Email Options

1. Inbox Display

The default setting for emails to display in your Gmail account are set to “Comfortable“, which displays emails in large print and wide sections. You can adjust how they are displayed by clicking the “Settings” tab in the top right corner and selecting either “Cozy“, which makes the font and spacing more slim or “Compact“, which makes them… well compact! The “Compact” setting seems to make your inbox look less full and more tidy.

2. Inbox Type

There are also some great ways to sort your inbox messages that can help you be more efficient with your time. Hover over the “Inbox” tab to see a small arrow. Click the arrow to open the window of display options for your inbox. Each tab will show you what it’s best used for so you can make an educated decision on which will be the best for your Gmail purposes. You can also change your inbox sorting preferences in the menu above the email messages by clicking on that inbox type.

3. Custom Search

Of course, Google is all about searches so in addition to being able to search their engine for information, you can also search within your Gmail account by entering information into the fields to narrow your search.

4. Create A Filter

You can create a filter from within the search box by clicking “More” and then “Create Filter.” Setup how you want emails delivered from this particular subject. Since I’m looking for a car, it’s a time sensitive email. I want the email to be “Starred”, labeled as “Personal”, and “Marked As Important” so I am sure to see when something I want has become available. This is a great way to make sure important emails don’t go unnoticed because they won’t blend in with all the rest of the inbox messages.

Settings

The Settings tab is where you’ll be able to really customize the way you use your Gmail. There’s more than I can cover in this one article so we’ll just touch on some of the key features that will be useful for most people. All of the following features can be found in the “Settings” tab.

5. Buttons

You’ll notice that the default setting for the new Gmail interface buttons are now icons. Most people don’t know what the buttons are simply by looking at an icon and would rather have the words on the buttons.

Changing your buttons to a text view is easy. Simply scroll down a little to see the settings for “Button Labels”. Here, you can change the default Icons setting back to” Text”. Scroll to the bottom of the settings list and “Save Changes”. Now your buttons will have the words for their function listed on them.

Your toolbar will now look like the one below, showing you exactly what each button does.

6. Stars

Gmail’s idea of making yellow stars and yellow Important icons make it difficult to tell them apart. You can customize and color code your stars in the “Settings” tab. Drag and drop any of the icons from the “Not In Use” row up to the “In Use” row to activate them.

To use them, click on the star next to the email you want to highlight and keep clicking until you find the color code you need for that item. The colors will come up in succession of how they are arranged “In Use”.

7. Labels

Gmail uses the “Label” system instead of the typical folder filing system most email services provide. Next to each “Label” is a customization tab where you can change the color of a Label to identify it at a glance. Simply click on the color you want to use for the Label.

In that same drop down menu, you can rename, remove the label or add a sublabel.

8. Circles

Another new feature in the Gmail interface incorporates your Google+ circles into your email settings. When you “Enable” “Circles”, and enable “Show In Message List” incoming messages will display a colorful tag when the sender is from one of your Google+ circles.

You can also manage and edit your Google+ circles from within your Gmail page by hovering over the Circles tab. Click on the arrow and then Edit Circles.

Gmail Design

9. Themes

If you read my articles, you know I’m a big fan of customizing everything. Tools and sites we use on a regular basis are more interesting and fresh when they can be changed according to mood, season, or need. Gmail “Themes” are a great place to insert some color and personality to your email dashboard and if you have more than one account, the themes can help you determine which account you’re in without having to look for the address. There are several solid color or picture backgrounds to choose from in the “Themes” tab under your “Settings” menu.

“Labs”

10. Change The Sidebars

The default dashboard has everything on the left side of the screen. I like things balanced and don’t use chat very much so I wanted to move that feature out of the way of my everyday actions. You can also do this by clicking on “Labs” in the “Settings” tab and enabling the “Right Side Chat” lab.

11. Undo Send

How many times have you hit the send button and then realized you forgot an attachment or didn’t reply all? Hopefully you never sent an email to the wrong person but if you ever did send something that you immediately want to take back, the” Undo Send Lab” can save the day. When you enable it, it allows you to undo a sent email within a few seconds of sending. After that, well, you’re just out of luck!

I think you’ll find some very useful and colorful ways to enjoy the new Gmail interface with these tips. What changes have you made to your dashboard? What features do you use most? Come back and share your thoughts, we’d love to interact with you!

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Starting out

Like most of the mass changes Google makes with their apps, they roll them out in batches. It took me a few days for my Google Docs to change over after I started to read about Google Drive. So if yours hasn’t made the switch yet, don’t worry, it’s on the way soon.

When you get the option to change your Google Docs to Google Drive, you should see a welcome screen, something like this asking you if you want to try Google Drive.There isn’t much you need to do online or on your Android to make the change, just click yes.

What changed

Once you have agreed to make the change, you will see some slight changes. The word Docs is now Drive and your Collections are now called, get ready for this…. folders. I was happy about that one.

Another change is Google added SlideRocket presentations. When you make a lot of presentations, the presentations Google Docs could make did leave a something to be desired. SlideRocket will pick up the slack in this department.

More than a name change

So far none of the changes I’ve talked about have been life altering. The part everyone has been waiting for is increased space and the desktop app. Let’s talk a little bit about that why these are so great.

The space increase

You now have 5GB of free storage space to store whatever you’d like. This is quite a bit more than what you had with Google Docs.

If you need more space, the rates are really reasonable. The 25GB upgrade is $2.49 a month. The cool part is, your Gmail inbox gets bumped from 10gb to 25gb also. If you need even more storage, there is a 100GB upgrade for $4.99 a month with the same bump to your Gmail account to 25GB.

Desktop sync

The desktop sync is the part you have been waiting for. You will need to initiate the download of the desktop app and log in with your Google credentials.

Once you are all logged in, you can choose the location of the folder or folders you want to keep in sync. If you use Box or Dropbox, the setup is really similar to those. Now when you place something in this folder, it is automatically synced with your Google Drive.

