Google added features ‘Instant Previews’

Google search engine users will be able to enjoy a new feature that allows one to see a preview of search results. People can see the sites in the search results page before the pulled-click.

Features “Instant Preview” Google announced, Tuesday, November 9, 2010. These features are intended to help people see the websites that are relevant or irrelevant to their taste. This feature works for Google web search, and search for news, videos and local business.

After clicking the magnifying glass icon, people will see pictures of sites in the white space on the right of search results within a tenth of a second. Although the preview image will vary in size, as set out Google, the search engine to design the best possible preview of the display so it will not interfere with the overall display. Thus was launched FoxNews.

In addition, when users view images from a website, Google will include a visual preview of search results to another in the background so that users can compare your website with me rolling the cursor over the search results page.

This is a continuation of the Instant Search feature, which Google launched in September last. This feature helps users to get search results even if the user continues to type in the search box. Last week, Google also launched Google Instant for Google’s Android platform.

Google claims that five percent of users ‘Instant Preview of’ more likely to feel satisfied with the website of their choosing. Google will launch this feature in 40 languages over the next few days.

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The X-ray is 115 years old: latest Google Doodle

Google's latest Doodle is celebrating 115 years of X-ish technology. No, we don't mean X-Files or X-Men: we mean X-rays.

Google's Doodle

115 years ago, on Nov. 8, 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays. As with many important discoveries, it was an accident.

Roentgen was experimenting with electron beams in a gas discharge tube when he discovered X-rays. He noticed that a fluorescent screen in his lab started to glow when the electron beam was turned on, which in and itself was surprising, as fluorescent material normally glows in reaction to electromagnetic radiation. However, the tube was surrounded by heavy black cardboard, which Roentgen assumed should have blocked most of the radiation.

Placing various objects between the tube and the fluorescent screen, it still glowed. When he placed his hand in front of the tube, not only did it continue to glow, but he saw the silhouette of his bones projected onto the fluorescent screen, thus producing the first set of skeletal X-ray images in history.

A week later, he took an X-ray photograph of his wife's hand, which clearly showed her wedding ring and her bones. Roentgen called the new radiation "X" to indicate it was an unknown type of radiation. Many of his colleagues suggested calling them Roentgen rays, but the name stuck.

In addition to celebrating 115 years of X-rays, according to Google exec Marissa Mayer, the small "g" in today's Google doodle is an homage to PigeonRank, a 2002 April Fool's joke at the company (look carefully; there's a bird skeleton in there).

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Twitter Introducing Location Based Places/Check-ins?

Looks like location is taking a new dimension. You can no longer just visit some place and not tell your friends about it, literally. Facebook recently introduced a new location based service called Facebook Places. Facebook Places was in direct competition with previously introduced service Foursquare.

Twitter Places/Check-ins

It looks now that Twitter is also all set to introduce Places and Check-ins. As you can see from the image above, Twitter has some sort of check-ins in place where users can claim to be in places. In addition to that people can also check-in to places as seen in the "Recent people in Twitter HQ". If you are a Foursquare user, you might be familiar with this, albeit, instead of claiming a place, you actually become the mayor of a certain place.

With location based services heating up, thanks to the additional advertisements services can obtain from local businesses, this is definitely going to be another way for Twitter to claim a share of revenue, just like Facebook did.

(via techie-buzz Scripting News – Hacker News h/t @Scobleizer | Image Credit – Scripting News/Flickr)

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Facebook application developers selling user identity

facebook declare the data brokers have purchased an application which can identify social networking site user information from the developers. As a result, facebook application developer suspended for six months.

The announcement posted on the developer blog reveals some existing popular applications on facebook are transmitting the identity of users, one of which data on behalf of the user’s friends about 25 applications to advertising companies.

“We found a data broker who pay developers to ‘steal’ the identity of users,” he wrote in a blog facebook developers. “This is a violation of policy and this is very serious.”

