Every now and then Microsoft releases updates for its different versions of Windows. Usually these updates are beneficial, good for you and your computer. Sometimes, these updates can cause your computer to malfunction, not often but every now and then. There are two things you can about this, the easiest being to simply delete the offending update. Here’s how you do that.
1. Head to your Control Panel (Start/Windows icon on the lower left of your taskbar then look for the words Control Panel up on the right middle and click on them). Like this:
See ‘Control Panel’?
2. Clicking on the words Control Panel opens up this screen:
What we want is the section that says ‘Programs Uninstall a program’
3. Click on Programs and the following screen pops up:
Look up on the top left for the words ‘View Installed updates’ and click them.
4. You have to view the updates carefully to find the one that you want to delete. Better if you know the number of it, KB971033 for instance. If you don’t, you can sort the updates according to different parameters. We suggest you sort them by date of installation. Here’s what that looks like:
There is even a calendar that appears if you hover up on the top right.
5. Once you’ve found the correct update, simply right click it and choose ‘uninstall’. You could also click it once and then choose ‘uninstall’ at the top. Either way, Windows will remove the offending update.
Right click and choose ‘Uninstall’.
Depending on which update you uninstall, you might have to reboot your computer.
Back at the start we said there were two ways to get rid of an update. What’s the second? You could restore your computer to previous day before you installed the update. We’ll explain how to do that in our next post. Stay tuned.
Most of us like to play some of the games on Facebook. If you read our last post, you’ll know that you don’t have a lot of privacy when you play these games. We’ve recommended using a dummy account for games but that’s up to you. If you do play games on your main or only Facebook account, here’s how you can adjust a few privacy settings.
1. Go to your Privacy Settings page (top right, click on the little down arrow and choose Privacy Settings.)
2. Look for the words ‘Ads, Apps and Websites’ about 3/4s of the way down the page then click ‘Edit settings’ on the right side.
3. You should be at a page that looks like this:
Here is where we’ll spend some time.
4. Read the top part of this page. You’ll see why we suggest a dummy account for games. Here is the important part:
“On Facebook, your name, profile picture, gender, networks, username and user id (account number) are always publicly available, including to apps (Learn why). Also, by default, apps have access to your friends list and any information you choose to make public.”
Note that your friend list is available to applications and games, even if it is marked ‘only me’ in your custom privacy settings. We’re not sure why a game has to know who your friends are but, hey, that’s Facebook!
5. In the middle of the page you’ll see a short list of apps that you are using. Not all are shown at once so click the words ‘Edit settings’. The next page that comes up will have a complete list of apps that you have allowed to ‘interact with your Facebook account’. In other words, these are the apps that Facebook has shared your most intimate details with. There certainly are a lot of them, aren’t there? Every web page, every game, every little widget that you’ve added to your Facebook account is there.
6. On the right side of every app, there is the word ‘Edit’. Click that and let’s see what you’re sharing with your friends. This is what Social Wars can see on one of our accounts:
We think you should match your settings to these.
7. Every app that you use must be able to access your basic information. This one, Social Wars, says that it has to be able to access your email, too. Not every app requires that but this one does. However, does this Facebook user get emails from Social Wars? No. See down at the bottom where it says ‘When to notify you?’ We’ve set that to ‘Never’.
8. Why cover your Timeline with posts from games? You don’t have to. There will always be some game posts when you look at your own Timeline but you can hide all of these from your friends. Second up from the bottom is the line ‘Posts on your behalf’. Well thanks, Social Wars, but we don’t want you to post crap on our Timeline. Therefore we’ve set that to ‘Only Me’. Only this Facebook user will see Social War’s posts, no one else.
9. We suggest that you work your way down the complete list of apps and change your settings to match ours. You can, of course, adjust each app to your own level of privacy. It takes time but we think it’s worth it.
TIP: Every time you add a game or an app, you’ll have to change these settings for it, right? Remember that.
10. Lastly, on the far right of each app or game you’ll see a little X. That is how you delete the game or app entirely. If you haven’t used something for a while, get rid of it. Some of these apps are temporary, for contests and so on. There is no reason to give them continued access to your private data, is there?
