How I Cross-Post Updates to Social Media

Digital Inspiration has an active presence across all social media websites – from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn – and as soon as a new article is published on the site, updates are sent out to all the difference social channels.

The social media publishing strategy is partly automated and partly manual for sites like Pinterest and Google+ that do not allow automated posting. Also, I am not using services like dlvr.it that monitor RSS feeds and cross-post updates almost immediately to Twitter and Facebook channels. The reason being that handcrafted social updates tend to perform better than ones containing only post titles picked from the RSS feed.

I have connected my Twitter account, Facebook Page, LinkedIn Page and the Google+ page to Buffer. When I am ready to share an article, I simply open the Buffer add-on, write a message and share.

In some cases, it helps to include an image with the social update and Buffer makes that easy as well. While you are on a page, hover your mouse over any image on that page and a little Buffer icon appears. When you click that icon, the actual image is included in the update along with a link to the containing page. Here are some tweets posted through Buffer that contain images and as well as links.

Learn to code in the comfort of your browser http://t.co/P1ryxSe2aY http://ift.tt/1oS3aTl

— Amit Agarwal (@labnol) June 12, 2014

You can only post to a limited number of your social channels through the free version of Buffer but, as a workaround, you can install a couple of IFTTT recipes that will further propagate your Buffer updates to other non-supported channels.

I have created recipes that automatically send updates posted on Buffer to Tumblr (link) and my LinkedIn profile (link). I have another IFTTT recipe that takes the first picture from my RSS feed and uploads it to Flickr while adding the post excerpt in the picture description. Here’s a screenshot image posted on Flickr through IFTTT. This does help improve visibility of your stuff in Google Images and other visual search engines.

For Twitter, I have configured the large summary card so an large image from the post is automatically shown when someone expands the tweet on the Twitter website. This tends to perform than regular summary cards where a small cropped image is shown inside the tweet.

Finally, I manually share links on Google+ since they do not allow automated posting on Google+ Profiles. Since Buffer has already published the update on the Google+ Page, I just use the share option to post that same update on my Google+ profile – this saves some time and also exposes the site’s Google+ Page to my Google+ followers.

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This story, How I Cross-Post Updates to Social Media, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 04/08/2014 under Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Internet

More YouTube Comments

The Google+ integration managed to improve the quality of YouTube comments (or at least the top comments). Sometimes you find YouTube videos with interesting comments, but it's not that easy to read all of them.



YouTube only displays 20 comments or threads and you have to click "more" to read 20 other comments. There's also a page that only displays comments: click "all comments" below the video description and you'll be able to read the top 100 comments.

When you click "more", YouTube fetches 100 other comments. For example, the page lets you read 300 comments with only 2 clicks on "more", while the standard YouTube video page requires 14 clicks.

Here's an example of comment page that shows the top 100 comments. You can click the drop-down below "all comments" to sort comments by date. Another example here.

Offline Android Games

Google Play Store has a collection of games that work offline. It's a hand-picked list of free and paid games like Despicable Me, Asphalt 8, Dots, Minecraft, Riptide GP, Temple Run 2 and more.

"Whether you're in airplane mode or stuck with zero bars, all these games require is your thumb. Now you can play your heart out from anywhere with our selection of off-line games," says Google.



Maybe Google should allow users to create their own collections they could share with other people. A Google search reveals a lot of Google Play collections: Get Things Done, Essential Games, Abstract Puzzlers, MMORPGs, Hidden Gems, Mood Boosters, Picture Taking, For The Power User and more. There are also music collections, movie collections, books collections, Newsstand collections.

Google on Windows 8.1

Google's homepage continues to promote Chrome when using a different browser. Until now, the ad promised "a faster way to browse the web". Now there's a more specific ad in Internet Explorer: "a faster way to browse on Windows".

When clicking "install Google Chrome", Google sent me to this page: "Get Your Google Back. Take two minutes to make Windows 8.1 more familiar." The page suggests to install Google Chrome ("It's the fast, free browser that's built for the modern web") and get the Google Search app for Windows 8 ("It's the quickest, easiest way to access Google Search").

This seems to be an updated version of the "Get Your Google Back" page launched in 2012 for Windows 8 users. Google tries to explain that you can continue to use Chrome even from the Metro/Modern interface and there's even an optimized Google Search app.

Removing the Plus from Google+

3 years ago, Google+ was launched in an effort to make Google more social. It's the most successful social service created by Google and the main reason is that Google promoted it a lot and switched a lot features to Google+.



Google Talk morphed into Google+ Hangouts, Picasa Web Albums became Google+ Photos, YouTube comments require Google+, Android reviews and Google Maps reviews require Google+. When you create a Google account, you need to join Google+. There are Google+ features in Google's notification bar and Google+ is the first service displayed in the app launcher.



