Facebook is an online social networking service that can connect you with friends and family. Over the years, Facebook has changed and has become something entirely new and unique that goes beyond just social contact with people you know. New services and features have brought up a lot of privacy concerns that are making people wonder if sticking with Facebook is really worth it.

People normally find Facebook to be a fun place to share information about their life with other people, but there’s a lot of information even prolific users probably don’t know about Facebook. The biggest concern relates to privacy. There are many ways your information can be compromised because of convoluted privacy settings on your account or because your friends are setup to share information about you. The new system called Open Graph and Instant Personalization automatically provide websites outside of Facebook with your information -- unless you specifically go in and turn it off.

These changes over the years have even prompted DownloadSquad’s Jason Clarke to cancel his Facebook account. This is quite unheard of for an online writer of a tech website.

Will I be cancelling mine? I’ve thought about it -- but since I’ve taken an active role in managing my online identity and keep on top of my Facebook privacy settings, the use of Facebook is worth the risk for me. For now. Is it worth the risk for you?

Hopefully if you’ve followed some of those previous links you now have a much better handle on your privacy settings. If you didn’t, please do so now because many of these settings change as services change -- and you aren’t notified or asked about the option, you’re automatically opted in.

Even after setting all your privacy settings to be locked down just as you wish, you can still run into people who suck at Facebook. Unfortunately, there isn’t a setting for that.

As a reward for reading through all that dry information, here’s the Facebook Song:

UPDATE: Facebook has updated its login security today. So at least that’s a little better.

First off, to turn it on, go to your Google Mail (Gmail) account and click on Settings in the upper right corner. Then click on the Labs header. You can also click on the little green bottle next to Settings to go directly to the Labs page.

Next you’ll want to scroll down a ways until you find the Canned Responses options and then mark it as Enable and then click the Save Changes button either at the top or bottom of the page.

Now you are all set to start creating your canned responses.

The most common use is to create a draft of text that answers a common question. For example, I get the question about how to clean spyware off a computer regularly so I have a canned response with some recommendations on how to go about this.  When I get the question I can just click on Reply and then click on Canned Responses and select my spyware cleaning response. It then automatically loads all the text, links, and formatting into my current message. I hit send and I’m done. Also, having a prepared answer means I’ve had a chance to go over it a couple times to make sure it’s clear and concise.

A similar option would be if you are the birthday maven of your family and you get the “when is Uncle Bob’s birthday” question regularly. You can have a canned response that has everyone’s birthday setup already. You can just hit that quick option and be done.

Let’s create a new canned response that we’ll use for another function – an email signature. Gmail has some automated signature options but sometimes you may want a different signature for different occasions.

First start a new email by clicking on Compose Mail on your Gmail page. Leave the details like To and Subject blank and just go to the body of the message.  Here is a common format for a detailed signature:

--
First Last Name
123 Main St
Somecity, CA 12345
Phone Number
Email Address

Once you have the details written out, you’ll want to save it as a canned response. Click on Canned Responses in above the message body and below the subject line and choose “New Canned Response” under Save.

You will be prompted to name it so call it something you’ll recognize like “Detailed Signature” or something similar. Once you click OK you are done. You can click on Discard and you’ll be back to your message folder.

To test out your new canned response you can click on Compose Mail and then in the message area click on Canned Reponses and choose “Detailed Signature” from under the Insert heading. It will appear in your message body.

The nice thing about the Canned Responses is that it will appear wherever your cursor is located. So you can type out your entire message and then insert your signature.

As you can see, this allows you to not only have canned emails but saved snippets of text that you can insert anywhere you like. If you are often typing out a common phrase or bit of information you can save it as a canned response and insert it into your email wherever it fits best.

The last function I wanted to mention is that filters can use canned responses. This is useful for businesses who get frequent common questions and it’s also useful as a vacation reminder (so you can tell specific people specific information while you are away). This means that emails that come in with specific triggers can get a specific response from you without your direct interaction.

It’s a pretty neat function and can provide lots of options. Currently, I use it for many tech responses to common questions, as a vacation reminder to family, and to insert different signatures with different details depending on the situation. For some other ideas, check out Lifehacker’s article about how they and some of their readers use canned responses.

Good luck and as always, feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Barnes & Noble has come out with their own eBook reader to compete against the Kindle and it was officially announced today. It is called Nook.

Here are the main features the Nook has over the Kindle.

