See all your Google Contacts on a Google Map

Want to know where you friends and colleagues are? The all-new Map My Contacts app will help you quickly visualize the location of your Google contacts on a world map. It reads the postal addresses of people from your Google Contacts and puts them all in a Google Map using a simple Google script.

Create a Google Map with your Google Contacts

Publish a Map of Google Contacts

It takes one easy step to turn your address book into a Google Map. If you are Google Chrome user, you can install an add-on or you can click here to directly access the “Map My Contacts” web app in any other browser.

The app will require authorization because it needs to read the addresses of your Google Contacts and it needs access to Google Drive for saving the generated map. It is an open-source Google Script and you get find the entire source code on ctrlq.org published under the MIT License.

Once you have authorized and granted access, the app will run for a few minutes, depending on how big your address book is, and generates a Google Map embedded in an HTML file. A KML file is also created in your Google Drive with markers (or placemarks) for every contact and you can double-click to open this file inside Google Earth.

Also, if you are not using Google Contacts as your primary address book, you can still use the apps to map your contacts. Just export the contacts data from your existing address book (like Outlook or Yahoo Mail) as a CSV file, import the file into Google Contacts and run the app again.

Internally, the Google Apps Script reads the home and work postal addresses of your Google Contacts and then uses the geocoding service of Google Maps to transform these human-readable addresses into latitudes and longitude values. These points are then put in a KML file (see sample KML file) that can viewed inside Google Earth or Google Maps.

See some of our other useful Google Scripts.

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The story, See all your Google Contacts on a Google Map, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 30/06/2015 under Google Contacts, Google Maps, Internet.

Earth View Update

Google has a cool Chrome extension called Earth View, which replaces the new tab page with a random stunning satellite image from Google Earth. The latest release brings a lot of new features: there are 500 new images, you can see the images from the last 10 tabs you've opened, there's a download feature in the menu and a sharing button. You can share images on Google+, Facebook, Twitter or copy the URL and paste it somewhere else.

If you don't want to install the extension or you use a different browser, there's a web gallery that shows all the 1500 images. Click the arrow button or use the left/right keyboard shortcuts to navigate between images. There's also a slideshow feature called "leanback mode".

"Earth View is a collection of the most striking and enigmatic landscapes available in Google Earth. The colors, shapes, textures and patterns all contribute to the strange beauty of our planet, reminding us of nature’s uncanny geometry and bewildering simplicity. Each of the 1500 images featured in this collection was hand curated and available for download as wallpaper for your desktop or mobile," informs Google.

Find LinkedIn Profiles with Google Search

LinkedIn, the largest network of professionals in the world, is also the favorite hunting ground for recruiters and staffing agencies. Whether you are looking for a list of college students who are currently interning at Facebook or a head hunter building a pool of presumptive candidates, LinkedIn will not disappoint.

LinkedIn has a useful search function to help you find potential candidates but do you know that Google search can also help to find people on LinkedIn. Google indexes every public profile of LinkedIn and if you perform people search on LinkedIn via Google, you get a few additional features:

• While LinkedIn will only show 10 results per search query in one page, Google can return up to 100 results in one search results page.
• You can perform date-limited searches in Google and this is helpful when you are only looking for profiles that have been created or updated in a particular date range.
• You can automatically easily save your LinkedIn search results in a spreadsheet using the Google search Scraper for further analysis.

LinkedIn Scraper with Google Search

OK, let’s take a look at how we can search LinkedIn profiles with the help of Google. Say you are trying to find people for senior position who are based in New York area. Here’s how we’ll construct the Google search query.

1. Show LinkedIn profiles but exclude internal LinkedIn search pages:

site:linkedin.com/in/ OR site:linkedin.com/pub/ -intitle:profiles -inurl:"/dir"

2. Find LinkedIn profiles of people who have senior positions:

"head | vp | vice-president | senior | director" site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -intitle:profiles -inurl:"/dir"

3. Find matching LinkedIn profiles who are based in NY (wild card search)

"Location * New York" "head | vp | senior | director" site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -intitle:profiles -inurl:"/dir

You can further refine search results by adding the domain (like Sales & Marketing) or even the company name to limit your search to executives of a particular organization.

