Metronome Card in Google Search

Google shows a special card when you search for [metronome]. The default beat rate is 120 BPM, but you can change the value from 40 to 208 BPM by pressing the "+" and "-" buttons. Google plays a sound, shows an animation and changes the color of the UI, depending on the selected value.

According to Wikipedia, "a metronome is any device that produces regular, metrical ticks (beats, clicks) — settable in beats per minute. (...) The metronome is used by musicians to help keep a steady tempo as they play, or to work on issues of irregular timing, or to help internalize a clear sense of timing and tempo."

{ Thanks, Mukil Elango. }

How to Track Google Spreadsheet Views with Google Analytics

You have been using Google Analytics to track visitors (or page views) on your website but did you know that the same analytics service can also be used for tracking views inside Google Spreadsheets. You insert a little snippet of tracking code inside your spreadsheet and when someone opens the sheet, that visit will be recorded permanently in your Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics provides a JavaScript snippet that can be inserted into web templates for tracking visits. You cannot insert JavaScript inside the cells of a Google Spreadsheet but we can use the IMAGE function combined with some Apps Script to enable tracking inside spreadsheet. The visit is recorded as an “event” and not a “page view” and thus your spreadsheet opens will not artificially inflate your Google Analytics reports.

To get started, go to your Google Analytics dashboard and make a note of the Google Analytics tracking ID which is a string like UA-12345-67. This web tutorial explains how you can locate the ID inside your Analytics dashboard.

Now open any Google Spreadsheet that you wish to track and go to Tools, Script Editor and copy-paste the following code. This is a custom Google Spreadsheet function that will embed the 1×1 tracking GIF image in our spreadsheets.

/**
 * Track Spreadsheet views with Google Analytics
 *
 * @param {string} gaaccount Google Analytics Account like UA-1234-56.
 * @param {string} spreadsheet Name of the Google Spreadsheet.
 * @param {string} sheetname Name of individual Google Sheet.
 * @return The 1x1 tracking GIF image
 * @customfunction
 */

function GOOGLEANALYTICS(gaaccount, spreadsheet, sheetname) {
  
  /** 
  * Written by Amit Agarwal 
  * Web: www.ctrlq.org 
  * Email: amit@labnol.org 
  */
  
  var imageURL = [
    "http://ift.tt/1jZhjuD",
    "&tid=" + gaaccount,
    "&cid=" + Utilities.getUuid(),
    "&z="   + Math.round(Date.now() / 1000).toString(),
    "&ec="  + encodeURIComponent("Google Spreadsheets"),
    "&ea="  + encodeURIComponent(spreadsheet || "Spreadsheet"),
    "&el="  + encodeURIComponent(sheetname || "Sheet")
  ].join("");
  
  return imageURL;

}

Save the code, close the Apps Script editor window and return to the spreadsheet.

Click an empty cell and insert the following formula. The cell will be blank but it contains an embedded image. You may want to change the background color so it is easy to figure out which cell in the spreadsheet contains the tracking formula.

The GOOGLEANALYTICS() formula takes 3 parameters – the analytics ID, the spreadsheet name and the sheet name. This helps if you would like to separately track individual sheets inside a spreadsheet.

Now open the spreadsheet in a new browser window and go to Google Analytics, Real Time, Overview to test if the tracking is working. It may sometimes take a minute to record the visit. If you would like to see all the visits, go to Behavior – Events – Overview and click on the Google Spreadsheets category.

Also see: Track Gmail Messages with Google Analytics

The tracking would work even if the user has enabled ad blocking and that’s because Google Spreadsheets, like Gmail, serves images through a proxy server. The downside is that you will never know the location of the visitor since all visits will be show up as United States (the location of Google servers).

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The story, How to Track Google Spreadsheet Views with Google Analytics, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 09/03/2016 under Google Analytics, Google Docs, Internet.

How to Make eBooks with Google Docs

Adobe PDF may be the most popular document format on the web but there’s a reason why eBook lovers prefer the ePub format over PDF. PDF documents have a static layout with fixed page breaks but the layout of an ePUB document is “responsive” meaning it will automatically adjust for different screen sizes.

