I run a Facebook group and am considering switching it to a Facebook fan page, but I don't think it'll address my basic problem: how do I make a Facebook group or fan page interesting and lively to my online community? Do I need to have giveaways? Spend an hour each day making new postings? What's the secret, Dave?

Now that I have a bunch of apps on my new Apple iPhone 3GS, I want to change what's where in the most efficient manner possible: dragging back and forth isn't my idea of fun when there are three screens full of icons! What's the best approach for reordering my apps on the iPhone?

Kind of a weird request, but I'm wondering if there's a way to minimize my logins when I'm at an Internet Café so that I can log in to one service, like Gmail, and be automatically logged in to Facebook?

I still use Hotmail because it's what I am familiar with and it's what I've been using for years, but I'm starting to get jealous of my friends on Gmail because of all the cool themes they can apply to their mailbox to make it look cool. Is there any way to skin or otherwise tweak Hotmail to make it look a bit more cool?

My son and his friends are really into a iPhone program called Foursquare, and whenever they go somewhere, they "check in" so that they can find each other. Neat idea. Is there some way that I can add my own restaurant to the list of places where people can check in so that they'll see we're popular and perhaps check us out?

As I have moved more into conference calls via Skype and am now involved in two podcasts on a weekly basis (Boulder Open Podcast (or in iTunes) and Three Insight (or in iTunes), you are listening to them, right? I hope so!) I'm finding that the built-in microphone on my MacBook Pro isn't the optimal audio quality. Worse, there's also a frequent feedback loop of it picking up the audio coming out of the speakers which leads to a sort of weird echo/reverb loop.

As a result, I've been on the hunt for a good, small, portable microphone that will offer better audio quality and still be compact enough that I can have it in my computer bag without adding weight and bulk. My ideal is a tiny lavalier microphone that can be clipped onto my shirt and plug into the "mic" input on my MacBook Pro, but so far I haven't found a single manufacturer offering such a thing. Oddly, but maybe it's a tough problem.

When my colleagues and I have all been in the same room, we've been recording our podcasts using the Blue Microphone Snowball, which is a nice microphone but pretty big and bulky. When Blue Microphone contacted me and asked me if I wanted to evaluate the Snowflake, what they call their "portable professional USB mic", I was most interested...

I got a text from a friend of mine, iPhone to iPhone, and darn if she didn't have all sorts of cute little icons in her message to me. When I asked how she did it, she said "emoji!" I have no idea what that is or what it means, but I really want to be able to respond in kind ASAP. Help?!

I don't know how it's happened, but I seem to have a bunch of duplicate tracks in my (huge) iTunes library and it's annoying as heck. I can remove them by hand, but it's tedious and I'm afraid of user error. I checked out the "Show Duplicates" feature in iTunes, but it seems to think that songs with the same name by different artists on different albums are dupes. Uh, no. So what's the solution, Dave? Oh, if it matters, I'm on an iMac.

Another game for the iPhone? I already have over a hundred games on my iPhone (one reason my kids are always stealing my phone!) so when my friend Gary dropped me a note to let me know that his long-time hit Gold Strike [iTunes link] was now available through the iPhone App Store, I was skeptical. He writes great games but still, another game? Fortunately, I sprang for the $0.99, dropped it onto my phone and am impressed!

Hi, my name is Viola and I'm going to be a mom, a single one but a mom and I am a photographer. I've had my own show for my photos and I was wondering if you can guide me to finding some websites that will buy my stock photos of Colorado and other places. I really need help so I am able to save money for baby stuff so if you can't I'm sorry for wasting your time, I just have a very strong passion for photography.

This is weird, but all of a suddenly my MacBook Pro is running really hot and the fan keeps turning on. Not a big deal, but I'm used to it being quiet and smooth without ever even being aware of its temperature. Is there a power supply problem, as my Dad suggests, or is it something else going on? I'm just afraid that my Mac is about to die and that'd be a disaster!

