LostInTechnology

How to Appear Offline to Specific People on Facebook

Sandy Ag — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:00:44 +0000

Sometimes when I am online and logged onto Facebook but attending to an important task at the same time, I do not want to get disturbed. I do not want people to ping me and distract me from what I am doing.

So, I can easily set my status as Offline on Facebook chat. However, this does not always help me. Indeed, I have missed talking to important people because I was Offline (virtually though). What do I do then?

After lots of feedback, Facebook has integrated chat settings in a way that you can appear online or offline to specific people.

We will list the ways to appear offline from chat, appear offline to specific people or group/list and/or appear offline to an individual. In case you would want to do this for a group/list, you must have lists created in you profile. If not, check how to create lists on Facebook we covered in one of our previous post.

Offline from Facebook Chat

This option will take you offline completely from Facebook chat. Click on the gear like icon on the bottom right of the interface and choose Go Offline.

Appear Offline to an Individual

We all have those friends on Facebook that can get really irritating, because they ping you all the time when you are online. Worry not, just launch that contact from the chat pane and click on the gear like icon on the top right of the chat window. Choose Go Offline to .

Offline to a Multiple People

When you want to appear offline to many people you cannot take the first option (because you still want to be visible to others) and you cannot take the second option (because you can’t repeat the activity for each selective contact).

This time, click on the gear like icon on the bottom right of the interface and choose Advanced Settings. On the new window that pops up, you will see three radio buttons (of which the first two are in the context).

Take the first one to select the people whom you want to appear offline to. Or take the second one to select the people whom you want to appear online to. Both are good enough to help you through.

Conclusion

Now, you can be online, logged on to Facebook, attend to important tasks and not miss talking to important people all at the same time. Be selective, be efficient and enjoy a distraction free session without hurting anyone.

(By) Sandeep Agarwal is an engineer and tech fanatic who has a lot of appetite to explore hidden difficulties in technology drift. He loves to explore and devise the latest software and technologies.

Image By Poster Boy

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How to Unfriend People and Unlike Pages on New Facebook

Ashish Mundhra — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:00:20 +0000

Facebook is all about making friends and liking updates, pages, photos to engage socially. Personally speaking, I never accept a friend request from strangers on Facebook. There is no harm in doing that as long as you have configured your privacy settings well but the main reason behind it is, I love to keep my stream clean.

There might be scenarios when you became friends with someone for a cause or liked a page just because you wanted to enter an on-going contest. However, do you revert your actions after you are done? I suppose no. As these options to unfriend and unlike a page are well hidden from the users (not as readily available as compared to send a friend request), we tend to ignore it.

These useless contacts and pages just sit around and spam your stream. So today we will see how you can unfriend and unlike them on Facebook.

Unfriend and Unlike on the New Timeline View

There are two ways in which you can unfriend a contact in the new timeline view. For the first method, you will have to visit the profile page of the contact. Just search for the person in Facebook search and open the page.

On the contact timeline profile page, hold your mouse over the friend button for few seconds to open a pull-down menu. In the menu select the option Unfriend to make the changes. The page will then reload, and you will no longer be the friend of the particular contact anymore. To unlike a page, do the needful on a Facebook page and then select the option Unlike from the pull-down menu.

You can also unfriend someone directly from your Facebook stream. Whenever you see an update from that someone, you want to unfriend, click on the small arrow at the top right corner of the update and select unsubscribe from.

As soon as you unsubscribe, Facebook will show you an option to unfriend the particular person. Click on it and confirm your action to unfriend him.

Unfriend and Unlike on the Classic Facebook View

If you have used a browser plugin to restore your Facebook to the old classic view, the friends button will no longer be there when you open a contact profile. Instead, you will find an option to Report/Block at the end of the page in the left sidebar (below the list of persons friends list).

Click on it and select the option Unfriend the contact. The same goes for unlinking a Facebook page.

Conclusion

After reading the post most of you might think, “Dam! That was easy. “And indeed, it was. So if you have an irritating friend, or you have liked a spamming Facebook page, you now know how to get rid of it. Furthermore, don’t forget to like LostinTechnology on Facebook. Rest assured, we never spam!

