Hot Digiwonk How-Tos
How To: Find Out Who Doesn't Like You Anymore on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Twitter
Offensive pictures, depressing tweets, political statuses, and just plain old dumb comments are only a few of the reasons why people unfriend or unfollow others on social media sites. Sometimes it's just social spring cleaning, other times there's no reason at all.
How To: Easily Transfer All of Your Instagram Photos Over to Flickr
It's been a rough week for Instagram. First they came out with a new terms of service that suggested the right to let companies use people's photos for advertisements without the user's permission. Then everyone started freaking out and debating whether or not to leave the online photo-sharing and social networking service. Now, they've changed the controversial wording saying that the selling of user photos "is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing".
How To: Enable Google Chrome's Secret (And Possibly Dangerous) Experimental Features
I use Google Chrome every day for my browsing needs, and I had no idea they were hiding something from me. So, I was pretty surprised to see that Chrome has an entire hidden experimental add-ons section. There are add-ons that work for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, so there's something for everybody.
How To: 5 Alternative Apps to Instagram, Plus How to Back Up and Delete Your Instagram Account for Good
It might be time to move those Instagram photos to another service. It seems that Instagram has never heard of the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." In a very big WTF moment, the extremely popular photo sharing and editing app decided that it has the right to sell its users photos to third parties without pay or notice. Yep, you heard that right. That photo you took of your girlfriend laying out on the beach could be in the next stupid Corona commercial without your consent and witho...
How To: Improve the Facebook Photo Gallery for Advanced Stalking and Ogling
If you're a professional stalker like me, you know that scrolling the photo gallery on somebody's Facebook profile can take some time. In order to see the full-sized image of any one picture, you have to click on it, view it, and then return to the gallery. Anything that slows down the stalking process only enhances its inherent creepiness.
How To: Get Around Instagram's Twitter Ban Using an IFTTT Recipe
Last week, Instagram stopped supporting media Cards on Twitter, meaning that in order to view a full photo shared in a tweet, you have to click through to Instagram rather than seeing it on your Twitter feed. Otherwise, the photo will appear to be cropped.
How To: Upload Your Photos to Instagram—Without an Android or Apple Device
Instagram allows us to vicariously live through others, experiencing their moments with them. It's an enormously popular application and has already garnered 100 million users, but it has only been made available for download on Android and Apple devices. Sure, there are third-party apps where you can browse, like, and comment on other people's Instagram photos—but they don't give you a way to upload your own pictures. So, what about all of the other people who want to share their lives, but ...
How To: Add Real-Time Twitter Results to Google Search in Chrome and Firefox
If you want to know the most up-to-date news on a trending topic, Twitter can be a great place to look since people generally tweet about things as they happen. It used to be easy to find Twitter results in Google Search, but after their deal expired last year, tweets are no longer included in search results.
How To: Send Self-Destructing Spy Messages via Google Docs, Texts, and Private Links
There's really nothing safe about transmitting sensitive information electronically, but even if it gets there safely without being seen by prying eyes, there's no guarantee what happens to it once it reaches its destination. And let's face it, there are some things that you just don't want floating out there forever. So what can you do? Whether you want to send an email, a text, or a link, there are ways to send messages that self-destruct so that once they're read, they immediately vanish. ...
How To: Use Your Friends' Profile Pictures as Emoticons in Facebook Chat
By now, everyone on Facebook is pretty well-versed with emoticons. Some of them are as simple as :) while others like :putnam: are a bit more odd. And now you can have even stranger faces by turning your friend's profile pictures into an emoticon! It's not new, but even the best chatters out there don't know this one.
How To: Block Annoying Political Comments from Your Facebook and Replace Them with Cute Kittens
Election day is less than two weeks away and the political rhetoric is at an all time high. From the constant political commercials to the endless cable news coverage, it's hard to escape the noise. And nothing is worse than your social media sanctuaries being invaded by some clown's personal political insights.
How To: Send Encrypted Spy Messages Through Gmail on Google Chrome
Have a super secret spy communication you'd like to send out, but don't have the funds to hire your own trusted operatives to deliver the message? Then stick to what you're used to—email it. SafeGmail is a browser extension that allows you to send encrypted emails right through your regular Gmail account. While this may seem a bit unnecessary for most messages, encrypting your email can definitely be useful.
How To: Don't Trust Cloud Security? Here's a Safer Local Alternative to Dropbox
Having all of your stuff in the cloud is super convenient if you want to access it on multiple devices, or if you want a backup in case it gets lost or wiped. The biggest downside with services like Dropbox, though, is security. With everything sitting there in one place, the last thing you want is for someone to break in.
