Internet Privacy

I don't know if you are like me, but I am a pretty oblivious person.  I like to live in my happy little bubble and think of the world as a pretty happy place.  When it comes to your internet privacy though, it really isn't the case.  The government really can track everything that you do online which is a really scary thought.  Also, if the government can do it, there are plenty of brainy hackers out there who can have access to what you do too.  This interesting article published by the Huffington post helps to show you how you can protect yourself and keep your internet searches and such private.  One of the ones that I found to be extremely interesting was DuckDuckGo.  Whenever you use a search engine like Google, the search engine saves your searches and could give information out to people who you don't want seeing it.  DuckDuckGo is a search engine that vows that they will not collect any information about you or the things that you search.  In the article it helps to show you how you can make this DuckDuckGo your default search engine.  Another thing that you can do to help keep your searching's private is by downloading the Tor browser.  Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are browsers that track your cookies, IP addresses, and a whole lot more.  Tor is used to help you go online and communicate discretely and privately, without you being tracked, censored, or watched.  It is also shown in the article how you can go online and download it to whichever operating system you have like Mac, Windows, or Linux.  I think that this article brings to light how much we actually are watched and monitored without really even realizing it, and the things that were shown are great precautions to keep things about your private.

VSCOcam

One of my favorite apps on my phone that I don't think a whole lot of people know about is VSCOcam.  I am really into photography and taking really artsy, different kinds of pictures, so this app is perfect for me.  It is similar to Instagram, but you don't like other people's posts.  You just follow profiles who's pictures you like and that's what comes up on your feed.  You can edit and do everything to your picture on the app also, but it allows more filters and more editing than Instagram does.  But if you like the picture you edit on VSCO, you can save it and post it to your Instagram, Facebook, or other app of your choosing.  It doesn't have to stay isolated on that one app.  I love VSCO so much just because of how artsy and unique that app is.  You can also access VSCO from your computer.  There is a free filter app that you can apply to your computer, and then there are ones that you can buy for a pretty hefty price if you are really into photography and want to use them on pictures from a nicer camera than just your phone.  Below are some of the pictures that I took and filtered with my VSCO account.  I recommend at least giving VSCO a try.  It's an easy app to operate and if you want to give your photos a little more depth and interest, VSCO is the app to try!

Swivel Locks Android's Screen Orientation for Individual Apps

Don't you hate it whenever you are on Youtube or on certain apps and you wish that your phone would automatically know to be in landscape mode or in portrait?  Well, if you have and Android device, Swivel has now made your life much easier.  Swivel is the new app that lets you permanently choose the orientation type that you want for any app on your Android phone.  Youtube is probably the best example.  Almost always, Youtube is much better in landscape mode.  Now, as you know, by default your Android phone usually only lets you do auto-rotate or it doesn't allow it at all.  Now you can use Swivel to customize your phone's orientation.  It even goes beyond portrait and landscape by allowing you to specify the direction that your portrait/landscape screen faces. You can even go into your phone settings and turn off the auto-rotate, and still be able to set certain apps to auto-rotate and override your settings to accommodate your needs! Quite a cool invention and is only $0.99 on Google Play Store. Now all they need to do is come out with something just like this for the iPhone.  I for sure would greatly appreciate if they did that or if they were able to make it compatible for iPhones.