Gadgetory

if Facebook has done anything it's made us acutely aware of everyone's birthday login and you'll see birthday alerts right here at the top but what if heaven forbid you go a day or two without checking Facebook your bffs birthday could come and go and then you're the one stuck writing a belated wall post a week later don't let this happen to you assuming that you have some kind of calendar software out there like google calendar or ical you can import all of your birthday's from your facebook friends in less than a minute first step login to your facebook account and select events from the left sidebar then the drop down menu to select birthdays you'll now see a listing of all your friends who have one coming up use that same drop-down menu and select export birthdays the link you'll see is a web hosted calendar file so we'll always stay up to date with your latest friends copy that link and then head into your preferred calendar app I'm going to use Google Calendar down here on the Left I'll go to other calendars pull down the list and select add by URL well paste in the URL facebook gave us and leave the public sharing option down here unchecked click here to add it and now you'll see your friends birthdays all plotted out on your calendar but to get that same info on your phone you'll need to dive into your phone's calendar settings and make sure that the box for friends birthdays is enabled now if you visually check your calendar every day this might be enough but I'm going to take a few extra steps to make sure i'm also notified over email in Google Calendar I'll hover over the birthday calendar i just added and click the little options list here to select notifications this is going to show me all the ways google can notify me about the events on this calendar if i'm really crazy about this stuff i could set up an event reminder here at the top to email me about upcoming birthday is a few days ahead of time but since i'm kind of a jerk and I'm probably not buying anyone a present I'll just check this option here at the bottom to send me a daily digest of each day's events then I'll hit save now when you check your inbox every morning you'll see any birthdays for that day if you're not using google calendar you can still get reminders from facebook itself go into your facebook account settings and click on notification in the left bar hit edit on your facebook notifications and then check the box for has a birthday coming up if this option is grayed out you may need to uncheck a box at the top that limits email frequency now you can look forward to a weekly email from Facebook to help you remember those important dates so there you go now no birthday will escape your attention for more tips like these you can visit how to cnet com if you have any more questions or tips for me send them to me on Twitter or you can subscribe to my facebook page for CNN com I'm Tom Bell