Technology Guides

With news today that Facebook is now valued at a small chunk of change (aka $70 billion), I thought I’d take a look at it again.

My opinion of Facebook used to be very radical and I stubbornly refused to sign up. Then a couple years ago I decided to sign up and I have not looked back. Now I’m starting to revisit my opinion on it as Facebook starts to introduce more invasive features such as “Auto-tagging” which is based on facial recognition software. Why am I mentioning this you ask. I, like a growing number of Facebook users are starting to wean ourselves off Facebook because of this. It has been a trivial battle thus far and when I think I make progress I run into new ways to use this dominant service. It also doesn’t help that Twitter is becoming really popular and I’ve integrated the two, as well as Google is taking another swing with its recently announced social network called Google Plus (I will review this shortly). So without further ado, here are some useful Facebook tips and tricks to make your Facebook experience more useful, efficient and fun.

1. Download Facebook Photo Albums

There are some great photo albums out there that your friends have but it’s a pain to click on each photo and save it separately. That’s where Fotobounce comes in. It is a desktop application that allows you to download the photo albums. The great thing is it supports facial recognition so that saves time with the tagging. The difference between this and the Facebook feature is it does not have access to every other Facebook user so some random person who looks like your best friend will not be tagged in these photos.

2. Featured Friends

An underutilized feature on Facebook is the Friends tab on the left sidebar. You can customize this to only show certain friends (i.e. best friends, family…). To do this, click edit right by the Friends box. Under the Featured Friends tab, click “Create a new list”. Select all the friends you want on the list, and name it. Then click “Add an existing list or group” to add to it to your profile.

3. Remove Facebook Ads

This really should have been number one but I was too lazy to switch things around. This only works on Firefox and if you have the add-on Greasemonkey. Then you use that and install a script called Facebook Cleaner. Once it’s installed, and this takes seconds, go to Facebook and all the ads will have vanished. It reduces the clutter by a lot and makes the user interface a lot more pleasing although deep down inside I feel like something is missing.

4. Auto-Share Blog Posts

This one is only really for people like me, who own a website of some sort and would like to auto-share their posts. I just downloaded a plug-in called BlogUpp, and after following their instructions, my auto-sharing went on without a hitch. They also auto-share to all your Twitter followers which is great.

5. Access Facebook Chat on your Desktop

A lot of people have switched completely from MSN to Facebook chat (me included). Even though it is bare bones, it somehow has taken over a feature rich application such as MSN which is not something that usually happens in this world. Maybe simple is really better. In any case, if you are solely going onto your web browser just for Facebook chat, I highly suggest using a program called Gabtastik which is a desktop application that allows you to chat to your Facebook friends without opening a browser.

I will update the list as I continue to unearth the gems of Facebook but if you readers out there have any you’d like to share, comment away.

Popularity: 6% [?]

My friend told me of a problem she had with her Apple iPod. It froze and she couldn’t reset it via her computer. Now this usually works for most iPod users but there are times when the basics don’t seem to fix anything. I researched and researched and the simplest thing came up. Recharge your iPod because that might be the reason it won’t hook up to your computer. You may have to leave it in the wall outlet for some time before you can start using it again. When you plug it in to your computer again, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes to speed up the process.

There are other methods which include actually opening up your Apple iPod but I won’t go there as I’m not fully aware of what you should do so I recommend reading this CrunchGear Article to learn more and let me say; if you have to resort to this, I am praying for you.

My suggestion though is if you the two options above don’t work (i.e. reseting your iPod on iTunes or charging it for a while) then you should really consider sending it to Apple or wherever you bought it so they can take care of it. Hopefully it won’t too long to get your baby back.

Popularity: 5% [?]

When I first heard about this update through my friend, I questioned it because why would Apple jump from firmware 2.2.1 all the way to 3.0? Well in fact, when I looked it up, it was dead true. Now I’m here to tell you about it. Apple is planning a major revamp of its OS which includes many cool things that might just blow your mind when you put it all together. There are loads of features, 100 last time I counted but these are the ones that I decided to highlight.

iPhone 3.0 Software

Push Technology

Apple was late to the push technology game and so when it released it, it basically killed the battery life. Now, it’s reconfigured its system so that it eliminates background processes and thus improves battery life. This makes the iPhone more business friendly because it automatically updates you if you receive new mail for instance even when the application isn’t running.

Push Notification on Apple iPhone

Cut, Copy & Paste

This to me is one of the biggest improvements for the iPhone after preserving the battery. How many times have you had a URL or some sentence that you wanted to copy and paste but couldn’t? I know I have many times. Now you’ll be able to use it with text messaging and even in Web pages and photos from the camera album. With this feature, you’ll be able to move the copy points and shake to undo. Now why did it take so long to do something so simple? My take is that Apple as we know them likes to control as much as possible which is why they delete apps with no warning. There excuse is that they wanted to deal with the security issue and make it work well with the touch screen.

Undo Paste on Apple iPhone

Real GPS Capabilities

Now you’ll be able to get applications that will have turn-by-turn directions making it a fully capable GPS with the free upgrade for iPhone users. The bad thing is because of licensing issues, the Google Maps app will not be used in conjuction with the GPS so developers will need to get their own maps which leads to the fact that these applications will probably cost users money.

Peer to Peer Connectivity

This is big as well for me at least because I remember I could play Worms on my Sony Ericsson phone with my friend who used to have a Sony Ericsson phone and it’d be great. We’d be sitting like 5m apart and be playing against each other. I was totally surprised to find that the iPod or iPhone could not do this. I’m an iPod Touch user and I was delighted to hear that the Apple iPod Touch does in fact have Bluetooth but Apple kept it locked. Now with this update, both the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch will have Bluetooth so you’ll be able to use this feature. Apple will build upon the original framework of the iPhone Bluetooth system and unlock the iPod Touch system. On top of that, Apple will have add onto the peer to peer system by putting in “in-game voice communication”.