• The Nook has Wi-Fi which besides being a fast connection also is enable to allow full book browsing while on the B&N wireless network in store.
• The Nook has touch screen navigation and a color LCD for library browsing and other display and navigation options.
• The Nook has an expanded memory slot to increase the storage space if necessary (or for managing sets of books).
• PDFs can be read natively (Kindle has to have the PDF converted – unless a hack is applied).
• Custom images for the “screen saver” (Kindle also needs a hack to do this).
• Multiple device sync for books including iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, and Computer (Kindle only has iPhone/iPod Touch and Computer).
• Digital book lending is possible which could possibly allow for library ebook borrowing systems.
• The battery on the Nook is replaceable and there are some harware customization options (like colored backplates).
• The Nook runs an Android OS which could allow for many future development options.

The e-Ink displays are almost identical so the readability will be the same but this is true of almost all eReaders that use e-Ink technology so the difference in devices really does come down to features.

The Nook also has AT&T 3G built in just like the Kindle has the Sprint 3G so depending on your area, one wireless service may be a better option than another.

The only real winner here for the Kindle is the battery life (14 days vs 10 days) and the backing of Amazon… but the book prices are about the same and currently Barnes & Noble is boasting an opening digital library larger than Amazon’s so it will be interesting to see how that aspect shapes up.

The price is $259 and will be available in November. Barnes & Noble stores will be putting up displays in the next couple days so you can check out the device yourself and pre-order one if you like. That is also an advantage for the Nook – the ability to check it out before you buy it.

This device looks very cool and has many of the features that some Kindle owners have complained about lacking (which would be why they are on this device). It has good bookstore backing and already has accessories. I see no reason this device couldn’t outshine or at the very least provide excellent competition for the Kindle – and in technology, competition is a good thing for customers.

September 26th through October 3rd is Banned Books Week and is dedicated to bringing awareness of ongoing censorship and promote freedom of speech.

Head over to BannedBooksWeek.org to get more information about how prevalent book banning and censorship really is and how you can help prevent it.

You will also find many events scheduled at your local library and book sellers  if you would like to participate in your local community.

Here, for your perusal, is the list of 10 most challenged books:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
   Reason: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint,
   and unsuited to age group
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
   Reason: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
   Reason: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age  group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
   Reason: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reason: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint,
   sexually explicit, and violence
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
   Reason: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually
   explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
   Reason: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age
   group
8. Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
   Reason: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
   Reason: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
    Reason: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

First of all, if you have cable or dish services you don’t need to do anything at all. Everything will move along the same as always.

The only thing that changes is the OTA reception. In order to get digital OTA you need to have 2 things:

1. An antenna
2. A TV that can translate the HD signal

Lets take care of part of that first issue right off the bat – if you already have an antenna that can receive UHF then you are done. There is no such thing as an HD antenna. All antenna’s work the same – the only difference between antennas is their reception range – which was always true anyways. The HD antenna thing is just a marketing spin to help sell antennas.

If you don’t already have an antenna and you want to receive OTA HD then you’ll probably want to pick one up. A site to check before purchasing is AntennaWeb. They are a non-profit site that helps you find what channels are in your area and what style of antenna might work best for you. Click on the “Choose an Antenna” button and enter your street address and zip code (the rest is up to you but it really needs those two things). Once it gives you your channel listings mark the “Show Digital Stations Only” option to see what HD broadcasts you can expect. The color codes match with standardized antenna ratings to match different distance levels and reception requirements. You can also click on the “View Street Level Map” to see which direction those channels are broadcast to help with orienting your antenna (if necessary).

When it comes time to buy an antenna, I recommend Antennas Direct. They have many models to choose from and a very helpful guide to help you choose what will work for you. Their ratings and information also match well with Antenna Web so you can use them together pretty easily.

Now you need a TV to watch those beautiful HD broadcasts on… or maybe not. If your TV is already HD  compliant (check your manual) then you are all set. If your TV says “HD Ready” then it can show high resolution video but it can’t decode the transmission – you’ll need a tuner. If you are planning on using a Tivo then your tuner is in there – otherwise you’ll need to purchase a tuner.

Now what about if you aren’t ready to buy a new TV and just want to use your old TV with the new DTV signal? No problem. The government is here to help (don’t hear that too often when it comes to technology). What you need is a converter box which will translate the digital broadcast signal into an analog signal.  Luckily you get two $40 coupons to help with that purchase. To get your coupon go to the coupon request site at DTV2009.gov and fill out the information. You’ll get your coupons in the mail in about a week. Once you get the coupon, you can check DTV2009 for a local retailer and compatible models but I found the easiest way is by using Amazon. They have a special page dedicated to the redemption and I was able to pick up one of the top Consumer Reports rated models called the Zinwell ZAT-970A for the low price of zero dollars thanks to the coupon and the free shipping. Once you receive the box you’ll hook the OTA antenna cable to the box and then a cable from the box to your TV and you’ll be all set.

