Share little identifiable information: Thanks to Facebook, which has been getting people in trouble since 2004, people nowadays seem willing to tell the entire world about their deepest darkest secrets. Do not become one of those, even if you have a private profile, you cannot guarantee that your friends profile is private or that they are the only ones who has access to it. Do not put your business over Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or any other social networking site. I am not saying you shouldn’t have one, but be very careful what you share.

Change usernames frequently: Using just one username or a variation of the same one is not a good idea. You can leave tracks for people to follow. Do not use the same username for every site your register for unless you want people to know who you are.

Change your language:  Pay attention to phrases and words you use commonly. If you want to keep completely anonymous and throw of anyone trying to track you, try and change up your lexicon. It’s not a must, but it is added protection.

Delete unused online accounts: Have a Myspace or Twitter account you’re not using? Deactivate or delete it.

There are many other tips you can use, however these are some of the easiest and most efficient methods. Remember, the less you put online, the less people will be able to track your online movements.

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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The RIAA, the organization that handles the affairs of musicians and record labels alike, has become infamous among internet users for their harsh penalties and constant vigilance over the distribution of songs both legally and illegally and most naturally you have heard of cases where individuals were sued for millions because they illegally shared music.

The horror stories are not as bad as they sound however and only a small group of people are liable to be sued. First of all, before the RIAA goes after an individual in court for pirating music, they will generally send them a letter telling them they need to pay a sum of money for their illegal activities or face a lawsuit. Most people take that option, and though steep, paying a $2-4,000 fine versus going to court and possibly being required to pay millions is a much better option.

However, this only applies to those who are actively distributing pirated material, such as file hosting sites and P2P networks. It is very cost ineffective to go after an individual who has downloaded 2,000 songs illegally (value: $2,000). Just the legal fees along would surpass any amount of money the RIAA could possibly think of collecting because they can only sue for the market value of what you pirated.

However, if you were distributing pirated material, the cost goes up significantly because you can be charged for every person who downloaded the file from you, which is why P2P networks are so dangerous to use.

This brings us back to our original question. Is Grooveshark illegal. Yes and no. Grooveshark pays royalties to the RIAA, though the RIAA wants more of the money the company makes. This has led the RIAA to pressure Google and Apple to remove the Grooveshark app from their application stores (the app can be side loaded on Android devices or installed on Jailbroken iPhones).

However, just like the MPAA or any film distribution company will not sue you for watching a movie illegally online, it’s the same rule that applies to the RIAA. They will not sue you for listening to a song online.

Grooveshark allows it’s users to upload their musical collection to the internet however, and this might pose a legal matter for those who do, especially if Grooveshark is subpoenaed to disclose who uploaded what and how many times the media was played.

You as a user, on the other hand, is almost always immune to court action, due to the fact that it is both not cost effective and highly risky to go after a user than the distributor.

So to answer the question, no Grooveshark is not illegal. I wouldn’t go as far and say it is legal however, but listening to music on the online service is definitely not going to put you behind bars.

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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Music can be stored in the cloud and streamed to almost every device. Documents can be created, shared and collaborated online and of course, social media has taken center stage in information exchange within the last few years.

Online converters are an example of web based tools which can easily replace a desktop application. Thanks to multiple websites offering this service, people can convert audio, video and image codecs into a variety of different formats. What follows are some of the best online converters we have personally tested and used.

• iConvert

  This simple web based converter allows you to upload an image file and convert it into .ico, .icns, ihqx or .png file format for use as icons and such on Windows, Mac and Linux based machines. The service is free and conversion is fast and simple.

• Zamzar

  One of my new favorite video converters, Zamzar allows you to upload a video file (up to 100MB) which it will than convert and send the download link to your email when the task is completed. It is free and supports the widest range of formats I have ever seen.

• Media Convertor

  My all time favorite converter, Media Converter allows you to upload multiple files and convert them into a wide range of media formats. Best of all, it supports images, audio and video files and not only can you upload a file for it to convert, it can grab a file from YouTube or some other website (once the link is provided). The service allows you to convert five files for free each day. After that, you will have to sign up for an account or wait 24 hours.

• Online-Convert

  Another solid online conversion service, Online-Convert, allows you to convert images, audio, video, document, eBook and archive file formats into a myriad of similar formats. The service is free but free registered users are allowed to send files as email attachments as well as access to a user panel where they can view statistics about their use.

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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If you are a parent, concerned adult or administrator who needs to monitor the traffic of the users on your Internet connection, there are options available to you.

Monitoring Internet traffic can be done for a variety of reasons including protecting children from pornography or online predators. It can be used to prevent the sharing of personal or confidential data online as well as legal issues such as file sharing websites, hacking or other activity that could be illegal.

One of the top Internet monitoring software available is Spytech SpyAgent. SpyAgent is a full fledged monitoring system that allows you to find out what users of your Internet connection are doing. For instance, one can see what keywords are being searched for in Google, Bing and Yahoo. Social networking sites can be limited or banned completely. A list of programs and apps used by users on the network as well as logs of windows opened and even uncovering of passwords.

