No More Schemer

Google confirmed the news that Schemer will be discontinued.

The time has come for Schemer to power down.



Schemer launched in beta over a year ago to help inspire and motivate people to do more awesome stuff, and though it's shutting down, the adventures will continue. You can use the "Explore" section on Google Maps for Android and iOS to find interesting things to do around you, or Field Trip to uncover hidden or unique things in your city, among others.



All your schemes are available for download until February 7, 2014, after which all data will be permanently deleted. Before then, we recommend you use the button below to get a copy of your schemes for download.



In the meantime, stay curious, ambitious, daring, and above all, stay adventurous; thank you for all your support on this journey!



-The Schemer Team

Go to schemer.com to export your schemes. Since it was a small experimental project, you'll only get your data by email.

Schemer was one of the few Google projects with a distinct user interface. It started as an invitation-only service, it required a Google+ account and it lived in its own cocoon far away from other Google services. Google didn't promote the service, didn't integrate it with other services and eventually stopped updating it.



"Whether it's exploring a new city, checking out a friend's movie recommendation, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day. We started out as a scrappy team of Google engineers who wanted to help people do fun stuff in the real world. So we went ahead and built Schemer! We hope you like it," informs the About page.

Circular Profile Pictures in Google's Navigation Bar

Google no longer shows the square profile image in the navigation bar. Now it shows a round image, just like in Google+.

The new version looks nice and makes the Google bar more consistent. Some Google services still use the old version: YouTube, Blogger.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Send Email to Your Google+ Circles

Usually, if you want to send someone an email, you are supposed to know the email address, but that's not always the case. Many sites use contact forms and now it's very easy to create one using Google Drive. A few years ago, Google Profiles added a contact form, but it was disabled by default. Google+ made it easy to send someone a message: just add "+", mention his name and he will probably receive a notification, depending on his notification settings.



Now you can send email to the people from your Google+ circles even if you don't have their email addresses. Gmail will show suggestions from your Google+ circles when you compose an email and will send your email without showing you the address. "Your email address isn't visible to a Google+ connection unless you send that person an email, and likewise, that person's email address isn't visible to you unless they send you an email."

Suggestions from Google+ are placed at the bottom of the list, below the suggestions from your address book. As you can see, email addresses aren't included. Google will only show suggestions from your circles, but you can add anyone to your circles.



What happens when you send an email to someone? If you are in his circles, the message will be added to Gmail's Personal tab from the inbox. Otherwise, it will be added to the Social tab and you won't be able to send another message until he responds or adds you to his circles.

By default, anyone who circles you can send you an email message in Gmail. If you have many followers, the default setting will limit the messages to your circles. You can alway edit the scope of this feature in Gmail's settings. Find the "Email via Google+" section and choose from "Anyone on Google+", "Extended circles", "Circles" and "No one". Pick "no one" to completely disable this feature.

The feature is gradually rolled out. You'll receive a message from Google with the following subject: "Gmail update: Reach more people you know". It starts like this: "Ever wanted to email someone you know, but haven't yet exchanged email addresses? Starting this week, when you're composing a new email, Gmail will suggest your Google+ connections as recipients, even if you haven't exchanged email addresses yet." Even if you receive the message, you might still have to wait until the feature is enabled.



Gmail is now even more integrated with Google+. Gmail shows your circles in the sidebar, loads Google+ notifications and allows you to reply from the Gmail interface and now it lets you send email to Google+ users without knowing their addresses.



The new feature makes Gmail more useful because it unlocks the power of circles, but it can also lead to more spam. Since anyone who adds you to a circle can send you an email, you'll have to deal with that. If you have many followers, Google already limits this feature to your circles. You can also receive spam messages in Google+, so that's not something new.



It's interesting that the default setting for most people is "anyone". The default setting for notifications and the contact form is "extended circles", which include your circles and your circles' circles.



"You can only send emails to your Google+ connections with the desktop version of Gmail," informs the Gmail help center.

6 Warning Signs Of Digital Identity Theft You Shouldn’t Ignore

What would you do if you checked your bank account and saw a $0 balance? Identity theft isn’t too rare of an occurrence these days, yet we often fall into the trap of thinking that it’ll always happen to “someone else”. Unfortunately, we are all somebody else’s “someone else”, which means identity theft can happen to you. Your identity can be stolen in numerous ways. Thieves can steal your credit card numbers when you shop online. They can also steal your identity through hacks, viruses, and malware. They can even manipulate you into giving up your personal data without you...