How To: Are Your Cloud Documents Safe from Hackers? Make Sure with These Free Cloud-Worthy Encryption Programs
The convenience of storing things on the cloud can definitely make life easier, but if you're storing sensitive files, it could be a total disaster if anyone hacked your account. Some encryption services can be expensive, but if you just need it for personal use, there are some really great ones that don't cost anything. Here are three programs that let you encrypt your cloud storage for free. BoxCryptor
How To: Opt Out of Facebook's Creepy New Ad-Targeting Partnership with Datalogix
As if you needed another reason to lock down your Facebook profile, the company's sketchy new partnership with data mining firm Datalogix is geared towards giving advertisers more information on what you're doing—even when you're not online. It's just not enough that they can target ads based on your preferences, now they want to know how those ads are influencing your buying habits in the real world.
How To: Have Your Friends Ever Used Pandora on Your Computer? Well, You Can Steal Their Passwords
If you've ever logged on to the popular music application Pandora, your password is saved onto that computer in the local storage...for good.
How To: Customize Your Chrome Extensions for Specific Websites with Extension Automation
Browser extensions help us do all sorts of things, and there's one for just about everything, but like anything else, they can be easy to get carried away with. If you use a lot of add-ons, your browser is probably running some of them in the background on sites that don't actually use them for anything. You can disable them, but it's a pain to change your settings all the time, which is where Extension Automation comes in. Extension Automation is (ironically) a Chrome extension that lets you...
How To: How Many of Your Twitter Followers Are Phony? Find Out with This Fake-Follower Detector
There have been plenty of headlines recently about fake followers in both politics and entertainment. Everyone gets hit by a spam account here and there, but when a large percentage of someone's followers are fake, it can look pretty bad, especially with influential people being accused of buying their followers to look more popular.
How To: Your Guide to Finding Free Creative Commons Images and Other Media Online
Creative Commons is awesome—really. If an image, video, or audio file is tagged with a CC license, that means you can use it as long as you give appropriate credit to the owner. For bloggers with no money for pricey stock media, it's a godsend. When you license your own media under CC, you can choose how you want it to be used by others and whether or not it can be used commercially.
How To: Block Yourself from Being 'Seen' by Facebook's New Read Receipts Feature
Facebook recently added some features to its Messages, Chat and Groups that a lot of people have found to be somewhat sketchy. Facebook's "read receipts" tell people exactly who has viewed posts and messages, so you can no longer get away with the old, trusted excuse of "What message?"
How To: Don't Have Photoshop? Use the Free Web Tool Cropp.me to Crop and Resize Images Easily
Cropping images can be a huge pain if you have a bunch to do at once. Even if you have Photoshop or a similar program, the process of opening each individual photo and cropping them one at a time can take forever. A free web-app called Cropp.me makes that task a lot easier by auto-cropping your photos to whatever size you choose. All you have to do is upload an image, choose what size you want it to be, and click Cropp My Images. You can choose from a list of sizes or input a custom size of y...
How To: Always Know When Someone's Talking About You Online with IFTTT
Too many accounts, too little time. If this sounds like the story of your life, you're not alone. That's where If This, Then That (IFTTT) comes in. It's a site that lets you automate tasks in 50 different channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Craigslist, WordPress, YouTube, and even your own phone and email accounts. It works by using "recipes," an infinitely customizable list of tasks that you can set up to do almost anything you want. Want to know when someone mentions you on Twi...
How To: The 5 Best Places to Download or Design Fonts Online for Free
Whether you're making a poster, drawing a logo or designing a website, the font you use can make a huge difference in any visual design, and the ones available in most word processors can get pretty boring. There are thousands of sites online where you can download free fonts, and even a few that let you design your own. Here are some of the best.
How To: Get Free Internet on Your Laptop from Your Phone
Tethering your Android phone basically turns it into a mobile hotspot, allowing you to funnel a 3G or 4G internet connection from your phone into your PC or laptop via USB. As you might expect, phone carriers brought the hammer down in an effort to stop users from getting around the fees they charge to normally allow you to do this.
How To: Eradicate Annoying Baby Pictures from Your Facebook News Feed with UNBABY.ME
We all have that friend. You know, the one who can't resist posting pictures on Facebook of every single thing their newborn does. Babies are cute and all, but new parents don't seem to get that not everyone wants to see a play-by-play of every moment of their child's existence. For the rest of us, Unbaby.me is here to help. Unbaby.me is a Chrome extension that replaces baby photos in your News Feed with pictures of "awesome stuff." It's super easy to use. Just go to the homepage, click Add t...
How To: Explore the Kennedy Space Center Online with Google Street View
With all the excitement over the Mars rover landing this weekend, you might also want to know that Google has gotten their cameras into the Kennedy Space Center for their largest collection of Street View imagery to date. In total, the explorable facility totals 6,000 panoramic views. The views include the space shuttle launch pad, the towering Vehicle Assembly Building, and a up-close and personal view of a space shuttle's main engine.
