Facebook Lists: Streamline Your Page

If you've been wasting a lot of time searching through your News Feed on Facebook, you are going to love this feature. My "Homepage" on Facebook is usually strewn with people I don't know well enough to have an interest in their updates. Often times, I scroll to the bottom of the page and don't see a single update of a close friend. Cue lists:

In the upper corner, notice the "+Create" button:


It'll bring you to this page (I've removed names):


The criteria you choose for this list can be anything--the only list I currently have is the 35 people I know the best. Now, my homepage displays the status updates of everyone I care most about.

Once your list is created, it'll show up with your "feeds".

You can hit that little pencil any time you'd like to add or remove someone from your list. Make sure to click and drag it to the top of the list if you want this to always load as your homepage:


To edit your lists differently, head to the Friends page. You can also delete lists from the Friends page.


This is a very quick way to effectively decrease wasted time on the site. You can also use lists in Facebook Chat to limit who you speak with.


Part 2: Lists Make Privacy Easier to Control

Head over to Settings in the upper-right corner of your page and click Privacy Settings.


Click Profile.


In this example, you can create a list of people who you'd like to restrict from seeing your tagged photos. You can also restrict people from seeing your videos, status updates, and even your basic information.


It's safe to put your mobile number on Facebook because you can navigate to the Contact tab and select your list of Friends/Family to be the only people who can see it. The same holds true for your address.

Ten Essential Windows and Firefox Shortcuts

Once you've taken steps to physically speed up your computer, there are still small steps you can take to speed up your computing experience. Practicing touch-typing, memorizing shortcut keys, and organizing your files for easier access are all great ways to enjoy your computer more. You will accomplish more yet spend less time at the computer.

I'd like to share my favorite Windows and Firefox shortcuts. The idea is to keep your hands on the keyboard and spend less time fiddling with your mouse.

Useful Windows Shortcuts:

1. Windows Key + D will minimize all windows and bring up the desktop. Very useful.
2. Alt+F4 will close whatever program/window currently has focus. When you've minimized to the desktop, hit Alt+F4+S to put your computer into Standby. Alt+F4+U will shut down your computer.
3. Windows Key by itself will bring up the Start Menu. This one is simple and will make you feel much more efficient.
4. Alt + TAB is great if you tend to have many programs running at once. It displays the open programs and allows you to switch between them instantly.
5. Ctrl + A will select all the text in an open window, or all the files in an open folder. This is great for moving all the files from a folder efficiently, or deleting all the files within a folder or text within a document fast and easily. If you want to select a group of files except for a few, hit Ctrl + A and continue to hold Ctrl as you click the few files you don't want highlighted.

Here is the complete list from Microsoft.

Favorite Firefox Shortcuts:

1. Ctrl + F is one of the best shortcut keys to have memorized. After hitting this you can immediately search within a body of text. This is essential to being an efficient web-surfer. Once you've entered a search, tapping Enter will cycle through your results. Alt + A will highlight all the results. Hitting Esc will end the search.
2. Ctrl + T will open a new Tab--memorize this one for sure. Ctrl + Shift + T will open the last tab you closed, great for backtracking if you accidentally closed the window. This shortcut key alone really validates Tab-based browsing. Ctrl + W closes a tab.
3. Ctrl + K will bring the focus to the search in the upper-right corner. I have mine set to search Wikipedia. Ctrl + E does the same thing.
   
4. Alt + D or F6 brings the focus to the address bar of your current tab. Another great time-saver. You can immediately enter a new address that you'd like to surf to.
   
5. Middle Mouse Button (or Wheel) + Hyperlink should open a link in a new tab. This can be an incredibly useful tool.
   

For fun... F11 will make Firefox full screen. Good for large websites, if you'd like to look at something without the distraction of the address bar/toolbars at the top of the screen.

Here is Mozilla's complete list of Firefox shortcuts.

These ten shortcuts alone will make your computer feel much faster--without tweaking your computer at all. When your hands can quickly and automatically communicate through the keyboard what you'd like to do, you seriously enjoy navigating around the web.

