How to make your Facebook note visible to everyone?

[Update on Oct 1, 2010]

Facebook has changed a lot since March 2010. This post previously is no longer valid. In the past, Facebook Notes privacy setting possessed its own rules and settings which were different from other applications. Nowadays everything has been migrated. Notes acts like other applications and its privacy permission setting also follows the norms.

There are 4 categories in permissions: Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only and Customize. The privacy permission is a lot of simpler. For example,

Setting permission to Everyone on a note means that this note is visible to everyone on Facebook, no matter if your wall is closed or the wall is visible only to yourself. However, if your personal profile is closed or only visible to certain people, the Facebook community may not see your note via your profile page unless they have your note URL, e.g. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=[your_note_id].

Unlike the past, the default setting of Notes application has no additional control on permissions. It will be applied to a note when published only when you don't make any permission change individually.

There are two areas to control if your Facebook note is visible to everyone.

First, you have to open your application permission door to the Facebook public. This application permission acts like a gatekeeper to control who can get in the Notes door and see your notes. The default permission is Everyone. Each individual note can be associated or applied by different permissions as needed. The default is still Everyone. If you set your Notes application permission to something else other than Everyone, and then you set your individual note to Everyone, your note will not be visible to everyone on Facebook. For example, if you set the Notes application permission to Only Friends, and you set your note to Everyone, it means that only everyone of your friends will see that note. In other words, the permissions for both the application and the note itself must be set to Everyone in order to share that note with the Facebook public. The following table could provides you some illustration.

Notes Application Permission	Individual Note Permission	Who can see the note
Everyone	Everyone	Everyone on the Facebook this is the default.
Only Friends	Everyone	Everyone of your friends on Facebook

All combination permission sets are not shown in this table. There are only two examples as discussed.

For me, I set my Notes application permission to Everyone; then I use the individual note permission to control who can see my notes. Some notes will be shared with the entire Facebook community, some with my friends, some with certain people and some even only for myself. If you are sure that you won't share anything to the Facebook public, you can just simply to close the door by setting the application permission to something else other than Everyone. Then the unwanted guests won't be able to get into your Notes territory.

How and where to set the application permission settings

Here is one of the ways to do it.

• Navigate to your Notes page, and then at the top of the page (blue bar), mouse over Settings. you will see something similar as below.
  
• Select Notes Settings if it exists; otherwise, select Application Settings.
• If you select Application Settings, locate the application called Notes and then click on Edit Settings.

• Now you're at the application setting control box where you can change the permission.

Individual Note Permission

In each note, you should find something similar to the following at the bottom of the note when you compose it. Set or change the permission as needed.

One more thing, Setting Everyone permission to both the application and the note will not make it to be visible to non-Facebook users. All users have to log in onto Facebook in order to see your note.

Location of IsolatedStorageFile

An IsolatedStorageFile is always persisted to a dedicated location by .NET isolated storage API. Each file, when it is first created, will be granted access at least to the current logged-on user plus other requirements. In other words, an IsolatedStorageFile is created based on isolated requirements called IsolatedStorageScope, for example,

• User + Assembly
• User + Assembly + Domain
• Roaming + User + Assembly
• Roaming + User + Assembly + Domain
• ...
• Machine + Assembly +
• Machine + Assembly + Domain
• ...

Note that you cannot initialize a storage with IsolatedStorageScope.User and IsolatedStorageScope.Machine together because IsolatedStorageScope.Machine represents All Users which include the current user. But either one of them must be present in the IsolatedStorageScope with others. In addition, you cannot use IsolatedStorageScope.Application if the application is not configured or running as a ClickOnce application, which implies you can only use either IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication() or IsolatedStorageFile.GetMachineStoreForApplication() for store initialization only when the application is NOT a ClickOnce application.

The exact location to represent the isolated storage "file system" varies from operating systems.

For user scope (IsolatedStorageScope.User) related, the isolated storage is located at

   XP: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\IsolatedStorage\
Vista: %USERPROFILE%\App Data\Local\IsolatedStorage\ 

For machine or all users scope (IsolatedStorageScope.Machine) related, the isolated storage is located at

   XP: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\IsolatedStorage\
Vista: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\App Data\Local\IsolatedStorage\ 

All storage entry points (folders) will be placed under the above location(s). Each of entry point or folder represents a store assigned or automatically created by .NET when an IsolatedStorageFile is first created. Then you can create folders or sub-folders relative to that store location. After that, you can even create another IsolatedStorageFiles under those sub-folders.

Disappointed Again

Yesterday I spoke with my brother about my friend's condition, who is currently fighting for the fatal disease, brain cancer. I am extremely worry about him, especially I can't pay him a visit due to geographical living locations. His radiation therapy is not doing well and he could lose his battle.

My brother immediate reaction makes me even sadder. He shows no compassion. Instead he said, I should prepare to deal with this thing to happen in my life when I get older. Who doesn't know this? No one needs him to remind of this. A person will leave the world eventually. Especially when we get older, such a sad story will echo to our ears and/or surround us more often. However, could he pretend to show some sympathy by simply saying "I am sorry to hear this"? He is disappointed me again!

