Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Cooool dork stuff.

Ok, so, I said would be gone a lot lately. However, I just found out about a great way to make it WAY easier to post when I come home.

So, how many of you have two different google accounts, one for your real life, and one for your blogger, and you hate how you can't be logged into both at the same time? I don't like having two browsers open so I can have both accounts because of the RAM consumption, so in the end, if I ever wanted to post, I would have to go to blogger.com, sign out of my "real life", sign into my new life, and then go back to my gmail so I could still have that going on. Then, I could continue and blog if I felt like it. Like I said yesterday, after coming home from a long day of work, that just seemed like too much.

But today, I found out about two apps that could allow you to log into TWO google accounts at once (among other things, but I won't get into those right now).


Basically, you can wrap one of your websites into another app, so that it appears like a separate desktop app. So now, you can have a "blogger app", where you are logged in at Phizz, and a gmail app, where you are logged in as "Real Me". When I want to post, I can just open Blogger App, and off I go! Wow, how easy! That little difference may cause me to post just SLIGHTLY more, and it may help those who want to make a very strong distinction between work and home life like me.

Now, if you want to get slightly more geekoid, you should read the next part. So...one thing I have been increasingly uncomfortable with is how when I browse the web, everything on the web seems to know shit about me. Like, how come when I go to CNN.com, it knows that 4 of my FB friends liked that article. How do you know who my friends are? Why is that information kind of "in the wild" on the browser instead of confined to whatever tab my facebook account is on? Why does that persist even when I close my FB tab? How come my FB suggests friends for me where I don't have any mutual friends with them, and are just random people I have emailed with once in gmail? How do they know who is on my gmail contacts list? Why does Linked In suggest people for me as well, people that I don't understand how they know about?

Well, it's because you probably clicked something like "remember me" or "keep me signed in" on things like your google account and your facebook account, so that basically means they know everything about where you go on the web and what you click, who you know, and who you're friends with. I don't like that. So that's when I found out about these tools I linked to above, so that you can have, basically a protected box around your accounts where can stay logged in but they won't follow you around the internet. There you go - your web safety/privacy tip of the day.

5 comments:

Becca said...

You rock!! I've been dying for a way to have both gmails open at once, and now I can! Thanks, PhizzleDizzle!

chall said...

I think that is something more people might care about soon... the FB "4 of yuor friends liked this article" although you are not logged in and you didn't want anyone to know you were looking at that article...

Myself? I'm finding that I am turning way more paranoid than ever. Clearing caches and never ever keeping prechecked boxes when signing in ;) Don't even get me started on the FB "friends you might want" and "emails from your friends". I'm only waiting for the app where they scan your contacts...wait, that's one app they already have. duh.

Nicky said...

I, too, was *very* excited about this app... until I realized that my laptop is too old to run it. I mean, I knew that I was behind the curve, but I don't want to buy a new computer just yet. Damn.

unknown said...

Yeah I've been looking for a way to do this too. Thanks!

Zinn said...

Wow, thanks for the tip about having two Google accounts open at once. I actually have my personal account linked to my blogger account (is that bad?) but I do have the same issues for other things!

Also, you're right, that is very annoying when they tell me my Facebook friends like something - why! Haha. I keep myself logged in on my personal computer but it's important to log out on any other computers for sure!

Zinn
http://zinn000.blogspot.com/