31 May 2013

New Google Calendar Controls for Android



Google Calendar's app for Android has been updated with new controls for selecting time, date, timezones, colors and editing repeating events. I wonder if the next Android version will use these controls instead of the existing pickers.



Selecting the time is a 2-part process: you first select the hour and then the number of minutes. The time picker is based on a real 24-hour clock.









Selecting the date is straightforward: Google uses a scrolling calendar that's great for picking a date from the current month or next month. If you want to pick a date from a different year, tap the year and you can quickly switch to 2014, 2015 or any other year.






Here are the standard time/date Android pickers. "Each picker provides controls for selecting each part of the time (hour, minute, AM/PM) or date (month, day, year). Using these pickers helps ensure that your users can pick a time or date that is valid, formatted correctly, and adjusted to the user's locale."






The control for repeating events looks much better:






Now you can pick different colors for events:






Google decreased Google Drive storage plans



Google has just announced the new deducted price list of Google Drive storage, now the cheapest google drive plan is 100GB for $4.99/month.


It’s shared storage that can be used in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.


Google Drive Storage Old Plans:-


google-drive-old-plans


Google Drive Storage New Plans:-


google-drive-new-plans



Google’s 25GB plan will no longer be available for new users. It was the most affordable storage plan: $2.49/month. Now the cheapest plan offers 100GB for $4.99/month, but it’s shared storage that can be used in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.



The post Google decreased Google Drive storage plans appeared first on Hack Illusion.




Google Storage Plans Downgraded



As previously anticipated, Google Drive's 25GB plan will no longer be available for new users. It was the most affordable storage plan: $2.49/month. Now the cheapest Google Drive plan offers 100GB for $4.99/month.



OLD:






NEW:






"Store up to 15GB in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos, and then pay for additional storage as your account grows," informs Google. It's interesting that paid storage no longer increases Gmail storage limit to 25GB.



You can still find the old plans here, so I suggest to choose the 25GB plan if you need more storage because it will be removed soon. You'll also get some additional Gmail storage.



Existing users will keep the old plans. "If your account lapses, your credit card is declined, or you choose to change your storage plan in any way (upgrade or downgrade), you'll be asked to choose from among the new Google Drive storage plans. Once you choose a new plan, you'll no longer be able to switch back to the old one." I still have the plan that offered 20GB of storage for only $5/year.






{ Thanks, Florian K. }


Drag facebook chat box anywhere in the screen



Are you wanna to change or move the position of chatbox while chatting with two or more facebook friends, So here is a trick that allows you to drag facebook chatbox anywhere in the screen.


By-default facebook chatbox is fixed on right bottom side, and when we chatting with multiple friends then all these chatbox covered our news feed, but using this tricks you can easily drag it to anywhere you want.


Here we are using an chrome extension called, Pretty facebook chat that lets you to make you chatbox draggable and you also have control on the size of chatbox, such as- increase, decrease size of chat box.


drag-facebook.chat-box


Apart from this, this extension also adds some beautiful little animation.


To get started with, all you have to do is install Pretty facebook chat from chrome store and use it.


The post Drag facebook chat box anywhere in the screen appeared first on Hack Illusion.




Cool Websites and Tools [May 30th 2013]



cwt logo static

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. Most of the listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here....

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Read full post: Cool Websites and Tools [May 30th 2013]



Need A Lightweight Music Player Without Sacrificing Features? Clementine! [Cross-Platform]



Clementine Music Player Intro

Sometimes you don’t really know what you want until you’re holding it in your hands. There are not-so-resource-intensive music players out there that are bland and there are monster RAM hogs that provide tons of eye candy and aesthetic pleasure. What if you want something in the middle of the road? Oh, hello Clementine! I recently stumbled across this music player and let me tell you: it offers the best of both worlds and there’s no other music player like it.

Continue reading the article


Read full post: Need A Lightweight Music Player Without Sacrificing Features? Clementine! [Cross-Platform]



Need A Lightweight Music Player Without Sacrificing Features? Clementine! [Cross-Platform]



Clementine Music Player Intro

Sometimes you don’t really know what you want until you’re holding it in your hands. There are not-so-resource-intensive music players out there that are bland and there are monster RAM hogs that provide tons of eye candy and aesthetic pleasure. What if you want something in the middle of the road? Oh, hello Clementine! I recently stumbled across this music player and let me tell you: it offers the best of both worlds and there’s no other music player like it.

Continue reading the article


Read full post: Need A Lightweight Music Player Without Sacrificing Features? Clementine! [Cross-Platform]



4 Websites To Create Personalized “Speed Dial” Homepages



Speed Dial

If you use an obscure browser that doesn’t show any support for Speed Dial, there’s good news for you: the same feature can easily be replicated by a large number of web services. All you need to do is configure your page and set it as your browser’s homepage, and it’s as good as any add-on for the same feature. Some do it better than others.

Continue reading the article


Read full post: 4 Websites To Create Personalized “Speed Dial” Homepages



HTC One, Nexus Edition



After Samsung Galaxy S4, it's time for HTC One to get a Nexus Edition. It will be available on June 26 from Google Play US for $599, $50 less than Samsung's flagship.



"The unlocked device will run on both AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States with support for high-speed LTE data on both networks. This 'Nexus user experience' version will contain 32GB of built-in storage. Much like the special edition Samsung Galaxy S4 unveiled during I/O, Google will be directly handling future software updates," reports The Verge.