Hopefully this has cleared up some of the HD confusion and not just added to it. If you need more information though, the DTV2009 and AntennaWeb sites are excellent resources without any marketing spin or you post in the comments and I’ll try to help you out. I did get OTA working at my home with mixed TVs and I’m very happy to not be paying a bill for excellent quality broadcast TV (nothing like getting 16:9 widescreen with 5.1 surround on Big Bang Theory).

Thanks to Tim at Daily Cup of Tech for pointing this one out.  It’s so true (and not just for science news).

So how do we accomplish this amazing feat? Actually, very easily. The program to use is called Mangle.

Mangle does an awesome job of converting images to be optimized for the Kindle display and processed to work correctly with the navigation system of the device.

See for yourself. The following image was converted using Mangle and loaded onto my Kindle 2. The left side image is the original, the middle one is the converted, and the right side image is displaying on the Kindle 2. Click on the thumbnails to see the original sizes.

So as you can see it looks pretty darn good. You can see a couple other examples at the Mangle website.

Mangle runs as a stand alone executable so you can run it directly with no installation necessary. It’s a very basic layout so it’s very easy to use. You pick either a set of images or a directory of images, click the gear icon to get it started, tell it where to put the converted images and then it converts them for you. That’s it!

Once it’s converted, you will plug in your Kindle and create a folder on it called “pictures”. Put the new book you created (the folder with all the images) into the Pictures directory and you are all set. It should show up in your book list using the name of the folder as the title.  If you don’t see it, press Alt+Z to refresh the listing.

You can also use Mangle to convert pictures into a photo album or convert pictures to use as custom screen savers.

Yes… custom screen saver. It requires hacking the Kindle a bit but is very easy and can be reversed. Go to the Kindle 2 Screen Saver Hack wiki page at MobileRead and it will walk you through using it. The image you see above is one of my custom screen saver images.

This program works on Windows and Linux and is free to use. Feel free to post any questions and I’ll be happy to help out.

UPDATE: The Kindle 2.3 update breaks the screen saver hack. The updated version can be found at JYA’s site.

UPDATE 2: The Kindle 2.3 update has some new image viewer options. For some it has caused issues and for others it has not. If you have any issues, the new PDF support has worked pretty well for manga. IrfanView does a good job of converting the Mangle converted images to PDF (process: thumbnail viewer->select all->print to PDF using CuteWriter).

UPDATE 3: After speaking with Amazon customer service and tech support it seems the “developers” have decided that any use of the built in image viewer is considered a hack and therefore note support. After bothering them over and over about it though I was told an image viewer would be developed in a future release. I’m assuming that it will be part of the new active content  that is coming to the Kindle (think “App Store”) and the recent release of the Kindle KDK (Kindle Development Kit). This could easily mean a dedicated comic book reader as well.

UPDATE 4: Looks like the latest update for Kindle (2.3.3) corrected many of the view issues. The images are refreshing correctly now. Settings still aren’t working exactly right but at least the viewer is working again.

UPDATE 5: Kindle update 2.5 didn’t do anything to help with the image viewer (though it does seem snappier). The new PDF functions also don’t help much with reading manga or graphic novels on the K2 (but the Kindle DX does work pretty well with PDFs).

Many people ask me about BitTorrent and to be honest, it’s not easy to explain. I’m going to try here but I’m going to do it with lots of help.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol based around a distributed sharing system and optimized for large files.

While completely accurate that description isn’t really useful in getting started with BitTorrent.

If you’ve ever used file sharing programs before like Napster, Kazaa or Limewire … BitTorrent is nothing like those. To explain how BitTorrent is different I’m going to get some help because as simple as it is to use, the initial understanding on how to use it is can be confusing.

I’m going to send you to a bit of learning before we move on to a couple other topics. First, Lifehacker has two guides to getting started with BitTorrent; a beginner’s guide and an intermediate guide. You can skip the intermediate guide for now but definitely bookmark it for future reference. The other excellent guide is The Big Book of BitTorrent by Aibek. That is a free PDF book about 28 pages long… that’s more of a reference tool but will answer pretty much all of your quesitons. Start with the Lifehacker beginner’s guide…

Once you’ve looked through those items you’ll notice that you’ll need a program and some websites. The program handles the downloading and the websites are where you find the torrents.

If you didn’t read the guide here are the quick and dirty basics (but you may or may not understand them just from this little bit):

BitTorrent uses torrent files to connect your BitTorrent program with other people sharing the exact same file. So a torrent file for the movie Elephant’s Dream is like a bookmark or ticket that connects you to all the other people downloading/uploading the movie. People who have the entire file are called seeders and people who are still downloading the file are called leechers or peers. You will be connected to multiple people who have the same file and you will download pieces of the file from different people and others will download pieces from you. So you download the Elephant’s Dream torrent file and open it with your BitTorrent program which connects you to others to share the actual movie file of Elephant’s Dream.

