More Than Just A Social Network: 5 Creative Uses For Google+ On The Go

There’s a lot you can get out of Google+ as a social network, but if there’s one place it really excels, it’s on your mobile. Available for both Android and iOS users, the Google+ app is a slick offering that gives you access to all the main features of the social network. You can post links, images, and text updates, as well as share your location. You can also access Google+ Communities and Google+ Events. In addition to the traditional use of the social network itself, you can get creative with how you interact with Google+ on the go. Whether...

Read the full article: More Than Just A Social Network: 5 Creative Uses For Google+ On The Go

Technophilia 80 Live From MakeUseOf

This week: Apple announces a thing that, while better than last year’s thing, isn’t quite as good as the thing people can imagine in their heads. Or, at least, the thing they could imagine with their heads if they had any imagination left at all, but unfortunately they’ve spent all of their down time staring at a thing, mindlessly flicking things into other things to destroy their thing structures. Oh, and reading those 140-character things about other things. This week’s show is brought to you by Bitdefender’s Clueful for iOS. It is the world’s first and only way to really...

Read the full article: Technophilia 80 Live From MakeUseOf

How To Install Windows 8.1 Without Microsoft Account

CLICK HERE TO SEE FULL POST



With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced a new way of signing-into Windows. In addition to the local account, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 let you sign-in using a Microsoft account. That is, you can use your Outlook.com, Hotmail, MSN, or Live email ID to sign-in to Windows. The advantage of signing-in with a Microsoft account is […]

Find Who has Access to your Files in Google Drive

Wondering who has access to your Google files and folders. This simple Google Script will show a list of all files that you may have ever shared with public or specific contacts.

---

This story, Find Who has Access to your Files in Google Drive, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 11/09/2013 under Google Drive, Security, Internet

Inside Kickstarter #2: What Does It Feel Like To Make $500,000 In 2 Weeks?

Can a handful of people raise half a million dollars in 10 days? Two weeks ago, we told you about Pressy, a then anonymous Kickstarter project like thousands of others, that was standing before its biggest moment yet: its Kickstarter launch. The odds were wide open. Anything could happen. For the developers, this was do or die: Pressy’s $40,000 goal wasn’t even enough for them to break even. All they wanted was to make Pressy come true, and after months of work and preparations, the moment has finally come. If Pressy couldn’t raise the goal, it would be gone forever....

Read the full article: Inside Kickstarter #2: What Does It Feel Like To Make $500,000 In 2 Weeks?

Google Operating System, Phishing Site?

If you use Opera to visit the site, you'll probably see this warning: "This site has been reported as fraudulent. Exchanging sensitive or confidential information with this site could put you at risk for identity theft and/or financial fraud. Opera Software strongly discourages visiting this page."

Opera uses Netcraft's phishing database. You'll get a similar warning if you install Netcraft's extensions:

Netcraft's site report page doesn't provide too many useful information. I could only find that the Google OS blog has a 5/10 risk rating, but the rating varies depending on the URL. The recent post about the Google logo has a 7/10 risk rating.

Many factors contribute to the risk rating of each site. The dominant factor for most sites is the age of the domain name in which the site appears. Domain names that have never been seen in the Netcraft Web Server Survey are given a high risk rating, since many phishing sites and relatively few legitimate sites fall into this category. Other factors which can influence the risk rating include:



* Any other known phishing sites in the same domain.

* Whether a hostname or a numeric IP address is used in the URL.

* Whether or not a port number appears in the URL.

* The hosting ISP's history with respect to phishing sites.

* The hosting country's history with respect to phishing sites.

* The top level domain's history with respect to phishing sites.

* The site's popularity with Netcraft Extension users.

So just because other Blogger blogs are used for phishing, Netcraft decided that this is a phishing site? It's hard to say. Google's official blog has a 0/10 risk rating, while a random blog like googlelatlong.blogspot.com (it's not Google's Maps blog) has a 7/10 risk rating, but there's no warning.



A site that lets you check multiple anti-phishing databases is the Google-owned VirusTotal. "VirusTotal is a free service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware." VirusTotal reported that there are 3 services that flag the Google OS blog: Opera, Netcraft and Kaspersky. They probably have the same source.

Here's Kaspersky's "access denied" message:

Ironically, a recent blog post from Kaspersky's site informs that: "Kaspersky's product blocked 99 percent of the 187 phishing websites while producing zero false alarms among the 400 legitimate URLs, earning first place among its competitors with an Advanced + award from AV-Comparatives."



