Hasta La Gadget!

Back in the good old days when Facebook was first starting out, the amount of information that was presented to you was pretty much information that you know you wanted, such as updates from friends, what they got up to, photos, status updates, and more. Naturally Facebook has evolved since then and not only are those features still available, but there’s a lot more going on too.

For example there are sponsored posts, posts that Facebook thinks you like, related posts, game requests, people posting what they are watching or listening to online, and so on. It has become a flood of information that sometimes we don’t really need, which is why one developer by the name of Max Friedrich has posted a browser hack that will basically hide your Facebook’s News Feed.

Basically what it does is that it strips away your Facebook’s entire News Feed, leaving you pretty much with just the chat feature available. Dubbed “Quiet Facebook”, Friedrich wrote, “Facebook is an important communication tool to me. Most of my fellow students don’t use iMessage or Twitter DMs, so we talk on Facebook. However, I seem not to be able to just check my messages on Facebook. Instead, I wind up scrolling through the News Feed for a couple of minutes each time I visit Facebook in the browser.”

We have to agree that Facebook does come across as a distraction sometimes and the good news is that if you were hoping to use Quiet Facebook for yourself, he has posted the CSS for it on GitHub, although it has been designed for Safari in mind. Google Chrome users will be able to achieve a similar effect with this plugin instead.

Browser Hack Removes Your Facebook News Feed

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Web, Facebook,

For those who shop online for books, Amazon is probably a good place to look for said items. Not only do they have an extremely large collection, but their ability to ship to most parts of the world appeals to international customers too, exorbitant shipping rates aside. Unfortunately if you were hoping to purchase any books by the Hachette publisher, you could be out of luck.

This is because of an ongoing feud that Amazon is having with Hachette. For those unfamiliar, Hachette is one of the top five book publishers, which also includes HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon and Schuster. Amazon and Hachette are currently negotiating a deal with one another, but in the meantime it looks like Amazon is making life difficult for the publisher, its writers, and its customers.

This is done by either delaying the shipments of Hachette-published books, pricier physical books, as well as recommendations for alternative titles in their Amazon listings, which would essentially drive customers away from Hachette-published books to another company. We’re not sure if the latter strategy works since not two books are alike.

It seems that Amazon is doing this to frustrate writers who make royalties of books sold, and if no books are sold, then they don’t get paid. Frustrated writers will then go to their publishers and pressure them to give in to Amazon’s demands. There is a good chance that Amazon will come up on top, but in the meantime if you were hoping to get the latest title from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.

Amazon’s Feud With Publisher Hachette Leads To Books Being Pulled

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Web, Amazon,

The race to be the first to deploy ultra-high speed fiber-backed broadband in as many markets as possible is on. In a bid to beat Google to the punch, AT&T today announced a proposal to expand its AT&T Gigapower with U-Verse service to 21 new cities. It has already begun talking to municipalities in these new markets. Much like Google Fiber, AT&T’s U-Verse Gigapower network offers customers internet speeds of 1 gigabit per second.

AT&T Gigapower was first launched in Austin, Texas back in December last year. Earlier this month it announced a plan to expand the service to six cities in North Carolina. AT&T certainly wants to match Google’s pace when it comes to deployment. Google Fiber was launched in Kansas City last year and was later expanded to Provo, Utah and Austin, Texas. Google announced earlier this year in February its proposal to expand Fiber into 34 new cities.

Bear in mind though that the proposed cities aren’t confirmed until local officials give the approval. Both Google and AT&T have to jump through the same hoops in order to gain approval. Only then they can begin building the networks. AT&T expects that following approval in these new cities, it may be able to start building the network by the end of 2014.

Current rates of AT&T Gigapower in Austin offer 1Gbps download speeds for just $70 per month, it balloons to $120 per month if customers opt for cable TV as well. AT&T charges $150 per month for the holy trinity, which consists of internet, cable TV and unlimited voice service.

AT&T Gigapower Looks At Expansion Into 21 New Cities , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Web, AT&T, Google Fiber,

While Facebook is seen more as a casual sort of social network, LinkedIn could be thought of as a more professional version of Facebook where people use it to connect to others of varying professions, like to build up a work-related network so to speak.

It is also because of the number of professionals that use LinkedIn that it can also be used to poll professionals who use the website, but unfortunately it looks like that feature could soon be shutting down.

According to LinkedIn, they have announced that LinkedIn Polls will be shutting down on the 15th of May, meaning that if you wanted to use the feature to poll your connections on the network, you’ll need to find some other means to do so.

The company writes, “We’re continuously evaluating how our current products and features are used, and seeking new ways to focus our resources on building the best products. This sometimes results in the retirement of certain features.” They also stated that all data related to polls will also be removed in the process.

LinkedIn Polls was introduced back in December 2011 and was designed as a way to gain the insights of members of the group. This is actually not the first LinkedIn Poll to be retired as in the past, the company has also retired its general polling application. In any case like we said, you’ll need to find an alternative but there are plenty of third-party services out there that you can easily check out, such as Voice and Wedgies, for example.

LinkedIn Polls For Groups Will Be Shutting Down 15th May , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Web, linkedin,

Google Trends is a great tool to find out what people are searching for on the internet. It allows you to keep an eye on hot searches in real time or even go as far back as 2004 to gauge historical trends. This information comes in handy when you’re a business owner trying to find out what people are saying about your brand, or if you’re a student researching a topic for class. The possibilities are endless, but it does require some work. Google has added a new feature into Trends which will make it easier to get the right insights at the right time with email subscriptions.

You now have the ability to subscribe to any search topic on Google Trends as well as Hot Searches for any country and even the monthly chart of top searches in the U.S. It is possible to adjust how subscription emails are sent to your inbox, frequency rates for Hot Searches are once a day, once a week or “as-it-happens.” Emails about individual search topics can be limited to once a week or once a month.

One might think that this new feature sounds a lot like Google Alerts, a notification service that the company launched in 2007. It sends email alerts when certain phrases or terms appear online. There has been speculation that Google Alerts may be shut down, but seeing as how the company did a major overhaul of Alerts back in January, it would be unusual for it to kill the service soon after that.

Google Trends Gets Email Subscriptions

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Web, Google,