chaka chaka » google

gmail labs features

justine — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:16:30 +0000

i never pretended to be all cutting-edge techno-geek (although i did spend 5 hours finishing up time hollow in my second sitting) so i’m a little late (it launched in june) to start using the new gmail lab features.

it took ages to find, but i found the labs button – a little green beaker – located at the top right of the gmail screen.

clicking it takes you to the lab settings which you can activate

gmail labs is to be activated at your own risk. since it’s still in beta, whatever that means to the google team. gmail has been in beta for-freaking-ever.

Gmail engineers come up with new ideas all the time. Gmail Labs is our place to try them out and get your feedback. None of these features are really ready for prime time yet, so they may change, break or disappear at any time.

If (when) a Labs feature breaks, and you’re having trouble getting into your account, there’s an escape hatch — just go to https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 and Labs will be temporarily disabled.

features listed for my own reference. as of now, i’m using tasks and right-side chat. the rest of the add-ons look like a right waste of time. signature tweak nad random signature? geez.

Tasks
Tasks is a way to help you keep track of what you need to do and what you’ve already done. Tips:

Manage your email workflow better by converting emails into tasks: “More Actions > Add to Tasks”
ENTER creates a new task, TAB and SHIFT-TAB indent and un-indent, CTRL-UP and CTRL-DOWN let you reorder from the keyboard, and SHIFT-ENTER toggles back and forth between the detailed view for a task and the main view
After turning Tasks on, turn on Keyboard shortcuts in “Settings > General” and then use “SHIFT-T” to create tasks from your emails – even faster than using the More Actions menu

Quick Links

Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.

Superstars
Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature:
(1) Go to the “General” Settings page to choose which superstars you wish to use.
(2) Use either the keyboard shortcut (‘s’) or click to rotate through your selected superstars.
(3) Use the search operator “has:” to find all messages with your superstar (e.g. “has:red-bang”, “has:blue-star”). Learn the name of a superstar by hovering over its image in the “General” Settings page.

Pictures in chat
See your friends’ profile pictures when you chat with them.

Fixed width font
Adds an option to the reply dropdown menu that lets you view a message in fixed width font.

Custom keyboard shortcuts
Lets you customize keyboard shortcut mappings. Adds a new Settings tab from which you can remap keys to various actions.

Mouse gestures
Use your mouse to navigate with gestures. Hold right-click and move the mouse left to go to a previous conversation, move it right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the inbox view. Works best on Windows.

Signature tweaks
Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the “–” line that appears before signatures.

Random Signature
Rotates among random quotations for your email signature.

Custom date formats
Adds options to the general settings page allowing the date and time format to be changed independent of language. For example, you can use a 24-hour clock (14:57) or show dates with the day first (31/12/07).

Muzzle
Conserves screen real estate by hiding your friends’ status messages.

Old Snakey
Kick it old school with Old Snakey! Enable keyboard shortcuts and hit ‘&’ from the main page to play a game of snake.

Email Addict
Lets you take a break from email and chat by blocking the screen for fifteen minutes and making you invisible in chat.

Right-side chat
Move the chat box to the right side of the inbox.

Right-side labels
Move the labels box to the right side of the inbox.

Hide Unread Counts
Hides the unread counts for inbox, labels, etc.

Advanced IMAP Controls
Choose which labels show up in IMAP, turn off message auto-expunging, or trash messages when they’re deleted from IMAP.

Canned Responses
Email for the truly lazy. Save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form. Also automatically send emails using filters.

Default ‘Reply to all’
Make ‘Reply to all’ your default option for responding to emails.

Quote selected text
Quote the text you have selected when you reply to a message. This works best if you use keyboard shortcuts.

Navbar drag and drop
Allows you to reorder the items in your navbar using drag and drop.

Mail Goggles
Google strives to make the world’s information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you’re good to go. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the “General” settings page.

Forgotten Attachment Detector
Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so.

Vacation Time!
Lets you specify starting and ending dates for the vacation autoresponder.

