Know Your Network, Lesson 1: Router Hardware 101

Home networking is something we all have to deal with, but it can be confusing as heck. This week, we're going to turn you into a networking wizard, starting with getting to know the most important device on your network: the router. Router Basics Your router is the glue that holds your home network together. It connects all your computers to one another, either through Ethernet cables or a wireless connection. A router is different than a modem: your modem connects you to the internet, while your router connects your computers to one another. When you hook up your router to the modem, however, you're then able to share that internet connection with all of the computers on your network. Sometimes modems will come with routers built-in, but this isn't always the case. Devices that connect to your router—that is, the computers, tablets, smartphones, DVRs, game systems, and so on—are called clients. Each client on the network is given an IP address, which helps your router direct traffic. Clients within the network get a local IP address, while your modem gets a global IP address. Global IP addresses are like street addresses, while local IP addresses are like apartment numbers: one lets you find the building in relation to the rest of the world, while the other lets you find the specific location within the complex. These addresses make sure the right information from the outside world gets to the right computer on your network. Routers have a number of different features, so we'll go through some of the most common router specs and how they affect your home network. Wired vs Wireless You'll want to hardwire any computer that doesn't need to move around, like a desktop, since wired connections arefast, reliable, and cheap. They're far from ideal for devices you pick up and move around, though, like laptops, so for those we use a wireless connection (commonly known as Wi-Fi). Wi-Fi is more than adequate for simple web browsing, though wired connections are ideal if you're transferring big files, gaming, video chatting, or streaming video. Most people have a mix of wired and wireless devices on their network, so most of our discussion today will be focused on wireless routers. Since wireless routers allow for both wired and wireless connections, you can wire up when necessary, and connect over Wi-Fi everywhere else. Wireless Throughput Throughput is the speed at which a router can transfer data. The transfer speed of your wireless connection is dependent on the wireless standard it uses. The most common standards today are 802.11g and 802.11n (also known as "wireless G" and "wireless N", respectively). Wireless N is faster than wireless G, though routers that support wireless N are also more expensive. Most new devices—like smartphones and laptops—support the faster wireless N. Your router isn't the only thing that determines wireless speed: you also need the correct kind of wireless card in your computer. If you have an older laptop, it might have an older wireless G card inside, meaning it can't take advantage of wireless N speeds. If you have a mix of N- and G-capable computers, you can turn on a wireless N feature called "mixed mode", which will let you use both on the same network. You'll get faster speeds on the wireless N clients and slower speeds on the wireless G clients. Some claim, however, that running both N and G devices on the same network can lower speeds across the network, even between a wireless N router and wireless N computer. So if you want the fastest possible speeds, you'll probably want all wireless N devices on that network. Wired Throughput The wired half of your router will come in one of two speeds: 10/100 Mbps and 10/100/1000 Mbps (also known as "gigabit"). 10/100 routers are cheaper, but won't transfer data between computers as quickly as gigabit routers will. If you're only using your router to connect to the internet, 10/100 is fine, since your internet connection is probably slower than 100Mbps, meaning you wouldn't be able to actually take advantage of the router's full speed. If you're transferring data between computers, however, you'll want to go with a gigabit router, since it'll transfer that data much faster than a 10/100 model. Range Wireless routers can only reach so far. If you have a big house and have the router on one side, you might not be able to access the network from the other side of the house. Your range, like your speed, is determined by the wireless standard you use. Wireless N has a longer range than wireless G, so if range is important you'll want to use wireless N. That said, there are many other ways to connect to your network from afar. Wireless extenders (also calledwireless repeaters) are products you can buy that do exactly what they say—extend your network further. Alternatively, you can buy a powerline adapter, which lets you use your home's electrical wiring to hook a faraway device up to your router with an Ethernet cable (and thus get a faster connection than wireless would allow for). Number of Ports Routers have two types of ports in the back: LAN ports and WAN ports. Your WAN port hooks up to your modem (which, again, is what connects to the internet), while the LAN ports hook up to your computers and other clients. Most routers have one WAN port, but you'll need as many LAN ports as you have wired devices. If you have more wired devices than can fit on a router, you can plug them all in using a wired switch. A switch is like a power strip for your router: it lets you plug in more devices than the router originally allowed. Photo by Ari Zoldan. Number of Bands Wireless routers broadcast on a radio band, and many new wireless N routers can broadcast on two bands. These are called, appropriately, dual band routers. Older routers and computers operate on a 2.4Ghz band only, while dual-band routers allow for both the 2.4Ghz band and a 5Ghz band. The 5Ghz band is great because it has less interference, since tons of other devices—from other networks to Bluetooth to cordless phones to microwaves—operate on the 2.4Ghz band. The main downside of the 5Ghz band is that, since it uses a higher frequency, it isn't as good at penetrating walls. As such, if you run your router in 5Ghz mode, you might have a shorter range than if you ran it in 2.4Ghz mode. In addition, some older devices don't support 5Ghz. The solution to this problem is to use a simultaneousdual-band router, which can broadcast on both bands at once. Wireless Security Unless you don't mind strangers eating your bandwidth and potentially accessing your networked files, you should always protect your wireless network with a password. WPA2 is currently the most secure type of wireless encryption, so make sure you use WPA2 if you can. Some old wireless devices won't support WPA, in which case you'll have use the less secure WEP instead. Basically every device made in the last four years support WPA2 encryption. If you're planning to use your router for a small business, you might want to look for a router with the "guest network" feature, which allows other people to access the internet without giving them full access to your computers and sensitive data. Hackability Hardware specs like these are important, but routers also come with a lot of software and firmware features, likeDHCP reservations, Quality of Service, or firewalls that can make managing your network easier. However, the more of these features a router has, the more expensive it's likely to be. If you're comfortable with flashing a new firmware on your router, you're better off getting one that's compatible with a third-party firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato. Make sure your router is on DD-WRT's list of supported devices or Tomato's list of supported devices if you want to go this route. When It Comes Time to Buy a New Router If you have a particularly old router, you may read a lot of the above information and decide it's time to upgrade. Be sure to check out our guide to buying a Wi-Fi router, and take all the above information into account as you shop: for example, if you need your network to reach long distances, make sure you get a simultaneous dual-band router for maximum range. A note on user reviews: unlike most technology, reviews for wireless routers are not to be trusted. Most routers have a mix of 5-star "works perfectly" reviews and one star "totally sucks" reviews, and it's because everyone's home is different. There are so many other factors that go into network quality, like the walls, interference from other devices, and so on that you can't really extrapolate much from a given person's experience. The best thing to do is evaluate your needs, buy a router from a trusted brand that fits those needs, and return it if it doesn't work for you.

