New Gmail Categories

Gmail automatically categorizes messages. Right now, there are only 4 categories available: social, promotions, updates, forums and they match Gmail's inbox tabs. Even if you disable Gmail's inbox tabs from the settings, you'll still see the list of categories in the right sidebar.

When you click the 4 categories, Gmail adds the following queries to the search box: [category:social], [category:promotions], [category:updates], [category:forums].



If you used the new Google Inbox app, you probably noticed some other categories: travel, purchases, finance.

They're also available in Gmail, but you have to manually search for: [category:travel], [category:purchases], [category:finance]. Travel groups email confirmations from sites like Booking.com or Expedia, the purchases category shows order receipts from sites like Amazon or eBay, while the finance category shows bills, PayPal payment updates and more.

You can create labels that show messages from the new categories using filters. How to create a Purchases label?



1. Go to Gmail's inbox

2. Click the small arrow from the search box that shows advanced search options

3. Type category:purchases in the "Has the words" box

4. Click "Create filter with this search"

5. Check "Apply the label", pick "New label" from the list and type "Purchases"

6. Check "Also apply filter to matching conversations"

7. Click "Create filter".

Use the same steps to create labels for Travel and Finance, but replace Purchases with Travel or Finance in step 3 and 5.

Android's Email App Links to Gmail

Now that the Gmail app for Android lets you add non-Gmail accounts and works like a generic email client, the Email app is no longer necessary. When you open it, the app shows this message: "Email has moved. The Gmail app now lets you view all of your email accounts." You can tap "Take me to the Gmail app" and check "Always do this".

There are a few advantages for Google: it only has to bundle a single mail app from now on, the Gmail app is constantly updated in the Play Store, there's a consistent interface for both Gmail and the mail client.



Gmail could already import messages from other accounts using Mail Fetcher, but that's a tool for power users who fiddle with Gmail's settings. "Gmail's Mail Fetcher feature first imports all your old messages to Gmail and then continues to bring in new messages sent to your other account. You can add up to 5 accounts, including Gmail and other email providers."



Email is another AOSP app that bites the dust and is replaced by a closed source Google app, just like Music, Calendar, Browser, Camera and more.

Find Your Purchases Using Google

Google uses confirmation messages from Gmail to show helpful information about your purchases in Google Now, Google Search and other Google services. That's not a new feature, but there are some ways to make it even more useful.



If you're signed in to your Google account, you can search for [my purchases] and Google shows your latest purchases from sites like Amazon, eBay, Google Play and more. Click one of the items to find more details, including tracking links, prices and links to email receipts. Click "show 10 more results" to see more orders.

You can filter your purchases. For example, you can search for [my purchases amazon de] to find your amazon.de orders.

You can also search for [my purchases from June 2013], [my purchases from last month], [my purchases from yesterday] and more.

This also works for searching purchases by name: [my purchases led], [my purchases shirt], [my purchases Samsung].

How to find your receipts from Gmail? Just search Gmail for [category:purchases] and you'll find all the confirmation messages detected by Gmail. It's interesting to notice that not all of them are used by Google Now and Google Search.

YouTube HTML5 Loop

YouTube's HTML5 player uses some tricks to hide the standard menu that's displayed when you right click a HTML5 video. This menu includes features like looping videos, enabling browser controls or saving videos.



I've found a way to enable this menu in Chrome: just right click the video twice in the same place. The first right click will trigger YouTube's contextual menu, while the second right click will display browser's menu. Features like "save video as", "copy video URL" don't work, but you can use this trick to watch videos on repeat. Just click "loop" and you can watch your favorite YouTube video over and over again. To deactivate repeat, right click the video twice and click "loop" once again.

Obviously, this only works for YouTube's HTML5 player, but it's enabled by default in Chrome and most YouTube videos use it.



There are other ways to loop YouTube videos: from adding videos to playlists to using the "loop" parameter, installing extensions or using sites like Infinite Looper.



To enable the menu in Firefox, you can Shift click the YouTube player. There's no loop option, but you can find features like "save snapshot as", "view video" and more.

Chromebooks Bring 1 TB of Free Google Storage

If you planned to buy Google storage, you might decide to buy a Chromebook instead. When you buy a Chromebook, you now also get 1 TB of storage for 2 years if you redeem the offer by January 31, 2015. You would have to pay almost $240 for 1 TB of Google storage and the most affordable Chromebook costs $199: Acer Chromebook 11. You get the Chromebook for free and you still save about $40.

Until now, Google only offered 1 TB of storage for Chromebook Pixel users. Chromebook Pixel is the most expensive Chromebook and still costs $1299 when you buy it from the Google Play Store.

Chrome Will Remove NPAPI Support in 2015

Google hoped to remove the support for NPAPI plug-ins this feature, but that will have to wait until next year. The NPAPI support will be completely removed in September 2015.

Chrome whitelisted some of the most popular NPAPI plug-ins like Silverlight or Google Talk. As their usage continued to decline, the whitelist will be removed in January and users will have to manually enable the plug-ins.



As you can see from the table below, the only plug-in used by more than 10% of the Chrome users is Silverlight and it's followed by Google Talk, which is still used by 7% of the Chrome users. Java usage declined from 8.9% to 3.7%, Facebook's plug-in usage declined from 6% to 3%, while Unity is only used by 1.9% of the Chrome users, down from 9.1% in September 2013.

In April 2015 NPAPI support will be disabled and Google will unpublish from the Chrome Web Store the extensions that require NPAPI plugins. Power users and business users will still be able to enable NPAPI using Chrome flags or Enterprise Policy, but only until September 2015, when NPAPI support will be completely removed. There's a deprecation guide for developers which offers a few alternatives to NPAPI, including HTML5, WebRTC, Chrome APIs for apps and extensions and Native Client.