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How to Disable Facebook Timeline View

Ashish Mundhra — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:00:16 +0000

One thing that’s famous about Facebook is, it launches a new look every other day. By the time you get accustomed to a layout, Facebook launches a fresh one completely different from the previous. What’s worse it, once cannot choose to stay back on the old layout as Facebook gives a deadline to its users to get used to the new look. After the deadline is finished, no matter you liked the change or not, you’ll have to accept it.

Though once can ignore nifty changes here and there, introduction of Facebook timeline was the one thing that really did irritated people to a very large scale. Facebook users who extensively use web based apps, like pages on the internet and even share their check-ins to places on Facebook mostly loved the new update. Users who just want to stay connected to their friends and share their thought as a status update once in a while got really confused with the new timeline view.

Although there are many tips available to get the most for the Facebook timeline, I think you should disable it if you loved the old, classic look. So let’s see how you can achieve it.

Disable Facebook Timeline View on Chrome

Before we proceed, I would like to make one thing clear. We will not permanently disable the timeline view on your personal Facebook profile. All the users who would view your profile will land on the timeline view as long as they have not disabled it. We will just be disabling the view so that you can see all the Facebook profile in the classic format.

All you need to do is, download and install TimelineRemove extension on your Chrome browser and restart it. The application is plug-n-play in nature, and as soon as you install, all the Facebook profile pages will load in classic view. The pages might show the timeline view for a fraction of seconds, but that’s just the transition phase.

If you want to enable the timeline view due to some reason, no need to uninstall the extension. Simply click on the TimelineRemove extension button and click on the Statue: TimeLine Remover to uncheck it. The page will load again in timeline view.

Conclusion

As I have already stated above, the changes will only be made on your computer and that too on the Chrome browser, but that’s enough if you ask me. I would love to know what irritates you the most in the Facebook timeline. Furthermore, don’t forget to share the post on Facebook so that your friends can as well disable the timeline.

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4 Great Google Chrome Extensions That Were Developed by Google

Chinmoy Kanjilal — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:00:37 +0000

Google has something to offer to just about every technical and business layer of the Internet. It has captured search and email services with Google search and Gmail, the internet transport layer with SPDY, the browser market with Google Chrome, the world of web-advertising with Adsense and much more with all of their other projects.

Each of Google’s successful products creates a great ecosystem around themselves. Google Chrome has definitely done this. The Google Chrome Webstore is the place to go if you want to install new apps on your browser. Today, we are going to take a look at some of the awesome Google Chrome extensions that were developed by the guys at Google themselves.

Keep my Opt-outs

The web is a vast place with lots of great information and entertainment, and we all know that the main source of online revenue comes from advertisements. Advertisements on the web are much better aimed at the consumer, because the advertisers have the ability to read your cookies and determine what advertisement suits you best, based on the content that you browse.

The Google Chrome team values your privacy, and this extension doesn’t allow advertisements to read your personal browsing data from Chrome. However, it comes with a downside. You might see irrelevant ads and repetitive ads on websites. Though, if privacy is your first concern, this extension is a must have.

Get Keep my Opt-outs from Google Chrome Webstore.

Screen Capture

This extension is pretty straightforward in that it can be used to capture a screeenshot of the current web-page that you are browsing.

This extension supports horizontal scroll for scrolling pages. Additionally, pages can be edited (like highlighting and adding text) before you save them as PDF. There may be better screenshot Google Chrome extensions, but the most important part of this one is that you know it is going to run smooth due to the development team.

You can get Screen capture for Google Chrome here.

Google Quick Scroll

At times, we arrive at a page through Google Search and find ourselves completely lost on a cluttered page. This extension takes us back to what we came searching for. It highlights the search term that we enter in our search box and lets us get to it quickly.

Get Google quick scroll from the Google Chrome webstore at this page.

Google Chrome to Phone

Google has made a successful attempt at capturing the mobile segment, and it has done a wonderful job in this field. Android is the forerunner in mobile technology and has pushed the mobile hardware industry to go faster.

