18 May 2014

Google's Site Info Cards Use DMOZ Descriptions



When Google added site info cards for search results, I noticed that Google only used information from Wikipedia. If a site or an organization didn't have an associated Wikipedia article, the info card wasn't displayed. Now Google also uses descriptions from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), so sites like the Official Google Blog, Android Police or this blog got their own cards.





YouTube Switches to the HTML5 Player in Chrome



YouTube has a page that lets you switch to the HTML5 player. If you visit that page in Chrome, you'll only see the message: "The HTML5 player is currently used when possible" and you can't switch to the Flash player. In all the other browsers, the Flash player is enabled by default and you can click "request the HTML5 player" to enable that player.






Here's the same page in Firefox:






It turns out that the HTML5 player is now enabled by default in Chrome and it's the only player you can use, at least officially. YouTube's HTML5 player now supports all the features of the Flash player, including ads and encrypted streams.



If you don't like the HTML5 player and you want to switch to the Flash player, install this extension.

17 May 2014

Knowledge Graph Card in Google Maps



Google Maps for desktop added a "quick facts" card that uses information from the Knowledge Graph. If you search for a country, a state, a city, a district, a museum or any other important building, you'll find some information from Wikipedia.









Google Maps cards include a lot of useful information, depending on the context: events, transit information, hotel booking.









{ via +Google Maps }




Mobile Interface for Chrome Web Store



One of the most annoying things about Chrome Web Store was that it didn't work if you used a mobile phone or a tablet. Google only displayed a message that allowed you to send a reminder to download the app or extension from the desktop Chrome.



Chrome Web Store now has a mobile interface, but only for individual apps and extensions. The homepage, category pages and the search feature still aren't available. If you find a link to a Chrome app or extension, you can now open it in your favorite mobile browsers, read the description, check the screenshots and some other details. You can't read or write reviews, install extensions remotely, find related extensions, go to the homepage or to a category.






{ via François Beaufort }

PayPal Billing in Google Play



Google Play added support for a very popular payment service: PayPal. "We're making it possible for people to choose PayPal for their Google Play purchases in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada. When you make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, you'll find PayPal as an option in your Google Wallet; just enter your PayPal account login and you'll easily be able to make purchases," informs Google.






Here's the full list of countries where PayPal is now supported: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United States, United Kingdom. One important notice: "PayPal can't be used to purchase devices or accessories on Google Play or for other purchases that use Google Wallet outside of the Play Store."



Google has always tried to promote its own payment service, whether it was called Google Checkout or Google Wallet, so why would Google add support for a competing service? Google offers an answer: "Sales of apps and games on Google Play are up by more than 300 percent over the past year. And today, two-thirds of Google Play purchases happen outside of the United States, with international sales continuing to climb. We're hoping to fuel this momentum by making Google Play payments easier and more convenient for people around the world."



In addition to supporting PayPal, Google also added carrier billing to 7 more countries (including Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan) and Google Play gift cards to 13 more countries (including Japan and Germany). "Developers based in 13 new countries can now sell apps on Google Play (with new additions such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey), bringing the total to 45 countries with support for local developers."

16 May 2014

Advanced Gmail Filters That Aren’t Available in Gmail



Gmail filters help you automatically sort email messages based on rules. So if your boss has sent an email message, the filter can mark it as important. If the email has the word “Unsubscribe” somewhere in the message body, it can be marked as a promotional message and so on.


How to Create Advanced Gmail Filters


While the built-in Gmail filters are powerful, they do have certain limitations.


For instance, you cannot have a Gmail filter that does case-sensitive search. It will treat WHO and who as same. Gmail filters won’t do pattern matching (regular expressions) so you cannot have a filter for messages that contain phone numbers.


We often get spam messages that have a few dozen addresses in the TO and CC fields but there’s no filter to automatically redirect such messages to the SPAM folder of Gmail. That’s where Google Scripts can help. You can setup advanced filters that aren’t available in the native version of Gmail.


Advanced Gmail Filters


What you see above is a set of 10 Gmail filters that were created with Apps Script. You can have a filter to process messages that contain tons of links. Or messages that have too many attachments. Or messages that have just a word or two in the message body.