You can read an ePub book on your desktop or inside the Google Play Books app on your Android phone and they’ll look good. Also, since ePub files are essentially HTML5 documents under the hood, the text size and font family can be easily adjusted for an improved reading experience.

How to Create your ePUB eBooks

Adobe Stanza and Calibre are popular desktop software for  creating ePub ebooks but now can now easily make one in the browser using Google Docs itself. Just write a document in Google Document, or upload an existing Microsoft Word file to your Google Drive, go to File menu and choose download as EPUB publication.

Here’s an ePUB version of this article, generated with Google Docs.

You get an ePub file that you can copy to your mobile phone or, better still, upload the ePub to the Google Books website and access the ebook from anywhere. You can even read it in the browser. To upload an eBook to Google Books, go here and click the Upload Files button. The files are only visible to you.

ePub files are readable on iPad, Nook and Google Play books. Amazon Kindle doesn’t support the ePub format but there’s an easy way to convert ePub into MOBI format that is supported by Kindle.

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The story, How to Make eBooks with Google Docs, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 08/03/2016 under Convert, Epub, Google Docs, Internet.

How to Make Org Charts with Google Sheets

Do you need a quick organization chart to show the hierarchy of employees in your business? Well, just open a blank Google Spreadsheet, put the employee names in a column and your org charge should be ready in minutes. Here’s a sample org chart created with nothing but Google Sheets.

Create Organizational Charts with Google Spreadsheets

Here’s how you can put together an org chart in Google Sheets. It will be a live chart meaning as you update the employee names or hierarchy in the spreadsheet, the org chart would update itself. Let’s get started.

Step 1. Open a Google Sheet and put the employee names in column A and the names of the immediate managers in Column B.

Step 2. Select the cells that you’ve just entered and choose Chart from the Insert menu in the spreadsheet.

Step 3. The Chart Editor will open inside Google Sheets. Switch to the Chart Types tab and uncheck the option that says “Aggregate Column A.” Then scroll down the list of available chart types, choose “Organizational Chart” and click Insert to add the chart into your spreadsheet.

Unlike flowcharting tools like Visio, you don’t have enough formatting options for org charts in Google Sheets except for changing the background and fill colors of various nodes in the chart. And if you hit the little drop-down arrow in the chart box, you’ll see an option to download the charge as a PNG image for embedding on other websites.

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The story, How to Make Org Charts with Google Sheets, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 22/02/2016 under Charts, Google Docs, Internet.

How to Use Github for Hosting Files

Github, in simple English, is a website for hosting source code. The site is built for programmers and, if you are not one, it is highly unlikely that you have ever used Github. Repositories and Forks, the basic building blocks of Github, may seem like second-nature to developers but, for everyone else, Github continues to be a complicated beast.

Github isn’t just a place for developers though. The site can be used a writing platform. It can host HTML websites. You can use Github to visually compare the content of two text files. The site’s Gist service can used for anonymous publishing and as a tasklist. There’re so many things do on Github already and you can how use it as a free file hosting service as well.

How to Host Files on Github

It takes few easy steps to turn your Github into a file repository. You can upload files from the browser and you can add collaborators so they can also upload files to a common repository (similar to shared folders in Google Drive). The files are public so anyone can download them with a direct link. The one limitation is that the individual files cannot be larger than 25 MB each. There are no known bandwidth limits though.

Step 1: Go to github.com and sign-up for a free account, if you don’t have one. Choose the free plan as that’s all we need for hosting our files.

Step 2: Click the “New Repository” button, or go to github.com/new, to create a new repository for hosting your files. You can think of a repository as a folder on your computer.

Step 3: Give your repository a name and a description and click the Create button. It helps to have a description as it will help others discover your files on the web. You can have Private repositories too but that requires a monthly subscription.

Step 4: Your repository will initially be empty. click the Import Code button on the next screen to initialize the repository.

