The Current Disadvantages of Merging a Place With a Page on Facebook

By Josh Constine

With the launch of Places, Facebook began allowing businesses to merge their Page with a Place they’ve claimed. While there are some advantages for businesses focusing on generating foot traffic to a single physical location, merging has important disadvantages including lost functionality (at least for now). Here we’ll take a look two of the biggest problems with merged Places/Pages: an unfamiliar interface, and the inability to set the landing tab.

Facebook launched Places in August, allowing users to create Places for physical locations they’d like to tell their friends they’ve visited. Legitimate owners of Places can apply to claim their Place, giving them the ability to edit details, moderate comments, and advertise the Place.
The official guide to Place for advertisers explains that users who claim Places and are also an admin of a similar Page may be prompted to merge their Place and Page. Facebook recommends merging if a business has only one physical location and only one Page. The guide says, “you’ll be able to manage your business centrally on Facebook”, and Likes, content, custom tabs, and ads directing to the Page will remain intact.

However, Facebook fails to inform admins that merged Places Pages cannot be separated. This has angered some Page admins, and a few have formed a protest Page called “Unmerge Places & My Business Page“.
An important reason not to merge is that users may be confused by the change in user interface: a merged Places Page does not display tabs the way a traditional Page does. (However, it’s possible will move the tabs under the profile photo like they are on the recently redesigned user profiles – though Facebook hasn’t said that.) Instead, it uses a navigation panel beneath the Page’s picture. Users won’t see a panel of friends who Like that Places Page or previews of uploaded photos and videos, plus the option to suggest the Places Page to friends is dropped to the very bottom of the left sidebar.

Engaging with merged Places Pages is more difficult as well. The default landing tab is the Profile, which shows the Places address, a map, hours, and a description. Even if users have Liked the Places Page, they still see this tab upon visiting, and have to navigate to the Wall via the navigation panel in order to share their opinions or publish content. This is much different than traditional Pages, where those who’ve clicked Like can immediately post to the wall upon visiting. If getting users to communicate with each other and foster a sense of community is a business’ goal, the traditional Page is a better fit because those who’ve clicked Like see the Wall and publisher first.
While this navigation format is similar to the newly redesigned user profile, users are accustomed to seeing tab applications along the top of a Page, not running down the left sidebar.
Another serious deficiency of merged Places Pages is that admins cannot change the landing tab. Many businesses spend a lot of money or time creating custom tab applications or outsourcing this job to a Page management company. Being unable to show these apps to those who haven’t Liked your merged Places Page can hurt Page growth. Therefore, merged Places Pages miss out on much of the opportunity to condition access to tab app contests or content on a user Liking the Page.
It’s possible that Facebook will address these issues in upcoming product updates, but that’s the way it works for now.
Facebook says a “A solution for linking multiple Places to a single Facebook Page will become available in the future”, but it first needs to make this a more attractive option. The ability to set a landing tab promotes Page growth, which is important to Facebook as well as admins.

Facebook Now Allows Merged Places Pages to Unmerge

By Josh Constine

Facebook today added an unmerge option to Pages which had been merged with Places. Facebook has allowed an admin of a similar official Page and claimed Places location page to merge these two entities since the launch of the Places location-sharing services in August, but offered no way to undo the combination.
Merged Place Pages are unable to set a default landing tab, frustrating admins who use custom tabs but had merged without knowing the consequences. The new unmerge option restores all the functionality of the separate entities.

We discussed a need for the option in our post on the disadvantages of merging earlier this month. Followers of the protest Page “Unmerge Places & My Business”, which has requested the option since early November, are currently rejoicing and thanking Facebook. Facebook’s move has successfully turn some outraged admins back into loyal supporters of the site.
Admins of merged Place Pages now see an “Unmerge all merged Places” button in the bottom left of their Page. When clicked, admins are shown the following confirmation message:

“Once you confirm this request, the format of this Page will be reverted to the previous format and location information will be removed. The Places that you merged will be restored as separate claimed Places that you also still own and must continue to manage.”

Admins of merged Places Pages which want to be able to set a landing tab or show a more familiar interface (at least until Facebook rolls out the Page redesigned that leaked last week) should take advantage of the option. Meanwhile, admins of Pages which haven’t merged, have a single physical location, and who want to focus on driving foot traffic can now experiment with merging without being stuck with the result.
[Thanks to Kim Bui of KPCC Los Angeles for the tip]

What is svchost.exe service And Why Is It Running on Windows?

So What Is It?
According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?
Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.


Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?
If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.
Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?
You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.
The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.
If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Guide to Using Check Disk in Windows 7 or Vista

Anytime somebody has hard drive errors, I always recommend that they run chkdsk—what geek wouldn’t? Here’s a full guide to using the Check Disk feature built into every version of Windows.
The chkdsk or “Check Disk” utility is used in Windows to scan through your entire hard drive and find problems… it’s like a lot like doing inventory… it’s boring, but it has to be done sometimes. I recommend that you run through a check disk every month or two.
Image by Nemo

Using CheckDisk the GUI Way

Open up Computer and then right-click on the drive you want to check, and choose Properties, or just click the drive, and then click the Properties button.

Then select the Tools tab, and click the “Check Now” button.

A little dialog will pop up to allow you to choose the options you want for the disk check. You should check both options if you want to really check the disk properly, but if you just want to do a quick check you could select only the first one.

How to remote your PC from anywhere

Ever been at a friend's house and wanted to show off a photo you left saved on your home computer? Ever wanted to check from the office that your daughter's doing homework and not instant messaging with friends at home? Ever need to grab a file on your home hard drive when you're miles away? An age-old protocol called VNC and some free software lets you control your home computer from anywhere.
In this tutorial, we'll set up a VNC (Virtual Network Computing) server on your home computer, which will let you connect to your desktop and drive it from any Internet-connected computer.

Notes and warnings: Running a server and opening up a port on your home computer to the Internet is a risky undertaking. Make sure your computer has all the latest security patches, has been checked for spyware and viruses and that you're using strong passwords. The VNC protocol is not inherently secure. This how-to assumes you're comfortable with basic networking concepts. If you're scared off by the fine print, check out an easier alternative [1] to VNC. Still with me? Read on.


The Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol remotely controls another computer over a network. Think of it as a window into your home computer's desktop from any other computer. Your key presses and mouse clicks get transferred over the network and happen on the remote computer in real time, and anyone at the remote computer can watch the action as it happens.
A few things you can do with a VNC server running at home:

• Start a downloading a large file, like a movie, in the morning so it's there when you get home in the evening
• Search your home computer's IM logs, address book or file system for important information
• Help Mom figure out why Microsoft Word doesn't start without having to go to her house (even though Mom would like to see you more often)
• Control a headless (monitor-less) machine like a media center or file server in another room in the house from the laptop on the couch

VNC requires two components for a successful connection: the server on your home computer, and the viewer on the remote computer. Let's set up each component to get going. Here's how.

Step 1. Install the VNC server.

Windows users: TightVNC is free Windows VNC server and client software. TightVNC is a nice choice because it also allows for file transfers and high compression levels for slow connections. Download TightVNC from here and run the installation on your home computer. Start the server, and set a password for incoming connections.

TightVNC can be set to run as a Windows service, which means your Windows usernames and passwords can be used to authenticate on the VNC server connection. Be sure all your Windows passwords are set and strong, and that any passwordless guest accounts are disabled.
Mac users: OSXvnc is a free Mac VNC server. Download, install, set up a password and start the server.
If your VNC server is connected directly to the Internet, it is now listening for Internet requests [2] on port 5900, VNC's default port (which is also configurable). Visit WhatIsMyIP from your home computer to determine its IP address and write it down.
 
Step 2. Install the VNC client.
On the remote Windows computer, also download and install TightVNC, but this time, start the viewer, NOT the server. If you're on a Mac, download the free Chicken of the VNC Mac viewer to connect to your home PC. Enter your home computer's IP address [3] and password to connect.
Here's a screengrab of a VNC connection to my Windows PC from my Mac. Click on the image to see a larger version.




And that's that! You're virtually sitting at your home desktop from anywhere in the world.
A few extra VNC tips to chew on:

• For slower network connections, set the compression to "best." The window image quality will be lower, but the connection response will be snappier.
• Bring a VNC viewer with you on a USB memory stick so you don't have to download and install on every computer you want to use to connect to your server.
• Avoid having to install a server on Mom's computer; email her the 166K self-extracting SingleClick UltraVNC server for your next tech support phone session. More on SingleClick in an upcoming Lifehacker feature.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] LogMeIn is a web-based application that also provides this remote desktop control and may be a better option for some folks. I prefer VNC because it's more of a challenge and doesn't require third party intervention. [back to top]
[2] If your home computer is behind a home network router with a firewall, remote computers will not be able to connect. You must open up a port on your router's firewall and forward requests to it to your computer, a how-to that's beyond the scope of this article but will be covered in an upcoming Lifehacker feature is covered in the Lifehacker feature How to access a home server behind a firewall. [back to top]
[3] Alternately, you can enter your home computer's domain name. For more information on setting that up, see previous Lifehacker feature Assign a domain name to your home server. This way, when connecting using the VNC viewer, you can enter an address like mycomputer.dyndns.org instead of an IP address. [back to top]

by Gina Trapani is the editor of Lifehacker. Her special feature Geek to Live appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker.