Over time I have become reliant on Google's Gmail service, but it strikes me that if I were to ever bail on it, I'd have a hard time rebuilding all of my email rules. Even if not, it'd be helpful to migrate my rules from one account to another. Except, as usual, there's no way to do that. Or is there a way to export and import Gmail mail filters?

I read that you can now respond to Facebook comments via email, which is pretty cool when you don't have a fancy smartphone. My question is, how does it work?

I've been hearing a lot about how the American Red Cross has raised millions of dollars in relief funds for the Haitians through people "texting 'HAITI' to 90999" but I have an iPhone and I know how to send text messages to my friends by finding them in my Contacts app, but how do I send a text message like that to a non-phone number numeric code [they're called "shortcodes" in the industry, btw --Ed]?

My friends are all into playing the game "FourSquare" and when I checked it out, it looks like it's only for smartphones like the iPhone. Kinda stinks because I don't have a "smart" phone, just a regular cellphone. Am I stuck in the cold, or is there some way to play FourSquare from my Mac laptop?

This is a guest article written by freelance programmer Ville-Matti Hakanpää

In this brief introductory tutorial I will go through some basic aspects of Facebook application development. The work itself is basic app programming, but it's a whole new world and environment. If you have a wonderful idea, Facebook can work as a great distribution channel for you. Heck, even a bad idea can get some attention fast!

Start out with the most basic of questions, though: what makes a good app?

That's the first and most common question people are asking or they should be asking. The best way to start when you're trying to decide what to develop is to look through all the other applications what are inside Facebook already. Facebook applications are listed and rated by users, so there's a feedback loop there too that tells you the kind of things people find useful and engaging.

How can I print a document "sideways" in Microsoft Word (or print a Web page in Internet Explorer sideways, for that matter), so that the words run lengthwise down the length of the paper, rather than running from side to side parallel with the shorter sides of the paper?

How can I use InPrivate Browsing in Microsoft Internet Explorer, to prevent other users of the computer from seeing my browsing history and knowing what websites I've visited?

I'm experimenting by switching from Safari on my Mac OS X system to Google's new Chrome system (well, actually I am running Chromium, the software build release that includes support for extensions) and the one thing I really miss is 1Password. Is there any way to add that to Chrome??

I'm trying to be efficient with my time, Dave, but somehow I end up forgetting about Twitter as I work on LinkedIn and play on Facebook. I know that I'm supposed to be involved in all the big social networks, but who has the time? Is there some way that status updates from LinkedIn can at least show up in my Twitter account [ed: "twitterstream" is what we hardcore folk call it] without me having to do anything special?

Dave, I know how to check for free disk space on Windows XP, but how do I check for the amount of free disk space available on a machine running Linux (CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc.)?

I work for a small manufacturer and our product brand is a registered trademark. I recently created a facebook fan page and when I went to set a custom facebook fan page shortcut I found out that the name was already taken. What the heck? How can we file a complaint with Facebook so we can recover our trademark and prevent someone else from using it??

Every so often I go to download some software for my Acer Windows PC and have to decide between a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the application. I'm running Windows Vista but when I look, it just says that I'm running "Home Premium". How do I know if I'm running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows?

Okay, this is crazy. My friend and I both have Apple iPhones. We both have Facebook accounts, and we both have the Facebook app for the iPhone. On his, however, if he shakes his phone it gets the latest data from his Live Feed, but on mine, nothing happens when I do that. Is my iPhone 3GS busted, or what??

I have a writer who produces content for me on a weekly basis, content that includes photographs or other pictures. Very helpful, but he submits his material in Apple Pages format and I have no idea how to get the image out of the document and into a separate file when I want to save it to my blog.

I've heard I can use my Apple iPhone 3GS as a Kindle without actually buying a Kindle from Amazon. How is this possible and how do I do it?

If you're big into movies, TV or other media, you already know that more and more shows and productions are getting short movies to advertise them, "trailers" that you can now even find for books and video games (though you're not likely to see those in a movie theater). I write a film blog too, so I pay close attention to trailers for upcoming movies, which is why the Apple iPhone app TrailerSpy Mobile [iTunes link] caught my interest. Here's what I found...