The best part is that you don’t have to know scripting to use either of these filters. Just follow these 3 easy steps:



  1. Click here to copy the Gmail Filters sheet into your Google Drive. You can write OFF to deactivate any of the available rules.

  2. Go to the Gmail Filters menu in the sheet, choose Initialize and grant the necessary permissions to the script.

  3. Now choose Turn-on Gmail Filter to activate your filters. You may close the Google sheet now.


Here’s what happens behind the scenes. The script will run in the background every 10 minutes and monitor any new unread messages in your Gmail inbox. It will then run the various rules against these messages. The native filters in Gmail take precedence and then your custom rules specified in the sheet are applied.


You can also look at the source code to understand how the various rules were created.


Awesome Google Scripts → Custom Google Scripts →




This story, Advanced Gmail Filters That Aren’t Available in Gmail, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 15/05/2014 under GMail, Internet

13 May 2014

The Best Places to Find Free, High-Res Images for your Website



Good, high-quality images add visual interest to your website. Another reason why photos have become so important is because web pages that include good photos get better engagement when shared on social sites like Twitter and Facebook.


high quality photo


Download High Quality Images for Free


The web offers billions of photos that are just a Google search away. The images that are in public domain, or licensed under the Creative Commons license, can be used without any copyright issues.


The only problem is that Google may not always surface the best content that is free. Their algorithms, at least for image search, prefer pages from premium stock photography websites and the free listings thus lose out. If Google isn’t helping in your quest for images, here are some of the best websites where you may find high-quality photos for free.


1. unsplash.com (Unsplash) – This is my favorite website for downloading high-resolution photographs. Subscribe to the email newsletter and you’ll get 10 photos in your inbox every 10 days. All images are under the CC0 license meaning they are in public domain and you are free to use them in any way you like.


2. google.com (LIFE) – The Google images website hosts millions of historical photographs from the LIFE library. You can add source:life to any query in Google image search to find these images and they are free for personal, non-commercial use.


3. flickr.com (The British Library) – The national library of the UK has uploaded over a million vintage photographs and scanned images to Flickr that are now in pubic domain and they encourage re-use.


4. picjubmo.com (Picjumbo) – Here you’ll find exceptionally high-quality photos for your personal and commercial use. The pictures have been shot by the site owner himself and all he requests for in return is proper attribution.


5. pixabay.com (Pixabay) – All the images on Pixabay are available under the CC0 license and thus can be used anywhere. Like Flickr, there’s an option to browse photographs by camera model as well.


6. publicdomainarchive.com (Public Domain Archive) – This is an impressive online repository of public domain images that are neatly organized in categories. It contains only high quality photos though the collection is limited at this time.


7. commons.wikimedia.org (Wikimedia Commons) – The site hosts 21+ million images under some kind of free license or in the public domain. The images are arranged in categories or you can find images through search keywords.


8. superfamous.com (Super Famous) – Another great resource for finding high-res images for your websites and other design projects. The images are licensed under Creative Commons and require attribution.


old historical photos


9. nos.twnsnd.co (New Old Stock) – Here you will find a curated collection of vintage photographs from public archives that are free of any copyright restrictions. If you are trying to create a twitter feed like @HistoricalPics, this might be a good source for images.


10. freeimages.com (Stock Exchange) – This is one of the biggest repositories of free images and graphics that you can use for almost any purpose. You do however need to sign-in to download the images. The site, previously hosted on the schx.hu domain, is now part of Getty Images.


11. morguefile.com (Morgue File) – The site hosts 300,000+ free images and you are free to use them in both personal and commercial projects even without attribution. The image gallery has a built-in cropping tool and you can even hotlink the images from your website.


Related: Protect your photos from Casual Copying


12. gettyimages.com (Getty Images) – If you are looking for professional images for your website but without the expensive license fee, Getty has something in store for you. You can embed pictures from Getty Images for free on your website though in future, the embeds may carry ads.