Top 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Gear (Without Spending Extra Money)

The life of a tech junkie is expensive, but you don't always need to spend tons of money to get tons of features. Here are some of our favorite ways to add extra features to your tech without paying an arm and a leg. While we here at Lifehacker are all about upcycling, the goal of this list is something different. We're not recycling old, unused tech and turning it into something else, we're taking the stuff you already use and making it better. If you've got old tech lying around that you don't know what to do with, check out some of our favorite repurposing hacks here. Otherwise, read on. 10. Turn a $3 Pen into a $200 Pen Considered by some to be the world's best writing utensils, Mont Blanc pens tend to be on the pricey side (upwards of $200). With a bit of finagling, though, you can actually take a cheap, $3 pen and make it write just as well. All it takes is a cheap Mont Blanc refill cartridge and a bit of scissoring—you should be able to squeeze that amazing ink into your cheap pen to get that experience others pay hundreds of dollars for. (Original Post) 9. Turn a $10 Flashlight into a $95 Flashlight Ever buy a flashlight, only to breathe a sigh of disappointment when you turn it on? While you can't make your $10 flashlightfeel like one of those heavy, expensive ones the police carry, you can make it shine like one—all you need is a new bulb. It's a bit more complicated than that, of course; you'll have to do a bit of modding on the case, but once you're done, you'll have a fantastically bright flashlight without paying the cash necessary to buy one. 8. Add a Macro Lens to Your Phone's Camera Smartphone cameras are getting better all the time, and with the right technique, you canget pretty good shots out of them. However, if you want to beef up the camera's hardware a little bit, you can actuallyreplace your camera's lens with the lens from a DVD player. This will turn your phone's lens into a macro lens capable of taking super-close, super-detailed shots of just about anything. 7. Turn Your Unhealthy Sitting Desk Into a Standing Desk Whether you exercise or not,sitting at a desk all day is bad for you. There are many good reasons to switch to a standing desk, but you may not want to go buy a whole new desk just to try it out. Luckily, you can easily convert your current desk in a myriad of ways: You canbuild up half your desk with a platform, adding a high tabletop to your current desk, or even extending the legs of your desk so its at standing height. Whichever way you slice it, you're getting something a bit healthier for you without ditching your current setup too much. 6. Turn a Pogoplug into a Full-Featured Linux Web Server Pogoplugs are fine media storage devices, but if you're finding that you wish it did a bit more, you can actually hack it into a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) web server by installing Linux on it. After that, you can not only store media on the Pogoplug, but also share files with your friends, host a blog, run a multiplayer gaming server, and tons more, all on your little $50 Pogoplug. Again, this mod takes some work, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than actually buying a dedicated server, so it's an incredible deal if you're willing to get your hands dirty (figuratively, of course). 5. Turn Your Wii Into a Full-Featured Media Center The Wii is the only video game system without a fully-featured media center built-in, and if you don't have a video game-playing, movie-streaming XBMC box, you're probably a little jealous. Luckily, you can hack your Wii and install the Homebrew modin just a few minutes, and get a bunch of glorious extras like DVD playback, old-school emulators, and tons of others. 4. Turn Your Nook Into a Cheap Android Tablet There's no doubting that some of the new Android tablets are awesome, but they're a bit more expensive than they probably need to be. Instead of buying a new tablet, you can take a less expensive Barnes & Noble Nook Color E-Reader, root it, and run stock Android on it for a much more versatile, very cheap Android tablet. Rooting it takes a bit of work, obviously, but it's certainly worth it to save another $250 or so. (Original Post) 3. Add Advanced Features to Your Point and Shoot Camera Like much of your other tech, your Canon point-and-shoot camera is a great piece of hardware that ships with limited software. With the Canon Hacker's Development Kit, however, you can get RAW support (which you should always use), more advanced photo settings, on-screen info, scripts, and more. Be sure to also check out how to make the best of a CHDK-equipped camera, and if you already have a DSLR, you can supercharge that too with the Magic Lantern enhancement. 2. Turn Your iPod Touch Into an iPhone Whether you aren't on an iPhone-friendly carrier or you just don't feel like paying for the full iPhone, you can still get similar functionality out of the iPod touch with a few tweaks. You'll need a VoIP app, a constant Wi-Fi connection or Verizon Mi-Fi, and an iPod-compatible headset to talk, but once you've got these things together you should be able to make calls over your iPod just like you would an iPhone. And, after all, that's the only real difference between the two, and you got it without being stuck on their carriers or paying the extra $400 for an unlocked phone. 1. Turn Your $60 Router Into a $600 Router If your cheap router isn't fulfilling your needs, you can give it a bit of a boost with the open-source DD-WRT firmware. DD-WRT can boost your signal strength, give certain programs bandwidth priority, and add a whole host of other advanced options to your router that you'd generally only find on super expensive models. Essentially, you're getting a $600 router out of the deal with just a simple firmware upgrade at no cost—giving your router a new lease on life and your wallet a repreive from another electronics spending spree. If DD-WRT is a little nerve-racking, you might want to check out the very similar but more user-friendly Tomato. Photo by Rusty Haskell. These aren't the most time-friendly hacks, but they'll be much nicer to your wallet than springing for the expensive, high-end tech you've always dreamed for—and in the end, you get a product that's just as good. Got any of your own favorite tech-supercharging projects? Share them with us in the comments.

