Post to Google+ (G+) using SMS | Feature For INDIAN Users

It seems that often when a new service from Internet giants such as Google or Facebook is launched, all the cool features are primarily US-centric with the rest of the world left high and dry.

Hence, it is quite surprising to see Google offering an exclusive feature to Indian Google+ users through which they can update their stream using text messages.

Enabling the service

To update Google+ through text messages, you will have to initially add your phone number in Google+ settings, following which Google will text you a verification code which has to be added in the Google+ settings. Optionally, you can also add a security PIN for extra security and avoid spoofing of text messages.

Further, you can also modify the notification settings so that you can be notified by any specific activities on Google+ such as mentioning your name, commenting on your post, adding you to a circle, tagging you in a photo and more.

While these notifications are also available to US users, Indian users get the additional benefit of being able to post into their Google+ stream by texting a message to 9222222222 at no extra cost. This update will be visible to all your circles by default and you will be charged as per the standard message rates from your carrier.

You can also have better control of your posts by sharing them with only specific people or circles, by using a few short codes which can be appended to your text messages..

Quite honestly, it does make a lot of sense to offer SMS posting capabilities to Indian users since smartphone penetration is still pretty low and a lot of users still rely on SMS to converse with their friends/family.

That aside, Facebook has also tried to tap into this market over the past few years with several initiatives such as Facebook Zero and Facebook text messages, but it has very few mobile operators onboard whereas this SMS feature from Google seems to be carrier-agnostic, which could provide an competitive advantage to Google in the forthcoming months.

Great Facebook Tricks & Tips

1. Hide Your Online Status From Selected Friends:

So you want to use Facebook chat but don’t want some people to see your online status? Simply open up the Facebook Chat and click on Friends List. Start creating a new list called BlockList.
Once the list is created, add those friends to the list that you want to appear offline to. When the list is complete, hover your mouse to the little green icon adjacent to the list and click Go Offline. Bingo! You will now appear offline to everybody in the BlockList.

2. View a Friend’s Profile Without Messy Applications:

If you are like me, you often get annoyed by the dozens of silly applications that people have added to their profile. Here’s a Grease Monkey script that allows you to view any profile without all those applications. Remember: the Mozilla Firefox web browser is a prerequisite for running Greasemonkey.

3. Display Your Facebook Status On Your WordPress Blog:

Want to display your Facebook status updates on your WordPress blog? There is a plugin that does exactly that. StatusPress lets you display your status updates to a widget on your WordPress blog.

4. Access Facebook Chat Through Your Desktop:

No need to go to Facebook.com if all you want to do is use Facebook chat. You can do it right from your desktop using clients like social.im , Adium or ChitChat.

5. Update Facebook Status From Firefox:

If you are a firefox addict you don’t need to use any other software to update your Facebook status. Simply install the FireStatus add-on and update your status right from your browser. You can also use the Facebook Toolbar to completely manage Facebook from your Firefox browser.

6. Create A Photo Collage From Pictures Of Your Facebook Friends:

Easily create a photo collage from profile pictures of all your Facebook friends using a simple Facebook app called Photo Collage.

7. Add A New friend But Hide It From Your Status Update:

A great tutorial by Tim Watson walks you through the process of hiding specific actions from your status updates.

8. Schedule Facebook Messages To Be Send Later:

If you want to schedule your Facebook messages to be send sometime in the future, Sendible is a great tool to do that. You can also use Sendible to schedule your status updates.

9. How To Share Flickr Photos On Facebook:

My Flickr is a Facebook application that lets you display your Flickr photos and photo sets on Facebook so your friends can view and comment on them without leaving Facebook.

10. How To Download Facebook Photo Albums:

Ever felt the need to download complete photo albums from Facebook. You can easily do it with either a Windows desktop application named FotoBounce or a great Firefox add-on FacePad.

11. Upload Photos On Facebook From Your Phone:

All the smart phones like iPhone and Blackberry make it simple to upload photos to your Facebook account but how would you do it if you have a regular phone? Here is a great tutorial to walk you through that.

12. Magic Circles On Facebook:

You might have heard about the Konami code that makes red blurry circles on your Facebook page. This might be one of the most popular Facebook hidden tricks. Here’s how to do it:

Press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter key then press up & down & Magic circles will appear!

