We're all a little lax when it comes to sending as many "thank you" notes as we should.
That's where Facebook comes in. It's the perfect platform for thank you missives that can be personalized and shared, giving a public shoutout to someone who's done you a solid.


There are endless ways in which Facebook is ideal for sending a thank you note.

• Someone's given you/your child/your pet a gift. Snap a picture of the recipient with said gift and create a photo post, tagging the giver as a thank you. You get to show her how much the present was appreciated and she gets a public shoutout for her thoughtfulness.
• You enjoyed a delicious meal at someone's home. Be sure to grab a tasty-looking image of the food and the next day, post a Facebook #foodgram complimenting his amazing cuisine and tagging him as the chef. He'll be flattered you liked the food so much to create a post.
• You were invited to a party or other event. Take some arty shots and create a mini-gallery on Facebook, tagging the organizer. Make sure you mention details (the decorations, the venue, the music, etc.) so the organizer knows you really noticed the small things.
• If you want to say a thank you for a deed or kindness, but there's no obvious visual, think about what your recipient really loves. A cute picture of her favorite animal, a quirky image to make her smile, or a beautiful arty photo can work just as well.

Unlike traditional thank you cards, the great thing about social "thank yous" is that the person, or people, you're thanking get to post an instant "you're welcome" by commenting under it. Good feels all around.

Once you've created your photo post, don't forget to tag the person (by typing the "@" sign and selecting their name from the list that appears).
You can also add a "feeling" emoticon to further enhance your message. Just click on the yellow smiley at the bottom of your post to choose a suitable emotion, such as grateful, loved, thankful or delighted.
If you think your recipient would like it, add cartoon "stickers" to your photo: Once you've uploaded it, hover over the pic and click on the paintbrush-shaped "edit" icon. You can browse and add stickers.

Of course, you could always make your own digital thank you card and upload this as a Facebook image. A variety of sites and apps can help. We like the Red Stamp app for iOS. It lets you pay to create real cards and send them, but also gives you the ability to make free digital versions.

You can choose from a great selection of thank you card templates, add images and designs to make it personal, then upload your finished design to Facebook, remembering to tag the individuals you want to thank.

 

Website Performance Affects Your Bottom Line

We all know that website performance is extremely important. Every website visitor’s experience should be as optimal as possible. With 75-80% of website visitors coming from mobile browsers, it is important that your website is as streamlined and efficient as possible. Let’s take a look at some helpful tips for increasing website performance.

Be Sure To Test Your Website Every Once In A While

With free services, such as Google Page Speed, Yslow, and Pingdom, you can test your website’s performance for free. You gain valuable insight as to how fast your website is running, that you also learn where it is hanging up. Maybe there is a script that is taking too long to load, or maybe you have a lot of server requests. You may not know this is happening, unless you test your website using one of these services. It’s free, so why not?

Reduce Image File Size

It seems like images on the web are getting bigger and bigger. Mobile devices are beginning to be able to use more bandwidth as it is becoming available. Some web designers are forgetting that large images slow down your site. If you do decide to use a large image, make sure that it is optimized as much as possible for the web. There’s no point in using a 300 PPI image on your website.
It’s also important to remember to use the right file format for the right image. For flat one or two color graphics, use a GIF or PNG-8. If your image requires transparency, but is still 1 to 2 colors, use a GIF with transparency enabled. If it is a full-color image that requires transparency, then use a PNG 24. If it’s a full-color image that doesn’t require transparency than a JPEG is the best choice. Make sure to save it for the web, don’t make it super high quality unless you have to.

Minify CSS and JavaScript

Minification removes unnecessary characters and spaces from your CSS and JavaScript files. While this doesn’t seem like a lot, every little bit helps. You might also consider bundling your CSS and JavaScript files together. Remember when I talked about reducing the number of server requests? Combining CSS and JavaScript files will do that. The harder your server has to work, the slower your site will load.

Use Compression To Reduce File Sizes

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a theme here. It’s all about making everything smaller and more compact. The way you compress your files is to use gzip compression. This type of compression will lower file sizes, dramatically increasing your website’s performance.

Use Amazon S3 For Your Website’s Images

There are pros and cons of using images off-site. This can be a real headache when something goes wrong. This is especially true with WordPress, because there are a lot of plug-ins out there to help fix image problems when the images are actually on your server. The problem is missing images is multiplied when your images are off your server and hosted on another site. The advantage of this is that your server doesn’t have to work as hard. Images are displayed remotely, and Amazons hardware is extremely fast. You have to weigh out the pros and cons for yourself and decide whether the payoff outweighs the possible risks and headaches that may come.