Google+ was supposed to be a new version of Google, an upgraded Google that's more personal, has better tools for sharing content and better ways to filter information. "This is just the next version of Google. Everything is being upgraded. We already have users. We're now upgrading them to what we consider Google 2.0," said Vic Gundotra 2 years ago.



Vic Gundotra left Google a few months ago and since then Google+'s importance has diminished. Google no longer released some information about the number of active Google+ users and barely mentioned Google+ in the Google I/O keynote. Google+ no longer requires real names, Google Apps users no longer need to join Google+ to use Google Hangouts video calls and there are rumors that Google+ Photos will be renamed Google Photos and will no longer require Google+. "The move would enable the photo service to stand more independently and be accessible for consumers who aren't part of Google+, potentially spurring more growth," suggests Bloomberg.

Google launched some of its best features inside Google+ to attract users. Now it's time to set them free and make them more popular instead of using them to make Google+ more popular.



For many people, Google+ was an artificial barrier. Having to use your real name to write comments and reviews, to share photos, to write blog posts was an obstacle. The Google+ integration improved YouTube comments, but made many users unhappy.

Google+ is not dead, but Google seems to extract the "+" and split into standalone apps and services. The stream could become less important.

Google Drive Viewer Changes

I've mentioned a few weeks ago that there's a new interface for Google Drive previews and Gmail attachment previews. There's more space for content, the toolbar disappears when you're not using it, you can click "open" to open the file using the default app.



If you use the new Google Drive UI, Google Drive Viewer is no longer available in the "open" menu and you need to click the "pop-out" icon next to the "x" icon to open Google Drive Viewer. Most of its functionality is available from the preview interface, but there are some missing features. For example, adding comments.

The Google Apps blog mentions that "as part of this change we will remove support for adding file-level commenting of non-Google file formats. This change doesn't impact comments in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, and existing comments on non-Google formats will be retained and available to view." The commenting feature is still available for me in the "Edit" menu when opening a PDF file or other non-Google file types:

Find the Number of Gmail Messages

By default, Gmail groups all your messages in conversations. That's the reason why Gmail displays the number of conversations and not messages in all the Gmail views: inbox, all mail, labels, search results.



If you ever want to find the number of actual messages that match a certain query, the number of messages from inbox or the number of messages you've sent or received since you started using Gmail, there's a way to do that. Just go to Gmail's settings and temporarily disable conversation view. Find the "conversation view" section in the General tab, click "Conversation view off", scroll down to the bottom of the page and make sure you click "Save changes".

Now Gmail will only display separate messages and the number of search results will be more accurate. You'll be able to find the number of messages, not conversations or threads. A conversation can include one message or more messages, so the number of messages will be bigger. Please note that the number of search results is not displayed if there are many search results, so you need to use a workaround.

The screenshot above shows the "all mail" message counter when conversation mode is disabled, while the screenshot below shows the number of conversations when the conversation mode is enabled.

You can go back to Gmail's settings page to enable conversation view.

Google Drive's Quota Page

The new Google Drive interface has a cool feature: it shows all the files you've uploaded, sorted by file size. Mouse over the storage stats at the bottom of the page ("X GB of Y GB used"), click "Drive" and you'll get to this page that shows the quota used by your files, so you can quickly delete some of the files you no longer need. Interestingly, the URL: http://ift.tt/1pr94ua also works in the old Google Drive interface.

The page doesn't include the documents, spreadsheets, forms, presentations, drawings created with Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings or converted to the Google formats.



The old Google Drive interface also had this feature. You had to click an arrow icon next to "owner", pick "quota used" and sort by quota. Google Drive only displayed the files from the current folder, so you had to use this URL: http://ift.tt/1fkeQ8U to see all your files. The new quota page is more convenient, but the new Google Drive interface no longer lets you sort folders by quota used.

64-Bit Chrome for Windows, Now in Beta

2 months after the Dev/Canary channels, the 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows is now available in the beta channel. It's still limited to Windows 7 and Windows 8+ and you obviously need a 64-bit operating system.



"To try it out, download the 64-bit installer from our Beta download pages. The new version replaces the existing version while preserving all your settings and bookmarks, so there's no need to uninstall a current installation of Chrome," informs Google.

The 64-bit Chrome brings some actual improvements: better performance and fewer crashes. 5 years after releasing the 64-bit Chrome for Linux, it's time for Windows users to upgrade to a 64-bit browser.

Paul Buchheit on Startups

Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler who created Gmail, gave a talk at Startup School. There are a lot of interesting ideas and many of them have something to do with Google.