The best thing about SpyAgent is it runs in complete stealth mode so it is hard for anyone to detect that it is running. That said, before montoring someones Internet traffic, they should be made aware that their Internet traffic is being monitored and possibly recorded. Unfortunately, SpyAgent cannot see information sent through an encrypted connection such as a VPN. The software is available for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and that includes the 64bit editions. It does not, however, support Mac or Linux.

A trial version of the software is available that limits monitoring to 30 minute sessions. depending on your purpose, the trial version alone may be sufficient.

There are several free alternatives that offer similar features however most applications are crippled versions that lack all the features of an internet traffic monitoring software. You can find some of these applications from cnet.

Mac users can use SpectorSoft’s Spector Pro which offers an almost identical feature set. Best of all Spector Pro is available not only for Macs, but PCs as well. The package costs $99.

For Linux however, the options are a lot more limited since there are so many different distros. One of the more popular distros, Ubuntu, has a program available called Darkstat that will allow administrators to monitor most of what was mentioned above.  The only downside to it is that command line access and knowledge is required.

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So are there any apps, plugins, websites etc. that allow you to tell who visited your Facebook profile? In one word: NO! In a more detailed explanation, any app that claims to offer this ability is a scam.

(an example of a Facebook profile viewer scam)

Unlike MySpace, Tumblr and other social networking sites that allow users to install trackers to see who is viewing their profile, Facebook (and Twitter for that matter) do not accommodate this feature. In fact, if you take a quick look at the Facebook app developer guidelines, you will notice that among other things, apps that track profile views are absolutely prohibited on Facebook. Many might argue that this is a bit extreme from a company who has been known to have many a security loop holes. That might be true, but if we were to guess Facebook’s reason for such a decision, it stems from the whole idea of individual privacy, as double standard as it may sound.

Imagine if you could track who viewed your profile, or who un-friended you, while you might not use this knowledge for negative purposes, some people may be tempted to act on these information. We need not go into the countless horror stories that have stemmed from frivolous Facebook spats. Considering a very superficial example, if a jealous girlfriend finds out her boyfriend is viewing another girl’s profile more than her’s, imagine what issues that could cause? Plus, would you really want someone else to know if you have been viewing their profile? I highly doubt anyone would.

As stated before, any app that claims to offer the ability to track who views your profile is a scam and most naturally, when you activate such an app, it will spam the inbox and walls of your friends with similar messages.

Until Facebook allows developers to include that functionality in their apps, which is very unlikely I might add, we will be stuck with guessing who is viewing our profile.

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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• Incompatible Plugins

If you noticed that after you updated to the latest version of Firefox the browser crashes, it can be due to an incompatible plugin. One way to determine this is to check your Plugin Manager and see if all installed plugins are supported.

• Flash

Even though Adobe Flash is light years ahead of where it was two years ago, Flash still carries many bugs and unfortunately, enough of those bugs can cause Firefox to become unstable and ultimately crash. Disabling Flash might not be optimum for all situations, however if you are using a Flash heavy page and you do not need to see the Flash content, disabling Flash can stabilize the browser.

• Malware

Malware can be another factor in causing Firefox to crash. Many times malware will fill a browser with cookies and other temporary files that can cause the browser to become unstable and crash. If you experience constant crashing of Firefox (or any other browser for that matter) you should run a full virus scan. If the virus scan comes back negative, try a root scan to check if there are malicious files buried deep within the operating system.

• Webpages

Not all websites are designed alike and there is a great possibility that a bug in the websites syntax, coding or scripting could case Firefox to crash. If you notice that Firefox crashes only when you visit a particular site, try turning off JavaScript, Flash etc. before returning to that website. However, be careful when visiting such a website as constant crashing could indicate malicious code on the website.

• Media Player or VLC

Conflicts between Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player have been known to cause crashing in Firefox. If you notice that Firefox crashes after trying to view a Windows Media file, you will need to delete the VLC plugin file (“npvlc.dll”) from the Firefox installation directory.

Firefox may crash for other reasons apart from the 5 aforementioned reasons. If you are having trouble rectifying the issue, leave a comment below.

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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You can save yourself the trouble by backing up or exporting your Firefox bookmarks. You might export them just to keep them safe as explained before, or if you’re migrating your data to another computer or if you’re reinstalling Firefox as well. If you heavily rely on your bookmarks, you might want to have access with them at all time so that if you’re surfing the net elsewhere from your personal computer you will be able to use your bookmarks. Below are some ways you can use to export your bookmarks.

• Using Xmarks

Xmarks is by far the best method for any of the purposes mentioned above. It is a Firefox addon that lets you synchronize your bookmarks, passwords and history with the Xmarks server. They can then be accessed online or synchronized into another instance of Firefox and other popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari) as well. The company was scheduled to shutdown but was thankfully acquired and active as before.

• Using Firefox Sync

This is a relatively new (in comparison to Xmarks) addon that synchronizes all your data across your Firefox browsers. It falls short of Xmarks in that it does not allow you to access the bookmarks on a web based interface like Xmarks does so if you are using a public or shared computer the only option would be to synchronize the data to that computer’s browser and delete it afterwards (unless you don’t mind it remaining there), however it does offer synchronization of more data on your browser such as your preferences. Firefox has been made a native feature in the latest version. To get the best of both worlds you may use both services.

