Category Archives: Free Software

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

WeChat Shake Problem – a solution? Maybe.

234 Comments

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!
Thanks for reading. Like our Facebook page, please and thank you! Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

 

Free Software, Rotate Video, Windows Live Movie Maker

Rotate Video in Windows Movie Maker

Leave a comment

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:

Photo of Rotate Video 2
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:

Photo of Rotate Video 3
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?

Thanks for reading. Like us on Facebook and we’ll like you! Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

 

 

Fake Search Results in Shake, Free Software, WeChat, Weixin

Weixan/WeChat – Shake your way to new friends Part II

4 Comments

Back in May of 2012 we posted a story about WeChat and its new Shake feature. Since then we’ve been inundated with hundreds of questions regarding Shake, usually about problems users have with it. To date, there have been just under 400 questions and answers, 368 actually. For one post on a small blog such as this, that’s an incredible number of comments.

Photo of WeChat Shake Problems 1
368 comments so far.

Most of the problems with WeChat Shake seem to stem from faulty GPS signals or helper apps that interfere with the main WeChat/Weixin app. We use WeChat on two devices, one Android and one iOS (Apple) but, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to duplicate the errors. Every now and then we get a result that we know isn’t correct but after shaking again, everything goes back to normal. In this post, we’re going to list some suggestions about how you can solve problems that you have. We’ve tweeted the makers of the app several times but they have not responded yet. Although they follow us on Twitter, they don’t seem interested in helping their users. Hey, the app is free so we really can’t blame them, can we?

Suggestions for Troubleshooting WeChat Shake Errors

1. Is your GPS working perfectly for other apps?

2. Do you get errors on wifi or data? Do you get the same errors on each?

3. Have you installed helper apps that promise to assist you in finding other single WeChat users? We think that this is the first place to look for answers.

4. When you are chatting with someone, do you see blue lines under some of their words? These are links to something. Whatever you do, don’t accept a file from them.

5. Further with number 4, don’t accept files from anyone, even if you know them. Ask them to send it in an email or on QQ. That way you can use your anti-virus to scan the file before you open it.

6. If you notice Shake doing strange things, change your password. This goes for problems with any app or social media site. Make a point of changing your password on a regular basis.

7. Log out of your account, delete WeChat, reboot your phone then install WeChat again. Create a new ID and see if the problems are still there.

8. Change your WeChat name. You can change your name to anything you want, any number of times you want. This is what people see you as, not your WeChat ID.

9. Change your location. If you know that the results you are getting are faulty, move to another location. We’re not talking a few meters here, go a few kilometres away and see what you get.

10. Have a friend check their results against yours on a completely different device, preferably with a different carrier as well. What you’re trying to do here is to narrow the error down to your device, your carrier or the actual WeChat app.

Those are ten suggestions to start with. Use your head on this. The way to troubleshoot these problems is to narrow down the possibilities in an attempt to find a solution. It’s easy to suggest that WeChat is at fault and maybe it is but eliminate things that you are in control of before blaming the app makers. Here are our results from the last Shake search we did:

Photo of WeChat Shake Problems 2
No Chinese users and the KM distances are correct.

 

Remember this above all, WeChat is free and it’s fun, when it works. The Shake feature is taking the world by storm, sure, but it’s also free. If it works, fine. If not, don’t go crazy trying to figure it all out. Wait for a while to see if things change. Explore your device and your carrier’s services to see if the errors are based on something you or they are doing. We will do our best to answer your questions but until we can duplicate the errors, we’re simply guessing at a solution. Good luck and keep commenting.

Thanks for reading! Like us on Facebook and keep up on our tips and helpful posts. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

Download Youtube Videos, Free Software

Download Youtube Videos – revisited

1 Comment

It seems that Youtube has changed its policy regarding the downloading of some videos on the site. When we lauded Miro on its ability to download Youtube videos, we hadn’t run into anything that this free app couldn’t download. That’s changed. Some videos are just about impossible to download from Youtube, even when using the Real Downloader which has worked well in the past. Recently, we’ve discovered a new add-on for Firefox that works very well for most, but not all, videos on Youtube. Here’s how you do it:

1. Next to Google Chrome, Firefox is our favorite browser. If you don’t have it installed, download it from here: Mozilla Firefox Install it and let it update itself.

2.  Head over to Download Flash and Video to get the app that will allow you to save Youtube videos to your computer. Install it as per their directions.

Photo of Download Flash and Video 2
Here is the main page.