Step 5: Paste the URL http://ift.tt/1OpAlq3 into the repository field and click Begin Import to create your Github repository for hosting files.

Upload Files to Github

Your Github repository is now ready. Click the Upload Files files button and begin uploading files. You can drag one or more files from the desktop and then click Commit Changes to publish the files on the web. Github will accept any file as long as the size is within the 25 MB limit.

Github has a built-in previewer for PDF, text and image files (including animated GIFs) so anyone can view them without downloading the actual file. Else there’s a simple URL hack to get the raw (downloadable) version of any file hosted on Github.

Direct URLs for Github Files

After the file has been uploaded to Github, click the filename in the list and you’ll get the file’s URL in the browser’s address. Append ?raw=true to the URL and you get a downloadable / embeddable version.

For instance, if the file URL is http://ift.tt/1OpAn0V, the direct link to the same file would be http://ift.tt/1KDmLEG. If the uploaded file is an image, you can even embed it in your website using the standard img tag.

Here’s a sample file repository on Github. The T-Rex image is here and the direct link is here. You can go to the Repository settings and add one or more collaborators. They’ll get write access to your repository and can then add or delete files.

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The story, How to Use Github for Hosting Files, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 22/02/2016 under Embed, Upload, Internet.

How to Add Speech Recognition to your Website

Open the Google website on your desktop computer and you’ll find a little microphone icon embedded inside the search box. Click the icon, say something and your voice is quickly transcribed into words. Unlike earlier speech recognition products, you no longer have to train the browser to understand your speech and, for those who don’t know touch typing, speech is often a faster mode of input than the keyboard.

Sounds like magic, right? Well, did you know that you can also include similar speech recognition capabilities to your own website with a few lines of code. Visitors can search your website, or even fill forms, using just their voice. Both Google Chrome and Firefox browsers support the speech recognition API.

Before we dive into the actual implementation, let’s play with a working demo. If you are viewing this page inside Google Chrome (desktop or mobile), click the voice icon inside the search box and say a search query. You may have allow the browser to access your microphone. When you are done speaking, the search results page will open automatically.

Add Voice Recognition to your Website

The HTML5 Web Speech API has been around for few years now but it takes slightly more work now to include it in your website.

Earlier, you could add the attribute x-webkit-speech to any form input field and it would become voice capable. The x-webkit-speech attribute has however been deprecated and you are now required to use the JavaScript API to include speech recognition. Here’s the updated code:

<!-- CSS Styles -->
<style>
  .speech {border: 1px solid #DDD; width: 300px; padding: 0; margin: 0}
  .speech input {border: 0; width: 240px; display: inline-block; height: 30px;}
  .speech img {float: right; width: 40px }
</style>

<!-- Search Form -->
<form id="labnol" method="get" action="http://ift.tt/1gKlIhB;
  <div class="speech">
    <input type="text" name="q" id="transcript" placeholder="Speak" />
    <img onclick="startDictation()" src="//i.imgur.com/cHidSVu.gif" />
  </div>
</form>

<!-- HTML5 Speech Recognition API -->
<script>
  function startDictation() {

    if (window.hasOwnProperty('webkitSpeechRecognition')) {

      var recognition = new webkitSpeechRecognition();

      recognition.continuous = false;
      recognition.interimResults = false;

      recognition.lang = "en-US";
      recognition.start();

      recognition.onresult = function(e) {
        document.getElementById('transcript').value
                                 = e.results[0][0].transcript;
        recognition.stop();
        document.getElementById('labnol').submit();
      };

      recognition.onerror = function(e) {
        recognition.stop();
      }

    }
  }
</script>

We have the CSS to place the microphone image inside the input box, the form code containing the input button and the JavaScript that does all the heavy work.

When the user click the mic image inside the search box, the JavaScript checks if the user’s browser supports speech recognition. If so, it waits for the transcribed text to arrive from Google servers and then submits the form.

The Dictation App also uses the speech recognition API though it writes the transcribed text to textarea field instead of an input box.

