Well, I was watching the news last night and it was being reported that social networking site Facebook had made some controversial changes to their TOS (or terms of service). Well, I logged on to Facebook today to find out that Mark Zuckerberg had posted a short message concerning the recent press. He posted a link to the Facebook Blog post: On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information
As it turns out, Facebook is going back to the original TOS until they can find better wording. They SAY that they need to have rights to your information so they can be allowed to forward it to other users that you are trying to send it to. Here’s how they word it:
Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.
What are your thougts about this? Do they really need license to do this? Also, I had another concern about a statement later on in the post:
In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.
To me, this seems a little ambiguous. Who’s to say what I want? Do they know my wants? I believe a lot of this will be clearer in the near future. Facebook has committed to working this out so we should pay attention and even give our input NOW while they say they’re looking for it: Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities
Again, what are your thoughts about this whole thing?
FYI, I am testing a new comment type. Now you can actually leave me comments with you webcam and microphone! I AM just testing it out right now but if it goes over well, it’ll stick around.
Notice that I left a video AND an audio comment on this post. It’s reall easy!
- Now you’ll find new options in the comment section of every post!
- When you select one of these links, you’ll be asked whether or not your microphone or webcam can be accessed
- All there is left to do is hit record!
You can still leave typed comments on posts if you prefer. Now you just have two more options. Drop me a line and test the new options! I’d be happy to hear (from) you!
Are you anything like me in the morning? I HATE the waking up process! I actually have to set my cell phone to sound 3 times just in case I miss the first 2! When I do get up, I’m like the walking dead! For the first hour or two, my head doesn’t seem to work and you’d laugh if you knew some of the silly things I’ve done before actually waking up! One time I actually brewed coffee without the grounds!
Well, I found a neat list of things a non-morning person (that’s me!) can do to get going in the morning! Head over to Simpleproductivityblog.com for the full list but here is the general jist of things:
- Get Away from the Bed
- Turn On The Lights
- Stretch or Exercise
- Hot Beverage (don’t forget the coffee!)
- Combination (my favorite!)
Like I mentioned earlier, check out Simpleproductivityblog.com to get the full scoop! Join me in my everlasting quest to productivity in the morning!
Here we are again with another wonderful accessory for FireFox! Today I bring you Snap Links! Well, ok, I’m not actually “bringing” it to you but showing you what it is, but what’s the difference?
Snap Links add-on for FireFox makes it possible to open several links at one time just by drawing a box around them. Among other options, you can have links open in separate tabs. Very useful, right? Here’s the down lo!
- Head on over to snaplinks.mozdev.org
- Hit the “Download” button
- Install it like any FireFox add-on
- Go to options to set up your own preferences
- Try it out! Cool, huh?
Snap away! Hey, I wonder if the developers were Snapple fans? My mouth waters just remembering the wonderful fruity goodness!
Hello to all you Windows Live Hotmail users out there! For years, we have been without the option to use software like Outlook or Thunderbird to check our Hotmail. People have been trying to get around this obsticle for years and have even switched to other web mail providers like Gmail in order to have this ability.
Finally, Hotmail has POP3! This means that if you follow the simple instructions on Microsoft’s help site, Send and Receive Windows Live Hotmail emails from a Mail Client, you can check your Windows Live Hotmail from your favorite email client!
I know, I know, most of you geeks out there think that gmail is better anyways! I’ve had Hotmail since the 90’s and I’ll probably always have it. Now I can fetch email from my Gmail AND my Hotmail with an email client so THERE!
I’m sorry about the cat picture but I was looking for a photo of a computer and I came accross this one and I couldn’t resist!
Check out this news article: Coffee lovers face lower dementia risk
Wow! I knew there was something good about my favorite part of waking up! Coffee has long been my consistent companion on work week mornings and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
But, this, now this is cool! One more reason to enjoy that cup (or two) in the morning! I understand that the finding could end up being circumstantial but, hey, don’t take my joy away!
My suggestion? Find a friend to share a cup of coffee with today! Life is short!
From my experience, many of you seem to appreciate FireFox and what it can do as a browser. Check out the comments in this post: What Web Browser Do You Use and Why? and the opinions of the techies in the Techie Interview series when I asked for their opinion on which browser is best and you’ll get the same idea that I did. For this reason, today I’m starting a series of posts containing programs and add-ons that work with FireFox to make your life easier.
I use many services from Google and sometimes it gets annoying re-entering the website addresses or allowing all of the bookmarks to take over the bookmark bar. Well, someone thought it would be a good idea to combine all of the services that Google offers into one easy to manage dropdown button. They called it “GButts” (sounds a bit crude, but it really stands for “Google Buttons”). The cool part is that you can choose which services you use often enough to be added to the dropdown menu! Here’s the lowdown:
- Head on over to the GButts page on the site hosting the FireFox add-ons: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3576:
- Click the “Add to FireFox” button (FireFow will restart once the download is complete):
- To configure the buttons, go to tools/add-ons in FireFox:
- When the add-ons window appears, find GButts and click the “Options” button:
- From here, you can choose which Google services to have buttons for, how they are displayed (in a row or as a drop-down menu), and how the window opens:
- There you have it! Here’s a sample of how I have my Google buttons organized with Gbutts:
Personally, I have it set as a dropdown menu (as you can see) and so that they open in a separate tag. Those are my preferences. I hope you enjoyed this first of many FireFox posts!
Feel free to leave a comment if you need some assistence or if you just have a comment!
Do you remember the post from a while ago called “How I Get Almost Any Question I Have Answered Using The Internet“? Well, last night a quick question came up so I figured I give a working example of how I come across answers.
Well, there were actually two questions: “Is the idea that it is unhealthy to eat right before bed a misnomer?” and “Was ‘misnomer’ used correctly in that sentence?” Here is what I did to answer those two questions.
- Define: Misnomer – to do this, I headed over to Wiktionary.com
- Enter “wiktionary” into address bar and hit Ctrl+Enter (a nice little short cut I learned from my friend George Carpenter):
- Type “misnomer” into search box provided:
- Wictionary.com gives the list of possible definitions and gives examples of each. Then, as you can see, it gives “Usage notes” giving possible usages of the word (very handy for getting a feel of the many ways a word can be defined and used):
- Research: Is it really unhealthy to eat right before bed?
- I hit Yahoo.com up for this answer (I know, I know, Google is better! I’m still using Yahoo for this example!):
- I entered “eating befor bed” into the search field (I put the words in quotes so yahoo would search for occurrences of the phrase):
- I then got a list of sites containing the phrase I was searching for. The first link seems like it might have some answers:
- As you can see from this screen shot, this site breaks the answer down for us:
- Does the Timing of Meals Matter?
- Timing of Meals and Weight
- Other Health Effects
- Eating at Night: a Real Disease?
- The Bottom Line
There you have it, a quick example of how easy the internet makes it to find answers! Please remember, when doing research, it is always good to find multiple sources of information to get more of a consesus of whether or not an answer is accurate. For more tools for researching answers, revisit “How I Get Almost Any Question I Have Answered Using The Internet“!
Taking a break from my more usual tech-related topics (although definitely not my first break: more about fast food), I found this storefront and it made me chuckle!
It’s a pizza joint and a gym, right next door to each other! Who else thinks that’s funny?
Internet, Technology | timmy February 18, 2009 | 
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