Find LinkedIn Profiles by Post Code

Google search supports number ranges meaning you can search pages that contain numbers within a specific range. For instance, if you say “apples 1900..2000″ on Google, it will show matching pages that contain any number before 1900 and 2000.

We can extend the same trick to perform LinkedIn people search on Google. To give you an example, the pin code of Delhi is something like 110049. So if you are looking for web developers in the Delhi area on LinkedIn, you search query would be something like:

"web developer" 110001..110099 site:linkedin.com/in

One more thing. A search query like site:linkedin.com will perform a global search. However, you can use country specific sub-domains in LinkedIn to only show candidates from a particular country. For instance, site:uk.linkedin.com/in web-developer will find LinkedIn profiles from UK while site:ca.linkedin.com/in will only look for candidates that have set thir region as Canada.

Also see: Stop broadcasting your LinkedIn profile updates

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The story, Find LinkedIn Profiles with Google Search, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 29/06/2015 under Google, LinkedIn, Internet.

How to Update Files in Google Drive without Changing the Link

John uploaded a PDF file in Google Drive and shared it with Peter. A week later, John updated the PDF file and uploaded the new version to Google Drive. Peter however still has the link to the old version and John will have to send him another email informing of the new version. Confusing, right?

You’ve probably gone through this situation where you have multiple copies of the same file residing in your Google Drive and, while you would like everyone to use the latest version, they are either not aware that the file has been updated or it takes too much work to locate it in the Drive.

When you have multiple copies of the same file in Drive, it not only creates confusion but the files also take up precious storage space in your Drive. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could simply replace an existing file in Google Drive with the new version instead of uploading it as a separate file? Well, there’s a solution:

Replace Files in Google Drive

1. Go to your Google Drive and select any file that you would like to update. This is applicable for files that are not in that native Google Docs format like PDF, images, text files or even videos.
2. Right-click the file, choose Manage Versions from the menu and then click the Upload new version button to upload the updated file to your Google Drive.
3. That’s it. The file name and the file’s URL won’t change and thus all the old shared links will now automatically point to the new version of your file.

You can use the same method to replace a file in one format with another format. For instance, if you have a video file in Drive that you would like to replace with a GIF animation of smaller file size, the Manage Versions option will do the trick. And the shared link won’t change either.

Also see: Create Download Links for files in Google Drive

Things are a bit easier for Dropbox users. If you would like to update a shared file in Dropbox but without changing the link, simply upload the new version of the file in the same Dropbox folder.

When you upload a file in Dropbox and another file with a similar name already exists, Dropbox will simply replace the old file with the new one while the shared link will continue to work. In the case of Google Drive, you can can have multiple file with the same name in one folder and hence the confusion.

Also see: Add Files to Multiple Folders in Drive

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The story, How to Update Files in Google Drive without Changing the Link, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 29/06/2015 under Dropbox, Google Drive, Internet.

Wikipedia Available as a Printed Book

The English edition of Wikipedia Encyclopedia contains around 5 million articles and if someone were to print the entire Wikipedia encyclopedia into a book, the size of the printed book would roughly be equivalent to 2000+ volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (source).

Rob Matthews, a graphics design student from UK, converted 5000 pages of Wikipedia into a printed book in 2012. He downloaded few hundred featured articles from Wikipedia and bound them together in a physical book that was almost 1’7″ thick. Rob’s website (rob-matthews.com) has been taken over by domain squatters but the pictures of the printed Wikipedia book have survived.

While Rob limited his printed book to the featured articles, Michael Mandiberg’s team has a more ambitious plan. They’re working on making the entire English-language Wikipedia in print format. The work has about 7500 volumes, each made up of 700 pages, and you’ll soon be order individual volumes from Lulu.

