SIMPLE POWER HACKS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEB EXPERIENCE
Almost everyone uses Facebook and Twitter for
social networking, YouTube for videos, and Wikipedia for reference. But very
few are aware of hacks or the not-so-obvious features of these services
that will not only make you a power user, but also give you boasting rights
among friends. Telling you about a few...
FACEBOOK
SWITCH TO THE OLD DESIGN:
If you miss the old Facebook timeline, then visit
http:www.socialreviver .net to install the SocialReviver brows er extension
that's available for Chrome, Firefox, Iron, Opera, and RockMelt.
After signing in with your Facebook ID, allow it to connect to
your account. Then, click the account dropdown button (indicated by the
inverted triangle) in the top right-hand corner of your Facebook page, and
select “SocialReviver Settings“. Here, you can change the appearance of
Facebook Chat, how message notifications appear, revert to the old personal
profile style, disable the new timeline feature to return to the original news
feed, and even alter Facebook's blue top bar.
NOTE: These changes are only visible to those signed in to
Facebook in a browser that has SocialReviver installed.
QUICK ACCESS TO
NOTIFICATIONS:
You do not need to have a Facebook browser tab open all the time
to keep an eye on notifications. Instead, you can create a selfupdating `live
bookmark' in your browser. To do this, go to http:www.facebook.comnotifications
while you are signed in to your account, and click the “RSS“ link under “Your
Notifications“.
If you use Firefox or Opera as your default web browser, its
built-in RSS reader will automatically create a bookmark on its toolbar. If you
use Chrome: install an extension called RSS Feed Reader from the Chrome Web
Store, copy the notifications' RSS link and manually add it to the reader.
BACK UP PHOTOS
Create an account with http:www.streamnation.com to import the
photos and videos you have uploaded to your social profile. You get 20GB of
free online storage and the option to transfer the pictures you have been
tagged in. Besides Facebook, StreamNation also lets you import your personal
content from Instagram, Google+, Flickr, YouTube and more.
WHATSAPP ON THE WEB
You can send and receive WhatsApp messages via the Chrome,
Firefox, Opera and Safari web browsers. Visit web.whatsapp.com in your computer
browser, launch the app on your phone and go to Menu > WhatsApp Web to scan
the QR code displayed on your PC screen. That's it. Now you will be able to
message from your computer without checking your phone. NOTE: You need the
latest version of WhatsApp on your handset.
WIKIPEDIA CONCISE
WIKIS:
Wikipedia entries can be quite exhaustive, often running into
thousands of words, and filled with details that might not always be relevant,
or sometimes even too complex for most users. In such cases, in the browser
address bar, just replace the “en“ in the link with “simple“ for a shorter
version of the entry that carries only the most important parts.For example:
en.wikipedia.orgwikiIsaac_Newton becomes simple.wikipedia.orgwikiIsaac_Newton
It should be noted that the “simple“ version is not available for every
article.
VIDEOS IN WIKI:
If you're using Google's Chrome browser, go to the Chrome Web
Store and install the WikiTube extension. After this, whenever you visit a
Wikipedia page, the plugin automatically extracts videos that are related to
the topic you are reading and displays them right on your Wikipedia page for
quick access.
BREAKING NEWS:
You can use Wikipedia to get a quick glimpse of all the major
breaking stories from around the world. Simply head to en.wikipedia.org
wikiPortal:Current_events The panel on the right side of the page displays a
calendar of the month where you can see the stories by day, you can see the
death anniversaries of famous personalities by date, a list of ongoing events,
conflicts, elections and even famous court trials. The news portal also has an
entire section dedicated to sporting events.
WIKI BOOK
Wikipedia has tools that lets you create a book in PDF format of
any entry (and even multiple entries) with a layout that is conducive to
reading in print. For details on how to create a book in few easy steps, head
to en.wikipedia.orgwiki Help:Books You can use this feature for schoolbased
education and even for corporate training and reference.
YOUTUBE
JUMP TO A SPECIFIC
TIME:
There are times when you share a YouTube video with friends, but
you might want them to check out a very specific portion of the entire clip.
Well, simply send them a link with exactly where you want them to start
watching the video. To do this, right-click the video screen when that portion
begins playing and from the resulting drop-down, select “Get video URL at
current time“.
YouTube will provide you with a link where the timestamp is
indicated by a “t=x“ (where x is the number value in seconds). Simply copy that
link to share.For example: http:www.youtube.comwatch?v=v8RkNHmSgns becomes
youtu.bev8RkNHmSgns?t=80 As is evident, YouTube shortens the link for you.
TWITTER VIEW YOUR TWEET ACTIVITY:
Twitter lets you check how your tweets fared on the public
timeline. Visit analytics.twitter.com and sign in to enable the service. Here
you can see how many people viewed your tweet and at what time; top tweets; how
many clicked the link you shared; the number of people who responded to it;
basic follower demographics, and more.
FOLLOWUNFOLLOW IN
BULK:
If you want to trim your “following“ list or want to find
interesting Twitter users around the world, then visit
http:www.flittermanager.com. Here, you will be able to unfollow users in bulk
and also search for users with common interests.
Sign in with your Twitter ID and Flitter Manager will display your
list in different ways users with out a profile image, non-English tweeters,
fake accounts, infrequent tweeters, those with highlow influence, etc to help
you decide which people to remove from your list.
NUMBERS TO
FAST-FORWARD:
You can use the number keys 1 to 9 on your keyboard to
navigate to a particular spot in the active video. Pressing `1' will skip
forward to 10%; pressing `4' to 40% and so on. Alternatively, you can use the
`J' key to rewind 10 seconds in the video, while the `L' key fast forwards by
10 seconds.
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
On your computer, you can browse through your Twitter timeline,
favourite posts and publish new tweets without reaching for the mouse. Press
the J or K keys to move to the next or previous tweet; R to reply; T to
retweet; F to favourite, and more. To learn more shortcuts, sign in to Twitter,
click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the page, and click
“Keyboard shortcuts“.
DOWNLOAD VIDEOS
If you have a slow connection, sometimes, you might feel the need
to download a video so you can watch it from your local hard drive without
having to wait for it to buffer. In such cases, simply copy the link to the
video, head to en.savefrom.net and paste it there. The site will immediately
convert the clip into a downloadable MP4 video file. You can also use this
service to convert only the audio track to listen to it as an MP3.
Savio D'Souza and Ashutosh DesaiET27JUN15
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