To stop them simply reload your page.

13. Use Your Facebook Like A Pirate:

Do you love talking like a pirate? You can set your Facebook to appear like a pirate page by going into Current Language Settings and setting it to English (Pirate).


14. How To Insert Cool Symbols In Your Status Updates:
Make your status updates interesting by inserting cool symbols. Simply copying them from this list and pasting in your status updates.

15. Automatically Poke Friends That Poke You:

Don’t have enough time to poke back friends who poke you on Facebook? Automate it with a Grease Monkey script called Facebook Autopoke.

16. Upload Photos From PicasaTo Facebook:

Upload photos to your Facebook account directly from Picasa using the Picasa app for Facebook. You can also upload the Picasa captions and resize your photos before uploading them to Facebook.

17. Search Facebook Like A Pro:

Not everybody knows how powerful Facebook search is. Similar to any large search engine, Facebook search has a lot of advanced options to help you search like a pro. For example if you are looking for a person named John Marsh and filter your results down to only people who are married, you can try name: John Marsh status:married. A complete list of search tips for Facebook can be found here.

18. How To Update Facebook Status From Gmail:

Facebook gadget for Gmail allows you to update your Facebook status right from your Gmail.

19. How To Access Gmail From Facebook:

If you seldom have to leave Facebook just to go check your Gmail inbox, check out Fmail. It is a great application that lets you check your Gmail from within your Facebook inbox.

20. See Facebook Twitter style:

If you love Twitter more than Facebook, you can view your Facebook just like you view your Twitter using this grease monkey script.

21. Import Facebook Friends To Twitter:

FB140 is a simple tool that lets you find all your Facebook friends that are using Twitter so you can easily follow them.

22. Access Facebook From Microsoft Outlook:

This is a great tip for people attending colleges or working in places that block Facebook, but allow you access to Microsoft Outlook. Simple install the FBlook plugin and access Facebook from Outlook.

23. Display Your Facebook Status Upside Down:

This is a cool and fun trick. To display upside down status updates, simply head over to FlipText and type in your status. Then simply click on Flip Text and copy-paste the upside down text into your Facebook status box.

24. Update Facebook Status Using Twitter:

Wouldn’t you love to update your status on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Just install the Twitter application for Facebook. Once synced, your tweets including the #fb tag would automatically be posted as status updates on your Facebook.

25. Download Videos From Facebook:

Facebook has one of the largest collection of user uploaded videos.You can download most of the videos from Facebook by using a client like SpeedBit or DownFacbook.

GooglePlus (G+) status with FACEBOOK - Sync

Sync your Google+ (Google Plus) status with Facebook ?

How to sync G+ status with FB ( Facebook ) ? 

So are you on Google+ yet ? If you are already there and lucky enough to get invitation from Google or any of your friend, you might want to sync your g+ status with facebook, because some of you still don’t want to loose facebook also
Although, till todate, Google has not come up with any of the G+ API (they will come soon), but still there is way to sync the Google Plus status with facebook or even twitter ?


Yes, all you have to do :

Step 1: Go to http://facebook.com/mobile and get your personalized email address which can be used to post pic and post statuses on the facebook. (This is something which is private for you)

Step 2: Go to https://plus.google.com/ and go to the section where you can invite your friends to your G+ profile. This section can be seen usually on top right corner of G+ main page.

Step 3: Click on “Add a New Person” and write your personalized  facebook email address which you got in Step 1.

Step 4: Drag this address to the circle below to create a new circle, since this email address cannot be seen publicly, so you need to create a new circle which should be hidden by others. You can do all privacy settings about circles, by going into the Privacy options in
Google+.

Step 5: You are all set, now whenever you are updating your status at Google+, include your hidden circle that contins the facebook email and check the box which says ‘Also emil xxx people’ . Since your facebook email is not using Google+ so your status will be sent to facebook via this email.

Cool ? … yes … till you get any plugin or any other tweaks by developers, I think this is enough for you.

You can do the same steps for other social network also. For example: http://ping.fm offers you to update status on several networks via one personalized email address. You can use ping.fm for your G+ – Twitter sync as well.

Make sure you care about ‘Privacy’.

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