Getting Started

You will, of course, want to check out http://www.google.com/reader/play/. You’ll first be brought to something of a Welcome screen.

Once you’re ready to get started, you’ll get the main Play screen. This is where everything happens, and it’s very similar in design to the Stumble Video screen that many of you may be familiar with.

Items are organized into a playlist of sorts, and you can scroll them like a slideshow. The bottom panel displays a scrolling list of content that may be text, images, or other multimedia. Images are automatically scaled to the appropriate size, and videos are embedded into the display window.

If an item has multiple related images, Play will sort them into a table and you can click the desired image to display full size.

Tools and Settings

Most of Play’s tools and options can be found in the toolbar between the main viewing area and the thumbnail scrollbar.

The first box simply hides or shows the bottom thumbnail panel. Items can still be scrolled with arrow keys or by clicking the arrows on either side of the viewing area.

The second icon with the eye symbol changes your view options. As shown above, Play will by default sort images and things into a table. This button will set the display to be more like that of the original page. This is often handy if Play is not showing things correctly.

The third option, the one with the slider icon, is a little more complex. With this you can filter your items to match certain criteria, such as things you’ve Liked in Reader. You can also choose specific categories for Play to display.

The fourth option, with the television icon, enables or disables the slide show mode. This seems of somewhat limited use, because it seems unlikely that any one time setting would be appropriate for all, or even most of the items shown.

The final three items are to Star, Like, and Share. As in GMail, starring an item has no particular function other than that the item is now marked, and can be pulled up later in a list of starred items. Liking an item, as in StumbleUpon, can influence the future items that Play will recommend for you. Shared items are sent to your Reader shares, and optionally Buzz.

Have fun Playing!

Google Reader Play – The New Web Discovery Portal originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop is one of two Adobe Air apps that help you keep on top of your Twitter and Facebook accounts. It supports Twitter lists, so you can keep up with your own, and the ones you are following. Another great feature of this application is that you can add the URL shortener and/or image sharing applications that you usually use. Seesmic bought Ping.fm late last year, so soon you will be able to update more than 50 social media sites in an instant. It is definitely a must-have Adobe Air app to have.

2. aSnippet

aSnippet is a great way to store snippets of code while sharing it with others. If you create an account, you are able to add other users and chat with them while using the Adobe Air app. It’s great because if you are stuck trying to figure something out with your code, you can use social networking to find the answer. Also, it supports various programming languages, so it provides versatility.

3. Klok

Klok helps you keep track of where your time goes. It can be used for personal, business, or both. You are able to create multiple projects, and within these projects, you can further break them down into sub-projects. It automatically keeps track of your time by pressing the Start/Stop buttons. The reports are a good way for you to view what areas need improvement.

4. Ora Time and Expense

Ora Time and Expense helps you manage your time and create invoices. This is a great Adobe Air app that has a variety of reports that you can use to see where your time has gone. It works with Projects and Types, which are similar to sub-projects. In addition to managing your time, it also gives you a way to track your expenses. A great app that provides a variety of functionality.

5. GmD

GmD brings all the Google applications (i.e. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, and Picasa) in a standalone application. The Adobe Air app also allows you to add another Google app rather than the regular ones by adding the link. It would be great if the developers would allow the different Google applications to be viewed at once.

6. Snackr

Snackr is a RSS ticker that allows you to see the RSS feeds that you are subscribed to. There are four ways to pull in RSS feeds:
1. Google Reader
2. Import OMPL file
3. Snackr suggested feeds
4. Manually enter feeds.

It’s a great way to view your RSS feeds without having to log into any application.

7. Flickroom

Flickroom is an Adobe Air standalone app that allows you to view photos on Flickr beautifully. One of the great things about this application is that you do not have to authorize it to your Flickr account, if you choose not to. This is something many other Flickr apps do not give an option for. You can view your photos in three ways (i.e. Grid, Filmstrip, or Map). It has a search function very similar to the one on the Flickr site. It’s a great application for photo lovers.

8. uvLayer

uvLayer allows users to discover, share, and watch videos throughout the webosphere. You can add RSS feeds from various sources, even other users’. The format is great because you can drag the different video windows around, so you can organize it any way you want.

9. Polaris

Polaris provides a way for you to view your Google Analytics right on your desktop. There used to be a Google Analytics Adobe Air app, but unfortunately, the links no longer work. Therefore, Polaris is a good alternative to use. You are given all the options you would get if you were on the Google Analytics site. Polaris also offers various reports that you can use to check how well your site/blog traffic is. It would be great if you could view different views of your web traffic at the same time. However, just being able to view Google Analytics on your desktop is useful already.

10. inPreso Screens

inPreso Screens is an Adobe Air app that allows you to create mock-ups for web site and blogs. It has tons of different tools that you can use to aid you in creating a design that will improve usability with users. There is a premium version that will provide you access to additional tools. However, the free version has an abundance of features that you can easily create a great mock-up.

As I stated before, there are new Adobe Air apps popping up every day, so this list will probably change, if the developers do not upgrade their applications to the newest and latest features. If you want to view more, you can go to RefreshingApps and Adobe Marketplace to search and find other Adobe Air apps.

Which are the Adobe Air apps you can’t live without?

10 Best Free Adobe Air Apps to Have on Your System originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

For starters, yes you will need a Gmail account. Much of Buzz is built as extensions to the Gmail interface. If you’ve already got one, you can go to http://www.google.com/buzz to activate Buzz for your account. The downside here is that somewhat like the Wave launch, your activation might not happen right away. I activated in the afternoon and it was live when I got up the following morning.

Once everything is up and running, you’ll see the Buzz icon under your normal Gmail inbox.

If you open it up, you’ll get a Welcome screen similar to the one below. If you already have a lot of connections in Gmail or Reader, they will be imported automatically.

Under that you’ll find any friends who’ve made updates to Buzz, similar to Facebook’s main page.

Likely, one of the first things you’ll want to do is give a good hello world up in the text box at the top. If you do, you’ll be brought to a one-time Set Up All Your Stuff screen.

If you choose to edit the profile, you’ll be given a few (surprisingly few actually) options for control. The only really notable one for now is that you can choose whether or not your profile will list your friend connections.

The status post box has some nice privacy controls. You can set specific people or groups who can see your update. I’d recommend creating a Buzz group, as it’s quite possible that you might not want everyone on your contact list to be in your social network.

Also on the Welcome page is a link to choose which other sites to connect to your Buzz feed.

As the list includes non-Google sites like Flickr and Twitter, it seems reasonable to assume other popular sites could eventually be included.

You can set groups on here as well. For example, you could set your pictures to only share with family, and keep crude humor to only those who’d appreciate it. Buzz certainly isn’t the first to implement user grouping but it does make it easy and useful to set sharing groups.

Embedding online pictures and videos is quite easy. Just paste in the URL and Buzz will include it in the message. To embed a local picture, just choose Photo from the bottom of the text box and you can upload. Alternatively, if you have photos in Picasa, you can select them from your list. This can be useful if you want to share photos you’ve already uploaded to Picasa of your cats, your trip to Italy, or of course Ted Danson.

Conclusion

Most of the appeal of Buzz only exists if you already use a lot of Google products. Picasa for photos, Reader for news, and of course Gmail for email. If you do, there’s a good chance you’ll find Buzz to be a very convenient place to funnel all your news and social feed needs. On top of Gmail, this can make for a very powerful one-stop online communication system. On the other hand, if you’re a Yahoo/Feedly/Myspace type then Buzz would likely be just another tab to keep open. Either way, it’s still pretty rough around the edges, but if Google dedicates a fair amount of time and effort into polishing it then it might just replace my Facebook tab.

What about you?

Is Google Buzz a Facebook Killer? originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

There are plenty of reasons that you need to log out of Google account:

1. Your current Gmail account has been spammed and you are switching to another account

2. Your Android Gmail is not syncing with the main server and you need to clear the internal cookie to get it resync again.

Here’s how you can log out of your Google account in Android and re-login again. (The following instruction is meant for Android 1.6. I will update this again when I have the chance to play with Android 2.1)

Go to Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications

Scroll down until you see the Google App entry. Select it.

Press the Clear Data and Clear Cache buttons.

Exit back to the Home screen. You have just clear your Google cache and log out of your account.

To log back in, go to Settings -> Data Synchronization.

It will prompt you to enter your Google login credential.

That’s it.

How to Log Out Of Google in Android originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

I am sure you have seen a .UK at the end of a website address. That is because of the country specific nature of the site. Google for example, has a bunch of country specific search engines. For example Google.com.au or Google.fr/

Below are some tips to help you narrow down your searches from a global level to a more manageable set of results. The big three make up the bulk of the article, but there is a list of different localized search engines.

Bing

If you use Bing to search, a great option to narrow your search is using an operator to soley search in your region of interest. For example, if you wanted to search for something in Australia, you could add [loc:AU] to the end of your search query. Bing would then only search for results in that country.

Here is a monster list of the country codes. It is from their help archives. I couldn’t find a direct link so click on the country and region codes table for all of the available choices.

Another search trick with Bing is to add a little bit of code to the completed query. Try adding [?cc=fr] to the Bing URL so it would look like this

www.bing.com?cc=fr

Google

Search giant Google lets you search in different countries couple different ways.

The first I mentioned above. Simply add [.AU] or what ever country abbreviation for the country you would like to search.

The other option is to add a little bit of code [&gl=uk] to the end of a completed search. The “gl” is for Google Location. Here is a before and after example

Before:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=volkswagen+dealerships&aq=0&oq=volkswagen+dealers&aqi=g10&esrch=FT1

After:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=volkswagen+dealerships&aq=0&oq=volkswagen+dealers&aqi=g10&esrch=FT1&gl=uk

Yahoo

Yahoo is a little different than the other two. Yahoo offers a country search option in the advance search options.

Yahoo also has a page that directs you to the search engine page for the country of your choice; there are 41 to choose from. Here is a link to the Yahoo International page.

Local Search Engines

The last option I’m going to mention is local search engines. There are a lot of local search engines who will search the local pages. These pages might be business searches in a certain city, or just a local telephone or address search. Having access to these will help you sift through the possibilities and really narrow in your search results. Most larger cities are bound to have a search engine or two like this.

This site has a pretty large list of search engines by country. It does not look like it has been updated in a while, but it will give you somewhere to start.

Do you know any ways to narrow your search to a country or even a city level?

Image credit Si1very

How to Perform a Country Specific Web Search originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Getting Android

While it’s true that the needed files are available on the Google Code project page, I’d recommend downloading with this torrent link instead. This is because the project page has the ISO file split into two parts that you’d have to manually join together. That torrent is the same files, pre-joined by Yours Truly for convenience. It’s about 173MB. The torrent is new so until I have some other seeders, it may be a little slow.

Preparing VirtualBox

With that downloads, Windows, Linux, and Mac users can all get their system’s version of VirtualBox here. Follow the website’s instructions to install, and start the program. Once ready, you should have something like this:

Choose New in the top left corner. After hitting Next, you’ll be taken to the first config screen where you can enter the information as shown in the screenshot below.

The Name field can, of course, be anything you like.

The next step on the following page is to set Base Memory Size. Go ahead and leave this at the default. On the page after that, you’ll be presented with an option to boot a hard disk. Since we’ll be running solely from the live image, a hard drive image is unnecessary so go ahead and remove the checkbox leaving that page blank, as shown below.

VirtualBox may give you a warning about no hard drives, but that’s ok for what we want to do. Ignore the warning, and hit Finish on the final page. This should take you back to the main screen, but this time it’ll show LiveAndroid 0.3 in the left pane.

Booting LiveAndroid

Before you click Start, we have to tell VirtualBox to boot from the LiveAndroid file. If it has finished downloading, click the Settings button in VirtualBox. Choose CD/DVD Rom on the left. With the config screen open, check the box for Mount CD/DVD Drive and ISO Image File. You can click the folder icon to choose the downloaded ISO file, as shown here.

When finished click OK and you should be returned to the main screen, but this time it should show liveandroidv0.3.iso under the CD/DVD ROM section in the right hand panel.

If all is well and good, you can now hit Start and boot into your very own local Android OS.

How To Run Android on Your Home PC with Virtualbox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Using a secondary email address to recover your Google account

Before we go any further, let me remind you that you can reset your Google account password, if you have set up secondary email address. The process is simple enough. When you forget the password of your email account, Google will send a confirmatory link in your secondary email address. Click the link and you are taken to the password recovery page, from where you can reset the password and login to your account.

But, here lies a big question. What if i forget the password of my secondary email account ? You are totally compromised and cannot recover the primary email account.

Hence, using the phone number option is a much better and easy way to recover your Google account as it does not require you to remember any secondary email address or password.

Connect Your Mobile number with your Google account

Following are the steps involved to connect a mobile number with your Google account :

1. Sign in to your account and go to your account settings page.

2. For security reasons,you will be asked to log in again. After logging in, click “Change password recovery options”.

3. Choose your country from the drop down list and add your phone number. This phone number will receive a code to reset your password so choose your phone number carefully.

4. After adding the phone number, click on save to update your account.

That’s it. You have just added your Mobile phone number with your Google account. Now it’s time to test what happens when you can’t access your Google account.

Test your Google account password recovery using SMS message

After you have added the mobile number with your Google account it’s time to test whether you are able to reset your password or not. Following are the steps involved to test your Google account password recovery process:

1. While signing in, write your username and supply a wrong password. After that click the link “Can’t access your account”.

2. Now you will be redirected to the password recovery page. Select “I forgot my password” and then browse to the password assistance page.

3.You will be asked to submit your username. Just type your username and click on submit.

4. Fill the captcha and hit the submit button again.

5. As soon as you hit the submit button, you will get a text message in your mobile phone containing a security code.The message will read

“Your Google account recovery code is XXXXXXX. If you did not request this code you can safely ignore this message”.

To use the code sent to your mobile, browse to the page as shown above.

8. Just submit the code and click on the submit recovery code button.

9. Bingo ! You will be asked to reset your password. Choose a password,enter it twice and you can reset your Google account password.

Have you associated your mobile number with your Google account ?

How To recover Google account Password Via SMS Message originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Below are the most popular desktop applications and plug-in for Google Wave. Now keep in mind, Wave is very simple and doesn’t have a lot of bells, whistles and blinky lights, so the applications don’t really have a lot to work with just yet. I am sure later on, more apps and more features will be available.

1. Waver

Waver is an Adobe Air app, making it the only cross platform app of the bunch. It offers the same basic functionality as going to the site, just in a smaller stand alone window.

Using the two buttons and the search bar, you can manage your contacts, view lists of Waves, create new and reply. There is a search bar just like in Gmail and the same types of search shortcuts.

All of these are pretty much just like you have on the site. The main difference, is you only have one window, whereas the Wave site has multiple panes.

2. Google Wave Add-On

The Firefox add-on is what I use most frequently. It is very basic and more of a notifier/shortcut link than anything.

The add-on resides in the statusbar. When one of you have a new or updated Wave in your inbox, it will display the unread count. To get to your Wave inbox, simply double click the icon; that’s it.

In the settings menu, all there is to adjust is the intervals when it checks for updates, the timeout and your username and password.

3. Waveboard

Waveboard is a Mac only desktop application. It is another simple application that allows you to access your Waves in an identical stand alone screen. There really isn’t any noticeable difference between the web app and Wakeboard aside from the Growl-like notifications. An iPhone app on the way.

This application is a lot like using the next one on the list.

4. Fluid

Fluid (Mac only) isn’t specifically a Wave desktop application, however is does give you all of the same functionality you would get from going to Google Wave’s web page.

If you would like to read more, here is a post from last spring that will explain it a little more in depth.

In a nutshell, Fluid allows you to “separate” a web page from your browser and turn any web app or web page into a desktop app. It even adds a Dock icon. By doing this, the new “application” functions like the web application, but doesn’t need a browser.

As you can see, this will give you all of the functionality of Google Wave, because it IS Google Wave.

Conclusion

All-in-all, these applications are pretty simple. Not because they aren’t doing exactly what you need them to do, it’s because there isn’t a lot to spice up yet. I can see things getting very interesting later on when more people start adopting and defining clear uses for the infant collaboration tool.

What do you think the future applications will need to offer to make your Wave-ing easier?

image credit San Diego Shooter

4 Useful Google Wave Apps originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

A note about terminology – The official Google products for the browser and OS are Chrome and Chrome OS, respectively. The open source versions are Chromium and Chromium OS. As they’re essentially the same thing, this article will use the terms Chrome and Chrome OS.

What is it?

As mentioned above, Google took the Linux kernel to use as the foundation for their new operating system. This makes perfect design sense, as it gives them a stable, mainstream, open and well-supported foundation on which to build. It’s good news for the rest of us as well, as it means we’ll have great hardware support and easy access to the guts of the system.

One of the most unusual aspects of Chrome OS is that it essentially does away with the concept of desktop applications. This means there’s no manual installation or removal of packages, no manual upgrades, and improved security. Even logins are done remotely, and use your GMail account name to authenticate. A nice side effect of this is that the single sign-on is used to automatically log you in to all Google services.

When you login to Chrome OS, you do not get a “desktop” or anything of the sort, you’re immediately dropped into the web browser (Google Chrome, of course).

Obviously, when your whole UI is a web browser, you’re missing some things normally handled by the UI, like taskbars, clocks, and applets. The browser screen has been somewhat modified to include some desktop-panel type options. In the current version of Chrome OS, some of the normal desktop UI elements have been included in the Chrome browser. Here for example, you can see the buttons for power management and network setup.

Storing files

Chrome OS is split into a few parts on the disk. There’s essentially two major parts, the system files and the user files. The system files on Chrome OS are actually stored in a read-only partition, and there’s pretty much nothing the user can do to change them. This may sound weird at first, but it was designed this way for a reason. By keeping all system files separate and read-only, Google has increased security by allowing only approved software to exist on the local client. In fact, every time the OS boots, it checks the integrity of the OS and will re-image any files that may have been altered.

This of course begs the question “Well then how do I save files?”. User files are kept apart from the system files, and aren’t actually stored on the computer running Chrome OS. When you save a file, it is actually saved in “the cloud”, aka an internet server. Any files “saved” will be synced to your Google account and stored online.

While there are some drawbacks to that approach, there are a number of advantages as well. For one, you no longer have to worry about backing up that data. From what I know of Google’s data storage practices, your file will exist in no fewer than three separate locations at datacenters across the globe. If one, or even two of them somehow suffer a catastrophic failure, your data will still live on at the third. The other advantage is automatic portability. If I save files on my Chrome OS netbook, then forget it at home while on vacation, I can load up any other Chrome OS system and everything will be exactly the same as if I was on my own machine at home.

For details about how and why Chrome OS does things this way, you can watch the video here.

Conclusion

It’s hard to gauge what I think of Chrome OS for two main reasons. First, it is still fairly early in development and therefore can’t be considered an accurate picture of what the final product will be like. Second, the design choices made in Chrome OS require an entirely different perspective on exactly what an operating system should do. Having spent my life learning the details of the “traditional” way, it may be some time before I can fully wrap my head around all the pros and cons of the design.

That said, there are certainly some things to like and dislike about the current state of Chrome OS. Having removed all but the essential parts of a Linux OS, the boot speed is nothing short of phenomenal. Once logged in, the system is up and running in very few seconds. For someone who just wants to get up and online quickly, like a netbook user, this could be great. On the other hand, if you’re a power user who likes to get into the guts of the system and make things work your way, Chrome OS will likely leave you unsatisfied. There are no desktop applications, so any computer needs that can’t be met by a web app simply cannot be met. For me, that’s a pretty big drawback and I don’t think I’ll ever be using Chrome as my main desktop OS, but for thin clients, netbooks, and portable devices, Chrome OS could be exactly what we need.

UPDATE: A Google engineer has requested that I clarify this point.  Chrome OS is unsuitable as a desktop OS because it is not intended to be a desktop OS.  Chrome OS is for netbooks and other portable internet devices, and it is not meant to replace the likes of Linux and Windows on your desktop computer.

First Look at the New Google Operating System – Chrome OS originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Removing keywords

A common websearch function applied to email. You can filter out items containing certain words. For example, if I want to get a list of all my MakeTechEasier messages, but not those relating to pingbacks, I can remove items containing that word from my results with the minus sign.

2. To: and From:

Probably the simplest and most often used search function is the ability to specify sender or recipient. By specifying a name or email address you can narrow results to items written by (or to) a name or email address. In this example, I’m trying to get all the emails I’ve written about MakeTechEasier to Damien.

3. CC:

Much like To: and From:, you can filter to show messages with a certain person in the cc or bcc fields. Here I am searching for all party-related messages that involve my good friend The Dude.

4. has:attachment

This one’s pretty self-explanatory – you can get only the results that have a file attached. In this example Im looking for all emails from my sister that may have pictures of her kids.

5. filename:

Similar to #4 above, but this time you can specify an exact filename, or even just part of a filename in an attachment. I can improve upon my previous search by specifying that I want only results with pictures attached.

6. OR

No search system is complete without at least a few boolean operators, and GMail is no exception. While AND is implied in most searches, sometimes you need OR to get the results you want. In this example, I’m trying to get messages about Christmas plans from both sisters.

OR, by the way, does have to be in caps.

7. is:

Another very handy one, is: lets you see only messages in a certain state, like read, unread, or starred. Here, I’m trying to get any emails from Damien which I had previously marked as important (starred).

8. label:

Labels are already a very useful GMail feature, and the search function only makes it better. You can tell the search to return only messages with a particular label attached. If I have a Work label for all my work-related emails and I want to find a message relating to last year’s company picnic, I can use label: to avoid getting messages relating to my countless other picnics of 2008.

9. (Parentheses)

I just recently learned about this, and I’m very glad I did. Using parentheses you can group items for use with things like OR. Parentheses can shorten what might otherwise be a long search string. Let’s say I’m searching for the XBox Live names of my friends Adam, Galt and Joe. I could write out three separate from: statements much like #6, or I could use parentheses to group items together.

10. Combinations

A few of these examples have combined the search options into single queries. GMail gives nearly unlimited flexibility when combining complex search options. You can get extremely detailed results by combining the options to return exactly what you want. The following is an attempt to bring up all messages from both of my sisters about all our prior Christmas plans, that also have pictures attached, but not including our trip to Kentucky.

10 Useful GMail Search Tips originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

My main personal homepage has been iGoogle for a long time. I use the tabs to keep things sorted. In those tabs are a some RSS feeds, a couple gadgets, webmaster tools and some mindless time wasters. I have to admit, I really don’t use the different things on the homepage much; they are what I am used to.

When I am sitting at my desk and trying to focus on work, it is all too easy to lend my attention to something much more interesting than what I should be doing. Going to a search site or looking at the auto suggestions when typing in a bookmark tag can easily steal your attention.

I have recently been trying out a different homepage at work. 43marks isn’t as flashy as some of the homepages out there, but flashy is usually distracting. How 43marks differs from other homepages, is how much it offers in such a simple layout. 43marks combines two things people use on a daily basis: bookmarks and search engines.

Having four options to search at your fingertips without all of the typical distractions and random links associated with some sites is a breath of fresh air. Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia are probably the most commonly used search engines. All of them aggregate the “top sites” in a different way. Type in a search term and get the results from Google; to see what Yahoo,Bing or Wikipedia simply click that tab and the results shift to the other search engine’s results.

To personalize your 43marks homepage, follow these steps:

1. Click on the the “customize yours” tab in the top right corner of the main page.

2. Enter in a user name, email address and a password twice.

3. Once you are all set up, you will have a default list of bookmarks and RSS feeds.

4. To change the bookmarks and RSS feeds, click [Manage]

5. Three options are presented to you: Manage Bookmarks, Manage RSS Feeds and User Settings.

If you want to wipe the slate clean, 43marks does give an option to delete all bookmarks.

6. In the RSS Manage RSS Feeds tab, the same option to start from scratch is available.

* A pretty easy way to add a feed is to click on the RSS icon most sites have. This will pull up a page with the feed address listed. The feed URL should look something like this – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeTechEasier

The RSS part works well, but if you want to change a feed from ESPN to Make Tech Easier, you need to delete the old one and add in the new name and address.

7. In the User Settings, you are presented a four options:

• Choose whether you want your page to be private or public so anyone can see your list of bookmarks and RSS feeds. If you choose public, just give our the URL to your page. Mine is 43marks.com/trevor_dobrygoski

• How you would like the RSS feeds displayed – Expanded or collapsed
• The maximum number of books marks to display in each category column
• How you want the bookmark or RSS link to open when clicked

With all of the distractions present to anyone who works online, 43marks is a great solution to wrangle the information you NEED to look at and none that you don’t.

What tools do you use to cut down on distractions when you work online?

Get Your Homepage Organized With 43marks originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Google Docs

Google Docs is a great place to design, store, and collaborate with other people on your resume. Your resume can be exported as a PDF, RTF or a Word document for easy viewing by your potential employer. With hundreds of easily customizable templates for both resumes and cover letters, this is a easy choice.

It is a good idea to keep your resume up dated. If you set a reminder in the calendar of your choice to update your resume quarterly, you will have less work if a lay off strikes. Another benefit to updating your information often is you are less likely to omit important details about your accomplishments.

2. Ingboo

Ingboo is a service that gives you a way to aggregate search results from a huge number of sites. In the job tab; Simply Hired, Craigslist and Hotjobs are 3 of the 11 sites from which you can be notified of newly posted job opportunities. The updates can be emailed in a daily digest, as soon as new results appear or at a selectable time of the day. Ingboo also can send updates right to your Twitter account. If none of these methods to view the results are appealing to you, going to Ingboo.com to see the results is always an option too. Ingboo is working on a Blackberry app which will help you keep up with your searches while mobile.

3. RSS

If you are using an RSS feed reader for viewing new posts on blogs and websites, using it for your job search will be a piece of cake. If you are not using any kind of RSS feed reader, Google Reader and iGoogle are good options to those who have a Google/ Gmail account. If not, other services for Mac, Windows and mobile devices are available.

The way to use RSS for a job search is simple. Create a search the same way you are accustomed to on a site like Monster.com. Instead of saving the search, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on the RSS feed button.

You will be prompted to choose what reader you want to use. Once subscribed, all of the new jobs will arrive in this feed within moments of being posted. Here is what a feed would look like on your iGoogle hompage.

4. Google Alerts

If you are looking at a specific company’s career page, the odds of them having an RSS feed with job updates are pretty slim. In this case, you can set up a Google alert for when a page changes (if a job is added). The results can be emailed to you weekly, daily or as soon as a change happens. This is done with some advanced Google search formulas like these:

if you were looking for a job at Apple

(inurl:job OR inurl:jobs) site:apple.com

if you were looking for a job anywhere in Denver, Colorado.

(inurl:job OR inurl:jobs) denver

(inurl:career OR inurl:careers)

These alerts work well because most companies post job openings on a page with [job] or [career] in the URL. By adding in a site:operator or a location, the search is narrowed and becomes more useful to you.

5. InSide Job

Usually apps on Facebook aren’t thought to be very useful in the search for a job. Granted Facebook can be a good way to network (when you aren’t distracted by Farmville or Mafia Wars); this is one application however, is making a good argument to be on Facebook.

Here is how their webpage describes the app:

Inside Job lets you contact people who have interviewed, worked, or are currently employed at the places you want to work at next!
InSide Job users can also:
-Get the inside scoop on their prospective employer before the interview;
-Network with people in similar fields; and
-Find the right people to hire as service providers.

6. A Blog

A personal blog is a good thing to keep up on whether you are working or not. Many free blogging platforms (Wordpress.com, Blogger, Typepad…) give you an avenue to let people and potential employers get to know you. You can choose to display work accomplishments, personal stories, your thought on your industry news or anything you would like others to know about you.

The more positive information is on the web about you when a client or potential employer is looking you up on the web, the better. Job hunting is a full time job. You need to market yourself and control your online profile/ information in a way no other generation has before.

Leave any job searching tips and tools in the comments below.

Image credit bjmccray

6 Useful Web Apps To Help You Job Hunt originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Message Management

One of GMail’s strengths is its ability to handle large volumes of email while allowing you to keep things organized. Wave built on GMail’s experience and has also included some useful features for keeping things in order. For starters, you’ve got Folders which work like GMail’s labels and everything else’s… well… folders. You can drag and drop waves into these folders and they will not show up in your inbox. To view that message you can either click the title of the folder or choose All at the top of the Navigation pane.

As you can see in the screenshot, you can also colorize each of the folders individually. I can see how this could be helpful if you have a LOT of folders and want to use colors to group them together, or if there’s a particular folder you want to keep highlighted to catch your eye.

In addition to managing waves through folders, you also have two ways to essentially forget about a message until it’s needed. First, you can Mute a wave, so that it no longer shows up as unread even when it has been modified by others. If you just want a wave out of your inbox but still want to know when it’s been updated, you can Archive that message. You won’t see it until someone makes an update to that wave. Both muted and archived waves will show up in searches and in the All section.

I’ve found it useful to archive almost everything. When a wave has pretty clearly ended, I’ll set it to Archive and leave only messages I intend to keep alive in my inbox. If anyone happens to update one of those waves, it’ll pop right back up in my inbox like normal. Without this I think it wouldn’t take long for Wave to feel a bit overwhelming, if you use it frequently.

Embedded Replies

One messaging feature I really like is the ability to embed a reply inside the original message. In this example, Tara wrote the original message, and instead of creating a separate reply or copy & pasting her words, I can choose any spot in her message and insert my reply.

Private Branches

Let’s say you’re in a wave with everyone at the office. Your boss is discussing the importance of TPS reports. Suddenly, a witty remark pops into your head, and you have a choice. Do you uphold your status as the office comedian, or bite your tongue to keep your job? Wave provides a third option – create a private branch. Only the people specified in that branch can see those messages. In this example screenshot, there are many people in the wave but only the person I included in my private reply can see what I wrote.

Managing Contacts

The only really notable feature about the contacts is that you can do an incremental search for people in your contact list, as demonstrated below. My only complaint is that Wave does not apparently include GMail type status messages with the contacts. I’ve seen no word so far on whether or not that will be a feature in future Wave revisions.

Extensions

We covered extensions briefly in our first report on Wave, but there’s plently more to be said. Extensions can be installed and removed through the Extensions Gallery, which is a wave itself. For me, the extension gallery showed up in my inbox the day after I activated my Wave account. In it is a list of available extensions you can choose to install.

One of the most notable aspects of Wave in regards to extensions is they Google strongly encourages independent developers to create their own Wave extensions. The recommended language is Java but they also have a Python client library. As a fan of Python I think this is great news.

Bottom Line

With the many clever options Wave provides for message management and extensions, Wave is clearly going to be a contender for online communications. Right now the biggest obstacle is establishing a firm user base, as Wave is only useful if all your friends and associates also use it. Leaving the system open will work to Google’s benefit in that sense, as future users won’t be limited to just the official Wave website and client, but will be able to communicate over any wave-compatible platform. I, for one, look forward to seeing what the future holds for Wave.

Google Wave – Round 2 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Slowly but surely Google has been adding a feature here and a feature there. Some have been bigger steps than others; all of them are chipping away at the reasons you need to buy an office suite. I’m not going to get on a soapbox and shout to the world. I will however, give you a few nifty tips to make using Google Docs spreadsheets a little easier.

1. Lookup

Much like other spreadsheet programs, Docs can do calculations and formulas. The question to ask is the other programs would be, “Do you have built in Google search?” No? Hmmm…. well anyway, here are a couple handy formulas to enter into the desired cell to utilize Google’s search. Make sure to keep the quotation marks surrounding the terms you are adding.

The values will automatically update as the information changes; imagine the possibilities.

=GoogleLookup(“entity”; “attribute”)

Replace entity with something like Ireland and attribute with population.

=GoogleFinance(“symbol”, “attribute”)

An example for this function would be:  =GoogleFinance(“AAPL”, “Price”) The result would end up being what ever the current stock price is.

=GoogleTranslate(“text”, “source language”,”target language”)

The translation function is really cool. It allows you to translate a word or a few sentences from English to Modern Greek or Chinese to Spanish. The most difficult part is having to use ISO 639-1 country abbreviations.

For easy access check out this list of all the functions available.

2. Google Doc Forms

A Google Docs Form is a very simple way to add a survey to an email or website. The basic idea behind these forms is to gather information and automatically aggregate the results into a spreadsheet. You also have the choice to get an email notification when someone completes the form or add a gadget to your iGoogle page to track all of your surveys.

Creating a form is really straightforward.

1. From the main Google Docs screen, choose New — Form

2. If you don’t like the plain blue and white color scheme, you can pick a new one by clicking Theme.

3. Click apply on the new theme to start editing.

4. From there, simply type in the question, choose the type of question you’d like it to be and if it is required to complete the survey.

5. If you click the Share button, there is an option to email the survey or even get the code to embed it into a web page on your site.

3. List View

List view is a fast loading version of a spreadsheet you can publish or embed to your website. The settings you determine in the Share menu will carry over to the spreadsheet you embed.

One of the coolest parts is the spreadsheet is auto-updating. If, for example, you have stock quotes or dollar amounts from a fundraiser; these will all be updated on the embeded version instantly.

If you are a Google Sites user, you can add a editable version of the spreadsheet onto the page by going to the Insert menu.

List view provides a few basic ways to modify data:

• edit cells
• add rows
• filter and sort data
• cells with formulas can’t be edited in this view

4. From Your Mobile

If you have an Android, iPod touch/iPhone or Nokia S60, you can access and manipulate your Google Doc spreadsheets. I was a little disappointed there isn’t a Blackberry or Windows Mobile access, but I’ll live.

• Create shortcuts to your spreadsheets on your home screen
• Edit cells
• Add data
• Sort columns to give you relevant data first

5. Styling

Even though it isn’t an option in a drop down menu, the forms can be modified. You do have over 70 themes available, but if that isn’t enough for you, here are a few tips to spice them up even more by Gill Smith.

What are your productivity tips for Google spreadsheets and forms?

image credit: TaopaiC

5 Tips for Google Spreadsheets originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

If you have a web site or blog, you probably rely on web analytics to understand about your visitors. It provides a way for you to know

1. How they found your site
2. The items on your site they find interesting and
3. Location information about your visitors.

The best known and most widely used web analytics tool is Google Analytics. There are over 80 reports that can be accessed to track and analyze the health of your web site/blog. Additionally, it also has an ad hoc reporting function that allows you to further tailor these 80 reports, or create your own from scratch. There are other tasks that allow you to monitor vistors’ paths on your site/blog, monitor your AdWords, group similar visits together, etc. What if you were able to extend the functions that Google Analytics offer? There is a Firefox add-on that will allow you to do that. It’s called the Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension.

What does it do?

Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension enhances Google Analytics by using a variety of GreaseMonkey user scripts. The add-on uses user scripts created by different developers into one area. It gives Google Analytics some of the user-friendly and additional features that are missing.

What do I need to do before I start using it?

The first thing you need is to go to the FireFox add-on page, and install GreaseMonkey. After GreaseMonkey is up and running, install the Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension add-on.

How do I personalize it?

After installing Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension and GreaseMonkey, go to Tools->Add-Ons->Better Google Analytics Firefox. Press the Preference button.  There are three tabs: General, Reports, and Other.

What do I do in the General tab?

Go to the General tab. There are three options: automatically entering Google Analytics; automatically expanding the sub-navigation items; and increase the text boxes.

• If you want to automatically enter Google Analytics whenever the button is displayed, then check the check box next to this option.
• If you want to have all the sub-navigation expand automatically, then check the check box.
• If you want to increase the text boxes, then check this check box.

What do I do in the Reports tab?

In the Reports tab, it provides you additional report features that will make the Google Analytics’ reports area, more powerful. It adds search functionality, export capabilities, full-screen reader, profile enhancements, table sorting, and social media metrics. If you want to select one or all of the options, check the check boxes next to them.

What do I do the in the Other tab?

In the Other tab, it allows additional features to other areas of Google Analytics. It provides two Google Analytics Conversion University functionalities: “Expand All” button and the time. Also, it has a URL builder override for the “utm_nooverride” url variable.

What did I think?

I really love this Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension. It gives extra functionality to Google Analytics that makes it more user friendly and easier to navigate. Before I found this add-on, I was using the basic functions that Google Analytics had to offer because I didn’t really understand how to use it. With this add-on, I am using it more, using more reports, and even the goals/funnel features. If you have never use it, and you have a web site and/or blog, install it.

How do I get more information?

• To learn more about Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension, please visit: http://erikvold.com/tools/firefox/betterga/index.cfm
• To learn more about GreaseMonkey, please visit: http://www.greasespot.net/

Firefox Extension Adds Functionality to Google Analytics originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

So what is it exactly?

According to Google:

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Intriguing, but not very specific. Suffice it to say, each “Wave” is like an email thread or message board post. The difference is that you’re not just posting a series of replies (though you certainly can use it that way), you’re making changes to a single document. Each change becomes a branch of the original message. You can roll a wave back in time to see how the conversation has evolved. If you get added to a pre-existing wave, you get the whole thing – the document (or thread) as-is, along with its entire history. Waves can be embedded into blogs, so any time a change is made to that wave it can show up in something like Blogger in near real time. We’ll cover the most interesting Wave features in more detail as we go.

Using a Wave

The Wave exists online, and can be accessed a few different ways. The most common would probably be through a “Wave Client”, ie a GMail-like web app that displays your Waves in the browser window. Here is an example of the main wave.google.com

On the far left we’ve got a pretty familiar webmail style menu, with the usual Inbox, etc. Below that is your contacts. Wave seems to have imported my GMail contacts and added those who are also signed in here. The center pane shows your message history much like any email client, including the pic for each participant in the wave.

Things get more interesting when we get to the right pane. Here we can view, edit, and create waves. In this example, I wrote a Kurt Vonnegut quote to Crystal. She responded not by creating a separate reply, but by editing my original words. When I get back to Wave and see her message, Wave highlights the changes she has made.

This means you could use a single wave to have multiple people, say, write a paper for school or collaborate on a family Christmas list. All changes are essentially real time, each change creating a new branch with a complete backup history. In fact, Wave provides a playback feature that allows you to step through the document from creation to the present.

Extensions

Wave expects and encourages user-developed extensions. As it’s still in development, there aren’t many choices yet. The extensions that do exist are all fairly useful. First, you can perform a Google search and include the results in the wave. No real surprises there.

Next is the single-click Yes/No box. Of all the things to include in an early release I’m a little surprised the Yes/No box was one of them, but I suppose it demonstrates some of the things you can do with extensions.

The results were unanimous.

There is also a Maps extension, which is another single click surprise. I have to admit, this would make it a lot easier to exchange directions.

As I write this, a new wave just arrived in my inbox for the Google Wave Extension Gallery. I can browse and install new extensions from within the wave. Presumably the wave will be updated as new extensions come out.

Conclusion

There is FAR more to Google Wave than I could possibly cover here, and this is still a fairly early development version. For those who want all the details, you can find a LONG (80 minutes) video of the tech demo here. For something with so drastically different from email on the technical side, Wave manages to feel surprisingly comfortable. The technology is certainly impressive, and it’s easy to adjust to the Wave way of doing things once you’ve spent a few minutes using it. As for usefulness, that’s a little harder to judge. From what I’ve seen, Wave only works if everyone else is also using it. As great as the map feature may be, the recipient would of course need to be a Wave user as well. Not that this is a flaw in Wave exactly, but it does place a limit on how useful it can be. I think it’s got a lot of potential, and I’ll be keeping a Wave tab open for a while to see how things go, but I won’t go closing my webmail tab just yet.

Google Wave – The Future of Email? originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Below, I will explain the layout of the site, then get deeper into a few of the main features. There are several other features to this service if you’d like to check them out for yourself here.

The Basics

The simplest explanation of how Google Voice works is this. Give out your new Google Voice telephone number to people. (Unfortunately, yes you need a new phone number.) When someone calls that number, it will ring all of your phones/ phone numbers. If you do not answer the call, it goes into a common voice mailbox.

The set up is really easy and only takes a few minutes to complete. You are asked to enter a zip code, then pick a new phone number, PIN for your voicemail. The next step is adding in your other phone numbers which you can be reached. Google displays a one time numeric code on the screen. You will receive an automated verification call where you are asked to type in the code. That’s all there is too it.

The layout of the homepage looks similar to a basic Gmail account.

At the top left of the page on the homepage, reside two tabs. One says Call, the other SMS (text message). If you click the Call tab, a window pops up with the option to dial a number and have the call sent to the phone you choose. If the SMS button is clicked, it offers to send a free text message right from your computer.

Farther down the left side are the options to click on the inbox, trash, history and Spam. Yup, that’s right, you have a Spam folder for your phone now. (More on that later.) You can also see the contacts, voicemail, SMS and other tabs down the left side.

SMS

The text messaging feature is pretty cool. Aside from letting you send messages via the home page, it also logs them. Inside your inbox, you can see both their text and your reply. This feature may be very useful for a person who sends a small to moderate amount of messages. On the other hand, if you text like most people under the age of 25, you may have a very full inbox when you sign in.

Call Screening

The screening option is something that should have been around a long time ago. When someone calls your Google Voice number, if they arent in your contact list, they will be asked to say their name. When you decide to take the call, you are presented with four options: take the call, send the call to voicemail, send the call to voicemail and listen to the message as it is recorded or record the call. If you don’t have a need to screen your calls, this feature can be turned off in the settings.

Contacts

Since everyone already uses multiple Google apps in every other part of your web experience, it makes sense that Google Voice would be in sync with your Gmail contact list. If you have them separated into groups for personal and business for example, you can set up a different voicemail message for each group. If they are not in a group or even in your contact list, you can have a generic message for these people.

Spam

Okay, in my opinion this one is the second best feature. (I’m saving my favorite for last.) Just like an email, if you choose to, you can select a person or phone number as Spam. From that point on, when they call they are sent right into voicemail.

Voicemail Transcription

That’s right, you did read that correctly… Google Voice will email and/or SMS you a written copy of what was said in the voicemail. If you are anything like me, you dread listening to your voicemail messages; people either leave way too much information, or not enough. In your email or Google Voice inbox, you are able to both read and hear the voicemail. SMS and voice messages can be archived and starred just like in in your Gmail inbox. This feature alone was enough for me to make the switch.

How do you feel about Google managing your telephone needs?

A Hands-on Review of Google Voice originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Nokia advertises it as an “Internet Tablet” rather than a PDA, so perhaps they expect you to rely on cloud services, such as Google Calendar.  Very well, we will, but we will do it with style.  mCalendar is a small application for the Maemo operating system that allows you to have an appointment calendar on your tablet and also sync it with your Google Calendar.  It is finger-friendly and easy to use.  It is available for Maemo/Tablet OS2007 and OS2008 and should work on Nokia 770, N800, N810, and N810 WiMax models.

Installation

The easiest way to install mCalendar is to go to maemo.org and click the big green “Install” button next to mCalendar.  This will add the extras software repository and also install the application.  If you prefer to add the software repository yourself, simply open your Application Manager, open the menu, click on Tools and click “Application catalog…”.  Click the “New” button and add this repository:

Catalog name = maemo Extras
Web address = http://repository.maemo.org/extras/
Components = free non-free

Setup

1. Start mCalendar.

2. Open the menu and click “Preferences”.

3. Click on the “Google Syncronization” tab.

4. Enter your Google login (usually your email address) and password.

5. Click on the “General” tab.

6. Optional: You can select “google popup reminder” to receive notices of appointments and “auto sync” if you want to keep mCalendar automatically in sync with your Google calendar.

Start Syncing

You should test synchronization to make sure it works.

1. Add an appointment to your calendar and save it.

2. Open the menu and click “Synchro”.

3. Open a browser and login to Google Calendar.

4. Check the appointment to make sure that it is the right day and time.

5. Edit the appointment and re-sync to make sure two-way communication is working.

Alternatives

While mCalendar is quick and easy, it is hardly robust.  If you prefer a calendar with a few more options, such as GPE Calendar, you can use a third party application called Erminig to sync it with your Google calendar.

Erminig is in the maemo extras repository and is configured in roughly the same way as mCalendar’s sync function.  One advantage is that you can sync with a specific calender from  your Google account and a specific GPE calendar, if you have more than one.  You can then setup multiple entries and sync all of them at once.  Furthermore, it has a “read-only” feature, if you prefer not to make changes on the tablet side.

Beyond the tablet

Once you have your tablet synced with your Google calendar, you might also want to sync with your desktop calendar.  I have not found an easy way to sync directly from the Nokia internet tablet to the desktop.  Instead, you can sync it with your Google calendar and then sync Google with your desktop, using GCALDaemon.

KDE4’s data backend, Akonadi, currently only supports read-only functionality with Google Calendar.  If that is all you need, you will not need GCALDaemon.  There are plans to add read-write functionality in KDE 4.3

Now you have the ability to wirelessly sync your calendars on the move.  This certainly does not come close to full PIM synchronization, but you will at least have your important appointments in order.

How to Sync your Nokia Internet Tablet with Google Calendar originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Let’s say you open up Google and enter a query like “Princess Bride Cast”. You’d get results linking to several pages with info on who was in that cinematic masterpiece. It would probably look something like this:

Pretty good, right? You’ve got a list of pages that probably all have the info you’re looking for.

Wolfram, on the other hand, doesn’t give you the pages with the info, it gives you the info! That same query in Wolfram gives results like this:

This approach to search opens all kinds of possibilities. Want to know the population of Guam? How many mililiters in a gallon? The current time in Dublin? The radius of the sun in yards? Of course it can’t handle queries that simply don’t make sense (it couldn’t figure out quite what I meant by “Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!”).

You can even lookup weather, stock values, and mathematical formulas, like this one:

Delivering information in this way is a flashback to those old sci-fi movies where a character walks up to a terminal and asks it something like “Computer, how long until we reach Alpha Centauri?”. The creators of Wolfram|Alpha have cited this as a direct inspiration behind the design of their system. Any why not? With the vast quantities of information available to us, why not make the computer sort and process that information to give us just what we need?

Firefox Addons

Now that you’ve got a good idea how and why to use Wolfram, let’s integrate it into Firefox for easy searches. First is a plain old search box entry that lets you use Wolfram from the search box in the top-right corner of your browser. The Wolfram|Alpha extension can be installed easily according to the instructions on the page, and it’s immediately ready to use.

A slightly different approach was taken by the other extension I tried. Wolfram|Alpha Google integrates Wolfram|Alpha results into existing Google results, giving you both options side by side, as shown below.

WARNING: Opinions ahead!

Many of the articles surrounding Wolfram|Alpha have portrayed it as a Google-killer. I think this is extremely inaccurate. For starters, the two have entirely different purposes. Sure, many of us use Google to find information, but we also use it to find pictures, files, news, articles, reviews, and of course web pages. All these things that Wolfram simply isn’t designed to handle. Calling it a Google killer is like saying the popularity in skateboards will kill the trucking industry. Sure, both can get you from A to B, but they’re two different things with different uses.

That being said, I’ve been extremely impressed by Wolfram|Alpha’s capabilities so far. It certainly does have the potential to pull some of the simpler queries away from Google, but as long as it remains a “computational knowledge engine”, we’ll still have the good old search engines.

How To Use Wolfram|Alpha Search and Firefox Extension originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Here is a simple trick to default your search to Google.com, regardless of which country you are in.

On your browser’s URL bar, if you typed in google.com, it will redirect to your country local domains (such as google.fr or google.ch).

To search on Google.com, you just have to type in http://www.google.com/ncr and google.com will automatically appear. For your info, the ‘ncr’ refers to No Country Redirect.

A good thing about this is that you don’t have to type in ‘google.com/ncr’ everytime you want to search in Google. The first time you go to google.com/ncr page, Google will set a cookie in your browser and make all your future searches default to google.com. This means that you only need to go to www.google.com/ncr once and you will be able to search Google.com right from your Firefox’s search bar (at the top right corner) at all time.

Get your Google local domain back

You just need to clear your cookie and your Google local domain will show up the next time you type in Google.com.

How To Default Your Search To Google.com In Firefox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)