Getting pictures from Facebook to your Android phone via the "Box" app

I've said in the past that one of the things I dislike about Android is that a lot of simple things really aren't as straight forward as they should be. Whilst I love the overall system I hate how tricky it makes things that really shouldn't be difficult and one of the most complex things is using the Facebook app to "save pictures" of your friends. You'd have thought just holding the picture would give you the option but sadly not, instead you need to use another app such as "Box".

Firstly you need to open your friends profile, here we are using the facebook profile of boxing website "Ringnews 24". From the person's profile you need to click "Photos" from the bottom of the screen and then find the specific photograph that you want to
use. For our example we are using the Ringnews24 image of David Haye that the site uses for it's Facebook picture.

When you have opened the picture you need to press the phone's "Menu" button which will see you given 6 options at the bottom of the screen. From those options you need to select "Share" from the bottom left hand corner. After clicking on "Share" you will

see a list of all the sharing apps on your phone, from the list you will need to select "Box" (obviously to use the "Box" app you will need to already have installed on your phone before getting to this stage).

After clicking on "Box" from the list of share apps you will be taken to the Box app "Upload screen" (which should look like the image on the right). The file name by default will contain "facebook", though you can feel free to rename the file in the usual way when using the "Box" app and when you are happy with the name you have to click "Upload".

After uploading the file to "Box" you will then need to download the file (which we wrote a guide on yesterday) to your phone before you can see it in your gallery.

Trust me I know this is an incredibly long winded way to save the pictures from facebook onto your phone, sadly however their doesn't seem to be a more logical one unless you log in to your facebook account via your browser and save the picture the way we explained in this guide.

Alternatives to MMS

A few years ago MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) was going to be the thing to really make the most of Camera Phones, the quickest and easiest way of sharing your photos with a friend or a family member. Sadly it seems like the lifespan of the MMS is almost over, the high cost of the service and size limitations have effectively killed it before it became the success it was expected to be. When Camera Phones first hit the market around the turn of the century few expected phones to advance to the point where they became small and powerful mobile computers (as Smart Phones now are), it's been the move to Smart Phones that has effectively killed the MMS.

Rather than writing a long obitury of the MMS I've instead decided to look at some of the most useful alternatives to actually using MMS, something I quickly did in an old article looking at the pros and cons of using e-mail instead of MMS. Whilst it is true that E-mail is still the prefered way for some, such as myself, it's certainly not the only way, in fact their is so many different ways that I'm not even going to be able to cover them all, just the most straight forward ones.

The most widely used "third option" (behind MMS and E-mail) are the new messenger apps, things such as Whatspp? and Ebuddy XMS which allow you to send pictures, messages and other forms of media over the internet for free. This is a service much like sending images over MSN for example. For this you only need to make sure you and your friend are both using the same messenger service and both online at the same time. Whilst some people may like this method (and some genuinely do use it an awful lot of the time) I've not been sold over to it personally due to fact that I've simply found Emailing to be quicker, though this is likely to change over the coming years as these services continue to improve.

Facebook has been an internet super-power for the past few years and now you can use the massive social networking sites to send pictures directly from your phone to someone on your friends list. To do this you need to use the Facebook "Messenger" app and select it as a "Share via" option (with an Android, I'm not exactly sure with other phones) when you've selected a picture, then slect a friend. This is a bit of a middle line between e-mail and the above messaging apps as this can be recieved on a PC or a Phone (or anywhere else where the recipient can access their Facebook).

You could as a fifth option (and by far the least attractive for some pictures) share them publicly via Social Networking sites like Twitter, Picasa or Google+. If the picture is something you do want to share with a wider viewing public this is a much better option than E-mailing it to a number of people. However on the flip, if the picture is something that you would only like one particular person to see you'd be rather silly to use this option.

As said at the start of this post, modern phones do have a host of other options to share pictures, though I'd say these are the main 5 to look at if you wish to share the picture with someone further a field than the Bluetooth range on your handset. Of course if you are close enough to use Bluetooth I'd reccomend using that instead as it's quicker and much easier than using things like Ebuddy XMS or Facebook.

Posting youtube videos to facebook on an Android phone

 So you've found an awesome youtube video whilst surfing the web on your Android Smartphone phone and now you want to share it with your friends, but you don't know how. This guide will explain, in details, exactly how you share any videos found on the youtube app with your friends on facebook, twitter, google+ or any other social networking app.

First you will need to load up a video in youtube and make sure the view is set to the portrait view. This should look something like the image to the left and at the top of the screen you can clearly see "More", click on this.

