Facebook Annoyances, Retrieving Stolen Laptops, and Six-Strike Safety

This week on the podcast we're talking about Facebook annoyances, tracking stolen gadgets, and how much water you actually need. We're also answering your questions about streaming from XBMC over the web, sharing music with your significant other, and how the six-strike law can impact you.

How to Listen to This Week's Episode

Here's how you can listen to our episode:

News and Top Stories

• Google+ Adds Sign-In, Allowing Third-Party Apps to Integrate with Your Account: One glaring omission from Google+ was the lack of third-party app support, preventing you from sharing activity from certain apps and more. Today Google released sign-in for Google+ so developers can offer greater options.
• Google Settings Gives You Convenient Access to Other Google Apps' Settings on Android: Google has quietly updated its Google Play service and automatically installed a new app for all of us Android users. It's called Google Settings, and all the app does is give you shortcuts to the settings for Google+, Maps, and Search, as well as your location and ad preferences.
• Another iOS 6.1 Bug Allows Thieves to Bypass Your Lock Screen: Researchers have discovered another lock screen bug in iOS 6.1, which allows someone to get past your lock screen without a passcode and view that phone's data after plugging it into a computer.
• How Facebook Is Using You to Annoy Your Friends (and How to Stop It): Facebook is using you, whether you know it or not. Sometimes it's obvious: you like a page, you click share, Facebook benefits. Other times, you have no clue until a friend asks you about a photo they saw that you liked. The unfortunate side-effect to all of this is that it can actually make you an unbearable annoyance to your friends, and you probably don't even know it. Here's how it works, and how to stop it.
• Can I Track My Laptop or Smartphone After It's Been Stolen? Generally, no, but there are some last-ditch efforts you can try!
• How Much Water Do I Actually Need to Drink Every Day? We decided to figure out the answer to this question that seems to have 1,000 different answers.

Questions and Answers

Each week we answer five questions from readers and listeners. Here's what we tackled this week.

• How can I stream my XBMC media over the internet? Set up an SMB/AFP share, forward the necessary ports, and access the share remotely through an XBMC client. This isn't terribly secure, however, so consider using SFTP instead. For added security, a VPN will allow you to act like your on your home network while you're away (read this guide for setup) but it will be kind of slow. Really, this is what Plex is best at. It handles all this trouble for you. You're an XBMC fan so you probably don't want to switch, but you might consider running a Plex server in addition to XBMC for remote access purposes only.
• How do I merge my music with my wife's music so we can get it all on both our Google Music accounts? She uses iTunes, I use folders. There isn't an easy way. You need to start using iTunes or she needs to stop, but how you manage your music is going to have to be the same if you want to automatically sync everything. If you go the iTunes route, MediaRover or even Dropbox can sync everything. Any file syncing service can do the trick if you're just using folders, of course.
• Will my VPN (VyprVPN to be exact) protect me from the new six strikes rules with my ISP? No, VyperVPN keeps logs. First, read about the six strikes law so you know how it works and how you need to protect yourself, then read our safe torrenting guide and VPN-choosing guide.
• Should I ever use two Antivirus apps at the same time? No, never run two antivirus apps simultaneously because they'll conflict with each other. That said, you can install two and run them separately, always making sure one is off when the other is on.
• Is there a good Android alternative to Due, my favorite iOS app? We couldn't think of anything and AlternativesTo didn't have suggestions, but sometimes searching the Google Play Store for the app you're looking for often helps. Due is such a simple name that none of these suggestions are really helpful. If anyone knows of a good alternative, please write in an tell us. That said, if the only thing barring you from switching is one app, you should just switch anyway. I didn't want to switch because my favorite iOS app, Downcast, didn't have an Android equivalent that I knew of. I switched anyway, tried out about six podcast apps, and eventually found what I was looking for.
• I have a large iTunes library that has come from...various sources. I'm super OCD and would like all of the song names/artists/albums/art/etc/etc to be correct and up-to-date. Can you point me in the best direction for an automated solution to this? Sure.

Tips of the Week

Downloads of the Week

How Do I Submit a Question?

There are two ways to send in your question:

Please keep your questions as brief as possible. This means about 3-5 sentences for emails and 30-60 seconds for calls and videos. Your questions can be specific, but broader questions are generally better because they'll apply to more people. For example, "how can I breathe new life into my old PDA?" is much better than "what can I do with an old HP iPAQ 210?" Either way, we look forward to hearing from you!

Newspaper, Computer, Clock (by Brandon Hopkins), and Alert (by Dima Yagnyuk) provided by the Noun Project.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/TdszAuwVoxw/ask-lifehacker-podcast-live-right-now

ann arbor news ides of march elizabeth smart nick young south dakota state long beach state beasley