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I’d have to do a chart or table to show all the different settings that you could use to hide your ‘stuff’ on Facebook but here are a few short tips that will help.

If you don’t want ANYONE to see what you post, like maybe you’re waiting for some big moment to pop it on someone, make sure your sharing is set to ‘only me’. Whatever you do, don’t tag anyone, even if the item is shared with only you.  Because:

Even if an item is shared with only one other person and you tag it, any of your friend’s friends can see the item and comment on it plus they can tag it and share it. Remember, even if the item is shared ONLY WITH ONE OTHER PERSON. The tagged person cannot remove the tag, only the original poster. 

OK, caps lock is off and bold is gone. The key to all of this, as I’ve said before, is not sharing, it’s tagging. Tagging opens up your tagged items to everyone.

Here is a tip that will help  you keep stuff private. Two tips, actually.

1. Don’t tag anyone on anything. Send a private message to someone if you have something that is vital to share. Or:

2. Post the item by itself (a photo works best for ths) and tag that one single item. No one else will be able to see your other items, just that one thing.

 

HOLD THE PRESSES : Facebook, just this moment, seems to have fixed the loophole. I’m going to end this now (and go for a swim) but I’ll leave this up until I can confirm that the sharing loophole has been sealed. I spent a few hours sorting all of this out, while doing a few other things too, and I don’t want to waste this beautiful writing! Hahahaha.

Thanks for reading.

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I had just driven the kids to school and was pulling into the driveway. Billie Holliday and Mad Dog Michaels were hamming it up on 92.5 as usual. I didn’t hear the first part of what Billie said. Her voice had kind of a giggle in it, which I now realize was nervousness or fear, as she told us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I can’t remember what crossed my mind, whether I felt that it was terrorists or not. I don’t think I realized that the plane in question was a full-size people-carrying jet airliner.

I didn’t pause on the main floor for any length of time, instead I raced down to the family room to catch the news on CNN. For the next few minutes I sat stunned as I listened to the coverage. At some point, the second plane hit. I can’t remember if I actually saw it or just heard the announcer say it, but at that point in time I knew it was terrorists.

Immediately after the second plane hit I called in to work. At that time I was a kitchen designer for the Home Depot. Coincidentally, the person who answered the phone was Faiika, a very conservative Muslim. I didn’t say much, just that she should tell the store manager to turn on CNN in the meeting room. We had a satellite dish that was connected to the Home Depot network but we could also get CNN. Faiika put up a bit of resistance but I insisted that she tell management to get the hell into the meeting room and hung up.

The full impact of what had happened gradually set in as the day wore on. We heard about the other planes, the other crashes and there seemed to be constant threats and rumours every few minutes. Most of this is now a blur, except for the part where the two towers fell…like vertical domino stacks with one floor knocking down the next. At that time we didn’t know about the asbestos that was being blown across Manhattan or the poor souls who jumped from above the flames to their deaths. None of us knew much about anything then, it was a simpler time, a time when we trusted governments and trusted each other. It’s all different now.

As the lists of the dead came out over the next few weeks, I checked the names of the Canadians who were missing or certified as being lost forever. One name popped out, that of Ralph Gerhardt. Back in my car sales days, I had sold the Gerhardts two cars, and remembered them very well. Hans, Ralph’s dad, had even sent me a Christmas card or two after the sales. Part of the reason I remembered them was that the whole family seemed to be very together, very close and exceptionally polite. Hans was the manager of the Sutton Place Hotel at that time and I could sense his professionalism as well as his strong influence on his sons, Ralph and Stephan. The two boys were car nuts and one of them, perhaps it was Ralph, used to visit me every time he brought the car in for service. His loss brought the events of that day much closer to home. When I think of 9/11, I think of the Gerhardt’s loss as well as the unimaginable pain that these events brought to the world. I’m sure we will all take a moment to reflect on 9/11, not only this year but every year.

Thanks for reading.

