This series of posts will walk you through the process of figuring out whether or not you can cancel your cable or satellite subscription.
As much as cable and satellite providers would like you to think they're the only ones with the good content, you do have other options.
These devices take content from the Internet to display on your TV.
We're not giving up the fight! These links take you to resources supporting the campaign to get Google to bring back Classic Maps.
While none of these alternative sites are perfect replacements for Classic Maps, they're what we've got for now. I haven't checked most of these out personally yet, but I'm linking to them anyway in case you find them helpful for your purposes.
Yeah, I hate 'em too... But if we're going to be stuck with them at least for the foreseeable future, I'll be working on some tutorial posts to try to make them a little less painful.
Today’s T3 includes tips for fixing Facebook link previews, the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update release, and a new way to create photo books.
1. Fixing Facebook sharing images and blurbs
You may remember that in Facebook’s earlier days, it was common that when you shared a link to a web page you’d get some weird URL as the headline and no picture, making it highly unlikely anyone would ever click on it. Thanks to better back-end processing from both Facebook and website software, this is rarely an issue anymore.
However, there’s still an issue that primarily affects people who publish websites or blogs where they accidentally put the wrong title, description, or image for sharing articles and posts. In that case, even after correcting those elements, the wrong info still shows up when the link is posted to Facebook.
The problem is that Facebook keeps that information in a type of memory cache on its end, probably to reduce the amount of processing resources required with generating this share info. The good news is that you can force Facebook to re-scrape the page to replace the wrong elements with the updated ones.
- Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug.
- Enter the URL you want to update and click the Debug button. (If it tells you the page hasn’t been shared before, click the Fetch New Information button.)
- Scroll down the page to the Link Preview section to see what Facebook currently has for the sharing information. If it’s incorrect, click the Scrape Again button.
NOTE: Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 clicks of the Scrape Again button to get everything cleared out and the correct information to display. If it’s still not right at that point, and you’re the person who manages the web page, you should double-check you have entered all the metadata correctly and you may need to purge your own server’s cache before using the Facebook Debug tool again.
2. Windows 10 Creators Update Coming Soon
The next major release of Windows 10 is expected to roll out in April. The article below does a great job explaining the main new features to expect, including turning the once-a-butt-of-jokes Paint program into a powerful 3D content creation tool:
Windows 10 Creators Update: An overview of the new features and improvements on the way (Neowin, 3/20/17)
If you don’t want to wait for the public rollout, you can get the not-quite-finished-but-almost-there version now by joining the Windows Insider Program.
Visit Windows 10 Creators Update page on Microsoft’s website. >>
3. Make Photo Books with ChatBooks
I’ve never made a photo book in my life, so I have no idea how difficult, time-consuming, or expensive it might be. But there’s a new service called Chatbooks whose primary marketing message is that it makes the process a lot easier, faster, and cheaper with an app that automatically builds the books based on photos you identify from your phone’s camera, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.
Again, I haven’t tried this myself, but it sure seems like a great idea. However, that’s not the main reason I’m sharing this tip. The main reason is so I can share one of the funniest marketing videos I’ve ever seen. Enjoy!
You may also be interested in:
The Facebook News Feed: How to (Sort of) Control What You See