Some notes:

1. If the HTML form / search box is embedded inside an HTTPS website, the browser will not repeatedly ask for permission to use the microphone.
2. You can change the value of the recognition.lang property from ‘en-US’ to another language (like hi-In for Hindi or fr-FR for Français). See the complete list of supported languages.

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The story, How to Add Speech Recognition to your Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 19/02/2016 under Speech Recognition, Software.

Export Google Fit Data

Google Takeout has recently added support for exporting Google Fit data. You'll be able to download some CSV and TCX files that include your activities and daly aggregations.

* TCX (Training Center XML) is a common file format for fitness activity data that can be imported to many fitness tracking tools such as Garmin Connect and Strava. By default, Fit samples location data with low accuracy and frequency to reduce device battery consumption. These Activities are exported into the Low Accuracy folder. Activities recorded with Fit's active mode will contain more detailed location paths and more accurate data.

* CSV files are easily read by spreadsheet software or parsed programmatically but may not be easy to import into fitness tracking software.

Gmailify

Gmail's app for Android is more than a mobile app for Gmail, it's also a general-purpose mail client. You can add IMAP, POP3 or Exchange accounts and use the Gmail app to read, compose and organize your mail. Now Google added the option to Gmailify your email accounts, which means bringing Gmail features without having to switch to a Gmail account.

"Gmailify links your existing account to Gmail so that you get all the bells and whistles — spam protection, inbox organization and even Google Now cards based on your mail — without having to leave your current address behind. All you need to do is open the Gmail app, sign in to your email account(s), and enable Gmailify," informs Google.

Which features are available? Spam protection, automatic categorization, labels, better search with support for advanced search operators, travel and hotel reservations appearing automatically in Google Now, better mobile notifications and all the other Gmail features.

How does it work? You can link your non-Gmail address (Yahoo Mail, Outlook.com, AOL Mail, etc.) to an existing Gmail account or to a new Gmail account. "When you sign in to the linked Gmail address, you'll see your messages from the other email provider in your mailbox. You'll be able to read, reply, and organize them just like you do in Gmail." The Gmail app keeps everything in sync, so a read email will be marked as read in the original account, archived messages will be added to a new Archive folder, while Gmail labels will be treated like folders.

Google Tweaks Mobile Search UI

Google tweaked the mobile search interface. There's now a menu that lets you view the original image, open the list of saved images, search by image and send feedback. There's also a redundant "visit page" link below the image.

Google brought back the title of the page and that's a good thing because you can find more details about the image. Hopefully, Google will also bring back the snippets.

You can find some screenshots for the old interface in this post.

How to Use Animated GIF Images as your Mac Wallpaper

You may have seen web pages with video backgrounds but did you know that it is also possible to use videos and animated GIF images as backgrounds for your Mac desktop. OS X natively supports only static wallpaper images but there’s a little Mac utility called GIFPaper that adds support for animated live backgrounds to your desktop.

Animated GIFs as Mac Background

It takes a few easy steps to inject some life in your Mac background.

Step 1. Download a GIF image. You can use Giphy for readymade GIFs, or create your own cinemagraphs with Photoshop or, if you are trying to use a video, convert to GIF using FFMpeg.

Step 2. Download the GIFPaper app from Dropbox (link found via Reddit) and extract the content to a local folder.

Step 3. Double-click the GIFPaperPrefs.prefPane file inside the extracted folder to install the preferences pane. Go to your Mac’s System Preferences and double-click GIFPaperPref to launch the actual app.

Step 4. Browse the computer, locate the GIF, set the Scaling to “Axes Independently” and the GIF will be set as the background of your Mac desktop. If you have a multiple virtual desktops, only the current screen will be changed.

You can place add GIFPaperAgent to your Mac login items to preserve your wallpaper preferences. Also, it might not be a good idea to use animated on older Macs since it does consume system resources.

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The story, How to Use Animated GIF Images as your Mac Wallpaper, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/02/2016 under Apple Mac, GIF, Internet.

