Google Photos Search Filters

Google+ Photos has a few search filters that are pretty useful. You can find them if you click the small arrow from the search box: Auto Backup, Hangouts, Google Drive, Posts, Auto Awesome, Videos and more. The nice thing is that most of them are also available in Google Photos.

Google Photos has a search page that shows a few filters: Creations (replaces Auto Awesome), Google Drive, Video, Recently Added. Here are some searches you can use to bring back the filters from Google+ Photos:

#AutoBackup - shows all the photos automatically backed up from your mobile devices and desktop computers

#Desktop - shows the photos automatically backed up from your desktop computers

#Posts - shows the photos added to your Google+ posts

#All - shows all your photos

#PhotosOfYou - photos you've been tagged in

#CAMERANAME - replace CAMERANAME with the your camera's model or brand to see all the photos taken with that camera. Some examples: #Nexus5, #Canon, #iPhone.

Evernote Drops Email-to-Note for Free Accounts, Alternative

Your Evernote account has a unique and secret email address. Any email messages forwarded to this address are automatically saved as notes in your Evernote notebook. The feature has been around for a while and is particularly handy for quickly archiving email messages and included file attachments into Evernote that can be retrieved later from any device.

Earlier this month, Evernote made a little change. The Email to Evernote feature still exists but only if you have a premium account. From the support page:

After July 15, 2015, you can continue saving up to five more emails into Evernote. After you send your fifth email, you won’t be able to save any additional emails into Evernote until you’ve upgraded to Evernote Plus or Premium.

In the meantime, Evernote has introduced a new Email Clipper for sending your Gmail messages to Evernote but it only works inside desktop browsers. How do you send email messages to Evernote from a mobile device?

A good alternative is IFTTT. Assuming that you have activated the Evernote and Gmail channels in your IFTTT account, here are the 2 recipes that will help you email notes into Evernote but without having to upgrade to premium.

• Recipe 1 – Forward any email message to trigger@recipe.ifttt.com with #Evernote in the subject line and it will create a note in your default Evernote notebook.
• Recipe 2 – Apply the label Evernote to any email message inside Gmail and it will magically appear in your Evernote notebook via IFTTT.

You will however miss the option to create reminder notes via email nor can your redirect notes to different Evernote notebook based on the subject line.

See more Evernote Tips & Tricks

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The story, Evernote Drops Email-to-Note for Free Accounts, Alternative, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 28/07/2015 under Evernote, Internet.

Embedded Tweets can be Easily Faked

You can easily embed tweets in your website by adding a little HTML snippet to your site’s template. The embedded tweets are interactive in the sense that they’ve a follow button, they show live retweet counts, and you also use CSS to change the formatting of tweets.

Now CSS does help you control the tweet’s appearance but you may be surprised to know that it is also possible to change the other elements of an embedded tweet. For instance, you may modify the actual text of the tweet. The favorite & retweet counts can be altered as well. Let me illustrate that with an example:

This is the original tweet:

Receive files in your Google Drive from anyone http://t.co/5NyaM0NRiK http://pic.twitter.com/w6RTdkWhSe

— Amit Agarwal (@labnol) April 23, 2014

This is the same tweet, but altered with JavaScript:

Notice any difference? Well, there are quite a few.

The altered tweet uses a different font family, there’s minimal Twitter branding, the favorite & retweet numbers are made up, some extra words were appended to the tweet itself and the date has been replaced with custom text. And it is not a fake screenshot.

Also see: Learn Coding Online

How to Alter an Embedded Tweet

Twitter allows you embed tweets with JavaScript and when you take this route, you not only gain control over how the tweets are rendered but also over what’s rendered inside the tweet.

Here’s the complete JavaScript snippet that allows use to modify most of the elements of an embedded tweet.