Paul talks about the danger of experience and dogma: "Just because it didn't work in the past doesn't mean it won't work in the future. Likewise, what worked before may not work again. The best opportunities live in our collective blind spots. To most, they appear to be bad ideas, or simply unimportant." For example, many people thought that writing the Gmail interface in JavaScript was a bad idea, but Gmail worked well, browsers improved and now web apps are commonplace.



The man who came up with Gmail says that "to be innovative, we need to evade the limitations of established thinking. Creating an innovative new product often means spending years working on something that most people doubt the value of." To be able to do this, you really need to love what you are doing and ignore the voices that tell you that what you are trying to achieve is impossible. As Larry Page says, maintain a healthy disregard for the impossible.



Trying to solve interesting problems also helps. "Interestingness is a sign of unexplored or under-explored territory. If I already know what the outcome is going to be, that's not very interesting. (...) But I find that great startups exist in a space of productive uncertainty. Regardless whether they succeed or fail, I'm likely to learn something interesting," says Paul Buchheit. That's one of the reasons why he picked Google back in 1999: he believed that Google couldn't compete with Alta Vista, but at least he'll learn something from the smart people at Google.



Google as a startup was different from the way people perceived it. Even if Google was mostly a search engine, Google founders had bigger ambitions. "Larry wanted to store and search the whole web in memory, even though our machines only had 1/4 GB of RAM. It was unrealistic at the time, but Moore's law moves fast and very soon we were doing it, but only because everyone's thinking was already oriented in that direction. He also wanted self-driving cars that would deliver hamburgers. That hasn't happened yet, but I bet it will."



For Paul Buchheit, money are only the "fuel" that helps you achieve a mission, not the main goal of a business. "For me, startups are more than just a clever way to make money. They are machines for harnessing the fire of human self-interest, creating a self-sustaining reaction capable of rapidly transforming the world."

Tambola Tickets Made With Emojis

We were choosing a game for an upcoming kids party and tambola (or housie or bingo depending on which part of the world you live) was a clear and unanimous choice. The rules of game are simple, you can download the PDFs and print the tickets at home and even adults are likely to enjoy this game.

The regular tambola tickets contain numbers but for this party, we wanted a little variation. How about replacing numbers on the ticket with the more visual emojis (see example) that almost everyone can instantly recognize now thanks to the growing popularity of Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and other instant messaging apps that all support these emoticons.

There were no online generators that supported Emoji tickets so I put together a little PHP script that outputs the Bingo tickets using Emojis instead of numbers. If you would also like to try this, go to ctrlq.org and hit the “Ticket Sheet” button to create your own tamobola sheets. It generates a set of 2×5 tickets and you can create as many you like. They’ll all be unique.

Here’re some photographs of the Emoji tickets printed on photo paper. The full emoji sheet can be downloaded from imgur.com.

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This story, Tambola Tickets Made With Emojis, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 28/07/2014 under Games, Internet

New URL for Google Docs

If you go to docs.google.com, you might see this message: "Soon, docs.google.com will start taking you to the Google Docs application, not Google Drive. You can always get to Google Drive by using drive.google.com." Until now, docs.google.com redirected to drive.google.com without displaying this message.

"You may be using docs.google.com to access Google Drive. With the launch of the new Google Docs editors home screens, docs.google.com will redirect to the Docs home screen, where you'll find all of your Google Docs and Word files," explains Google.



Some useful URLs:



* docs.google.com, google.com/docs - Google Docs (the first URL still redirects to Drive for now)

* sheets.google.com, google.com/sheets - Google Sheets

* slides.google.com, google.com/slides - Google Slides

Google Tests Timeline View for Knowledge Graph

Google tests a timeline view for Knowledge Graph cards. For a query like [World War I], Google's experimental interface displays a chronological list of important events obtained from Wikipedia articles.

Mouse over an event and Google shows more information, including images, relevant dates and snippets from Wikipedia articles. Click the event to perform a Google search.

By default, Google only highlights some of the most important events, but you can zoom in to explore to see even more events. Google uses colors and parallel axis to distinguish between different types of information.



Here's a video that shows this feature in action. Right now, the timeline view looks like a tool for power users and Google will have to create a simplified interface when this feature is publicly released.



Back in 2007, Google Labs added a timeline view for Google Search. Google News Archive also had a timeline view. These features displayed relevant search results about important events related to your query.

{ via Florian Kiersch - translation }

Animated YouTube Channel Art

YouTube now lets you upload animated GIFs for channel art. The maximum file size is 2MB and the minimum dimension is 2048 x 1152. "For optimal results on all devices we recommend uploading a single 2560 X 1440 px image," informs YouTube.

Here's an example of channel that uses animated GIFs and a video that explains how to create animated channel art using Photoshop:

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Gmail Setup Widget

When you create a new Gmail account, Google now shows a widget that helps you learn how to use Gmail, choose a theme, import contacts and mail, change profile image and more.

