From The Tips Box: Facebook ‘Recent Stories’, Thunderbolt Devices And More

Lifehacker readers offer their best tips for getting a better Facebook news feed, hanging up mid-voicemail, and attaching multiple Thunderbolt devices to your Mac.

Lifehacker’s App Directory is a growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools across multiple platforms.

Get Facebook’s “Most Recent” Stories Every Time

Croebh shows us a simple way to avoid Facebook’s automatic “Top Stories” view:

Pissed off that Facebook keeps changing your feed to “Top Stories”? Use the following link instead of the standard facebook.com: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

Changing your Facebook bookmark to this will switch your feed back to “Most Recent” every time you visit it. It’s the same link that it uses when you switch to Most Recent.

Lots of browser extensions, like the ever-useful Social Fixer, also have this feature — but this is a great extension-less fix.

Erase a Voicemail Message While Recording It

Jryan727 shares a useful mobile phone trick:

Have you ever called someone, got their voicemail, then while you’re in the middle of leaving them a message, have them call you back? So you switch to their call, have your conversation, then hang up, forgetting all about the voicemail on the other line, and it calls you back. If you just hear silence, your message is still recording, and if you hang up, it’ll be delivered. Instead, most voicemail systems (especially on cell carriers) support this:

1. Press pound (#)
2. Listen to your available options
3. Press the number associated with cancelling your message

Also, in an entirely different scenario where you’re leaving a message and screw it up, pressing # will usually offer you an option to re-record your message. This is especially awesome when you call that girl for the first time and leave a super awkward message and immediately regret it. Regret no more!

Daisy-Chain Multiple Thunderbolt Devices to Use Only One Port

Mike Trang shares one of Thunderbolt’s best features:

I just discovered my Thunderbolt device (Lacie Little Big Disk) can daisy chain a 3rd party monitor with my 11in Macbook Air!

I wanted to hook up my 26in Viewsonic Monitor to my Macbook Air 11in (2011). I bought a generic Mini DisplayPort to DVI adaptor and hooked it up to my Macbook Air. Great it works! But then I realised I can’t use my Lacie Little Big Disc! I thought my only option was to bite the bullet and buy Apple’s expensive Thunderbolt display.

However, with some experimenting, I discovered I can just stick the cable into the Lacie Little Big Disk and then the Little Big Disk to my Macbook Air via Thunderbolt cable, and viola! Dual Displays!

This is actually a pretty well-known feature of Thunderbolt, from my understanding, but if none of you knew about this, here it is!

iTunes Purchases Are Limited to Your Country’s Store

The Inquisitive Guy discovers one of iTunes’ little annoyances:

You can’t have the same (purchased) apps re-downloaded when you change your country in the App Store. You would have to buy them again, using your new country’s payment and other credentials.

So, to get those apps you have already paid for, change the country on iTunes Store. Enter the details you already used to use when you were there, re-download them. Now that you have re-downloaded them, change the country again (in iTunes). Now, you can continue using the apps you had purchased before while having your new country set in iTunes. You no longer need to unnecessary spend on those apps again.

There is one catch here, when you change the country in iTunes, it asks for that country’s legit details (that is the Credit Card details and the address) So, you must enter those when you change (you would already have that, ’cause that’s what you must have used to buy the apps) the country and then do the same when you change back.

This is ONLY valid for apps and nothing else. Yes, this will work (I got it checked/confirmed my Apple Support)

The best tip here might be: if you move to a new country, find a way to keep some valid credentials for your other country’s store, if you have a lot of apps there (whether it’s a sibling’s credit card, a prepaid credit card from that country, or something else).