<div id="tweet"></div>

<script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

<script>
  twttr.ready(function() {

    twttr.widgets.createTweet(
      
      // Replace this with the Tweet ID
      'TWEET ID', document.getElementById("tweet"))
      .then(function(el) {

        var e = el.contentDocument;

        // Change the tweet text
        var html = e.querySelector(".Tweet-text");
        html.innerHTML = "[How-to Guide] " + html.innerHTML;

        // Hide the Follow Button
        e.querySelector(".FollowButton").style.display = "none";

        // Change the retweet count
        e.querySelector(".TweetAction--retweet .TweetAction-stat").innerHTML = "123";

        // Change the favorites count
        e.querySelector(".TweetAction--favorite .TweetAction-stat").innerHTML = "999";

        // Replace the date with text
        e.querySelector(".dt-updated").innerHTML = "Contact the author of this tweet at amit@labnol.org";
      });
  });
</script>

You pass the tweet ID (line #11) and also specify the DIV element where the tweet will be rendered.

After the tweet is rendered, you can use standard DOM methods to change the various inner elements based on class names. For instance, you can change the innerHTML property of the element with the Tweet-text class to modify the tweet text. Similarly, if you set the display property of class FollowButton to none, the follow button is hidden.

Fake tweets are known to have crashed markets so the next time you come across an embedded tweet with unbelievable retweets or favorites, it may be a good idea to verify the numbers.

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The story, Embedded Tweets can be Easily Faked, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 28/07/2015 under Embed, Twitter, Internet.

Google+ Profiles, No Longer Required

After so many years of promoting Google+ and integrating it with other services, Google realized that Google+ doesn't mean a lot for many Google users and it started dismantling Google+. Google Photos is now a standalone service and other Google+ features will follow suit.

In a blog post, Google announced that Google+ profiles will no longer be required and YouTube will be the first service that will make this change in the coming weeks. "A Google Account will be all you'll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. Your underlying Google Account won't be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles. And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don't plan to use Google+ itself, we'll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles."

A lot of YouTube users complained when YouTube switched to a new commenting system which required Google+ profiles, but YouTube comments are much better today. Now YouTube comments will no longer appear on Google+ and Google+ posts that share a YouTube video will no longer be added as YouTube comments. "In the coming weeks, YouTube will no longer require a Google+ profile when you want to upload, comment, or create a channel," mentions the YouTube Blog.

Google claims that Google+ will continue to exist and will become "a place where people engage around their shared interests". It's a much smaller goal for a service that used to tie all the other Google services, add unified sharing and identity information. Google+ used to be more than a service, it was a layer that was supposed to make Google products work together.

Here's what Bradley Horowitz said back in 2011:

"Until now, every single Google property acted like a separate company. Due to the way we grew, through various acquisitions and the fierce independence of each division within Google, each product sort of veered off in its own direction. That was dizzying. But Google+ is Google itself. We're extending it across all that we do — search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube — so that each of those services contributes to our understanding of who you are."

Bradley Horowitz is now the Google VP of Streams, Photos, and Sharing. That's "Streams, Photos, and Sharing" and not Google+. Ever since it was launched back in 2011, Google+ meant 2 things: the stream and the sharing platform. It looks like Google+ now focuses on the stream, which was less successful than the sharing platform.

It's not clear how Google+ will continue to exist if Google removes important features like photo sharing and starts to remove the integration with YouTube and other Google services. It just makes it easier for Google to discontinue Google+, now that fewer people will use it.

Gmail's Mobile Site Promotes Inbox App

I'm not sure if this is new, but I've noticed that Google now promotes the Inbox app when opening Gmail in the mobile browser. "Get Inbox by Gmail, a new email app from the Gmail team," suggests the interstitial page, which still lets you "go to the mobile Gmail site".

Here's a screenshot from an iPad:

And another screenshot from a Nexus 5:

Google used to promote the Gmail app.