How a Web Browser Works? (ilustration by comic)

How to create Free Proxy Server with Google App Engine

A simple Google search and you’ll find dozens of really good PHP scripts on the Internet to help you create proxy servers in minutes for free. The only limitation with PHP based proxies is that you require a web server to host the proxy scripts and second, you also need a domain name to act as an address for your proxy site.
If you don’t own a domain or server space, you can still create a personal proxy server for free and that too without requiring any technical knowledge.

How to get a list of SQL Server tables and their row counts

Obvious methods

The most straightforward method for determining the number of rows in a table, is to use the following:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tablename

You can also use the system stored procedure, sp_spaceused, to determine other information, such as data and index size:

EXEC sp_spaceused 'tablename'

To get an *approximate* count for all tables, you can use the following:

Ask.com, The End of an Era for Search

Today marks the end of Ask.com as a search engine, the search giant will lay off once powerful the vast majority of its engineers and to grant a small piece of the search market from Google and Microsoft.
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, was once one of the search engines the world's most recognizable. It launched in 1996 and quickly gained popularity with its emphasis on natural language queries, in addition to keyword searching. At its peak, Ask.com has taken care of 2 million queries per day. Its mascot, Jeeves the butler, was well known by millions of people.

12 ways to reset the Windows administrator password – Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP

In this article, I describe 12 ways for resetting the administrator password on Windows 7, Vista, or Windows XP. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Make sure you use the right procedure for your situation.

If you forgot the admin password and have no other account with administrator rights, things can get tricky. The methods and free tools explained here can reset the Windows password for all Windows versions—that is, for Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008 R2. In this article I only talk about the Windows client editions, but the methods also work for the corresponding server versions. The methods described here are not for resetting lost domain administrator passwords.
As system administrator, you are usually confronted with this problem if users have admin rights on their machines. Even if you don’t have to reset a password now, you should get acquainted with this issue. Rest assured that sooner or later a user will bug you with this problem. I must admit that I managed to forget my password more than once.
Note that I published this article a few years ago, but since then I updated it several times and added a few new methods. Not much of the original article is left except the numerous comments below. As you can see, forgetting the Windows password is a common problem.

Change Password on Windows 7 (Fastest)

Changing your Windows 7 password on a regular basis is a good habit to help keep your PC secure. You might also want to change your Windows 7 password if you've been having problem remembering or entering your current one.
Changing your password in Windows 7 is very easy. Follow the easy steps below to change your Windows 7 password:

Note: If you're trying to change your Windows 7 password because you've forgotten it and can no longer access Windows, see Tip #2 at the bottom of the page for help.

Difficulty: Easy

Time Required: Changing your Windows 7 password usually takes less than a few minutes

How to Configure Win 7 for a Limited User Account

This Tech Tip was written exclusively for the Windows 7 experience, but most of it applies to Vista as well.
In addition, this paper describes workgroup or standalone machine setups only; it does not address the more complex enterprise environments for domain-joined machines.

Windows 7 is now in Release Candidate status (build 7100, May 2009), and many are trying this new operating system. Those who skipped past Vista from XP are finding a new experience and an entirely new security paradigm: User Account Control.

UAC was introduced with Vista and was widely maligned due to its in-your-faceness, and though it's calmed down some as Vista has been updated, it seems to have really hit its stride in Windows 7. I like UAC a lot.
But even in its imperfect form, it was a good idea, attempting to brighten the terribly blurry line between administrative tasks and user tasks that has plagued Windows since the early days.
Much of this is due to the early consumer operating systems Win95, Win98, and WinME, which maintained no technical distinction between these roles: everybody was always an administrator, and software developers had no way of even thinking about a separation of roles.

But even with the more modern NT-based systems Windows 2000 and Windows XP, it was so painful to really get your work done as a non-administrative user that most people simply gave up and ran with an admin account. This was almost entirely due to poor habits by software developers: they themselves ran as admins, and simply wrote sloppy code that assumed everybody was one too.
Microsoft has been trying very hard to counter this everybody-is-an-admin mentality, and UAC was their attempt at compromise: if you're going to run as admin, at least we can make you aware of the role differences. This is what UAC is attempting to do.

