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[ FLIPPIN’ THE BIAS ]
FlipFeed
BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE.
Free | flipfeed.media.mit.eduTHE CONCEPT OF FlipFeed is simple, and incredibly relevant given the
current political and social climate. There’s been plenty of discussion
around social media ‘echo chambers’, a phenomenon in which a user’s
existing political and social views can be further strengthened by the
articles and opinions they view via their social media platforms.
These articles act as part of a feedback loop, due to the fact that the
media being followed by the user and the user’s friends influences
the targeted content, which will generally continue to align with the
user’s own political views. FlipFeed works through Twitter with the
intention of breaking this echo chamber down by deliberately ‘flipping’
this bias and providing you with another user’s perspective. In our
experience, a lot of the feeds we ended up flipping to were US-centric,
with Walmart, Trump and immigration issues popping up in high
frequencies, but nevertheless, the political leaning of these accounts
did seem to differ to our own. The extension itself provides a little
button that essentially does nothing but give you quick access to its
website, but with it installed, the option to ‘load another feed’
appears on the Twitter website itself.[ FAVICONS GALORE ]
GMAIL SENDER ICONS
SKIMMING EMAILS MADE EASIER.
Free | http://www.labnol.orgWith emails constantly pouring into our mailboxes from practically everyone
we know and then some, there’s always a clutter of unread mails in our
inboxes. And trying to figure out which ones are important can get a tad hard.
But Gmail Sender Icons makes that at least a bit easier to deal with. This
simple Chrome extension displays the domain names and site favicons of
incoming emails to make a small visual tweak that goes miles. Having the
additional information available makes it a lot easier to identify senders and
prioritise the important ones at a glance. The best part about this extension
is that it works in every folder in your mailbox, not just the main inbox —
particularly handy if you’ve got important emails inadvertantly being
redirected to the spam folder. It might prove lifesaving for work mailboxes,
given the volume of emails many of us tend to receive. The extension works
for both Gmail and G Suite accounts and we think it’s well worth a try.[ EN GARDE ]
METADEFENDER
MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK.
Free with optional IAP | http://www.metadefender.comAlthough we’ve seen improvements in the integrated antivirus software
bundled with the major operating systems, the fact that so many decent
security options are offered for free means it’s worth having a second line
of defence. MetaDefender is actually best employed as the initial safety
probe before downloading any files that could potentially be harmful.
It promises to give a more reliable safety check than any single piece of
virus detection software by cross-referencing an array of on-premise and
cloud-based malware detection software (around 30 to 40 of each). As a
result, this extension is incredibly useful when downloading from unfamiliar
sites, or sites that you already know to be suspect. To use it, you can simply
right-click on a download link and select ‘Scan with MetaDefender’,
or alternatively select the option to automatically scan all future downloads
from the extension button, where you can also view your scan history.
A large amount of the functionality is available for free, although there is
a paid version that unlocks deeper options such as the ability to turn off
automatic data uploading for the purposes of improving the service.[ EXTENSIONS TO ENHANCE YOUR WEB EXPERIENCE ]Browse better
THE TECHLIFE TEAM DIGS UP THE BEST NEW
BROWSER EXTENSIONS FOR CHROME, FIREFOX
AND MICROSOFT EDGE.
[ SHARMISHTA SARKAR AND HARRY DOMANSKI ][] BROWSE BETTER