Facebook the Social Networking giant has released a set of tools to help users in knowing when someone logs into their accounts from unknown computers.

In a blog post on the official Facebook blog, software engineer Lev Popov, introduced the new features and emphasized that Facebook is constantly working on new ways to protect their users from scams and keeping their information and accounts secure.

This is kind of ironic seeing as Facebook has been in the press repeatedly in the past due to their privacy policies.

Facebook has introduced two new features that will help protect users’ accounts, the first being Login Notifications and the other Blocking Suspicious Logins, this just a few weeks after they introduced their new OpenGraph API and Social Tools.

The Login Notifications is just what is says, users can set up their accounts so that they receive an Email or SMS message when someone logs into their account from an unknown computer. You can specify multiple computers you normally work on from your accounts settings page and enable to either receive notifications by Email or both SMS and Email when your account is being accessed by a computer not on your list.

As an extra measure of security Facebook will also monitor your account for suspicious activity and block logins if they think someone is trying to gain unauthorized access to your account. Measures taken to unblock your account will include asking you personal questions from your data or asking you to identify someone in a picture next to you.

Facebook has designed the questions to be easy to you and hard for the person trying to gain access to your account.

I really like the way Facebook has approached this and glad there is now some form of extra security available to users, you’d be surprise how many Facebook users’ password is something like their birth date or just simply 123456.

If you haven’t heard of TweSMS, its my new sideline project to bring SMS notifications to countries that twitter does not support for their own SMS notification system.

TweSMS is currently undergoing some major changes week by week with a few testers helping me out. TweSMS currently supports receive of DMs and Metions. Twitter users have the option to either receive all DMs or Mentions or either or only if it is from certain twitter friends.

I’m proud to introduce the latest feature for TweSMS, the Clickatell Gateway. Users can now use their own Clickatell accounts for SMS delivery. To setup a Clickatell gateway do the following.

1. Log in at Clickatell
2. Go to Manage My Products
3. From the Add Connection drop down choose HTTP
4. Enter TweSMS for name
5. Choose HTTP GET from Callback Type
6. Enter a Username
7. Enter a Password
8. Click Submit
9. Log in at TweSMS
10. Go to Clickatell API Settings
11. Enable use own Clickatell account
12. Enter your settings you set up above and save

If you have any problems getting this working please contact info@twesms.com or @TweSMS via twitter.

I few weeks ago I started on a project called TweSMS, a twitter SMS notification system for people that does not have coverage with twitter’s own SMS notification system.

The project was inspired by Rafiq Phillips from Web AddiCT(s); and soon after that I started coding on basic functionality. Today I am proud to say that the system is improving immensely with every new feature being rolled out.

Yesterday saw the release of mention notifications as well as the ability to receive notifications from selected friends only. The changes has been implemented and the testers are testing away and giving feedback along the way.

Features to come include the ability to receive SMS messages only during certain times of the day as well as the ability to use your own Clickatell account to receive SMS messages.

If you are interested in partaking in the TweSMS testing send an email to TweSMS, there is a few places open still.

I have been putting blogging off for a couple of days due to my latest private project taking all my time. A while ago I read a message by Rafiq owner of Web AddiCT(s); where he asked if anybody was willing to write a Twitter notifications to SMS app.

After some investigation I found 2 current services of which one was closed down and the other one really expensive, almost R1 per sms. This lead me to investigating all the viable methods to send out sms messages from South Africa and having played with the twitter api before stared coding on some basic functionality.

I introduce to you TweSMS, TweSMS will allow you to receive SMS messages for different twitter notifications. Currently TweSMS only supports sending SMS messages for Twitter Direct Messages but will soon have functionality to be able to receive replies and even friend updates via SMS.

I am really proud of this project and would like to thank Web Addict(s); for the inspiration and support with this project aswell as Clickatell. I see big things in the pipeline for TweSMS and we are already testing away on the system.

For more info on TweSMS read the Web Addict(s); post, follow @twesms on twitter or visit www.twesms.com