Touch Typing: Increasing Your Typing Speed

The faster one can communicate ideas onto a computer screen, the more enjoyable web-browsing and writing becomes. If you'd like to spend a little time practicing touch typing, Keybr has an interesting way to improve your brain's connection to your digits. The interface is refreshing and sleek compared to other touch typing programs I've seen. Dvorak, Colemak, and UK keyboard configurations are available, as well as language support for German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, and Russian.


Keybr is a challange because it strings syllables together so you are forced to type words that look like your language, but aren't. Your brain has to work harder to type. The onscreen keyboard also highlights your most mistake-prone letters, allowing you to consciously improve your skills.

Make sure to try the custom text option--copy and paste any text to practice with. While doing this, I was struck with the idea that I could both read an article and practice typing at the same time. I had copied and pasted text from a Wikipedia article. This free site really performs a dual purpose.

Getting a Free College Education Online

There's always time to learn more and improve oneself. There are a growing number of free opportunities to continue one's education online through both college (.edu) sites and through a few surprising third-party sources.


~ MIT, yes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a free program called OpenCourseWare. They provide a direct look into their materials, lectures, and layouts of entire majors. For as long as this site exists, I will be exploring the classes they provide. The concept of a free college education warms my heart.

~ Tufts University offers a similar Open Course Ware program. Not as large as MIT's program, but, it's still free!



~ UC Berkeley offers both video and audio links to lectures on various courses. Again, a limited selection is offered.

~ Utah State University has the Open Course Ware format. Hopefully they will add more courses in the future.



~ Academic Earth has the same format as Hulu but is entirely composed of video lectures from reputable colleges. For once, watching videos online is not a waste of time.



~ YouTube.com/Edu came out of nowhere. Not as scholarly as Academic Earth, but it is still a great source of college-level material. Search 'Lecture' + the course of interest if you'd like to see mostly college course videos.



Sitting in on these lectures without the stresses of note-taking, assignments, or tests, I feel like I retain more information. It's genuinely fun to "take" courses that are far outside of my college major.

It is my sincere hope that more people consider learning to be a form of entertainment. The most influential and brilliant people in the world spent great amounts of time in libraries; I hope that having universal free access to collegiate libraries helps us become a more intelligent and compassionate people.

Navigating Wikipedia

When you aren't looking for a specific article, navigating through Wikipedia can become a serious time-waster and form of entertainment. Here are a few small suggestions if you've yet to try out the site as a form of entertainment.

Portals serve as introductory pages into larger topics. They make a good first step when you are learning about a subject for recreation. The directory of portals is the complete list of all the portals on Wikipedia.

Current Events is a bare-bones source for news. It links to WikiNews, which seeks to meld mainstream news sources into unbiased reports of current events.

If you'd really like to squeeze Wikipedia for all it has to offer, make sure probe every nook and cranny of the site. Pressing the "Random Article" button on the top left part of the site (or alt+shift+x when you're on a Wiki page) always produces strange and interesting results. This command will direct you to any article among the 3 million existing English articles.

Stumble Upon: Channel Surfing the Internet

Stumble Upon is a Firefox and Internet Explorer add-on that can effectively turn you into an Internet junkie. Press the Stumble button and you are whisked to a website that is tailored to your interests.

Be careful. You can become addicted to pressing this button. Websites can be given a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, and can be reviewed. Your reviews are kept together on your personal page as both a history and your own websurfing blog. Millions of people tag, review, and investigate the internet each day--therein lies the addictive quality of the button. New content is added by the second, and through browsing you become part of the Stumblemachine. The site is constantly working to connect you and your interests to other people and their interests. This creates what feels like a collective Stumble-consciousness that always delivers great content; tag, review, and connect to websites that you love. This helps others to find what they love.

As you set up your free profile, you select from over 100 topics and subtopics that interest you. My Stumble button directs me to websites about green energy, astronomy, architecture, technology, philosophy, psychology, photography, film/filmmaking, and about forty other topics. You can also enter interests that are not included on their list.