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Freecorder is a pretty cool free app that allows you to record any sound coming from your browser. On my computer Freecorder only works with Internet Explorer, at least on my computer, and there are a couple of tricks to using it but if you stick around, I’ll explain it all for you.

Download Freecorder, install it and accept it when the installation asks you to associate Freecorder with your browsers. Freecorder installs a toolbar which has settings for recording audio and video as it plays. This blog is for audio but you can certainly use Freecorder for video, too. Actually, video is much easier to record than audio since Freecorder taps into your cache, allowing you to save videos even after you’ve watched them.

The only trick to Freecorder is when you open your browser. On my 64 bit version of Windows, recording will only work when I run the 32 bit version of Internet Explorer using the ‘Run as Administrator’ setting. To do this, find the Internet Explorer shortcut in your ‘All Programs’ list, right click it and choose ‘Run as Administrator’. The 64 bit version is clearly labelled 64 bit. Don’t use that one.

Once Explorer is running, you’ll see the Freecorder toolbar across the top of the window. Click on the little wrench and this menu will pop up:

The storage directory doesn’t need setting unless you want to move it somewhere else. Temp storage is fine at half a gig but you can make it larger if you have a huge hard drive. The audio capture settings should be set to something similar to mine. I use 128bit simply because I don’t think that increasing that will do much good. I have checked both ‘record using’ boxes, just in case.

Save those settings and head over to Youtube. Find your favorite video and click the button with the red dot and musical note on it. The Freecorder recording window will pop up. Click play on the Youtube video and you should see some jaggies on the horizontal line in the recording window. If the video is playing and you can’t see any jaggies, stop the recording and reload the page. Any problems with the recording have been fixed by reloading the page and then starting the recording before the video. Once you see the jagged lines, you’re all set.

You can record audio files separately by clicking the ‘Stop Recording’ after each video or you can record complete playlists of videos on Youtube (and other sites, too). Don’t worry about running back to the computer after the song. When the video ends, so does the recording, even though the window stays open. Freecorder senses the end of the song and saves the recording as an MP3 files automatically. Once you close the recording window, you confirm that the recordings are saved. Just make sure you click stop recording and then click OK when you see the verification window.

Now, recording a whole playlist is fine but you’ll have to rename each MP3 later. Same for individual recordings but they are a bit easier to remember, right?

That’s it, hopefully this is clear. Using this technique you’ll soon have a nice library of tunes for your MP3 player – not as high quality as ripping a CD but pretty good…for the price.

Thanks for reading!

 

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I’m sure you know by now how important your passwords are. Keeping your profiles secure on all of the sites that you interact with on the Internet is sometimes a big job. Think about how many passwords you use every day. I would bet that the number is at least ten and probably more. Here’s an easy way to change your passwords and keep track of them at the same time.

If you haven’t installed Dropbox yet, make sure that you do. Dropbox is absolutely the best way to keep your information accessible when you are running from computer to computer. I use three computers on a regular basis and all of my current stories, passwords, etc. are available through Dropbox. There are some alternatives but I haven’t tried them yet so for now, I will recommend Dropbox.

Next, find your way to Notepad. Notepad is free with every Windows-based computer. It lives in Accessories (Start/All Programs/Accessories). You can create a shortcut on your desktop, too. I use Notepad many times a day to record thoughts, passwords and all kinds of information, even if it’s just a place to put a log entry until I am sure that the entry has been published. (Ever been in the middle of writing a long message in Facebook and then have it disappear in front of you? How frustrating! Write it in Notepad first, then copy and paste it into Facebook.)

I’ve used Messenpass to save many of my passwords to a text file. Messenpass reads your cache memory and sucks many passwords up and pops them into a .txt file for you. Keep that file in your Dropbox folder. Don’t title it Passwords! You can encrypt it if you want but Dropbox is already encrypted. If you put your banking passwords in your Dropbox, it might be better to encrypt them, now that I think of it.

Once you have the Messenpass text file saved, many of your passwords are there for you to refer to when you need them. If you’ve been using easy to remember but easy to hack passwords, now is the time to change them. Twitter, Facebook, Hotmail; they’ve all been hacked many times. Now is your chance to secure your accounts.

