How do I disable those annoying updates on Facebook?
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disable those annoying updates on facebook.
Do you get really annoyed when you login to facebook and all you see on your wall is a bunch of updates from your friends, but not really from your friends? Rather, the update is from a game or application that they are using on facebook, and it has decided to let you know that your friend is playing thier game, and that they want to let you know, or they need your help!
I know that this topic is not one that I normally cover, but I liked the question that I received so I decided to post on it.
In Facebook, these apps and games are trying to advertise themselves to everyone, and thats why they are posting to your wall. I can appreciate that, but I personally find it annoying, so I am going to tell you how to stop it, without blocking your friend!
When you login to facebook and you are looking at the home page, you might see a bunch of updates from farmville, mafia wars, some random quiz, or whatever the latest facebook fad is. The best way and easiest way to stop them is really simple.
Beside each post on the right hand side, there will be a drop down arrow. You won’t see it unless you move your mouse over that area, thats the trick! once you have your mouse over that area, you will be able to select “hide” or hide application. Hide, will remove all posts from that user, so you never see their updates again. Not sure you will want to do that, but its there. Hide application, will remove all the posts from that application. So if you have 20 friends all playing Farmville, or passing around the 10 things I know about you quiz, once you hide that application, you won’t see anyones update about it afterwards.
Although you are not able to do this on the iPhone with the Facebook app, once you do this on your PC in a webbrowser, then you will not see these updates on your iPhone anymore either.
There you go, now you don’t have to see all those application updates anymore!
This was a request from a subscriber to DutchGeek.com. If you want to get your questions answered, why not post a comment below.
Do you get really annoyed when you login to Facebook and all you see on your wall is a bunch of updates from your friends, but not really from your friends? Rather, the update is from a game or application that they are using on Facebook, and it has decided to let you know that your friend is playing thier game, and that they want to let you know, or they need your help!
I know that this topic is not one that I normally cover, but I liked the question so I decided to post on it.
In Facebook, these apps and games are trying to advertise themselves to everyone, and thats why they are posting to your wall. I can appreciate that, but I personally find it annoying, so I am going to tell you how to stop it, without blocking your friend!
When you login to Facebook and you are looking at the home page, you might see a bunch of updates from Farmville, Mafia Wars, some random quiz, or whatever the latest Facebook fad is. The best way and easiest way to stop them is really simple.
Beside each post on the right hand side, there will be a drop down arrow.
You won’t see it unless you move your mouse over that area, thats the trick! once you have your mouse over that area, you will be able to select “hide” or hide application.
Hide, will remove all posts from that user, so you never see their updates again. Not sure you will want to do that, but its there. Hide application, will remove all the posts from that application. So if you have 20 friends all playing Farmville, or passing around the 10 things I know about you quiz, once you hide that application, you won’t see anyones update about it afterwards.
Although you are not able to do this on the iPhone with the Facebook app, once you do this on your PC in a web browser, then you will not see these updates on your iPhone anymore either.
There you go, now you don’t have to see all those application updates anymore!
This was a request from a subscriber to DutchGeek.com. If you want to get your questions answered, why not post a comment below.
Related posts
What are System Restore points?
Have you ever wondered just what a system restore point was, and just why you need them?
Your not alone. A lot of people don’t know how to effectively use them, and they can be a great tool for backup. However; that being said, it should never be your ONLY form of backup of your system. System Restore points should be considered the front line of your backup solution.
System Restore points can be made in Vista or Windows 7 by opening the Control Panel and choosing System.
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Select on System Protection
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Here we are able to choose the specific settings of our backup. Choose configure, and Select the following options:
Restore system settings and previous versions of files.
The amount of Disk Space that is used is up to you. I would normally recommend about 10% of your total Hard Disk.
Once these options are enabled, then your system should be backing up the data. The default for the task in Windows is to run at midnight each day.
I do not consider this to be a full backup of your system, however if used correctly, this can be used as one component of a full backup routine for your data.
Have you ever wondered just what a system restore point was, and just why you need them?
Your not alone. A lot of people don’t know how to effectively use them, and they can be a great tool for backup. However; that being said, it should never be your ONLY form of backup of your system. System Restore points should be considered the front line of your backup solution.
System Restore points can be made in Vista or Windows 7 by opening the Control Panel and choosing System.
Select on System Protection
Here we are able to choose the specific settings of our backup. Choose configure, and Select the following options:
Restore system settings and previous versions of files.
The amount of Disk Space that is used, is up to you. I would normally recommend about 10% of your total Hard Disk. Once these options are enabled, then your system should be backing up the data. The default for the task in Windows is to run at midnight each day.