It's January 1st and my boyfriend and I are contemplating some resolutions for New Years. What are some of the most popular ones, so we can get a head start? :-)

Now that I have read your splendid tutorial on how to create a Facebook fan page (see How to Create Your Own Facebook Fan Page) I want to take the next step and set a custom URL shortcut for the page. Can I do that, or is it reserved for just the big guys in the fan page world? If so, what's the procedure, Dave?

I'm a fan of Audio-Technica consumer electronics gear and have been for many years. Decades ago, I'm pretty sure I had an Audio-Technica turntable and my earbuds of preference are Audio-Technica Quietpoint ATH-ANC3 (see my review: Audio-Technica ATH-ANC3 noise-reducing earbuds).

When I received a press release from the company about new foldable noise reducing headphones, it caught my interest, because my mainstay noise reducing headphones are the terrific Sennheiser PXC-300 headphones, but they have two issues: first, they're expensive at $150 (they were $300 when I got them two years ago!) and secondly the noise-reducing microphone electronics are big and unwieldy, the size of a small flashlight. A bit awkward.

So I asked Audio-Technica to send us a pair of the new ATH-ANC1 headphones to give a test run and so far, with one glitch, they've been great.

My parents bought me an Amazon Kindle ebook reader for Christmas. Very cool. They also told me that they bought me a few books on Amazon (we share an account). I'm baffled, though: how do I get those books onto my Kindle?

I'm a bit anxious that somehow I've ended up with some sort of weird Google spyware or something: every time I want to just go to the Google home page by typing in http://www.google.com/ I end up on the iGoogle page. What's up with that and how do I fix it?

Now that I have an Apple iPod Touch and have figured out how to get it working on my Microsoft Windows Vista PC, my question is how do I import music CDs into iTunes?

I just received an email from Facebook telling me about a new login system that they're implementing in a few days, and telling me I need to log in and update my profile. I'm skeptical. Is this legit, Dave, or bogus?

I just got an Apple iPod Touch, which is super cool, but I have no idea how to get it to work with my Dell PC. I'm running Windows Vista and use Windows Media Player 10 (WMP10) for the music on my computer, but WMP doesn't seem to see my iPod. How do I proceed and get it to work??

I've been hearing rumors for months about Apple releasing a tablet computer but they give me very odd looks when I ask about it at the Apple Store. Then at Christmas dinner someone told me that it's on the way and it's going to be called the iSlate. What? How could they know, and what's your best information about what an iSlate will be?

Is there anywhere online I can track Santa's progress as he delivers Christmas presents to all the good little boys and girls around the Earth? For that matter, his sleigh must be rockin' fast: has anyone ever calculated how fast it'd need to go for him to deliver presents to every child between sunset on the 24th and sunrise on the 25th of December?

I got a very nice card from my grandma that included $10 "to buy some music for my new apple phone". It wasn't a gift card, though, so I figured I'd just buy the music directly in the iTunes Store on my iPhone and drop the $10 in the bank. Did it, but now I'm baffled: how do I copy that purchased music onto my MacBook Pro laptop? Do I need to download it again from the iTunes Store, or can iTunes just pull it from the phone?

I've been working extensively in Apple's GarageBand on my MacBook Pro and it's always worked great, except this afternoon I got the error message Core Audio: Disk is too slow (Write) (-10002). What does it mean and how do I fix it? Do I need a new disk drive??

I know this is a totally newbie question, but when I'm writing an email to someone in Apple Mail, I see certain words underlined with a squiggly red line, but if I click on them, nothing happens. Looks like it's the spelling system telling me that I have mispelled a word, but not always. What's the story? What can I do at that point?

I have the Facebook app on my Apple iPhone 3GS and like it a lot, but am wondering if there's any way I can manage my fan page while mobile, in addition to accessing my regular user account?