The Stumble toolbar comes with the option to 'StumbleThru' a set of websites. This is particularly useful if you are in a mood to watch videos, or read news.


You can also have your Stumble button show you websites relating to a very specific topic that you enter manually:

A search for "George W. Bush" directed me to:

http://www.goodnightbush.com/librarium/

and a satirical news snippet from The Onion.

Stumbling has brought me laughs, gorgeous photographs, and a sense that the Internet is infinite and endlessly interesting. It has become an integral part in how I use the Web in my free time.

Barack Obama and Technology: A 21st Century President

History will remember President Obama as the first African-American president. He mobilized the largest movement of young voters the United States has seen, surprisingly, by connecting with them online. He joined every major social network, allowing 18 to 25-year-olds (and their younger teenage siblings) to identify with him personally. At a subconscious level, this indicated that Obama understood the youngest voting block and that his presidency would reflect our technological culture and economy.

Exhibit A

facebook.com/barackobama

(Click for full image)

Facebook is MySpace's successor, the web locale where high school and college students complain about school and make new friends. The messaging system acts as a second e-mail, while statuses inform friends of recent happenings in their lives. Links, videos, and pictures are swapped with ease. By joining Facebook, news of Obama's potential historic presidency quickly spread through college campuses and high schools.

Exhibit B

myspace.com/barackobama

Myspace's frustrating HTML layouts and comment spam (often linking to viruses) were its ultimate downfall. Facebook is more uniform, professional, and family-oriented. Obama still joined Myspace, however, reaching the demographic of younger people who have shied away from making Facebook profiles. Again, there's something fascinating about "friending" a politician who wants your vote--a digital handshake. It felt good to be one of his 5 million "fans" on Facebook and one of his 1 million friends on Myspace.

Exhibit C
twitter.com/barackobama

Twitter is the new kid on the block, filling the I-Want-Information-Now niche in the networking universe. Individuals from every metropolitan area in the country exchange links and succinct wit. With a strict 140-character limit on posts ("tweets"), the site provides the same status-update feature that is available on Myspace and Facebook. The speed that information, news, and irrelevant whining spreads is maxed out.

Obama currently has 1.8 million followers on Twitter.

Exhibit D

Free iTunes Podcasts (Link will open iTunes)

Again, this is fulfills an important niche. The iTunes store is a quick way to download music and videos legally. Podcasts are the next frontier of radio and are an underappreciated resource. Wikipedia's current definition:

"A podcast is a series of digital computer files, usually either digital audio or video, that is released periodically and made available for download by means of web syndication."

During the election, those looking to become familiar with Obama could watch and listen to town hall meetings and speeches he'd made. Ultimately, this brought the world a step closer to him and communicated his interest in being the candidate of an intelligent, well-informed electorate.

Exhibit E

BlackPlanet.com/Barack_Obama | MiGente.com/Barack_Obama | AsianAve.com/Barack_Obama

BlackPlanet, MiGente ("My People"), and AsianAve are for the black, hispanic, and asian communities, respectfully. Obama's presence on these sites brought him community-specific familiarity, representing him as a candidate that is empathetic to American minorities. This is where his campaign truly shined: he showed great concern for individual communities, not just the public as a whole. People who hadn't voted in decades stood in line for hours to vote.

What Next?
Flickr.com/Whitehouse

Seeing the Whitehouse "Photostream" on Flickr is a joy. Flickr is a community for aspiring and professional photographers to share ideas and display their work. In the coming month(s) the profile will reach its 1000th photo. The warmth that the photography brings to the Obamas is both vivid and surreal.

Looking Forward

January 20th, 2009, the Obama team made the decision that solidified Obama as the first true technologically-aware President of the Internet age.

YouTube.com/Whitehouse

YouTube is very popular around the world; a whitehouse "channel" can only bring us closer to the executive branch. Why not present politics as entertainment? Why not learn to like the political process? Why not enjoy the process? I see a generation of children identifying with their president as a person because of his presence online--the realization that politics are central to being human. Engaging young people in political discussion instills the values necessary for a sound, honest government in the future.

Check out BarackObama.com, too.