31 July 2014

Google Drive's Quota Page



The new Google Drive interface has a cool feature: it shows all the files you've uploaded, sorted by file size. Mouse over the storage stats at the bottom of the page ("X GB of Y GB used"), click "Drive" and you'll get to this page that shows the quota used by your files, so you can quickly delete some of the files you no longer need. Interestingly, the URL: http://ift.tt/1pr94ua also works in the old Google Drive interface.









The page doesn't include the documents, spreadsheets, forms, presentations, drawings created with Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings or converted to the Google formats.



The old Google Drive interface also had this feature. You had to click an arrow icon next to "owner", pick "quota used" and sort by quota. Google Drive only displayed the files from the current folder, so you had to use this URL: http://ift.tt/1fkeQ8U to see all your files. The new quota page is more convenient, but the new Google Drive interface no longer lets you sort folders by quota used.

64-Bit Chrome for Windows, Now in Beta



2 months after the Dev/Canary channels, the 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows is now available in the beta channel. It's still limited to Windows 7 and Windows 8+ and you obviously need a 64-bit operating system.



"To try it out, download the 64-bit installer from our Beta download pages. The new version replaces the existing version while preserving all your settings and bookmarks, so there's no need to uninstall a current installation of Chrome," informs Google.






The 64-bit Chrome brings some actual improvements: better performance and fewer crashes. 5 years after releasing the 64-bit Chrome for Linux, it's time for Windows users to upgrade to a 64-bit browser.




Paul Buchheit on Startups



Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler who created Gmail, gave a talk at Startup School. There are a lot of interesting ideas and many of them have something to do with Google.



Paul talks about the danger of experience and dogma: "Just because it didn't work in the past doesn't mean it won't work in the future. Likewise, what worked before may not work again. The best opportunities live in our collective blind spots. To most, they appear to be bad ideas, or simply unimportant." For example, many people thought that writing the Gmail interface in JavaScript was a bad idea, but Gmail worked well, browsers improved and now web apps are commonplace.



The man who came up with Gmail says that "to be innovative, we need to evade the limitations of established thinking. Creating an innovative new product often means spending years working on something that most people doubt the value of." To be able to do this, you really need to love what you are doing and ignore the voices that tell you that what you are trying to achieve is impossible. As Larry Page says, maintain a healthy disregard for the impossible.



Trying to solve interesting problems also helps. "Interestingness is a sign of unexplored or under-explored territory. If I already know what the outcome is going to be, that's not very interesting. (...) But I find that great startups exist in a space of productive uncertainty. Regardless whether they succeed or fail, I'm likely to learn something interesting," says Paul Buchheit. That's one of the reasons why he picked Google back in 1999: he believed that Google couldn't compete with Alta Vista, but at least he'll learn something from the smart people at Google.



Google as a startup was different from the way people perceived it. Even if Google was mostly a search engine, Google founders had bigger ambitions. "Larry wanted to store and search the whole web in memory, even though our machines only had 1/4 GB of RAM. It was unrealistic at the time, but Moore's law moves fast and very soon we were doing it, but only because everyone's thinking was already oriented in that direction. He also wanted self-driving cars that would deliver hamburgers. That hasn't happened yet, but I bet it will."



For Paul Buchheit, money are only the "fuel" that helps you achieve a mission, not the main goal of a business. "For me, startups are more than just a clever way to make money. They are machines for harnessing the fire of human self-interest, creating a self-sustaining reaction capable of rapidly transforming the world."





28 July 2014

Tambola Tickets Made With Emojis



We were choosing a game for an upcoming kids party and tambola (or housie or bingo depending on which part of the world you live) was a clear and unanimous choice. The rules of game are simple, you can download the PDFs and print the tickets at home and even adults are likely to enjoy this game.


The regular tambola tickets contain numbers but for this party, we wanted a little variation. How about replacing numbers on the ticket with the more visual emojis (see example) that almost everyone can instantly recognize now thanks to the growing popularity of Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and other instant messaging apps that all support these emoticons.