Read the full article: 6 Warning Signs Of Digital Identity Theft You Shouldn’t Ignore

Dead PCs, Gmail Stalking, Bitcoin Overstock, Kindle Kiosk [Tech News Digest]

Today in Tech News Digest, desktops are declared dead, Gmail stalkers get given a gift thanks to Google+, Overstock starts accepting Bitcoin, scanning your irises to protect your identity becomes a thing, Snapchat apologizes, Amazon starts selling hardware from a vending machine, and two companies fight over the right to pin. Tablets Are Killing PCs It's only going to get worse for the PC industry http://t.co/LA8Ubl5O4a — Josh Wetzel (@jwetzel) January 10, 2014 The PC market is continuing to slowly die, with a seventh consecutive quarter of declining worldwide shipments. According to Gartner (via The Next Web), there were 82.6...

Read the full article: Dead PCs, Gmail Stalking, Bitcoin Overstock, Kindle Kiosk [Tech News Digest]

How to Watch YouTube in the Background on Android

You are watching or rather listening to a music video on YouTube but are distracted by an email notification. You switch to the Gmail app to check your mail and, as expected, the YouTube video stops playing. You have to switch to the YouTube app again on your Android device to resume playback.

This is a limitation of the YouTube app on Android. It automatically stops video playback as soon as you move it to the background. The same is true for the YouTube mobile website as well. The videos will play as long as the web browser – be it Chrome or some other browser – is in focus. Switch to a different app and the video will pause itself.

The YouTube app for iPhone and iPad too impose a similar restriction but you can easily get around that limitation by playing YouTube videos inside the Safari browser (see: Play YouTube in the background on iOS).

Play Youtube in the Background on Android

The iOS trick however won’t work on Android but there exist even simple workarounds in the form of apps. The Google Play store has several apps that support background playback thus letting you use YouTube as a music player. I did try them all and here are my favorites:

The uListen app has a simple interface and minimal features which is what I like most about this app. Just use the search button to find videos and playlists on YouTube and hit the play button. You can also tap and hold a search result to favorite it or to add it to your playlist. uListen doesn’t link to your YouTube account and all your playlists and favorites are saved locally.

Then there are apps like SuperTube and Viral that more like clones of the official YouTube app except that they also let you watch or play YouTube videos while in the background. You can create local playlists or connect these apps to your main YouTube account and access your playlists, watch later queue and favorites. Another handy feature is that you can do a vertical swipe on the video to increase or decrease the volume.

Both Viral and SuperTube offer a floating video player which essentially means that you can pull out a YouTube video and place it over any other app. It’s like the Picture-In-Picture effect – you can read the New York Times in the browser and watch a movie on YouTube simultaneously. I prefer SuperTube more since it lets you choose a different video in the queue from the floating player itself.

A major downside of the previously mentioned uListen app is that it doesn’t offer autocomplete mode so you have to the type the entire search terms manually for relevant results. YT Player, another free YouTube audio player, fixes that problem. It pulls in search suggestions from YouTube and you can search for videos, playlists or even channels. If you prefer apps with slightly bigger fonts, you will probably like this one even more.

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This story, How to Watch YouTube in the Background on Android, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/01/2014 under Android, Music, YouTube, Internet

Web Scraping Reddit with Google Scripts

I am working on a little side project that involves mining Reddit data. It fetches a listing of all posts on different subreddits and copies the obtained data to a Google spreadsheet for further analysis (more on the project later).

Reddit, unlike most websites, allows web scraping as long as the crawler scripts make no more than one request every two seconds to the Reddit servers (see rules). You don’t even need a developer account or an API key to perform scraping on Reddit.

There are popular tools like wget, Site Sucker (Mac) or HTTrack Website Copier (Windows) that can download entire websites for offline use but they are mostly useless for scraping Reddit data since the site doesn’t use page numbers and content of pages is constantly changing. A post maybe listed on the first page of a subreddit but it could find itself on the third page the next second as other posts are voted to the top.

While there exists PHP and Python libraries for scraping Reddit, they are too complicated for the non-techies. Fortunately, there’s always Google Apps Script to the rescue. Here’s what you can do to pull data from any Subreddit on Reddit automatically.

1. Open the Google Sheet and choose File – Make a copy to copy this sheet in your Google Drive.


2. Go to Tools -> Script editor and copy-paste the Reddit Scraper Script. You can change “LifeProTips” to any other subreddit name.


3. While in the script editor, choose Run -> Run and authorize the script.

That’s it. The script will run in the background automatically pulling content from Reddit into the Google spreadsheet. And it stops automatically once all the posts* of that Reddit have been fetched.

[*] All Subreddits on Reddit display a maximum of 1000 posts – you can’t go beyond that number even while manually browsing a subreddit.

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This story, Web Scraping Reddit with Google Scripts, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 09/01/2014 under Javascript, Internet

6 Life Habits That Programming Could Teach You Today

Everything important that you need to know about living a successful life, you can get from a computer program. Don’t believe me? Read on. When I first started programming as a young kid, it only amounted to copying foreign-looking words and symbols out of a computer magazine so that my brother and I could get our old Franklin 64 with a dual floppy drive to play a cute little digital tune at us. Back then, there weren’t many life lessons to discern out of that cryptic text. A number of years later, in high school Pascal class, things started to...