How to Build a Computer from Scratch, Lesson 1: Hardware Basics

Building a computer from scratch gives you the perfect machine for your needs, but it can be daunting the first time around. In this edition of Lifehacker Night School, we'll be taking you through the buying, building, and installation process step-by-step. Today, we're going to start with a little computer hardware basics. While you could just go to the store and buy a Dell, you might find that you're happier with a custom-built machine. Building a PC from the ground up means it's perfectly crafted to fit your needs, whether you're a hardcore gamer, video editor extraordinaire, or you're just trying to build a low- or high-powered home theater PC. In some instances, you may save some money, and in all instances you'll have accomplished a project that you'll benefit from for years—a pretty great feeling in and of itself. That said, building is much more time consuming than buying, and your first time through, it can be daunting. This week's Night School series will walk you through building your first (or second, or third) computer from start to finish. Today, we'll be talking about the first step in any computer build: brainstorming what kind of machine you're looking to make and what that means for your hardware. The Types of Machines and their Ballpark Costs Much like we did in our original spec-crafting feature, the the first thing you need to do is come up with a very, very rough idea of what kind of performance you want from your machine. The easiest way to do that is to split builds it up into three general categories: Low Performance: If you're looking for a simple PC for web browsing, email checking, or video watching, a low performance machine is probably the way to go. These machines are small, don't draw a lot of power, and are usually pretty quiet, which is great (though they obviously sacrifice performance for those perks). Nettops, home theater PCs, and (on a more extreme level) home servers also fit into this category. Most custom-built low performance machines range from $200 to $400. Middle of the Road: This is a great option for the majority of users, especially since you can stretch the machine's power and your budget to fit almost any scenario. Middle of the road machines will sit in a smaller computer tower, with enough power to play some games and run more than a few programs at once. If you're looking for a multipurpose computer that won't break the bank, this is where you want to go. Middle of the road machines can vary quite a bit in price, but in general they range from $300 to $700. High Performance: These are the big guns. Generally, users with high performance computers are doing things that are more resource-intensive: converting and editing large amounts of video, playing the latest and greatest games at high settings, running other operating systems in virtual machines, and so on. Be prepared to shell out a bit of cash, use a lot of electricity, and devote a lot of space to this machine. Again, there's a good range here, but typically a high performance machine will cost anywhere from $700 to infinity and beyond. The Parts That Make Up a Computer (and What They Do) Every fully functioning computer is made of the same basic components, and in this section, we'll walk through the basic hardware you'll need for your first build. We're still just talking about "things to consider" here—we'll get down to the nitty-gritty of picking out specific parts in the next lesson. Here, we just want to point out what the important components are, and which ones are the most important for certain builds. The Processor The Processor (CPU) is the "brain" of your computer, the thing that carries out the tasks you give it. Better CPUs can perform more tasks at once, and perform them faster. That said, not everyone actually takes advantage of their processor's full speed, so the high-end models are only really crucial if you're performing intensive tasks like gaming, video editing, video conversion, or compiling code. It's also one of the most expensive parts of a machine, so if you aren't performing these types of tasks, you don't necessarily need to worry about buying the latest and greatest. The Motherboard The motherboard connects all the other components to one another, and is the physical base upon which you build everything else. It contains a lot of your machine's core features, like the number of USB ports, the number of expansion cards you can put in (such as video, sound, and Wi-Fi), and also determines how big your computer will be. Which motherboard you pick will depend on whether you build a low, medium, or high performance machine and how advanced of a user you are. The Case The case holds all of your computer's parts together. For themost part, a case is less about features that affect how your computer runs and more about features that affect you and your home—that is, how quiet it is, how large it is, and of course, how it looks in your office. Still, it's