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How to Turn Off Automatic Sound on Facebook Videos

Did you recently receive this rather helpful message from Facebook’s mobile app?

“We’re always working to make Facebook a better place to watch videos. That’s why videos now play with sound on automatically. Use the volume icon on any video to make the sound right for you.”

Well it popped up on my screen and I sure do wish that I had clicked on that “Learn More” button because it might have spared me from what started happening about 4 days later: every freaking video I scrolled across began Continue reading How to Turn Off Automatic Sound on Facebook Videos

Getting Smart About Smoke Detectors

When is the last time you thought about your home’s smoke detectors? I typically change the batteries in our home’s smoke detectors around this time every year, usually on the same weekend when we “spring” our clocks forward an hour for Daylight Saving Time. Last March we lost my dad and all of my normal routines fell away for quite a long time, and so it came as no surprise a week ago when I discovered that my smoke detectors were a year past due for having their batteries replaced.

Like me, a lot of people lose track of their normal routines and some are unfortunate enough to experience a fire in their homes. According to the National Fire Protection Agency: “In fires in which the smoke alarms were present but did not operate, almost half (46%) of the smoke alarms had missing or disconnected batteries.”

Keeping the batteries in your smoke detectors up to date cannot be stressed enough, but there’s one additional detail about these devices that I only Continue reading Getting Smart About Smoke Detectors

Be Careful Using LED Replacement Lights in Enclosed Fixtures

I’ve recently been helping my parents embrace the joy of replacing their beloved incandescent bulbs with LED equivalents. My biggest ally in this campaign has been the summer weather, as highs in the Southeastern United States have been consistently pushing above 90ºF (32ºC) for the past two months and show no signs of letting up any time soon. In an older, less well-insulated home it’s important to use every trick available to keep room temperatures low, and LEDs run so much cooler than incandescent lights that you can actually reach out and Continue reading Be Careful Using LED Replacement Lights in Enclosed Fixtures

Google Asks “What Do You Love?”

A few days ago I wandered over to Google+ to see who in the heck was still posting there, when to my great surprise I encountered a shiny new Google tool (which has apparently been around since this past July). It’s called “What Do You Love” and it has its very own domain (www.wdyl.com). This special new website asks you to tell it what you “love” and in return it fetches everything that it can find about Continue reading Google Asks “What Do You Love?”

Welcome to Facebook Timeline (Panic!!)

There are a jillion articles out there about Facebook’s new Timeline format. Some good intros are on USA Today, PC World, and The Guardian. I recently activated the new feature and have a few notes for the rest of you, as everyone will be moved to this new format by December 22nd.

Sharing Photo Albums on Facebook

I’ve recently uploaded several albums to Facebook of fantastic weekend adventures with my supermodel bikini girlfriends and tonight I noticed a phenomenon that’s new to me… some of the girls have gone through and tagged dozens of photos with the names of people who aren’t in the photographs!! This puzzled me so much I got up and finished off the bottle of champagne from the Lear jet. While I was polishing off the caviar I suddenly realized that the reason my friends were tagging people who weren’t with us in Paris was because this was the only way they could figure out how to share the photo album with people they thought might like to see the albums! If only they’d checked with me first I could have shown them this very simple trick!

How to Manage Your Facebook Friends

Are you having a hard time using Facebook? Are posts by your favorite people being “covered up” by a tidal wave of crap from other friends who post stuff to Facebook every five minutes? Don’t be embarrassed, you’re not alone! Most importantly, don’t get so frustrated that you start unfriending people!! Keep reading to learn how to make custom “channels” on Facebook – from now on you’ll be able to “tune in” to see updates by the people you care about the most! (Trust me, I’ve made television shows!)

Now, before we begin let’s establish what I mean by “channels”….

Make Facebook’s NEW Status Updates Group Your Default

Let’s face it, Facebook, you have managed to make me look like a fool twice this week and while that’s not terribly difficult to do, I’m getting tired of it. This time around I find out that you fulfilled my wish for a way to view status updates only. No application updates, no notes, no videos, no links to helpful articles like this one, just plain old status updates. So where did you put this fantastic new Feed View? Why, down at the bottom of my list of Feed Views. While this is probably not a big deal for most of your users, it’s a really big deal for me because I subdivide all of my users into different categories to help me wade through them a bit better. So, let’s see what we have to in order to see the Status Updates view as our default page view. (Thanks to Amber Ward and her list of friends for this tip)

Fix Your Broken Facebook Feed

Jeepers, people. Has Facebook gone wanky (again) or what? Don’t worry though, it’s okay, I have a fix so that your Live Feed works nearly like it did before the weekend of the Great Facebook Flop of Late 2009…… but before I get to the fix let me first mention that I found these instructions on Facebook… and of all people, it was sitting up on the wall of our friend Hollis Gillespie, a well known potty mouthed Atlanta author with movie deals and book deals coming out her ears. While I admire and respect Hollis’ creative skills it galled me that I, a graduate of Georgia Tech with a double-secret minor in computer technology, had to rely on a woman whose cellphone is held together by rubberbands (no offense Hollis).

Facebook’s NEW News Feed

(note: be sure to read my newest post about Facebook’s undocumented transition)
I got tired of not understanding the NEW version of Facebook’s News Feed and went all the way over to their help section (tiring, this) looking for answers. Why they didn’t send the explanation out to its users baffles me (I’ve re-posted their answer below for you lazy people).