Facebook Talk

For many of these hacks, you are going to need to be using the Firefox browser and have the Greasemonkey extension installed. Both are free to download and amazingly easy to use, so fear not!

Plugins

This AIM / Facebook plugin only works with the latest AIM version, but it’s such a cool little program that it’ll make you think about upgrading if you haven’t already. Basically what it does is alert you to whenever you’re poked, messaged, or etc. Now you’ll be able to respond in lightning fast time and won’t continute to refresh your profile to see if anything new has shown up in the last 19 seconds! (plugin homepage)

Facebook’s own development team put together a Facebook Toolbar that basically does the same thing as the AIM plugin, but instead of working through AIM, it installs a toolbar on your browser of choice.

Usage Hacks

Auto Login - Automatically logs you into Facebook as long as you have your password stored in Firefox. (Script’s homepage)

Auto Refresh - You might wonder why you’d want something that automatically refreshes your Facebook home page every 30 seconds. But when you use this and the script below… (Script’s homepage)

EZPoke - This awesome little script makes it much easier to poke somebody and when used in conjunction with the script above, it makes winning those Poke Wars a breeze! This completely automates the process of poking somebody by removing the confirmation page and skipping the success page. Thus, when the auto refresh loads your home page and sees a new poke, this script takes care of poking them back for you! Now you can just leave your computer on all day and never be defeated in a war! (Script’s homepage)

Firewalls & Blocked Pages

So your school or work has blocked Facebook from your computer? What a shame! Fortunately for you, 99% of the time you can circumnavigate any obstacles in your way to surfing Facebook!

One of the best ways to do so is to use Mathcookbook. In fact, it’s also one of the simplest methods to bypass any firewall set up. Simply go to Mathcookbook, enter in the site that you want to visit, and hit “begin.” That’s it! You’re now surfing Facebook, Myspace, or whatever other site you want to without anything stopping you.

Another great way is to use a language translator page to “translate” the sites from any language into English. These sites fool the blocking software into thinking the page you are loading is only the language translation site and not a Facebook profile. Some of the most popular sites to use are Google Language Tools, Babel Fish Translation, FreeTranslation, Online Website Translation, Language Translation, or Online Translator. Any of those should work wonders.

However, the two methods above only work if the block is based at the router. If, instead, it’s based through a piece of software that you’re school has installed, they won’t work. But there’s still a way to beat the system! What you’ll want to do is get a USB thumb drive with some room on it and install a new operating system (ie, NOT Windows) on it. The best ones to try are Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux, both of which are easy to install, small enough to fit on a thumb drive, and free.