an important consideration that is dependent on your other choices, so you might want to think about what you want in terms of a case before moving on to the shopping step. The RAM RAM, or Random Access Memory, is like your computer's short-term memory. It stores data your computer needs quick access to to help your programs run faster, and help you run more programs at one time. Thus, if you run a lot of programs at once, you'll want a computer with more RAM. If you use virtual machines, you'll want even more RAM, since it has to run its own programs in addition to yours. The Graphics Card The Graphics card, or GPU, is a processor specifically designed to handle graphics. It's what you hook your monitor up to, and it's what draws your desktop and your windows on the screen. Some motherboards come with a GPU already integrated, which is enough to manage your desktop, but not enough for watching high definition video or playing 3D games. For those, you'll need a dedicated graphics card, since it can do the legwork needed to draw those complex images. The Hard Drive(s) Your hard drives are what store all of your data, ranging from your operating system to your documents, music, and movies. If the RAM is your computer's short-term memory, your hard drive is the long-term memory. It stores the things you want to keep around for awhile. The kind of hard drive you choose will be determined mainly by how much data you need to store, but certain kinds of hard drives (like solid state drives) can also affect your computer's speed. The Optical Drive An optical drive, more commonly known as a CD or DVD drive, is what you'll use to read CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-Ray discs. Not everyone needs an optical drive in his/her computer, but since you can buy one for about $20, there's little reason not to have one. The Power Supply The power supply directs electricity to the other components in your machine. Generally speaking, if you have a high performance computer with a fast processor, a graphics card, and a few hard drives, you'll need a higher wattage power supply than you would if you were building a low-end PC. This is probably the last component you'll shop for, once you've nailed down your other parts and how much electricity they'll require. Other Parts to Consider While these are the main parts almost every computer has, you probably have other needs. For example, if you're going to use Wi-Fi instead of wired Ethernet for accessing the internet, you'll probably need to buy a Wi-Fi card. If you take a lot of photos, it's probably worth getting an internal SD card reader for easily loading your photos onto your computer. If you have any Bluetooth peripherals, you might consider an internal Bluetooth card, and if you video chat with friends, you'll want to pick up a webcam. And, of course, if you don't already have them, you'll need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. These are just a few of the extra things you could use, so really think about what you'll be using this computer for and what other parts you need to buy so you don't have to take an extra trip to the store (and so you can better budget your money). Sit back and ponder how you use your current computer, how you're going to use your new computer, and what that means for the components listed above. If you're going to do a lot of gaming, a high-end processor and video card are crucial. If you're building a home theater PC, you'll want a "good enough" video card, a low-end processor, and a large hard drive to store all your movies. Once you've figured it out, come back for our next lesson tomorrow night, where we'll talk about how to actually shop for the parts you need to build your computer.

Google’s new service Google Hotel Finder

If you are the person who like travelling and going on weekend getaways then you would surely like this new service launched by Google. Finding right hotel is very important when at vacation as finding the good hotel that suits your need, can decide the fate of your vacation.

There are many other web services that can help you with this then why Google Hotel Finder? May be because they want to take on this market and provide the users the easier way of finding the accommodation. The Google Hotel Finder service is currently in the experimental stage and is aimed at providing better options easily to the users.

Finding the hotel shouldn’t be difficult for you as you need to enter your search criteria for making the right choice and with the feature of “tourist spotlight” it becomes easier. This feature shows you, at first, the most visited hotels in the area you searched for.

You can also get a good deal for the hotel of your choice as compared to the other hotel finder services. The service is currently in the experimental stage and is, as of now, running in US. So if you are visiting US soon then do try this.

But does this service mean are we expecting more Google services like Google pedia or say Google job finder?