TIP: Even though you have deleted a game or an app, guess what? They still have all of your data. Look at this warning from Facebook regarding a game, Farmville:
Oh no! Farmville (and other games) still have your personal data!
See why we suggest a dummy account for games? Does it makes sense now?
Thanks for reading! Questions and comments are always welcome.
As we all know, Facebook plays pretty fast and loose with your personal information. How fast and loose? Take a look that this notice that popped up when we were removing Farmville from one of our Facebook accounts:
What? Farmville may still have our data???
Once Facebook has shared your data with Farmville why do you have to go to Farmville to get them to delete it? Wouldn’t deleting Farmville from your Facebook account be sufficient? Looks like it’s not. You have to scramble around to ask a game to delete your own data. All the more reason to use a dummy profile to play games.
If you’re tired of worrying about Facebook sharing your data as you travel around the Internet, try this. Go to your privacy page, top right of any page and click on the down arrow and choose Privacy Settings. Once you’re there, look for Apps and Websites. Click on Edit Settings. Here’s the page that comes up:
This is where you can change your game privacy settings.
Right now, this user has allowed 28 games or applications, including websites, access to their personal information. In the last few days, 5 apps/games have accessed that information. (We’ll show you how to limit some of this access in a later post.)
What if all of this third party sharing is not for you? From the looks of this page, Facebook is sharing everything about you with everyone. Lets change that. In the middle of this page, look for this:
The highlighted words ‘Turn off” will stop the sharing.
If you click on the words ‘Turn off’, none of your personal information will be shared with apps or games or websites outside of Facebook. The upside is that your data is substantially more private, the downside is that you won’t be able to play games or interact with websites the way you did before. Depending on who you are, this could be a good thing. Here’s what you see when you click on those words:
The warning is self-explanatory.
One click and you’re done. None of your games will show up on your Facebook page, your notices won’t include game updates or requests and you won’t be hounded to ‘Sign in with Facebook’ when you travel around the Internet. If you don’t like this, head back to the same page and ‘Turn on’ what you just turned off. Or, you could just play a game. Read the next tip.
TIP: Even though you have turned off Apps, Plugins and Websites and received the dire warning posted above, Facebook does not warn you that your privacy is being invaded the next time you play a game. Read that again, we’ll wait.
Facebook is eager to warn you when you turn off Apps, Plugins and Websites, right? It’s curious that there is no warning when you turn this on, isn’t it? All you have to do is play a game, even a game that you had been playing before you turned this off, and everything is back to normal. Your personal data is being shared outside of Facebook all over again.
Facebook is full of tricks and missteps, isn’t it? It’s like walking in a minefield blindfolded sometimes. We strongly suggest a secondary, anonymous account when playing games and ‘liking’ web pages. You never know when something you’ve done on Facebook will come back to haunt you later on. Use one account for friends and another for everything else. Using two browsers on a modern fast computer is simple and saves time logging in. Keep your main account on Chrome and your play account in Explorer, example.
Next time, we’ll tell you how to adjust your app and game settings to protect at least some of your privacy. Stay tuned!
We’ve written about Fotobounce before, here and here . Fotobounce allows you to download full photo albums from friends or pages that you like on Facebook. Yesterday, we got involved in a discussion about precisely this activity. Some of our artist or photographer friends objected to friends and/or complete strangers downloading their photos and using them on other social media sites. While we agreed that there is a case to be made here, we pointed out that simply putting something on Facebook is telling the world that it’s OK to copy/share/use etc. Anyway, that’s not the point today. In this post, we’ll teach you how to defeat Fotobounce from stealing your photos. (Stealing is a strong word but it kind of fits here.)
Deep inside Facebook’s privacy page, in an area that you probably wouldn’t get to on your own, there is a section that will allow you to prevent Fotobounce from downloading your photo albums. Here’s how to do it:
1. On the top right of any Facebook page, click on the down arrow like this:
Click on Privacy Settings
2. Once you get to the Privacy Settings page, look for the section that says ‘Ads, Apps and Websites’. Click on ‘Edit Settings’.