Keep the password text file open and browse to Twitter, for an example. Enter your current password then head to the “change password’ section on your profile page. Once you’re there, enter your current password in the slot then start typing about fourteen letters of gibberish in Notepad. Something like this : !14Ghtnr&*(<>).  I think that’s fourteen. The number is irrelevant and twenty is better than fourteen but you get the point. Then, leave some spaces and type something that will remind you that this is your Twitter password. ‘W O T’ might do nicely, as in Waste of Time! 🙂

Once you’ve got that done, copy the password you’ve just created and paste it into the new password spot. Don’t do this for both slots. Take the time to type the new password in the second slot. This ensures that you’ve copied and pasted the password correctly and it only takes a minute. If you lock yourself out of your account, you have to waste more time retrieving your acount from Twitter, right.  Once the two passwords match, you’re done…for now.

If you use more than one computer, you can simply copy and paste the new Twitter password from the .txt file to the password slot. It’s up to you if you want to have your browser remember your password or not. I am the only person using my computers but if you use a shared computer, it might be better to copy and paste the password every time you log in to Twitter and your other social networking sites, email, bank, whatever.

When it comes time to change your passwords, and you should do that once a month or so, it’s a simple matter to copy and paste the passwords after you type them into the text file. Remember to save the text file every time and make sure that it ends up in Dropbox, not somewhere on your computer. You can also send the .txt file to yourself in an email now and then, just in case.

I know that there are free programs such as KeePass etc. Personally, I find them a bit too cumbersome and certainly no more secure than my system. It’s up to you to choose which works for you but whatever you do, keep your passwords safe!

Thanks for reading.

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Facebook tags are the new bugaboo. Since Facebook changed its and your privacy settings, it seems that when you tag a photo with a friend’s name, everyone who is a friend of that person can see and comment on your picture. Initially, I thought this wasn’t the case but it seems that it is. I have three Facebook accounts and I’ve tried all the different combinations. There is only ONE setting that eliminates this problem and it’s completely out of your control. The only way that a stranger can be kept from seeing and commenting on your post is if your tagged friend has her or his privacy set to ‘Only me’ in one key place. Let me explain.

No matter what your share settings are on anything you post on Facebook, even if you have a photo that is only open to one friend, once you tag someone in it, every one of your tagged friend’s friends can see your post and comment on it…depending on what settings your tagged friend is using. Read that again, I’ll wait.

Scenario 1: I have a photo that is shared with ‘friends only’. I tag my friend Sven in it. Sven and his friends can see that photo and comment on it. The tag may or may not show up on Sven’s wall, depending on whether he has accepted or ignored the tag review prompt. If the tag is not shown on Sven’s wall, then none of his friends can see or comment on my pic unless  they are also friends of mine, obviously.

Scenario 2: I  have a photo that is shared with only one other person, not Sven. For whatever reason, I tag Sven in that picture. Even though my share settings are set to Custom to share the picture with one friend only, Sven and his friends can now see and comment on that picture. It’s as if the original share status is ignored once the item is tagged.

Scenario 3: I have a photo that is shared with the ‘only me’ custom setting. I tag Sven in it. Sven doesn’t get notice of the tag, his friends can’t see the photo nor comment on it. Of course, only I can see it. Why this is different from using the custom share setting with only one friend on it is anyone’s guess.

There are many other scenarios possible, I’ve tried them all, believe me. I guess the lesson from all of this is that tagging is getting to be a real big pain in the butt. Once you tag someone, you open up your posts to complete strangers IF the taggee has ignored their privacy settings. It’s out of your hands unless everyone sets their privacy settings to ON in the Profile review section of How Tags Work. If you want to keep your stuff private DON’T TAG ANYONE. 

It’s hard to believe that Facebook has opened itself up to losing even more users. Tagging used to be fun, now it’s a security loophole. Facebook better fix it or they risk losing users in droves.

Thanks for reading. Questions, comments, shouts, etc. are welcomed.

 

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