Keyboard short cuts are still king. While Windows 8 is so gesture oriented, especially when you are using a touch screen, it is still useful to know some keyboard shortcuts.
Alt+tab is the most wonderful way to switch between open programs. Ctrl+Shift+Esc will open the Task Manager which in Windows 8 can help pinpoint memory and processor hogs. Alt+F4 will quit you out of desktop programs and the newer style apps, while Ctrl+F4 will close the open windows within that program. Then there are a handful of useful Windows logo key combinations, including Window+l to lock your computer, Windows+m to minimize all windows and Windows+d to show your desktop. On web pages and in images, often you can zoom in with Ctrl and +, using Ctrl and – to zoom back out.
Time to trim your Facebook newsfeed. With Facebook now ten years old, your newsfeed my have become intimidating with its length. Unfollowing friends lets you stop seeing their news without actually unfriending them. With the increase in ads, Facebook is now letting people right click on an ad or post to take a survey that lets you rate how commercial some random posts feel. Hopefully, these surveys will tilt Facebook’s inclusions to be less commercial. And, if you are using a Facebook app on a device using data, then you should be able to turn off the new auto-play of videos.
Logging into a site with your Facebook login, rather than creating a site-specific login, gives that site all sorts of personal information like political views, personal information and other relationships, along with the same information from all your Facebook contacts. So, although it may seem easier to just use that Facebook login all over the web to avoid keeping up with all those passwords, understand that you may be over-sharing personal information.
There is a Google Calendar feature that leverages your trust of events showing up in your calendar that is useful for spammers. If you put a Google account name in the subject of a calendar event, then that event will show up in that account holders calendar. You can imagine how if you see something show up in your Google calendar you might think it legit, Google wouldn’t be placing ads there, right? No, just others taking advantage of a feature the Google engineers don’t seem interested in disabling.