YouTube's Updated Notifications

YouTube has recently changed the settings for notifications. When you subscribe to a channel, there's a box that says "Send me all notifications for this channel". The settings page has a new label for the email digest checkbox: "Occasionally notify me of new videos and activity from my subscriptions" and you can choose if you want email notifications, mobile notifications or both email and mobile notifications.

Mobile apps for Android and iOS have a notification section in the settings, which lets you disable or enable notifications, customize notification types (subscription activity, recommended videos, comments and replies) and also see all your notifications.

Named Places in Google Maps

The latest version of the Google Maps app for Android lets you add private names for places. Search for an address or drop a pin on the map, tap the 3-dot menu icon and pick "Edit name". You can add a name that lets you quickly find the place on the map, just like you can find "home" or "work". The private name is saved to your Google account and you're the only one who can see it.

Here's an example for a local business (this feature is even more useful for places that don't have a name in Google Maps):

To edit a name or delete it, open the side menu and tap "Your places". At the top of the section, you can find the named places, including "home" and "work".

Google Hangouts Photo Sharing, Powered by Picasa Web

Now that Google+ Photos is discontinued, Google Apps admins received a message which informs them that Google Hangouts will only use Picasa Web Albums for photo sharing.

"The photo-sharing functionality in Hangouts is changing. Going forward, the ability to share photos and other multimedia in Hangouts Chat will be set by the Picasa Web Albums service rather than by the Google+ service. If Google+ is enabled in your domain, no further action is necessary. Google+ requires Picasa Web Albums so you can continue to share photos using Hangouts Chat just like you always have. If Google+ is not enabled for your domain and you want to use the photo-sharing functionality in Hangouts Chat, you must turn on the Picasa Web Albums service in your Admin console."

This change also affects regular Google users, since photos shared using Hangouts aren't added to Google Photos and you'll only find them in Picasa Web Albums when Google+ Photos will shut down. The same thing will happen with Blogger photos.

Picasa Web Albums and Google+ Photos served as a central hub for almost all the photos uploaded using Google services. This was great, since you could find all your photos in one place, but it also cluttered Picasa Web and Google+ Photos with albums automatically generated by Blogger, Google Hangouts and other services.

It looks like Picasa Web Albums is here to stay, at least for now.

{ Thanks, Petr Man. }

Google+ Photos Discontinued

Google announced that Google+ Photos will no longer be available in a few weeks, so everyone will have to switch to Google Photos. "In an effort to ensure everyone has the best photos experience we can deliver, on August 1st we'll start to shut down Google+ Photos - initially on Android, and soon thereafter on the Web and iOS."

Google Photos was launched 2 months ago and there are many missing features. For examples, some powerful editing features from Google+ Photos for desktop are not yet available in Google Photos and you can't organize albums or tag people in Google Photos.

Since both services are 2 interfaces that show almost the same photos and videos, you can find most of your files in Google Photos. Apparently, photos shared in Blogger and Hangouts are only available in Picasa Web Albums, for now. If you don't like Google's new service, there's always Google Takeout, which lets you export all your photos and videos.

The New Google Patents

There's a new version of Google Patents that's available at patents.google.com. The interface now uses Material Design, there's a checkbox that lets you search Google Scholar, advanced search options are available in the sidebar and you can quickly navigate between search results, which are now grouped by category.

"The new Google Patents helps users find non-patent prior art by cataloguing it, using the same scheme that applies to patents. We've trained a machine classification model to classify everything found in Google Scholar using Cooperative Patent Classification codes. Now users can search for [autonomous vehicles] or [email encryption] and find prior art across patents, technical journals, scientific books, and more," informs Google.

Another change is that you can search for foreign patent documents using English keywords. It's interesting to notice that the old Google Patents is still available if you use this URL: http://ift.tt/Nnnbks.

{ Thanks, Florian Kiersch. }

How to Customize the Facebook Page Plugin for Websites

The old Like box for Facebook Pages has been deprecated and replaced with a new Page Plugin. If you have not manually upgraded the embed code for Like box on your website yet, no worries as Facebook has automatically migrated all the Like boxes using the old embed code to the new Page Plugin.

