All posts by Computers Made Simple

Google +

Facebook Without Ads? Try Google +

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The big news this week had to do with  Google using Google + user’s profile photos and names in their various promotions. On the one hand that seems tacky and somewhat dangerous, at least as far as privacy and security goes but, on the other hand, you won’t find ads on Google +. If you are concerned about the myriad of privacy issues with Facebook, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at Google +  (just say Google Plus and people will know what you mean.)

We think you’ll be surprised at how open and fresh Google + is. Here’s a screenshot:

Photo of Google + 1
A bit of Pinterest, a bit of Tumblr but nothing like Facebook.

 

Notice anything different? A whole page of stuff but no ads, right? The look is refreshingly clean and, to us anyway, more professional and fun. Each post is bigger and there are three rows of information, not just one. Another fun feature on Google + is the presence of action gifs. As you probably know, gifs are not allowed on Facebook. That’s always been a shortcoming for us since gifs can be a lot of fun when you’re looking for something to share. There’s no delay like there is when you’re waiting for a video to load and, quite often anyway, the gif gives you just as much info as a video would.

Signing up for Google + is much like the process for Facebook but with one main difference. All Google + accounts are linked to a Gmail account. Since the two are tied together, it makes jumping from one to the other a breeze. The link for Google + is right there as soon as you log in to your Gmail account.

There are the same personal questions; where do you live, where did you go to school, exactly like Facebook. (Remember that you don’t have to tell the truth on Google + or on Facebook. Be anyone you care to be as long as you don’t impersonate a popular personality.) Unlike Facebook, Google + suggests dozens of pages, people and personalities to get you started. That way, your page doesn’t look empty. Once you start adding people,places and things to your account, you can delete the things that Google suggested.

Just as you start to feel comfortable with Google +, there’s a bump in the road. First you get a notice that their terms of service have changed:

Photo of Google Plus 22
Uh oh, something seems to be changing.

Wait, we just joined and you’re changing the rules?

Photo of Google Plus 3
Because they want our experience to be extra special, Google will use your profile name and photo in ‘reviews’ and ‘advertising’.

At least Google is up front about all of this. As with most tech companies, cell phone providers are the worst for this, they try to talk down to you, making their aims and objectives as simple as possible, dumbing down the experience as if we are either uneducated or children. Going past that, you can see why we suggest that you keep your profile photo private. We’ve written about that in the past about keeping your profile pic semi-hidden. If Google and Facebook are going to use that photo in their ads, make sure people can’t identify you from it.  But wait! Hold your horses. Here is where you can opt out of this whole thing, click on the “Shared Endorsement setting” link to see this:

Photo of Google Plus 4
Google, unlike Facebook, lets you opt out of this. Cool huh?

Since you can say yes or not to the use of your photo and name in ads and reviews, we’re thinking Google + just might be a better choice than Facebook as far as privacy goes.

We will do more on Google + and Twitter, which we haven’t mentioned in a long time, as time goes by. There are alternatives to Facebook, you just have to expand your horizons a bit. While we still use Facebook every day, we’re gradually increasing our time on other sites.

Thanks for reading. Today’s post was a general discussion of Google + but we’ll get more into the settings in another post or two. We’ve pretty much exhausted Facebook topics but if there’s something you can’t figure out, we’re always open to comments, questions and suggestions. Keep in touch, OK?

(Our Facebook page is the easiest way to contact us. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

 

Fake Search Results in Shake, Social Networking, WeChat, WeChat, WeChat FAQ, Weixin, Weixin

WeChat Shake Problem – a solution? Maybe.

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There is a problem with the WeChat Shake application that we’ve written about in the past. It seems that the company responsible for WeChat, Tencent International, might have set up a temporary ban for users who use the Shake feature too frequently in one session. One of our readers noticed that he was able to get normal results, as opposed to purely Chinese results in Shake, if he simply stopped shaking for about half an hour.

To us, this makes perfect sense. Although the Shake feature is fun and quite exciting to use by times, we assume that it creates quite a drain on the WeChat servers. For this reason, we think that Tencent/Weixin/WeChat have created a shake limit for users who abuse this service.

