Facebook Stories launched

The idea behind Facebook Stories is simple: Some of the 950 or so million Facebook users, minus the ten percent fake accounts, must have used the site for something deeper than playing games, listening to music or posting status updates. It appears to be an attempt to prove that Facebook is more than that, and that the site can be used for life-changing extraordinary activities as well.

If you now thought that you would only see celebrities lined up on the Stories website then I have to tell you that you are wrong about that.  When you look closely, you will notice that the bulk of stories are about regular people that happen to be Facebook users. There is a story about a Facebook group from Guelph Ontario that tries to save a landmark building in the city, and one from a user who lost all of his memories after an accident who is using Facebook to piece together part of his past life. If you are particularly interested in these kind of stories, then you will feel right at home on the website.

Facebook obviously has its own agenda when it comes to the site, and if you think that all the posted stories make Facebook seem kinda great, then you may have found the core reason for the site’s creation. While marketing certainly has played an important role in the creation of Facebook Stories, there may be more behind the site than that.

Facebook for one zooms in on particular members of the site, or groups, and puts them into the spotlight, something that the company has not done before in large scale. This may help some of the users or groups to get the publicity they need to succeed.

Facebook plans to offer monthly features as well on the site. Each month an author will highlight books that fit the month’s theme, and a musician will make available a playlist on Spotify.

All Facebook users are invited to submit their stories to the site, as long as it includes an extraordinary way Facebook has been used. Good stories like finding your long lost dog companion after ten years on Facebook via the site’s people you know feature may then be featured on the Facebook Stories website where they are made available to a large audience.

PNG Gauntlet: compress png images without quality reduction

When you make available images on the Internet, be it embedded on a website, in documents, or by sending images as email attachments, you and the target audience often benefit from reduced file sizes. Webmasters may benefit from a fast optimized website in several ways, from improved click through rates to less visitors who close the tab before the full website has been been loaded. It also reduced the bandwidth the site needs to deliver its contents to its visitors. Bandwidth and time are also the factors when it comes to documents, email attachments and other forms of making images available to other users.

We have covered several automated solutions in the past. From the Thunderbird extensionShrunked Image Resizer, the WordPress plugin WP-Smush It to desktop applications to optimize images for websites and other purposes.

PNG Gauntlet

PNG Gauntlet is a desktop tool for Windows and Mac – the Windows version requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0 – that can reduce the size of png files without reducing the image’s quality at the same time. It combines three different tools for the purpose to create the smallest possible file size. What about other image formats? If you want, you can have them converted to the optimized png format.

The interface provides you with all the settings that you need to get started. Before you do, I’d suggest you click on Tools > Options to make sure everything is set correctly here. If you plan on working on the PC while the program compresses the images, you should consider checking the run compressors with low priority box to avoid slow downs on the system. Depending on your system, you may also, or alternatively, uncheck the preference to compress multiple files at once.

When that is out of the way you need to add an output directory where the optimized images are saved to. You can alternatively overwrite the existing files, but since you do not have an option to compare results, I’d suggest you do not the first times you use the program. Images can be dragged and dropped individually, in bulk or as folders into the interface.

A click on optimize runs the optimization of all images that you have added, and PNG Gaunlet will display the old and new image size, as well as the reduced size in percentage on the screen. In the status bar you find the total size that was saved by the operation, as well as information about the status of the operation. As you can see from the screenshot, the program is not the fastest. If you want fast, you should take a look at Riot instead which I have linked above. The program may not create the smallest file, but it does not take that long to get the images compressed and the difference is not that big that you can’t make use of it.

Still, if you want the maximum then PNG Gauntlet can get that extra percentage off of the image size.

Last Pass password manager gets two new security options

I have used LastPass for quite some time before I made the switch to the KeePass password manager. While I have not regretted that move, I know of several users who are using LastPass for all their password management needs.

LastPass supports a wide variety of features that make it more than a replacement for the built-in password manager of the web browser. This includes a secure password generator, note taking, access from web browsers and the LastPass website, browser synchronization and automatic form filling.

The premium version adds mobile client support and multifactor authentication to the client usingYubikeys or USB thumb drives.

Two new security features have been added to LastPass accounts yesterday that improve the security further.  Both features are available in the account settings dialog which you can open from the LastPass vault.

The first security feature restricts the LastPass login to countries that you select in the settings dialog.  Once you have made your selection here, and most LastPass users without doubt will only select their home country, log ins are only permitted if the IP address resolves to a location in that country.

If someone else steals the login and tries to log in from another country that log in will not be permitted even if the login credentials are correct. While there are options to bypass that limitation, for instance with the help of a VPN service, it may block a percentage of attackers from investigating the error message or trying to get into the account. You do however need to make sure to change the country selection before you travel to another country if you want to use LastPass there. This can be a temporary addition for a business trip, or a permanent one if you move to that country.

The second feature disables log ins from the Tor network. It is obviously not a good idea to block logins from the Tor network if you use it yourself. If you never use it however, you can block it to prevent hackers from using it when they try to access your account.

Opera 12.01 security and stability update released

Opera Software just a few minutes ago has released an update to the desktop version of the Opera browser. Opera 12.01 is a security and stability update that falls in line with the company’s previous update cycle that iterates between larger and smaller updates.

Existing Opera 12.0 or earlier users can run an update check in the browser to download and install the latest version of it automatically. This is done with a click on the Opera button, and the selection of Help > Check for updates from the menu that opens up. The browser will eventually pick up the new version automatically to offer an automatic update without manual check.

New and existing users who do not want to update the browser using the built-in updater can download the latest version from the Opera website instead. It is offered as usual for all supporting operating systems and languages.

The changelog lists several fixes and enhancements that have made their way into Opera 12.01. Here is a selection of important ones:

• General fixes and stability improvements
• Website thumbnail generation memory improvements
• Fixes for issues on sites and services such as Twitter, Google Maps Labs, Yahoo Chat, Lenovo’s Shop now page and Tuenti.com.
• Various display and scripting bug fixes
• The browser’s address bar inline auto-completion is no longer preferring the shortest domain
• Fixed a crash when mail databases were loaded on startup
• Resolved a favicon display issue when too many tabs were open in the web browser

The new version on top of that patches several security vulnerabilities in Opera 12.01, of which some can allow attackers to execute code on the target system. You find additional information about the security fixes linked from the official changelog. Mac and Linux users need to navigate back to the main changelog directory to access the log for their operating systems.