Google Drive for Android

Drive on your Android got a lot nicer. The layout of the document editing screen seems easier to use. Before the upgrade, editing a document was inconvenient because the interface made you select a line to edit almost like you would for a spreadsheet. Now editing is very similar to the web editing, just with less features.

You can now upload any kind of file right from your Android device. This means backing up music and pictures is an easy possibility. While there isn’t an automatic upload for your pictures like there is with Dropbox, most Android devices have the option to select several pictures at a time to upload or share.

Conclusion

I think with the large amount of Google Docs users that the change to Google Drive will bring on more users who are new to cloud storage. While the amount of free space could be more in comparison to some other services out there, the fee to increase the space is less than most. I for one am excited for Google Drive because now I don’t need to have an Internet connection all the time when I am typing something like this up. I can use something like Open Office and save it to the Google Drive sync folder. Trevor is a happy camper now.

Will you switch to Google Drive as your cloud storage?

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How Do Instant Pages Work?

Instant Pages builds upon the functionality of Google Instant shaving between 2 to 5 seconds off a search query by using an algorithm of about 200 factors combined with the Google search history to determine which link a user is most likely to click on. It begins contacting the server to load that page in the background as soon as the search results appear. Check out this quick video to give you a better idea just how much faster Instant Pages are!

How Can I Use Instant Pages To My Advantage?

Google has made this technology works for developers as well as searchers. By following the Guide To Prerendering In Chrome, publishers are able to choose which pages on their site they want to prerender when users are already on the page. However, it is important that you limit the number of prerendered pages because it could result in increased bandwidth usage, slow loading of other links and stale content.

 Before You Start

Although the process of implementing Instant Pages is easy, it’s VERY important to make sure you know where to properly place the code. Take it from me, if you aren’t familiar with PHP code placement, you may want to read about the most common mistakes beginners make when trying to copy and paste snippets into their site. If you put it in the wrong place, you WILL break your site. Always do a backup of your site before making any changes and if you’ve made modifications to your theme, it’s best to make changes and test using a child theme.

Adding The Code

You will need to add a few lines of code to your theme’s PHP settings. Go to your File Manager and open the header.php file under your theme by clicking the Edit button.

The page of code that is set by default will open displaying the current PHP code settings. Here’s where you’ll add the Instant Pages code to make it compatible with your site and where you need to be most careful! Before the closing </head> tag, include the following code:

<?php if(is_archive()) { ?>
<!-- Instant Pages codes for Google Chrome --> 
<link rel="prerender" href="<?php echo get_next_posts_page_link(); ?>" />
<?php } ?>

It should look like this when placed in the code file:

Save your changes and test them out on your site. Here you can see the Bombax theme will start to suggest article topics as you start entering letters into the search box. This doesn’t just give a suggested article; it’s also queued to open very quickly if selected.

In conclusion, adding Google Instant Pages as a background tool to your site will keep visitors engaged on your site. With suggested articles and fast page loading, your site will become more user friendly and encourage many return visitors, producing a low bounce rate. Test it out and see for yourself if your bounce rate improves and come back to let us know!

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How Google Currents work?

Instead of subscribing to RSS feeds like any other RSS feed reader, Google Currents allows you to subscribe to publication. Each publication is just like a magazine and can make up of blog posts, videos, images, Google Plus update or any other stuff that the publisher wishes to place in the publication. When you first start the app, you should be already subscribed to a few default publication, like Fast Company, Forbes and so on. You can tap on the “Add More” button and subscribe to publications from various categories.

Once you have subscribed to your favorite publications, you can set it to sync in the background at regular interval, so it will always be populated with the latest content. In addition, you can also get it to download the images and content and read it offline.

* Make Tech Easier is on Google Currents too!. Subscribe to our publication now.

How to create your own publication?

Let’s say you are a web publisher and you wish to get onto the Google Currents platform and enable readers to subscribe to your publication. The only problem is, how do you create a publication without any technical coding knowledge? Google Currents Producer is the answer. It is an online publishing service (provided by Google) that allows you to publish your own edition/publication without any coding knowledge. All you need to know is a few mouse clicks, and where to locate your site’s RSS feed URL.

1. Go to Google Currents Producer. You need to be on Google Chrome and sign in to your Google account. Once you are logged in, the first thing to appear is the Publisher Agreement. You will need to read through it (supposedly, but I don’t think you will, right?) and agree to it.

2. On the next screen, you will be prompted to enter the name of your edition and the RSS feed of your site. If you are running a video site on YouTube, you can add the channel name as well.

3. Once you click the “Create” button, it will start to pull articles from your site and compile them into a magazine format. At this stage, the barebone of your publication is ready and you can publish it anytime to make it live.

Configuration

At the main screen, there are plenty of options for you to customize the look and feel of your edition. The first part is the Edition Settings. This is where you can change the name, category, icon, splash image of your edition, and whether to collect email address from the reader and track its performance using Google Analytic.

The sections is the important feature of Google Currents as it allows you to add content to your publication. You can add feed(s), upload articles from Google Docs, pull photos from Flickr, Picasa or the web, YouTube channel, and even update on your Google Plus account. There are plenty of content you can add here to make your publication interesting, so be creative.

If you are proficient in CSS, you can go to “Sections -> Blogs -> Section Template” and edit the stylesheet of your publication look-and-feel.

The “Grant Access” section allows you to grant permission to others to manage your edition.

At any point of time, once you have made an update, you can click on the Android, Tablet, iPhone or iPad link to check how your publication looks like in each device. You can even rotate it to check the landscape view.

Lastly, after you have completed all the configurations and are happy with the result, go to the “Distribute -> Publish” section and click the “Publish” button.

That’s it. Your site publication is now live!

* Make Tech Easier is on Google Currents too! You can subscribe to our update by clicking on this link on your mobile device.

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The Advantage of adding a Google Custom Search Engine

If you are not aware, the Google Custom Search Engine is a service provided by Google to allow anyone to create a customized search engine. The backend is powered by the Google searchbot, but you are able to customize the search results that appear.