I've seldom shared any feeling of mine with my family although we try to remain a good relation. Unfortunately, none of my family members understand me or even know what I will feel and think. Since a friend always encourages me to try/share my feeling with my family, it still fails and makes me even more upset. It was not the first time, the second time or the third. I can't remember how many times my families did to me. This episode is just a simpe example from my brother. I am not going to try again. They always hurt my feelings. I would rather keep all to myself or share with strangers who don't know me. Speaking to no one here, I will at least feel a lot better inside.

Health or Job?

I have felt extremely sad lately. But there is nothing I can do. A friend of mine passed out and rushed into the hospital in March. Then he had a brain surgery almost immediately next day and was diagnostics to brain cancer stage 4. The recent radiation seems not helping. According to a friend's messages, he also loses his confidence to survive. Right now, he cuts off people contact or visiting. Since we both are not living in the same country, I am unable to visit him. Instead I am thinking him a lot daily. I am afraid of losing him soon. He is one of my best friends I've ever had. His patient, listening, caring and consideration manner makes me/everyone feel comfortable to stay with him all times. He was "never" sick; he was very health conscious and always kept his health in a good shape. I can't imagine he ran into this fatal disease. Can he survive through this? No one is sure to tell. I cannot deny that the chance is less (although there are plenty of successful stories), especially when he loses his own confidence to fight this. I am not a Christian but I would like to pray for him to re-get his health over. Please, God bless and help him!

For those people who are currently losing jobs, please don't give up. You all definitely will receive a second chance (and more chances) to start your career and life again, and then stay happy. Remember, your life is much, much better than someone's, who is fighting for a fatal disease, losing health or life. No health means no life and no second chance. Please precious what you have now and make wise use of your free time to prepare yourself for your next career.

I also wish everyone healthy and no worry of sickness or disease.

Again, God, if you can hear me, please help and save my friend. Show me your mercy and the miracle. Thank you.

Cyberbully and MySpace

MySpace Mom:
The first felong charge case in Missouri. A 49 years old woman Lori Drew posing as a 16-year-old boy on MySpace befriended with a 13-year-old girl Megan Meier first, and then suddenly sent Meier hateful messages and even published her private messages online that led Meier who had a history of depression commite a suicide. Drew was found quilty of three misdemeanors by criminal laws, which have been recently overturned by arguing that violating a Website's terms of service (TOS) is not a federal crime. Although Drew's actions or motives disgust me, I don't agree that violating TOS constitued "unauthorized access" that induces violating federal anti-hacking laws. Harassment may be a better term. Missouri has changed its anti-harassment laws to cover cyberbully.

Craigslist's Casual Encounters:
A 40-year-old woman Elizabeth Thrasher posted a fake "Casual Encounter" ad on Craigslist for a 17-year-old girl with whom Thrasher argued over the Internet (MySpace again). Thrasher was currently out of jail on a $10,000 bond and prohibited from accessing to the Internet. She could face 4 years in state prision in addition to $5000 fine maximum if she was convicted.

Two cases are done by women. What was in those two women's minds? Are they sick or full of retaliation?

Moreover, two cases are somehow related to MySpace, one of popular social networks. Nowadays, the social network gathering has become "real" although we are not physically face-to-face. Conversations and/or arguments without geographical barriers happen every minute or any moment. These two cases are just a simple reflection of real-life scenarios. Whenever there are humans group together in a place, there may be a crime or evil thing to be conducted somehow.

Annoying JavaScript Error on IE7

There is nothing wrong with IE. It is the bad work done by the Web developers who did a very bad job. Even Google is not doing a good job either. See its blogger.com and most sites where installed Google Ads.

Since using IE 7, I keep getting javascript pop-up errors all the time. It is very annoying. "Disable Script Debugging" on your IE Internet settings doesn't mean you can eliminate all JavaScript errors. Some errors still continue popping up without your consent. I wish I simply put IE to retire but IE is still one of the popular browsers. I still have to use it for testing.

I am not a IE lover. I personally like to use Mozilla or now called Sea Monkey instead. Unfortunately, most sites don't support Mozilla but IE. Somehow I believe that IE popularity is related to its default distribution by the OSs. It induces users using it regardless of things users dislike.

Would this JavaScript problem be fixed soon? Unlikely, I think. IE 8 has already in the market. Later maybe IE 9, 10, ... Most sites focus on the latest technologies and have never bothered to fix things for the old browsers. Too bad for you if you're still using it! So don't count on them fixing it. Instead, users have to find their ways to deal with it.

Share or Trade?

I am reading news about "Rhapsody connects to Facebook, Twitter." You go and listen to a song you like at Rhapsody, then you post a link into your Facebook profile for sharing. Your friends see it and click on it; the link will bring them to Rhapsody site for further exploration.

Actually you're helping them to do advertisement for free and helping them to get more exposure in public - similar to the effect of "the word of mouth." The more people visit their sites, the more chances for them do business. It is just a marketing tactic. It looks like more and more business going to this direction.

Nowadays, sharing has another meaning attached to it - free advertisement - yeah, you share their content and they will make profit from your "sharing" - fair deal, huh? Or it may be called a trade!