The project launched at the Denny Gallery this month and visitors to the exhibition can see the process in real time as Wikipedia pages are converted in digital books and uploaded to Lulu. A Twitter bot, @PrintedWikipedia updates when new volumes are added to the book library.

Here are pictures of the Printed Wikipedia project courtesy Wikimedia.

Print your own Wikipedia Book

Wikipedia does include a built-in book creator that would let anyone, include anonymous non-logged users, create ebooks from Wikipedia articles. You can download these ebooks as PDF files or send them to a print-on-demand service like Lulu or PediaPress and have a custom printed book made of your favorite Wikipedia pages.

See more Wikipedia tools.

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The story, Wikipedia Available as a Printed Book, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 27/06/2015 under Wikipedia, Internet.

How to Schedule Gmail Messages with a Google Sheet

Have you ever wanted to write an email message in Gmail now but send it a later date and time? Maybe you are sending birthday greetings and would like the email message to be delivered on the exact day. Or you have written an email now but would like to schedule delivery in the recipient’s time zone when the message is more likely to get read.

Microsoft Outlook has a built-in scheduler to help you delay the delivery of email messages. After you are finished writing an email message and hit the Send button, the message isn’t delivered immediately – it stays in your outbox and is sent at the specified date and time automatically.

Gmail doesn’t let you schedule a later delivery of email messages but there are browser extensions – like Boomerang, Sidekick and Right Inbox – that let you specify a future send date for your outgoing email messages. These are however subscription based services that allow you to send only a limited number of scheduled email messages for free per month. The other concern is privacy – you will have to grant read and write access to your entire Gmail account to a third-party to enable scheduling inside Gmail.

Schedule & Send Gmail Messages Later

If you are reluctant to provide access to your entire Gmail account to another service, there’s a good alternative – Google Sheets.

What you can do is compose all the emails that you would like to be delivered later in Gmail, let them stay as drafts and then specify the exact delivery date and time for these messages in the Google sheet. The messages would be delivered automatically at the time chosen by you with Google Scripts.

The Gmail Scheduler is available in free and premium editions. The premium edition lets you schedule more emails, you can schedule recurring emails that are sent daily, weekly or monthly, it allows you to send mails from another alias associated with your Gmail account and you can also opt for one-on-one support.

Features	Free	Premium
Supports Gmail & Google Apps	Yes	Yes
Number of emails that you can schedule	~20	No limit
Schedule Recurring Emails	No	Yes
Change the sender’s email address (Gmail alias)	No	Yes
Logs scheduling activity for troubleshooting	No	Yes
Installation Manual (PDF) included	No	Yes
Support options	None	Email
Choose Edition	Forever Free	Premium You can buy the Premium version using your credit card or PayPal. It is a flat one-time fee (not a subscription) and you can use the program for life. You also get free technical support over email for 6 months. The Platinum version has all the features of premium and includes one-on-one support over phone, Skype or Google Hangouts for 12 months. Refunds can be requested within 6 hours of purchase. Should you have any questions, or require customization, send an email at amit@labnol.org or visit our services page. Premium Platinum ×

How to Setup Gmail Scheduler

Scheduling Gmail messages with Google sheets is easy. Here’s a detailed video tutorial (download) that will walk you through the steps for using Gmail scheduler.

Go to your Gmail mailbox and compose a few email messages that you would like to send later. Do not hit the Send button, just let these draft messages stay in the Drafts folder on your Gmail account.

Your draft messages can have rich formatting, you can add attachments, signatures and even inline images. Make sure that you have included the recipient’s email address in the TO field of the draft emails.