This may be because of a drain on their servers or it could be an attempt to cut out or eliminate spammers from using the Shake feature to promote their products. Keep in mind that millions upon millions of Asian users use Weixin/WeChat, not just users in North America, Europe and Africa. India, for instance, seems to have taken to this app in a big way. When a company realizes the marketing potential available through WeChat, we think they would leap at the chance to contact users one to one, perhaps to the point of paying people to shake and then send out spam messages to users. We can imagine a scenario where a roomful of low-paid ‘shakers’ send out endless spam messages one by one. Knowing this, you can understand why we think WeChat has imposed a limit on the number of shakes per minute/hour/day for users. It’s a guess, but an educated one.

How popular is WeChat? This graphic gives you an idea:

Photo of WeChat Graphic
300 million users of which 50 million use WeChat* (as opposed to Weixin*).

 

(* WeChat is the English version, Weixin is the Chinese language version. )

That’s an incredible growth rate, isn’t it? As far as we know, the two sides of the app work in conjunction with each other. We have contacts who use Weixin and some who use WeChat. We can’t identify which app these contacts use so we assume that WeChat/Weixin is one big happy family.

Our advice? Keep shaking but don’t take things too seriously. If you’re looking for a date, sign up for an online service that concentrates on just that. If you’re looking for friends from all over the world, use WeChat’s Shake and relax. It’s free and works well. If you get odd results, take a break. Above all, don’t install any helper apps. You don’t need them and they may skew your search results. Happy shaking!
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Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Controlled sharing, Data Use Policy Update, Facebook, Facebook Photo Privacy Settings, Facebook Tricks, Facebook's New Design, The New Facebook

Use Your Facebook Privacy Settings – or lose them completely!

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At some point last year,  Facebook users who hadn’t changed their search privacy settings lost the ability to change them at all. As of yesterday, October 10, 2013, all Facebook users lost that privacy feature. Why? Because Facebook arbitrarily changes these settings to benefit themselves, not their users. Here is what they have to say about it:

Reminder: Finishing the Removal of an Old Search Setting

Read over Facebook’s rather lame reasoning for this action. What’s the next thing that Facebook will change? We suspect that, unless you have set your post/status/photo settings to anything other than ‘everyone’, everything you post on Facebook will be just that, open to everyone. Every photo, every comment, every status update will be wide open to both people you know and millions upon millions of people you don’t. Change your settings now before you lose them completely.

On the page linked above, you should read the section about limiting your past posts. Here’s a graphic that they use:

Photo of Facebook Limit Past Posts
This is a way to set all of your past posts to Friends Only or Friends of Friends, depending on your preferences.

 

When you are making a new post, whether it be a status update, a photo/album or something that you’re sharing, be sure to set the privacy level that you feel secure with. Here’s a graphic about how to do that:

Photo of Facebook Post Privacy
Adjust these setting now before you lose the ability to change them at all.

 

We’ve just read that Twitter is now more popular among teens than Facebook is. Teens, the original audience for Facebook, seem to have moved on, leaving Facebook to their parents and grandparents. You can bet that Facebook will ramp up their privacy changes in the near future to eliminate that privacy altogether. Read through our posts and figure out how to change your settings to match your own level of security. It looks as if those who don’t use the settings, lose them completely. Don’t let this happen to you.

 

Thanks for reading. We enjoy your comments and questions. Use the form below to let us know what’s on your mind. Better yet, Like us on Facebook and keep up with our posts and tips. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

 

 

Tips and Tricks, Windows Secrets

Five Computer Tips to Save Time and Trouble

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Here are five tips that just might relieve some of the frustration you feel when simple computer chores become more complicated than they should be.

1. Notepad is your friend: How many times have you filled out a form online, only to see your comment/description/idea disappear before your eyes? Whenever you write something in one of these forms, make sure you copy and paste your words into a new Notepad text file. Highlight the text you want to save, open Notepad and hit Ctrl and V at the same time. Instantly your words appear in the Notepad window. Go back to your form and finish with it. If everything does smoothly, close Notepad. If the form screws up, copy and paste your words into a new form without having to type them all over again.

Photo of Five Computer Tips 1
We use Notepad every day to save things like comments that just might get lost.

2. Ctrl Z is a lifesaver: For just about any error you make on your computer, hitting the Ctrl key and the ‘z’ key at the same time will undo that error. Let’s say you copy something to somewhere you don’t want it to be or you accidentally delete a whole paragraph in a document.  Don’t do anything else until you push and hold the Ctrl key down and then press the ‘z’ key. This is Window’s ‘UNDO’ key sequence. Whatever you’ve just done will be undone in an instant. Just about every program has an undo tool, every one is based on the CTRL/z key combination. Practice it and use it whenever you get into trouble.