After suspend the developers, facebook will be asking them to submit data that has been leaked to re-audited and requested a commitment that they will not repeat it.

Unfortunately, facebook does not identify who the data brokers that buy information from the application developer. However, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg had been agreed with Rapleaf, a data aggregation company based in San Francisco to erase all user data they get from facebook application developers.
[source twitteling]

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How Google tackles Malware-Distribution

Its not easy to run world’s biggest Search engine, and yet make it robust against spams, malware. Everyday, Fabrice Jaubert and his team layouts new plans to conquer and kill malware from the web.

At a security conference, SecTor, Google malware researcher gave a rare peek inside the massive amounts of efforts of Google’s anti-malware and anti-phishing technologies. Google showcased stories of the attackers who make it their business to infect sites and exploit users. And what makes it worse is that users are adapting these blackhat/unethical tactics very quickly and creatively to combat the efforts of Google and other Internet giants.

The search giant has deployed a number of services and technologies recently that are designed to identify phishing sites as well as sites serving malware and prevent users from finding them. Among the biggest tools, the most powerful, yet simple, is Google SafeBrowsing API.

Safebrowsing API enables client applications to check URLs against Google’s constantly updated blacklists of suspected phishing and malware pages. The client application can use the API to download an encrypted table for local, client-side lookups of URLs that everyone would like to check.

• Warn users before clicking on links that appear in site when they lead to malware-infested pages.

• Prevent users from posting links to phishing pages from your site.

• Check a list of pages against Google’s lists of suspected phishing and malware pages.

These services help site owners and network administrators find and eliminate malware and the attendant bugs from their sites.

As Google crawls through the web, it identifies malware-distribution sites as well as legitimate sites that have been compromised with injected malicious code. One of the major reasons of adoption of such methodologies is to gain back-links by infecting relatively higher PageRank websites, in order to gain more traffic from search engines.

Malware-distribution sites are regualrly being watched by Google. Google has invested in a huge number of virtual machines running completely unpatched versions of Windows and Internet Explorer that they point at potentially malicious URLs. The data hence gathered is then tied up with that of automated crawlers which look for “malicious code” on “legitimate Web sites”. The combiantion of the two gives them full confidence in identifying the culprits.

Fabrice Jaubert, of Google’s anti-malware team, said, “the company does pretty well on identifying malware sites, fast enough. Still, about 1.5 percent of all search result pages on Google include links to at least one malware-distribution site”.

“There’s a lot of fluctuation in that over time, and that could be due to a lot of factors. It could be due to a change in the pages, it could be a change in our detection rate and also in the popularity of the infected pages,” Jaubert said. “The biggest factor is that we’ve found a substantial number of malware pages are spammy and have no content. We remove those pages. But it’s a cat-and-mouse game, just like viruses and AV. We go and find bad pages and they get better at hiding them.”

Source of Malware distribution

Its difficult to identify the source of a malware, however prevention helps everyone.

A major cause of this infection and distribution ecosystem is the huge population of unpatched Web servers having known vulnerabilites waiting to be exploited by various code injections.

Malicious code is often hidden in web markup components, and the most favorite one is the iFrames. Such code injections redirects users to another site where malware is installed on the victim’s machine via a drive-by download, or one of the other popular ways.

With time, these malware distributors are getting smarter and have changed their tactics for their own good. Among ewer methods, instead of redirecting, these malicious codes of iframes attempt on loading the malware on the compromised legitimate site and using the same site for malware distribution as well.

On a good front, its relatively easier to identify malware-infected, malware-distribution pages , making web-malware easier to tackle.

But that doesn’t mean that there is an end to web-malware. Despite all the efforts there’s a large set of secrets of web malware that are in the dark even for companies like google. Like Jaubert says ”We don’t understand all the details of this. We focus on the technical. There’s monetization aspects that we don’t have visibility into.”
(source)

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iPhone 4G Facebook Email Is A Scam

Facebook has it’s own set of problems with privacy and scams alike, however, if you have been receiving emails about winning a iPhone 4 from Facebook, it is a scam.