Since the search engine is hosted at Google, the main advantage of using a GCSE is that you can ease some load off your server and give your visitors a better search experience. In addition, you can also integrate your Google Analytics and Google Adsense to the custom search engine and track what your visitors are searching and at the same time make some extra income.

Getting Started

In brief, this is what we are going to do.

1. Create a Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE).
2. Customize your GCSE.
3. Integrate to your WordPress site

1. Create a Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE)

Go to Google Custom Search and click the big “Create a Custom Search Engine” button. You will have to login to your Google account.

Give your custom search engine a name and description. Under the “Sites to search” field, enter “www.yourdomain.com/*” if you only want all pages from the main domain to be available. For those who wanted to include sub-domains as well, use “domain.com” or “*.yourdomain.com” instead.

If you have no intention to pay for the custom search engine, select the Standard edition. The “Site search” edition costs $100 per year and it allows you to remove Google branding and ads.

The next step is to customize the look and feel of the GCSE. You can pick from any of the template or customize the default style to your own. Things that you can customize include the font-family, background-color, search input color, search result color, and many other stuff.

Lastly, you will be shown a bunch of code where you need to copy and paste to the place where you want the GCSE to appear. We are going to ignore this for the time being as we are going to add more customization to the custom search engine.

2. Customizing the Google Custom Search Engine

Go to the Custom Search Control Panel and select your newly created custom search engine.

There are plenty of things that you can configure here. You can take your time to go through the option one by one. Some of the more important one includes: Autocompletions, Google Analytics, Make money and Look and feel. You can even go into the details and refine the results to appear in the result page

Note: The easiest way is to add the code to your theme where you want it to appear. However, in some cases, the search form might not integrate well with your theme. One alternative that we propose is to modify the search box in your theme, and get it to serve Google search result.

Click on the “Look and feel” link at the left sidebar. Under the “Choose a Layout” section, select “Results only”.

Next, press the “Save and Get Code” button. Copy the code.

3. Integrate the Search Result to your WordPress site

Log in to your WordPress dashboard and install (and activate) the plugin “WP Unformatted“.

Next, create a new page. Name the page “Search Result” (or whatever search title you want to show to your reader). In the text editor, go to HTML mode and paste the GCSE code in. Save the page (If you are using WP multisite, you will need to install the Unfiltered MU plugin to allow administrators and editors to insert code in post/page).

Important: Add a new custom field “sponge” (without the quote) and set the value to “1″ (without the quote).

Publish the page. Copy the permalink of this search result page.

Next, you have to open up the theme folder and search for the search form code. The default is in the “searchform.php” file, but in case you don’t find the file there, search for it in “header.php“.

The default searchform code should look like this (based on the TwentyEleven theme):

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>">
    <label for="s" class="assistive-text"><?php _e( 'Search', 'twentyeleven' ); ?></label>
    <input type="text" class="field" name="s" id="s" placeholder="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Search', 'twentyeleven' ); ?>" />
    <input type="submit" class="submit" name="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Search', 'twentyeleven' ); ?>" />
</form>

You need to replace:

action="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>"

with

action="your-newly-created-search-result-page-permalink"

replacing “your-newly-created-search-result-page-permalink” with the permalink that you have copied earlier.

Next, change the field:

<input type="text" class="field" name="s" id="s" placeholder="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Search', 'twentyeleven' ); ?>" />

to

<input type="text" class="field" name="q" id="s" placeholder="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Search', 'twentyeleven' ); ?>" />

replacing the name="s" to name="q"

Save the changes to your server.

Your custom search engine should be working now. Perform a search on your site and see the custom search results load up.

Alternatively, if you have chosen the “Two Page” option in the GCSE Look and Feel page, you can use the above method to create a search result page, but add the search form code to the theme file where you want it to appear, probably in the sidebar/widget area.

In addition, you will have to update the GCSE option page with the search result page permalink so the search query can be redirected correctly to the right URL.

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1. Search

This simple tool allows you to search Google’s image database safely and easily as thumbnails or full size images, with download ready links so you don’t have to open the source site to retrieve it.  Just right click on the image for easy storing and saving. The simple and clear layout of the images displayed, enables you to pick the perfect image for your needs.

2. Settings

For those of us that guard our eyes and the eyes of the young ones around us, the tool bar allows you to browse images in “Safe Mode” to avoid any inappropriate pictures from being displayed.

You can also customize the size the images are displayed, by selecting from Large, Medium, or Icon.

The last setting in the toolbar allows you to decide if the URL of the image should be displayed.  Even if you decide to display it, you don’t have to open it to retrieve the image but It’s an option if you wanted to view the source site.

3. Viewing

As you see above, you can view the images in several different sizes but you can also view full size pictures in a slide show mode. To do this, click on the image you would like to see in full size and either use your arrow keys to see the rest of the images or click the “Next” button.

Of course, there are a few image galleries like Flickr and Photbucket  that are gaining in popularity, but you need to sign up for an account and sign in every time you want to search the database. Again, wasted time. If you need something quick, easy and safe to use on a daily basis, Google Image Ripper is a great option. If you like Google Image Ripper but don’t have good luck with it due to your Internet speed, a Firefox plugin called Greasemonkey provides more of an image selection and faster download times for Google Image Ripper.

Which image gallery is your favorite?

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2. On the next page, enter your tagline and upload your business logo.

3. While uploading your business logo, make sure you adjust the border markers so that it doesn’t crop the necessary region.

4. Next, on your own Google+ account, you can send an update to your stream to get the word out about your newly created page. Click Finish when done.

Congratulation. You have successfully created a Google+ page for your business. You can now proceed on to setup your page (post content, get the words out, add new friends etc.) If you are already familiar with Google+, using the Google+ page will not be any different from your personal account.

Just below your business logo is a link for you to switch between your own Google+ account or the Google+ page. This allows you to manage your personal account and G+ page easily.