13. pdpics.com (Public Domain Photos) – The website contains thousands of royalty free images that can be used in both personal and commercial projects but with attribution. Unlike other sites that merely curate content, the images found here have been clicked by their in-house photographers.


14. imcreator.com (IM Free) – A curated collection of outstanding high-quality photos on all subjects that are also free for commercial use. The images have mostly been sourced from Flickr and require attribution.


15. photopin.com (Photo Pin) – Flickr is among the biggest repository of photographs on the web and Photo Pin helps you easily find photos on Flickr that are available under the Creative Commons license. You get the embed code as well so you don’t have to host the images on your own server.


Tip: How to avoid common photos


You may have found a great photo that is perfect for your project but there’s a probability that several other websites are using the same image. It will therefore help if you do a reverse image search using Google Images to estimate the relative popularity of that image on the Internet.


Also see: Sell your Instagram & Facebook Photos




This story, The Best Places to Find Free, High-Res Images for your Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 12/05/2014 under Creative Commons, Images, Internet

10 May 2014

Must-have Extensions for Google Chrome



Chrome extensions


Here’s a comprehensive list of the best extensions for Google Chrome that will help you do more and also enhance your web browsing experience.


The Best Google Chrome extensions



  1. Vimium — Power users can browse the web using keyboard shortcuts. No mouse required.

  2. Buffer — Share links to multiple social websites with a go.

  3. PushBullet — Send web links, text notes and even push files from computer to your phone.

  4. Clip Better — Don’t send raw links over email, send previews that suggest what a link is all about.

  5. Streamus — A YouTube music play for Chrome that also includes a radio.

  6. Mighty Text — Send and receive SMS text messages from your desktop computer.

  7. Snappy Snippets — Easily extract CSS and HTML from a web page and send it to CodePen or jsFiddle.

  8. Project Naptha — Copy text from any image with a right-click. It’s like an OCR for Chrome.

  9. Hover Reader — Read an article simply by hovering over a link.

  10. Bubble Cursor — Easily click links on web pages or type text in input boxes.

  11. Dewey — Improved bookmarks manager for Chrome with website thumbnails and instant search.

  12. dotEPUB — Convert web pages and documents to EPUB ebooks that you can read offline on your Kindle or iPad.

