Facebook newsfeed simplified. Facebook has made changes in News Feed settings that should help you focus (or refocus) on groups and people you follow. When you see a story you don’t want to follow anymore, click the arrow by the story to tweak settings. And, while you are dealing with Facebook, check out their newer Privacy Shortcuts menu in the top bluish bar, look through the Privacy Checkup, and read through their Privacy Basics, paying attention to the section on “What You See.” Since Facebook will have a new Terms of Service and other agreements going into effect on January 1st, I should remind you that whatever you read about Facebook owning your content is not true, you have copyright protections, they just can use it in a variety of ways to help their advertisers know more about you.
With rising concerns about text message security, you might want to check at EFF.org and look at their secure messaging scorecard, search for it in their upper right search box on their home page.
If there is a YouTube video you want to save, have it open in your web browser, click into the address bar and add two letters before the youtube.com part, after the www part. The two letters are “ss”, that is two esses and tap the enter key. You will end up at a video converter and downloader site called savefrom.net with download links for mp4 versions of that YouTube video.
Backups, you know I talk about them and I would like to add in some other things you should think of when thinking of backups. To have an alternative internet provider, you might be able to set up your smart phone in “tethered” mode, so that it connects to the internet and also sets up a Wi-Fi hotspot for laptops and tablets to use. Just be careful of the data plan limits you might have. What about having an alternative device to connect to the Internet, to your email, to other data you might have saving into the “cloud.” Your passwords should be backed up also, and let someone else know where they are, in case you cannot get to them. And, what about important papers, don’t forget to have copies of the top 25 documents to have, as determined by the Wall Street Journal.
Wikipedia may have great information but it is so pretty unless you use a browser extension from wikiwand.com. Try it and maybe you will get excited again about Wikipedia.org.
With all the talk of Facebook changes and expansion, I have seen more emails contending that Facebook has changed my password for security and suspicious activity from some location. Checking the actual senders address, sometimes you have to click on the senders address to see the real address, always shows an email address other than Facebook. So, be safe.