There were no online generators that supported Emoji tickets so I put together a little PHP script that outputs the Bingo tickets using Emojis instead of numbers. If you would also like to try this, go to ctrlq.org and hit the “Ticket Sheet” button to create your own tamobola sheets. It generates a set of 2×5 tickets and you can create as many you like. They’ll all be unique.


Here’re some photographs of the Emoji tickets printed on photo paper. The full emoji sheet can be downloaded from imgur.com.


tambola


housie




This story, Tambola Tickets Made With Emojis, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 28/07/2014 under Games, Internet

New URL for Google Docs



If you go to docs.google.com, you might see this message: "Soon, docs.google.com will start taking you to the Google Docs application, not Google Drive. You can always get to Google Drive by using drive.google.com." Until now, docs.google.com redirected to drive.google.com without displaying this message.






"You may be using docs.google.com to access Google Drive. With the launch of the new Google Docs editors home screens, docs.google.com will redirect to the Docs home screen, where you'll find all of your Google Docs and Word files," explains Google.



Some useful URLs:



* docs.google.com, google.com/docs - Google Docs (the first URL still redirects to Drive for now)

* sheets.google.com, google.com/sheets - Google Sheets

* slides.google.com, google.com/slides - Google Slides

Google Tests Timeline View for Knowledge Graph



Google tests a timeline view for Knowledge Graph cards. For a query like [World War I], Google's experimental interface displays a chronological list of important events obtained from Wikipedia articles.






Mouse over an event and Google shows more information, including images, relevant dates and snippets from Wikipedia articles. Click the event to perform a Google search.






By default, Google only highlights some of the most important events, but you can zoom in to explore to see even more events. Google uses colors and parallel axis to distinguish between different types of information.



Here's a video that shows this feature in action. Right now, the timeline view looks like a tool for power users and Google will have to create a simplified interface when this feature is publicly released.



Back in 2007, Google Labs added a timeline view for Google Search. Google News Archive also had a timeline view. These features displayed relevant search results about important events related to your query.






{ via Florian Kiersch - translation }

Animated YouTube Channel Art



YouTube now lets you upload animated GIFs for channel art. The maximum file size is 2MB and the minimum dimension is 2048 x 1152. "For optimal results on all devices we recommend uploading a single 2560 X 1440 px image," informs YouTube.






Here's an example of channel that uses animated GIFs and a video that explains how to create animated channel art using Photoshop:






{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Gmail Setup Widget



When you create a new Gmail account, Google now shows a widget that helps you learn how to use Gmail, choose a theme, import contacts and mail, change profile image and more.






"Gmail now has a setup gadget to help people new to Gmail get started. This gadget helps people set up their Gmail account with actions like adding a profile picture and creating an email signature, and teaches them to use features like undo send and creating an auto-responder. The setup gadget is hidden once the person completes all actions, dismisses the gadget or after two weeks. It can be relaunched from Settings," informs Google.



{ Thanks, Herin. }

25 July 2014

Clean-up the “Open With” Menu of your Mac



The “Open With” menu of your Mac, that you get when you right-click (or control-click) a file in the Finder window, may become extremely cluttered with time containing duplicate entries or even stale ones pointing to applications that are no longer installed on your Apple computer. Here’s an example:


Mac Contextual Menu Cluttered


If the “Open With” menu of your Mac is also messy and filled with applications that you no longer use, you can easily clean it up by rebuilding the Launch Services database with a simple Terminal command.


Open the Terminal app of your Mac and switch to the LaunchServices.framework folder using the “cd” command and then run the “lsregister” command to rebuild the database.



$ cd /System/Library/Frameworks
$ cd CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support
$ ./lsregister -kill -r -all local, system, user; killall Dock;

That’s it. All the erroneous entries are removed and here’s how the cleaned up “Open With” menu of the Mac now looks like. I no longer have to scroll through that confusing array of applications I no longer use.


Mac Clean Menu


And if Terminal commands aren’t your forte, you can always download a GUI based application like Onyx to rebuild the Launch Services database and thus clean up the menu with the click of a button.