Google Chrome is Google’s flagship browser, and it is extremely important for the Chrome team to provide a seamless experience across mobile and the desktop. Google Chrome to phone is a part of that effort. With Google Chrome to phone, you can send links from your desktop browser to your mobile browser easily.

Get Google Chrome to Phone here.

Conclusion

There are tons more Google Chrome extensions out there, but any extensions that come straight from the source are definitely worth checking out. What are your favorite Google Chrome extensions either made by Google or not?

(By) Chinmoy Kanjilal is a technology, web2.0 and Linux enthusiast and evangelist. He has an in depth knowledge of working of Software, Operating Systems, Hardware and Computer Networks. Blogging is his favorite pastime. He blogs primarily at Techarraz. You can find him on Twitter @ckandroid.

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How to Restore Accidently Deleted Bookmarks on Firefox

Ashish Mundhra — Sun, 20 May 2012 17:31:55 +0000

Few days back we saw how to restore accidentally deleted bookmarks on Chrome. As I am a fan of Chrome and use it as my default browser, I may have been a little biased towards it. One of my friend who prefers Firefox asked me as to how can he restore the deleted bookmarks, just as I did in Chrome and when I got a solution, I was amazed.

Unlike Chrome where you have to do the stuffs manually, Firefox has an inbuilt feature to take care of the accident. Furthermore, Firefox allows you to restore up to last ten bookmark modifications you made and there’s nothing left to luck here as it was in Chrome.

So let’s see how we can restore accidentally deleted bookmarks in Firefox.

Restoring Deleted Bookmarks in Firefox

1 Open Firefox and bring up the Bookmark Library. Select Show all bookmarks from the bookmark dropdown menu or alternatively press Ctrl+Shift+B.

2. Here, in the bookmark library, click on the Import and Backup button to open a drop down menu and select the Restore option.

3. You will now see a list of last 10 backup Firefox made when you modified your bookmarks. Select the date prior to the one you deleted the bookmarks accidentally.

4. Firefox will now ask you to for a confirmation. Select OK to successfully restore all your bookmarks to the previous date.

All the bookmarks you have added in the meantime will be deleted and the ones you did delete on purpose or by accident will be restored successfully. All the changes will be made instantly and unlike Chrome, you will not even have to restart your browser.

You can also take a custom backup of the bookmarks from time to time. To take the backup, click on the Import and Backup button and select Backup. Save the file on your hard disk in .JSON format to successfully create the backup. When you wish to restore them, you can simply select the file in the restore custom file option.

If you have any additional problems don’t hesitate to shoot your questions in the comment section.

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How to Easily Switch Between Online Email Accounts

Sandy Ag — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:00:56 +0000

Have you ever changed your email account? I am sure you must have, and you must have also experienced the pain of adding contacts all over again. TrueSwitch is a web service that not only eases your task of copying contacts but also the stored emails, calendar events and favorites.

TrueSwitch immediately finds the information on your old service provider and the information stored on your local hard drive. Once it finds this information, it starts moving it over to the new email service. Usually, the process takes up to one hour but may consume more time based on the volume of data.

It also has a feature that will notify all of your contacts about your new email address. Also, it automatically forwards any new email to your new account.

It offers a free service if you choose to switch to its partners like Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail and more. There is a paid version, but the free version should be enough to let you switch accounts. I tried switching to Gmail and Hotmail, of which the Hotmail experience was better. Let us have a look at both.

Switching to Hotmail

Navigate to the TrueSwitch web interface and click on the Hotmail icon. This activity takes you to another page where you need to enter the old email id (from where you want to switch) and new email id (to where you want to switch).

Additionally, you can check the boxes for data that you wish to copy and move. This includes email messages, address book and calendar events. You can also personalize the message that would be sent to your friends and set up the mail forwarding option.

Once the process is over, you will be notified with a completion message. You may then close your browser and wait until all information is transferred.

Switching to Gmail

This wasn’t that exciting, as it navigated me to Gmail’s interface where I could manually configure the imports. However, it acts as a quick guide for new users. Follow the link for Import mail and contacts. The process is pretty simple and requires no explanation.

Using the Paid Service

This is the easiest way to use TrueSwitch. First, enter both mail addresses that you want to switch between.