Photo of Five Computer Tips 2
A real lifesaving key sequence.

3. Lost an Interesting Website? In any browser, pressing Ctrl and h at the same time will bring up your browsing history. If you’ve come across an interesting page but can’t remember the address, press Ctrl/h and then search through the page that comes up. Remember that ALL of your recent history is there and anyone can search through it. That’s the other side of the problem, at least for some people. If you don’t want anyone to know where you’ve browsed, make sure you clear your history. It might be a good idea to clear your download data, too.

Photo of Five Computer Tips 3
It’s all there, whether you want it to be or not.

4. When Right Click/Save as doesn’t work: Some photos and material on the Internet are quite well guarded. Saving this material to your computer is forbidden, more or less. Every Windows computer has a ‘screen capture’ key to get around these restrictions. Let’s say your on a Flickr page and you try to save one of the wonderful photos there. You don’t want to make money from it, you just want to see it again, maybe use it as wallpaper on your desktop, something like that. Look for your ‘Prt Scr’ (Print Screen) key, usually it’s on the top row just to the right of your F keys, and press it. Then, open up an image viewer, we use Irfanview, hit Ctrl and v at the same time and the screen cap pops up in the window. Save it as a ‘jpg’ file and you’re done. (Even though the key reads ‘Print Screen’, it really doesn’t print what’s on your screen. It captures an image into your computer’s memory (clipboard) and waits for you to paste that information into an image program such as Irfanview.)

Photo of Five Computer Tips 4
‘Print’ here means ‘save’, same as copying before pasting it.

 

5. Save Some Videos Without Having to View Them: Some videos can be saved simply by right-clicking the link that leads to them and choosing ‘Save Link As’. When you choose this, the save menu pops up and shows you the name and the type of video it is. This doesn’t work all the time but it’s a fast easy way to save the objects that a link leads to, sometimes a video, sometimes a PDF file.

We’ll have more of these as time goes by. Do you have some favorites? Take a moment to comment below and let us know what tips you can give us. We’ll share everything with our readers.

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Free Software, Rotate Video, Windows Live Movie Maker

Rotate Video in Windows Movie Maker

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Yesterday we shot a video on our new Nexus 4. It was our first on our new toy and, alas, the video was sideways. We know now to shoot with the device held horizontally instead of upright. This mistake made us think about a way to rotate the video. Rotation is easy to do with a photo but can it be done on a video, essentially a string of photos? Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is there are at least two ways to do it, one complicated and one simple. We’ll do the simple way, thank you very much! Here’s the quick and easy way to rotate a video using Windows Movie Maker (WMM).

1. Unless you are still using Windows Vista, you have to download and install WMM separately. Here is the link:  Download Windows Movie Maker Download the version that is correct for you and install it.

2. Once WMM is installed, you can right click the video that you want rotated and choose ‘open with’ then ‘Movie Maker’, like this:

Photo of Rotate Video 1
Right click the video, choose open with movie maker.

3. Once the video has loaded, look up at the top when you are in the Home view. On the right side, just past the horizon icons, you’ll see Rotate left or Rotate right. Choose the one you want. We wanted to use the Rotate right setting:

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Rotate right, that’s the one we used.

4. Once the movie has been rotated, your view will change with the video now looking the way it should:

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Everything looks normal. Yay!

5. Once you have rotated the video, you can decide if you want to edit it or save it. If you simply save it, nothing will be changed except that the video will now play upright, not horizontally. If you don’t want to edit it, look up on the far right for the words ‘Save Movie’:

Photo of Rotate Video 4
Read number 6 before you click ‘Save movie’.

6. Click Save, name the movie something other than ‘My Movie’ but something different than the original, at least if you save it in the same spot. Why? Because if you happened to make a mistake, the original will still be there, safe and untouched. If you keep the same name, WMM will overwrite the original and you won’t be able to undo anything. The save process will take a few moments, depending on the length of your video. Here’s what you see:

Photo of Rotate Video 8
For a long video, go make a coffee.

Now that was easy, wasn’t it? Just so you know, rotation is not the only thing you can do with WMM. Even though it is free, there are many things you can do to enhance your video creations. There’s really no need to pay for a video editor. If you’re putting videos up on Youtube, don’t even think about using their editor or capture. Make your video using your webcam and then edit it, even if it’s just adding titles and credits, with WMM. Your fans will appreciate your effort. Better videos mean more fans, right?

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