How to Get Your Facebook Page to Display Without Logging In

We’ve been publishing lots of content to our Facebook page of late. Today I was upgrading the Rady Web site footer to include our social media channels when I noticed that our Facebook vanity URL (http://facebook.com/radyschool) was not displaying our page, but instead was rather unceremoniously dumping users at the Facebook home page. Sure, if you log in, you get redirected to the Rady page. But there is no visual indication that you need to log in to see the Rady page. Yes, the username and password boxes are shown in their traditional upper-right corner, but there is no “Please log in and we’ll send you on your way” text, making it all too easy to assume the link from the Rady web site is broken.

At first I thought this closed access might be related to a number-of-fans threshold, given that Facebook vanity URLs were initially only available to pages that had more than 1,000 fans. After some investigation, I found a page that did not require authentication but had only 300 fans. The plot thickened. Finally I dug around in the Settings panel of the Rady page, and it was there that I found the correct switch to flip. Was it labeled “Enable public access to page without authentication?” Sadly, no. The setting in question is called “Age Restrictions.”

Set your Age Restrictions to “Anyone (13+)” to enable page access without authentication. If you’re curious, there is a “What is this?” link next to Age Restrictions, but this pop-up explanation doesn’t clearly explain the issue and the solution.

This is definitely a usability FAIL in my opinion. Or am I missing something? Anyhow, I hope this post helps a few of you out there.

Web Stats: August 2008

Visits	12,000
New visits	71%
Top content	Full-Time MBA, MBA Admissions, FlexMBA, Faculty Directory, MBA Home, Faculty Research Areas, MBA Application Checklist, Full-Time MBA Curriculum, Full-Time MBA Costs and Financing, FlexMBA Costs and Financing, MBA Application Deadlines, MBA Application
Top countries	China, India, UK, Canada, Germnay, Taiwain, Japan, South Korea, Turkey
Top Local Cities	La Jolla, San Diego, Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, Poway, Carlsbad, La Mesa
Top Domestic Cities	New York, Los Angeles, Irvine, Chicago, Lake Forest, Santa Clara, Huntington Park, Phoenix, Washington
Top International Cities	London, Cambridge, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, San-Ch’Ung, Seoul, Bangkok, Istanbul, Zurich

Web Stats: June 2008

(compared to June 2007)
Visits: 11,600 (-16%)
Pageviews: 65,000 (-8%)
Average Pageviews: 5.6 (+9%)
Time on Site: 3:17 (+24%)
New Visits: 69% (-3%)

Top Content
Home (9,362)
MBA (5,757)
MBA Admissions (2,796)
MBA Full-Time (2,611)
MBA Flex (2,528)
Faculty Directory (2,289)
Faculty Home (2,125)
Exec Home (1,270)
MBA Admissions Application Checklist (1,082)
Undergrad (1,059)
About (1,009)
Faculty: Timmermann
MBA Flex Costs
MBA Fulltime Curriculum
MBA Application Deadlines
Corporate Connections

Top Countries
China (263)
South Korea (180)
India (152)
Canada (148)
Germany (148)
United Kingdom (142)
Japan (102)
Italy (87)
Taiwan (84)
Israel (78)
Turkey (75)
Mexico (70)
France
Australia
Hong Kong
Brazil
Switzerland
Thailand
Netherlands

Top U.S. Cities
La Jolla
San Diego
Poway
Del Mar
New York
San Francisco
West Hollywood
Irvine
Rancho Santa Fe
Los Angeles
Carlsbad
Beverly Hills
National City
Chicago
Lemon Grove
Washington
Alameda
New Haven
Seattle

Top International Cities
Shanghai
Chengdu
London
San-Ch’Ung
Beijing
Bangkok
Singapore
Istanbul
Tsuen Wan
Paris
Beersheba
Milan
Vancouver
Chennai
Dublin
Sydney

The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

The following is an excerpt from “Burden’s Wheel,” the first chapter of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is being published today by W. W. Norton & Company.

“At a conference in Paris during the summer of 2004, Apple introduced an updated version of its popular iMac computer. Since its debut in 1998, the iMac had always been distinguished by its unusual design, but the new model was particularly striking. It appeared to be nothing more than a flat-panel television, a rectangular screen encased in a thin block of white plastic and mounted on an aluminum pedestal. All the components of the computer itself – the chips, the drives, the cables, the connectors – were hidden behind the screen. The advertising tagline wittily anticipated the response of prospective buyers: ‘Where did the computer go?’

But the question was more than just a cute promotional pitch. It was, as well, a subtle acknowledgment that our longstanding idea of a computer is obsolete. While most of us continue to depend on personal computers both at home and in the office, we’re using them in a very different way than we used to. Instead of relying on data and software that reside inside our computers, inscribed on our private hard drives, we increasingly tap into data and software that stream through the public Internet. Our PCs are turning into terminals that draw most of their power and usefulness not from what’s inside them but from the network they’re hooked up to – and, in particular, from the other computers that are hooked up to that network.

The change in the way we use computers didn’t happen overnight. Primitive forms of centralized computing have been around for a long time. In the mid-1980s, many early PC owners bought modems to connect their computers over phone lines to central databases like Compuserve, Prodigy, and the Well – commonly known as ‘bulletin boards’ – where they exchanged messages with other subscribers. America Online popularized this kind of online community, greatly expanding its appeal by adding colorful graphics as well as chat rooms, games, weather reports, magazine and newspaper articles, and many other services. Other, more specialized databases were also available to scholars, engineers, librarians, military planners, and business analysts. When, in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he set the stage for the replacement of all those private online data stores with one vast public one. The Web popularized the Internet, turning it into a global bazaar for sharing digital information. And once easy-to-use browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer became widely available in the mid-1990s, we all went online in droves.”

Read more at roughtype.com

Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

“When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: finding exact phrases matches using quotes like “so say we all” or searching a single site using site:lifehacker.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we’re skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.”

Read more at lifehacker.com.

Welcome to the Source

Greetings! I’m Scott Parish, Web Communications Manager at the Rady School of Management. On behalf of the Marketing & Communications department I’d like to welcome you to Open Source, our newest blog.

The web is changing the way business gets done, and its important for business leaders to keep up with emerging technologies and trends. We’ll help you do that by posting on and linking to a variety of subjects, including:

• the inner workings of rady.ucsd.edu
• designing and building web sites
• designing and building HTML email
• social networking
• web startups and investments
• online marketing
• search engine optimization

So subscribe, sit back, and we’ll bring the web to you.