You don’t often see Sonos smart wi-fi speakers on sale, but this Sonos PLAY:1 speaker is currently selling for $180, down 10 percent from its usual $200 price tag.

Unlike a Bluetooth speaker that streams tunes from your phone, this smart wi-fi speaker (Sonos PLAY:1 Smart Speaker) connects to your home Wi-Fi network and streams music directly. You can use streaming digital music services like Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music Unlimited, Spotify and Pandora.

Setup is a snap for this smart wi-fi speaker, and once the PLAY:1 is connected to your wireless network, you can control it from anywhere using an iOS or Android app. You can also add a second speaker for a stereo pair, or add more speakers in other rooms. You can even create different music “zones” within your house. Sounds good to me.

Check out the Sonos PLAY:1 Smart Speaker on Amazon!

If you buy something through our Deals posts, we may earn some money. Thanks for the support!

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These Open Graph applications (which, include apps from the likes of Hulu, Spotify, The Washington Post, Yahoo! News, Urbanspoon, and more) can “seamlessly” share you most recent app activity with your Facebook friends after a single click of the “Add to Facebook” button.

Of course, if you’re eager to show the world that you’re, say, reading up on the Kardashians on Yahoo! News, they hey—go for it.

But if you’d rather keep your reading, listening, and streaming habits to yourself, here’s how to stop Facebook’s new, oversharing Open Graph apps from spilling the beans.

You can limit who sees the posts from “Open Graph” Facebook apps right before you install the app onto your account.

Muzzle an Open Graph app before it’s installed
The first (and luckily, not only) chance you have to keep an Open Graph app from sharing all your activity on Facebook comes as you’re installing the app itself.

During the installation process, you’ll see a pull-down menu that lets you choose how far and wide you’d like your app activity to be spread—from “Public” (meaning everyone and anyone, even non-Facebook members) to “Only Me.”

Select “Only Me” to keep an Open Graph app from sharing any activity at all, or pick a Friend List like “Family” or “Close Friends” to keep your activity in a tighter circle. You can even choose to share with only a few specific friends by selecting “Custom.”

Once you’re satisfied, go ahead and click the “Add to Facebook” button.

You can always go back a change the sharing options for an Open Graph app—or just delete the app completely, if you wish.

Tweak Open Graph app sharing settings in your Privacy Settings
Did you already grant an Open Graph app permission to share your activity with the Facebook masses, or are you simply not sure who can see what? Never fear—there’s an easy way to change the sharing settings for an Open Graph app, even after you’ve installed it.

• Go to the top-right corner of any Facebook page, click on the little downward arrow (it’s right next to the “Home” link), select Account Settings, then click the Apps link in the left column.
• Now, see an app in the list that’s been posting a little too much activity to your Facebook Timeline? Click its “Edit” button along the right side of the page.
• Find the section labeled “App activity privacy,” then check the pull-down menu to the right. Don’t like what you see? Then click it and section a new option—again, anything from “Public” to “Only Me.”
• From here, you can also revoke the app’s permission to post anything to your Timeline at all (click the “X” next to “Add app activity to your Timeline” and/or “Post to Facebook as you”), or you can zap the app completely by clicking the “Remove app” link.
• All done? Click “Close.”

So, are you comfortable with “Open Graph” apps sharing what you’re reading, listening to, and watching on Facebook?

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Execs at Spotify have announced that a new “private mode” on the Spotify desktop software will keep the titles of the music tracks you’re listening to from popping up in the new Facebook ticker, for all your friends to see. Nice—except we may have to wait weeks for the update to arrive. Update: Actually, you may already have the latest version of Spotify, which has a “Private Listening” option under the “Spotify” menu at the top of the screen. Be aware, though, that you must remember to enable the “Private Listening” setting each time you launch the Spotify app. What follows is a more permanent solution.

All your Spotify activity will pop up on the new Facebook ticker—unless you tweak your privacy settings, that is.

But here’s the thing, You can actually keep all your Spotify activity on Facebook private right now—and permanently—in just a few steps. Here’s how.