This story, Clean-up the “Open With” Menu of your Mac, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/07/2014 under Apple Mac, Software

A Chrome App Helps You Stop Procrastinating



Most anti-procrastination apps on the web help you stay focussed and increase productivity by blocking time wasting websites. The thinking goes that if these online distractions are gone, you are more likely to focus on actual work.


age progressing


Alex MacCaw has created Motivation, a Chrome app that takes a slightly different approach. It replaces the new tab page of your Google Chrome with a real-time counter that displays your incrementing age.


Every time you launch Chrome, or open a new tab in the browser, the extension works as a sobering reminder that the clock is ticking away. That may motivate you to exit the Bermuda productivity triangle and focus on the more important things.


The source code for the Motivation Chrome app is available on Github. See other useful Google Chrome extensions.




This story, A Chrome App Helps You Stop Procrastinating, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/07/2014 under Google Chrome, Productivity, Internet

Extended Google Play Music Trial for Chromecast Users



To celebrate Chromecast's first birthday, Google extended the Play Music All Access free trial from 30 days to 90 days, but only in the US. You can redeem Chromecast offers from this page. "In order to check for available offers, we require you to share your device's serial number with Google. We use the serial number to provide your device with offers that may be relevant to you," informs Google.






The extended trial is only available if you haven't subscribed to All Access and you haven't used the 30-days free trial. There's more information in the help center:



"Promotion only open to users in United States who have purchased and set up a Chromecast on or before September 30, 2014. Users must set up their All Access account and redeem their code by September 30, 2014 to be eligible for the offer."



{ via +Google Play }

Google Shows Images Next to Search Answers



I mentioned in a previous post that Google answers complicated questions using information from web pages. Now Google also shows images next to the relevant snippets. Here's an example for [galaxy s5 focal length].






Here's another example for [iphone 5s focal length]. This time, Google highlights the wrong answer:






A search for [iphone focal length] returns a row from a table that compares focal length for the latest 4 iPhones.





A Twitter Search Trick You Didn’t Know About



Tweetdeck, the popular app for Twitter, offers a very useful search feature that helps you discover the more popular (viral) tweets for any search term very easily. While setting up a search column inside Tweetdeck (see screenshot), you can define an “engagement level” so that tweets that have been retweeted or favorited at least ‘n’ times only show up in the search results.


twitter search tricks


The engagement filter surfaces the best tweets and removes the noise from Twitter search results but the most surprising part is that Twitter has not made this filter available outside Tweetdeck. You don’t even have it inside the official Twitter app.


Well, here’s the trick. You can actually filter tweets by engagement level on the Twitter website or inside any Twitter app using an undocumented search operator that Twitter doesn’t want us to know about.


Go to the Twitter search box, type any search term and append the operator min_retweets:[number] or min_faves:[number] to filter your search results. For instance, here’s a sample search that will only shows tweets pointing to the labnol.org domain that have been favorited or retweeted at least 5 times.


labnol.org min_retweets:5 OR min_faves:5


If you are brand manager trying to find out the most viral tweets generated for an event or a content, the min_retweets and min_faves search operators may save you several hours. You can also archive tweets to a Google Spreadsheet automatically.


You can further enhance your search queries with search operators like filter:news to show tweets emanating from news sources or use filter:images to only show tweets that contain images.




This story, A Twitter Search Trick You Didn’t Know About, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/07/2014 under Twitter, Internet

21 July 2014

More Secure Gmail Authentication



Google has a new settings page that lets you enable or disable access to less secure apps.



"Some devices and apps use insecure sign-in technology to access your data. Choosing Disable prevents these less secure devices and apps from accessing your Google Account. Choosing Enable increases your chances of unauthorized account access but allows you to continue using these less secure devices and apps."






Many mail apps use insecure sign-in standards: the Mail app for iOS 6 or below, the Mail app from Windows Phone 8.0 or earlier, some built-in mail apps for Android not developed by Google, desktop mail clients like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. If the access to less secure apps is disabled, you'll see a "Password incorrect" error when signing in.



A Microsoft article explains that "Google has increased its security measures to block access to Google accounts after July 15, 2014 if those accounts are being set up or synced in apps and on devices that use Basic Authentication." Another article informs that "Windows Phone builds earlier than 8.10.12359.845 [Windows Phone 8.1] use Basic Authentication and therefore may be impacted. Windows Phone builds later than 8.10.12359.845 use Open Authentication (or OAuth) and therefore will not be impacted".