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Interesting Websites to Visit When You’re Bored

I have added these non-tech related websites in my “weekly” bookmarks folder. I don’t visit them every single day but on weekends or when I am feeling bored and they never disappoint. Maybe you should check them out too.

The 15 Interesting Websites

1. Dear Photograph – The website features photographs of people holding up old pictures that were taken at the exact spot several years ago. Some of the best photographs are now compiled in a book (dearphotograph.me).


2. Textastrophe – This website is a reminder of why you shouldn’t post your cell phone number on public websites. The creator starts a text conversation with random numbers found on Craigslist ads and publishes the transcript on the internet. The chats are funny and I hope its real because screenshots can be faked too (textastrophe.com).


3. Stratocam – This is like an online self-running slideshow showcasing some of the best satellite images found on Google Maps. Run the website in full-screen mode (Ctrl+Shift+F) and you may discover pretty and unexpected place on our beautiful earth (stratocam.com).


4. Awkward Family Photos – This is a place where people share embarrassing pictures of their loved ones in weird settings that are both funny and entertaining. The website has spawned several coffee-table books as well (awkwardfamilyphotos.com).


5. Worldcam – This website pulls geo-tagged pictures posted on Instagram for Foursquare venues so you know what’s happening right now at your favorite place. For instance, here’s the livestream of a mall in Thailand which also happens to be the most Instagrammed place in the world (worldc.am).


6. This Is Why I’m Broke – Unique products on the Internet that you never knew even existed. Stuff like an iPhone case that doubles as a bottle opener, sandals that resemble computer keyboards or a boat from World War II that you can actually buy (thisiswhyimbroke.com).


7. Is It Normal – Do you like to dip French fries in ice cream? The website will help you understand whether your thoughts, feelings and urges are normal or weird and just unique to you. People can ask questions and once it gets approved, the community can weigh in their thoughts.You can also ask embarrassing questions here (isitnormal.com).
   

   Also see: The Most Useful Websites

   
   


8. Lamebook – Weird and hilarious stuff that people post on Facebook. The names and profile pictures of the Facebook users are blurred to protect real identity (lamebook.com).


9. Honest Slogans – Created by graphic designer Clif Dickens, Honest Slogans pokes fun at iconic brands by remixing their logos with slogans that convey what people actually think about that brand. Like the one for Men’s Health magazine that says – “Every issue promises perfect abs” (honestslogans.com).


10. Rich Kids of Instagram – The social sites are the new hangouts for people to show off and this tumblr is a perfect example. It captures the lavish lifestyle of the rich through pictures posted on Instagram (richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com).


11. Timelapse – Watch how a place has changed over a period of three decades through a series of satellite images from Google Maps. You can use the “Explore our World” link to watch the timelapse of any location on the planet (world.time.com).


12. Reasons My Son Is Crying – If you are a new parent, you’ll love this one. It documents the different reasons that little children cry for as submitted by parents around the world. Also available as a book (reasonsmysoniscrying.com).


13. LOL My Thesis – This site created by an Harvard University senior creates funny and lighthearted one-line summaries of thesis like this one submitted by a Sociology student – “It turns out, an only child never fights with its siblings.” (lolmythesis.com).


14. Larson+Shindelman – They pick a few geo-tagged tweets from Twitter, travel to the physical spot from where that tweet was sent and then take a picture. The original tweet is used as a caption for the photograph and the results are often incredibly touching. Like that photo outside the hospital with the caption “Amy is dying” (larson-shindelman.com).


15. 9-Eyes – A collection of interesting images as captured by Google Street view cards around the world. Also check out mapcrunch.com that catalogues street view scenes by location.

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This story, Interesting Websites to Visit When You’re Bored, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 09/01/2014 under Websites, Internet

5 Security Tips To Consider When Using a Microsoft Account

Microsoft wants Windows 8 users to log into their computers with a Microsoft account, not a standard old local user account. You can’t use much of the new user interface without a Microsoft account — you can’t even upgrade to Windows 8.1 without one. Along with this new focus on Microsoft accounts comes new security concerns. The account you use to log into your computer is now an online account and you need to worry about securing it. There are advantages to using a Microsoft account, as it allows you to sync your settings, files, apps, and other data between...