Vanity URL

Google has not introduced a vanity url yet, so your Google+ page URL will be of the form https://plus.google.com/105912493009262034063, which is kind of ugly and hard to remember. One alternative is to use a URL shortener (such as bit.ly) to create a personalised short URL for your Gplus page. For example, the URL shortener http://mte.gs/mte-gplus will lead to Make Tech Easier Google+ page. This is of course a temporary solution till Google introduces the vanity URL.

Promoting your Google+ Page

To promote your newly created Google+ page, you can insert a badge on your site to inform your readers about its existence.

To create a badge:

1. go to https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config.

2. Enter your Google+ page ID (the string of numbers behind the “https://plus.google.com“). Choose the size of the icon that you want to appear on your site. Lastly, enter your badge name.

3. Copy the code and paste it to the position where you want the badge to appear on your site.

Done.

Linking your website to your Google+ Page

If you have followed the instructions above to add the badge to your site, your site is already linked to your Google+ page. If not, just paste the following code to your site, between the <head></head> tag

<link href="https://your-gplus-page-url" rel="publisher" />

Replace the “https://your-gplus-page-url” with your Google+ page URL.

The benefit of linking your website to Google+ page is that your linked site is now eligible for Google Direct Connect, which allows people to search for you using the “+” sign.

Last but not least, while you are busy setting up your Google+ page, don’t forget to add Make Tech Easier to your circle.

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If you have noticed recently, when you perform a search in Google, some of the search results have a profile picture (of the author) displayed beneath the link. There are no special privilege for these authors, nor did they pay Google to do it. If you are a blogger or content creator, you can get your picture in the search result as well, for free. Here is how to do it.

Setup Google Profile

Obviously, if you want to display your Google Profile picture, you need to have a Google Profile. If you already have a Google account (or Gmail address), you already have a Google Profile. Log into your Google account and setup your Google Profile. Remember to upload a photo of you (not any other thing) as it will be used in the search result.

2. Before Google can display your profile picture, you need to establish authorship of your site. This is to let Google knows that you are the original author of your content. To do that, you just have to insert a link to your Google Profile with the parameter “?rel=author” in every single page of your site. For example, you can insert a link at the end of your content.

<a href="https://plus.google.com/1234567891234567?rel=author">Follow me at Google+</a>
<!--https://plus.google.com/1234567891234567 is your Google Profile URL-->

Or insert an empty link if you don’t want anything to show up.

<a href="https://plus.google.com/1234567891234567?rel=author"></a>
<!--https://plus.google.com/1234567891234567 is your Google Profile URL-->

To use Google+ image instead of text, go to this site and enter your Google Profile URL. Grab the generated code and embed it into your content.

3. Next, go to your Google Profile and click “Edit Profile”. At the About tab, click “Contributor to” and enter the name and URL of your website. Save the changes and click “Finished Editing”.

4. Lastly, complete this form so Google can contact you for any implementation issue.

That’s it.

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Backtracking for a second, you might be wondering what exactly these “about pages” are that I keep speaking of. You may notice that when you open a new tab in chrome, the address bar contains the text “about:blank”. That code simply tells Google Chrome to display a blank page. Varying the text after “about:” allows you to access special pages. I outline some of the most interesting and useful of these below.

1. about:about

This page lists most (but not all) available about pages that you can access. In my testing, however, the links on this page are not functional despite being clickable, and you need to manually type them into the address bar.

2. about:flags

One of the most interesting about pages, this allows you to turn on what Google terms “experiments”, modifying various functions of the Chrome browser. Some examples are an FPS counter that displays when hardware acceleration is in use, the option to disable VSync, and the ability to enable an in-tab preview of print. I tested a couple of the experiments and found some working, while others didn’t seem to do anything. Please report your findings here.

3. about:plugins

This gives you direct access to the options page where you can enable and disable any plugins that you may have installed for Google Chrome.

4. about:net-internals

A very useful backend tool that gives you access to a list of currently open connections, the ability to check what current proxy settings are in effect, and even a test tool that will try and identify why a certain page is not loading properly. Be careful with what you do here, as I could not find any documentation for it.

5. about:memory

This shows you the memory in use by Chrome as well as any other browsers you may have open. Furthermore, it shows you the memory in use by specific tabs and other processes running under Chrome. This allows you to get a better idea of the resource load of the browser, and to perhaps compare it to other browsers you may use. The memory use summary is currently buggy on OSX.

6. about:cache

This allows you to view everything currently in the browser’s cache. The only catch here is that if you click on a link, it does not actually load the image or the file in a normal way. It will display a hexadecimal & ascii form of the file. You could likely copy and paste this into a hex editor if you wanted to retrieve the contents in a usable format.

7. about:version

This displays the current version of Google Chrome that you have installed, along with the version of JavaScript, Flash and the User Agent that it will be giving to pages that it accesses. It also shows you the currently installed directory as well as the location of your profile. The latter might be useful if you want to back it up.

What other about pages did I miss out?

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Like many Google applications, Google Docs has been doing some testing behind the scenes. Being able to use and manage your documents well can save lots of time. Here are a few tips to help you be more versed with Google Docs.

Starting from scratch

If you are just starting with Google Docs, here are a few things you will want to start with. Note there are features you can add via web apps and extensions if you are using Google Chrome browser. The newest is offline support.

Collections

These are folders where you can organize your documents. I cannot stress enough how much easier it is to organize from the start. If you need to go back and sort through all of your documents and files, it will be a daunting task.

To create a collection, click on the Create button in the top left of the Google Docs homepage. In the drop down, you should see Collection as an option. Name the collection and you are ready to go.

By default, you will be taken into the new collection. If you want a sub-folder, this is a good time to make one. If you need to add a sub-folder, you can always do it later.

Importing

To move your current documents to the Google cloud, there are a couple of methods. If you have a lot of them to import to the cloud, you may want to consider an application like Gladinet. What Gladinet can do for you is upload all of the files from a certain folder or set of folders. You will need to sort them after they are all uploaded.