• Using Firefox

The above two methods are automated, all you need is to set it up the first time and forget about it, however if you need to make a one time backup for some reason you can use this method. Firefox has long offered the option to simple export Firefox bookmarks from your bookmark manager. All you need to do is  go to Bookmarks > Show all bookmarks (organize bookmarks in older versions) > Import backup. Here you can choose ‘Backup’ which creates a Firefox compatible backup file, or you may choose ‘export HTML’ which creates a basic HTML file which can be used universally.

Well there you have it, you may use any one of the methods above to backup your data. There are numerous other addons to choose from for synchronization of one time backup. A quick search in the Mozilla addons database should reveal alternative options. IMO, if you are looking to export Firefox bookmarks the above methods are sufficient.

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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What to do if Facebook is down

• Check if your internet is up. You can do this by simply loading another website.

• Find out if Facebook has been blocked on your network. This is more likely if you are a guest on a shared network connection than your own personal connection. Facebook is commonly blocked in school and office connections.

• If that isn’t the issue, the next step would be to find out if Facebook is down. This is of course highly unlikely however there have been brief downtime issues with Facebook in the past. To find out if Facebook is down the easiest way would be to use this website to check the status of the website. Another method would be to search twitter (irony?), even a short period of time would result in hordes of tweets acknowledging or querying if the site is down.

• Try restarting the computer. Isolated issues such as these usually go away when you restart the computer.

• Read this thread. There are some useful tips provided there.

• The last method that usually wouldn’t be required would be to find out if Facebook has been blocked in your country for some reason. While this is unlikely, it has happened in the past to a few countries such as China.

The answer to your issue would most probably lie in one of the 6 points above, however if you are still unable to find a solution you can call your ISP or leave a comment below with relevant details and I’ll try my best to assist you. Happy Facebooking!

This post was brought to you by Computer Tips

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While all this is very impressive, the fact that their standard m.facebook.com mobile version (that is used by 50% of smartphone users counting Nokia devices only that is) sucks doesn’t help their cause. Apparently they have abandoned the development of their standard mobile product.

For starters, any friend that writes a wall post to a mutual friend appears on a friend’s timeline as a status update (i.e. without the recipient) of the aforementioned friend. This obviously can make things a little confusing. Also, Facebook  probably handles hordes of bandwidth every second on their standard web product and mobile products but somehow they are looking to cut corners with their light bandwidth standard mobile product. The Recent and News Feed displays around 20-40 of the latest updates which is a tad cheeseparing in my opinion.

While the above two points are the main factors behind my rant, they are major inconveniences that should have been addressed several weeks (or perhaps months?) ago, however I’m baffled that out of 50% of Facebook Mobile users that use the standard m.facebook.com version of the site, I am yet to find anyone complaining on the blogosphere or anywhere for that matter. Maybe it’s just me?

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It is undeniably true that blogging revolves around great content. Forget about SEO and other promotion methods, what you need is great content to attract readers which will soon be your followers and subscribers.

In line with this, here are some basic elements of blogging which you cannot live without:

1. Write Attractive Headlines/Titles

People looking for information do not have time or do not want to spend much time browsing through all the words in your articles. The truth is, they will go for the title and decide whether they will read the content or not depending on how they like it delivered. Making your headlines/titles appealing will ensure that those who can read them will most likely read the rest of the article.

2. Make your First Paragraph Factual

People who are searching for information want to be sure that what they are reading are facts and not just the result of human imagination. And fact is, they will read the first paragraph as if they can find all the information they are looking for. You may think it is impossible to congest a 500-word idea into one paragraph, but anyone can do it; simply present the very core of the information you want to convey in the first paragraph as a sort of introduction. If you can do that, end the introduction abruptly to raise curiosity.

3. Always Make Your Content Physically Beautiful but Informative

Did you know that most of the people do not want to read plain texts? In this case, the physical structure of your article should be:

• Readable – always use easy-to-understand words and present your ideas in the simplest way possible.

• Scannable – most of the readers love to browse the whole article before reading it. Thus, if you have to present multiple ideas, use the following:

Bullet Points – best used in presenting 3 or more ideas in a row
Numbered List – best used in conveying step-by-step instructions
Bold Text – obviously used for emphasizing points within paragraphs
Good and Clean Spacing – there should be enough spaces between lines and words

4. Use Photos and Videos if Necessary

If a picture is worth a thousand words then what’s the use of writing when the picture you are presenting says it all? The thing is, do not overdo the use of these as it will make your post messy for your readers.

5. Keep It Simple and Brief

If you can present all your ideas in a 400-word article then there is no need to write a 700-word article which says of the same thing. Expressing your ideas in a “Simple Way” will always lead to brief content. It is important to note that readers always look for concise yet straightforward content.

6. Conclusion

You must end your article in a way that you started it. If you use a question in the opening, present an answer to your readers at the end of your article, if you present an argument then conclude it.

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