3. Once the add-on is installed, you’ll be taken to the main site. You can read a brief how-to there:

Photo of Download Flash and Video 1
A basic set of instructions for the Firefox add-on.

4. We’re using Youtube as an example but you can choose any video site, except vevo.com. Download Flash and Video works with just about all of them. Once you’re there, pick any video that you want to save and click on the play button. Up on the top right of your window you’ll see an icon. On a non-video page it will be grey. On a video page, as in now, it will be blue. Click on it to something similar to this:

Photo of Download Flash and Video 3
Choose your poison, as they say.

Don’t be put off by the rather confusing array of file types. The section at the top, at least for this Mumford and Sons video, lists the ads on this page. What you want is the list of  video files in the lower section. Which one you choose depends on what you want to do with the video. The smaller files, like the ones you can record on a cell phone, are pretty crappy, to be honest. The best quality videos will be the larger files, let’s say the one at the very top. It is a new filetype, at least for us. We haven’t seen ‘.webm’ videos prior to this but we use the VLC media player and, thank goodness, it will play just about any file we download. Click on the file you want to save, we suggest the .webm or .mp4 ones, and the download window will pop up:

Photo of Download Flash and Video 5
Click Save.

5. Click Save and you’re done. We were impressed with the quality of the .webm video and we’re pretty sure we’ll use that for future downloads.

TIP: You don’t have to watch the video while it’s downloading. Click pause and do something else if you want. The download app will save the video on its own. Remember that some of these files are quite large. Downloading them takes time. It all depends on the speed of your connection.

Initially, we had a problem with a Conan O’Brien video, there was no listing for it when we clicked on the icon. We moved on to another one then went back and there it was, a full list of file options. The lesson here might be to reload the page or move ahead then back if you don’t see the various download options.

Youtube has a much larger selection of videos than you might imagine. We’ve found full versions of movies, both foreign and domestic. Using Miro and choosing a ‘World’ setting, we find many videos we were unaware of. If we can’t download them through Miro, we copy the url and paste it into the Firefox url slot. After that, it’s a snap to download it using Download Flash and Video.

Good luck! We hope you find this easy way to save videos as useful as we do. Let us know if you have problems, OK?

Thanks for reading. Like us on Facebook. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

 

 

 

Fake Search Results in Shake, Free Software, Phishing Scams, WeChat, WeChat.WeChat Voice, Weixin

WeChat Shake Virus – a solution to a very real problem

13 Comments

We’ve had a huge jump in the comments on one of our WeChat posts. Here is a link to the post: Weixin/WeChat – Shake your way to new friends  Lately, the comments have focussed on what readers think are search results using the Shake feature that are skewed somehow. We think we’ve found the reason for this. Check out some of these screen caps. Maybe you can see where we’re going with this:

Photo of WeChat Virus 1
WeChat plus 54 other apps related to it.

 

We have both apps on our devices; WeChat and WeChat Voice. Both are made by TenCent International, the company that created WeChat. Can you trust these two apps? Sure you can. No problem. Let’s look at what other apps are available to ‘enhance’ your WeChat experience:

Photo of WeChat Virus 2
Same two at the top but lots more below.

Let’s see what we’ve got here. Find Friends for WeChat? Huh? Isn’t that what WeChat is all about? Why would you need to use an app to find friends for an app that finds friends? Something’s fishy here, folks.

Photo of WeChat Virus 3
Some of these are pretty sketchy, aren’t they?

One more, just in case you are missing the point:

Photo of WeChat Virus 4
Don’t even think of adding any of these. OK?

Just the same as on your PC, you’re at risk when you add software from companies that you are not familiar with. You have to ask yourself, why is this free? What will these people get from offering me free apps? Some get money from advertising. Others, unfortunately, have found a way to hijack WeChat’s Shake results. Instead of showing you other people who are shaking their phones, these apps will show you something else, usually spam ‘contacts’ who will try to get you to spend money on a product or service.

If you add any of these apps, you’re just asking for trouble. Remember those ‘free screensavers’ from a few years ago? Same thing there. After you installed them, your computer would start to act differently or would slow down to a crawl. Adding apps to your mobile device is reasonable safe, as long as you think about what you’re doing.

TIP: All you need is WeChat, nothing else. These add-on apps will do nothing but cause you problems. Some of these may actually hijack your mobile device, meaning that you won’t be able to remove them, even  by reformatting or resetting your device. Your flash card would be toast, even your ROM (the brain of your device) might be attacked.

Install WeChat, maybe add WeChat Voice but nothing else. You’ve been warned.

Thanks for reading! Like us on Facebook and we’ll like you. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook