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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• Create Custom Tabs For Facebook Timeline In Under 5 Minutes!

Create A Site

Navigate to Google Sites and enter your Gmail account information to begin. Click Create to start a new web page leaving the tab on Blank Template. Name your site and the Site Location will auto-fill. The name will need to be unique so if you have trouble getting a name to be accepted, just add an ending title that is unique to your Tab and it will process.

For the theme, choose the Blank Slate template and click Create.

In your site settings, click Site Layout. To customize the way the page displays on Facebook, we want to change the layout. Click on the tab Change Site Layout.

In the Site Width column, un-check the default tab and set the width to 100%. This is so your content will occupy the entire width of the Facebook canvas. We don’t need the Sidebar, Header, or Footer features here either so you can un-check those boxes and click OK.

The next thing we can hide are the customized footer settings. In Systems Footer, click on Customize System Footer Links and check all of the boxes to hide those options. Click OK and save all your changes.

The last thing in this step is to enable Google Analytics for the site so you can track visits to your Facebook Page. You can do this by going to the General site settings and scroll down to the Statistics tab. Enable Google Analytics and enter your Web Property ID and Save.

Create A New Page

Go to the Home tab of your new Google Site and click on the page icon in the top right of the tool bar.

Name the page and press Create at the top of the screen.

Compose your new page in Google Sites by adding some content. If you know how to write code, switch to the HTML view and add the code directly to your page. If you prefer to use the standard view, simply use the built in editor to enter your text as you would in a Word document.

You can add anything from pictures to video, maps, or even spreadsheets and tables. Just click on the Insert tab to see your options.

To make a Tab with a map to your location, create a new page as you did above but this time click Insert and choose the Maps tab. Enter the Address or Name of the location and click on the search box to propagate the map. When you have it directed to your location, click Select to add it to the page.

App Settings

Now that you have created your app, it’s time to configure it to be displayed in your Facebook Page. Go to the Facebook Developer Site and choose Apps. If you’re using this site for the first time, you’ll have to give the app permission to access your page. Click on Go To App and then click on Create New App.

Give your Facebook App a name and click Continue.

You will need the URL from your Google Site Page for the next step so go back to your Google Site and right click on the page you want to display as a Tab in Facebook. Copy the URL and paste it in the box for Page Tab URL.

Scroll down to the Page Tab Options and give your Tab a name. For the Page Tab, you will need to remove the ( S ) from https:// Repeat this step for the Secure Page Tab URL but leave in the ( S ). You should also use a custom image here that will be displayed on your Facebook Page to make your Tab stand out. Click Change to browse your files and upload a new image.

Adding a custom image can be done for the default Tabs created by Facebook by following the steps to add a Page Tab Image.

Add Your Custom Tab To A Facebook Page

Enter the following URL into your clip board and replace the XYZ at the end with your App ID from the Developer Page you were just working in.

After you add your App ID to the URL, copy the entire URL and open it in your browser. It will open the Add Page Tab menu. Select your page from the drop down menu and click Add Page Tab. Now you will see your new Facebook Tab displayed under your Timeline cover photo.

Now that you see how easy it is to create your own custom Tabs for your Timeline Page, give it a try and make your Facebook page stand out from the crowd! come back and post some links to your custom tabs so we can see what cool designers we have out there!

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Double-clicking the tray icon opens the InSync folder. If you have multiple Google accounts connected to the InSync profile, you will find a folder for each of them within the InSync folder. Each of the folders will have the name similar to that of the Google account you had connected. Open each folder and browse the files/folders within them. You can upload new documents, pictures, video clips and files of any type to the folder which will be auto-synced to the respective Google account once the computer is connected to the Internet. You can also edit existing documents and once you save the changes, it will get auto-updated on your Google Docs account.

Now the debate burns down to why should we prefer Google Docs storage with InSync and not the already popular and feature full Dropbox? The plain and simple answer is in the post header itself. The former is a cheaper option, to be precise, 8 times cheaper. Now, money doesn’t matter always, buyers are always looking for better products even though they put a hole in their pockets. Here are a few reasons I think the InSync way is way better than Dropbox.

Why InSync is Better than Dropbox

1. The Dropbox client only allows you to connect to one Dropbox account at one time and we have to use a hack to connect to multiple accounts. With InSync, you can add multiple Google accounts and thus a large amount of storage space can be monitored from a single tool.

2. If you are someone who wish to pay for cloud storage, Google Docs storage is a better choice since the price is cheaper and affordable than Dropbox.

3. The file size limit is another thing to consider. Dropbox desktop client lets you add files of reasonably high file size, however, the web interface adds a limit of 300MB. Google Docs lets you add files with filesize as high as 10GB which is quite high even if the Blu-ray movies are to be considered.

4. Individual file sharing is not allowed in Dropbox. Only folder sharing is available. InSync lets you share a single file and a folder as well.

The obvious reason that Dropbox still has an upper hand on Google Docs is the free storage it offers is more than the latter. Well news doing the rounds that the internet giant soon entering the cloud storage market suggests that the free storage is going to change. With endless possibilities with Insync, I’ve already jumped on the Google Docs bandwagon. What are your plans?

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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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Here are some pretty simple changes you can make to changes to take Google out of the picture for most things.

Applications

Something to keep in mind with applications is how you purchase them now. You likely have a credit card number on file with Google Wallet to make purchases easy. When you use a service like Amazon, you can have a card on file with them to make the purchase of applications just as smooth. Other markets may require a Paypal or offer other payment options.

Amazon App Store for Amazon

The Amazon App Store for Android is the most popular app store aside from Google Play (formerly the Google Market). A cool feature of the Amazon App Store for Android is there is a free application everyday that would normally cost you money.

Most of the applications in the Amazon App Store for Android are what you will find in Google Play. There are some difference though. You can’t get the Google applications like Gtalk or Google+ apps. There are other 3rd party apps that can manage these services though if you need to access your accounts.

GetJar

Getjar is a smaller alternative Android market, but GetJar has several applications for free. The Free Android applications are in the Gold category. When you use Getjar, you will be more likely to find lesser known applications that would normally get buried in the larger app stores.

Email

There are a lot of email providers out there. Choosing one that suits your needs can be easier for some people than others. While email is basically for sending and receiving information, Gmail offers a lot of cool features that are hard to pass up. Getting an email service offering most of the same abilities will be tough, so you will need to decide what is most important to you in an email service.

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo is an ever-evolving email service. The Android application is pretty basic and will let you send and receive emails. You can also move emails from folder to folder. Syncing your contacts is pretty much the only extra feature.

Hotmail

Your MSN, Live or Hotmail account will fill a basic need for email on your Android phone. If you have an organizational folder system in your Live account, you can see these folders and transfer emails to other folders from your inbox. You can choose to sync your contacts and your Hotmail calendar with your Android.

Calendar

People are pretty particular about their calendars. If you use your Android calendar a lot, you may rely on Google Calendar too. If you switch to a service like Hotmail, you can sync their calendar with your Android phone.

Keeping your calendar in sync is a breeze with Hotmail. Add an appointment in either your phone or your web account and it will sync.

Browser

For those who browse the web from their Android phone, you may not want to give Google information about how you search and what you search for. Using a different browser other than the pre-installed Android browser will help.

Firefox

Firefox is a really cool mobile browser. The Android version of Firefox offers a lot of the same add-ons you may be using for your desktop Firefox making the download to your Android a good choice.

Dolphin HD

Dolphin HD is a feature-packed Android browser that gives desktop browsers a run for their money. You can download extensions to customize Dolphin HD to create your ultimate mobile web browsing choice.

Music

Music lovers will be happy to see there is another choice to using Google Music

Amazon Cloud Player

Google music is pretty cool. However, Amazon has a similar service letting you store your personal library and MP3s you purchase through Amazon on their servers. Amazon Cloud Player was also around before Google Music too. You can stream your songs right from the cloud or have them available for offline playing.

Conclusion

Google is awesome at what they do but too much of a good thing can be bad. Sure,by putting all of your information in one spot, you can make your life easier, but if you aren’t comfortable with every bit of your life being in one place, know there are other options while still using an Android device.

Now, to the poll of the week: How comfortable are you to entrust your personal data to Google?

Take Our Poll

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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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For those who love the font and wish to use it on their applications such as Microsoft Word, Pages, Photoshop, Gimp, or even on their website, Google has kindly released the font for free and you can now use it without any restriction (under the Apache Software License).

Here’s how you can use it (almost) everywhere.

1. First, go to the Roboto font site and download the font (zipped file).

2. Extract the zipped file. You should see a folder named “Roboto_Hinted_20111129″. Open the folder and you should see all the roboto fonts (in (under the Apache Software License). (under the Apache Software License). (under the Apache Software License). various weight) in .ttf format.

For Linux (Ubuntu):

Open your home folder and enable the option to view hidden files/folders. Locate the “.fonts” folder. If it doesn’t exist, create it. Next, move the Roboto font folder to this “.fonts” folder.

Restart your LibreOffice, GIMP, Photoshop or whatever apps you are using. You should see the Roboto font available for selection.

For Windows

Open the Roboto font folder. Select all the fonts. Right-click your mouse and select “Install”.

This will install the fonts to your Windows machine. You can now use the Roboto font in your applications.

For Mac

Simply drag all the Roboto fonts to your Font Book.

For Android Phone

Since the font is a system level application, you won’t be able to change the font easily in your Android phone. For those who have an older Android phone (prior to Android 4.0 ICS), you will have to root your phone and install the Font Changer app (Play store link).

Open your File Manager app, navigate to the root of the SD Card (/sdcard) and create a folder (if not exist) “.fontchanger”. Place all the Roboto font in this folder. Open the Font Changer app and grant it SuperUser permission. Once it is loaded, you should see the Roboto font for selection in the main menu.

For iOS

There is no way to change the iOS system font without jailbreaking the device. Be prepared to void your warranty.

1. Jailbreak your iOS device and install BytaFont from Cydia.

2. Next, go to “Cydia -> Section -> Fonts” and install the Roboto font

3. Lastly, run the BytaFont app and you should see the Roboto font in the list, ready to be applied.

For the Web

If you wish to use the Roboto font in your website, you can use the CSS3 @font-face syntax to embed external font to your webpage.

1. Go to FontSquirrel Roboto font page and click the “@font-face Kit” link. Download the “@font-face kit”.

(under the Apache Software License).

2. Extract the zipped file to your website font folder. Open your web stylesheet and add the following code:

@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-Regular-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-Regular-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-Regular-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-Regular-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-Regular-webfont.svg#RobotoRegular') format('svg');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-Italic-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-Italic-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-Italic-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-Italic-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-Italic-webfont.svg#RobotoItalic') format('svg');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: italic;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-Bold-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-Bold-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-Bold-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-Bold-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-Bold-webfont.svg#RobotoBold') format('svg');
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: normal;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-BoldItalic-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-BoldItalic-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-BoldItalic-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-BoldItalic-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-BoldItalic-webfont.svg#RobotoBoldItalic') format('svg');
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: italic;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-Thin-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-Thin-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-Thin-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-Thin-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-Thin-webfont.svg#RobotoThin') format('svg');
    font-weight: 200;
    font-style: normal;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-ThinItalic-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-ThinItalic-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-ThinItalic-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-ThinItalic-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-ThinItalic-webfont.svg#RobotoThinItalic') format('svg'); (under the Apache Software License). 
    font-weight: 200;
    font-style: italic;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-Light-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-Light-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-Light-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-Light-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-Light-webfont.svg#RobotoLight') format('svg');
    font-weight: 100;
    font-style: normal;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-LightItalic-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-LightItalic-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-LightItalic-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-LightItalic-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-LightItalic-webfont.svg#RobotoLightItalic') format('svg');
    font-weight: 100;
    font-style: italic;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-Medium-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-Medium-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-Medium-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-Medium-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-Medium-webfont.svg#RobotoMedium') format('svg');
    font-weight: 300;
    font-style: normal;
}
 
@font-face {
    font-family: 'Roboto';
    src: url('Roboto-MediumItalic-webfont.eot');
    src: url('Roboto-MediumItalic-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('Roboto-MediumItalic-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('Roboto-MediumItalic-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('Roboto-MediumItalic-webfont.svg#RobotoMediumItalic') format('svg');
    font-weight: 300;
    font-style: italic;
}

Make sure you change the “src” to point to the path of the font folder.

Next, you can use the syntax

font-family:"Roboto";

to display the Roboto font on your web page.

That’s it. Enjoy!

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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

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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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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.

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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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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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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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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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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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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

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