I used Netcraft's browser extension to report that the URL was flagged by mistake and received this message after a few minutes: "Thank you for your enquiry. Following a review of the URL in question, I have unblocked the URL from the toolbar. Please allow a short period of time for the changes to propagate."

{ Thanks, Josh Rich. He reported this issue. }

How To Upgrade Windows 8.1 Preview To RTM (Final)

CLICK HERE TO SEE FULL POST



Upgrading from Windows 8.1 Preview to Windows 8.1 RTM isn’t as hard as you might think. In fact, it’s fairly simple. Windows 8.1 Preview users who have an ISO copy of Windows 8.1 RTM can easily upgrade to Windows 8.1 RTM without having to create a bootable media. In this guide we are going to […]

Google Tests a New Logo

Not only Marissa Mayer and her team at Yahoo worked on a new logo. Google also tests a new logo that's flat, minimalist, fresher and reduced to its essence, as Sir Jonathan Ive would say.

Here's the existing logo from the Google homepage:

This reminds me of Chrome, which switched from the original 3D logo to a flat logo back in 2011. "We're working on refreshing the icon to better represent the speed and simplicity of the modern browser and operating system," said Google at that time.



Update: The Verge reports that "a person familiar with Google's branding [says that] this is not a replacement for the company's traditional logo. Instead, the flatter design is used in instances where the beveled logo may not display well — such as on printed banners or other corporate use cases."



{ Thanks, Rubén and Artem. }

Google Tests Card-Style News OneBox

Google tests a card-style interface for the Google News OneBox. It's bigger, snippets are shorter, there's a lot of white space and the link to Google News search results is placed at the bottom of the card.



Here's a screenshot of a Google France search results page:

{ Thanks, Frédéric. }

Stuff I Found On The Web – Aliens! 101 Useful Websites! The Internet Of Things!

Today, we’ll be looking at icky aliens, Google preparing for screenless computers, 101 useful websites, offline and desktop apps from Chrome, and the “Internet of Things”. Don’t say we’re not good to you here at MUO. Ick! How The ‘Aliens’ Chestburster Was Created The Aliens movies are probably some of the best movies ever made, and one of the most iconic scenes is near the end, when John Hurt suddenly goes into spasms, and a baby alien comes bursting out of his body, like so : But would it surprise you to learn that this was done with absolutely no...

Read the full article: Stuff I Found On The Web – Aliens! 101 Useful Websites! The Internet Of Things!

Automatically Share Blogger Posts on Google+

For some reason, Google doesn't make it easy to automatically post content to Google+. You can't add the URL of a feed and import the posts from a blog. There's an exception: Blogger.



If you've integrated Blogger with Google+, you probably noticed a Google+ sharing box after publishing a post. It only required one click to share the post on Google+.

Now you can get even lazier: enable "Automatically share after posting" in Blogger's Google+ section and your posts will be shared automatically.

Google says that "automatic sharing to Google+ is enabled by default on all public blogs linked to Google+ pages or profiles. When you publish a blog post, a snippet of the post will automatically be shared publicly on your Google+ page or profile." That's probably true for new blogs, but it wasn't true for my blog: I had to manually enable "Automatically share after posting".



You can still enable "Prompt to share after posting" if you like to see the Google+ sharing box. Disable both options if you don't want to share your posts on Google+. Blogger also adds "share" links next to "edit", "view" and "delete" and you can use this feature to manually share posts on Google+.



Update: This feature is buggy. Here's what I got after publishing this post:

{ via Blogger Buzz }

Better Gmail for Feature Phones

There are still a lot of people who use feature phones and Google decided to improve the Gmail interface for these phones. The new version is closer to the smartphone UI, but it doesn't use AJAX, so you have to load a new page every time you perform an action.



"You'll get a number of improvements that reduce the number of button presses required to read, reply and compose emails. For example, you can reply directly to a message from the thread view, you can choose to move to the previous or next conversation, and much more," explains Google.

Gmail used to have a Java app for feature phones, but this is no longer available, at least not officially. Probably the best option to read your messages on a feature phone is to install Opera Mini and use the mobile Gmail site. Speaking of Opera Mini, you'll get the same "feature phone" Gmail interface even if you use an iPhone or an Android phone.