Pinterest is a fast-growing social network described as a “virtual pinboard” enabling users to “organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” Pinterest recently increased their Facebook integration, but as Dave Taylor explains it is not straight foward to simply get a “pin” to display on your wall. Read Dave’s article to get the inside scoop, with step-by-step illustrated instructions.

It’s 2012, do you know who has access to your online accounts? Throughout the year we click on pretty, sparkling new-fangled apps, and in the process give third-party software providers access to various parts of our online identities. Ready to reign in control? My Permissions provides easy access to the URLs that control the permissions settings of popular services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. It is definitetly worth the few minutes it takes to review all your permission settings, and make sure they truly reflect your needs.

Is your inbox cluttered with meaningless notification emails from sites such as Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest? Todays tip is a nudge to spend five minutes now, and save yourself time everyday by having fewer incoming emails to delete. Notification Control doesnt actually do anything except point you to the exact URL for notification settings for twelve popular services, including Four Square and Google+ (in addition to those already mentioned above.) Go ahead. Give your inbox a break!

According to tech guru Leo Notenboom, the number one problem reported in 2011 by the millions of visitors that seek help from his Ask Leo website was email account theft. If you believe your email account has been comprised, immediately login in and change both your password and all your security questions. To learn more about protecting your email account, read Is Changing My Password Enough?

Although Mac promotes itself as easier to use than Windows, the newest versions of Windows have come a long way in usability. To help the computer-illerate with Windows, the MakeTechEasier.com site has published a great article titled 4 Things Computer-illiterate Users Should Know When Running Windows. The first item is not to believe any ads that promise to speed up your computer. The rest of the list is just as important. Be sure to read the entire article.

Amazon.com released their Price Check app for Android and iPhone last week. Using either a scanned bar code, a snapped photo, typed input or voice command, the app will display product prices from Amazon.com (including all its online merchants.) In addition to reading reviews and buying directly from the app, you have the option of sharing local retail prices with Amazon. When you start the app, it will prompt you to allow sharing of your location, which is required if you want to submit a retail price to Amazon. Amazon says that sharing local prices will “help ensure the best prices to all Amazon customers.”

Last year, Apple announced iCloud for storing all your iTunes music purchases “in the cloud,” making them available to all your devices wherever you have an Internet connection. Now Apple has taken this concept one step further with iTunes Match. iTunes Match is a paid service ($24.99 per year) that will store your entire music collection in iCloud. The neat trick is that for music you already own that matches a track that iTunes sells, you do not need to upload it. iTunes Match will simply see that your track matches one that they sell, and make it available to you on any cloud-ready device you use, such as your iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Macbook, etc. The benefit here is the time-savings from not having to upload gigabytes upon gigabytes of music. For a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up iTunes Match, read Dave Taylor.

Have you noticed news headlines showing up on your Facebook wall indicating that your friends are reading specific news articles? When you click on any of these shares, you are prompted to allow a Facebook app (such as the Washington Post’s Social Reader or The Guardian) access to your wall. If you click agree, every news article you read via the app will be shared with your Facebook friends. Is this just annoying or is this flood of shares killing the sharing cow? CNET editor Molly Wood suggests that this hyper-sharing is worse than annoying, it might just be the straw that will break sharing completely! Read her comments here

Do you worry about strangers reading your email? Perhaps a nefarious hacker or the government? Sorry to burst your conspiracy bubble, but chances are that the email voyeur reading your email is someone you know, such as a spouse, boss or work colleague. An email privacy survey by Retrvo Blog confirms that there is a “lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other.” Internet guru Bob Rankin offers his viewpoint here.

Even though you may never actually use Internet Explorer to browse the Internet, you should never delete it from your Windows machine because it used by other applications (even if you never actually do!) Learn why you should keep Internet Explorer up to date, and then, simply ignore it by reading this article from Ask Leo.