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). }


How Much Customs Duty You Have to Pay for Importing Goods into India



You have to pay taxes for importing goods from a foreign country into India. See the tariff chart to know how much customs duty you may have to pay for your online purchases.


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Digital Inspiration @labnol This story, How Much Customs Duty You Have to Pay for Importing Goods into India, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 30/05/2013 under Shopping, India.



New Gmail Favicon



Gmail has a new favicon that looks like the icon used by Gmail's Chrome app. It's also close to the iOS app's icon.



In this screenshot, the first tab shows new the new favicon, while the second one shows the old favicon. There's also a bigger version of the new favicon.






Here's the same icon in Chrome's new tab page. The Gmail app for Chrome is installed by default.






If you don't see the new favicon, reload Gmail using F5 or Ctrl+F5.


Chrome for iOS, Not a Fast Browser



Chrome for iOS doesn't have a lot of things in common with the desktop Chrome or Chrome for Android. It doesn't use the latest WebKit rendering engine and can't switch to Blink, it doesn't use the V8 JavaScript engine, it doesn't have a multi-process architecture. These are iOS limitations and all third-party iOS browsers are built using UIWebView, so they use the same rendering engine and the same JavaScript engine, which is slower than Safari's Nitro (Opera Mini is just an OBML reader, not a browser, because pages are rendered using Opera's servers).



I was surprised to see an ad for Chrome when visiting Google's homepage in Safari for iPad: "Browse fast on your iPad. Install Google Chrome." Chrome for iOS is not fast, it's a lot slower than Safari and that's not Google's fault. It's even a little bit slower than other third-party browsers.






Even the Chrome for iOS homepage claims that you can "browse fast and sign in to bring your Chrome experience from your computer, anywhere you go". Sure, Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, preloads web pages and shows the most visited pages, but it's not a faster browser than Safari.



From Tom's Hardware: "In the end, any third-party Web browser on iOS is essentially tantamount to using an older version of Safari with a slightly different user interface and additional features. Due to Apple's App Store mandate that all third-party iOS browsers utilize Safari's stock engines, browser competition on this mobile operating system is practically non-existent. Unless Apple reverses course, allowing other developers to compete using their own unique rending and JavaScript engines."


How to Stop Brands from Using You in their Facebook Ads



Facebook offers sponsored stores that allows advertisers to easily target friends of connections. Your name will appear in the ad but and here's how you can prevent that from happening.



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Digital Inspiration @labnol This story, How to Stop Brands from Using You in their Facebook Ads, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 30/05/2013 under Facebook, Privacy, Internet.



Cool Websites and Tools [May 29th 2013]



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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 29th 2013]



Understanding Google And The Game That It Plays



Google.com, the largest search engine on the internet seems to be a nightmare and eyesore to many online marketers especially those trying to make money by ranking their website through S.E.O as a result of the constant changes it always brings!.


Today you can be ranking Number 2 position in Google and tomorrow when it brings a new algorithm change your website might not be among number 200!!!.


In reality Google didn’t start its frequent changes in 2012 or 2011 but way back before then. In fact according to a data I saw on the seniors website here are some of the google changes that has occurred through the years.


Note: Google loves to label a name to each major search engine algorithm changes that it makes.


September 2002- Boston Update


November 2003-Florida Update


July 2003- Flitz Update


April 2003- Cassandra Update


February 2003-Boston Update


January 2004-Austin Update


February 2004-Brandy Update


January 2005-The Nofollow Attribute was introduced


February 2009- Vince Update


May 2010- May Day


August 2010- Brand Update


February 2011- Panda Update


November 2011- Freshness Update


April 2012- Penguin Update


September 2012- EMD { Exact Match Domain} Update


That’s a long list of some major algorithm changes from Google over the past 13years. Virtually every year Google keeps rolling out new updates. It is important for you to know this and how you can secure yourself and your website by taking the appropriate measure before hand.


What EXACTLY Does Google Want?


How can you satisfy their want by giving them what they want so that not only will you be favored by not getting hammered in their next update but also you will receive love from them and continually get and keep your site in the page 1 position?


How To Know When Google Index Your Website


Remember our focus is to create a site that can rank on Page 1 in the search engines especially on Google.com. Your site cannot rank in the search engines if your website and articles are not there in the first place. So while creating great contents {more on that later} it is imperative you ensure that your articles or blog posts as the case may be are getting indexed by google.com because only when they are indexed can they start ranking.


The reason you want all your articles getting indexed by Google is that, until your articles are indexed it means Google is not “aware” about your post which means you have zero chance of even ranking it.


While am going to show you later in this report how to index your articles, I want to quickly show you how to know when your articles have been indexed.


The fastest and quickest way is to copy the direct link of the article and then paste it in google. If your article appears then it means it is indexed, if not it means you haven’t. Simple and straight.


Getting all your articles indexed is the first big step of ranking in the search engines. So let’s take for example I want to check if an article I have on my site www.nicheavenger.com/blog has been indexed. This is what I will do.


