24 April 2017

How to Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists and Junk Newsletters in Gmail


Unroll.me is a free online service that lets you easily unsubscribe from email newsletters and other bulk messages in Gmail. You, however, will have to grant complete access to your Gmail mailbox and to your Google Contacts for Unroll.me to automatically remove your email address from various mailing lists.

This morning, it was revealed that Unroll.me is silently scraping your Gmail mailbox and selling the data to Uber. Maybe it is hidden somewhere in the terms of service that the app can share your data with other companies but who actually reads the fine print. If this worries you,  here’s a simple guide on how to block the app from accessing your Gmail emails in future.

Christian Heilmann’s tweetFeature request for Gmail: automatically find and follow the unsubscribe link in all highlighted emails – prompted me to build an automated system for unsubscribing your Gmail address from the bulk senders. Here’s how it looks like:

Unsubscribe from Gmail Bulk Messages

How to Unsubscribe from Email Newsletters in Gmail

What I have now is a simple Google Script that parses the content of bulk emails and finds the unsubscribe link. If an unsubscribe link is found, the script opens the link and your email is automatically unsubscribed. In some cases, the bulk sender would require you to send a message to a special email address to unsubscribe and our Google script can do that as well.

The big advantage is that don’t have to grant access to your Gmail account to any third-party service and you can add subscription emails to the unsubscribe queue from any email client including desktop and mobile apps. Let’s get started:

  1. Click here to copy the Gmail Unsubscriber sheet to your Google Drive.
  2. Go to the Gmail menu in the sheet (see screenshot above) and choose Authorize. All the script access to your Gmail account. It is an open source Google Script that runs in your own Drive and not a single byte of data is shared with anyone.
  3. From the same menu, choose Start and pick a name for your Gmail label (the default is Unsubscribe). Save your changes

The Gmail Unsubscriber program is now initialized and running in the background. You can now apply the Unsubscribe label to any email message in Gmail and you’ll be automatically unsubscribed in 10-15 minutes. Everything is logged in the Google Sheet so you know what’s happening behind the scenes. Give it a try!

Also, the solution works everywhere – you can apply the label to unwanted subscription newsletters on the Gmail website, mobile apps for Gmail on iPhone & Android or even third-party email clients like Microsoft Outlook (move the email to the Unsubscribe folder) or Apple Mail.

How Gmail Unsubscribes from Mailing Lists

All legitimate bulk email senders include a List-Unsubscribe field in the message header that contains an URL or email address for unsubscribing from a mailing list. Here’s a screenshot:

List-Unsubscribe Header in Bulk Emails

You can view these details by opening any bulk message inside Gmail and choosing “Show Original” from the menu. In other cases, the unsubscribe link may be included in the message body with the anchor text like “click here to unsubscribe” – the script is smart enough to recognize all such links, it opens them for you and removes your email address from the mailing list.


15 April 2017

Using WhatsApp as a Private Store for your Documents and Notes


WhatsApp is a perfect messaging app for staying in touch with friends and family. It is super-fast, works on nearly all phones (including desktop computers) and Facebook has no plans to charge WhatsApp users.

You have been using WhatsApp primarily for text messaging and calling but there are a couple of other interesting uses for WhatsApp that will help boost the utility value of this app even further. Other than communicating with the external world, you can also use WhatsApp to:

  1. Capture and save ideas, notes, voice memos, scanned documents and everything else in you own private storage space that is accessible from everywhere.
  2. Quickly transfer web links, documents, screenshots, and other files between your computer and phone without having to sign-up for another service.

whatsapp-group.png

The idea is simple. You create a new virtual contact inside WhatsApp and, everything that you wish to capture privately, you can just share it with this virtual contact.

It is not possible to send WhatsApp messages to your own number but there’s a simple hack to get around this problem. Create a new WhatsApp group with just a single participant – you. Here’s how:

  1. Open WhatsApp on your phone and create a new group.
  2. Add any contact from your address book to this group. Give your group a name and save.
  3. Now go to the group in WhatsApp, tap the subject to view the list of participants.
  4. Tap and hold the lone participant in this list and remove them from the group.

That’s it. What you now have a private store in WhatsApp that is visible only to you and accessible from the web (desktop) and your mobile phone.

If you wish to transfer a document from computer to phone, open web.whatsapp.com on the computer, send the file to this group and it will instantly become available on your phone. There’s search built-in so you can easily find messages by keyword later.

Thank you Sidin Vadukut (blog, books, twitter) for this useful tip.


Google Can Remember Things for You


How do you remember important things that you think you might forget? Some rely on their brain to memorize information while others prefer  writing things down on post-it notes. There are ton of digital note-taking apps – from Evernote to Trello – that can also help you remember anything with ease.