If you receive an email which says "Hello, you won a iPhone 4G from Facebook", stay away from it. It is a scam and will not get you anywhere close to that device. The big problem with this scam is that it uses a familiar look and feel and is really very enticing to click on.

However, clicking on it will ensure that you are scammed. Malwarebytes blocks the website on my PC, so you should ensure to use a similar security software for your own PC. If you don’t have any, take a look at some of the Free Antivirus available or visit our Online Security section to learn how to protect your PC.

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Google Hits a Technical Snag: Stops Updating its Index

It won’t be an exaggeration to claim that Google Search drives most of the world wide web. Look around, and you will see that Google is the biggest (often by a large margin) source of traffic for a majority of the websites. So what will happen if Google breaks? Just the thought alone is enough to scare me as a webmaster.

Thankfully, Google has performed with admirable reliability over the years. However, it’s not easy managing a beast that is Google. Little technical snags are bound to occur. And it appears that Google has just hit one. According to reports, Google has stopped indexing numerous blogs and even popular websites, over the past few days. In other words, new content from several websites have stopped appearing in Google Search.

Google’s John Mueller confirmed the there is a technical problem that is preventing Google from efficiently indexing some websites. Here’s the message he posted in one of the Google Webmaster Central discussions.

I just wanted to provide a short update. This issue should be resolved soon, but it will take a several days for everything to catch up and for these changes to be visible. I’ll provide another update after the weekend.

In the meantime, there’s no need to make any changes on your side. Content from your sites will continue to be indexed during this time (though perhaps at the moment not as quickly as before in some cases).

Mueller has also clarified that the problem is entirely technical and not due to a change in Google’s algorithm.

I’ve been in contact with the indexing and diagnostics teams since your initial reports — we are taking your reports seriously and doing what is necessary to resolve this problem as soon as possible. We love sending users to your sites quickly after you have published something too :-).

Just to be clear, the issues from this thread, which I have reviewed in detail, are not due to changes in our policies or changes in our algorithms; they is due to a technical issue on our side that will be visibly resolved as soon as possible (it may take up to a few days to be visible for all sites though). You do not need to change anything on your side and we will continue to crawl and index your content (perhaps not as quickly at the moment, but we hope that will be resolved for all sites soon). I would not recommend changing anything significantly at this moment (unless you spot obvious problems on your side), as these may result in other issues once this problem is resolved on our side.

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A Complete Guide on Getting Your Blog Indexed by Google within 24 Hours

A common problem faced by most of the bloggers is getting their blog indexed in Google or any other major search engines. If you’re blogging on Blogger-hosted blog, then you don’t have to worry about getting indexed in Google as all your entries or posts are shown in Google Search Results immediately at the instant time you hit the “Publish” button. But, it’s really frustrating for Self-hosted WordPress users and especially new blogger s who really have to do everything manually to be indexed in Google.
After creating your blog, just follow these simple steps and you’ll see your website in Search Engine Results within 24 hours for sure. (100% working)

Step #1: Install “All in One SEO pack plugin” for WordPress

This is the first thing that I’ve done immediately after migrating to WordPress. Installing the All in One SEO pack plugin. Although I do not have any basic knowledge/ experience of using WordPress before, I’ve read a lot of articles about the use of this great plugin which is really essential to every WordPress users. This plugin enables you to add post title, description, and keywords for every individual posts for better Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) and hence maximizes the chances of getting organic traffic from Google very soon after blog being launched.

Step #2: Add your site to Google Webmasters Tools

Log into Google Webmasters Tools with your Google account and add your blog/site by clicking the ‘Add a site‘ button. Then, type the domain name you wish to add, and click ‘Continue‘. You will have to verify your site using a META Tag. Copy it go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > and paste the META tag in the ‘Additional Home Headers‘ at the bottom and ‘Update‘ the info. Then, click ‘Verify‘ on Google Webmaster Tools and you are done.