The Directory of Twitter News Feeds

Twitter is the best source of news on the Internet but there’s no denying the fact that Twitter is both complex and confusing for most people. Unlike a newspaper website where you just open the homepage and read the news, you need to follow the right set of people before understanding the true potential of Twitter.

Twitter realises this problem and they are now trying to capture the audience that stumble upon Twitter just for catching up with news but may not be inclined to traverse the complex universe of Likes and RTs. Now when you open the Twitter homepage, they will show you to the top tweets across various categories without requiring you to sign up. The tweets are grouped in categories like Sports, Music, Food, etc. so it is easier than ever before to follow your interests.

See the Top Tweets for any Category

The Twitter news feeds surface the top tweets for any category but, for some unknown reason, they have made these available only to users who are not logged into Twitter.

Not a problem as here are direct URLs (links) that will help you access all the Twitter category feeds without having to log out of your Twitter account. The list covers both US and India specific Twitter news categories. You can bookmark the pages that pique your interest and access them anytime, anywhere.

Also see: The Best Twitter Tools

Twitter News Feeds (US)

General news sources	Business news	Journalists & pundits
World news	Weather news & meteorologists	Financial news & analysts
Tech blogs & reporters	Tech CEOs, investors & startups	Space news, Nonprofits & foundations
Designers & architects	Authors, critics & publishers	Photographers & photo agencies
NFL players, teams & personalities	NBA players, teams & personalities	College basketball teams & fans
MLB players, teams & personalities	Soccer players, teams & fans	NHL players, teams & personalities
NASCAR drivers & teams	WWE wrestlers & personalities	MMA fighters & personalities
Golfers, tours & commentators	College football teams & personalities	Celebrity news
TV shows & stars	Actors & actresses	Reality TV shows & stars
TV talent shows & contestants	Industry news, film critics & festivals	Video games & gamers
Science news & journalists	Celebrity chefs & personalities	Parenting experts & opinion
Home design & decorators	Food, drinks & entertainment guides	Travel guides, airlines & hotels
Health & fitness	Automakers & reviewers	Wedding guides
Inspiration & motivation	Pop artists	Hip hop \/ rap artists
Country artists	Latino artists	R&B soul artists
Classic rock groups	Dance electronic artists	Metal groups
Comedians, writers & late-night hosts	Cute animals	Cool & interesting photos
Art museums & publications	Beauty & cosmetics brands	Clothing brands & retailers
High-end fashion labels	Politicians, pundits & parties	US federal agencies

Twitter News Feeds (India)

Entertainment	Sports	Government and Politics
Music	News	Cricketers and Commentators
Youth and Music	Women	Comedy and Humour
South Indian	NGOs and Social Good	CEOs
Bollywood and Celebrities	Food	Hindi Music
Fashion	Breaking News	Indian Athletes
Politicians and Pol Parties	Business and Financial News	Punjabi Music
Government & Public Utilities	Books & Authors	Entertainment Channels
TV Personalities	Leagues and Teams	Sports News, TV and Scores
Journalists	Indie & Electronic Music	Brands

These semi-curated Twitter News Feeds are probably the best thing to have happened to Twitter in recent times. Content discovery has always been an issue in the world of Twitter but now you can easily find the top tweets for your favourite category without the chaos.

If you are curious to know how I found these Twitter feeds, the answer is web scraping and some trial-n-error. Also, I think Twitter is using geo-location to tailor the news feeds so if you are, say, in UK, your news feed links will be different from mine.

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The story, The Directory of Twitter News Feeds, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/02/2016 under Twitter, Internet.

How to Find and Replace Text in Gmail and other Web Pages

Web pages were essentially meant for reading and thus vendors never cared to include “find and replace” functionality in their web browsers. Websites have however evolved and they are no longer just blocks of static content. You can write lengthy emails or even dictate text inside web pages but if you are to fix those embarrassing spelling mistakes, you’ll have to correct them one-by-one.

You cannot automatically replace a word or phrase with another inside a web page without using browser extensions. The following tutorial discusses a simple technique that will help you search and replace text in web pages using the built-in Chrome Developer Tools but without any extensions.