{ Thanks, Herin. }

19 July 2014

Add the new Google Maps to your Website with Street View



I have written a new web app that should make it extremely easy for you to embed the new version of Google Maps in your website or blog. Available at ctrlq.org, the apps lets you add basic road maps, satellite imagery or even maps with Street View Panoramas to your website (see video demo).



Getting started is easy. Search for a place and pan or zoom to make sure that the Google Maps area you’d like to embed is visible inside the browser window. The embed code, available in the lower left corner, updates automatically as you move around the map.


You may be wondering why would anyone need another code generator when the map embedding options are available on the Google Maps website itself. Well, there are two reasons.


One, Google Maps does not offer an option to embed Street View panoramas. You could do that in the old (classic) version of Google Maps but that feature is no longer available. With the ctrlq generator, you can add interactive street views panoramas just like regular Google Maps in one easy step.


The other reason is that the new embeddable Google Maps are personalized and thus look very cluttered to users who are signed-in to Google. If all you want to do is add a minimalistic Google Map in your web pages without any personalization features, you’ll find my app handy.


embed street view


Internally, the app uses the Google Maps API to generate the embed code and wraps everything inside the IFRAME tag. With a little CSS, you can even make your embedded Google Maps responsive.




This story, Add the new Google Maps to your Website with Street View, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 19/07/2014 under Embed, Google Maps, Internet

Create Reminders in Google Search



You don't have to use the mobile Google Search app to add reminders. Just search Google for add reminder or create reminder, enter a name, a date or a place. You can also enter specific queries like: add reminder to buy milk tomorrow or create reminder to buy sandwich when I am in Chicago. Just click "remind me on Google Now".









You can create reminders for tasks, places to visit, events and more. You're notified of your reminders in Google Now, which works in Android, iOS (using the Google Search app) and Chrome for desktop.

Create Google Calendar Events in Google Search



You can now create events from Google Search. Type create event, add event, new event, add meeting or schedule appointment and Google shows the details for a generic Meeting event that starts in a few minutes. You can add the event to your calendar or click the time to go to Google Calendar.






A better idea is to enter something more specific: create event for Monday at 10am: write the report. This way, you can create the event directly from Google Search and you don't even have to open Google Calendar. It's similar to the "quick add" feature from Google Calendar, except that you need to add some text like "new event" or "create event" and detection doesn't work that well.






You can click "edit event" to open Google Calendar and make some changes.






This also works when you use voice input.



{ via Search Engine Land }

The New Google Alerts UI, Now Available



As previously anticipated, Google Alerts has a new interface inspired by Material Design. For some reason, Google only shows the new UI when you are logged in, while displaying the old interface if you don't log in to a Google account.



The new UI is a lot simpler and focuses on managing alerts and creating alerts with one click. The old Google Alerts homepage exposed a lot of advanced options, which are now hidden. There's a long list of alert suggestions: companies, people, countries, musical artists, industries, places, athletes, as well as your name and email address (the "me on the web" section).






For example, you can type "Google" in the huge input box at the top of the page, click "Create alert" and that's it. Google shows a preview, so you can see what results you may get.






There's a "show options" link that shows the advanced options, so you can choose sources, language and region, how often to send alerts, how many results to include and the delivery option: email or feed. The nice thing is that Google remembers your options and it uses them the next time you create a new alert.






Google Alerts lets you edit or delete alerts and shows a special icon for feed alerts.





18 July 2014

The New Google Drive for Desktop



I just got the new Google Drive desktop interface. Google shows a small box that asks you to try the new Drive. You need to go to the Settings drop-down and click "Experience the new Drive".









Here's the welcome page with a small accessibility icon:






The new interface has a lot in common with the new desktop home screens for Docs, Slides and Sheets. All of them use the new Material Design.






Here's the contextual menu:






When you click a file, it's selected and the info pane shows more information about the file. There are no more checkboxes: click to select, double click to open.









There's an updated "new" button that lets you upload files and files, but also create new documents.