Visit Google Hotel Finder

A Guide to Google+ Privacy and Information Control

Google+ is the new social networking kid on the block, and one of the main reasons so many people are interested in the service over Facebook is Google+'s proclaimed focus on protecting users' privacy. Whether you're a new Google+ user or you're already a pro, understanding how to control your information on the site can make you feel much more at ease on the social network. Here's the lowdown on Google+'s privacy controls, including a few of the more buried settings you'll want to know about. This guide will take you through setting up Google+'s circles with an emphasis on how they work from a privacy perspective, how to control what others can see about you on your profile, your options for selectively sharing posts with others, and some miscellaneous settings you'll want to tweak—like only allowing friends to start Huddles with you. A note on pseudonymity: Google has taken a strong and, I think, awfully mistaken stance on not allowing people to use Google+ with a pseudonym. While this is definitely a privacy issue, it falls outside of this post's purpose of explaining how to use Google+'s privacy settings. Kee Hinckley, a Consulting CTO for Somewhere.com and Lead Architect at Zinc.tv, has written a compelling and thorough post on the subject, and hopefully Google is listening and will rectify this issue. Let's go tackle your main Google+ privacy settings and options: 1. Privacy and Your Circles Circles are Google+'s uber easy way of organizing your contacts. Most of your privacy controls will stem from how you set your circles up, since you can set privacy controls for both individual posts and your profile information with these customized groups. Basically, you create a circle—such as "Family," "Work," "Tech Bloggers," etc.—and drag people you want to share information with or whose posts you want to follow into those groups. Things you need to know: Your circles are private by default. The particular circle groups you set up and which people are in them are only known to you. So you can set up a "Lunatics" circle and put your boss in it and he/she and the rest of the world will be none the wiser. Managing who sees which posts can still be tricky with this system.The main issue is that it's important to remember who you've put in which circles. You could, by the way, purposely have placed your boss in both a Lunatics circle and Work circle, so you'll need to remember which circles you've placed her in. You'll need to be careful about selecting the right circles to share posts with (more on that in a bit). Differences between Google+ circles and Twitter followers or Facebook friends Lots of people like how intuitive and basic using circles is. It's much more upfront and clearer that Facebook's friends lists (which offer useful way to control your Facebook privacy), but there are also some intricacies to keep in mind about how circles work, especially if you're used to how Twitter and Facebook work: As with Twitter, you can follow anyone else's posts on Google+ (like, ahem, Lifehacker writers) by adding him or her to your circles—without that person also having to follow you. It's not a one-to-one friending model like Facebook. In that sense, it's much more like Twitter. On the flip side, anyone can add you to his or her circles without your consent; unlike Twitter's "Protect my tweets" option, there's no Google+ setting to require your approval before others can follow you. The onus is on you to choose the right sharing setting for your posts. Even if someone's following you who you'd rather not follow, they'll never see any of your posts as long as you're not posting to the public at large. So, on the one hand, Google+'s circles are much simpler to set up and use because they form the basis of this social networking model. On the other, it's like a mishmash of other social networks, so it might be confusing at first. Although anyone can follow you or add you to their circles, the important thing to remember is that the privacy of your posts is always set by you (more on this below). Google+ has many controls for allowing who can see your profile information and also who can see each individual post. 2. Control What People Know About You From Your Profile Your Google+ profile page links to your background (occupation, education, places lived, etc.), photos and videos shared, and websites you've "+1'ed" from Google search results. So, after setting up your social groups in circles, editing this Google+ profile page is one of the major ways to control your Google+ privacy. To edit your profile settings, click on the button that looks like a circle with a silhouette in it, then click the "Edit Profile" button. Here are the default settings for your profile information: Full Name: This is the only required part of your profile, and it's visible to all. Changing your name here will change your name across all Google's services. Anyone on the web can also see: Your introduction, profile photo, gender, who are in your circles, who you've added to your circles, and the button to send you an email (but not your actual email address). Your circles can see your: introduction, employment, education, places lived, relationship status, looking for, links. Locked for only you until you change it: your occupation, home and work contact info. You can change each of these sections to allow viewing by: the whole world (anyone on the web), extended circles, your circles, just you, or a custom grouping. Each privacy group setting has its own icon (see image at left), so when you look at your profile, you can quickly see which parts are shared to which groups. So, for example, you can set your introduction to be for anyone on the web, your employment to be visible to anyone you've added to your circles, your contact information to be visible to a custom selection of circles such as friends and family, and your relationship status to be only for you and your significant other to see. Want to check what your profile looks like to someone else? There's a "View profile as..." input field at the top right of your profile where you can check. Search visibility. If you don't want your profile to be indexed by Google and it to appear in search results, this is the setting to look for. It's at the bottom of your Profile on the About page. Uncheck "Help others find my profile in search results," which is checked by default. Who's in your circles/Which circles you are in. While you're at it (editing your profile page), you can also change the visibility of the people in your social network. Look to the left column. Under your circles lists, click on the "Change who is visible here" to control who can see all the people you have in your circles (i.e., who you're following) as well as everyone who has you in their circles (who are following you). Again, by default, everyone on the web can see who you've added to your circles and who has added you to theirs. This, however, is highly customizable. You have options to make the world think you're only following a select group or groups of people—excluding other groups from their view or hiding all the people you follow, in fact. And you can hide everyone who's added you to their circles, so no one would know how many people or which people are following you. Profile photos, email, links. The other sections of the profile page are customizable too: your main photo and series of profile photos, that "send an email" link, and your web links. By default, everyone on the web can see these. If this bothers you, here's where you can change it. Photos Profile photos, shared albums from Picasa, photos of you tagged by other Google+ users, and Instant