NPAPI is a legacy technology that enabled a lot of powerful features, back when browsers couldn't play videos, handle video calls or run games. You had to install QuickTime or RealPlayer to play videos, install plug-ins for Google Talk or other video calling apps, install Java or Flash to play games. Now browsers are a lot more powerful and the features that are still not supported by Chrome can be enabled by more secure NPAPI alternatives like PPAPI and Native Client, which are unfortunately still only available in Chrome.

Create a Tree View of your Google Drive

If you have ever worked with DOS or Linux before, you’ll be familiar with the “tree” command that recursively lists all the files and folders in the current directory in a tree like format. Most of us prefer visual navigation through Windows Explorer or Mac Finder but a unique advantage with the tree command is that you can save and print the directory structure.

Tree Command for your Google Drive

I have written a little Google Script that is much like running “tree” but against your Google Drive. It creates a hierarchical tree diagram of all the files and folders in your Google Drive that you can save for offline reference or even print.

To get started, click here and authorize the script to access the files in your Google Drive. Once the authorization is complete, it may take a minute to generate the entire Google Drive tree. You’ll then get a link to download an HTML file that mirrors your Drive structure. You can directly send the file to the printer as well.

Internally, all the script does is recursive traversal and the tree itself is sylized through simple CSS. In the current version, only the folder names in the tree are linked to their corresponding location in your Google Drive though the script can be easily extended to create a more data-rich tree that includes details like file URLs, sharing permissions, file sizes, file types and so on.

The process may take slightly longer if you have a large drive with tons of file and folders. Also, as soon as you authorize the Google Drive Tree script, you’ll get an email from Google with instructions on how to revoke access. You can do so as soon as the tree has been generated.

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The story, Create a Tree View of your Google Drive , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 25/11/2014 under Google Drive, Internet.

YouTube Videos in Google Play Music

A side effect of the YouTube Music Key service is that the Play Music app for Android/iOS and the desktop site started to show relevant YouTube music videos for the songs you are playing. There's a "watch video" button placed on top of the album art and a "start video" menu option (it's called "watch video" in the iPhone app).

Google Play Music for Android shows the video inside the mobile app, so it doesn't launch the YouTube app. Google Play Music for iOS opens the YouTube app.

In the desktop site, the YouTube player is overlaid. Press Esc or click outside the player to hide it.

I've checked a long list of songs and the "start video" option is available for many popular songs that have music videos. You can also find YouTube videos when searching for artists and albums.

Who Tweeted It First on Twitter?

Twitter has recently opened up their archives making it possible for anyone to search the entire Twitter database ever since the first tweet was published in 2006. This time-sorted archive of billions to tweets will be extremely helpful for research and more so when you are trying to find out who broke the news first on Twitter or who the original source of a quote is.

To give you an example, if you want to know who said something first on Twitter, say the iPhone, you can head to Twitter’s advanced search, choose a range of dates and dig through the old tweets. If a match is found, you further narrow down the date range and repeat until you find the oldest matching tweet.

There’s a little problem though.

It takes lot of trial-and-error to find the first tweet for any topic. You have to first guess a range of dates when that tweet was probably sent and keep narrowing down that range. The Twitter API does let you search tweets within a date range but, as you have noticed in the Twitter archiver, the API doesn’t return tweets older than a few weeks and thus you’ve to perform searches for old tweets manually.

Who Said It First is my new web-app that seeks to solve this very problem. It helps you find old tweets for any topic automatically. Here are some examples.

Internally, the web app performs binary search against the archives. It takes your search query and executes Twitter’s advanced search for the entire range of dates. It then shrinks the range by half and discards the other half. The process continues till that elusive tweet is discovered. This also explains why the app is slow as it has to perform a couple of JSON requests before getting the result.

[*] Do note that the app only works on the desktop at this time.

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The story, Who Tweeted It First on Twitter? , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 22/11/2014 under Twitter, Internet.

Using YouTube Music Key

Thanks to my Google Play Music All Access subscription, I've been able to try YouTube Music Key, the new feature that transforms YouTube into the music streaming service with the largest collection of music videos.



If you use All Access and you have the latest version of the Play Music app for Android, you should see this message in Play Music:

Open the YouTube app and the most obvious new feature is the download button that lets you save almost any music video.

The "add video to Offline" dialog lets you pick the video quality: normal (360p), HD (720p). You can click "remember my settings" to no longer see this dialog.

The Offline section shows all your offline videos and playlists.

You can download entire playlists. The music tab from the "what to watch" section features a lot of music playlists, including Songza playlists.

The "background & offline" section from the settings lets you customize background listening, video quality, offline storage and lets you disable downloading videos when you're not using Wi-Fi.

By default, YouTube continues to play music videos in the background, but you can disable this feature or only enable it when using headphones or external speakers.

New UI in Google Maps for Mobile Browsers

The new interface from the Google Maps mobile apps is now also available in the mobile browser. Just go to maps.google.com in your favorite mobile browser for Android and iOS and you should see an interface that closely resembles the UI from the native mobile apps.

"Bold colors and textures are in — and Google Maps is on trend, with a slick new style to make traveling with Maps even easier. Over the next few days, when you open up Google Maps on your Android or iPhone, you'll be greeted by bright colors and a fresh new design. This new look is all about creating surfaces and shadows that echo the real world; with Google Maps' new material feel, layers and buttons come to life so you know just where to touch to get directions, recommendations and imagery," explained Google a few weeks ago, when the new versions of the mobile apps were launched.

The mobile web app even has a "hamburger" menu that lets you enable layers like traffic, transit, bicycling and satellite.