recent

Facebook is testing a couple of new features that, as usual, some people may like and others not so much.

The two features would add notices of upcoming events and recently released albums to a user's news feed, according to The Next Web.

The upcoming events feature would suggest nearby events. But these would be events that you wouldn't necessarily have been invited to join, revealed blog site AllFacebook. This is also a follow-up to the upcoming concerts feature that the social network started testing last month.

The recently released albums feature would list new albums by artists … Read more

Facebook has made a lot of changes over the past couple of years. We've seen new features get added, while others died off. We've seen new games get added and take over most of our Timelines. And we've also seen Facebook pick settings for us that we can't seem to change by default because the options just aren't there.

Well, enough of that.

If you're like me, you find keeping track of family and friends on Facebook much easier when the posts are in chronological order. Facebook obviously disagrees because at some point after … Read more

When Netflix users in the U.S. are sick of their queue or feel like they've already seen much of what's been offered on "Watch Instantly," they can just scroll down to the "Recently Added" subhead and see if the video service has anything fun and new to watch.

Until today, only U.S. and Canadian users had this feature. Now, people in the U.K., Ireland, and Latin America can see all of the new titles that Netflix has "recently added," announced the streaming service today.

Google announced today that people's searches can be saved via Google.com across several devices using a new "recent" icon. This new software aims to help people who search for a restaurant, shop, or other information on their computer to see that same search on their smartphone or any other Web-ready device.

"We provide this new convenience feature for users who have Web History enabled and are logged into Google when doing their search," Google software engineer Junichi Uekawa wrote in a blog post today. "Next time you are heading to a place you … Read more

Do you count yourself among the multitudes who dislike Facebook's latest revision, mainly because it took away the ability to toggle between Top Stories and Most Recent in your news feed? Regarding the new news feed, Facebook explains, "If you haven't visited Facebook for a while, the first things you'll see are top photos and statuses posted while you've been away...If you check Facebook more frequently, you'll see the most recent stories first."

If you don't trust Facebook to sort your news for you, you can manually create a Most Recent news feed. Ironically, you must turn to one of Facebook's new features--Lists--to resurrect the old Most Recent feed. Just create a custom list and add all of your friends and pages to it; the resulting list appears to be sorted by chronological order. Disclaimer: If you have hundreds upon hundreds of Facebook friends, the process will be laborious because there isn't a way to select all, at least that I have found. Instead, you must click one by one to add each friend or page to the list.… Read more

FFT stands for Find Files Time. It's a free tool that shows when files in a folder are modified with a high degree of specificity and accuracy. Users can view which files were modified and when in days, hours, minutes, and seconds, or search for files based on when they were modified. You can also use it like a fast file counter. It's portable freeware that requires no installation, but it does require Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher, which isn't a problem for Vista and Windows 7 users.

We extracted FFT's compact executable and … Read more

EasyFind is a useful freeware search tool that can be a substitute for--or, more likely, supplement to--Spotlight in the Mac OS.

Spotlight has made great strides in recent years, but its lack of speed and specificity can still leave some users frustrated--especially older Mac users who miss pre-Spotlight standalone search apps like Sherlock. EasyFind is a more blunt search tool, and unlike Spotlight, it doesn't index your hard drive. That means it searches your entire hard drive (or whatever location you specify) from scratch every time you enter a query, and it lets you set quite a few parameters … Read more

One of the most common uses for the Apple menu has been to quickly launch utilities, system settings, and programs. Starting with its early implementations in the classic Mac OS, you used it to access the control panel, the calculator, keycaps, and other accessories. With later versions Apple added the ability to launch recent applications and documents--a feature that has carried over to OS X today.… Read more

Fresh is a small, low-cost, file-management utility that essentially offers an amped-up version of the Finder's "Recent Items" lists, along with a quasi-replacement for your Desktop called "The Cooler."

The app's streamlined interface consists of two simple "zones," or panes, which display your "Fresh Files" (basically, anything that's new to your computer or recently changed) and "The Cooler" (a user-defined collection of files that you want to have quick access to). "Fresh Files" is particularly great for tracking downloads and Mail attachments, and the Cooler … Read more