Step #3: Submit your Sitemap to Google

Install Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress. This plugin will generate a XML sitemap which you can submit to Google Webmasters Tools or any other search engines to better index your blog. Once you’ve activated it in your ‘Plugins‘ page, you’ll see a ‘XML-Sitemap‘ link under ‘Settings‘ menu. So, build your XML sitemap for the first time by clicking on “Rebuild Sitemap” button. So, your sitemap URL will be looking like this http://www.yourblogname.com/sitemap.xml or http://www.yourblogname.com/sitemap.xml.gz. So now, go to Google Webmasters > Site Configurations > Sitemaps > Click on ‘Add a sitemap‘ button. Now, type ‘sitemap.xml‘ in the text area box which comes after http://www.yourblogname.com/ and click “Submit” button. This great plugin will automatically update your sitemap every time you publish your post.

Step #4: Adding your site to Google Analytics

First, sign into Google Analytics using your Google Account. Then, you will have to add your Website’s URL, Contact information, accept User Agreements and finally you’ll be provided with a Tracking Code. Copy the code and go to WordPress Dashboard > Appearances > Editor > Footer.php and paste the code right above the tag. This step is important to track your visitors, traffic sources, page views and more.

Google Search in 24 hrs.

Step #5: Site Stats and Valuation sites

This is another simplest way to tell to Google that you page does exist. Usually, most of us have come across site valuation sites which tells you “How Much Does Your Site Worth?” These sites already have good place/rankings in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. So, when you submit your site and check your site’s value there, it will automatically create a special page for your blog/website (like this, this and this ). This will help your site to easily get indexed by Google. Here is a list of such sites:

Alexa, About The Domain, Stat Brain, Stimator, BizInformation, Websiteoutlook, QuarkBase, Whois, Cubestat, BuiltWith, URLfan, SiteValueCheck, Business-Opportunities, NinjaWebsiteAppraiser, MyWebsiteWorth, Estimix  and etc.

Step #6: Social Networking and Bookmarking sites

Register an account with top Social Networking Sites such as Facebook ( Facebook fans page ), Twitter, Orkut and bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg, Delicious, and etc. As they have a good reputation in Google, they will make Googlebot to have a glance at your site. But, remember to use your site name like this www.facebook.com/yourblogname or twitter.com/yourblogname .

Step #7: Blog directories and communities

Add your blog to top directories such as Technorati, BlogCatalog, Bloggernity, GlobeofBlogs, Blogged, OnTopList and etc. This is the most easiest and effective way to get free quality back links from websites with higher Google page ranks.

Step #8: Link Exchanges

Link exchange is one of the ancient but effective way for people to get exposure to their website and get indexed. But usually, no body wants to exchange link with a blog with zero Google Page rank and no Alexa rank. Though, you can try to exchange link with your friends and peers who already have websites with good rankings or try free link exchange services such as Link Market where you can exchange links with other people.

So, if you’ve followed each and every step that I’ve mentioned above, I bet that your site/blog (at least your homepage if you’ve just started your blog) will be indexed in Google Search Engine results within 24 hours. Try to check for those links by typing “site:www.yourblogname.com” in Google Search. Good luck.

Source: Techbu

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Natter: Cross-Linking Facebook And Twitter

Natter is a free web based application that links your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Setup your account in 3 easy steps and control both the account from Twitter itself.

1. Go to the Natter home page and get started by joining the service.

2. Connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts with the service.

3. Once done, you are good to go. You can change the settings by scrolling down to the bottom of your account settings page.

What Happens When You Use Natter?

1. Whenever you update anything on Twitter it will be automatically posted to your Facebook account. On the other hand, if someone comments on the Facebook update, the app auto-posts a @ reply to Twitter with your name and the message.

NOTE: You can also control the tweets to be posted by using a custom hashtag (#) in your Tweet. You can add the custom tag in Natter settings.