1. Click here to make a copy of the Gmail Scheduler sheet in your Google Drive.
2. Go to File – Spreadsheet Settings and select your current timezone from the dropdown. The emails will be scheduled in this timezone.
3. Go to the Gmail Scheduler menu, select Authorize and grant the necessary permissions.
4. Choose the Gmail Scheduler menu again and select Fetch Messages to import all the draft messages from your Gmail account into the Google Sheet.
5. Set the scheduled date and time for individual messages in column D of the sheet. You can double-click a cell and use the date picker or you can manually enter the date and time as mm/dd/yyyy h:mm:ss in 24 hour format.
6. Go to Gmail Scheduler -> Schedule Messages and run the scheduler. You can close the spreadsheet and it will send messages at the specified time automatically.

Please do note that once an email message has been scheduled, you should not edit the corresponding Gmail draft message else it will be removed from the queue. If you wish to edit the draft or need to change the delivery time once the messages have been scheduled, you can fetch the drafts again and reinitialize the queue.

The free edition of Gmail scheduler lets you schedule 10-20 email messages in one go. If you wish to schedule more messages, or if you are trying the schedule recurring email with Gmail, please get the premium edition.

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The story, How to Schedule Gmail Messages with a Google Sheet, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 25/06/2015 under GMail, Internet.

Listen Again in Google Translate

Emanuele Bartolomucci, a reader of this blog, noticed an interesting feature in Google Translate. If you click the "listen" button next to the text you want to translate or the translation, Google converts the text into speech. Click "listen" again and the speed decreases, probably because Google assumes that you are listening again to better get the correct pronunciation.

If you click "listen" the third time, Google goes back to the normal speed. Click again and the speed decreases. The two text-to-speech versions alternate.

I've checked Google Translate's URLs and the second version has the following parameter: "ttsspeed=0.24", which changes the text-to-speech speed.

{ Thanks, Emanuele. }

Classic Google Maps, No Longer Available

Classic Google Maps has been replaced by Google Maps Lite back in April, but they were still a few URLs you could use to access it. Now they no longer work, so you'll have to get used to the new interface or switch to a different service like Bing Maps or Here.com.

Last week, I had to print some directions in Google Maps and I realized that the classic Google Maps had a much better printing feature. You could include a map for each step or add Street View imagery. The new Google Maps offers two options: print text only or print including maps. There are fewer maps included since directions are now grouped and you can no longer customize each step.

Google's Updated Privacy Policy

Google has recently changed its privacy policy and there's a page that shows the differences. It's not clear if there are actual changes or the updated privacy policy only clarifies some existing features.

The new privacy policy states that information like your name, email address, phone number or credit card could be stored with your Google account, which is not something new. Another change is that the "cookies and anonymous identifiers" section is now called "cookies and similar technologies", which is a broader title.

The following text:

We and our partners use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, and this may include sending one or more cookies or anonymous identifiers to your device.

... has been replaced with:

We and our partners use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, and this may include using cookies or similar technologies to identify your browser or device.

Basically, Google removed all the references to "anonymous identifiers" from the privacy policy and replaced them with "similar technologies", which includes anonymous identifiers, but also HTML5 Local Storage, local shared objects (Flash cookies), Web beacons and more. The privacy policy clearly states that Google can use cookies and similar technologies to identify your browser or device. Google says that it uses "these technologies to collect and store information when you interact with services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or Google features that may appear on other sites."

There's also a new paragraph:

Information we collect when you are signed in to Google may be associated with your Google Account. When information is associated with your Google Account, we treat it as personal information. For more information about how you can access, manage or delete information that is associated with your Google Account, visit the Transparency and choice section of this policy.

Undo Send Graduates From Gmail Labs

After spending 6 years in Gmail Labs, "undo send" is now a regular Gmail feature. You can find it in the settings, bellow "send and archive". The feature is disabled by default, but it's enabled if you've already used the Gmail Labs feature.

So what's so great about "undo send"? Gmail doesn't send email immediately and there's a short delay that lets you undo sending the message, just in case you changed your mind, you noticed a mistake or you picked the wrong sender. There are 4 options for the cancellation period: 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds and 30 seconds.

After sending a message, you'll get an "Undo" link next to "Your message has been sent". If you click the "Undo" link, you can edit the message, save it as a draft or delete it.