So back to what you need… a program and some torrent sites. If you are on Windows I recommend uTorrent (it’s actually µTorrent using the metric presentation for “micro”) and for OS X and Linux I recommend Transmission. The uTorrent guides are very good as well for help in using BitTorrent even if you aren’t using uTorrent. Each program has a different interface but all BitTorrent applications work in a similar fashion so once you are familiar with one you can use pretty much any of them and it’s just a matter of extra features.

So you have the program and now you need to start sharing. This is where a good set of BitTorrent websites comes in handy. For beginners, I recommend The Pirate Bay and Mininova. Those sites should provide you with pretty much all the items you may be looking to download. Demonoid is also a popular location but requires membership and sometimes they aren’t open to new members – but you can get an invite if you ask around. The Pirate Bay is probably the most open and busy torrent tracker (the backend service that directs your torrent “ticket” or “bookmark”) so you’ll find lots of content there. Mininova also has a lot of content and is a bit more manageable in regards to browsing particular catagories.

A note on piracy… there are lots of laws and rules about piracy and some of them apply differently depending on your situation and the content. There are loopholes and so forth but put simply: if you didn’t pay for it, and you should have, then you are stealing. That being said, BitTorrent is not digital piracy… BitTorrent is just a system for transfering large files.

One last note… BitTorrent is a LOT safer than other file sharing services but you can still get infected if you download and install the wrong thing. Be sure to check through torrent site comments and run antivirus utilities just to be safe.

So that should provide you will all the information you need to get started with your file sharing. Don’t let the amount of information be too daunting … it really is easy to use.

Good luck and happy torrenting!

To use the feature, click the More button on any map and select Webcams. You’ll get some icons popping up on the map if any webcams are available. Clicking on an icon will bring up an image from the past 15 minutes. Clicking the image will take you to the webcam page for a live view.

This is an interesting add-on to include for “Virtual Tourists” visiting a location (currently done via Streetview) or for checking current conditions in an area before you head out.

YouTube is starting to horn in on Hulu’s action by partnering with Sony, CBS, MGM and a few other studios to bring some TV shows and Movies to their streaming video service. The choices are pretty sparse at the moment but there are a few gems like Alf, Married with Children, Cliffhanger, and Starman. One of the studios that have partnered is Bandai so anime fans can pick up some rather recent english dubbed series like Code Geass and Gundam 00.

It’ll be worth checking back on occasion as I’m sure more and more content will be added.

Embedding is obviously disabled for these shows but here is a classic you just can’t pass up: MacGyver Season 1 Episode 1 … Enjoy!

Well, they just recently released the 2008 Anime Reactor Community Awards.

Here is a quick rundown on some of the winners:

• Best Overall, Best Story, Best Sci-Fi: Kaiba
• Best Romance, Best Drama, Best Slice-of-Life: Clannad
• Best Adventure/Fantasy: Ookami to Koushinryou (Spice and Wolf)

There are some others listed at the site as well as Jury picks – so go check a few of them out if you are interested.

I will say that Kaiba is completely original in its story telling and animation style – so original it may be a bit awkward for some people. If you are confused while watching it – just keep watching, it works itself out.

Also, if you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook you may have seen me mention an anime that was really excellent – that one would be Clannad and its second season Clannad ~After Story~. I highly recommend it as a drama/romance/comedy/fantasy/slice-of-life style story.

If you have any recommendations or comments about the ARC Award winners, shout ‘em out in the comments!

The other interesting camera related information is about a type of photo processing called Exposure Fusion. Digital Photography School has an article all about this photography process that combines different exposure levels into one photograph (similar to HDR).

Exposure fusion combines different exposures of the same image together so that bright areas don’t look washed out and detail areas look crisp with good contrast. Look through the article for more details about how this type of process could make for some nice looking pictures and also a program that can help you do this type of process automatically.

Geek Chart

Click the image or this link to see the full version of the chart. Perhaps a future post will detail the different types of geeks that are in the wild and how geeks and nerds are different but not mutually exclusive.

Update: Thanks to Kamikaze Joe, the source is a New York Times article.

Here are a couple comparative screenshots from the “Where the Hell is Matt” video which is available in both normal and HD versions.

Normal Quality

HD

As you can see the difference is pretty obvious and it is even more obvious when you watch these videos in full screen.

A word of warning.  HD is very bandwidth intensive so remember that more quality equals more data to download or stream. If you have bandwidth caps or a slower connection you may want to skip the HD quality for now.

This seems like an update related directly to Hulu and Vimeo higher quailty offerings which have been drawing people away from YouTube even as YouTube begins hosting more content (like movies and TV shows).

It seems workplaces will see even larger bandwidth spikes around lunchtime now.