpose of Pages is for advertisers to connect with Facebook users, but these Pages build up fan bases under misleading pretenses of “fun” topics before converting their content and spamming their users.

Although just a small sample of the problem, these Pages have over 3.3 millions fans between them.

Besides their flagrant abuse of the service and disregard for Facebook’s Terms of Use, it’s surprising that these Pages are still around for another reason: by allowing these Pages to operate, Facebook is taking money away from its own advertising sales. Why pay Facebook for ads, when you can create a generic Page like “cuddles” or “sleeping” that’s viral enough to advertise itself?

In our next article we will be explaining how we at FBHive think Facebook could drastically (and easily) overhaul the system for all, but while you wait, tell us: what you think Facebook should do with Pages like those above, and what could be done to improve the system for the future?

Every event page features an export link. It’s an easy way to quickly add Facebook events to your favorite scheduling program, such as Google Calendar, Apple iCal or Microsoft Outlook.

However, it’s a bit of a pain to have to continually do this for every event. Fortunately, Facebook provides an iCalendar URL for all your upcoming events that updates automatically.

Simply click the “Export Events” link on the top of the Events page, and copy the URL that follows into your favourite iCalendar supporting program.

2) View who joined Facebook because of you

It’s not only possible to view whom you’ve sent Facebook invitations to, but also who joined because of you. So if you invited your friends Steve Jones and Isaac Dabah, simply head on over to the Invite History page of Facebook.

3) Format text in Facebook Chat

It’s possible to make your text both underlined and bold in Facebook Chat. It’s easy too: just enclose your text between _underscores_ or *asterisks*. For a more in-depth guide, check out our full article.

4) Solve programming puzzles for the chance to score a job

Facebook has a selection of programming puzzles on their Careers page for Facebook users to solve. A number of past puzzle solvers have now been hired by Facebook. If programming is your thing and you’d like to get a foot in the door at Facebook, this might be it!

5) Print a guest list for your event

Facebook makes it easy to generate printer friendly guest lists for your events.  You can select which people to print based on their RSVP, from just those attending to all invitees. It displays the names in alphabetical order and you can also choose to have the person’s profile picture next to their name. Useful for bigger events where you don’t personally know some of the attendees, or you have a bouncer or hired security manning the entrance.

6) Create a Profile Badge

It’s easy to create customizable profile badges for your blog or website. Profile badges can be made up of one or more of the following:

• Profile Pic
• Name
• Networks
• Email
• Screen Name
• Birthday
• Mobile Number
• Websites
• Status Updates
• Recent Pics
• Upcoming Events
• Recent Notes
• Recent Posts

The items automatically update with your profile, and you can choose either a horizontal or vertical layout for the badge, which can be then be embedded using the supplied HTML. You can create and save multiple badges for use on different websites. Create a Facebook Badge.

7) View Facebook in Pirate

Tired of reading Facebook in American English? Browse Facebook in Pirate for a swashbuckling good laugh. To change your language, go to the bottom of any Facebook page and click the current language in the left corner. Then simply select “English (Pirate)” from the menu that appears.

8) Find out what a person has been viewing with the URL they paste

Next time someone sends you a Facebook URL, take a closer look at the address to see what else they’ve been looking at. This also goes for people posting links on walls, groups, events and discussion boards! For a full guide to how to do this check out this article.

9) Login to Facebook when you login to Gmail or Yahoo

It’s possible to link your Facebook account with a number of other services in order to be logged into Facebook automatically when you log into their site. Current supported services include:

• Google
• MySpace
• Yahoo
• Myopenid
• Verisign PIP
• OpenID

Simply visit your Account Settings, select “Linked Accounts” and select the type of account you would like to link.

10) Link directly to specific News Feed stories

Any News Feed story can be linked directly to. Simply copy the hyperlink on the time of the News Feed story (ie: 19 Minutes Ago). This makes it a lot easier to link your friends to a particular post on Facebook, instead of having to link them to an entire profile.

To change your profile’s username, go to Settings > Account Settings, and next to Username, click Change.

“Choose your new username carefully. You can only change your username once.” it warns.

Annoyingly, it does not allow you to change the formatting of your current username, such as the capitalization of letters or the location of dots. Because capital letters and dots do not make a username unique, when you click “Check Availability” it checks against all current usernames and reports that it’s not available because someone is already using it: you. Hopefully Facebook fixes this issue in the future.

Facebook suggests that when choosing a username you should “make sure it is something you like and that it’s appropriate for friends, family, co-workers, and anyone else who might use it to find you.”

Will you be changing your username?

We’re not quite sure why, but Facebook has a very cool free gift we can’t attribute to an event or sponsor. We’re not complaining though! It’s a limited edition with only 20,000 available for gifting and is only available until Friday! Thanks to Meghan for the heads up on this one.

Penguin Love

To send this free gift, go to:Facebook Gifts