Upload photos all appear here. You can choose not show this tab (it's displayed by default), but even if your photos tab is displayed, only those photos that you share with others will appear here to them. A strange setting for "People whose tags of you are automatically approved to link to your Profile" is set by default to be allowed for your circles. This setting just means if someone tags you in a photo and you approve it, the photo will be linked to your profile and added here. Geo-location is not added by default, nor are photos uploaded by the Instant Upload feature of the Google+ Android app. Videos This section only has the option to hide or show the tab. You'll need to explicitly share videos here, but the tab is shown by default. +1's When you like a page or website by clicking on the +1 button in the search results or on the site, it will show up on your profile page if you have this set to be shared by default. (Note: clicking +1 on comments on a post or stream will not show up on this tab. It will only be shown on that thread.) If you don't want people to see your +1's, uncheck this tab (but this begs the question of why you would click any +1 buttons.) 3. Share Only to Select People Using Circles After organizing people into groups for sharing and adjusting our profile settings, the next major privacy concern is controlling who can see and share the content you post (which can include a photo, web link, video, and/or map/location). Groups you can share with: When you share content on the service in your "stream," you can select which Circles or individuals will see that content by adding one or more of these groups: Public—visible to everyone who has added you to their circles, and shown on your profile page as well Extended Circles—everyone in the Public group above, plus everyone in their circles, like friends of friends in Facebook, but also a bit spammy feeling a name of one or more of your Circles individual names of people on Google+ (this is how you send a direct message to someone on Google+. Just enter their name as the person you are sharing the post with) Notes about selecting groups you share with: Once you've specified your group and posted your content, you can't change the group it's shared with. For example, once you've set it to Public for all your circle contacts, it will be public to everyone you ever add to your circles. From now on, it seems. By default when you create a new post, the circles or people you shared with last will be the ones your next post will be shared with by default. This is convenient if you often share with the same groups or individuals, but it's a good idea to check the "share with" settings for each post. Sharing with circles is only inclusive, not exclusive. Currently, you can only select specific groups you want to share your content with; you can't set your post to be shared with everyone except fora specific circle or person. This means if you want to be able to post about your rotten workplace, you can't just create a work circle and create a post that excludes that circle; you'll have to create something like "everyone except for work" to share your work horror stories with. Similarly, if I had, for example, Whitson in my Lifehacker circle and wanted to write something about a secret yet also public birthday surprise for him on Google+ and include everyone except him in on the secret, Google+ would not let me do so. 4. Control Your Information Streams and Posts Besides specifying which circles can view your posts, there are also other post administration tools at your disposal (see the little triangle to the top right of each post you make): If you get trolls on one of your posts, you can remove them individually or report them to Google. You can disable all commenting (e.g., if this is a group thing and you just want to send a notification to your team). And you can disable resharing. These all need to be done manually for each post to protect them. Incoming streams. Posts from people you've added to your circles will appear in your "stream" under their various circle categories. For people you haven't added to your circles but who are following you, their posts will be shared with you under the "Incoming" link. You can mute posts you're not interested in seeing there (more trouble than it's worth, probably) or add some of those people to your circles. Blocking people. If there are too many spammy or offensive or just overwhelming posts from some people, you can block them in your circles settings. "Block" here, however, may not work as you might think. As Hinckley describes it: "Blocking people hides their posts and comments from your stream, and hides your public posts, but not your comments from their stream. It does not hide either posts or comments when viewed directly on a profile or in the posts themselves. It actually does more to hide them from you, than it does to hide you from them. Block does not block. It's a mute button, useful for muting over-sharers." In other words, don't think of blocking a user as actually protecting your privacy. Your comments on others' posts are public: Note that your comments on other people's threads, if those threads are shared publicly, are public too and indexed by Google (i.e., searchable). Your +1's of any other people's posts are public too, so that's another thing to be mindful of. An individual post will say "Limited" or "Public" next to the timestamp, so you'll have some idea whether it's shared with a circle or with the public at large. 5. Check Other Obscure Privacy Options and Settings Click on the Google+ Settings gear icon to get to the full set of settings. Under the main Google+ section, you can set your notification settings for things like when someone mentions you in a post or adds you to a circle. By default you'll be notified by email for everything. At the bottom you can change the default of anyone being able to start a Huddle (group text) with you. (This can be really annoying, as Adam Pash can tell you.) Your Profile and Privacy tab links to most of the other settings we've already mentioned. It's a convenient one-stop page to jump to all the settings, perhaps, as well as to your main Google Account information and Google's Privacy Center. One nice thing you don't have to worry about is data retention and an encrypted connection. Google has confirmed Google+ uses only an encrypted SSL connection and that the data you delete from Google+ is deleted from their servers. A Wish List As a new service, Google+ has a lot of promise and Google has been responsive so far to many privacy concerns. The privacy controls for the most part are very straightforward, and Google's continuing to tweak them. For example, recently they changed the chat feature in Google+ so that you need to explicitly invite people for them to appear in your chat list (and Google says they're working on removing the restriction of all users in your chat list having access to your email address). There are still lots of usability and privacy features we'd like to see added to Google+, as evidenced by the many extensions available for making the most of the service and a recent discussion on Google+ privacy (thanks to everyone who joined in). Some of the things fellow Google+ers most wished for were: the ability to exclude specific circles or individuals from posts, adding subcircles for finer control, viewing multiple circles' streams at once, and an easier way to view comments and replies to comments in Google+. You've taken a tour of Google+'s privacy settings, but this certainly isn't the end of the discussion. So, please feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Lifehacker Pack for Linux: Our List of the Best Linux Downloads