***NOTE***
I do not consider this to be a full backup of your system, however; if used correctly this can be used as one component of a full backup routine for your data.
Related posts
Need email service for your company?
I had been holding off on posting this, but after finally getting this to work flawlessly for me, I have decided to publish this article.
For all the different domains that I own, and all the websites that I have setup, I have always needed some form of software to be my mail server. I used to run a few different mail server programs out of my own home, so I had greater control over the application.
Then a few years ago I was invited to the googlemail beta when it was still closed. I had used hotmail, yahoo, and a few other free mail clients before this, but they just never seemed to interest me enough to keep using them. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my yahoo account, but I use that as a spam address.
The biggest problem that I was facing was I needed an application that would allow for mail client usage such as Outlook Express (Microsoft Mail now), and also for web viewing, as some of the people that I was serving mail for needed to view it over the web.
I was using a program called Icewarp, and it was great, until I starting getting innudated with SPAM. The different organizations, that I was hosting for free started to complain about receiving way too much SPAM, and asked me to decrease it. It became a never ending battle. So the search started. Then I stumbled upon it… oh could this be it? Gmail had been released for orgainzations. Yes free and paid email solutions for all! Upto 25 accounts was still free, and since my customers were all smaller, this was perfect!
Yes, yes it was all I needed until I got my first iPhone. I saw all the different mail accounts I could have and I could seperate them, and be organized! My previous Blackberry needed special apps to be able to view HTML mails, and even seperate the accounts.
Being on an exchange server at work, I was able to push emails, for my work account, and IMAP for my Gmail, and yahoo accounts. I was in heaven! Then in order to save the company a bit of money, I removed myself from the push server, freeing up my 1 available Exchange connection.
Then Gmail started to tease me. They allowed for contacts and calendars to be synced through push! I copied all my contacts from my work email, and published them into my personal gmail account. Now I had access to all the contacts that I would ever need, and they were in my personal email. This meant that if I was ever let go from the company, I would not scramble to get my contact data out of my work email account. I had seen it far too often that people were let go, and I would have to disable access to their accounts.
That’s right people. If its your work account, it doesn’t belong to you. You might think it does, but sadly, it doesnot. This was a great way for me to prepare incase any ever happened, I would retain my contacts, and my work email account would be clean for anyone else to look at.
Then a short while ago, Gmail allowed mail push. Oh Happy Day! yes that’s right, I am now able to push all my information for my gmail account in realtime to my iPhone.
Gmail for organizations has become a true leader in email services. They are second to none, as they offer free accounts for the smaller organizations, and low cost enterprise solutions as well. Everytime I am asked how to setup an email acount for a client, I always recommend Gmail, as the administrator is able to control the accounts, and the people in the organization can have an email address with their proper domain name rather than a @gmail.com account or a @hotmail.com. This is much more professional looking, and its very easy to setup.
COngratulations Google for giving us yet another stunning service!
I had been holding off on posting this, but after finally getting this to work flawlessly for me, I have decided to publish this article.
For all the different domains that I own, and all the websites that I have setup, I have always needed some form of software to be my mail server. I used to run a few different mail server programs out of my own home, so I had greater control over the application.
Then a few years ago I was invited to the Gmail beta when it was still closed. I had used Hotmail, Yahoo, and a few other free mail clients before this, but they just never seemed to interest me enough to keep using them. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my yahoo account, but I use that as a spam address.
The biggest problem that I was facing was I needed an application that would allow for mail client usage such as Outlook Express (Microsoft Mail now), and also for web viewing, as some of the people that I was serving mail for needed to view it over the web.
I was using a program called Icewarp, and it was great, until I starting getting innudated with SPAM. The different organizations, that I was hosting for free started to complain about receiving way too much SPAM, and asked me to decrease it. It became a never ending battle. So the search started. Then I stumbled upon it… oh could this be it? Gmail had been released for orgainzations. Yes free and paid email solutions for all! Upto 25 accounts was still free, and since my customers were all smaller, this was perfect!
Yes, yes it was all I needed until I got my first iPhone. I saw all the different mail accounts I could have and I could seperate them, and be organized! My previous Blackberry needed special apps to be able to view HTML mails, and even seperate the accounts.
Being on an exchange server at work, I was able to push emails, for my work account, and IMAP for my Gmail, and yahoo accounts. I was in heaven! Then in order to save the company a bit of money, I removed myself from the push server, freeing up my 1 available Exchange connection.