Click on Edit Settings
3. When the next page pops up, look for the section that says ‘How people bring your info to apps they use’.
Click on Edit Settings
4. Finally, you’re at the page we want. This is how it probably looks the first time you see it:
Most things are checked on this page. This isn’t good.
What you see here are the controls for what parts of your information Facebook apps can use. This is completely separate from what your friends can see or what strangers can see. We’ve already covered hiding things from your friends in many previous posts. Right now, we want to stop any Facebook apps from using your personal information including your photo albums.
5. You’ll have to take our word for it but ignore the last line: “But, remember, you will not be able to use any games or apps yourself.” That line is total baloney.
TIP: Despite what Facebook and games such as Farmville tell you, games and apps do not need access to anything other than your Basic Information. Check the photo below. Basic Information is not something that can be hidden anyway. If you uncheck everything on that page, you will still be able to play games as usual. Please note that you can also limit what parts of your Basic Information that anyone can see. More on that in a future post.
6. Here is how one of our accounts looks after we fixed our app settings:
Nothing is checked and we can still play games. Looks like Facebook lied.
7. You see above that nothing is checked. Apps cannot see anything about this profile. Neither can websites or, supposedly, games. At least that’s what Facebook tells you. More on that in a future post. The good news is that Fotobounce will not be able to access your photos at all. Not only will they not be able to download them, your photos are not even visible in Fotobounce.
We advise you to take these steps immediately to protect your personal data from being spread across websites and Facebook apps and games. Once everything is unchecked, your own Facebook experience won’t change. You won’t notice any difference. Then again, you won’t be shocked when your face shows up on a website or game somewhere, either. That, we think, is worth the few minutes that this process takes.
Panoramic photos are now free and very easy to create. You do not need a special camera, any digital camera will do. As a matter of fact, you don’t even need a digital camera if you have a scanner. More on that later. First, let’s look at the panorama photos.
Let’s say that you want to create an image that gives a better feeling of a wide scene, maybe a harbor or a cityscape. Single images just won’t do for something like this. What you want is a full view of what you see when you look from left to right or right to left across a scene. While some digital cameras can create panoramic images by themselves, we’re here to show you how to create a panoramic photo on your own computer, with free software from Microsoft.
Next, go out with your digital camera and take about six or seven photos in a row, doesn’t matter which direction you start. Make sure you overlap a bit with each photo on one edge or the other. Keep the same camera height but you don’t have to be totally precise, just do the best you can. Later, you can crop the jagged bits caused by any up or down movement of the camera between snaps. You can do more, maybe even a complete circle, although we haven’t tried that. Once you’re done, upload the photos to your computer.
Fire up Microsoft ICE. The program opens with a blank screen. What you’re going to do is drag and drop that series of photos onto the dark grey space that is shown here:
Highlight your new photos in their folder and drop them into this window.
As soon as ICE has the images in its hands, it starts to stitch them together. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could take seconds or a couple of minutes. Our seven photos only took about 15 seconds to stitch on a relatively fast computer. Here is how ICE looks when it’s completed its work:
See the jagged lines at top and bottom? We can crop those out.
Once ICE has completed working, check for jagged lines on the top or bottom of the image. Drag the horizontal line up or down, depending on which edge you are working on, to get rid of the jagginess. Once you’re done that, click on Export to disk, middle right side of the window.
The standard Windows save menu pops up and allows to save the stitched photo to your desktop or other folder. You’re done! Fast, easy and free.
As far as scanning is concerned, many things you want to scan are larger than the flatbed that you lay them on. Carefully line up different scans, making sure you overlap the edges as we did in the photo, and scan away. In this case, it doesn’t matter if the scans are overlapped on top or bottom, right or left. Just make sure to get scans of every part of the map, painting or whatever you are scanning.
When you’re done, open up ICE and, same as before, drag and drop the various images into it. Wait for ICE to complete its task and then export the photo to a disk. Even if you are copying a map, ICE sees it as a photo and will stitch it together. We’ve used this on maps and on things like diplomas. Both worked perfectly. Some scanners come with ICE software but, if not, you can use Microsoft ICE for free.
Let us know if you have questions. Comments are always welcome.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