Strip Down Your Site To Only What You Need

You might consider using the heat map tool that I mentioned on this week’s iTunes podcast. You can use it to record for your users are actually clicking on your site. If you have bulky ads that no one is clicking on, or scripts for special effects that no one seems to be using, you might strip these away to increase performance. The less scripts you have on your site, the faster it will load.

Stay Away From Script Heavy Sharing Buttons

I use sharing buttons on my website to promote social sharing and content promotion. I try my best to use the most lightweight solutions possible. However, there are some really script heavy social sharing plug-ins out there that cause your site to load an extra 3 to 5 seconds longer. This is murder for your page speed and rank. Consider using a more lightweight solution, such as sumo maze share plug-in. It’s fast, lightweight and gives you a ton of options. This is the case where features don’t necessarily have to equal size or bulk. You just have to know where to look.
There are some people who would say that you might consider stripping your social sharing buttons from your site altogether. I tend to disagree with this, because people are inherently lazy. They aren’t going to share your content unless there’s a button there to make it easy. Any extra effort you cause someone to have to take in order to share your content means that it is less likely to happen.

Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a script that only loads the images that are visible to the user. The rest of the images load as you scroll down the page, or they load in the background. While this sounds like just another script that will bog your site town, it actually speeds up the amount of time that it takes for your site load.

Conclusion

Focusing on website performance will give you a blazing fast website that users like exploring. No one likes waiting for every page to load. Increasing website performance will also increase your rank. It’s not really difficult to do, but it’s definitely something you should take a look at periodically. You never know when someone will make a change to a script, causing it to bog down your site. Regularly checking your website’s performance should be something that you add to your weekly routine. You have any tips for increasing website performance? Feel free to leave your tips in the comments section below.

A few weeks ago, WhatsApp's Call feature made a small appearance for a few users, but at the time almost no one was able to trigger it reliably and keep it activated. The company appears to have flipped a few switches in its servers and the function is confirmed to work for those running version 2.11.528 from the Play Store, or 2.11.531 from WhatsApp's website (also uploaded to APKMirror).



A few users have emailed us reporting getting the function activated over the past hours, and I just got mine up and running after receiving a call from Clinton (who got it from another friend, and so on). So as you are suspecting, the "invite" or, more accurately, the trigger that enables the feature has to be the reception of a call from someone who already has it. (Or maybe this terminal trick still works, I'm not sure.) Once that happens, WhatsApp's UI switches (either immediately or after you exit and reopen the app) from just showing chats, to a 3-tab layout with calls, chats, and contacts.

Calls are well integrated in WhatsApp. The dedicated tab shows incoming, outgoing, and missed calls with precise timing. Ongoing calls stay in the notification panel until you hang up while missed calls leave a notification that you can later check out. While on a call, you can activate the loudspeaker or mute the microphone. If you open your text chats with any contact, a call button appears in the action bar, right next to the attach icon and the menu, to make it easier to talk to them. And finally, if you click a contact's avatar, you now get a bigger profile image with the options to message or call them, or view their information.

The call button for all contacts now defaults to a WhatsApp call instead of going through your phone. I can't find a way to trigger a regular network call from the app, which is a bit annoying because you might be in a spotty area or your contact might be offline. (For the record, in this case, the WhatsApp call still rings for a while, no one answers, and then gets disconnected. When the person goes back online, they see it as a missed call.) You'll have to go to your regular Phone app to initiate a network call.
When you're lucky enough to receive a WhatsApp call from a friend, you can go on enabling the feature by calling your other contacts. If they're running an older version of the app that doesn't support it, you will instantly see a message notifying you of that so you can tell them to update their app before you call them. Now all you have to do is cross your fingers and hope that someone shares the riches with you so you can spread them further.

I'll leave you with the truthful words of CJ (whose face is all over my screenshots) that perfectly describe this feeling: "I feel so powerful now. What do I do with all this POWAAAAAAAH? *Calls random people in friends' list* With every person I activate, I get less powerful, gasp."

Update 5: 2015/03/25 1:18am PDT

Invites open again
The invites are working again. You are better off installing WhatsApp 2.12.14 and trying to get called by someone who has the feature activated.