2. It automatically converts your Twitter name to the real world counterpart.

3. Natter scans your tweets for links and if found, updates your Facebook account with a new post.

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Google Groups Data to Be Made Inaccessible Early Next Year

Google Groups, whether useful or spamful has been used extensively by organizations for their internal communication. Even at our institute, loads of study material is shared on Google Groups and accessing it becomes easy and handy for all of us. Facilities like these have made a large number of people to turn to Google Groups to share content amongst groups.

However, if you have recently tried to make a new page in Google Groups, you might have seen the “notice about files and pages” that appears before you are allowed to proceed. The exact terms of the announcement stand as:

Starting in November 2010, Groups will no longer allow the creation or editing of files and pages; the content will only be available for viewing, and only existing files will be able to be downloaded. If you would like to keep the content currently on the pages and files sections of your group, we highly encourage you to export and migrate it to another product. In February 2011, we will turn off the pages and files features, and you will no longer be able to access that content.

In short, Google is forcing people to use its storage services like Google Docs to upload and maintain files online. The idea is clarified here:

We have decided to stop supporting the pages and files features. Even though we know discontinuing these features may inconvenience some of you in the short term, we believe that this move will improve your experience storing and sharing files as other products, such as Google Docs and Google Sites, are designed specifically for file storage and page creation.

This is a move by Google where it has made two things clear:

1. Google has a kill switch to all its free services.
2. Google wants us to use its services seriously and not find hacks and workarounds to use them in our desired way.

Bruce Eckel was prompt enough to notice this and write on it. Read his views here.
[via Techei-buzz]

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Loopt integrates Facebook Places into its iOS app

Location-based social networking site Loopt has just announced a new feature, Facebook Places. As touted in a press release, a newly released iOS application will allow users to “view both Facebook and Loopt check-ins on an interactive map, providing a clear view of friends gathering nearby.” The new code will also allow users to simultaneously check-in to locations on Facebook and Loopt as well as view the history of Facebook and Loopt friends. Your one-stop stalking shop. “We are glad to have access to the Facebook Places API, and we jumped to incorporate it into Loopt,” said the company’s CEO, Sam Altman. “You’ll see even more integration soon.” Hit the jump for the full press release.

iPhone and iPod touch app now blends Loopt and Facebook Places to make it easier to connect with friends while out and about

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – October 18, 2010 – Loopt, the mobile connection to people and places around you, today announced it has integrated Facebook Places with the latest version of its app for iPhone and iPod touch, making Loopt’s friend-finding capabilities even stronger. Now, Loopt users can view both Facebook and Loopt check-ins on an interactive map, providing a clear view of friends gathering nearby.

With this update, people can now see all their friends’ location updates in one app. Overall Facebook Places additions to Loopt include:

• Universal map view – Facebook friends are shown on an interactive map, for which Loopt has long been known. Friends using Facebook Places will populate your Loopt map, giving you a clear view of friends nearby.

• Dual check-in – When Loopt users check in and share to Facebook, it will show up as a Facebook Places check-in – a simple, quick update on both services. This action will add activity to the Facebook Places page for that location. For those with accounts on both services, comments on a friend’s Loopt updates will also show up as a comment on the friend’s Facebook Place update.

• Friend history – Facebook friends who have used Facebook Places will appear in Loopt’s Friends list. Through Loopt, you can pull up a friend’s check-in log (for both Loopt and Facebook Places). This comes in especially handy when you are heading to an unfamiliar city, but you have a Facebook friend who knows the area well. You can see where they like to go regularly, plus their input and photos.

“When we first learned that Facebook would enter the location space, we saw a huge opportunity before us,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Loopt. “Facebook is introducing its 500 million users to location services. We are glad to have access to the Facebook Places API, and we jumped to incorporate it into Loopt. You’ll see even more integration soon.”

