Improve your MySpace profile

Your MySpace profile defines who you are, make sure you give the right impression. If your page takes too long to load and some features aren't available, you will not get a good response from your friends. View your profile and get an idea of what your friends are looking at to come up with a game plan for any changes you may want to make.
Now, open another tab in your browser and go to your "edit profile" page. This is the best setup to make changes to your profile and see the results. I like to open a text editor like "Notepad" to copy and paste codes to so that I have a backup in case I don't like the changes I made.
With this setup you will be able to copy and paste the existing contents of your profile, make changes to your "Edit profile" page, save the changes, tab to your view profile page and click on refresh to see the results. Now, we can get started on making a few tweaks to your MySpace profile.
First of all, avoid using duplicate style tags. You should only have one set of style tags in your "about me" section. Typically you will end up with duplicate style tags when you copy and paste multiple codes into your profile. All of the codes you've collected should go in the same set of style tags. Deleting multiple style tags will shave a few seconds off of your load time.
If you have videos or sound files on your profile, make sure that they don't play automatically when your page loads. This gets confusing to your viewers and sounds terrible. It also makes your page load slow. Check the code for these embedded files and change the auto play element from true to false.
If you have any falling object codes make sure that they don't interfere with the function of the page. Although falling object codes look nice, they can cover up the links on the page making them useless. I have seen profiles where the falling object codes made it impossible to send messages or leave comments so if you haven't heard from your friends since you got the falling object code, that may be why. If you really have to have your falling object code, you will want to spread it out so that it doesn't cover your contact box or nav bar. I'll cover that in another article.
Keep the width of your profile to the screen size. Most of your viewers will have a mouse with a scroll wheel on it making it easy to scroll up and down. But if your page is twice as wide as the screen, they will probably not see half of what you have on your profile. If you have images on your page that are too wide, you will want to place a width element in there to confine them to fit the screen.
Keep your graphics and videos to a minimum. I know you want everyone to see all of your favorite videos and pictures but if it take too long to load your page, people will leave. If you uploaded your own pictures and they load slow, try uploading a new one that is a smaller size or lower resolution. This includes the background image on your page. If you found it online check to see if you can find one with a smaller file size or save a copy of it, reduce it and upload it to your MySpace or Photobucket account.
Don't hide your comments. There are just as many codes to view hidden comments as there are to hide them so it doesn't work anyway. Besides, comments are for all to see, messages are for your eyes only. Some of the hide comment codes also hide the "add comment" link. You are more likely to get comments if people can see the comment link and read the comments that they sent you.

Use your own pictures as comments.

I'm sure that you are very proud of those pictures you have in your photo album on MySpace and would love to show them off. Or maybe you just can't seem to find the perfect picture comment on any of the several MySpace layout websites. Fortunately, it is very simple to show off your own photos as a comment to all of your friends. I'm going to give you the HTML you need and explain the process involved. Then, I am going to go into more depth on what the HTML is doing and why. This way you will be able to modify the code if you feel you need to.
The first thing you need to do is copy the HTML to place the image as a comment
<img src="" width="260px">
Paste this into notepad so that we can insert the picture into it. You could also go ahead and paste it as the comment then open a new tab in your browser to get the address of the picture. Either way, the next thing you will need is the URL or location of the image you want to use. Go into your albums and find the picture that you want to use. Right click on the image and select "Properties" from the pop up menu. When the Properties box appears, you will see a line that says "Location" and next to it is a line that begins with "http://" Highlight the location, make sure that you get the entire address. It should begin with "http" and end with ".jpg". Now, go back to the line of html. Click your mouse between the quote marks following src=. Then, right click and select paste. The address will now be pasted between the quote marks for src and you are ready to post your comment. Click on the post comment button and see if the image appears the way you want it. If it doesn't, you can always click on the back button and make changes or start over.
The HTML is fairly simple. Within the brackets is the tag for placing an image "img" and the source of the image "src". I also added a width of 260 pixels to make sure that the image fits in the comment area and fills it properly. The web browser will take care of setting the height property so the image is not distorted. If you want to add your own caption for the picture or add some text, you can do that before the html if you want your text above the picture or after the html if you want your text to appear below the picture.
You can also make your own picture comments and upload them to image hosting services like photobucket or flickr. Once you set up an account and upload your image they provide you with the html you need to leave the images as a comment. Just make sure that the images you upload are no wider that 160 pixels or your comment may get deleted by your friend when it interferes with their layout.

American Idol Fever

We are just a few weeks away from another season of American Idol. The season premiere begins January 15th and 16th with a four hour television event. This reality show has shown unbelievable staying power, now in season 7. Somehow the judges manage to find more new talent year after year. American Idol has become a huge part of our culture. Idolonfox.com has its own Myspace style social networking community called MyIdol where members can make new friends, discuss the show, comment on pictures and send messages to other members. There is also an American Idol bootcamp for kids ages 10 to 15 who aspire to be the next American Idol.
If winning American Idol isn't in the cards for you due to age or talent limitations, there is also an American Idol underground. Here you can become a member and submit your music to be posted online. Then other members listen to your music and rate it. The artist with the most votes wins prize money and so does the listener that casts the most votes.
So, there you have it, the many faces of American Idol and the many channels to get your American Idol fix. With anticipation in the air, we will all have to wait and see who will be the next winner. Find out after the break.

Reveal hidden comments on myspace

Myspace profiles provide a great way for us to communicate with our friends or make new friends on a global level. How nice it is to be able to send a private message to a friend and know that it is only going to be read by them. And the myspace creators were even nice enough to allow us to have an option to post a public comment on our friends page to let the whole world know how great we think they are. And isn’t it also nice to go to your friends page and see what everyone else has to say, be included in the funny comments or maybe find out if you are the first person to wish them happy birthday via comments?

It seems that some clever people have found a ways to make their comments appear to be hidden from the public. That’s right, somewhere in there profile they have added the code to hide the comments that were posted by their friends for all to see. If I wanted my comments to be private I would send them to you in a message. I wanted all of your friends to know that I was wishing you a wonderful weekend.

If you have ever gone to a friends MySpace profile and noticed that they have hidden their comments, I’m sure you felt very “out of the loop”. Or worse, what if you have kids that have a MySpace and you went to their page and noticed that they have blocked their public comments from the prying eyes of Mom and Dad. Don’t worry, you can still see them if you look in the right place. I’m sure you are even more curious about their comments now that you can’t see them. It kind of makes you wonder what they are hiding.

Well, these comments were meant to be viewed by all so let’s get into the simple trick to get these sneaky little guys back into the sunlight. Go to your friends page, the one that has the hidden comments. If you’ll notice up in the address bar of your web browser there is a long URL that seems to make no sense at all. Look for the part where it says, “&friendid=“. The number to the left of the equals sign is the friend ID number, write this down, you will need it to see the comments.

Now, erase all of that stuff in your browsers address bar and replace it with: http://comment.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewComments&friendID=
And type the Friend ID number at the end after the equals sign. Click on go or hit enter and the mystery is revealed.

This will not work on anyone that has a MySpace account, if their profile is not set to public you have to be their friend to view their comments, even the hidden ones. This little trick only allows you to read the comments that you could normally read if the friend had not set them up to be hidden.

More myspace info at how2life.com