Unlike the previous Like box that carried too much Facebook branding, the new Facebook Page plugin is cleaner without any branding. You can now display the cover photo of your Facebook Page inside the Like box. You can also add a “Call to Action” button that will redirect people to your email newsletter or prompt them to install your mobile app and so on.

The other difference that you can now only display a single row of fan pictures inside the Page Plugin. Why does this matter? The pile shows profile pictures of mutual friends who have liked your Facebook Page and thus, when a casual visitor sees a familiar face inside that pile, it is likely to increase their interest in your website.

What you see here are a list of customization options now available inside the Facebook Page plugin. You can choose to have a simple Like box with just your logo and like button or you can have a complete box with cover photos as well.

Customizing this Facebook Page plugin is simple as detailed in the official documentation. For instance, if you would not like to show a cover photo, set the HTML5 data attribute data-hide-cover to false in the DIV tag. Setting data-show-facepile to false will hide the row of pictures.

Similarly, you can attach styles to the .fb-page class to customize the outer of the Facebook Plugin. For instance, if you like the steps style I use here with the Facebook box at labnol.org, this is the underlying CSS code.

<div class="fb-page" 
     data-href="http://ift.tt/1V2OjFb;  
     data-small-header="false"  
     data-hide-cover="false"    
     data-show-facepile="true"  
     data-show-posts="false">
</div>

<div id="fb-root"></div>

<style>

  .fb-page, .fb-page:before, .fb-page:after {
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
  }

  .fb-page:before, .fb-page:after {
    content: "";
    position: absolute;
    bottom: -3px;
    left: 2px;
    right: 2px;
    height: 1px;
    border-top: none
  }
  
  .fb-page:after {
    left: 4px;
    right: 4px;
    bottom: -5px;
    box-shadow: 0 0 2px #ccc
  }
</style>

<script>
  (function(d, s, id) {
    var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
    if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
    js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
    js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.4";
    fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
  }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
</script>

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The story, How to Customize the Facebook Page Plugin for Websites, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 15/07/2015 under Embed, Facebook, Internet.

Bring Gmail’s Archiving Feature to Microsoft Outlook for Mac (without scripting)

The Archive feature in Gmail comes handy when you would like to preserve an email conversation forever but at the same time move it out of your main inbox. While a thread is selected in Gmail, you can press the Archive button, or hit the “e” keyboard shortcut, and the selected thread is removed from your inbox but continues to exists in the “All Mails” folder.

Microsoft has just launched a new version of Outlook with Office 2016 for Mac but there’s no built-in option to help you easily archive messages similar to what you have in Gmail. You can obviously move email messages to the Archive folder through the Message > Move > Choose Folder.. menu but that is no match to the simplistic option available in Gmail. Press ‘e’ and you’re done.

Add Gmail-like Archiving to Outlook

Here’s a step-by-step guide that will help you emulate Gmail’s archiving functionality in your Microsoft Outlook. The tutorial is for Office 2016 but it should work with previous versions of Outlook on Mac OS X as well.

Step 1: Open Microsoft Outlook, select any message in the inbox and press the keyboard shortcut Cmd+Shift+M to move the selected email message into another Outlook folder.

Step 2: A search window will pop-up. If you are using Gmail with Outlook, type All Mail in this window to select your Gmail’s archive folder (see screenshot). Or you can type the name of any other Outlook folder that you plan to use for archiving messages. Click “Move” to move the selected message.

Step 3: From the Outlook menu, choose Message > Move and make an exact note of the highlighted menu item corresponding to the folder that you selected in the previous step. In this example, the menu is available as All Mail (email@domain.com).

Step 4: From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, then click Keyboard. Click Shortcuts, select App Shortcuts, then click Add (+). Choose Microsoft Outlook from the Application dropdown, type the menu name exactly as noted in previous step and put Cmd+E as the app shortcut.