Linux may not be the most popular OS around, but that doesn't mean it we're going to sit here and ignore it. Here are our favorite downloads for everyone's favorite open source operating system. Just like our Windows pack, the awesome team at Ninite has graciously put all these apps into a one-click installer for you. Just check off the apps you want, and it'll spit out a unified, one-click installer package for all of them. Download the 2011 Lifehacker Pack Here Note that, unlike Windows and Mac OS X, Linux comes in many flavors and with a number of different desktop environments. Since most of you are using the GNOME-based Ubuntu, that's what this pack is designed for. Below, we've got explanations of what each program in the pack does, and why we chose it. Want to skip to a specific category? Use these links: Productivity Internet/Communication Music, Pictures and Video Utilities Optional (for Beginners) The Lifehacker Pack is a yearly snapshot of our favorite, must-have applications for each of our favorite platforms. If you're curious to see how things have changed this year, here's last year's Lifehacker Pack for Linux. PRODUCTIVITY GNOME Do Inspired by Mac favorite Quicksilver, GNOME Do is the application launcher to get on Linux. Not only can you launch apps with just a few taps of your keyboard, but its large plugin library lets you add even more functionality, like sending emails, IMs, playing music, searching the web, and more. Download Page LibreOffice After OpenOffice became a less-than-open-source project, the community broke off and bore LibreOffice, the now-premiere open source office suite on Linux. It's got all the functionality you need for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. It may not be quite as ubiquitous or feature-filled as Microsoft's offerings, but it'll get the job done more often than not. Download Page gedit Text editor gedit comes with a ton of different Linux distributions, and it's easy to see why. It's lightweight, super customizable, and works for pretty much any text-based needs you could have—whether it's making a few notes or writing some serious code. Plus, it's got plugins that let you add word completion, file browsing, and tons more to give it an even bigger boost of power. The bottom line: if you ever need to edit text in Linux (and believe me, you will), you'll want to have gedit close by. Download Page AutoKey If you ever feel like some of your typing is just busywork, AutoKey will save you a lot of keypresses by filling in large passages, addresses, or even code by hitting just a few letters. Not only can you fill in text, but if you know a little Python, you can write out more complex scripts to manipulate that text pretty much any way you want, saving you hours of typing every week. Download Page INTERNET/COMMUNICATION Chromium Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome, the favored browser of power users everywhere. Fast browsing, awesome extensions, and preference-syncing tools make this the browser to beat on any platform, so while most Linux distributions still ship with Firefox, we recommend you make it your second-in-command and put Chromium your browser of choice. Download Page Thunderbird While your first instincts may be to go with web-based mail, or with the GNOME-integrated Evolution, we just can't get over Thunderbird. It's got most of the features you love about Gmail, like archiving and conversations, and a huge add-on library that lets you tweak it to your liking. If you prefer your email in webapps, that's totally cool—but we recommend keeping an IMAP client like Thunderbird around for offline access and in case of emergency. Download Page Pidgin It may not be shipping with Ubuntu by default anymore, but we still recommend Pidgin as your go-to IM client. It's been around for years, and had more than enough time to build up a huge library of features, supported chat protocols, and plug-ins to let you customize it right down to the last pixel. We may take another look at the pre-packaged Empathy one day, but for now, Pidgin's still got our hearts. Download Page Skype Video chat apps abound these days, but chances are everyone you know has Skype. It doesn't get quite as much love on the Linux platform, and it rarely gets updated, but if you plan on video chatting with your friends and family, it's inevitable that you'll end up using Skype. It's okay if it isn't your favorite, but we recommend tucking it away in the corner for those occasions when you actually need it. Download Page Deluge Deluge has slowly risen to become the best BitTorrent clients available on Linux. Modeling itself after µTorrent on Windows, it's super lightweight while packing a big punch in the features department. It's got loads of plugins, so you can get pretty much any feature you desire added on, including watch folders, IP blocklists, bandwidth scheduling, a web UI, and much, much more. If you're downloading torrents, deluge deserves a permanent spot in your applications menu. Download Page MUSIC, PHOTOS AND VIDEO Flash Player Flash is especially annoying on Linux, but sadly, it's still necessary for browsing a good