Then Gmail started to tease me. They allowed for contacts and calendars to be synced through push! I copied all my contacts from my work email, and published them into my personal gmail account. Now I had access to all the contacts that I would ever need, and they were in my personal email. This meant that if I was ever let go from the company, I would not scramble to get my contact data out of my work email account. I had seen it far too often that people were let go, and I would have to disable access to their accounts.
That’s right people. If its your work account, it doesn’t belong to you. You might think it does, but sadly, it doesnot. This was a great way for me to prepare incase any ever happened, I would retain my contacts, and my work email account would be clean for anyone else to look at.
Then a short while ago, Gmail allowed mail push. Oh Happy Day! yes that’s right, I am now able to push all my information for my gmail account in realtime to my iPhone.
Gmail for organizations has become a true leader in email services. They are second to none, as they offer free accounts for the smaller organizations, and low cost enterprise solutions as well. Everytime I am asked how to setup an email acount for a client, I always recommend Gmail, as the administrator is able to control the accounts, and the people in the organization can have an email address with their proper domain name rather than a @gmail.com account or a @hotmail.com. This is much more professional looking, and its very easy to setup.
Congratulations Google for giving us yet another stunning service!
Related posts
Which type of Wireless Security is best?
If you remember a little while back I wrote an article on wireless security and I briefly mentioned that you should make sure that its turned on, and I mentioned that at a minimum you need to have WPA.
Now is the time to explain the differences between the different types so you can understand why I make the recomendations that I do.
There are 3 main types of Wireless security for your router. They are WEP, WPA and WPA2.
WEP Encryption – (Wired Equivalent Privacy) 1997
This form of security has a few flaws. The most noticeable being that the encryption is done in plain text. It can be set to handle 64 bit encryption and 128 bit as well. This format uses RC4 for its traffic key. This is a very short key, and requires less packets to determine the network password.
Tests have been done on secured WEP Networks, and the key was determined in about 1 minute. There are software packages that are readily available for people to download in order to hack into this type of network. The latest ports have even been setup for the iPhone. The info I saw showed an iPhone hacking a network in less than 2 minutes.
WPA – (WiFi Protected Access) 1999
This is still using the RC4 stream, but the key type was changed to TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol). This was designed to replace the older, failing WEP format. This format was designed to fix some of the flaws from WEP, but still needed to communicate with the older hardware. This meant that a flaw was available for hacking in order to find the key. This flaw is only able to decrypt short packets that were known to contain data.
WPA2 – 2006
This is a newer protocol, and might not work with all the older equipment that is still in some networks. Some hardware will need to be replaced, or if you are lucky just have the firmware updated.
Based on the WPA format, WPA2 uses a much stronger advanced encryption standard, rather than RC4.
With WPA2 being the stronger format available, this is the best option for your network. While nothing can ever be truly secure, there are steps that you can take to make it harder for hackers to retrieve your personal data.
1. SSID (Service Set IDentifier) – try not to use common words or names for your network. Use random letters B2BIR or pick an acronym that you can remember. ROY G BIV, JJASONDJFMAM, or SOHCAHTOA works for me.
2. Once you have the network setup there should be an option to disable broadcast of your SSID. This is why having a random acronym that you can remember makes it easier for you to enter your credentials
3. Turn on the MAC (Media Access Control) Filter. This means that only approved MAC addresses are allowed to connect to your network.
*note – While 99% of network cards have this information hard coded onto the hardware, there are some network cards allow you to type in your own MAC Address for the card. This is primarily used to hack networks and to bypass licensing restrictions for software. I own one of these cards, and they are extremely handy for those situations*
4. Change your Network Key in intervals, ie every 3 – 7 days. This is a manual process and requires all clients to update as well.
5. Use a NetBEUI protocol for file sharing (Advanced users only). As most people do not have this option enabled, and rather than using the IP address of the machine it uses the computer name to authenticate.
6. While setting up the DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) on the router, set the available amount of licenses that it delivers to the exact number of machines on your network.
7. Don’t use 192.168.0.1 as your default address for your router.
8. Change the admin login and password on your router.
While some of these are basic and should be done, others are more advanced, and unless you feel comfortable, should be avoided, or you might need a professionals help you to set these options in place. I am not able to post screen shots for setup as there are hundreds of manufacturers, and each one does things just a little bit differently.
I am happy to help you as much as I can through the comments, or I can do some consulting for you to assist with your setup.
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Even professionals make mistakes
Yep, you guessed it, I made a bit of a mistake earlier today, and I thought I would share my experience with you.
I was making a new avatar for a social site, and I was chatting with a friend of mine on skype. So there was mistake number 1, I should have been focusing on what I was doing at the time.
While editing the image to make it smaller, I mistakenly clicked on the save button and not the save as button. Now, my large nice image has been replaced by a much smaller one. This is where I start swearing at my computer right?