1. Log on to Facebook, click the little arrow in the top-right corner of the page (next to “Home”), then select “Privacy Settings.”
2. Scroll down the page near the bottom, until you find the “Apps and Websites” section, then click the “Edit Settings” link on the right.
3. Next, in the “Apps you use” section at the top, click the “Edit Settings” button.
4. You should now be looking at a list of apps that you’ve authorized on Facebook—and somewhere in the list, you should see Spotify. Once you’ve found its listing, click the “Edit” link to the right.
5. The Spotify entry will expand, revealing all its settings. From here, you can do any number of things to keep it from notifying your Facebook friends what you’re listening to. For instance, you can revoke its access to your News Feed, or stop it from posting updates to your wall.
6. But here’s the easiest way to keep your Spotify activity private: go to the “App activity privacy” section, click the pull-down menu, and pick a new privacy option, from Public to Friends only.
7. Don’t want anyone to see—or hear—what you’re listening to on Spotify? Select “Customize,” click the pull-down menu under “Make this visible to,” and click “Only Me.”

Looking for more Facebook tips and how-tos? Click here!

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Yep, get ready to take “oversharing” to a whole new level.

Now, just to be clear, the impending changes to your Facebook profile page won’t land in your account for a few weeks, although several related new features—like that floating “ticker” that appeared on the Facebook home page a few days ago—are already here.

But the changes, once they do arrive, will be fairly significant. In place of the linear “wall” of activity on your current Facebook profile will appear a jumbo-sized “cover photo” that you can use to … well, “express who you are,” as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg puts it. The cover photo could be a snapshot from a recent vacation, or a picture of your dogs, or your tykes in their Halloween costumes; think of it as the wallpaper on your PC desktop.

Your new Facebook profile page, with the Timeline on the right.

Also new will be a series of thumbnailed tiles for letting visitors view your Facebook friends, your most recent photos, a map of everywhere you’ve been, and a compendium of your various “likes.”

Most importantly, though, there’s the new, appropriately named “Timeline,” which will let your Facebook pals browse your shared photos, links, videos, and stories through the years, with summaries and “trends” of your activity posted at the top of the page.

Make no mistake, Facebook has big plans for your Timeline. Instead of just collecting the content you’ve actively shared with your friends, your Timeline can also show the world (depending on your comfort level, of course) what you’re listening to on Spotify, what you just watched on Hulu, and how many laps you did around the park last week.

How so? With the help of a new series of applications that can share what you’re doing, once you’ve given them the go-ahead.

Using a new behind-the-scenes architecture dubbed “Open Graph,” this new “class” of apps (like, for instance, Spotify for music, or Hulu for TV shows) will ask you once—and only once—for permission to access your activity and publish to your Timeline.

Grant that permission to Spotify, for example, and your friends will be able to see what you’ve been listening to on Spotify—or indeed, the song you’re playing right now—automatically, with updates appearing in your Timeline and on that new “ticker” on the Facebook home page.

Not only that, but your friends will be able to listen or watch (in the case of Hulu or, soon enough, Netflix) along with you. All they’ll have to do is click an item in your Timeline or in the ticker—which might read, for example, “Ben is listening to Born to Run on Spotify”—and click a button to sample what you’ve been playing.

A new breed of Facebook apps will only ask once before they start sharing all your activity with the world.

The same principle will apply to games, too. Take “Words with Friends,” the Scrabble-like social game that you can play on Facebook. With the new “open graph” system, your friends might be able to see that you just got a triple-word score in a game—and they’ll even be able to see an image of the board, complete with your brilliant 78-point Words with Friends move.

These new “open graph” applications will also extend to news sites, letting your friends see each and every story you’ve read on, say Yahoo! News or The Huffington Post, while a new series of “lifestyle” apps will let the world track the latest recipes you’ve tried, or the milestones you’ve hit in your fitness regimen.

