Digital Knowledge

For most internet users who are starting off their web journey, Internet Explorer is likely to be their first browser. This is mostly because, it is the only browser installed by default on the popular series of Windows Operating Systems from Microsoft. Hence, many of tend to get entrenched in IE and most importantly start to create and compile a list of useful bookmarks which they later find hard to give up when they switch over to a more user friendly and feature rich browser such as Firefox.

This tutorial will help them overcome all of these shortcomings.

1. Install and open Firefox.
2. Click On File->Import button.
3. A dialog box will pop up asking you from which browser you want to make the import. The best part about Firefox is that it will auto-detect the browsers installed and give you the respective options for importing them.
4. Select on Internet Explorer and click on the next button.
5. The browser will now give you options about which settings you want to import from your Internet Explorer to Firefox. Choose the ones that are pertinent, and click on next.
6. The browser will now start to import the requisite files.
7. Once the import process is completed, you can click on the finish button.
8. The imported bookmarks can be seen from the Bookmarks menu under the “From Internet Explorer” Bookmark heading.
9. If you have chosen to import any other settings from IE, those too will be merged in the respective places in your Firefox as well.

In the first part of our guide, we saw the basic functions of twitter and how it can be used to communicate with friends. However, the concept of twitter goes much beyond just providing a medium of communication between yourself and your friends. Twitter has expanded itself to provide many other additional features that have turned tweets and ‘trends’ into well-known internet topics.

Trends
Trends are a new feature which shows the hottest topics that are being tweeted about within a specific time period (usually 24hrs). The top trends that have been dominating twitter are also shown and updated on a real-time basis. Trends are also divided on the basis of country so that one can know what the latest buzz word in a particular country is.

Twitter Search
Twitter search basically involves browsing through all the tweets made by various users to find the latest occurrences of a particular word. The results are also updated on a real time basis if you have a compatible browser. Hence, you can easily keep track of how many people think the keyword you have entered is good enough to be tweeted.

Twitter & Mobile
Twitter also provides you with the functionality to keep track of your tweets via mobile. By simply sending a few SMS, you can tweet your thoughts from wherever you are on a real-time basis. The full list of twitter commands for mobile is given below.

FOLLOW username
Start following a user

UNFOLLOW username
Stop following a user

ON/OFF
Turn all Tweet notifications on or off

ON/OFF username
Set Tweet notifications for a user on or off (you’ll still be following them even if you set it to off)

GET username
Shows you the latest tweet from any user

RT username
Retweet a user’s latest tweet

FAV username
Favorite a user’s latest tweet

D username your-message
Send a direct message to a user

As per your telecom subscriber’s settings, you may be charged for sending sms to twitter. However, receiving any updates via twitter on your mobile is free. For further details, check out http://twitter.com/devices

General guidelines to use twitter

Twitter gives you a lot of freedom in making tweets. However, it is always advisable to at least follow a general set of guidelines while using twitter.
DO NOT

• Use twitter for purely advertisement purposes and spam with links all over your tweets.
• Squat on a username that could possibly be trademarked.
• Create many alias (duplicate) accounts either by yourself or using a BOT to do the same.
• Post any link that could lead people to a phishing or virus related or any site that violates the general etiquette of the World Wide Web.

If your account doesn’t fall under any of the above mentioned categories, you can very well contact twitter support at suspended@twitter.com and get your suspension revoked. In many cases, a misunderstanding might also be the reason for your suspension and sending an email can get your account access restored within hours.

Enjoy using twitter!

Twitter is one among the latest social networking phenomenon that has taken the whole world by storm. The concept of twitter differs from Facebook and other social networking websites in that it presents a form of sharing your thoughts and updates in real time. The twitter concept has caught on in a big way and we present to you an easy to use guide for getting started on twitter.

Getting an account
Getting a twitter account is very easy. All you need to do is to visit http://www.twitter.com and click on the sign up link that you see there. The account creation process is pretty simple and requires very few basic details. Choose your username carefully as that will appear as your display name for twitter. Check out the terms of service and click on the submit button. The account is created and ready for use.

Tweeting your way forward
As you would have probably noticed by now, tweets are what drive twitter. Hence, you need to learn how to make a tweet and what tweets are in the first place.

A tweet is nothing but a short post which describes your current activity or your thought process or just about anything that you wish to share with the world. The tweets will be visible on your friend’s home page or on your own home page if someone visits your twitter home. Since it is basically a social networking concept, the chances of your tweets getting read are more if you have a larger social network of friends who actively use twitter.

Making a tweet
Making a tweet is a very simple task. Just logon to your twitter account, and make a post in the box provided at the top of your twitter home and click on share. Your post or tweet as it is called is instantly posted and visible on the home pages or timelines as they are called of all your buddies.

Socializing on twitter
In the previous section, we mentioned about how your tweets will show up in your friend’s timeline. But for that to happen, they need to be on your network first! To do that, they need to click on the follow link in your profile. The same way, by clicking on the follow link in their profile, you can keep track of all the tweets they make from your home page itself. This is called as following someone.

To un-follow a person, all you need to do is to click on the respective link in their home page. All future timelines of that particular person will be removed from your home page.

Replying to a tweet
Responding to a tweet is also pretty simple. From your home page, choose the tweet you want to respond to. Then hover over it and click on the reply button that appears below the tweet. A text box will pop up with a @symbol followed by the other person’s username. You can append your reply to that and click on update to make the tweet. The @user-name can be directly used if you want to refer a particular tweet to someone.

Keeping track of your replies
To see who have replied to your tweets, click on the @your-user-name from the twitter sidebar to show all your buddies who have posted some reply to your tweet or sent you a tweet.

Re-tweeting
Other than the reply button below a tweet, you will also see a re-tweet button. Clicking that will allow you to transmit someone’s tweet as your own while referring to that person as well. This helps when a message needs to be passed across to a large cross section of twitter followers across the globe.