Read the full article: 5 Security Tips To Consider When Using a Microsoft Account

Contract Freedom, Modular Smartphones, DuckDuckGrow, Kanye Vs. Coinye [Tech News Digest]

Today in Tech News Digest, T-Mobile offers you money to switch contracts, ZTE teases a modular smartphone, DuckDuckGo shows off, Dell brings 4K monitors to the mainstream, biased reviews of Yahoo’s app are questioned, Kindle for iOS is improved, and Kanye West goes after cryptocurrency Coinye. T-Mobile Offers Contract Freedom T-Mobile is offering to pay the costs associated with terminating your mobile contract early. The company wants you to switch to them, and in an effort to persuade you it’s worth doing so, will pay your early termination fees (of up to $350 per line) with one of the three...

Read the full article: Contract Freedom, Modular Smartphones, DuckDuckGrow, Kanye Vs. Coinye [Tech News Digest]

Ultimate Windows Tweaker 3.0 Released For Windows 8.1

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Those of you following IntoWindows or any other popular tech website ever since the release of Windows 7 probably have noticed that most of the tweaking applications that were released for Windows 7 haven’t been updated to support Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. For those who have started using Windows or computers recently, hundreds of […]

How Do You Obtain Music? [We Ask You]

Music is a universal language that binds all humans together in a very real way. While the specific styles and genres of music listened to by different cultures vary wildly, they all share common ground. In other words, music is a very powerful force. It’s been true for a long time: the music industry is in a state of flux. The Internet having upset the apple cart that had been trundling merrily on for several decades. Now, each of us has multiple options open to us for getting our music fix. This multitude of options forms the basis for this...

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8 Easy Ways To Get Started With A Photography Habit Today

You don’t have to wait for the turn of a new year to start a new habit. Each day can be a new beginning. A hobby like photography also needs the discipline of a habit, and you can give it an extra motivational push with the help of the Web. You shouldn’t let your camera collect dust – think differently and inspiring photography ideas will come to you. If all fails, the Web and the number of popular photography blogs offer a constant stream of ideas. So, are you stuck in a rut? Is your camera cocooned snugly in its...

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How To Turn Random Snapshots Into A Uniform-Looking Photo Series

A few tricks can save you hours of editing in Photoshop. Let’s say you have a random collection of photos. You or whoever the photographer was didn’t have the foresight to take them with the same camera or lens, but now you wish you could combine them and make them look like they were created during a single photo shoot. Rather than tediously editing each photo, you could run all of them through the same preset filter to create that desired uniform look. Let me explain… Pick Your Photo Collection Maybe you have a collection of family photos, taken by...

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Technophilia 95 Live From MakeUseOf

We’re reunited and it feels…okay. This week: backdoors guests are best! Infrequent guests knock your front door, which you’d otherwise never open. Good friends know to use the backdoor, and by this standard the NSA is apparently a very, very good friend to everyone. McAfee anti-virus is changing its name to stop being associated with John McAfee, the drug-crazed alleged killer who founded the company. They should also consider changing the software. Like, completely. Or just get rid of it. Forever. Also this week: the Cat In The Hat becomes public domain this year! Just kidding, nothing will ever become...

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Create PC Settings Shortcut On Desktop In Windows 8.1

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The updated PC settings, the modern UI Control Panel designed especially for touch devices, in Windows 8.1 includes settings for lock screen, SkyDrive, sync, share, search, user accounts, network, recovery and device settings. With default settings, one can launch PC settings by clicking Settings on the Charms bar and then clicking Change PC settings in […]

Your Top Tech Resolutions For 2014 [We Ask You Results]

We’re now well into 2014, with 2013 (and its memes) being a dim and distant memory for most of us. Tradition dictates that a new year brings with it an opportunity for us all to improve ourselves, as we strive to be better people this year than last year. Which is where new year’s resolutions come into play. These vows to stick to something for a whole year or improve at something over the course of the year are a fun way in which we can all pinpoint the areas of our lives we’re currently unhappy with. And your new...

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How To Disable Forced Restarts After A Windows Update

It’s happened to all Windows users. You’re using your computer and Windows decides you need to reboot, hassling you with pop-ups that continue to bug you all day long. If you step away from your computer and miss the pop-up, Windows will automatically reboot your computer. You may come back to your computer and find that all your open programs are gone, as Windows decided to reboot without your permission. This can be maddening. There’s a good reason for rebooting after updates, as rebooting ensures that security updates actually take effect. But Microsoft has gone too far — they shouldn’t...

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How I Nearly Got Conned Via A Western Union Transfer Scam

Here’s a little story about the latest “Nigerian scam“, which is all too obvious in hindsight and yet so believable when you’re on the hook. Now, I’m a regular online shopper on Amazon, eBay, and the like. I know the sorts of scams you see on Craigslist and the very similar eBay scams you’re likely to come across. I know basic rules of not getting fleeced in marketplace transactions and most of the likely online scams. Yet, still, this one almost got me. The Scam It all started on Facebook. A woman posted to a local buy-sell group with a...

Read the full article: How I Nearly Got Conned Via A Western Union Transfer Scam