Downloading a Friend's Video from FB and Rotating the Video

How to Download a video a friend or family member posted on Facebook:

Facebook currently, doesn't give an easy option to download videos. However, following the steps below allows you to download any uploaded video on Facebook conveniently.

1. Log in to Facebook and find the video you want to download.
2. control-click on the video and select Show video link.
3. A small pop-up window should appear, with the video link. Copy the link.
4. In your browser's address bar (URL field), press paste the video link.
5. Now, modify the video link, changing the "www" at the beginning of the URL to "m". The URL should then start with https://m.facebook.com/...
6. Once changed, press Enter to open the mobile version of the page


If using Google Chrome browser:  Control-click on the video and select the Save as... option.
If using Firefox browser:  Control-click on the video and select the Save Link As... option.


How to Rotate or Flip Videos in Mac OS X
1. Open the video or movie file you wish to rotate into QuickTime Player in Mac OS X on your laptop.
2. Go to the “Edit” menu and choose one of the  rotation options for the video: (rotate left, right, ...)
3. Save the newly edited rotated video as usual by hitting Command+S or by going to File and “Save”


I chose to save the smaller file size 480 resolution option. Tweet

How do I know if I'm being watched too?

All this talk about wiretapping, wikileaks, hacking and such makes some of us, very edgy. 

How can you tell when your camera is active on your Macbook Air?

Next to the camera at the top, middle of your screen is a very small led indicator that comes on when your camera is active. It is pretty hard to see this hole when not active.

To see the green light - try running PhotoBooth application and you should see it.

If you fear someone might be watching you, try putting a post-it-note over the camera.




Tweet

Using Airdrop

I use airdrop as a convenient way to transfer photos from my iphone to my Mac laptop and to transfer files from one Mac to another Mac.  If you haven't tried airdrop, you should.

There are some excellent articles on the Apple support pages:

Share content with AirDrop on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204144

Use AirDrop to send content from your Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203106

Key to successfully using Airdrop is making sure your Mac and devices support Airdrop and that the user you are wanting to share with also has a Mac or device that supports Airdrop and that they are set up to receive and send.

Tweet

Staying up-to-date with Twitter App for Mac

Today, I decided to try out the  Twitter app for Mac.  I installed the app from the Mac App Store.

It constantly updates to latest tweets I am following.  I also opted to keep in my dock.  The app also installs a tweet icon in the top menu bar for easy access.

Tweet

Can I delete apps from my iTunes app to free up space on my laptop?

Periodically the space on my laptop gets lower than I like.  So, yesterday I decided to get rid of the numerous apps that I have stored in my iTunes app.  I was able to recover over 10 GB of much needed space. 

Did  you know that you do not need to keep copies of your iphone/ipad apps in iTunes, as you can re-download purchased content from the iTunes or App stores anyway. 

However, there may be a reason to keep some in your iTunes library.  If the developer pulls a particular version of an app and replaces it with another version, the only version available for re-download will be the current one, regardless of which version you originally purchased or want on your device.

So for any older devices you still have, i.e. an iPad 1, this may be the case for keeping an old app.  An iPad 1 cannot be updated beyond iOS 5.1.1 and many apps in the stores have been updated and now require iOS 5, 6 or 7.  In that situation, an iPad 1's owner may have only their own saved copies of compatible apps for re-installation if necessary.

So there are a few circumstances where you may want to keep some app's installers saved locally for yourself.

Tweet

Annoying message "plugin container app needs to install osaka font"

This morning, I was confronted with an annoying message box  requesting that I install  the Osaka font when I tried opening Firefox Browser (Developers Version 51).  I kept clicking on "Skip" as it is not my nature to install files that I do not recognize a reason to do so.

First, I searched for any problems that had been reported with the Firefox Browser and did see that this has been a recurring problem that has been reported by various users for other versions of Firefox.  So I spent most of the day, trying to open in safe-mode, refreshing my browser settings, searching for online solutions.  Nothing seemed to help with the annoying popup box.  I disabled plugins and tried various other means to solve my problem.

Finally, after a brief break to do some household chores, I returned to my laptop.

I tired one other thing which I will describe below:

(1)  I opened Font Book application from my Applications folder on my Mac.

(2)  Clicked on "All Fonts"

(3) Scrolled down the list to see "Osaka"  which is evidently a real font available for my Mac.

(4) I highlighted "Osaka"

(5) Clicked on "Edit" menu and selected "Download Osaka Family  - I figured that if  I downloaded this font through the Apple app that it would be reliable.

(6)  It appears that the Osaka Mono family was somehow not complete. And, with this downloaded, I quit Firefox and ran again.  Hurray!  No annoying message to download the Osaka font!

Hopefully, this has resolved my problem and will help others who might be experiencing the same problem with Firefox.  Good luck and have a nice day! Tweet