How To: See If Anyone's Hacked into Your Dropbox, Facebook, or Gmail Accounts
Dropbox announced Tuesday that a recent security breach compromised a list that included the email addresses of certain Dropbox users. To avoid future complications, the service announced that it would be implementing two-factor authentication, and even more useful, a security page that lets you monitor all activity on your account. In light of this and other recent web security threats, you might also want to know that services like Gmail, Facebook, and Yahoo! Mail have similar pages where y...
How To: Customize Your Facebook Cover Image with Your Instagram Photos (Or Anyone Else's)
If you have trouble deciding on just one cover photo for your Facebook profile, this new app is perfect for you. It's called InstaCover and it lets you create your own cover out of Instagram photos. They can be your own photos or you can choose from all of the public photos by other Instagram users. All you need is a Facebook account.
How To: Text Facebook for a Temporary Password to Protect Your Profile on Public Networks
We all know the dangers of logging on to our personal accounts on public networks, but we pretty much all do it anyway—especially when it comes to Facebook. But the next time you're in a public place and can't wait to check out your Facebook news feed, use this simple trick to make sure that no one gets a hold of your password. In order for this to work, your mobile phone needs to be linked to your Facebook account. All you have to do is text "otp" (for one time password) to the number 32665.
How To: Convert Your Online Reading List into MP3s with SoundGecko for Easy On-the-Go Listening
Most of us have what seems to be a never-ending list of articles that we want to read... someday. A new web app called SoundGecko can help you get started on that list by converting your articles with text-to-speech technology so you can listen to them instead.
YouTube Pro Tip: How to Automatically Blur All Faces in Your YouTube Videos
There's a strange grey area for "guerrilla filmmaking" on YouTube. Generally, someone shooting a video needs to get permission from the people in it to show their faces. But on YouTube, that "rule" is more of a suggestion (and sometimes not even that).
How To: Use Ad Blockers to Stop Ads from Displaying in Your Web Browser
Tired of seeing all of those ads in your browser? The flashing ones make for a terrible browsing experience, and those rollover ones are just downright annoying. If you don't want to be bothered by them again, you've got a few choices, depending on what web browser you're using.
How To: Stop Advertising Companies from Tracking Your Online Activity for Targeted Web Ads
Back in the eighties, I used to hate television commercials, but I eventually got used to them. Had to, in order to enjoy my favorite shows. Then, the increasing number of billboard ads annoyed me in the nineties. They followed me everywhere I went—no escape—persuading me to buy the newest whatever. It seemed like Big Brotherism—like They Live. But, I got used to it. When I finally entered the digital age and became a web addict, I was peeved at the constant sight of online ads everywhere I v...
How To: Hack any webcam easily using Google
Given that megastar internet search engine Google became its own verb a few years ago, we've all come to acknowledge that the wide and ever-expanding engine is becoming more powerful than ever before. You can take a look at your own house from outer space via Google Earth, you can look at famous paintings - down to the very last grizzly brushstroke - via Google Art Project, and you can look at what's hot and what's not in Spain - or anywhere in the world - with Google Trends.
How to Spy on Tweeters: Viewing Someone Else's Twitter Timeline with TwtRoulette
In today's world of social media, there's really only two powerhouses—Facebook and Twitter. And those of you with Twitter accounts know the power of a Tweet. Getting more followers means reaching more people, but the vast majority of Tweeters are following only a handful of Twitterers themselves. Do you ever wonder why them? What's so special about these selected followed users? Is it worth it to follow them, too? That's up to you, but if you're searching for more people to follow, then it's ...
How To: Hack WPA wireless networks for beginners on Windows and Linux
WPA-secured wireless networks, or WiFI Protected Access, is a form of internet security that secures your wireless LAN from being accessed by unauthorized users. Safer than WEP, or wireless equivalent privacy, WPA still has weaknesses that are prone to cracking - IF, that is, you know what you're doing.
How To: Make Free Phone Calls Using Gmail
Did you know that you can use Gmail to make free phone calls to anywhere in North America? We're not talking computer to computer, but actual free phone calls to cell phones and home phones. All you need is a Gmail account, a microphone, and speakers plugged into your computer.
How To: Block Personal Facebook Data from Third-Party Websites with "Facebook Disconnect"
"Connect via Facebook" — these words are coated on over a million websites nowadays, but Facebook Connect poses a risk of leaking personally identifiable information to those third parties. If you're not convinced Facebook Connect is safe, then turn off the flow of personal data to those websites!
How To: Hack any password on any site with JavaScript
Want to know someone's private website password? It's the biggest wanted hack: passwords, but how do you do it? Well, this tutorial shows you how to hack any password on any site with JavaScript. But this works best on public computers because multiple people log on to them, which means a better chance at unintentionally stored passwords. It helps to know a little bit about JavaScript before attempting this password hack.
How To: Trace an IP or URL address to their starting location
This video will show you how you can trace IP address or websites to a specific location using Windows command functions.