  13. YouTube Feed — Get notified when new videos are available in your YouTube subscriptions list.

  14. Boomerang — You can write an email in Gmail now and schedule it to be sent automatically at the perfect time.

  15. Hola — Unblock websites and access content, including videos, that aren’t available in your country.

  16. YT Options — Improves your YouTube experience and hides all the annoying parts.

  17. TextDown — A well designed Markdown text editor for Chrome.

  18. WriteBox — A minimal text editor for Chrome that also sync with Dropbox and Google Drive.

  19. Font Previewer — Preview and test any of the Google Web fonts on your website.

  20. SpeakIt — Select some text on a web page and the add-on will read it for you.

  21. Remote Desktop — Access other computers or allow another user to access your computer securely over the Internet.

  22. Extensions Manager — Easily manage your installed extensions, applications and themes from the Chrome toolbar.

  23. StayFocusd — Lets you restrict the amount of time you spend on time-wasting websites.

  24. Feeder — A mini RSS reader that sites in the toolbar of your Chrome.

  25. Page Monitor — Runs in the background and monitor web pages for changes.

  26. OneTab — Make your Chrome run faster by suspending tabs and restore them all with a click.

  27. Clipular — Screen capture anything you see on the web with a click.

  28. Time Warp — Focus on your work and avoid the distracting websites.

  29. MakeGIF — This is the easiest way to save a YouTub video as a GIF file.

  30. CleanPrint — Print web pages without the clutter or save them as PDFs

  31. Quick Source — View the source code of any web page, deobfuscated and beautified.

  32. SpellBook — It collects all your bookmarklets and puts them in the contextual menu.

  33. GIF Scrubber — This adds movie player like controls to animated GIFs on the web.

  34. Push to Kindle — Delivers any web content to your Kindle or the Kindle Reading Apps.

  35. KeyRocket — Learn and master the various keyboard shortcuts available in Gmail.

  36. Hover Zoom — Hover your mouse over an image to see the full-sized version in an overlay window.

  37. Input Tools — Write text in your own language using virtual keyboards and transliteration.

  38. ShortenMe — This lets you to easily shorten links with goo.gl and generate QR codes.

  39. Chime — Unified desktop notifications for Gmail and all your social networks.

  40. NiftySplit — Split Chrome in two windows. Click a link in the left window and it opens in the right one.

  41. WhatFont — Identify the name of the fonts used in a web page with a click.

  42. StyleBot — You can manipulate the appearance of websites and the changes are permanently preserved.

  43. Panic Button — Quickly hide all the open tabs and replace them with a work related website.

  44. iReader — Read long web pages like a novel in a clutter-free environment.

  45. Image Properties — View camera details, GPS location and other information about any photograph.

  46. Tab Outliner — See all your open tabs and Chrome windows in a vertical hierarchical tree.

  47. RSS Subscription — Subscribe to RSS feeds in your favorite news reader with a click.

  48. URL Expander — The add-on will auto-expand all short URLs found on a web page.

  49. Text Mode — Browse the web in black and white in pure text without images and other media.

  50. Twipster — It makes the Twitter website clean and more readable.

  51. Better History — A better history viewer for your Chrome.

  52. History Timeline — A better way to visualize your browsing history in Chrome with pictures.

  53. Clearly — Read web pages in a distraction free environment.

  54. Stylish — Completely change the look of your favorite websites.

  55. PageRank — Find the Google PageRank and other SEO related information of a page.

  56. Fatkum — Download images in bulk from any website including Flickr and Google Images.

  57. Google Dictionary — View word meanings without leaving the current page.

  58. in10search — Search for content across all open tabs in Chrome.

  59. Page Archiver — Save the entire web page to your desktop including the images, CSS and JavaScript.

  60. Holmes — Search your bookmarks from the omni bar of Chrome.

  61. Nimbus Screenshot — Capture and annotate web pages inside your Chrome browser.

  62. AutoPagerize — Easily read paginated web pages without clicking.

  63. Readability — Send web pages to your Kindle for reading later in a clutter free environment.

  64. Save to Google Drive — Save web files to your Google Drive with a click.

  65. Looper — Watch your favorite YouTube videos in a continuous loop.

  66. Personal Blocklist — Block one or more useless websites from appearing in your Google search results.

  67. Swift Preview — Don’t open a new tab. Preview links before clicking in the same window.

  68. FastBrowz — Preview links on Reddit and Hacker news without leaving the front page.

  69. Share Extensions — Generate and share a list of extensions installed in your Chrome browser.

  70. Chrome to Mobile — Push web pages from the desktop to your mobile or tablet for offline reading.

  71. Dead Mouse — You can open links on a web page with your keyboard without ever touching the mouse.

  72. Google Site Search — Quickly search pages on the website that you are currently browsing.

  73. YouTube Ratings — See the proportion of likes and dislikes of any video on the YouTube website.

  74. Similar Pages — Find more websites that are similar to the one you are currently looking at.

  75. Search by Image — Find other images on the web that are similar to one picture.

  76. Source Locator — Locate the folder where the source code of any Chrome add-on is unpacked.

  77. YouTube Thumbs — See a short preview of the YouTube video without even opening the watch page.

  78. Send from Gmail — Send the current web page by Gmail with a click. Works for both Gmail and Google Apps accounts.

  79. Chrome Access — The add-on provides quick access all the ‘about:’ and ‘chrome://’ internal pages of Chrome.

  80. Disconnect Me — Prevent online advertisers and search engines from tracking you on the web.

  81. Web Timer — Keep track of how you spend your time on the Internet.

  82. Strict Workflow — Block time-wasting websites temporarily and focus on your work.

  83. Window Resizer — Automatically resize your Chrome browser window to any screen resolution.




This story, Must-have Extensions for Google Chrome, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 09/05/2014 under Google Chrome, Software

05 May 2014

Clean Up your Whiteboard Pictures by Email



Your mobile phone has an excellent camera but photos of the whiteboard aren’t coming out as good and clear as you would like them to be. Maybe there’s poor lighting in the conference room? Maybe your camera’s settings aren’t perfect for capturing whiteboard photos?