"Undo send" has been recently added to Google Inbox for desktop and mobile. Mashable reports that Gmail's mobile apps will also add this feature: "Google said it will roll out the feature to mobile in the future but didn't elaborate on the timeline."

Send Tweets with Rich-Text Formatting using TallTweets

You can post messages of virutally any length to Twitter using TallTweets. The web app bypasses the 140 character limit of Twitter by either converting your tweet into a PNG image or by breaking the long snippets of text into multiple tweets and sending them all in quick succession. Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood’s biggest star, once recommended it too.

Compose Tweetstorms & Tweetshots

A new release of TallTweets has just been rolled out and it includes several new features and enhancements. The interesting additions are:

1. TallTweets now supports rich-text formatting so you can use bold text, write in italics or even mark words with the yellow highlighter. See image tweet.
2. You can compose Tweetstorms (numbered tweets, sent sequentially) and TallTweets will offer a live preview as you type so you know exactly how the tweets will look like in your timeline. See Tweetstorm
3. TallTweets has gone international and now supports all languages including Hindi, Arabic, Malay, Chinese and more. In fact, if you use the “tweet as image” option, you can even send tweets in languages that are not officially supported by Twitter yet.

To get started, go the Tall Tweets website and sign-in with your Twitter account. Next choose the tweet style (tweetstorm for text tweets, tweetshot for image tweets), compose the tweet and then hit the Send button.

The TallTweets website is mobile-friendly so you can should be able to send tweets from your mobile and tablets as well. On the technical side, TallTweets uses an HTML5 library to convert text into images in the client’s browser itself.

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The story, Send Tweets with Rich-Text Formatting using TallTweets, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 24/06/2015 under Twitter, Internet.

Add Google Drive Files to Google Calendar Events

The latest version of the Google Calendar app for iOS brings a few useful features, catching up with the Android app.

You can now add Google Drive files to calendar events in the iOS app, as well as the desktop Google Calendar site. This feature was already available in the Android app since February and in Google Calendar Labs since 2009. "Event attachments" graduated from Labs and it's now available for everyone (including developers).

If a Drive file isn't shared with all the guests, you'll see a prompt and you can change how the file is shared.

Here's a screenshot from the desktop site (the feature may not seem new if you've used the Event Attachments feature from Google Calendar Labs):

Another feature already available in the Android app is the 7-day view, which lets you see more events at a glance. You can now switch to the 7-day view in the iOS app and customize your calendar with week numbers in the settings.

Google takes advantages of the improved notification features from iOS8 and adds interactive notifications for events, so you can email guests or view the map without having to open Google Calendar first.

Picasa Web Albums, Back to the Future

Picasa Web Albums is fully functional again. The site no longer redirects to Google+ Photos and the search feature works, at least for personal photos and videos. The search feature was removed in 2013.

I thought that Google will discontinue the service and replace it with Google Photos, since Google+ is no longer required. For now, Picasa Web Albums is here to stay and that's surprising.

Google+: Then and Now

Here are 2 screenshots that show the importance of Google+ today and a few years ago. Back in 2013, Google changed the navigation bar and added an app launcher: the first shortcut was for Google+.

Google has recently tweaked the app launcher. The first shortcut is now for "My Account", followed by Search, Maps, YouTube, Play, News, Gmail, Drive and Calendar. Google+ is now the 10th shortcut, right next to Google Translate and Google Photos.

Google Wallet, Rebranded as Google Payments?

A few weeks ago, I posted about Google Payments, a service that could replace Google Wallet. If you open Google Wallet's site, you'll notice that the name of the service is now Payments. There are still references to the Wallet Card and Wallet Balance.

Another change is that payments.google.com no longer redirects to wallet.google.com, but shows the same site.

Google says that "the Services offered by Google Payments are covered by the Google Wallet Privacy Notice. The Google Wallet Privacy Notice will be updated effective June 30, 2015." The link sends users to this page, which is the Google Payments Privacy Notice.

{ Thanks, Kevin. }