All posts by Computers Made Simple

Facebook Privacy Settings – Video

How many times have we shown you how to adjust your privacy settings on Facebook? Lots of times. You can never know too much, right? Here’s a video that explains the current, March 2014, settings.

If you have questions or comments, let us know. Use the form below or, better yet, like us on our Facebook page. Here is the link:Computers Made Simple on Facebook.

Thanks for reading and watching!

Facebook’s New Look – March 2014

We knew it was coming, thanks to this:

Photo of Facebook Changes   5
Is that an Easter bunny? A kitten?

 

 

 

Once again, Facebook has changed its look. This time the change affects both your timeline and your home page. Your timeline is your own page, in case you didn’t know, while the home page is where you see what kinds of things your friends have been up to. Here’s a shot of the new timeline:

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Lots of open real estate on the left, cut from this photo, with more on the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The center of the page looks much the same but the right side has the news ticker on the top, below the games and apps,  with chat below. You can remove the games tab, thank goodness:

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Here are the options that you’ll be able to choose by clicking on the gear icon on the bottom right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old news ticker had only one item down on the bottom left. Your home page looks like this:

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Ads, lots of them with trending posts at the top right, an attempt to link up with Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you turn off the chat and hide the sidebar, things get pretty stark:

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Don’t worry, the ads are still there. Not much else though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s also an interesting look while your home page is loading. These look like postal envelopes, don’t they?

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The new look seems to be a bit slow in loading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only one of our accounts has the new look but, unless you are very observant, you probably won’t notice much difference. To be honest, we think it’s a step backwards. The black sidebar on the left looked OK, to us anyway. It was new, distinctive but maybe needed some work to show more of the ticker and less of the games, etc. Remember it?

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We think this looked more modern than the one we have now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think? There’s not much we can do about any changes that come our way and not everyone has the new look yet anyway. We’re kind of non-committal about it all, basically because there’s no way to change the look yourself. Until that happens, we will just observe and share our thoughts with you.

Thanks for reading. As always, comments, questions and suggestions are welcomed. Fill in the form below or, better yet, ‘Like’ us on Facebook. Here is the link:Computers Made Simple on Facebook.

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Here’s a link that might help us if you are interested in hosting your own blog with Fatcow Hosting. We’ve signed up to become an affiliate and we make a bit of money if you sign up for hosting via this link: FatCow Hosting Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two Irfanview Tutorials – Batch resize and batch rename

Some topics lend themselves to videos as opposed to written posts. We think that this applies to our Irfanview tutorials. There are two new ones up on Youtube, one is about batch renaming photos while the other deals with batch resizing. The first will help you organize your photos into manageable groups by name, the second will help you when you’re sending photos in an email or uploading them to a website. Here they are:

 

As always, comments, questions and suggestions are welcomed. Fill in the form below or, better yet, ‘Like’ us on Facebook. Here is the link:Computers Made Simple on Facebook. Thanks for reading!

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Here’s a link that might help us if you are interested in hosting your own blog with Fatcow Hosting. We’ve signed up to become an affiliate and we make a bit of money if you sign up for hosting via this link: FatCow Hosting Thanks!

 

Irfanview Tutorial – How to create a PDF

Here’s a new video that describes making a PDF (Portable Document Format) with Irfanview. Have we ever mentioned that we love Irfanview? Well, we do. It’s free and does a million things with no muss, fuss or flashy ads. Here’s the video:

 

Thanks for reading and watching! Comments, questions and suggestions are welcomed. Fill in the form below or, better yet, ‘Like’ us on Facebook. Here is the link:Computers Made Simple on Facebook.

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Here’s a link that might help us if you are interested in hosting your own blog with Fatcow Hosting. We’ve signed up to become an affiliate and we make a bit of money if you sign up for hosting via this link: FatCow Hosting Thanks!

Windows Movie Maker – Part two. Adding single audio track to two or three video tracks

Today we’re working with the newest version of Windows Movie Maker. This is the one that comes with Window 7 or 8/8.1, the version that you downloaded with all the ‘Live’ components. It’s a dumbed-down version that does not allow for separate audio tracks. The older version, 2.6, let you have two audio tracks and you could switch between them. Apparently Microsoft thought this was too complicated for its users and they came out with a simpler, less confusing WMM.

Don’t despair, however. You can still do some fairly fancy editing with the new version. This video shows you how to add a full audio track to an previously edited video. In other words, you can’t do this all in one step. Edit the video first, then add the full sound track. Hopefully this video we just made explains it all.
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Thanks for reading (and watching)! Comments, questions and suggestions are welcomed. Fill in the form below or, better yet, ‘Like’ us on Facebook. Here is the link:Computers Made Simple on Facebook.

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Here’s a link that might help us if you are interested in hosting your own blog with Fatcow Hosting. We’ve signed up to become an affiliate and we make a bit of money if you sign up for hosting via this link: FatCow Hosting Thanks!