I have been hearing and reading from a lot of different people about the growing concern regarding privacy on Facebook and wanting to quit. First of all, if you don’t want to share something that might be a little compromising, do not put it up online in the first place. It would make your life a whole lot easier.

However, if there are things you share that you want to limit who sees them and how they can share them, hopefully this post helps you accomplish that. In order to update your settings with the new Facebook Privacy Settings, just follow these simple steps and you should be able to restrict what you want, from who you want.

Note: If you click the image, it will actually direct you to that page on Facebook.

Here is a step-by-step instruction guide on how to reduce the amount of information you are sharing to third and unwanted parties but as I said earlier, the best protection against shared information is to not share it at all.

1. First on your main profile page, select the “Account” button on the top right corner of the page and select “Privacy Settings“.

2. Now select the 4th item down on the list, “Applications and Websites“.

3. Once you are on this page, there are a couple of options for you (“What your friends can share about you” and “Instant Personalization Pilot Programs”) but I would certainly recommend both of them. If you only want to do the first one, go to step 4 but skip 5. If you only want to do the second one, go to step 5 and skip 4 — but again, I would recommend at least taking a look at both.

In a follow up to Twitter Has Been Way Too Good To Me, I figured to write another one in light of two wins in two days courtesy of trivia question from @NBAStoreNYC — two pretty nice birthday gifts to myself following my birthday this past Sunday.

[April 14, 2010]

1. The first question was yesterday which asked a Raptors question which was awesome even though it would be followed by the Toronto Raptors being eliminated from the playoffs via a Chicago Bulls victory. Hopefully CB4 hasn’t played his last game up north and will be back following what promises to be a ridiculous free agency period.

“Wanna win a Raptors Authentic Jersey? What is Patrick O’Bryant’s wingspan? 1st to answer correctly wins!!!”

To all you stats fanatics out there, the answer is 7’6″ wingspan and that is certainly something I did not know off-hand. Being near a computer and Google will always help. I’m pretty sure its the Green Raptors jersey and I’ll probably put up a picture once it gets here in the mail.

[April 15, 2010]

2. The second trivia question was related to a picture they tweeted earlier in the day but it was something that I did not see until the contest was over. The question was:

“To win his figurine, please tell me who is the following: 1 of only 5 players in NBA history to avg a 25-7-7 in a season.”

A pure guess between Michael Jordan and Lebron James. I would love to know how the other players are that have averaged 25 points, 7 rebounds and assists in a season season. A pretty good trivia question if you ask me.

I definitely put off recommending blogs in the segment “ABG Recommends” much longer than I would have liked but as this week’s snowpocalypse allowed me to get some work done, I’ll recommend one now. This one is called “The Two-Headed Think Tank” and its co-written by Niko Gkionis and Matt Friesen who were both teammates in Belgium for a little while.

Niko Gkionis is a professional soccer player who currently plies his trade in the Belgium 3rd division for Excelsior Veldwezelt. Born and raised in New Jersey, Niko probably likes MTV reality television shows just as much as I despise them but we can both agree to like sports of all kinds. He graduated with a degree in Chemical Biology from Stevens Institute of Technology. I saw Niko play for two years when I first came to Stevens and he’s still probably one of the best players I have seen play in D-III all these years later.

Matt Friesen spends his days in the rain of the NW playing soccer for the Kitsap Pumas, members of the NW division of the USL’s PDL. He’s pretty much been a West Coast boy his entire life as he was born in California, raised in Oregon and attended Whitworth University (in Spokane, Washington) graduating with a degree in Computer Science.

At first I wasn’t sure how this blog was going to work out since one of the two guys takes a relative topic in the sports or entertainment world and puts up their view and the other is left to reply in the following post. It is quite a novel idea and I haven’t seen too many other blogs like it that post a reply to one of their own posts.

As the great Lou Gehrig famously said on this day 70 years ago, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” I probably wouldn’t go that far but I’ll continue to ride my little lucky streak as far as it will take me.

Twitter has been really, really good to me. I started using this about two years ago but I didn’t start using it full-time until about late last year. More recently as Twitter has become mainstream, bigger companies and corporations have started running PR contests and giveaways to get more followers and just get more publicity.

I should start off by saying that I have not had any help by another person in getting these answers and/or submitting them for me. It has mostly been a good combination of TweetDeck, Firefox and Google which have allowed me to succeed so far.

Here are my winnings so far (in order I won them, starting with the earliest):

[May 12, 2009]
1. The first thing I ever won on Twitter was a $10 Gift Certificate courtesy of @BaskinRobbins which was doing its 88 cent promotion Soft Serve promotion with a contest daily or twice a day. The question that I answered correctly figured to be a sports one and was

“What was the horse’s name that won the Kentucky derby in 1988?”

I would like to be able to say that I knew that off the top of my head that the winner was Winning Colors but let’s just leave it at a search engine helping me figure that one out.

[May 14, 2009]
2. Two days later, Angels and Demons movie account (@AandDMovie) ran a contest asking:

“What cam number are you looking at on AltarsOfScience.com?”

Just saw this on a couple of blogs I read but I think it is originally from the Huffington Post so here it is:

10 warning signs that you may be addicted to Facebook

1. Facebook is your home page.

2. You update your status more than twice a day.

3. You have over 500 “friends” half of whom you’ve never actually met.

4. As soon as you step away from your computer you’re on FB on your phone.

5. You are a FB stalker. You qualify as a FB stalker if you

a) click on someone’s profile more than once a day even if they haven’t messaged or tagged you in a photo.

b) have dragged and dropped more than 3 FB photos (not from your own profile)

c) actually go to a place mentioned on someone’s page in hopes of seeing them in real life…creepy!

6. You change your profile picture more than a 12-year=old girl.

7. You have checked your FB page while reading this article.

8. You clean up your “wall” so it looks like you spend less time on FB.

9. You are a member of more than 10 groups and respond to every event invitation “attending” even if you have no intention of going.

10. You change your relationship status just to mess with people.

I think it is safe to say that I know a couple of people who would most certainly qualify as addicted. I definitely know that an old roommate qualifies for #9, while maybe a kid or two from those that I coach soccer are guilty of #5. I don’t think I know anyone with sympton #1 although if you would like to admit it, I would most certainly like to know.