Second, choose what data you want to import.

Third, enter the registration key of your email provider if needed. Now, you are done, so you can see how easy the paid version of TrueSwitch is.

Conclusion

Switching between email accounts cannot get simpler than this. The paid version of TrueSwitch is very easy to use, but the free version should get the job done for just about everyone. If you had been hesitant to switch your email accounts, you can do it easily now.

Image By Lali Masriera

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How To Restore Accidentally Deleted Bookmarks on Chrome in Windows

Ashish Mundhra — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:30:16 +0000

We humans have one thing common in all of us and that’s, we create mistakes. One of the error I create while working on computer is, to delete important stuffs accidentally. These can be some important files or folders on the computer or even bookmarks on my browser.

We have already seen many tools using which we can restore files on your computer, today we will see how we can restore our deleted bookmarks on Chrome.

Chrome makes a backup copy of all your bookmarks from time to time, and if you have accidentally deleted some, there’s a way we can restore it.

So let’s see how it’s done.

Restoring the Chrome Bookmarks

1. After you realize that you have deleted an important bookmark or a folder altogether, stop using Chrome. It would be even better if you close all the instances of Chrome running on your computer.

2. Open the Run command using Windows+R key. In the command box type, C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default to open up the default user data folder of Chrome.

3. In the folder, you will find two files, namely Bookmarks and Bookmarks.bak. The Bookmarks file contain the information about the bookmarks you currently have on your Chrome while the Bookmarks.bak is the backup file for your Bookmarks that Chrome creates occasionally.

Check the last modified date of the Bookmarks.bak file and if the timestamp is of before you deleted your important bookmark consider yourself lucky. If the timestamp is of after you have deleted the bookmark, consider it as the end of the story.

4. If you are still in game, rename the Bookmarks file to Bookmarks.old and thereafter rename the Bookmarks.bak to Bookmarks. Windows will ask you if you would like to change the extension of the file. Select yes for an answer and save the filename.

So what you have done is, you have made the backup file the active bookmark information file for Chrome and made the file with the deleted information as an old, unusable file thus restoring all the bookmarks to previous date.

Conclusion

Of course, you will loose any new bookmarks you have added to Chrome after you deleted the ones that were useful. Here you will have to choose which one is substantial for you and let go the other.

So next time you accidentally delete your Chrome bookmarks, don’t panic. Just rename the backup file and get back on track.

Image Credits: shioshvili

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How to Create a New Email Profile in Microsoft Outlook 2010

Ashish Mundhra — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:00:50 +0000

When we use Outlook for the first time after installing it we need to setup a mail account. During this process, Outlook creates a default profile for the particular account and save it by the name Outlook.

Now, if more than one person are using the same computer and the users manage their email accounts on Outlook, it’s not at all secure for the users. Of course, one can make multiple user profiles in Windows to come up with a solution but making a new profile just for Outlook does not sound feasible.

So let’s see how you can make a new profile in Microsoft Outlook 2010. These options are not available directly on Outlook application but can be accessed through Windows Control Panel.

Creating New Profile in Outlook

1: Close all the instances of Outlook running on your computer and open Control Panel on your system.

2: In Control Panel, if you are in a classic view, open Mail (Mail 32 Bit for users working on 64 bit OS). If you are in a category view, search for mail and do the needful.

3: The Outlook Mail Setup will open up for you. Click on the Show profile button to view all the Outlook profiles you have on your system. To add a new Outlook profile, click on Add button to start the wizard.

4: Give the new profile a name and click on the OK button to proceed.

5: You will now be asked to configure your email account to setup the new profile. Having done that, the new profile will be created instantly. Furthermore, you can select the profile and configure advance settings using the properties button.

Conclusion

Once you start maintaining multiple accounts on Outlook either make one your default account or opt for an option to choose every time you start Outlook. You can configure the option in the profile management window.

That’s all, you can now keep all your mails discrete on Outlook without making different Windows profile for distinct users. If you want to remove a profile, just select the one and press the Remove button.