"Gmail now has a setup gadget to help people new to Gmail get started. This gadget helps people set up their Gmail account with actions like adding a profile picture and creating an email signature, and teaches them to use features like undo send and creating an auto-responder. The setup gadget is hidden once the person completes all actions, dismisses the gadget or after two weeks. It can be relaunched from Settings," informs Google.



{ Thanks, Herin. }

Clean-up the “Open With” Menu of your Mac

The “Open With” menu of your Mac, that you get when you right-click (or control-click) a file in the Finder window, may become extremely cluttered with time containing duplicate entries or even stale ones pointing to applications that are no longer installed on your Apple computer. Here’s an example:

If the “Open With” menu of your Mac is also messy and filled with applications that you no longer use, you can easily clean it up by rebuilding the Launch Services database with a simple Terminal command.

Open the Terminal app of your Mac and switch to the LaunchServices.framework folder using the “cd” command and then run the “lsregister” command to rebuild the database.

 $ cd /System/Library/Frameworks
 $ cd CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support
 $ ./lsregister -kill -r -all local, system, user; killall Dock;

That’s it. All the erroneous entries are removed and here’s how the cleaned up “Open With” menu of the Mac now looks like. I no longer have to scroll through that confusing array of applications I no longer use.

And if Terminal commands aren’t your forte, you can always download a GUI based application like Onyx to rebuild the Launch Services database and thus clean up the menu with the click of a button.

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This story, Clean-up the “Open With” Menu of your Mac, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/07/2014 under Apple Mac, Software

A Chrome App Helps You Stop Procrastinating

Most anti-procrastination apps on the web help you stay focussed and increase productivity by blocking time wasting websites. The thinking goes that if these online distractions are gone, you are more likely to focus on actual work.

Alex MacCaw has created Motivation, a Chrome app that takes a slightly different approach. It replaces the new tab page of your Google Chrome with a real-time counter that displays your incrementing age.

Every time you launch Chrome, or open a new tab in the browser, the extension works as a sobering reminder that the clock is ticking away. That may motivate you to exit the Bermuda productivity triangle and focus on the more important things.

The source code for the Motivation Chrome app is available on Github. See other useful Google Chrome extensions.

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This story, A Chrome App Helps You Stop Procrastinating, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/07/2014 under Google Chrome, Productivity, Internet

Extended Google Play Music Trial for Chromecast Users

To celebrate Chromecast's first birthday, Google extended the Play Music All Access free trial from 30 days to 90 days, but only in the US. You can redeem Chromecast offers from this page. "In order to check for available offers, we require you to share your device's serial number with Google. We use the serial number to provide your device with offers that may be relevant to you," informs Google.

The extended trial is only available if you haven't subscribed to All Access and you haven't used the 30-days free trial. There's more information in the help center:



"Promotion only open to users in United States who have purchased and set up a Chromecast on or before September 30, 2014. Users must set up their All Access account and redeem their code by September 30, 2014 to be eligible for the offer."



{ via +Google Play }

Google Shows Images Next to Search Answers

I mentioned in a previous post that Google answers complicated questions using information from web pages. Now Google also shows images next to the relevant snippets. Here's an example for [galaxy s5 focal length].

Here's another example for [iphone 5s focal length]. This time, Google highlights the wrong answer:

A search for [iphone focal length] returns a row from a table that compares focal length for the latest 4 iPhones.

A Twitter Search Trick You Didn’t Know About

Tweetdeck, the popular app for Twitter, offers a very useful search feature that helps you discover the more popular (viral) tweets for any search term very easily. While setting up a search column inside Tweetdeck (see screenshot), you can define an “engagement level” so that tweets that have been retweeted or favorited at least ‘n’ times only show up in the search results.

The engagement filter surfaces the best tweets and removes the noise from Twitter search results but the most surprising part is that Twitter has not made this filter available outside Tweetdeck. You don’t even have it inside the official Twitter app.

Well, here’s the trick. You can actually filter tweets by engagement level on the Twitter website or inside any Twitter app using an undocumented search operator that Twitter doesn’t want us to know about.

Go to the Twitter search box, type any search term and append the operator min_retweets:[number] or min_faves:[number] to filter your search results. For instance, here’s a sample search that will only shows tweets pointing to the labnol.org domain that have been favorited or retweeted at least 5 times.

labnol.org min_retweets:5 OR min_faves:5

If you are brand manager trying to find out the most viral tweets generated for an event or a content, the min_retweets and min_faves search operators may save you several hours. You can also archive tweets to a Google Spreadsheet automatically.

You can further enhance your search queries with search operators like filter:news to show tweets emanating from news sources or use filter:images to only show tweets that contain images.

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This story, A Twitter Search Trick You Didn’t Know About, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/07/2014 under Twitter, Internet