One little trick that will vastly improve the quality of your whiteboard pictures is available inside the manual settings of your cameraphone. Go to your camera’s manual settings, choose EV (Exposure Value) and add 1 or 2 “stops” (usually indicated by +2) before clicking the Capture button.


Then there’s a shell script that brightens and cleans up your whiteboard images using the popular ImageMagick library. It runs from the command line and all it needs is ImageMagick, a free image editing software that is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.


If you find it a hassle to remember commands, there’s an even easier way. Capture the whiteboard scribbles with your mobile camera and send the picture as an email attachment to the following email address.


please@make.unwhiteboard.com


Wait for a minute or two and you’ll get a prettier version of the whiteboard image, clean and legible and more optimized for printing. Here’s an example.


Before

Raw Whiteboard Picture


After

Clean Whiteboard Picture


Internally, the Unwhiteboard service uses the same ImageMagick command to clean up your Whiteboard captures but on their own server so you don’t have to install anything on your computer.


Here are some more useful email addresses.




This story, Clean Up your Whiteboard Pictures by Email, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 05/05/2014 under Email, Image Editing, Internet

02 May 2014

Microsoft Patches XP, Vine YouTube, Mute Twitter, Life Simulator [Tech News Digest]



windows-xp-head

Today in Tech News Digest, Microsoft patches Windows XP, Vine does a YouTube, Twitter experiments with muting, a Google Glass teardown, Amazon smartphone leaks, a real-life Dropbox, and the creator of Minecraft’s new game. Microsoft Backtracks On XP Support “DON’T USE WINDOWS XP WE WILL NEVER PATCH IT AGAIN EXCEPT WHEN WE TOTALLY PATCH IT AGAIN.” You blinked. http://t.co/moSpDAxJT2 — Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) May 2, 2014 Microsoft has released an emergency patch fixing the vulnerability recently discovered in all versions of Internet Explorer. As well as the expected patches for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.1, Microsoft has issued...


Read the full article: Microsoft Patches XP, Vine YouTube, Mute Twitter, Life Simulator [Tech News Digest]



Microsoft Patches XP, Vine YouTube, Mute Twitter, Life Simulator [Tech News Digest]



windows-xp-head

Today in Tech News Digest, Microsoft patches Windows XP, Vine does a YouTube, Twitter experiments with muting, a Google Glass teardown, Amazon smartphone leaks, a real-life Dropbox, and the creator of Minecraft’s new game. Microsoft Backtracks On XP Support “DON’T USE WINDOWS XP WE WILL NEVER PATCH IT AGAIN EXCEPT WHEN WE TOTALLY PATCH IT AGAIN.” You blinked. http://t.co/moSpDAxJT2 — Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) May 2, 2014 Microsoft has released an emergency patch fixing the vulnerability recently discovered in all versions of Internet Explorer. As well as the expected patches for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.1, Microsoft has issued...


Read the full article: Microsoft Patches XP, Vine YouTube, Mute Twitter, Life Simulator [Tech News Digest]



Lucidpress: The Free Online InDesign Alternative For Your Creative Needs



lucidpress

Adobe InDesign is a fantastic desktop publishing program, but is still prohibitively expensive for many who only need a casual page layout app. The monthly subscription model of the Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) is still not quite right for casual projects and minimal budgets. So, what is a casual designer to use as an InDesign replacement? After a bit of research, I decided to try Lucidpress. One of Lucidpress’s main advantages is that it’s a free InDesign alternative available online. For all the new Chromebook users out there who need a page layout tool, this is a major selling point...


Read the full article: Lucidpress: The Free Online InDesign Alternative For Your Creative Needs



4 Hidden Benefits Of Learning A Foreign Language If You Are A Geek



language-featured

When you’re an Anglophone geek, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that you don’t have to learn a foreign language. After all, nearly every piece of software comes with an English localization. Most programming languages use English words and phrases. Indeed, English is overwhelmingly the language of the Internet. And yet, there’s never been a better reason and a better time to learn a foreign language. We’ve talked about ways in which you can learn a language over the Internet, but we’ve not really talked about the benefits learning a new language can deliver to a geek. Indeed, there...