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Save the Best Stuff on the Web with these 4 Chrome Extensions

Alex.Braz — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:00:52 +0000

I refused to swap Firefox for Chrome for quite some time, but I did it and boy, am I glad. Firefox is still a cool browser, but Chrome is way better, since it’s faster, has more extentions and offers multiple accounts, which is great if you share your computer.

Now, a standard Chrome is just like a standard car. Nice, but not as great as the one with additional equipment, right?

Let’s take a look at 4 great extensions for Chrome that let you save and organize your online content.

XMarks

When I changed browsers, I wanted to keep all my bookmarks. Luckily, I had Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) on Firefox, and luckily, Chrome has it, too. After you log in (assuming you already have an account and a bunch of bookmarks), you sync your Chrome with Xmarks’ server and voila, there are all your favorite sites.

If you’re reading this from Chrome, get the extension here.

Springpad

Springpad is a nifty extentsion that enables you to save everything from the web and check it out later, whether you need to save URLs, photos, text, you name it. What’s even better, you can get an Android app as well, save stuff there and check it later on your computer.

After installation, you get an icon next to the power bar and clicking it gives you different options: ‘clipping’ a website, adding a note, a task or looking stuff up. It can basically work as a bookmark tool, too. Opening the dropdown window lets you check all saved things, without leaving the page.

And what’s even better, your right mouse button is useful again. Right-click on a link, selected text or a photo, and save it instantly. Get Springpad here.

Pocket

I found out about this cool extension when I was searching for a better read-it-later mobile app. The main idea of it is that you you can use it to save stuff you find online, and it does that. However, I found it to be amazing for online articles.

If you browse your Twitter timeline and find a recomended article but don’t have the time to read it, just add it to Pocket. Or when you know you’ll be waiting for a long time, you can add a bunch of cool articles in Pocket on your PC and read it later on your phone or a tablet. This app, too, has a toolbar shortcut and a right-click option. Get it here.

Evernote

I probably don’t have to introduce Evernote, but briefly: it’s an advanced notepad that I mostly use to save passwords and PIN codes (because it lets you put your notes under a password), but you can use it for much more. Chrome Webclipper does what the last two extensions do, so there’s nothing new there, and you can sync it with your desktop or mobile app.

But it offers an additional extension, called Clearly. It transforms a regular, ad-laden and distracting blog post into a minimalistic and easy-to-read text. You can get the Webclipper here and Clearly here.

Conclusion

These extensions seem to do the same thing: save web stuff, but as you can see, each extension does it just a little different. It’s up to you to test them out and see which extension is right for you.

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How to Delete Individual Website Cookies in Chrome and Firefox

Ashish Mundhra — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:30:12 +0000

Cookies, when talking with respect to the internet and websites, are small text files that websites stores on your computer to keep track of various information. Basically, these files contain your username, password (not directly) and other information associated with the account that helps the website to recognize you the next time you visit their page.

If you don’t store cookies on your computer, each time you visit a web page you will have to provide your login credentials and all the additional data to access your account. Sometimes, you might need to remove cookies of certain websites you wish to delete these data, or if you are developing a web page project, you need to delete cookies every time you do a test run. So let’s see how you can delete these cookies individually on Google Chrome and Firefox.

Delete Specific Cookies on Chrome

1. Open Google Chrome and click on the wrench icon on the browser toolbar and select Settings to open Google Chrome settings.

2. In the settings page, navigate to Under the Bonnet tab and click on the Content Settings button to open the respective page.

3. Here, click on the button All cookies and site data to view all the cookies of all the websites stored in your computer.

4. You can now either remove all the cookies by using the Remove All button, or you can filter out specific website and then press the cross next to the website to delete them individually.

Once you have deleted all the cookies close the Chrome settings window.

Delete Specific Website Cookies on Firefox

1. Launch Firefox and open Options from the menu.

2. On the settings window, navigate to the Privacy tab and click on the link Remove Individual Cookies.

3. Now, search and delete the individual cookies here. Just select the cookie you want to delete and press the Remove Cookies button.

As the cookies are now permanently flushed out of your Chrome and Firefox browsers, whenever you open these websites, they will open as if you are visiting the website for the first time.

Image Credits: seriousbri

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