Custom Label Colors
Lets you create your own combination of colors for labels. Instead of choosing one of the standard colors from the label dropdown menu, click on Add custom colors. Pick your combination of colors, hit Apply, and enjoy.

Mark as Read Button
Tired of spending all that effort to click on the more actions menu every time you want to mark messages as read without reading them? Now just enable this lab and that is just a button click away!

Go to label
Enable keyboard shortcuts and hit ‘g’ then ‘l’ to display a popup for selecting a label to go to. Also works with Quick Links.

Create a Document
Allows you to create a Google Document from an email conversation or a new blank document if your keyboard shortcuts are enabled by hitting ‘g’ then ‘w’.

Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat
Allows you to send and receive text messages (SMS) in Chat. US phones only for now.

Google Calendar gadget
Adds a box in the left column which shows your Google Calendar. See upcoming events, locations, and details.

Google Docs gadget
Adds a box in the left column which displays your Google Docs. Shows recent docs, starred docs, and has fast search.

Add any gadget by URL
Adds a “Gadgets” tab to Settings, where you’ll be able to specify the URL of any gadget. This gadget will show in a box in the left column.

latest chrome releases

justine — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:16:12 +0000

if you (unlike the many cretins) realise that chrome is merely in BETA and would like to try out their latest releases and fixes, install the Google Chrome Channel Chooser software from the dev channel.

install it, and you’ll get this popup. select dev for the cool (and in all probability buggy as hell) builds.

according to cnet:

“Build 1251 fixes bugs with areas including Microsoft’s Silverlight software, tab behavior, video playback with YouTube and other Flash players, and scalable vector graphics, and it suppresses full-text indexing of sites accessed with encrypted Web connections, according to the release notes.”

just click on About Google Chrome and update.

chrome is just google world domination stuff i have to keep up with. have arrived at the conclusion that i can not abandon my firefox (now pimped up with new add-ons to boot).

google’s shiny new browser

justine — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:59:48 +0000

of course google would come out with a browser and another step closer to world domination (if they haven’t already). being the try-hard wannabe trendy kid that i am, i already have google chrome installed on both home and work pcs.

the first thing you notice is of course google’s trademark clutter-free interface. they’ve also flipped the tabs upwards which is supposed to be a big deal, but i’m having some trouble getting used to it.

since it’s google, you’ expect the uber innovations to jump out anytime and change your life. it isn’t mind-blowing or revolutionary, but it is pretty sweet.

any new tab you open has a grid reminiscent of opera’s displaying your most visited websites. mine so far have been google, bloglines, facebook and youtube. so much for productivity at work, eh?

other things i liked: the magical invisible status bar (which only appears when you hover over links)

the download window (window being a slightly misleading term since it appears within the browser)

chrome won my heart when i found out it caters to my multiple split personalities. The Stalker loves incognito window, which lets you to surf without leaving nasty little crumbs of browser history, search history and cookies. downloads and bookmarks are still logged though, so spare a thought before you save that furry porn, you sicko.

The Geek loves the built-in task manager that lets you view the active processes (in chrome only la ok, don’t expect the browser to take over your pc) and what it’s holding up: memory, cpu and network resources. one article says to click on title bar to call it up, but i’m absolutely bat-like when it comes to finding stuff that’s right in front of my face so i use SHIFT+ESC to call it up instead.

here are some facts and figures i did not make up.

graph from zdnet

scriptnode has subjected chrome to a battering of 6 different benchmark tests which i’m not going to replicate here cos i’m not big enough a geek. all you need to know is that chrome came out harder, better, faster, stronger.

the ever prevalent google humour can be found even in browser commands. *hint hint*

about:blank
about:cache (mapped to view-cache:)
about:dns
about:histograms
about:objects
about:memory
about:plugins
about:stats
about:version
about:network
about:ipc
about:internets

what i would like is for chrome to support my favourite add-ons: Read it Later, StumbleUpon, DownloadHelper, FireFTP, Foxmarks, Delicious and Adblock. remember, kiddies, this is still in BETA and there might be some massive security flaws, so don’t fucking click any damn thing you see.

so download it and try it. or don’t. i’m just going to drag the tabs in and out of my window.