After clicking on "More" you will see 5 new options open up on the screen like in the screen shot to the right. From those options you will need to select on the "Share" icon (which you can see near the right hand side of the screen). If you've used the "share" facility on Android in the past you will know what to expect
and for those that haven't used the "share" facility before it is really simple. You'll see a list of your social apps (similar to the screen shot on the left) which you can scroll down to find the exact app you want to use, for example "Twitter" or "Plume".

When you've selected the app you want to share the video on
you will be taken to the post status screen (like this screen shot of posting on Facebook). When you've added your message to go with the video just post (or share) as you would do normally and it'll be updated to your status.

How to make sure that Facebook syncs properly on a Samsung Galaxy S2

Whilst you may have added your facebook information to your Samsung Galaxy S2 and synced the phones up originally, and added contacts to your address book as a result you may have noticed some issues. In fact one of the big problems you likely will have encountered is that the phone doesn't notify you of messages or similar things. To sort this issue you may wish to read the rest of this guide.

The first thing you will nee to to is open up the "Accounts and sync" screen in the Settings menu. To do this press "Menu" on a home screen, then "Settings" and find "Accounts and sync". At this stage you should see a screen like the one to the right with with a number of various accounts synced to the phone. The one you need to select is
"Facebook for Social Hub" (you may have 2 facebook options so make sure you select the right one). After doing that you should see a screen like the one to the left with 3 options with tick boxes, make sure each of those is ticked and then click on "SNS setting". The SNS setting is the important option that many people haven't actually looked at, probably thinking it's rather complicated but it's a key option.

 After pressing "SNS setting" you will then be given a list with "Sync Calendar", "Sync Contacts" and "Sync Messages". You need to select one of those then you'll see a screen like this one with a list of options regarding to time. When you select one of those you will notice your Facebook will sync up that category (Contacts, Calendar or Messages) at the set time. Make sure you set all 3 so that the phone automatically
updates them when it needs to. So this will help keep your Calendar up to date and your Contacts synced if a friend changes their number (and updates their own facebook).

Sadly it seems that the minimum setting currently available is 3 hours so if you need to sync more regularly you may need to manually sync the app up just to keep up to date, though for normal people 3 hours could well be regular enough syncing time.

For most people they may have already assumed they were automatically syncing, if you've not found the phone to be synching make sure you check your SNS settings as that seems to be the common error.

How to add a picture from the Samsung Galaxy S2 Gallery to Facebook

 So we've managed to take a bunch of photographs with the excellent 8MP camera on the brilliant Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone and now we want to add one of the pictures to Facebook. Firstly we need to find the picture in the Gallery, so open up the Gallery App and find your photograph then press the phone's "Menu" button. After doing this your display should look something like the image to the right with options along the bottom saying "Share via", "Delete" and "More".
When you see the options mentioned above you need to click on the "Share via" option and you'll soon be greeted with a nice long list of possible choices with all the apps you can share things via. At this screen you need to select on on "Facebook"
after which you will quickly be taken to the facebook app and
asked to give a name to your picture (as in the picture below right).

After giving your picture an adequate title/name you need to click on "Upload" and the photo will be added to one of your facebook albums. Please note before doing this however that
you will need some form of active internet connection (be it
mobile internet or WI-FI) and if you're using mobile internet it will be taken from your allowance.

It is worth noting before you begin that photographs can take a while to upload. If you pull down the notification bar from the top of the phone you can "watch" it uploading to your facebook account. When it reaches 100% your photo will be in your facebook album (usually the "Mobile" folder or something to that effect).

How to sync your your Samsung Galaxy S2 calendar to Facebook

Thanks to the advancement of technology we no longer need to use paper based calendars. Modern day phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 have effectively made traditional calenders obsolete, we don't need a big paper thing on the wall when we have a mobile phone that stores everything. The biggest advantage however of modern day technology is that you can sync things together and rather than adding all your key dates to every calender manually you can automatically add things from facebook onto your phone.

The image to the right hand side is of the default Calendar application without facebook being synced to the the application. To sync facebook is actually really easy and to start you need to press the menu button then press on settings and scroll down to the option of "Calendar sync" which will look like the screen on the left. Here you will need to click on "Add account" and you'll see a screen that lists a number of account options. The one you need to select is obviously Facebook.

After clicking on facebook you will have to to enter your login information and select what you want to sync, the important option here is the "Sync Calendar" option (which will be the bottom of 3 possible options).
After you do this you need to check your Calendar again and you will then swiftly notice a number of blue dots on the calendar, these are the birthdays of your facebook friends just one of many things you now become aware of due to the calender.

For some they may still prefer traditional calenders but thanks to this swift and easy way of adding your birthdays and things to your phones calender it's getting harder and harder to defend buying calenders. It's yet another reason why smart phones are slowly becoming a vital gadget and becoming a true-all-in-one tool.