I just had yet another Facebook (FB) crash. I type too fast for FB to keep up in comments and notes. When this happens, the screen dims and I know that the error message isn’t far behind.

Tonight, it happened while I was putting in a comment on a friend’s note containing travel hints. (Which, by the way, I will be adding as a guest post when this post is done.)

Instead of panicking, I thought “Snagit”! My first attempt was a text grab, but the text was too faded. The second attempt was an image grab – that worked. When my browser re-opened, I just set the two windows side by side and re-typed the text. The image I grabbed was:

If I had been thinking, I would have dropped it into OneNote to grab the actual text. It just takes a few moments to drop the image into OneNote, copy the text from the image, paste it on the note page, edit it, and copy paste it to the note after the browser comes back. OneNote did a halfway decent job of recognizing the text, as you can see here:

Has SnagIt saved the day for you? How? Let me know!

(In the interest of full disclosure: TechSmith takes good care of those who help them beta test and discuss thier products. In my case, that good care includes a few great tchotchkes through the year and a paid account on Screencast.com. I regularly tell Betsy Weber that I would write about and talk about the products even without the extras and that they rock. If you think so, you should tell them too!)

I get responses on Twitter when I first publish. I get LOTS of comments on some topics on Facebook. In fact, I have some people who only comment on my content via Facebook. I will occasionally get a comment sent to me via email.

I have been asked why should one comment on the blog. From the writer’s perspective, I like comments posted on the blog because it is a visible sign that  what I wrote connected with someone. But if they comment on Facebook, I see that too. So, why do I expect comments on the blog itself?

I think my desire to see comments on the blog is from an outdated sense that the blog itself is where my audience is. Ironic, isn’t that? I know that much more of my community is on Twitter and Facebook. I didn’t connect that fact with the location of the feedback.

Something on Facebook seems to cause people to not only connect with the content, but also with each other. I linked my blog to my notes today. Immediately, a conversation started on the “Guess the airport!” post. I don’t know if it was the timing of the information or if it was the location of the content. I am guessing that the people who commented felt more comfortable  in the Facebook environment. I haven’t yet figured out why, but am hoping they all tell me. (And I don’t care where they tell me!)

I find myself wondering… Where do people comment on your content? Are you looking for the comments actively? Are you finding them all?

Today, I think I finally figured out (and fixed) the last piece of the problem. I was allowing three Facebook applications to update my page with my tweets:

• FriendFeed
• Tweeter
• Twitter

I had found the FriendFeed problem about a month ago.Today I dug and found Tweeter.

Where did I find it? Let’s step through:

1. Edit your applications. The easiest way to get there is to click the applications box on the lower left of your Facebook page. At the bottom of the list, you will find “Edit Applications”.
2. Change the “Show” dropdown to “Allowed to Post”.
   

   Change "Show" setting

3. Scroll down to the section “Allowed to Post One-Line Stories without Prompting”.
4. Scroll through that section of the page and find anything that posts your tweets (FriendFeed, Tweeter, Twitter, etc.)
5. In turn, click edit settings for each of those applications.
6. Change to the “Additional Permissions” tab and uncheck “Publish to streams”.
   

   Uncheck to stop the double posts!

7. In turn, click edit settings for each of those applications. Be sure to leave at least one application posting to your feeds, or your tweets won’t ever show.

If you want to dig further, check the “Granted Addtional Permissions” tab. You will see multiple sublists on that page. I found that Twitter was set to publish to my wall, my status, and others. I tried to change it to just my status, but was not successful. It seems to be either on everywhere or off everywhere.

As far as I can tell, this process should fix the double posts for future tweets. It won’t change tweets made before the change. If you find differently, tell me – we’ll keep beating on the problem!

UPDATE:

After much hassle, I decided to go with TweetDeck. I installed TweetDeck and set it up to send to both Twitter and Facebook. The notes about turning off thenotifications from applications still applies, but TweetDeck doesn’t work via the applications. Instead, it runs on your desktop (or iPhone if you are lucky enough to have one). You post from it.

If you want help on getting it set up, let me know!