Web

Use MagicScroll Web Reader for a better reading experience

Do you love reading articles online, but find yourself losing your spot often? The developer of MagicScroll Web Reader, Richard Wallis, proposes that the problem isn't social media and other computer distractions -- it's the way you scroll through large blocks of text online.

To combat the issue of scrolling and making your eyes search for where you left off, Wallis wrote a browser bookmarklet that changes normal scrolling to page-turning style. This means that instead of scrolling down a really long page, you can flip through it, just like you would do with a book.

Here's … Read more

Find, delete your profane posts on Facebook with FaceWash

It's easy to write a quick post on Twitter or Facebook in a moment of joy -- or rage -- exclaiming your emotion with a few profane words in tow. But over time the way we want to use a social network may change, and it might make more sense for Facebook to become a professional representation of yourself. And with Graph Search just around the corner, your Facebook past is going to be extremely easy to search; possibly surfacing a side of you you'd rather not have your potential employers or family members see. Heck, you may … Read more

How to participate in the open-government movement

Four years from now, the government will still be partisan, public agencies will still operate out of public view, and citizens will still be excluded from participating in the decisions made by their representatives at all levels of government.

But just maybe, when the 45th president takes the oath of office in January 2017, political factions will be more willing to compromise for the good of everyone, agencies at all levels of government will be more transparent, and our elected and appointed representatives will be more willing to listen to and act upon our opinions and ideas about the challenges … Read more

How to manage Greasemonkey scripts

Once you have waded into the Greasemonkey waters, you may quickly find yourself in pretty deep. The userscripts are easy to install, and there are literally thousands of them. Thankfully, the Greasemonkey add-on makes it easy to manage.

To access Greasemonkey's management pane, click on the downward arrow on the right side of the button Greasemonkey to the right of your URL bar and select Manage User Scripts. This opens a tab with a list of your scripts. For each script, you'll find a button to disable or uninstall it. There is also a Preferences button for each … Read more

Getting started with Greasemonkey userscripts

Are there elements of the Web pages you frequent that annoy you? If so, the odds are good that they have also annoyed someone with a working knowledge of JavaScript who has taken it upon his or herself to create a userscript to address the issue. Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on that lets you install and run these userscripts to improve your browsing experience. There is a seemingly endless supply of these userscripts that add or remove elements on a page or change its appearance or behavior. In this tutorial, I will show you how to get up and running … Read more

Clean up that mess of an inbox with Unroll.me

If you are like me, you ignore most of the messages you receive from your various e-mail subscriptions -- the spam you asked for -- but you are loath to unsubscribe from any because every now and then one of these e-mails will include something important, interesting, or financially advantageous. With Unroll.me, you get a cleaner inbox and better way to manage your e-mail subscriptions. You'll still receive all of your e-mail subscriptions but in a much more digestible form.

Here's how it works:

Head to the Unroll.me site and choose Gmail/Google Apps or Yahoo … Read more

How to download, navigate your Twitter archive

Last month Twitter announced it was officially rolling out its Twitter archive feature to users. The feature, one Twitter users have been asking for, allows you to browse every tweet you've ever sent. Twitter is rolling out the archive feature slowly, with the full rollout expected to take months to reach all users across all supported languages.

Here's what you'll need to do:

To see if your account has the archive feature enabled, log into your account and navigate to Settings. Scroll down the bottom of the page. If your account is one of the lucky few, … Read more

Now's a really good time to update these Facebook privacy settings

As details of Facebook's Graph Search unfolded this morning, users heaved a sigh of relief when they learned that Facebook would not be exposing our innermost privacies with its latest product -- the company would simply search the data we've already (willfully) shared and make it easily accessible to friends.

Your data. Easily accessible to friends.

In the new search bar, a Facebook user can search for something like, "Friends who like 'Star Wars' and cooking." Immediately, Facebook will dig through that user's friends' likes and interests to find relevant matches. Facebook doesn't magically … Read more

Control your lights using Siri and a WeMo Switch

There are plenty of creative hacks you can use to control a random appliance or two in your house with Apple's Siri, but most of them take some level of programming and hardware expertise to accomplish.

I've come up with a less tech-savvy way to use Siri to control a lamp, or anything that plugs in. You'll only need to know how to give Siri a command after everything is set up.

To get started you'll need a Belkin WeMo Switch and an IFTTT (for "if this, then that") account. Provided by the WeMo … Read more

How to sign up for Facebook's Graph Search beta

Starting today, Facebook will slowly roll out its beta version of Graph Search, a new, smarter way to search within your social network.

Search has been available on Facebook for some time, but the introduced tool is much more than just a search bar. Its efficacy has yet to be tested, but Facebook promises that its search trumps other options like Google, allowing you to perform more complex searches like, "friends in New York who like Macklemore."

For the complete details on the story, read the official CNET take.

Graph Search launches today in "limited beta." … Read more