Category: Stuff

Leave it to WikiHow to have this very helpful entry explaining how to block Facebook’s Beacon. It includes a nice summary of how Beacon invades your space:

“When a Facebook user purchases an item at one of these websites, Facebook provides a way for the user to advertise their purchase on their Facebook News Feed.^[2] While users can decline sending out the advertising, Facebook does not allow users to opt out of the data collection and behavior monitoring.^[3][4] Even if you opt out, click “no thanks”, and log out of Facebook, Beacon will still be surreptitiously collecting your web browsing behavior data and sending it to Facebook. ^[5][6] “

and then describes their tips, the first being to USE FIREFOX.

http://www.wikihow.com/Block-Facebook-Beacon

From Think Simple Now:

“I find that I prefer living places with lots of lighting, wood floors, open space and high ceilings. Personally, this gives me the most effective amount of creative energy boost. In addition to the physical surroundings that make me feel best, I’ve also found that the clutter in my environment negatively affect my performance. When I am surrounded by mess and disorganization, I feel more mentally cluttered, less decisive, slightly anxious and more easily annoyed. I’ve learned that in order to be at my best, I needed my physical surrounding to be clean, organized and clutter free.”

Read the specific tips at http://thinksimplenow.com/clarity/how-to-cure-packrat-itis/

WikiHow’s “How to Become a Hobo”

I used to mumble 85% of the lyrics to this song. At least I’m not the only one with cotton in their ears:
From “The Archive of Misheard Lyrics”

Maggie May, Rod Stewart
Real lyrics: All you did was wreck my bed
Misheard [by Archive reader] as: All you did was wet my bed

The worst part isn’t the invasion of privacy…it’s the product name: “ThePudding” from Puddingmedia:

“A startup has come up with a new way to make money from phone calls connected via the Internet: having software listen to the calls, then displaying ads on the callers’ computer screens based on what’s being talked about…
… On Monday, the Silicon Valley-based company is launching a public trial of the software on its Web site, http://www.ThePudding.com. Visitors will be able to place free calls to U.S. and Canadian phone numbers from their computers using headsets or microphones. The phone numbers are entered via a Web browser, which is also where the ads and links show up.”
via CRMDaily.com

Futurepower(R) writes “Even though I have Automatic Updates turned off, on August 28, 2007, between 3:49 and 3:51 AM PDT, Microsoft installed new files on my Windows XP computer.” Nine files are updated on Vista and on XP SP1, a different set of on each, relating to Windows Update itself. Microsoft-watch.com’s Joe Wilcox and ZDnet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes confirm the stealth update.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.