The other option is to upload them individually or by the folder. If you choose this method, you can import the files into collections you have already created.

Spreadsheets

If you are an Excel user, this may be slightly different for you. However, many of the same features and settings will be in Google Docs. If you are a hard-core Excel user, you may not have everything you need. Also look at used for Google Forms. These export to a spreadsheet and stored in Google Docs.

Keyboard shortcuts

These are a few of the many keyboard shortcuts when you are using spreadsheets.

• Show all formulas  Ctrl + ~
• Make a copy  Ctrl + Up arrow + S
• Add new sheet  Up arrow + F11
• Select column  Up arrow + Space
• Select row  Ctrl + Up arrow + Space
• Strikethrough  Alt + Up arrow + 5
• Redo  Ctrl + Y
• Move to next sheet  Ctrl + Up arrow + PageDown

Conclusion

Google Docs is a fantastic replacement for most desktop If you an everyday user, you will do great. It is an easy transition from Microsoft Office. Having the flexibility to access your documents from anywhere with an internet connection including your phone, outweighs the small features that are lost.

What did you find useful when you first switched to Google Docs?

Image credit: Kinologik

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I know I use Google Reader to catch up on my favorite sites. The hard part is making your experience easier. Usually easier means you will use it more. Here are a few ways to make Google Reader easier to use.

Folders

Using folders to sort similar sites together will be the first step in making Google Reader easier to use. Just like in your email, folders help you easily find what you are looking for. By sorting sites into categories that make sense to you, you will be able to pick out posts from sites that are your flavor of the moment.

Eliminate sites

Many blogs simply stop posting new content. If this happens, you can eliminate them from your reader. It is better to bookmark the site as a resource than leave a dead feed in your reader.

You may even lose interest in a topic over time. When this happens, there is no need to keep these sites in your reader. They will take up space and make you feel guilty for not having read the 500 recent posts in that folder.

Use tags

Using tags in Google Reader can make finding a certain articles easier. I have a read later tag for posts that I find the title interesting but can’t read at just that moment. Another good way to use tags is as a sub category. Sometimes you may want to create a folder with an obscure name, but it will not really apply to more than just the one site or article. This is where tagging will come into play.

Instead of creating a folder to house one site or interesting post, make a tag for it. The tags show up at the bottom of same list as folders so you wont forget what tags you have used.

Star your favorites

Another way to keep your favorites easy to find is to star them. Using a star can serve what ever purpose you’d like it to. The star can be used as a read later option or to recall what you started to read and need to finish.

Use Trends to see where your interests are

People change their interests very quickly these days. Trends will tell you what you have been reading lately so you can possibly eliminate sites or topics you no longer read.

Search for bundles

Bundles are a bunch of sites that someone likes and wants to share with others. If you own or write for several sites, you could create a bundle for other people to subscribe to your work.

Conclusion

Google Reader is like many other web applications. It is made for a specific task, but by using a little imagination, you can make it work the way YOU want it to. Whether that is through browser extensions, the way you organize it or by using third-party applications.There is always a different possible use than originally intended.

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A search engine I’ve been hearing mentioned more and more lately is Blekko, so I decided to take a closer look to see if it actually offers anything different to El Goog’s algorithm. I don’t know if many of you have noticed, but Google’s search results have been looking more and more “gamed” lately, with spam becoming pervasive.

So What’s on Offer?

Blekko pitches itself as a search engine with a difference. Through its use of “slashtags”, it allows you to specify what section of the web you are trying to pull results from. Basically if you want to search for something health-related, for example, you would type “/health keyword” and so on. Blekko claims to filter out content farms, spam and malware. Google’s become quite good at filtering out malware, however as I mentioned earlier, its record on spam and content farms is not looking so great right now. Of course, it’s one thing to claim great features like these, but the proof should be in the proverbial pudding. So, does Blekko deliver?

The Results

Let me preface this by saying that this is a highly subjective analysis, and you are best trying it out for yourself. Anyway, I decided to try a bunch of searches in a variety of niches in both Blekko and Google, to test which search engine delivered more relevant results. I used google.com/ncr in order to ensure that Google was showing non-geographically determined results. For some queries, I ran two searches in Google to compare the results adequately, one using the Blekko slashtag as an extra keyword and one without.

Search 1:
Blekko search: “/health weight loss”
Google search 1: “weight loss”
Google search 2: “health weight loss”

Results: Again, highly subjective, but I found the second set of Google search results to be the most relevant. The first result in Blekko was headed “Vinegar may aid in Fat Loss”, second was “Yoga – Prevention” and third was “Sleep loss limits Fat Loss”, whereas the Google search results #2 were “Healthy Weight Loss and Dieting Tips”, “Healthy Eating and Diet Center” and “Weight Loss – Mayo Clinic”.

Search 2:
Blekko search: “/recipes chocolate cake”
Google search: “chocolate cake recipes”

Results: To be honest, I could not discern a quality or relevance different between these results. A tie.

Search 3:
Blekko search: “/smallbusiness accounting”
Google search: “small business accounting”

Results: Blekko wins this one. It linked to a number of pages that talk about how to select software for accounting, as well as a guide from the IRS. The Google results, on the other hand, were purely commercial – with software companies taking the top two places.

Search 4:
Blekko search: “/travel new york”
Google search: “new york travel”

Results: This one’s a tie. They both showed official NY tourism websites, with the only difference in the top 3 being a Yahoo travel link from Blekko and a NY Times link from Google

Wrap-up

This limited testing of mine suggests that, at the very least, Blekko is worth a look. Especially if you aren’t finding what you want on Google. While there is some overlap in the results, there are also some situations where Blekko shows markedly different results. Please comment on your experiences with Blekko below.

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Installation

RSS Share for Google+ and Google Reader (henceforth referred to as RSS Share) is a Chrome/Chromium extension, so yes, you will need to be running Google’s browser. If you haven’t already tried Chrome, you may be surprised by the speed and simplicity of the UI.