There’s another interesting option from Google that you may wish to explore for remembering things. It’s called Google Assistant, the voice assistant app that is now available on newer Android phones. If you don’t have one, you can still use Google assistant inside the Google Allo app that is available for both iPhone and Android.

google-remember-things.png

Let Google Remember Things for you

To get started, say “OK Google” to launch Google Assistant on your phone and then say “Remember ..” followed by information you would like Google to remember. For instance, you could say:

  • Remember my favorite color is blue
  • Remember that my registration number is Z1234
  • Remember that I parked the car in the 2nd level
  • Remember that my hotel room safe code is 6666

You can launch the Google Assistant anytime later and ask Google for information that was previously stored.

How to ask what Google remembers?

You could say something like “What did I say about my favorite color?” or “What’s my registration number?” If Google is unable to understand your question, you could say “What did I ask you to remember” and it will show a list of 5 most recent things you’ve asked Google to remember.

google-assistant.png

How to Clear Google’s Memory?

If the list has grown big, you can also use your voice to instruct Google to forget things it remembers. You could say “Forget what I said about my favorite color” or say “What did I ask you to remember” and tap the “Forget #” option to erase any of the listed items from Google’s memory.

 


How to Easily Switch between Multiple Google Accounts


Lots of us maintain multiple Google accounts for a variety of reasons. Maybe your day is mostly spent inside Gmail and Google Calendar associated with your work account but you prefer to store files inside Google Drive of your personal Google Account.

Google does make it easy for you to sign-in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously so you don’t have to log out of one Gmail account to check emails of the other one. Simply go to http://ift.tt/1QPMLv5 and sign-in with the other Google account inside the same browser session.

Sign-in is Easy, Switching Accounts is Difficult

One you are logged in, click your profile image in the upper right and select any Google account from the drop down to switch to that account.

switch-gmail-accounts.png

The default account, the one that appears on top of that list, is the one that you signed in with first. Thus, if you type mail.google.com in your browser’s address bar, you’ll always be taken your Gmail account. If you need to set another Google account as the default one, you’d have to sign-out of all existing accounts and sign-in first with that account.

That’s obviously too many steps for users who have to constantly juggle between multiple accounts. So here’s a simple URL trick that will help you switch between Google accounts quickly.

Create Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Accounts

Go to the Gmail website and press Ctrl+D (or Cmd+D on Mac) to bookmark the Gmail website.

gmail-bookmark.png

Click the Edit button to modify the bookmark. Here add ?authuser=email@gmail.com after the last slash(/) symbol and append the shortcut to the bookmark name as shown below. We use the short “gw” meaning Google Apps for Work Gmail.

gmail-multiple-signin.png

Repeat the steps for all your other Gmail accounts.

You can now type gw in the address bar to quickly launch your work Gmail account even if that account may not be your default Google account.

If you are a keyboard ninja, shortcuts are a much faster way to do things that using your mouse to click a bunch of menu items. The trick works with all Google Apps services including Google Drive, Contacts and Calendar.

http://ift.tt/2phT8CI
http://ift.tt/2ohfxeQ
http://ift.tt/2pi6AXq

You should check out the most important Google URLs.


01 April 2017

Google April Fools' Day 2017


April Fools' Day should probably be called Google Fools' Day, since there are so many Google hoaxes.

Google Japan developed a "bubble wrap" version of the Japanese keyboard. "The Google Japanese input bubble wrap version is a keyboard that realizes 'I want to press in my mind, I want to keep pressing'," according to Google Translate.



Another product for your smart home? Meet Google Gnome, "a voice-activated, hands-free tool designed to make backyard living effortless. Need to know what animal is squeaking in your bushes? Stay still and ask Gnome what sound an opossum makes. Running low on birdseed? That’s where Gnome comes in. You can even use Gnome's proprietary high-intensity lasers to trim your hedges into whatever shape your heart desires."



The Chrome OS team brings the most popular mobile accessories to the Chromebook, which already blurs the line between mobile and desktop. Chromebook Groupie Stick, Chromebook Cardboard, Chromebook Workout Armband will soon be available in the Google Store. "To take advantage of beautiful, high-resolution displays, as well as great photo editing apps, we've carefully engineered the first Chromebook-sized selfie stick. Never again will you miss the perfect groupie."


Haptic Helpers make VR even more immersive. "We're taking VR to the next level with Haptic Helpers. Using a modest set of everyday tools, these VR virtuosos can simulate more than 10,000 unique experiences, all from the comfort of your own home. Smell the roses. Listen to the ocean. Feel a fluffy dog!"


You can now play the classic arcade game MS. PAC-MAN in Google Maps. "Avoid Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue as you swerve the streets of real places around the world. But eat the pac-dots fast, because this game will only be around for a little while." Just go to the Google Maps site or open the Google Maps app for Android or iOS and click or tap MS. PAC-MAN at the bottom.


Google Cloud Platform expands to Mars. "By opening a dedicated extraterrestrial cloud region, we're bringing the power of Google’s compute, network, and storage to the rest of the solar system, unlocking a plethora of possibilities for astronomy research, exploration of Martian natural resources and interplanetary life sciences. This region will also serve as an important node in an extensive network throughout the solar system. Our first interplanetary data center — affectionately nicknamed 'Ziggy Stardust' — will open in 2018," mentions Google.



... To be continued ...