BIO:


Fenix Raw belongs to technical industry, willing to share his valuable ideas. Our exclusively prepared MB7-702 exam preparation material is quite handy for your success in MB7-701 exam. Take the benefit or our preparation material and derive the better end results.


The post Understanding Google And The Game That It Plays appeared first on Hack Illusion.




Be Prepared: These Are the Vital Files You Should Backup



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If you aren't already backing up your important files, you should be. Whether it be by manual copying files over to multiple hard drives or using a system like Apple's Time Capsule, it's very necessary to keep your files in more than one place. Why? Simply put, hard drives break. Sometimes they break for no reason, too. It's always best to be prepared. You may be wondering what exactly you should back up. Fortunately, that's what this entire article is about!

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Read full post: Be Prepared: These Are the Vital Files You Should Backup



Enginuity: Get The Socially-Relevant Searches You’ve Been Looking For



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The web has changed a lot since the first search engines erupted through the surface. One of those major changes have been social networks, enabling us to connect with each other all over the world – pretty incredible really. However, it seems that search engines haven't fully used the power of the social networks.

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Read full post: Enginuity: Get The Socially-Relevant Searches You’ve Been Looking For



5 Online Classic Video Game Shows You Need To Watch



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Currently, classic video games are a big deal. Prices are skyrocketing as collectors run out to get their hands on the gems from their childhood. With that, all kinds of websites are popping up dedicated to creating engaging and entertaining content related to classic video games. This is a good thing, as spending time watching funny reviews and other tidbits about classic games is something that never gets old for me.

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Hack YouTube – Kill the Annoyances, Improve Your Viewing



Reduce YouTube Annoyances Intro

YouTube is a revolutionary service, but that doesn't mean that it’s without its flaws. There are many features on the site that are designed for convenience, other features that are meant to satiate legal requirements, and then there are features that are plain missing. Here are some ways to easily spruce up your YouTube experience.

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Google Doesn’t Rule The Entire Internet Just Yet [Search Trends]



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When you examine Google search trends over time, it's amazing just how much it reveals about the public sentiment, and the rise and fall of various brands, service sand popular apps. It's really amazing to watch these trends and compare them between companies, products, websites and more. Sometimes, you can even predict which brands are going to win the war over the minds and hearts of the general public.

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Read full post: Google Doesn’t Rule The Entire Internet Just Yet [Search Trends]



7 Ways To Learn Something New Every Day With Wikipedia




Wikipedia is packed full of content. At the time of writing there are over 4 million articles contained within the English language version, with more being added all the time. All of these pages are free to view, not lumbered with ads, and are edited by people like us. It’s a resource that everybody knows about, but which very few people truly make the most of.

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Read full post: 7 Ways To Learn Something New Every Day With Wikipedia



Google's Bigger App Launcher



I've previously posted about Google's experimental app launcher that replaces the black navigation bar. It's the perfect fit for the Chrome integration with Google search, which also removes the search box from Google SERPs.



Google tests a new version of the app launcher in Chrome: it's huge and you can click "more" to see other Google services. I've managed to get the new interface using this URL in Chrome.









If you think "huge" is an exaggeration, take a look at this screenshot and compare it with the screenshots from this post:









{ Thanks, Silviu. }


Gmail's Inbox Tabs



Gmail has a lot of cool features that let you organize mail, but not many people use them. Creating filters is complicated and manually labelling messages is time consuming. That's why Google added features that automatically classify messages: Priority Inbox finds important messages, Smart Labels categorizes messages and lets you find notifications, bulk messages or automatically archive them. Gmail also has different inbox styles that prioritize important messages, starred or unread messages.



Now Gmail's inbox started to include a few tabs powered by Smart Labels, a feature from Gmail Labs. "On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. (...) Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what's new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. You can easily customize the new inbox - select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab."






There are tabs for social updates from sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google+, promotions (newsletters, offers and other bulk messages), notifications/updates (confirmations, bills, receipts), forum messages (online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists) and a primary tab that shows all the other messages. This way, you can focus on important messages and read everything else later. The Smart Labels feature also has a checkbox that allows you to automatically archive messages, so that notifications, newsletters and social updates skip the inbox.






A similar feature will be added to the mobile Gmail apps for iOS and Android. The nice thing is that inbox tabs are customizable, so you can hide some of them or even all of them.






The new feature will roll out in the coming weeks, but the updated mobile apps should be available sooner. Until then, try Smart Labels.



{ via Gmail Blog }


Modern All The Way: Creating Custom Tiles for Windows 8



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To tile or not to tile? One of the most divisive elements of Windows 8 is the Start screen's tiles. These square or rectangle-shaped buttons are effectively shortcuts to launching apps, and are often displaying additional data about the app they represent. This makes them vital, whatever you might think of them, and far superior to shortcut tiles. There are several very easy to use apps and utilities that can be used to create aesthetic and functional Windows 8 Start screen tiles.

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Read full post: Modern All The Way: Creating Custom Tiles for Windows 8