The Facebook timeline is not available for everyone, as its being released gradually, but if you want to activate the Facebook timeline on your profile right now, here’s the procedure:

• Log in to your Facebook account and go to http://developers.facebook.com/apps.

• Click on “Allow” and then “Create new application”. In the New App dialog, put timeline for the App Display Name, and put your name for App Namespace.

• Now click on Open Graph in the left side panel. On the open graph page, write a verb and a noun. For example, you can write, read and TechyLabs.

• Now click on Save changes, and then click on Next. Keep saving all settings now with default values. Once you Save and Finish, go back to your profile page and refresh your browser. Facebook will now ask you if you want to activate the new Facebook timeline on your profile. Click on Get it Now, to activate the Facebook timeline instantly.

That’s it. Now check your profile page to see the new Facebook timeline profile activated.

But now there is a new bug in Facebook using which you can view private photos on Facebook, irrespective of whether the person is in your friend list or not.

The bug is not really a bug but actually a feature to keep Facebook family safe. If you find an inappropriate image on anyone’s profile on Facebook, it lets you report the image so that Facebook can ask the respective user to remove it from the profile.

In this reporting procedure, you have to select the images that you want to report, and here Facebook show you all the photos to choose from, no matter if they are private or not.

This feature can be used to view private photos on Facebook easily. Here’s the procedure:

• Go to the Facebook profile of the person whose private photos you want to view and click on the Photos tab on the left panel.

• Now click on Report/Block in the left panel. In the popup dialog, choose ‘Inappropriate Profile photo’ and click Continue.

• On the next screen, select the ‘Nudity or pornography’ option, and click on Continue.

• Now don’t select any options available, but select the Report to Facebook option below them and click Continue.

• Now choose, ‘Help us take action by selecting additional photos to include with your report’ and click Okay.

That’s it. Facebook will now show you all the photos from all the private albums of this person so that you can report the inappropriate photos. But this is actually an issue with Facebook privacy as it lets you view private photos on Facebook.

I am sure that Facebook will fix this issue very soon but until then, all private Facebook photos are vulnerable.

Important: Don’t try this on your Facebook profile as Facebook knows who is reporting the photos, and if you try to exploit this bug, then your account may be deactivated.

Update: Readers have reported that this trick to view private Facebook photos is not working for everyone. Although it started working for many after they used Google chrome browser, and selected US English as their language. If this did not work for you and you found a way to make it work, then please post it here.

However, then is a workaround using which you can easily import Facebook contacts to Gmail. Here’s the procedure:

First import all your Facebook contacts to your Yahoo mail account. Go to the Contacts tabs near the Mail tab in your Yahoo Mail, and click on Popular Tools. Here, choose “Import your contacts from other accounts to Yahoo”

Click on Facebook. Click Allow when the application access window open on Facebook. Once you do this, the import process will start.

After that, all the contact details of your Facebook friends will be in your Yahoo account.

Now to import all these contacts in Gmail, first export your address book in a CSV format from your Yahoo account. To do this, click on Accounts, and click Export. Select Yahoo! CSV and you will get all contact details in CSV format.

Now, open Gmail and click on Contacts .

Upload the CSV file downloaded form Yahoo Mail here. That’s it. You have all your Facebook contacts imported to Gmail now.

There are many great features of Facebook but it still lacks one feature, the ability to change Facebook background. Users who migrated from MySpace miss this feature most as unlike Facebook, one could easily change MySpace background image.

You can still change the Facebook background on ‘your’ computer using a Firefox addon. First download and install PageRage addon for Firefox. Now login to your Facebook account and select a custom layout and Facebook background using Pagerage. That’s it. Check out how I changed my Facebook background below:

Note that since the Facebook background is changed using a Firefox add-on, only YOU will be able to see the changed background. If you want your friends to see your new background, the add-on has to be installed on your friend’s browser too.

It doesn’t matter if you keep your photos hidden using the privacy settings of Facebook, people can still open and see the hidden photos.

Procedure to see private hidden photos of any Facebook album:

• Open the Facebook profile page of the person whose private photo album you want to open.

• In the address bar or the URL bar of your web browser, type or copy paste the following code and press Enter.

• This will redirect you to the hidden or private photo album of the person.

It works 75% of the time but sometimes you see the error,

There are no photos to display. Photos of this person may not have been tagged, or may not be visible due to privacy.

This works even if you are not in the friend list of the person whose photos you want to see.

This bug will be eventually fixed by Facebook but its really scary.

No matter how tight the security and privacy settings are, people still find a way to bypass it. So if you want to keep any of your photos hidden and private, then simply don’t upload them on Facebook, or internet!