How To Sync Facebook Events with Google Calendar

Super simple, and extraordinarily useful:

1. Click on the "Events" link found in the left menu of your Facebook account.
2. On the top of the page you'll find a link called "Export Events". Click on it, and copy the URL that appears in the pop-up window.
3. Go to Google Calendar, and press on the "Add" button, found in the "Manage Calendars" box there. Then select "Add by URL".
4. Enter the URL you've just got from Facebook there, and click on the "Add" button.

Done! You may need to refresh your Google Calendar to see the update.

Combine your facebook and twitter updates

Having recently created a facebook account, I ran into the problem of too many social media networks. Think about it - there's twitter, facebook, trigga, linkedin, and a bunch of others that I don't subscribe to. I really don't want to have to update my status separately on all these different networks... luckily, you don't have to!

Here's how to combine your facebook and twitter updates (note: this will post your twitter updates to facebook, but not the other way around):

1. Make sure you have an active twitter account and an active facebook account
2. Log into your facebook account
3. Search for "twitter" in the upper right-hand corner
4. Click on the Applications tab and select the official Twitter application (probably the 1st result)
5. Select "Go to application" and allow it access to your twitter profile (you will need to provide your twitter account's username and password)

Now, all tweets you post via twitter will appear as facebook status updates. Pretty nifty right? Keep in mind that if you retweet something, the "RT @twittername" will show up in your facebook profile... but that's not such a big deal, is it?

Now you're all set to go. If you'd like to tweet/update facebook on the go (e.g. from your BlackBerry) try using some mobile integration like TwitterMail.

Add 3rd column to Blogger template

Want to add 3 columns to your Blogger template? This post will show you how to update your Blogger layout a to WidgetSidebar - Main Post - WidgetSidebar format (based on Blogger's "Minima" template). Here's how:

Backup your current template
You can do this by logging into your Blogger account and selecting Layout > Edit HTML. Check the Expand Widget Templates box and then click the Download Full Template link. Save a copy to your desktop just in case this doesn't work :-) I also recommend writing down a list of all your sidebar widgets.

Download this template
Right click here, select Save Link As... and save the file to your desktop. This is the minibox template, courtesy of www.2600degrees.com.

Update your code
Open the saved .xml template file with a text editor like Wordpad and copy the entire body of code. Go back to your Blogger browser window and replace all current code with the copied portion from Wordpad. Preview before saving, and if all looks good Save Template (WARNING: you may lose all your Widget data by saving your template). You may have to do some minor adjustments to make everything fit (I had to adjust the widths of each sidebar wrapper). If you lost Widget data, go back to Layout and add your widgets again. You will notice that you now have 3 columns!

trigga.me - cool!

I'm sure you've encountered this before...Facebook asks "what are you doing right now?" LinkedIn asks "what are you working on?" and Twitter asks "what are you doing?" How do you keep track of it all?

Here are 14 popular social media services, all of which continually ask you for a status update:

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Plurk brightkite TwitterMonitor Plaxo

Friendfeed Bleeper Xing Frazr niimo identi.ca Rejaw

If you subscribe to even 3 or 4 of these services, you know that updating your status in all the applications simultaneously is pretty tricky and time consuming. That's where trigga.me comes in. Trigga.me is a one-stop-shop that synchronises all of your social media statuses. One dashboard, from which you can update and track the status of all 14 services!

I'm only a recent trigga.me user - but so far, so good! As always, there's a down side. trigga.me is in closed beta, meaning you can only use it if you receive an invite. The good news? You can request one here (as I did), and it doesn't take long to get approved.

Too legit to quit: MC Hammer on twitter

Break it down, MC Hammer's on twitter!

MC Hammer (or "Hammer" in this decade) joins many other current & former celebrities online via the miracle of twitter. And boy is he using it! As of today, he has 166,686 followers, is following 25,026 people, and has posted over 2,600 updates. Want to reach out and make some new, high-profile friends? They're only a tweet away... so take a few minutes and browse, your favourite celebrity may be in the list below:

• Al Gore
  
• Ashton Kutcher
  
• Barack Obama
  
• Britney Spears (beware, there are other impersonators!)
  
• Dave Matthews
• Elijah Wood
  
• Hillary Clinton
• Jimmy Carr
  
• Jimmy Fallon
• John Cleese ("Yes, I am indeed still alive, contrary to rumour")
• Lance Armstrong
  
• MC Hammer
• Michael Phelps
  
• Oprah
• Snoop Dogg
  
• Shaquille O'Neil
  
• Stephen Harper (he followed me first, I swear)
  
• William Shatner

So be bold, reach out! Maybe you're only a few days of sore thumbs away from instant celebrity. Maybe not, but c'mon, who doesn't want to tweet back and forth with MC Hammer :-)

(do you have a celebrity twitter profile that I missed? email me and I'll be sure to add it)

Twitter gives Canada the shaft

The twitter blog recently announced the new Twitter/ Bell Canada SMS deal: 2-way SMS for Bell canada mobile customers! What these two partners in crime forgot to mention is that this service comes with a hefty price tag... $0.15 CAD/ tweet! This very important fact was very absent from twitter's announcement:

Today we're super excited to be activating full, two-way SMS service for Canadian Twitter-ers who are also customers of Bell Mobility. If you're a Bell Mobility customer, you can update Twitter via SMS and receive updates from Twitter via SMS. There are no limits and no added fees (beyond your normal texting plan). If you haven't already, you can activate your phone to Twitter over SMS. Special thanks to Bell's enthusiasm and eagerness to make this happen.

What my bolding above highlights is an obvious cover-up :-) The Twitter-Bell negotiated deal means that mobility users pick up the tab for each and every tweet - even if you already have an unlimited texting plan. Why? Because Bell labels twitter texts as "premium texts".... go figure.