portion of the web. Whether you're watching videos, listening to music, or—heck—just online shopping, chances are you'll need Flash installed to get anywhere on the net. Keep it at bay with FlashBlock for Chrome and FlashBlock for Firefox so it only opens when you actually need it. Download Page VLC The default player in your distribution is usually pretty great, but we know that a lot of you guys love VLC. It's lightweight, it plays any format you could ever want, and has loads of advanced features in its preferences to make your video-watching experience as good as possible. It's still one of the first things we install on any distribution, and we know it is for you too. Download Page Handbrake Watching video on the go? Ripping some high-def Blu-Ray discs? If you ever need to convert video, Handbrake is the way to do it. Rip or convert video to one of a bunch of different presets, or tweak the quality to your liking with all its advanced settings. It's an essential tool for any video watcher's arsenal. Download Page The GIMP The GIMP isn't included in Ubuntu anymore, and while you can make very basic edits with with the built-in F-Spot photo manager, anything beyond a simple crop or resize will require an actual editing program. The GIMP may seem complicated, but if you're doing more than just organizing a few photos, you'll want to have it around, and if you're doing any kind of advanced editing, it's a must-have. We recommend grabbing the GIMP and putting it back in place as your default photo editor. Download Page Banshee This is one of Ubuntu's recent changes we actually agree with: Banshee is now the default music player, and it should be your go-to as well. Besides the standard music management, CD ripping, and iPod syncing, it's got a ton of advanced features that make it the player to beat on Linux. It's integrated with the Amazon MP3 store, Miro for podcast support, and it has a good plug-in library for extra customization. Above all, though, it's got a great, easy-to-use, polished interface. Of course, we know the choice of music player is a deeply personal one, so if Banshee isn't your thing, we recommend checking out Rhythmbox, Amarok, and Exaile as alternatives. Download Page Restricted Extras If you didn't download them when you installed Ubuntu, this is a package you're going to want. There are a few computing necessities—like MP3 support, DVD support, and more that are copyrighted and thus aren't always bundled by default with Linux. So, unless you're very gung-ho about open source and you're purposely avoiding these formats, you'll need the Restricted Extras package. UTILITIES Dropbox If you have multiple computers, Dropbox is an absolutely essential tool. It syncs files between your machines, backs them up to the cloud, and does all sorts of other neat things. Grab your free 2GB to start, then rack up your storage for free to make it even more versatile. Download Page Conky Conky is an awesome system monitor for your desktop, displaying things like CPU and memory stats to RSS feeds, email, weather, packages that need updating, and tons more. You can customize every inch of it to fit in with the rest of your desktop, and keep track of everything while staying productive. Download Page Wine It's a sad fact of life, but despite your best efforts you'll probably have to run the odd Windows program from time to time. Wine makes this possible, letting you run Windows programs in your regular window manager, as if they were Linux apps. It won't suck up a ton of resources like a virtual machine, but not all programs are compatible with Wine, so it can sometimes be a crapshoot. Still, when it works, it's a godsend. Download Page VirtualBox When a Windows program isn't compatible with Wine, VirtualBox is next in the line of solutions. VirtualBox brings a full Windows environment to your desktop, which can be a bit slower, but it will run any Windows program out there. If you have the hard drive space and RAM to spare, it's a good idea to keep that Windows environment around for when you need it. Download Page Guake Linux has certainly come a long way in the user-friendliness department, but you'll be hard-pressed to use Linux as your daily driver without ever needing the command line. Guake brings the Terminal to a quick-access drop-down window, accessible with a hotkey. Plus, like everything else in Linux, it's fully customizable so you can tweak it to fit your workflow. Download Page p7zip P7zip is basically the Linux version of our favorite Windows compression tool 7-Zip. With it, you can compress and decompress tons of different archive formats, like ZIP, 7Z, RAR, and more, no terminal necessary. Just right-click on them and decompress them with one click. Download Page OPTIONAL (FOR BEGINNERS) Ubuntu Tweak If you're running Ubuntu, Ubuntu Tweak is a great little program that simplifies some of the basic Linux processes that can be intimidating to first-time users. It may not upgrade well with your system, but it's a good install for beginners: it'll help you install third-party apps, configure your system without the Terminal, clear up disk space, and more. Download Page