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I am sure you’ve watched tons of screencast videos on the web explaining complex topics in easy steps but have you ever come across one that’s done by a President?

The Whitehouse today released a screencast video on their YouTube channel that’s recorded and narrated by President Obama himself.

The screencast is a video tour of the new HealthCare.gov website where he walks you through the different features of the site and it’s another fine example of how an effective screencast should be like.

President Obama does some Screencasting

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

The other day there was a post on my wall from a Facebook friend that suggested that I delete my account since Facebook is disclosing our personal phone numbers to the external world without permission.

The message read something like this:

Facebook is at it again. Did you know that your land line and mobile numbers are all available to everyone on Facebook. Go into account –> edit friends and click Phonebook. Not good.

The phone directory feature has been part of Facebook for a very-very long time but suddenly, the concern around that feature has become so intense that it has almost turned into a meme on Facebook.

The story continues.

This morning a report from the BBC and Telegraph suggested that some had managed to collect data from profiles of 100 million Facebook users and leaked them onto the Internet. People were not amused and one of them went to the extent of saying that he doesn’t trust Facebook anymore.

I made a deliberate decision not to use Facebook because I don’t trust it. It is obviously a frequently-attacked site, and I don’t trust the company to resist the temptation to harvest the data they host.

It is interesting to see that the issue is getting so much attention in the press though all data that is claimed to have been ‘leaked’ was always public. Facebook maintains a public directory where anyone can browse people on Facebook by their last name.

The only people who are listed in this directory are the ones who have opted to make their profiles ‘public’ on Facebook. If someone writes a script to scrap this data from facebook.com into one single file, can it be termed as a leak or a privacy breach?

In fact, Facebook is not the only social site that has a ‘public directory.’ LinkedIn has their own people directory that’s open to both humans and bots. Google too has a detailed directory of its users that can be accessed using Google itself.

What’s interesting is that the directories on Google and LinkedIn probably reveal more information about their users than Facebook profiles yet all the anger is often directed towards Palo Alto.

Maybe we are being too paranoid or it’s just becoming cool to hate Facebook.

Are we too Paranoid about Privacy on Facebook?

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

This is the latest book from the 37 Signals duo, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (AKA DHH inventor of Ruby on Rails). I bought it because I enjoyed ‘Getting Real’, their previous book, so much. It’s in a similar mould and is essentially an extended version of Getting Real focussing less on the product and more on the business. Jason and David’s writing style is very engaging and easy, it only took two evenings to read through the book’s 271 pages. The book is divided into 1, 2 or 3 page snippets each filling out a pithy one-liner, such as ‘Underdo your competition’, ‘Meetings are toxic’, ‘Ignore the details early on’, which makes it very nice to just dip into. In fact, it would make an excellent book to leave by the loo.

I do a lot of work in medium to large scale organisations, which can be very frustrating. A lot of the things I dislike about the way such organisations work is down to gut feeling. If we could only stop talking and listening to every single little objection, if we could only dispose of over complicated processes, if we could just start building something without having to specify everything in minute detail, if we could just create, we would be far far more efficient.  And not only that, but work would be much more enjoyable. This book is a resounding vindication and justification for such gut feelings.

The problem is that it probably wouldn’t work in most of the places I consult at. All the advice in the book is predicated on the notion that you have a small organisation of motivated and talented individuals. Just look at the authors, one of whom is the creator of one of the world’s most influential software frameworks. You don’t need a manager to get DHH to do great work. No, this is a book for alpha people who want to start their own businesses. It’s basically saying, your gut feelings are right, you don’t need managers, meetings and detailed plans, you just need to do it.

The other problem with the book is that it’s mostly about negatives, what you don’t need to do. It doesn’t really have much to say about what you do need. Ruby on Rails is such a success because it brings together best practices for developing software in an easy to use package that almost forces you to do the right thing. As software engineers, we are usually scathing of management process, but obsessive about software development practice. Throughout the book you feel that there probably is a whole raft of good practice, rules and principles being executed at 37 signals, but all they are really telling you about is the stuff they don’t do. I expect that if you naively followed their instructions without a good background in your business’s speciality, things wouldn’t go very well.

Having said all that, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a great motivator to start up your own business and has some really good things to say about designing products, earning your customer’s trust and especially how to do great marketing. Highly recommended.

The search box is located in the upper right corner of IE and Firefox while Chrome has this thing integrated in the address bar itself. The function is however the same – it offers you a convenient way to search using your favorite search engine.

Other than search, there are some more interesting uses of the search bar as well.

1. Avoid Spelling Mistakes

If you writing an email inside the browser and are unsure about the spelling of some word, you can simply type that misspelled word in the search box.

Google will immediately offer you the correct spelling as a query suggestion that you can copy-paste into your email message.

2. Clean-up Formatting from Copied Text

When copying content from a web page into an email message, you can first paste that text into your browser’s search box and then copy it to the clipboard.

This will automatically convert the rich text into plain text removing all the hyperlinks and other formatting that you don’t want to add to your email message.

3. Correct Grammar Errors

The search box can also help you fix grammatical errors in your sentences.

Say you sometimes get confused between words like ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ or between ‘advise’ and ‘advice.’ In that case, just type the whole sentence in the search box and it should save you from making that silly grammatical error again.

4. Search Box as a Notepad

The search bar can be used like a notepad as it automatically stores all your search queries until you clear them manually.

This is so useful because you can easily save pieces of text in the search bar that you may repeatedly need inside your browser later.

For instance, I have an airway bill number of a package that I can store in the search box by performing a search only once. Later, when I am on the shipping company’s website to track the package status, I can easily retrieve that number by simply typing the first few characters in the search box — there’s no need for me to hunt for the email that has that tracking number.

5. As your Password Manager

Ever since my Gmail account got hacked, I have switched to a very long and complex password. Now it may be hard for someone to guess that password but it is equally hard for me to type that lengthy string correctly especially when everything in a password field is represented as asterisk characters.

I therefore store this ‘complex password’ in the search box. Whenever I am need my my Google Account credentials, I simply type the first few characters of the password in the search box, the string appears in the drop-down from where I can copy-paste it into the password box. Here’s a demo:

This method saves time but, obviously, it is not recommended for people who work on a shared computer.

Also see: Send Commands from the Address Bar

Do More with your Browser’s Search Box

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

BlackBerry, like most other mobile phones, uses a bar graph to indicate the current signal strength of your cellular network. If you see five bars on your BlackBerry screen, the network signal strength is excellent while lower number of bars may indicate insufficient or poor signal.

Know the Exact Signal Strength

The bars give an approximate idea of the signal strength but, looking at the bars, you won’t be able to determine minor fluctuations in signal that may occur when you move across different rooms in your house or when you accidentally cover the cellular antenna of the phone with your hands.

There’s however an easy ‘cheat code’ that you may use to determine the ‘actual’ network signal strength on your BlackBerry.

Hold down the ALT key on your BlackBerry and type the letters NMLL in the same sequence — the bar graph indicating signal strength will convert into real numbers indicating the exact strength in dBm.

You can key in the same sequence to return to Bar Graph mode. The signal range should be anywhere between –40 dBm and –100 dBm for you to send and receive data /calls. The higher the number, the better the signal.

Blackberry and Antenna-Gate

Also, while you are in the number mode, try covering your BlackBerry device with your hands and observe the signal strength – it if drops, it’s the same antenna problem.

Here’s another cheat code that will help you completely test your BlackBerry. [via BlackBerry's Facebook page]

Find the Actual Signal Strength on your BlackBerry

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.