“Real-time serendipity” is how Mark Zuckerberg is describing Facebook’s new, wide-ranging sharing philosophy, noting that these new social apps will make it even easier for users to find more music to buy, more movies to watch, and more stories to read, all thanks to the “passive” suggestions of their Facebook friends.

Of course, another way of looking at Facebook’s new Timeline is as the ultimate example of an “overshare”—in other words, exposing everyone in your world to (almost) everything you do online.

Now, I should point out that the items in your Timeline will be subject to the same privacy controls that govern the rest of Facebook; you can share all your activity with everyone or just some of it, or you can allow only your friends or just you to browse your every last click.

Also, this new breed of social apps from the likes of Spotify, Hulu, Netflix, and Yahoo! won’t share anything unless you give them permission to first—although once you do, the sharing will begin without any more prompting.

So, what do you think? Looking forward to sharing what you’re watching, reading, and listening to on Facebook—and seeing what your friends are enjoying, as well? Or is Facebook taking this whole “real-time serendipity” thing a bit too far?

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So, what’s so special about Spotify? Aren’t there already music sites like Pandora and Slacker (more on them in a moment) that stream tunes to your PC for free? Well yes, but Spotify boasts a key twist that sets it apart.

What exactly is Spotify?

Launched back in 2008, Spotify is an online music streaming company that serves up more than 15 million songs from all the big music labels, which you play through a peppy, easy-to-use desktop application (similar to iTunes).

Spotify has been up and running in seven countries—including the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, The Netherlands, and Spain for some time now, but it’s only making its (long-awaited) U.S. debut today.

How much does Spotify cost?

Spotify offers three membership levels: a free service that lets you play up to 20 hours of music a month (as noted by the New York Times) with occassional advertising, a $4.99-a-month Unlimited plan that lets you stream unlimited music, without the ads, and a $9.99 Premium service that offers downloadable or streaming music for your smartphone.

OK, so what’s so special about that? Aren’t there already websites that stream music for free?

Yes indeed. There’s Pandora, a popular music site that lets you create instant (and free) radio “stations” based on, say, your favorite artist or a particular song. Two other sites—Slacker, and Last.fm—do much the same thing. Meanwhile, we’ve also got Napster and Rhapsody, which offer for-pay streaming music starting at $5 and $10 a month, respectively.

Spotify’s peppy, easy-to-use desktop software for the Mac.

But here’s the thing: With Pandora, Slacker, and Last.fm, you can’t search for and play the exact song you want to hear (or at least you can’t with their free accounts). Instead, selecting, say, “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen will queue up an instant “station” with similar songs—great if you’re simply in a Bruce kind of mood, not so great if you must hear “Born in the U.S.A.” in particular.

With Spotify, you can choose and play an exact song with a free account—a key advantage over its free online music competitors.

The catch? As I mentioned above, you’ll hear occasional advertisements between tracks, and you’re restricted to 20 hours of music streaming a month in the first six months of your membership. After six months, you can only listen to 10 hours a month.

And one more thing: you aren’t allowed to listen to any particular song more than five times a month.

But if you pay for a Spotify account, those limitations are lifted, right?

Yep—starting with the $5/month Unlimited plan, you can listen to all the music you want, all the time.

Is all this legal?

Yes. Spotify signed deals with all the big music lables, so don’t worry—you won’t get hit with any lawsuits or get in trouble for using Spotify on your work PC.

Okie doke, you convinced me. Where can I sign up?

Right here, but there’s another catch: For now, access to the free Spotify plan is by invitation only. You can sign up here to request an invite. That said, you can sign up for an Unlimited or Premium account immediately—and if you do, you’ll be granted two invites to share with your friends.

Any other interesting features we should know about?

Well, Spotify’s desktop software is actually pretty nice—clean, easy to use, and very fast (and streaming tracks on Spotify start playing instantly, by the way). You can also share any songs you’re listening to on Facebook or Twitter, and you can share (or not) your iTunes playlists with your Facebook friends.

So, any other questions about Spotify? Let me know!

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