Tired of Outlook opening when you click on an Email link?

If you have ever responded to a Craigslist posting, you are familiar with the annoying problem of clicking on the link to respond to an ad and having Microsoft Outlook open.  Well, solve this problem in a couple of easy steps.  These steps assume that you would want to switch Windows from opening Outlook to opening a web based email (ie. Yahoo Mail, GMail, Hotmail, etc.). 

Firefox has one such tool built in--at least if you're using Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Select Tools, then Options. Click the Applications tab. Select mailto, pull down the menu, and select Use Gmail or Use Yahoo! Mail.

Chrome users should go to the Chrome web store and search for mailto. You'll find plenty of Mail plug-ins for specific services. You'll also find the generic Mailto, which supports AOL, Fastmail, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Zoho, or, with a bit of work, other services.

I know of no such add-ins for Internet Explorer. However, there are 2 Gmail specific solutions.

If you use Gmail, Google offers two free programs, either of which will handle mailto links appropriately: Gmail Notifier and the Google Toolbar. Both of these have other features and come with other baggage, so you may or may not want them.

If you decide to install the Notifier, make sure to leave the Use for outgoing mail option checked. If you go with the Toolbar, click the Tool icon, and in the General tab, check Use Gmail for "Mail To" links.

So long Outlook!

Prepare yourself for Facebook's new timeline

Facebook's Timeline is coming, whether you like it or not, to Facebook accounts everywhere - including yours.  On the one hand, it's a lot easier to find things -- events, wall posts, etc, because you can now search your Facebook profile by date. On the other hand, it's much easier for other people--friends, strangers, you name it -- to find things, because they can now search your Facebook profile by date.

Well, the simple way to get back a little more privacy on Facebook follows.  You might want to follow it, you would be surprised how much stuff you have put on Facebook.

The first step to Facebook privacy is making your profile, or Timeline, private. To do this, go to Privacy Settings > How You Connect and change the settings for "Who can post on your timeline?" and "Who can see posts by others on your timeline?" from "Public" to "Friends."

Go to Privacy Settings > How Tags Work and change the settings for "Maximum Timeline Visibility" from "Public" to "Friends."

If you're super-intense, you can change those settings to "Custom" and choose "Only Me" -- then you'll be the only one who can see the posts.

Finally, limit your past posts -- which may have been made public at the time -- to Friends only. To do this, go to "Limit the Audience for Past Posts" and click "Manage Past Post Visibility," then "Limit Old Posts." This will change all past posts to Friends-only, even if you initially made them public.

Delete Your Posts From Other People's Timelines

Once you've successfully hidden or deleted all of your Timeline posts, it's time to move onto other people. This is perhaps a more important step than deleting the posts on your Timeline, because you have no control over how other people protect their Facebook privacy (or don't).

To remove your posts from someone else's Timeline, go to your Timeline and click "Activity Log." You can now see all of your posts -- comments, likes, and events -- organized by date. To see just your posts, click "All" in the upper right corner and choose "Your Posts"

Anytime you wrote on someone's wall, you'll be able to delete that post -- not hide it, because it's no longer on your Timeline, but delete it so that it won't show up on their Timeline.

Better Credit Card Security

This is a bit personal for me as last week, a credit card leak somewhere out there resulted in my personal account being charged for $588.01 at walmart.com.   I would like to thank Wal-Mart for being less than pathetically helpful in getting it resolved.  A brighter day awaits.  By 2013 Mastercard and Visa intends to move to the European standard for using credit cards, the chip and pin method.  What does this mean? As any recent traveler to Europe knows, the continent is increasingly moving to the so-called "Chip and PIN" technology, where consumers slide in a credit card with an embedded security chip inside, then enter a 4-digit PIN. Putting U.S. credit-card payment technology onto the same technological footing as other regions will mean fewer headaches for overseas travelers.  For us here at home, it means that it will be a little more difficult for your card to be used after being stolen.  We can only dream.  Check out more here.

Started my Google+ business page, see how it goes

Apparently Google likes you a bit more in search results if you have a Google+ account.  Well, let the experiment begin!.  Here is the page link! Support your friendly neighborhood tech guy!

Another way to download Youtube videos

Youtube Downloader HD offers an adware free installation and gives you the option of downloading multiple videos at once.  The program also affords you the option of downloading a higher quality version of the clip and the option to convert a video from the FLV format (Youtube default) to he more popular formats of AVI or MP.  NOTE: the YouTube terms of service prohibit downloading clips that lack an official download button or link and that by doing so violates the video owner's copyright.  Just so you know...

Free Text messaging from your computer

I'm not sure what is more overpriced, HDMI cables or text messaging rates.  Nevertheless, here is a way to eliminate one of the problems.  Pinger Textfree Web brings free and simple text messaging to your Internet Browser.  You can send a text to any mobile number and view replies.  You also get a free textfree.us email address too.  This is needed if somebody sends an image via text, it gets sent to the email account.  The only apparent downside is that you cannot import contacts, but it does keep a 72 hour log, so you can resume any conversation within that time period by hitting reply.