Recording & Save Radio Internet Streaming as MP3 Audio Files with AudaCity

The radio programme is available as streaming audio [in Real Media or Windows Media] via the BBC Radio Player but there're no direct URLs to download the entire radio show as an MP3 file.

Sakshi wants to save the BBC radio stream on her computer and is looking for some simple method to do this. [download rm file from BBC and then convert real audio to mp3]

So here's a simple trick that uses a free software called Audacity to download any streaming radio from the internet to your hard drive as a WAV or MP3 file.

How to Install Fonts on Windows OS

Fonts are the typefaces we see on the computer screen. For example, Times New Roman and Verdana are fonts, and they define the shape of the characters we see on screen. A font can either be a serif font or a sans serif font and can be set in a bunch of different sizes.

System Requirements

• OpenType fonts can be used with Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher.
• TrueType fonts can be used with all the versions of the Microsoft Windows OS.
• To utilize PostScript Type 1 fonts, the installation of Adobe Type Manager (ATM) or ATM Deluxe is needed. However, if you are using Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher, you need not install it because it’s already a part of the operating system.

How to Get IP Address, MAC Address in network freely

SoftPerfect Network Scanner

 

SoftPerfect Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP scanner with a modern interface and many advanced features. It is intended for both system administrators and general users interested in computer security. The program pings computers, scans for listening TCP/UDP ports and displays which types of resources are shared on the network (including system and hidden).
In addition, it allows you to mount shared folders as network drives, browse them using Windows Explorer, filter the results list and more. SoftPerfect Network Scanner can also check for a user-defined port and report back if one is open. It can also resolve host names and auto-detect your local and external IP range. It supports remote shutdown and Wake-On-LAN.

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How to Enable Hibernate Feature In Windows 7

In Windows XP enabling Hibernate option was a very easy task, but we have to follow a different approach to do the same job in Vista and Windows 7.

If you are not aware of Hibernate feature, Hibernation is a power-saving state designed primarily for laptops. While sleep puts your work and settings in memory and draws a small amount of power, hibernation puts your open documents and programs on your hard disk and then turns off your computer. Of all the power-saving states in Windows, hibernation uses the least amount of power. On a laptop, use hibernation when you know that you won’t use your laptop for an extended period and won’t have an opportunity to charge the battery during that time.

How-To Develop Android Applications

Ok, so you’ve read the Android FAQ, successfully managed to install the Android SDK and get it up and running, so now you’re finally ready to get building some Android applications.
Below you’ll find anumber of links to sites that will be of great use to you as you get to grips with the Android SDK and begin to work on creating your own applications for the platform.
Android applications are written using the Java programming language, you’ll also use a custom virtual machine (Dalvik) to run and tst your creations. Dalvik is designed for embedded use which runs on top of the Linux kernal.

How to create read more (post summary) link on blogspot

Blogger has supported Read more function - To complete the 10^th anniversary gifts, now blogger has added one awaited button by thousands bloggers all around the world, it is "Jump Break" button or "More" button or "Read more" button that has function to cut off the article on homepage or known as "read more function".

How to disable AutoPlay WinVista Home Edition with Registry Hack

The Group Policy editor is not available on Windows Vista Home editions, so I’ve also included the registry tweak to disable AutoPlay entirely.

Download and unzip this registry hack and then double-click on the appropriate file.

• DisableAutoPlay.reg will disable autoplay entirely.
• DisableAutoPlayRemovable.reg will disable autoplay on removable devices.

How Disable AutoPlay or AutoRun in Windows Vista

Windows Vista’s AutoPlay options are a great improvement over Windows XP in terms of flexibility, but unfortunately there are so many options that it can be confusing, especially since there’s no specific mention of USB Flash drives in the options.
Open your Control Panel, and then click on “Play CDs or other media automatically” to open the AutoPlay dialog.


Disable AutoPlay Globally

The quickest way to disable AutoPlay entirely is to just uncheck the box for “Use AutoPlay for all media and devices”, which should usually work.

Disable for a Single Type
You can choose a setting in the drop-down menu for a single type of drive, for instance Audio CD in this example. For this to work you’ll have to make sure to keep the global autoplay option on, and then choose the specific setting in the drop-down.

How to Turn on/off AutoPlay Setting in Windows 7

AutoPlay allows you to set the AutoPlay settings for all media and devices. With AutoPlay you can also change which programs to use to start different kinds of media, such as music CDs or DVDs that contain photos. Eg. you can set for Software and Games CDs to start Installation or run automatically as soon as they are inserted in the CD Drive.

So with AutoPlay you can:

• Turn On/Off AutoPlay
• Set default program for media and other files
• Set default action for a device or type of media