Wrong. Why? because I use Windows 7. Windows 7 and Vista have a built in feature called shadow copy. This allows you to restore files from a previous version. In order to restore the file all I need to do is follow these steps.
Right click on the file and choose properties. A dialog box like this will pop up:
Choose the Previous Versions tab
Now I can select the old version that I want to restore from. Simply choose the file that you want, and hit Restore
Those of you that are paying attention will notice that the old version is from Feburary. Yes, that’s a little old, but in this case its fine. The reason that this file is so old is because the shadow copies are only created during a system restore point. By default this option is turned on, but you can manually invoke it so you have more backups of your data.
I will teach you how to setup this option in my next posting.
So remember, that even the professionals make mistakes. The difference is that we know how to recover from them.
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Ever needed to make an online video?
Have you ever tried to explain something to someone, and it was just too complicated to put into words, where if you were just sitting next to them you would point at the location you wanted them to go, say click this, then that, and hit done?
Most of the soft wares that are available to capture and record your screen cost a bundle, well since the dutch are famous for being cheap, so I found something that will suit your needs, and not break the bank in the process.
Screen Toaster allows you to record your actions on your PC. You can create the video as a portion of your screen or, the entire screen. All the recording is done through your browser window, and then you can save the file in a variety of formats.
The file can be uploaded to YouTube, left on Screen Toaster, or save it to your local PC, and send it to the person in an email you are trying to help. The videos are high quality, but small in size so they are easy to transfer.
This is a great way to be able to visually connect with other people for social media sites, or even to just record yourself getting that high score in minesweeper.
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Going Incognito
Have you ever been asked to disable your firewall or antivirus by tech support people for testing and they want you to surf on the net without protection just to test something.
If you are using google chrome or FireFox there is a way that you can surf an let your browser protect you a little. There is an option called private browsing or surf incognito that will stop the sites that you surf from saving cookies onto your computer. This will help when you are unsure if a site will try to put something on your PC. It will be removed as soon as you close the browser.
This protection can also be used to keep sites that you visit from being recorded into the history of the browser. Let’s say you want to surf some sites that you don’t want other people that might use the computer to know that you went to. Like at a internet cafe or library or school. You can start a private browsing session and surf to your online mail site or your banking site. All information will not be stored in the history so it adds another level of security for you.
Hope this helps you at some point.
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Need a way to covert a PDF to Word?
The other day I needed to be able to convert a PDF to a word file so I could edit the text. I tried the adobe software but the formatting became all messed up and I thought that there had to be a better way.
I did some searching and now you get to benefit from my time. I found a great tool that does a better job of keeping the formatting intact. Just like the next user I am a little leary of installing unknown software an this removes that problem as well.
I found a website that will allow you to upload the file and do the conversion online. It did a great job of keeping the formatting and it allowed me to get the word version of the file.
The website is pdftoword.com simple enough? Atleast it has an easy to remember name!
Just upload the file that you would like to make into a word file, and it will perform its magic. Once it is complete, you get an emailed copy of the Word file.
Try it out, and let me know what you think!
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Categories: Tips and Tricks Tags: computer, internet
Is your blog mobile ready?
As I am sitting waiting for an appointment, I am checking twitter for tech and geek updates, and I came to a conclusion. Most blogs are graphics rich and are not really mobile compatible.
I had clicked on a few blogs and I was reading away and when it was time to scroll down to read more, I had to wait for the page to load. The pages took a really long time to load, and I was on a 3G connection.
I don’t know about you but this agravates me! To the point that I will give up on the article. I will hit the back button and go read another post.
So the question is with so many users using iPhones, blackberrys and other mobile devices more and more why are blog authors not updating their sites to display on these devices?
I have a mobile theme and a “regular” theme. I figure that if some one is using a mobile device I want the page to load in a decent time and to be formated for their device.
Maybe I am alone in this thinking, so tell me, what do you think about this?
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Is my Blog working?
A little while ago, I wrote a post on how you could check to see if a website was working for you. I posted a link to a site that I found that you check the status of a website to see if it was down for the entire world, or just for you.
Well, I found another great little site that you might be interested in. If you blog, or if your thinking about starting a blog, I would bookmark this one!
This is a great site that you simply type in the name of your blog, and it gives you some quick information about it. it will report if your server is online, if your RSS feed is available, what your robots.txt file looks like, and even your links for Google and Bing!
How cool is that? A single page to see all the Tech information about your blog that you can use to make sure that your readers are getting the best experience.
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Categories: Computers, Tips and Tricks Tags:
