There are even several choices for different search engine apps. Which one you use depends a lot on what features you’re looking for, as well as which one you usually prefer when searching. Most of them are free, as you shouldn’t have to pay for searching, but there’s one that costs just a little. Depending on your usage, it could be worth it.

I’m doing a search here for news about Apple. I tried first using the search tool within the Safari browser in iOS. I have a lot of choices, certainly more than I had with the first Safari browser in the original iOS. Across the top in the black bar, I can search for News, Images, Maps, Shopping, etc… and I can sign in to my Google account for more options. In a list to the right, it shows related searches. If I click on the wrench, it gives me time options, as well as other interesting choices, such as reading level, translation, verbatim, etc. Additionally, in the Settings app, you can choose whether to search with Google, Bing, or Yahoo! There are ample amount of options here.

Google App

The Google App works much the same way as Google in Safari, but it provides you a few more options. If I just go to a regular search, it gives me the same search list, as well as the related searches to the right, and a few to the top. Clicking on the arrow in the upper left takes me to additional options that include a voice search. If you don’t have a newer iPhone or are using an iPad, and don’t have the use of Siri, you can search with voice here. It’s nice for when you’re tied up doing something else, yet you still have to use your eyes to navigate to the right spot here. Additionally, you can check in with the library of other Google apps. When you return to your search, it gives you the additional options you have with Google in Safari. Tapping a search option opens it in a separate tab. Gestures allows you to have the viewing window side by side with your search results.

Bing App

You just can’t get more attractive than the Bing App. The one optimized for the iPad is even more so. It has large images opened up in the middle, and you can swipe to different images if you prefer. You can click on an info icon in the bottom right for more information of what you’re looking at, and can click on certain pieces of the image to get more information about that section of the image. It’s not all about that though. There is also a search for voice option, and an attractive listing at the bottom of local weather, maps, searching trends, news, movies, and finance. Tapping those takes you to more options. And of course, there’s a search function in the top left that gives you standard search options.

Yahoo App

About the only reason to use the Yahoo! App would be if you are used to searching with Yahoo! online and are on your iPhone. It’s not optimized at all for the iPad. It does offer you great local suggestions. If you’re looking for a restaurant, movie, or coffee shop close by, it’ll give you those options on a map. It also shows you the current search trends, allows you to search by voice, and of course offers the same standard search options along the top there.

Ask App

Like Bing, the Ask App isn’t optimized for the iPad, and is only useful if you’re on an iPhone. It offers more choices if you sign up for a free account. The app shows you what is currently being searched for by others using Ask. It can search normally on the web and can also search for answers from people, just like ask.com does. If you look for specific answers, you need to either create an account or sign in with Facebook. It should be noted that if you ask something previously asked, it will show up in a web search, just as with any other search app. If you have many pointed questions you are looking to have answered, it might be useful.

BingYaMaGoggle! App

The BingYaMaGoggle! App combines all of the search functions in one place for you. There are other apps that do the same, but they aren’t as easy to use and as attractive. If you do a lot of searching and hate switching back and forth between search engines looking for the right answer, it’s worth the $1.99 price tag. It searches Bing, Yahoo!, Google, AOL, and Ask.com. At any time you can have it open the choices in Safari. My only question is where they get the “Ma” in the title.

Which is your favorite method to perform a search in iOS?

Image credit: Danard Vincente

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.

Here’s how you can establish authorship in WordPress.

Note: The following solution is just one of the many ways to establish the authorship of your content. If you have a better, easier way, feel free to use it.

For single author blog

1. Make sure you have an About page that describes who you are and what your blog is about. At the end of the content (of the About page), insert the following link:

<a href="http://your-google-profile-url" rel="me">Follow me on Google +</a>

Remember to replace the http://your-google-profile-url with your Google Profile URL.

Note: The Google Profile URL is of the format: https://plus.google.com/1234567890987654321.

Next, go to the theme editor and open your functions.php file. Insert the following code at the end of the file:

add_filter('the_content', 'add_author_link');
function add_author_link($content)
{	if(is_single())    	
		$content .= '<p>This article is written by <a href="http://link-to-your-about-page" rel="author">'.get_the_author_meta('display_name').'</a></p>';
 
	return $content;	
}

Save the changes.

What the above code does is to insert a sentence at the end of your article with a link to your About page.

For multi-authors blog

1. Get all your authors to update the Jabber/Google Talk field in the Profile section with their Google Profile URL.

2. Open the functions.php file and insert the following code:

add_filter('the_content', 'add_author_link');
function add_author_link($content)
{	if(is_single())    	
	{	$content .= '<p>Follow this author at <a href="'.get_the_author_meta('jabber').'" rel="author">Google+</a></p>';
	}
	return $content;	
}

The above code will grab the Google Profile URL from the author’s Jabber/Gtalk field and insert the link to the end of the content.

That’s it.

It will take 1-2 weeks for Google to show your profile picture in the search results. Meanwhile you can use the Rich Snippet Test Tool to see how your page looks like in the search results.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

A common digital calendar is the Google Calendar. Many companies, ISPs, municipalities and the general public are using Google Calendar. I love it because of how it synced with my Blackberry and now is integrated with my Android phone. Your Google Calendar is a great place to start getting your life in order.

Here’s how you can get the best out of Google Calendar and start to become organized.

Labs

Like all of the other Google apps, Google Calendar has features that are not quite ready to be released, but have a lot of value. Google calls these Labs. Here are some Labs for your calendar to help you get the most of it.

1. Gentle reminders

For those of you who get distracted easily (like me) and don’t want a window popping up to tell you about your meeting in an hour. Instead you will get a notice at the bottom of your screen to tell you.

2. Event attachments

If you invite people to a meeting, you may also want them to have the agenda. With this Labs add-on, you can attach a copy of the meeting agenda to the event.

3. Smart rescheduler

The smart rescheduler is what the name implies. If you need to move a meeting, you can use this Labs feature to find the next best meeting time for the participants. Single click on the appointment you want to reschedule and it will ask you to find a new time in the smart rescheduler box on the right side of your calendar. It can scan both calendars to find the best time for the reschedule.

4. Who’s my one-on-one with?

If you have a lot going on, you may not always remember who you are meeting. When you activate this function, you will see a name next to the appointment name telling you who the invite was from.

Ways to organize your calendars

If you are a busy person, you may have more than one calendar to deal with. A lot of the single parents I know have work, kids, family and personal time to manage. Here are some ways you can manage multiple calendars in one spot.

1. Share calendars with work or family

I suggest this all the time to families. If you have two or more people who lead active lives, sharing your calendar with the others is a good idea. This way you can see what they have going on before you make plans that include them.

I use this for the soccer club trainers and also my team. I share my main training and game schedule with my team so all they need to do is look at their Google Calendar and see the most up-to-date schedule of events.

2. Different colors for different calendars or events

Google lets you change the color of an event or calendar to help it stand out. Depending on the time of year, I manage 8 calendars. All of these calendars have a different color to make the event easier to differentiate from the others.

3. Print it

As strange as it may be to some, printing your weekly or monthly calendar really works for some people. If you have people who are not tech savvy or have a spot where your family may look for information naturally (the refrigerator door or a dry erase board), you can print your calendar for all to see.

Some of these may be simple fixes. The hard part is getting into the routine of using your digital calendar. If you have an Android or other smart phone, you can sync it with your Google account and start using your digital calendar right away.

How do you keep life’s events in order?

Image credit: Alaivani

Search Sidebar is a very useful add-on that allows you to search multiple sites with one query and search interface. The best thing is, all the search results appear in your Google search result page, so you don’t have to get used to any new interface.

Once you have installed the Search Sidebar extension, you won’t see any configuration option in your Firefox toolbar. Instead, you will see a search strip at the sidebar when you perform a search in Google (Note that this extension will not work for Google encrypted search).

When you hover your cursor over the icons in the search sidebar, the search result for that site will pop up.

If you are logged in to your Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook LinkedIn or Dropbox account, it can even search your personal account.

To see all the search results, simply click on the blue “WebMynd” button and the strip will expand to show all the search results from different sites.

You can add more sources for it to retrieve the search results or to remove the default source from the list.

Conclusion

Search Sidebar is useful if you search from multiple sources regularly. My personal favorite is the ability to search your personal accounts, like Gmail and Google Docs, without having to visit the sites.

My only gripe is there is no easy ways to organize the search sources. I prefer to have my Gmail account at the top of the list. To do that, I have to first remove Gmail from the list, then re-add it again to make it appear at the top. You have to do this for every other sources. It would be great if the developer can come out with a drag and drop solution to rearrange the search sources.

Search Sidebar is available for Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Signing up

As of this post, Google+ is by invitation only. You can go to http://plus.google.com, sign in with your Google account (Not Google apps account) and click the button “Keep me posted” to get into the queue. Alternatively, if any of your friend already have a Google+ account, you can get them to invite you in.

Creating Circles

The first thing you got to do after logging into your Google+ account is to create circles. In our social life, we have different circles of friends. They can be your family members, school mates, colleagues or even acquaintances that you met during travel. This is also what Circles in Google+ is about. Circles allows you to organize your friends in the group that they belong to. When you post a status update, you can decide which circles of friends can view your update.

By default, your Google+ account come with a few circles: Friends, Family, Acquaintance and Following. You can create your own circles by clicking the “Create Circle” link.

Once you have created your circles, you can start to drag your friends to the respective circles they belong. If you are an active Gmail user, all your Google contacts will appear in your friends list. If not, you can also pull in your contacts from Yahoo or Hotmail. At this moment, you will notice that your friends list is split into two sections, one is those who already have Google+ account and the other one is those that don’t have a Google+ account . While you can drag any of your friend to your circles, those who don’t have a Google+ account won’t be able to view your updates. You can however send them an email when you post an update. In this way, Google will send them an invitation to join Google+ (Update: Google has stopped all invitations as of this post).

Stream

This is the place where you post update and read news posted by your circle of friends. It acts like both Twitter and Facebook. You can follow friends’ update (by adding them to your circles) or post an update. Your friends/followers can read your public update only if they have added you to their circles.

As for the interface, it is very similar to Facebook, except that it is more plain and in an elegant way. I love the clean interface and the lack of clutter and noise to distract me.

While making an update, you can add photos, videos, links or even add your location to the message.

Sparks

Sparks is where you can select your interest and have Google returned all the related search results. For example, I entered “Linux” and it returned a series of Linux posts that were published over the last few days. You can then pin this topic to the sidebar (under the Spark section) for easy retrieval.

Hangout

Hangout is very useful if you have a webcam and love video chatting with your friends. Hangout allows you to create a video chatting session and invite your circles of friends to the party. Each hangout session can support up to 10 people.

Google+ Mobile App

Together with the browser-based Google+, Google also released a Google+ app for Android which integrates nicely with the phone. From the app, you can add friends to circles, update your status, read streams, view and upload photos and more.

Instant Upload

One great feature about the mobile app is the instant upload that automatically upload the photos and videos you took with your phone. The moment you snap the photos (and if you are connected to the web), it will upload your photos to your Google+ account. One thing that Google did right here is that your uploaded photos and videos are not shared by default. You have to explicitly share them with your circle of friends. You don’t have to worry that your unglamorous side get exposed, unless you purposely want it to.

Huddle

Huddle is just like the group feature in Facebook where you can send a group message to any circle.

Conclusion

The first impression of Google+ is good. I only received my invite 2 days ago and I am already spending more time on it than on Facebook.

Will this become another “great but failed to become popular” product? That will depend on whether Google can increase its stickiness and distinguish itself from Facebook. Google has a clear advantage here because of its deep integration with Google Profile, Picasa, Youtube and many other Google app. Attracting these group of people (who are already using these apps) into Google+ is generally easier than what Facebook had to do when it first started. However, as shown in the history, Google has the ability to make a great product fails too (I am talking about you, Google Wave), so it’s still too early to make any conclusion. The early reviews are mainly by tech enthusiasts and early adopters and they are mostly positive. We have to wait until Google opens the floodgate to the mass public before we can see how far it will go. At this moment, it sure looks promising.

Gog.is is great for sending a Google search link to someone about a topic. Normally when you search for something like Cars on Google and simply copy the URL, you will have a mess that looks like this.

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=cars&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=5014d35bb6efb157&biw=1024&bih=632

People sometimes get scared when they see all that gibberish and can’t tell what the link actually is. Gog.is simplifies this. All you need to do is type Gog.is/cars. When the link is clicked or copy and pasted into the address bar, they will see the same results.

Modifiers

There are a few options you can use as modifiers to help narrow the search. You can see them on the Gog.is site, but here are a few useful modifiers.

Separate words by a comma if there are multiple words in the search term (e.g. gog.is/race,cars ) Other options are adding a plus sign (+) or a forward slash (/) between the words.

• imdb: to search IMDB gog.is/imbb:hangover,2
• youtube: or y: to search Youtube. gog.is/y:soccer,tricks
• shop: or s: for shopping. gog.is/s:android

Other modifiers for seeing the stats of the link and Twitter searches can be found here.

What shortcuts for searching can you share?

Set-Up

Google Music is currently in beta invite-only mode for US users. So, if you live in the US, head over to music.google.com and put your name down for an invite.

Once you receive an invite you will be able to log-in to Google Music, just as you do any other Google service. After logging in your music library will be empty. The first thing you will have to do is select “Add Music” from the top right to download the Music Manager.

The Music Manager, as in the description, is a simple tool to upload all your music. Hence, it does not have a lot of functions aside from the ability to choose your music source, schedule uploads, and throttle bandwidth.

Slowly your the online music library will begin to populate as your files are uploaded. Be warned, this process takes a long time!

Playback and Features

Depending on your internet connection playback can be seamless or a little flaky. At home on my broadband connection a song takes about 2-5s to buffer after it starts playing. Subsequent songs load instantly. The quality of the song depends on the quality of your original track and playback quality seems to marginally lower than the original. In fact for most tracks it is hardly noticeable.

The music library also features the basic playback controls, in addition to the seek bar, shuffle, repeat, and volume controls.

There is also a binary rating system whereby you can “thumb up” or “thumb down” any of the songs.

You can also create “instant mixes” which are randomly generated by Google Music. These can be really quite random at times!

Google Music has a couple of interesting features, however don’t expect it to replace your desktop media player completely for anything other than basic playback.

Android App

My favourite aspect of Google Music is the Android app that allows you to stream all your songs from the cloud to your smartphone.

Market Link | AppBrain

The app, like the web-based library, is quite barebones giving you the option to browse through your synced music and play it back.

You can also create “instant mixes” straight from your phone.

Conclusion

The services offered by Google and Amazon will face stiff competition from Apple, who have announced that it will be launching a new service at its upcoming WWDC Keynote called “iCloud”. In the space of a few months three of the four biggest companies in technology have launched or are about to launch competing music streaming and syncing services and with rumours of a partnership between Facebook and Spotify, the fourth horseman cannot be far behind.

However, right now only the services from Amazon and Google are available and between the two Google is my favoured music player for a number of reasons. Firstly, Amazon only gives you 5GB of free space (approximately 2000 songs) whereas Google allows you to upload 20,000 songs for free, irrespective of quality or size. However, there is a note on the Google Music page that states that the free service is available for a limited time only. It is uncertain at this point what the charges for Google Music will be. Secondly, Google’s interface is a lot more streamlined and easy to use. Thirdly, I own an Android smartphone and the Android Music app syncs with Google Music seamlessly allowing me to stream all my songs.

Until Apple rolls out its service, a fair comparison will be difficult, so let us wait a while and come back to the battle of the online music services.

What’s the implication of the +1 button? Is it just another button?

On the surface, the +1 button is just another button for you to embed on your site. However, it is one important button that you want to have on your site, since it can potentially affect your search engine result. If you have a relatively unknown blog and you have plenty of people +1′d a particular post, that post could potentially score well in Google search and bring you tons and tons of traffic. Unless you don’t depend on Google for traffic (anyone who said No will be lying), you got to pay attention to this +1 button.

Implement +1 button to your website

The implementation button is simple. You just need to insert two line of codes to your HTML or theme file.

1. Insert the following javascript code to your <head> tag

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

2. Insert the following tag to the place where you want the button to appear.

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

That ‘s it.

For WordPress

As of this post, there are no plugins for adding the +1 button yet (but I am sure it will be available very soon). To add the +1 button, in your themes folder, open the header.php file. Insert the javascript code to the <head> tag

Open your single.php or index.php, and place the <g:plusone></g:plusone> to the place where you want it to appear.

Parameter

There are several parameters that you can use.

Size of the button: The default is “standard“, which is 24px tall. You can choose “small” (15px), “medium” (20px) or “tall” (60px).

Include count: The default is set to “true”. You can turn it off if you don’t want the +1′d count to appear.

URL (href): By default, the button will grab the URL of the existing page, but you can specify your own URL with the parameter href="your-url-here".

Points to note when adding the +1 button

1. +1 is a public action, so you should add the button only to public, crawlable pages on your site. If you have a password protected page, or a members only forum, do not use this button. Once you add the button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click.

2. You can include multiple +1 button on a page, but it is best to add the URL parameter to the code so it can identify the correct link for each button.

3. The +1 button is available in 40 languages. The default is English. If your site is not in English, do go to the Google +1 site to grab the code in your specified language.

For more info, check out the Google +1 button site and the FAQ site

However, to create a presentation, you need some sort of software. Or do you?

If you are going to create a presentation slide deck, you would likely think of PowerPoint. But what if you do not want to pay for the full version use it more than the trial period allows.

Keep in mind that when you are using one of the options below, you will be somewhat limited. If you are looking to make something super fancy, you may want to look into Keynote (Mac) or PowerPoint.

Some common features all of the below will have are:

• Downloading as .pptx (PowerPoint) file
• Save to PDF
• Print slide deck
• some sort of collaboration

Web-Based options

1. Google Docs

In Google Docs, there is a presentation option. Like the other Google applications, you can collaborate with other people on one presentation. These same people can view a live version of the presentation. This may come in handy if you are rehearsing for a presentation with a partner who is in a different area of the building, or even the world.

If you want to put the presentation onto your web page, you have the option to get the code to do just that. If you update the presentation, the embedded version will automatically update.

2. Microsoft Live

A while ago we talked about how Hotmail added a lot of cool features. One of these features is a cloud based Office suite. A simple version of PowerPoint is usable to anyone with a Hotmail or Live account.

It works in much the same way as Google Docs does. Everything is stored in the clouds on your SkyDrive. You can share and view the presentation with other Live account holders.

Aside from being able to download the presentation as a .pptx file, you can smoothly transition from the cloud to your desktop. You are given a choice to edit in your browser or open with PowerPoint (assuming you have it installed).

3. Zoho

Show is Zoho’s online presentation application. I was pretty surprised at how many features Show has over Google Docs and the cloud version of Office. You can embed and print the presentation just like the others too.

One feature of Zoho Shows is the ability to add transitions. Not just one or two transitions, but over 30 different transitions.

The other feature that stood out as being very different than the other two, is to play the presentation remotely to anyone. Email them a link, no need to sign into Zoho or create any accounts. This is handy for simple webinars or trial runs of an actual presentation.

Google Chrome Web Apps

The next two options are applications you can add to your Google Chrome browser.

4. 280 Slides

280 Slides has a very Mac-like feel to it. It doesn’t have the same drag and drop abilities like Keynote does, but the clean and minimalistic feel.

You can upload your completed work to your SlideShare account if you have one. Other ways of sharing are embedding a copy of your presentation into a sales page or blog post. If you would prefer, you can link to the presentation in an email or instant message.

You can work on and export your presentation with no account. But if you want to save a copy online, you will need an account which is free. If you don’t want yet another account, you can download the file and import it next time you want to work on it.

5. Slide rocket

Sliderocket is a pretty cool little web app. You can do the same basics as all of the others, but the unique features set it apart.

The share option is simple. You can embed or send a link. Sliderocket lets you customize your link. This means the presentations will be easier to determine which presentation is which when you only have the link in front of you.

Of the two web apps, this is the one you will want to use if you need transitions when you change from slide to slide.

You also have access to a few plug-ins. These plug-ins add some cool functionality I didn’t see with the others. The Twitter plug-in will let you place a live Twitter feed in your presentation. The Quote plug-in will help you find and display the perfect quote to fit the mood of your presentation.

While there are some limitations to each of these options, they are a great way for the occasional user to create a brilliant looking, easily sharable presentation.

image indieridley.i.ph

Step 1. Set-Up A Google Analytics Account

The first thing you need to set-up Google Analytics is to have a Google Account. Since this guide is primarily for Blogger users, I assume that you already have one.

If so, head over to the Google Analytics page and select “Sign Up Now“.

Next you will be given more information about Google Analytics and the opportunity to create a new account. To do so select “Sign Up >>“.

On the next page you will have to enter the name of the website which you wish to analyse as well as the name of this Analytics account. Under a single Google Account you can create as many Analytics accounts as you like, and each account can have up to 100 websites. It is a good idea to keep your “Account Name” fairly general so that you can add a variety of websites under it. Finally, select the appropriate territory and time zone.

You will then be asked to enter some more personal details, including your name and country.

The last step requires you to accept Google Analytics’ terms and conditions.

However, in addition to accepting the terms and conditions, be sure to have a look at the “Data Sharing Settings” by clicking on the “Edit Settings” link. Through these settings, you can determine how much information from the analytics Google retains.

When you are satisfied with your selections, select “Create New Account“. You will be prompted to clarify your data sharing options.

Your account is now created and you will be provided with a tracking code to input into your website’s HTML template. This code is used to link your website with Google Analytics.

Select “Save and Finish” once you have copied the tracking code.