The latest Loopt app involves some additional updates, including:

• Fine-tuned Friend Alerts – Friend alerts, launched recently, have become an extremely popular feature on Loopt. Previously, users would be notified when a friend was within one mile, but we’ve now added a greater customized range – you can adjust Friend Alert settings to receive notification when friends are between one and 10 miles away. This is especially useful for finding out a friend is in town – 10 miles is often worth the journey to meet up with an old friend.

• Upgraded and simplified registration system – An e-mail login option has been a highly requested feature. Now new users can join using either their phone number or email address.

As always, Facebook activity through Loopt will respect the privacy controls set on both Facebook and Loopt. The Loopt App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/ .

For instructions on how to get up and running with Facebook Places on Loopt, see our blog post. Read
[source BGR]

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71% of all tweets are ignored, 23% get a reply, 6% get retweeted: Study

According to a study by Canada-based media monitoring and analytics firm Sysomos, 71 per cent of all tweets are ignored, 23 per cent get a reply and just 6 per cent get retweeted. The study also reveals that 96.9 per cent of all replies and 92.4 per cent of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published.

For the study, Sysomos researchers examined 1.2 billion tweets sent in August and September 2009. Examining the distance between an original tweet and the replies it attracts, the researchers found that of all tweets that generated a reply, 85 per cent have only one reply and another 10.7 per cent attracted a reply to the original reply.

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Watch XIX CWG 2010 Closing Ceremony, Delhi Online

Common Wealth Games 2010 had a splendid opening ceremony, if you missed out on watching it, you can catch up on CWG 2010 Delhi Opening Ceremony video highlights. Sadly, the event will be coming to an end today October 14, 2010.

Just like the fabulous CWG opening ceremony in Delhi, the closing ceremony promises to be extravagant too. CWG 2010 closing ceremony will be graced by several prominent Bollywood stars, who will add their charm to the event.

The CWG Closing ceremony will be held at Jawaharlal Nehru stadium where there will be multiple segments with spectacular song and dance celebrations and a colorful laser show with India’s martial arts as the main part of the show. The main theme of the event is ‘Universal Love’. Around 2,500 school students will go to perform with 7,000 artists from across India.

Bollywood singers Sunidhi Chauhan, Shankar Mahadevan and Kailash Kher will be part of the ceremony. Tickets for the CWG 2010 Delhi closing ceremony is priced at Rs. 50,000, Rs. 20,000, Rs. 4,000, and Rs. 750.

If you are looking to watch the closing ceremony of CWG 2010 Delhi Online, you can visit Live Streaming for CWG Delhi 2010. You can also follow the updates and view videos of the ceremony at the official CWG Delhi site.

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Free Public WiFi is A Zombie Network

In our residential apartment building my iPod Touch usually connects to a network called "Free Public WiFi" whenever I step into the lobby. The same "Free Public WiFi" is also available below my office building and it turns out that it is available in several other places including airports and restaurants.
However, connecting to this "Free Public WiFi" does not give you access to an internet, puzzling? Well, the Free Public WiFi is not actually a internet network and is a bug which exists in an older version of Windows XP.
According to a blog post from NPR, Free Public WiFi is a bug which has been lurking around in Windows XP, where it creates an ad hoc network with the same name it previously connected to, in this case "Free Public WiFi".

When a computer running an older version of XP can’t find any of its "favorite" wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to -– in this case, "Free Public WiFi." Other computers
within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect. And who can resist the word "free?"

So what happens when you connect to this network?

Free Public WiFi isn’t set up like most wireless networks people use to get to the Internet
. Instead, it’s an "ad hoc" network
— meaning when a user selects it, he or she isn’t connecting to a router or hot spot, but rather directly to someone else’s computer in the area.