Also see: How to Edit Web Pages

Search and Replace for any Webpage

We’ll take a popular Wikipedia page for this example and show you how to replace all instances of one word with another.

While you are on the web page, press Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows or Cmd+Opt+J on Mac to open the Console window inside Chrome Developer tools. Now enter the following command to replace all occurrences of the word ABC with XYZ.

document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/ABC/g, "XYZ")

You can use Regular Expressions for more complex substitutions. For instance, if you wish to replace all common misspellings of occurrence, you could use either of these:

 document.body.innerHTML.replace(/(ocurrance|occurrance|occurance)/g, "occurrence")
 document.body.innerHTML.replace(/oc[\w]+nce/g, "occurrence")

The same technique can be used to format words inside a page as well. For instance, the next command will bold all instances of the word Hello on a page.

 document.body.innerHTML.replace(/Hello/g, "<b>Hello</b>")

Search and Replace Text in Gmail

Your changes aren’t preserved when you close the browser tab so you could be wondering why would anyone perform search and replace on a web page? Well, take the case of Gmail. You may have written a lengthy email but just when you were about to hit Send, you come across some spelling errors.

To fix the errors in Gmail, you can either copy the email message into notepad, perform search and replace and then paste the edited text back into Gmail. Or you can directly use Chrome Dev Tools.

In our previous example, we performed search and replace on document.body which in the entire web pages. However, in Gmail, we only need to replace text that’s inside the compose window.

The first step is to find the element on page where the search & replace should be done. This is easy as shown in the video above. Select the Gmail text, right-click and choose Inspect Element and make a note of the DIV ID that contains the editable textarea. It is “:h7” for Gmail.

Now all we need to is run the substitution command inside the Console window to replace word ABC with XYZ everywhere.

document.getElementById(':h7').innerHTML = 
  document.getElementById(':h7').innerHTML.replace(/ABC/g, "XYZ");

And your changes won’t be lost as Gmail will auto-save your Draft.

Also see: How to Learn Coding Online

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The story, How to Find and Replace Text in Gmail and other Web Pages, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 01/02/2016 under GMail, Google Chrome, Internet.

Access your Passwords from Anywhere with Google Password Manager

Google Chrome has a built-in password manager that offers to save your username and password whenever you sign-in to a website using Chrome. The stored passwords are synced with your Google Account and thus are available across all devices where you have signed in using the same Google Account.

Google Chrome is available for all platforms, including iOS and Android phones, and thus you always have access to your saved passwords. However, if you prefer using a different browser, like Safari on iPhone or Microsoft Edge on Windows 10, you can still access all your account passwords saved inside Chrome via passwords.google.com.

Open the Google Passwords website, sign-in in with your existing Google Account that you are using on Chrome and you’ll find a list of every single account (and the associated password) that you’ve used to sign-in in Chrome.

The passwords are hidden with asterisks but they can be easily revealed by clicking the corresponding eye icon. You can also remove any saved password from the list but there’s no option to edit passwords.

How to Hide Your Passwords

This is another strong reason why you should to enable 2-factor authorization for your Google Account. If someone gains access to your main Google account password, they likely have access to your entire library of passwords through the Google Passwords website.

If you are not comfortable seeing your passwords inside the Google Passwords website, you have two options. Either don’t save your passwords in Chrome at all or just make them inaccessible from the Google website as explained here.

Open Google Chrome on desktop and go to Settings – Advanced Sync Settings. Alternatively, type chrome://settings/syncSetup in the browser address bar and hit Enter. Under the Encryption Options, choose “Encrypt all synced data with your own sync passphrase”, enter a passphrase and save the settings.

After a minute or two, your passwords will no longer be available through the Google Passwords website. If you have later change your mood, simply reset to default settings.

Also see: 10 Important Google URLs

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The story, Access your Passwords from Anywhere with Google Password Manager, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 01/02/2016 under Google Chrome, Password, Internet.