Read the full article: 4 Hidden Benefits Of Learning A Foreign Language If You Are A Geek



01 May 2014

Build Your Own Weather Dashboard In This Google Spreadsheet Master Class



weather-spreadsheet

“Computer! Show me all current weather conditions within 300 miles of my current location” “Yes Captain” “Now, show me the humidity levels for those locations, charted by longitude and latitude on a map” “Yes Captain” Would you like to turn your Google Drive account into an intelligent weather analysis system, and live out this Star Trek fantasy? Okay, you might not be able to turn Google Spreadsheets into an artificially intelligent computer system that will respond to your voice commands, but in this article I’ll show you how you can import weather data from the Internet and have your own...


Read the full article: Build Your Own Weather Dashboard In This Google Spreadsheet Master Class



Get Tech Skills You Need At These Top 7 Online Course Sites



learning-computer-skills

The 21st Century workplace isn’t any different from the amphitheaters of ancient Rome. You are fighting someone brandishing a tech skill in demand, or running to barely stay ahead of the corporate lion going cutting edge. There is no war here – it’s a battle every day. The great thing is that you will not end up as vulture feed. The Roman arena was a prison. The 21st Century workplace sets you free with multiple gates of learning. Online learning is a disruptive technology whose time has come. Even though, there are genuine criticisms against the effectiveness of massive online...


Read the full article: Get Tech Skills You Need At These Top 7 Online Course Sites



Looking For A Markdown Editor For Linux? Try These 3 Solid Options



linux-markdown

If you’re looking for a dependable Markdown editor for Linux, we have three great options for you to consider. Markdown is a excellent format in which to write all things Web. With easy-to-use syntax, it bridges the gap between plain text and HTML smoothly. While Windows and Mac users, and even Android users, have many Markdown editors to choose from, Linux users will find fewer options. Having said that, there are a few decent options for us Linux users; you’ll find a few of them below. But first things first: if you’re not sure why and how you should be...


Read the full article: Looking For A Markdown Editor For Linux? Try These 3 Solid Options



Do You Care What Happens To Google+? [We Ask You]



we-ask-you-logo

Google+ hasn’t exactly set the world alight. It’s done OK, building a sizable userbase thanks to Google’s insistence we all have a Google+ account – whether we want one or not. But it’s hardly Facebook or Twitter in terms of engagement. Which leads us to ponder whether anyone actually cares about Google+ and its ultimate fate. We suspect no one does, and that assumption, and the arguments for and against it, form the basis for this week’s We Ask You discussion. Google+, Google-, Google+-? We want to know, Do You Care What Happens To Google+? The future of Google+ is...


Read the full article: Do You Care What Happens To Google+? [We Ask You]



Education For All: Volunteer In Coursera’s Global Translator Community



coursera-news

Coursera is calling on volunteers. The MOOC platform has launched The Global Translator Community (GTC) program that will attempt to add translated subtitles to the 600 plus video courses on the site. Coursera observes that only 40% of “Courserians” live in English-speaking countries. Translated video courses will immediately open up educational opportunities to a wider swathe of people around the world. Once the program kicks off, translated subtitles will be displayed for all students through a “closed captioning” tool at the bottom of the video player. According to Coursera, the demand for translated subtitles for the video courses is a...


Read the full article: Education For All: Volunteer In Coursera’s Global Translator Community



5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With The WordPress Config File



wp-config

At the heart of every WordPress install is the wp-config.php file, a file so sacred and shrouded in mystery that every WordPress user knows it should never be touched. Or should it? In fact, there’s a lot of lesser known useful hacks that can be without damaging WordPress in any way, and it’s about time you took your WordPress skills up a notch. Read on for 5 of my favourite wp-config tricks. This article is strictly intended for self-hosted WordPress.org sites, not those hosted on WordPress.com (what’s the difference?). Before you start, know that you can potentially stop WordPress from...


Read the full article: 5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With The WordPress Config File