(no chrome for mac yet. booooooo.)

[update: get a portable version of chrome here.]

google week: 101 tips, tricks and hacks

justine — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:35:28 +0000

The ultimate collection of Google tips

1. The best way to begin searching harder with Google is by clicking the Advanced Search link.

2. This lets you search for exact phrases, “all these words”, or one of the specified keywords by entering search terms into the appropriate box.

3. You can also define how many results you want on the page, what language and what file type you’re looking for, all with menus.

4. Advanced Search lets you type in a Top Level Domain (like .co.uk) in the “Search within site of domain” box to restrict results.

5. And you can click the “Date, usage rights, numeric range and more” link to access more advanced features.

6. Save time – most of these advanced features are also available in Google’s front page search box, as command line parameters.

7. Google’s main search invisibly combines search terms with the Boolean construct “AND”. When you enter smoke fire – it looks for smoke AND fire.

8. To make Google search for smoke or fire, just type smoke OR fire

9. Instead of OR you can type the | symbol, like this: smoke | fire

10. Boolean connectors like AND and OR are case sensitive. They must be upper case.

11. Search for a specific term, then one keyword OR another by grouping them with parentheses, like this: water (smoke OR fire)

12. To look for phrases, put them in quotes: “there’s no smoke without fire”

13. Synonym search looks for words that mean similar things. Use the tilde symbol before your keyword, like this: ~eggplant

14. Exclude specific key words with the minus operator. new pram -ebay excludes all results from eBay.

15. Common words, like I, and, then and if are ignored by Google. These are called “stop words”.

16. The plus operator makes sure stop words are included. Like: fish +and chips

17. If a stop word is included in a phrase between quote marks as a phrase, the word is searched for.

18. You can also ask Google to fill in a blank. Try: Christopher Columbus discovered *

19. Search for a numerical range using the numrange operator. For example, search for Sony TV between £300 and £500 with the string Sony TV £300..£500

20. Google recognises 13 main file types through advanced search, including all Microsoft Office Document types, Lotus, PostScript, Shockwave Flash and plain text files.

21. Search for any filetype directly using the modifier filetype:[filetype extension]. For example: soccer filetype:pdf

22. Exclude entire file types, using the same Boolean syntax we used to exclude key words earlier: rugby -filetype:doc

23, In fact, you can combine any Boolean search operators, as long as your syntax is correct. An example: “sausage and mash” -onions filetype:doc

24. Google has some very powerful, hidden search parameters, too. For example “intitle” only searches page titles. Try intitle:herbs

25. If you’re looking for files rather than pages – give index of as the intitle: parameter. It helps you find web and FTP directories.

26. The modifier inurl only searches the web address of a page: give inurl:spices a go.

27. Find live webcams by searching for: inurl:view/view.shtml

28. The modifier inanchor is very specific, only finding results in text used in page links.

29. Want to know how many links there are to a site? Try link:sitename – for example link:www.mozilla.org

30. Similarly, you can find pages that Google thinks are related in content, using the related: modifier. Use it like this: related:www.microsoft.com

31. The modifier info:site_name returns information about the specified page.

32. Alternatively, do a normal search then click the “Similar Pages” link next to a result.

33. Specify a site to search with the site: modifier – like this: search tips site:www.techradar.com

34. The above tip works with directory sites like www.dmoz.org and dynamically generated sites.

35. Access Google Directory – a database of handpicked and rated sites – at directory.google.com

36. The Boolean operators intitle and inurl work in Google directory, as does OR.

37. Use the site: modifier when searching Google Images, at images.google.com. For example: dvd recorder site:www.amazon.co.uk

38. Similar, using “site:.com” will only return results from .com domains.

39. Google News (news.google.com) has its own Boolean parameters. For example “intext” pulls terms from the body of a story.