The Google Play version of HTC One will run stock Android, but it will have the same hardware like a regular HTC One. For example, it will have an infrared blaster that can't be used by Google's software because the stock Android 4.2 doesn't support IR. It's likely that a future Android update will add native support for infrared sensors.



I've mentioned in the post about Galaxy S4 that the Nexus Edition is great for Google, phone manufacturers, developers and users. Even if you don't buy this phone, you'll be able to install Google's software or a custom ROM that uses it.



Why use the stock Android instead of HTC's Android flavour or Samsung's Android flavour? It doesn't include so much bloatware, it's faster and easier to update. You'll miss features like HTC's Zoe or Samsung's Smart Pause, but you'll get a phone that's more responsive, has a modern interface and can take advantage of the latest software updates. Still, Nexus Edition phones aren't Nexus phones, so don't expect the same experience. The software wasn't designed with this hardware in mind.



Maybe the 'Nexus user experience' project has a different goal: show the difference between the pure Android and custom Android, running on the same devices. Maybe this will convince users that the stock Android is better and phone manufacturers will have to use it or at least provide an option to switch to it. As the stock Android improves, it's time to use it and build upon it, instead of hiding it behind useless features.


Gmail Unveils New Inbox With Tabs To Give You More Control Over Your Email [Updates]



Gmail

Google introduced on Wednesday a fresh look for Gmail on its desktop, Android, and iOS apps. The changes are not cosmetic – the focus is on better email organization and management. This is the vaunted arena where every email application is pitting itself against the other, and while Gmail had remained comparatively unadventurous, the new updates promise much.

Continue reading the article


Read full post: Gmail Unveils New Inbox With Tabs To Give You More Control Over Your Email [Updates]



Tips for Gmail's Tabs and Categories



Some of you have already seen this screen in Gmail, which shows that the new inbox tabs have been enabled for your account. If not, click the gears button and see if you can find "Configure inbox". Click this menu item and you can use the new feature. If you can't find "Configure inbox", check back later.






There are 5 tabs:



- social messages from sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google+



- promotions: newsletters, offers and other bulk messages



- updates: confirmations, bills, receipts



- forums: messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists (hidden by default)



- primary: shows all the other messages






It's important to keep in mind that the tabs only show the messages from your inbox. If you have filters that automatically archive messages, you'll not see them in the new tabs.



If you've used the SmartLabels feature from Gmail Labs, you can delete the associated labels and filters after disabling the feature. Filters look like this: Matches: label:social-updates Do this: Skip Inbox. SmartLabels had the following names: social updates, promotions, notifications, forums. Inbox tabs replace the SmartLabels feature: instead of archiving messages, you can keep them in your inbox, but in separate tabs.



Here are some tips that should help you use the new feature:



Inbox tips



1. Click the "+" button to hide or show tabs. You can hide all the tabs except Primary to go back to the old inbox. This doesn't disable categorization, so you can use all the tips from the Categories section (starting from #6).









2. Starred messages are added to the Primary tab, but you can disable this option by clicking the "+" button and unchecking "include starred in Primary".



3. Drag inbox messages to a different category or right-click and select "move to tab".



4. Tabs show the number of unread messages and a list of senders. The inbox unread count only shows the number of unread messages from the Primary tab.



5. Keyboard shortcuts:

` Go to the next inbox tab

~ Go to previous inbox tab



Categories tips



6. There's a new Categories list in the sidebar that lets you find all your notifications, promotions, social updates, not just the messages from your inbox. The list is still displayed if you hide some inbox tabs, but you can collapse it. Click "Categories" to see the messages from all the categories.






7. Search for category:updates, category:social, category:forums, category:promotions to find these messages.



8. You can create filters that use these categories. For example, create a filter that forwards all forum-related messages to a different address.



9. Create filters that exclude messages from these categories by enabling "Exclude from SmartLabel categorization" in the filter editing dialog.



10. Help Gmail categorize messages by creating filters and selecting "categorize as". For example, send all messages that include "unsubscribe" to the Promotions category.






11. You can also drag messages to the sidebar categories and use feature like "move to" or "labels" to categorize messages. The list of categories is displayed below your labels.


2 Hidden Privacy Tools You Should Be Using



hiddenprivacy

Every day, people visit countless websites and make use of their favorite social networks with very little thought to just how much information is inadvertently escaping into the general public. In fact, there are privacy tools within your social network accounts that provide you with the ability to control things beyond just location privacy, but also account privacy itself.

Continue reading the article


Read full post: 2 Hidden Privacy Tools You Should Be Using



30 May 2013

No More Gmail Sneak Peek



Gmail had a cool Labs feature that allowed you to read messages without opening them. Message Sneak Peek displayed the first sentences from a message when you right-clicked it. You could use keyboard shortcuts to navigate to the previous or to the next message, so this was a great to quickly read messages.






Here's a screenshot from 2010, when this feature was launched:






The Labs experiment is no longer available and now Gmail has a contextual menu that shows features like "move to inbox", "archive", "delete", "mark as read/unread", "move to tab" (for inbox messages). You can select multiple messages, right click and use one of the features that were also included in the Gmail toolbar.






{ Thanks, jp (banana). }