The origin of "Free Public WiFi" networks is not known, however, it does exist in Windows XP. To get rid of this bug, you will need to update to Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Free Public WiFi does not cause any harm as such, but it has been spreading like wildfire considering the amount of networks you see as Free Public WiFi across the United States and other places. Connecting to this network may not cause you any harm, but it would be wise not to do it considering that it does not give you access to the internet anyways.
[Image Credit: WiFi]

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How to Disable/Turn Off Group Notifications in Facebook

Facebook announced Groups feature, which would allow you to create and communicate with a small set of people. However, as of today, I am finding groups a bit of nuisance because of the number of notifications I have been receiving for it.

The problem is that, anyone can add you to a group, so whenever that happens you receive a notification. To top that you receive notifications whenever someone adds a post to that group.

In order to stop group notifications, first of all go ahead and click on the "Unsubscribe" link available in the group. Secondly, on top of the Groups page, you will find an button to "Edit Notifications".

Click on that button and select the radio button next to "Never notify me". In addition to that you may also want to disable Email notifications to your account.
To completely disable Group notifications, go to edit your account notifications or click this link and scroll down till you see the Groups section and uncheck the boxes next to the options you do not want to receive notifications for.

Facebook should definitely have these notifications as opt-in rather than shoving it down your account. This is definitely going to create quite a privacy nightmare once again for Facebook.

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10 Tips to Avoid Getting Adware

Adware, malware, spyware and viruses can bring your system to its knees. They are detrimental, lowering the performance of your computer. You might need to replace data. You might lose unique files. Keep the nasties away from your computer using these ten simple tips.

1. Use Firefox: Internet Explorer is the most popular browser on the market, controlling over 50% of the market share. The virus and adware creators specifically look for exploitable vulnerabilities within IE because they know that they will receive the best return on investment. Your switch to Firefox prevents some adware from infecting your machine.

2. Scan your PC once a week: Sometimes adware programmers take a sneaky approach. They will set up their programs to run quietly in the background to spy upon your activities. This once a week scan is necessary to remove any of those sneaky bugs.

3. Download from known sites: New sites for installing adware are popping up all the time. If you find something that you want to download, make sure that it is from a known site. A company like Amazon will not steer you wrong, but Bob’s House of Wares might be a little less trustable. If you are not sure whether you can trust a site, perform a quick search.

4. Install Adaware: Ad-Aware is the most popular free adware removal program on the market. It detects, quarantines and removes adware. It searches for other programs which may have been installed, highlighting them in an easy to use interface. This program does not have an anti-virus attached.

5. Do not click on unsolicited email: You are constantly receiving offers to increase this or improve that through unsolicited email. Your curiosity may be killing you, but don’t click on these emails. They accept your click as permission to install adware, spyware and malware on your PC.

6. Install Antivirus software: Installing two programs for virus and adware protection is a smart idea. It caters to the strengths of each program, increasing the overall strength of your antiadware and antiviral campaign. Some of the best antivirus software is free, providing real time protection. Programs to look at would be Avast Antivir and AVG.

7. Don’t install toolbars: Even some reputable sites install custom toolbars. They slow your system down and collect information about your surfing habits. While a toolbar might offer some perks, it may also diminish your experience by dragging your system to a halt. Toolbars from less reputable places install adware and sometimes infect your system outright.

8. Look at your task manager: If anything seems out of place with your computer, take a look at your task manager. This tells you about all of the programs and processes which are running on your computer. Examine the processes tab for anything which you don’t immediately recognize. Perform a web search for unfamiliar processes.

9. Do not click on popups: Clicking on a popup usually spells certain doom for your computer. It opens the door for the viruses and adware that want to infect your machine, telling these malicious applications to make themselves at home. Stay away from those constantly advertised screensavers and icons.

10. Trust your gut: If you don’t feel right about a site, don’t go there. If you are receiving warnings from the antivirus and antiadware programs which you’ve installed, don’t go there. If you don’t like the layout of a site, don’t go there. Trust your instincts about sites.

With proper vigilance, you can keep aggravating adware, spyware and malware from your machine. Trust your instincts. Install Ad-Aware and an antivirus program. Play it safe. The care you spend in preventing adware from infecting your machine can save money and time

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