Click Add to create the app shortcut, switch to Microsoft Outlook, select one or more email messages and press Cmd+E. If you’ve followed the steps right, the selected email messages will instantly be moved to the Archive (All Mail) folder of Outlook, much like Gmail.

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The story, Bring Gmail’s Archiving Feature to Microsoft Outlook for Mac (without scripting), was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 14/07/2015 under Apple Mac, GMail, Microsoft Outlook, Software.

How to Get the Password of WiFi Network You Are Connected To

Your computer is connected to a Wi-Fi network but you do not remember the password that you had earlier used to connect to this particular WiFi network. Maybe you forgot the password or maybe the network administrator entered it directly without revealing the actual password to you.

You would now like to connect a second device, like your mobile phone, to the same WiFi network but how do you find out the password? You can either send a password request the WiFi admin or you can open the command prompt on your computer and retrieve the saved password in one easy step. The technique works on both Mac and Windows PCs.

Get the WiFi Password on Windows

Open the command prompt in administrator mode. Type “cmd” in the Run box, right-click the command prompt icon and choose Run as Administrator (see how). Now enter the following command and hit enter to see the WiFi password.

netsh wlan show profile name=labnol key=clear

Remember to replace labnol with the name of your Wireless SSID (this is the name of the Wi-Fi network that you connect your computer to). The password will show up under the Security Setting section (see screenshot).

If you do not see the password, probably you’ve not opened the command prompt window as administrator

Show the WiFi Password on Mac OS X

Your Mac OS X uses Keychain to store the configuration details of the WiFi network and we can use the BSD command “security” to query anything stored inside Keychain, including the Wi-Fi password. Here’s how:

Open Spotlight (Cmd+Space) and type terminal to open the Terminal window. At the command line, enter the following command (replace labnol with your WiFi name), then enter your Mac username and password to access the OS X keychain and the Wi-FI network password would be displayed on the screen in plain text.

security find-generic-password -ga labnol | grep password

Resources for further reading:

• Windows – Manage Network Profiles (microsoft.com)
• Man pages for Security Command (apple.com)

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The story, How to Get the Password of WiFi Network You Are Connected To, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 14/07/2015 under Apple Mac, Networking, Password, Wi-Fi, Software.

Redirect Gmail to Google Inbox

If you like Google Inbox and you're wondering why it doesn't replace Gmail, there's a setting that redirects Gmail to Inbox. Just go to Inbox, open the settings box, switch to the "Other" tab, enable "Redirect Gmail to inbox.google.com" and click "Done". The next time you type mail.google.com, gmail.com or click on a Gmail shortcut or bookmark, you'll be sent to inbox.google.com.

You can still open Gmail: just click the new "Gmail" menu item, which is placed below "Contacts" in Inbox's sidebar. The URL that temporarily disables redirects is http://ift.tt/1gwKrwv.

"If you often go to Gmail in your web browser when you really mean to go to Inbox, you can turn on a setting so that you'll automatically be taken to Inbox when you visit gmail.com or mail.google.com on a computer. You can always get back to Gmail using a simple link in Inbox," informs Google. The setting was added a few weeks ago.

A Privacy Reminder From Google

After signing in to my Google account, Google showed a new page called "a privacy reminder from Google." Here's Google's explanation: "To be consistent with data protection laws, we're asking you to take a moment to review key points of Google's Privacy Policy. This is not about a change we've made - it's just a chance to review the key points below."

The page shows a list of information processed when you use Google and a list of reasons why it's processed. Google also explains how it uses data to improve user experience and lets you adjust some privacy controls (account history, ads settings, opt out of Google Analytics data collection). "These features work because of the information you choose to store with Google. But that's up to you. The controls in your Google Account let you decide what information you want Google to put to work on your behalf," informs Google.