The extension can be installed from this page. It’s a simple one-click install that should operate like any other Chrome extension.

What it Does

The features, as described by the developer, are as follows:

• “Share on Google+” button in Google Reader
• (Optional) Add Google Reader section to Google+
• Show read and unread RSS items on Google Plus
• Choose if read items are shown
• Instantly share any link
• Google Reader unread count on Google Plus
• j/k key bindings for scrolling through RSS items on Google Plus
• Infinite scrolling for RSS items
• Click on title to refresh unread count
• Tree view of feeds

Usage

First, if you have any Google+ or Reader tabs open, you’ll want to fully refresh them after the extension is installed to make sure the page is rendered with the new bits included. In Reader, you’ll now see a Share with Google+ option at the bottom of each post.

which will bring up the sharing interface familiar to any Google+ user.

That’s nice and all, but RSS Share actually has another trick up it’s sleeve, and it’s a good one. If you open up your Google+, you’ll see that you’ve now got a list of your feeds in the sidebar, under your stream options.

Clicking on any of the titles will bring up the feed in Google+.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way to post entries from Google+ to Reader, but I suppose when you consider that those items are in an entirely different format from RSS and have security and other considerations applied, it makes some technical sense.

Conclusion

It’s been this author’s experience that many similar extensions tend to feel clunky and tacked-on. RSS Share for Google+ and Google Reader is the first I’ve found that integrates seamlessly, and feels like it belongs in the base applications. There are times when such things seem useful at first but quickly get forgotten, but RSS Share is something I’ll be keeping around for a while.

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The catalogs that are included are broken down into the categories such as Kids and Baby, Women’s Fashion and Apparel, Beauty, Home, etc.

Browsing a category shows all of the catalogs that are available for that current month. Just like the paper catalogs, they have months where they are releasing a new catalog and some where they aren’t. It allows you to see easily all the catalogs for any given month.

The pages of these online versions of the catalogs are displayed in much the same way as a paper catalog. There is a bar at the bottom that shows progression through the pages, as well as an icon that allows you to switch back and forth between a pages view and an overall view of all the pages.

Items that are for sale have a price tag icon on them. Clicking on a price tag icon brings up a product page. The item is shown in a larger view, along with a description and a price.

If you choose to buy the item online, it takes you to a the store website within the app, yet there’s an option to view the page in Safari as well. If available, the product page also has an option for buying the item locally. Clicking this option brings up a map with all the stores in the area highlighted where that item is available.

One great shopping tool is the option to create “collages” from different catalogs. It allows you to put together the perfect outfit or refurnish a room, and see all the items together before you buy them. Collage pages are already provided for you to view and use, or you can put together your own. Clicking on the item from the collage then takes you back to the catalog it came from.

Again, this app could never hold all the catalogs that are available, but it does have a great high-end selection, allowing for a good starting point for your shopping. The one thing it’s missing is a sharing function. To be able to share your shopping finds in an email with your friends and family would be a great addition.

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One of the options within Google Docs is Forms. The most common use for Forms is as a survey. There are articles galore on how set them up and incorporate them into a page or email; here is one to get you started.

If you are looking for more ways to make use of the Google Forms, here are some useful means to spark your creativity.

1. Contact Form

I recently replaced the contact form on my website with a Google Form. The reason for the switch was for a couple reasons.

• To eliminate emails.
• To ask specific questions to better help the person requesting correspondence.
• WordPress wasn’t always sending me the emails from the contact forms I tried, even with some troubleshooting and code work.

2. Checkbook registry

Most of the families I know don’t write checks, but carry debit cards. These same people do not save receipts or use any real method to track their spending. Using a form as your checkbook registry would be a great way for a business or household to keep track of money. If you have a smart phone, all you would need to do is save the link to your form in your bookmark.

How to make a registry form

Add in the fields you’d like such as deposit, expense and item purchased.

Using the formulas in the spreadsheet produced by the Form, you can have it automatically update your balance.

3. Wedding RSVP

Weddings are stressful enough. Why make more work for yourself or spend more money than you need to? Create an RSVP Form and email people the link. You could also send it via Facebook or Google+ or shorten the link and DM people on Twitter.

4. Employment application

Sifting through potential employees is a pain. You need to filter through people who have filled out all of the information and filled it out correctly. Then you need to compare and keep whittling down the potential candidates. If you are doing this the old school way with paper applications, you are wasting a lot of time.

By creating a Form with all of the instructions, input boxes and text fields you need, you can easily sort through all of the applicants in the generated spreadsheet. You can sort the whole lot of them by a certain column.

5. Easy expense reporting form

For those of you that travel, either for your own business or your employer, you know how much filling out your expense report sucks. Try making a Form with all of the fields you need. That way you can stay on top of your expenses much easier while on the road.

The entries are all time and date stamped so you can match up the receipt with the expense more easily.

Add fields to correspond with the fields your employer needs. Then, depending on how you need to turn in your expense report, you can simply copy and paste the information from the Google generated spreadsheet.

Those are a few uses for Google Forms other than a survey. Don’t forget to look at the different pre-made themes or even create your own.

What unique way do you use Google Forms?

image Kinologik

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Aside from forwarding your email to a single Gmail account, you can use browser extensions or manage the settings in Gmail to allow multiple account access without the inconveniences you are currently experiencing.

The following methods are mostly meant for accessing several Google accounts for email. Some of the other apps accessed when you are logged into your Google Account may not work.

Quick Login for Google Accounts

For this first fix, you will need to use Google Chrome (browser). The Quick Login for Google Accounts extension will allow you to access several different Google Accounts. This is ideal because you can have a browser window open and have a tab for each Google account.

Setup

1. After adding the extension to Chrome, click the new icon in the top right corner of the browser window, then on options.

2. In the name column, enter something to help you differentiate the account from the others. I chose personal, maketecheasier and untetheredoffice as the names for mine.

