facebook timeline cover: MINT

Just thought I'd share this one, too. :)

make your own facebook timeline cover

While Facebook does not offer the large timeline cover image for pages, you can certainly deck out your profile if you have a little Photoshop knowledge.

Recently I saw a design site offering templates for $40. Ahem. Here's a very simplistic way for you to begin making your own and saving your dough (if you have Photoshop).

Here's the short version of how I did mine. It's short because I'm going out on a limb to think you might have a little knowledge and I don't have much time. When I have more time, I'll give a step-by-step.

• Start with a canvas sized 851 pixels x 315 pixels.
• Fill in with a solid background color.
• Use brushes to create a flourish (mine are hearts in the top left and bottom right). My brush is part of a package called My Heart Brushes by ~mcbadshoes. It's a free download and you can get it here. After installing the brush in Photoshop I was able to use it. I added a drop shadow to each flourish. I performed a Free Transform on the upper left flourish to turn it around.
• For the images, I opened the ones I wanted to include, reduced their size, and drag-and-dropped them onto the canvas. 
• For the framed image, I used the Custom Shape Tool and chose Frame 7. I kept the color of the frame the same as the quote text and added Outer Glow.
• As a placeholder for my Facebook profile pic, I added a white box and applied the same frame style around it. The profile pic appears 2 cm off the left and extends approximately 10 cm up into the canvas. The box should be about 10 cm x 15 cm. 

Photoshop 7.0 screen-shot

Inserted into Facebook

Will this help you generate some ideas? I'll hope to have more of a tutorial later. To help me know if that's necessary, I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to leave a comment. And don't go spending $40 for someone to create one for you.

who's your mama?

It just dawned on me that the answer to the age-old security question, "What's your mother's maiden name?" is not very hard to figure out in the age of social media.

Facebook makes it easy to find long-lost classmates by allowing users to enter a maiden name. As a user, you can choose* if you'd like that name displayed on your profile.

Though you may have locked down your profile to be seen by friends only, your name is still displayed and can surface in search engine results.

Besides, who's mama isn't on Facebook at this point? And how many women are hyphenating their name now? It will be a much more insecure world for our children than it is for us.

My suggestion is to choose a harder security question for those accounts that need serious protection. Perhaps, "What date did you lose your first tooth?"

Just something to think about.

*To change your name display settings on Facebook, click Account > Account Settings. See User Name? Click "change" off to the right. If you previously included your maiden name in the Alternate Name field, delete it. Click "Change Alternate Name" to save the form. Do go back into that screen to make sure it's gone.

Gettin' Her Groove Back: 12/60

"come in, blogspot"

I think of myself as pretty technologically savvy, but then again, everything is relative.

I am on a team of folks about to jointly lead some sister organizations into the social media world. A consultant has been hired and as skeptical as I was, he taught me a few things today.

I've looked at iGoogle a few times but dismissed it. I get the gist of dashboards, but have so much more to do with my social networking than status updates. Therefore, a dashboard is quite limiting. However, I'm writing this blog post from a gadget on my iGoogle page. We'll see if it comes through ... :o)

A couple of other tidbits I took away from today are Ping.fm. I've seen references to it, but never have had the time to investigate it. I will be now. According to Nhat Pham, our consultant, you can write one status at Ping.fm and it will distribute that status update to all of your social networks.

Another cool tool is Xobni (inbox, spelled backwards). It's an Outlook add-in and is basically a social media dashboard, too. Wonder if our IS department will have a fit if I download it and hook it up?

I'm looking forward to our next meeting and to what Mr. Pham has up his sleeve ...

tweeting with the weatherman

The question was, "What's your favorite fair food?" I replied ...



How cool is that?! CBS 19 out of Charlottesville. Aired 7/28/09 @ 5:15 p.m. Thanks to my new friend @wood_brothers21 (yes, as in Wood Brothers Racing) for capturing my and his tweet on the screen. Woo hoo!