Spotlight

This isn’t huge but it’s still nice. Before you could only search one area of your iPod/iPhone, but now Apple has designed this nice feature that will allow you to search everything at once including mail, iPod library, notes, contacts and calendar. What Apple has done is unique in my mind because it’s very easy to access this feature. Go the home screen (which you can do by clicking the home button anytime) and swipe left and then search away.

Landscape Keyboard

You may ask, we already have this? Well you are technically right but what about when you’re in an app such as Mail? In that situation you can only use the portrait keyboard which can get tiring. The landscape keyboard will now be accessible in any app which to me is long overdue. If you don’t know already, the landscape keyboard has larger buttons, more buttons and the buttons are more spaced out.

Landscape Keyboard

Multimedia Messaging

This is such a basic feature yet it was not apparent to Apple to include it on the iPhone. Many of the basic cell phones have it yet one of the most sophisticated phones doesn’t (most sophisticated can be argued). If you bought the basic Apple iPhone, then you’ll be out of luck since it does not carry the required radio to run MMS on it.

Upgraded Bluetooth

If you own the newer version of the Apple iPhone you’ll now have the opportunity to buy wireless headphones/earphones to use with the upgraded bluetooth. Listening to music with Apple’s version of bluetooth headphones may be closer than you think.

Conclusion

The strange thing about this software is that for the people that would want it the most, it costs $0, or free, whichever way you flip it. For the people who might not need it and has less benefit, the Apple iPod Touch users, it costs $9.95 which makes me wonder who the sales and marketing department are.

Popularity: 10% [?]

One day I was sitting down at my desk and turned on my laptop. I was looking for a file when I realized I had lost it and could not recover it. It tought me a valuable lesson and that was to never delete a file because it might be important later on. That lesson got thrown out the window when I realized that I had too many files piling up and slowing down my computer. So I decided to install a program to help me recover deleted files if I ever needed them again. Microsoft Windows Vista creates shadow copies of every files you have and Ultimate utilizes it to recover them if you need it. Other version of Microsoft Windows Vista cannot recover it, unless you download another 3rd party program like ShadowExplorer or a file recovery utility such as Recuva.

ShadowExplorer

ShadowExplorer as I mentioned before allows you to browse the shadow copies created by the Windows Vista Volume Shadow Copy Service. It needs time to get going so don’t start deleting files as soon as you download it. What this program does is creates a copy of your hard drive for one day and you’ll have to access the deleted file from this day.

ShadowExplorer

This program is a great free alternative to the more expensive programs because it organizes your files at that specific day much better than most. Other programs tend to just show all the deleted files that can include internet cache stuff which is useless.

Recuva

Strangely enough, Recuva, is pronounced “recover” but who cares in my opinion because it is free. The problem I find with this type of recovery utility is the fact that it has to scan your whole hard drive, and not all of the files it finds can be recovered. It also names them different so you have to sift through the different files very carefully.

It is better than ShadowExplorer because it helps bring back files that were lost through a virus, bug or crash which ShadowExplorer doesn’t do as well at. It takes up a small area of your hard drive and you won’t lose much CPU when you run it but that comes with its drawbacks. It’s much slower at finding files because it has to scan whereas ShadowExplorer can almost instantly show you your hard drive at a certain date. The interface is slightly more refined but still equally usable.

Conclusion

Both of these programs will get the job done but offer two different ways to do it. Personally my bet is on ShadowExplorer but it’s better to be safe then sorry sometimes, so why not download both.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Everybody is worried about losing there cell phone especially if it is expensive like mine. I have therefore been searching for a cheap and possibly free piece of software that can help me locate my phone quickly. I foundsome  shareware called Guardian v2.1 but when I searched it on Google, I was skeptical on its reliability and whether or not a virus would ensue. You can view the video below on it which shows good things about it from.
Another alternative that is only available to Windows Mobile Users or Sony Ericsson phones is called mGuard which is free and installs on your phone at a size of only 100kb (.jar file and preferably on phone memory instead of memory stick). I myself have this on my phone but it can get costly as they charge you a SMS message per time you shut your phone off to check if it still has the same SIM. If there isn’t the same SIM, it will realize that your phone has been stolen and now you can be on your way to tracking your stolen phone.

I found a loop hole though. Don’t shut it down and always charge it whilst the phone is on. Not much of a loop hole. It still does its job as unsuspecting robbers will not know this and will then find out too late. Go to Dexmobile and click on mGuard. You will first download it and then after installing, run it, and click settings. They will ask you for an unlock code which you will get after you register (to the right of the download button) and they will send you the unlock code. They also you send the download url to your email. To notify you of a SIM change you will need to enter a friends phone number, where a pre-set or customized message will be sent to if, heaven forbid your cell phone gets stolen. Keep your IMEI number handy or enter *#06# on your phone to get it. I haven’t had the time to really put it in its paces but I guess thats a good thing. They have wide array of contact options including email and phone number if you do have a problem.
Another solution is called Lost Mobile Tracking Solution by Micro Technologies located in Mumbai. It is a cheap one time solution at a cost of $8 but it is not supported on many phones including mine. I was ready to fork over the money because I love my phone and a little money will keep it protected. There are about 40 phones supported at the most.

Now if your cell phone is ever stolen, you’ll be able to find it if you use either of these technologies with your cell phone.

Popularity: 21% [?]