3. In the next box over, you will need to put your login user name. You do not need the @gmail.com or @yourgoogleappname

4. Add your login password in the next box to the right.

5. If you are using Google Apps for a business, you will need to tell the extension where the login page is. To do this, you need to click show advanced options. Another row will appear. In this row, you can paste or type the page you visit to log into your business email.

6. After all the information is entered and saved, you can try it out. Click on the Quick login icon again and choose an account to log into.

Multiple Account Sign in

Another option to enable the multiple account login option in your Google Account settings. This way will not tie you to a single browser or even computer. Remember, you will need to sign out of these accounts as well. So if you are one of those people who ticks the remember me or keep me logged in buttons, make sure you actually  log out. If you don’t,  you will have a lot of email accounts accessible to anyone else using that computer.

Setup

The setup is pretty easy for this one. Sign into your Gmail or Google Docs or some other Google application. In the top right you will see your name. Click on it to show a drop down.

1. In this drop down, there will be an option to access your Account settings.

2. Once in the settings, you will see the option to edit the Multiple sign-in.

3. You will need to log into each Google Account you’d like to access and enable this option.

4. When you have all of the accounts enabled, you can sign into multiple accounts by clicking on your name in the top right again then switch accounts.

5. you will see an option to sign into another account.

You should have access to a good number of the Google application for the other accounts you are accessing.

Conclusion

The whole point of doing this is to make accessing your multiple accounts easier. If you can reply to emails or access your documents with ease, it will shave time off of your tasks. These two options may help you save a little time while freeing up resources on your computer by not having so many browsers running at the same time.

Do you have a preferred method for accessing your multiple accounts?

image o5com

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There are many applications available to help you on your never ending quest for rankings and traffic, you know Google will have solid web apps to help you out. Here are 4 different Google Labs web apps you can use to in some way if you are a website owner.

1. Scribe

If you have a blog or a site that is frequently updated, there are a few things you need. One of the main things you need is content. Having a clutter free place to write the content is a very helpful. Different people have different preferences on which application they like to use when they write. I have tried several different apps and have settled on Google Docs as my word processor app. That was until I found Google Scribe.

Google Scribe is a simple place to lay your words on a page. What really drew me to it was the word completion. When you start to type a word, it will give you the most likely possibility. You can select the word by pressing the spacebar. You will then see that Google will guess the next word in the sentence.

Google Scribe is pretty limited right now. For example, you cannot save the document you write. I think it will be an amazing add-on to Google Docs, but right now, it is a stand alone writing app.

2. Correlate

While writing, you may want to test keywords or Google search trends. A while ago we mentioned Google Trends. Well, Google Correlate is somewhat similar in that it shows trends for words and phrases being searched for on Google.

What’s different is the way you can search for things. You can search for something like record snowfall. You will see your search results and other searches similar to yours. Using this might help spark ideas of how and what people are searching for in relation to your topic. It is kind of like the wonder wheel and a keyword tool and google trends all wrapped into one.

3. Page Speed

One of the factors in page rank is how fast the pages on your site load. If your pages have long load times, your site will not rank as high as a site with similar information and fast loading pages.

By testing your page speed after you make changes or every-so-often, you will be able to make everyone happy when they find your page. When you run a test, Google will let you know what they see as a problem on your site.

4. Followers

The last of the bunch is getting people to your site. If you have good content and good search engine rankings, this may not be any troubles for you. Other people may choose to expand their reach and look for traffic on social sites like Twitter.

Follow finder is a cool little tool to help you find people to follow on Twitter. As an example, if you follow Make Tech Easier, you may also like LifeHacker’s updates. Follow finder will pull up 4 people you may like because they follow similar people and 4 people who have similar followers.

These may be very simple web apps, but all have a purpose when it comes to adding value to your site.

What unique apps do you use?

image Carlos Luna

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At the moment, the social tracking feature in GA only supports Facebook, Twitter and Google +1. The Google +1 tracking is already integrated to GA, so you don’t have to add any extra code. This article will show you how to implement the tracking code for Facebook and Twitter.

Assumption

Before we start, I have to assume that you are using the newer asynchronous Google Analytics code on your site. It should look something like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxx-x']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

If not, go to your Google Analytics account, grab the new code and add it to your site.

Adding the tracking script

Download this minify javascript and upload to your server (the original script can be found here).

Add the following code to your header file, just before the </head> tag:

<!-- Google Analytics Social Button Tracking -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://url-to-script/ga_social_tracking_min.js"></script>

Replace “url-to-script” to the actual URL where you upload the javascript file.

Adding Facebook Like button tracking code

In your web page, locate the section where you display the Facebook Like button code. It should look something like this:

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=222584734419298&amp;xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="" send="true" width="450" show_faces="true" font=""></fb:like>

Just below this code, add the following:

<script type="text/javascript">_ga.trackFacebook();</script>

The complete code should look like this:

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=222584734419298&amp;xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="" send="true" width="450" show_faces="true" font=""></fb:like>
<script type="text/javascript">_ga.trackFacebook();</script>

Adding Twitter button tracking code

For Twitter’s Tweet button, we need to add a callback function to activate the tracking. All you have to do is to copy/paste the code to your <head> tag.

<script>
(function(){
var twitterWidgets = document.createElement('script');
twitterWidgets.type = 'text/javascript';
twitterWidgets.async = true;
twitterWidgets.src = 'http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';
// Setup a callback to track once the script loads.
twitterWidgets.onload = _ga.trackTwitter;
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(twitterWidgets);
})();
</script>

Implementing Social Tracking in WordPress

If you are using WordPress, one plugin that you can use to implement the tracking code is Social Media Tracking.

Viewing the Analytics

Log into your Google Analytics account. If you have not switched to the new version, do it now.

Under the “Visitor” section, you should see a “social” link. click the “Engagement” link and you should be able to view your social engagement statistics.

That’s it.

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With some, that can be fairly easy. With many others, it can be difficult, if not impossible. But you should be able to get your information – no matter what the information is – out of any online service easily and in a format that other services or software can read. After all, it’s your data!