Finally, you will see an overview of your newly created account and your soon to be tracked website.

As the screenshot shows, there is an “error” in the status. This is because the tracking code has not been copied to your websites HTML template.

Step 2 – Installing Tracking Code in Blogger

This guide is primarily for Blogger accounts, however the tracking code can be pasted in the HTML template of most websites.

For Blogger Accounts: To copy this code into your website’s template head over to your Blogger dashboard and click on the “Design” link under the website which you wish to track.

On the next page select “Edit HTML”

You will see the full-text of your website’s HTML template. Check “Expand Widget Templates” to view all the HTML code. Then paste the tracking code just above the “</head>” tag.

The default tracking code is as follows:

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

This tracking code will come with a  alphanumeric number known as the “Web Property ID”. This is the essential part of the tracking code and it is in the form “UA-XXXXXXXX-Y“. Remember to exchange “UA-XXXXXXXX-Y” with your actual Web Property ID when you paste it into your HTML template.

Once you have completed this select “Save Template“.

Step 3 – Confirm Tracking

Your website will now be tracked on Analytics, but if it is not, head back to your Analytics overview page and select “Edit”.

Then select “Check Status“.

This will ping the tracking code in your website’s HTML template and Analytics will set to work collecting data for your website.

Step 4 – Add More Websites

To add more websites to your Analytics account, simply select “Add new profile”.

Conclusion

Once the data from your website is collected you will see a chart with all your information.

That’s it.

1. Boomerang

Boomerang allows you to schedule your emails to be sent at a particular time. It is a great tool for busy people who like to plan ahead of their schedule. For example, if you have an email that need to be sent on Monday morning 6am, you can write the email on Friday night (just before you leave for the weekend) and schedule it with Boomerang to deliver on Monday morning.

2. CloudMagic

CloudMagic is a search extension that can search your mails faster than Gmail itself. On top of that, it allows you to preview and interact with the search results without requiring you to leave your current mail. While composing a mail, you can search for a file (with CloudMagic) in your Google docs and drag the documents from the preview window to the mail to attach it as an attachment. Of all the Gmail apps I have seen, this has to be the coolest.

3. OtherInbox

OtherInbox is an organizer for your Gmail account. Once installed, it will scan your Gmail inbox and sort your emails to various categories (via label). It also has an “unsubscribe” category where all mails placed in it will be automatically unsubscribed. Even if the unsubscribe link does not work, you can be sure that emails from this sender will not appear in your inbox again.

4. Find Big Mail

Find Big Mail helps you to identify the big mails that are taking up tons of storage space. It scans your inbox and sort the emails with file attachments into various folders. Attachment with file size less than 500KB are labelled as “My Big Mail” while bigger than 2MB are labelled as “My Ultra Big Mail”. You can then switch to those folders and delete those big emails to free up storage space.

5. ActiveInbox

ActiveInbox allows you to project manage right within your inbox. You can turn emails into prioritized tasks, set deadline for projects and set reminder for to-do list.

6. Taskforce

Taskforce is a simple app that allows you to convert your emails into tasks and manage them right within your Gmail.

7. AwayFind

AwayFind is an interesting app aimed to bring you away from your inbox without missing the important mails. Instead of checking your inbox all the time, when you receive an urgent message, AwayFind will notify you via your mobile device, a voice call, IM, or even delegate the message to someone you specify.

8. Greplin

Greplin allows you to search your emails without having to login to your Gmail. Other than Gmail, it also supports Google Docs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote and many more applications. All you need to do is to link up all your accounts with Greplin and you will be able to search them all in one place.

9. SaneBox

SaneBox is functionally similar to OtherInbox, except that it is more aggressive in its approach to achieve zero inbox. It scans your inbox and leaves only the important emails in your inbox. The rest are then sent to the @SaneLater folder where you can read it when you are free. If you have a whole bunch of unread emails, it can instantly reduce that number by half.

10. Emailga.me

Do you need more motivation to clear your emails? The developers at Baydin (the same developers behind Boomerang) created a game for Gmail where you can play while clearing your email. The rule is simple. Clear your emails and you will receive points. The faster you clear, the higher point you will receive. The higher points you have, the higher is your ranking in the leaderboard.

11. Rapportive

Rapportive takes the sender’s email address and performs a search on various social networks. It then displays the sender’s info on the sidebar (the place where Google Ads are shown) so you know who you are dealing with.

What other apps do you use to enhance your Gmail experience?