Thanks to the work of the Data Liberation Front project, Google has been making the process of getting your data out of its various products easier. The result is Google Takeout. While not complete and not perfect, Google Takeout looks like it’s a step in the right direction.

Let’s take a look at how to use Google Takeout and see where it falls flat.

Using Takeout

Obviously, you won’t be using Google Takeout unless you have a Google account. Just go to the Google Takeout site and log in.

Takeout only supports the following services at the moment:

• +1 (web content that you’ve rated)
• Buzz (short updates and conversations)
• Picasa Web Albums
• Google Profiles
• Google+

With Google+, you can back up your circles (your groups of friends), your contacts, and your stream (any posts you’ve made to Google+).

On the main screen, click Create Archive. Takeout collects your data into a zip file and downloads it.

By default, Takeout creates an archive of everything. You might not want to do that too often. If you have a lot of data, especially a lot of photos in Picasa Web Albums, the zip file that Takeout creates can be large – several hundred megabytes.

Instead, click Choose services. You can select the data that you want to download, and Takeout will give you an estimate of the size of the archive.

Once you’ve selected the services, click Create Archive. Takeout collects your data into a zip file and downloads it.

The Backups Themselves

What you get in the archives the Takeout creates depends on the product. Takeout uses different file formats to backup your data.

Like what? Picasa Web Albums backups are, obviously, image files. Buzz, +1, and Google+ streams are HTML files. Your contacts are vCard files. And your Google Profile data is a JSON file.

While you might not be able to easily read some of those formats, other software and web services should be able to. It’s just a matter of importing the files.

What About My Other Data?

Takeout only lets you back up a small set of your data in Google’s services. But what about your other data? Well, there are some options for that. They’re not centralized, and force you to do a bit more work, but those options can be effective.

You can back up Google Docs using the information in this MakeTechEasier post. The Data Liberation Front website offers suggestions for other Google products.

If you’re willing to part with some money, then you might want to give Backupify a look. It can backup your Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts. Mac users can take advantage of CloudPull to backup their data from Google Docs,
Google Reader, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts.

Google’s products and services aren’t a black hole for your data. With Google Takeout, it’s gotten a lot easier to get your data out.

Google Takeout

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1. Google+ Ultimate

Is the Google+ design too bland for your taste? You can now customize the color and style of Google+ with Googlt+ Ultimate. Things that you can customize include the background, scrollbars, left and top panel, navigation bar, image size in stream, side-by-side view (for large monitor).

2. GTools+

GTools+ is developed by the same developer as Google+ Ultimate. It acts as a complement to Google+ Ultimate and allows you to customize the Google bar as well as integrating the chat feature to the Google bar.

3. Google+ Tweaks

The Google+ Tweaks extension is a wrapper for a series of userscripts to customize the usability of Google+. Features include

• Preview images when you mouse-over them
• Favicon badge shows the number of new notices
• Make Google+ use your browser’s full width
• Force all images in posts to thumbnails
• Pin the Google bar and other navigational elements
• Yellow “Post muted” notices automatically fade out
• View post actions as buttons instead of as a drop-down menu
• Hide various elements of Google+ you don’t use

4. Google+Facebook

If you are not ready to give up your Facebook yet, this extension can show your Facebook news feed in Google+ stream so you can manage both in one place.

Note: While you can post to and view your Facebook feed, you won’t be able to comment on other’s update.

5. Surplus

Surplus integrates Google+ deep into your Chrome browser, allowing you to read notification and post to Streams right from the Google taskbar. It also supports desktop notification and notification sounds.

6. Extended Share for Google Plus

If you are using other social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr, this Extended Share add-on will add a “Share on” button below each post in Google+, allowing you to share to other social networks.

Similar extension: Share+ Social Buttons for Google Plus

7. Favorite G+ Stream

By default, when you log in to your Google+ account, it will show you the posts from all your circles. However, there will be times where you just want to follow the streams from a particular circle of friends. Favorite G+ Stream allows you to set a particular stream as the default. When you load your Google+ page, your favorite stream will appear.

8. Move Your Photos

Do you have a lot of photos in Facebook and wanted to migrate them to Picasa (so you can share in Google+)? Move Your Photos can do just that. All you have to do is to connect it with Facebook and it will immediately export your photos from Facebook to Picasa.

9. Goo Plus Manager

Goo Plus Manager adds a shortcut menu so you can quickly access the various part of Google+. In addition, Goo Plus Manager also comes with a series of keyboard shortcuts that you can use, for example:

• g + h : go home
• g + p : go to profile
• i + i : go to photos
• i + p : go to photos > phone
• i + m : go to photos of me
• i + a : go to my photo albums
• g + i : go to incoming
• g + n : go to notifications

For more keyboard shortcuts, check out the list here.

10. G+ Extended

G+ Extended adds a different set of keyboard shortcuts to your Google+. The shortcuts are:

• Press “+” for +1′ing a post.
• Press “-” for removing your +1 on a post.
• Press “p” to toggle your +1 on a post.
• Press “s” to share a post.
• Press “e” to expand older comments on a post.

11. Helper for Google+

As its name implies, Helper for Google+ is indeed a very good helper for Google+. Once installed, you will be able to share posts via Twitter, translate posts with Google Translate, bookmarks individual post (locally or to delicious.com), linked #hashtags, search Google+ posts and profiles directly from your omnibox.

12. +Comment Toggle

A simple extension to allow you to hide/show comments on Google+

13. G+ Count in Title

Another simple extension to show notification count at the document title in the page tab.

14. Usability Boost for Google Plus

The Usability Boost for Google Plus extension adds several CSS rule to make Google Plus more pleasant to use. Once installed, it sets the background to gray color, the post area white and the comments section light blue.

15. Native GMail for Google Plus – Beta

This extension allows you to check your Gmail inbox right inside your Google+ page.

What other extensions do you use to enhance your Google+ experience?

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