40. If you use the operator “source:” in Google News, you can pick specific archives. For example: heather mills source:daily_mail

41. Using the “location:” filter enables you to return news from a chosen country. location:uk for example.

42. Similarly, Google Blogsearch (blogsearch.google.com) has its own syntax. You can search for a blog title, for example, using inblogtitle:

43. The general search engine can get very specific indeed. Try movie: to look for movie reviews.

44. The modifier film: works just as well!

45. Enter showtimes and Google will prompt you for your postcode. Enter it and it’ll tell you when and where local films are showing.

46. For a dedicated film search page, go to www.google.co.uk/movies

47. If you ticked “Remember this Location” when you searched for show times, the next time you can enter the name of a current film instead.

48. Google really likes movies. Try typing director: The Dark Knight into the main search box.

49. For cast lists, try cast: name_of_film

50. The modifier music: followed by a band, song or album returns music reviews.

51. Try searching for weather London – you’ll get a full 4-day forecast.

52. There’s also a built-in dictionary. Try define: in the search box.

53. Google stores the content of old sites. You can search this cache direct with the syntax keyword cache:site_url

54. Alternatively, enter cache:site_url into Google’s search box to be taken direct to the stored site.

55. No calculator handy? Use Google’s built in features. Try typing 12*15 and hitting “Google Search”.

56. Google’s calculator converts measurements and understands natural language. Type in 14 stones in kilos, for example.

57. It does currency conversion too. Try 200 pounds in euros

58. If you know the currency code you can type 200 GBP in EUR instead for more reliable results.

59. And temperature! Just type: 98 f to c to convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade.

60. Want to know how clever Google really is? Type 2476 in roman numerals, then hit “Google Search”…

61. You can personalise your Google experience by creating a Google account. Go to www.google.com/account/ then click “Create Account”.

62. With a Google account there are lots more extras available. You’ll get a free Gmail email account for one…

63. With your Google account, you can also personalise your front page. Click “iGoogle” to add blog and site feeds.

64. Click “Add a Tab” in iGoogle to add custom tabs. Google automatically populates them with suitable site suggestions.

65. iGoogle allows you to theme your page too. Click “Select Theme” to change the default look.

66. Some iGoogle themes change with time…”Sweet Dreams” is a theme that turns from day to night as you browse.

67. Click “More” under “Try something new” to access a full list of Google sites and new features.

68. “Custom Search” enables you to create a branded Google search for your own site.

69. An active, useful service missing from the list is “Personalised Search” – but you can access it via www.google.com/psearch when you’re logged in.

70. This page lists searches you have recently made – and is divided into categories. Clicking “pause” stops Google from recording your history.

71. Click “Trends” to see the sites you visit most, the terms you enter most often and links you’ve clicked on!

72. Personalised Search also includes a bookmark facility – which enables you to save bookmarks online and access them from anywhere.

73. You can add bookmarks or access your bookmarks using the iGoogle Bookmarks gadget.

74. Did you know you can search within your returned results? Scroll down to the bottom of the search results page to find the link.

75. Search locally by appending your postcode to the end of query. For example Indian food BA1 2BW finds restaurants in Bath, with addresses and phone numbers!

76. Looking for a map? Just add map to the end of your query, like this: Leeds map

77. Google finds images just as easily and lists them at the top, when you add image to the end of your search.

78. Google Image Search recognises faces… add &imgtype=face to the end of the returned URL in the location bar, then hit enter to filter out pictures that aren’t people.

79. Keeping an eye on stocks? Type stocks: followed by market ticker for the company and Google returns the data from Google Finance.

80. Enter the carrier and flight number in Google’s main search box to return flight tracking information.

81. What time is it? Find out anywhere by typing time then the name of a place.

82. You may have noticed Google suggests alternate spellings for search terms – that’s the built in spell checker!

83. You can invoke the spell checker directly by using spell: followed by your keyword.

84. Click “I’m Feeling Lucky” to be taken straight to the first page Google finds for your keyword.

85. Enter a statistics-based query like population of Britain into Google, and it will show you the answer at the top of its results.

86. If your search has none-English results, click “Translate this Page” to see it in English.

87. You can search foreign sites specifically by clicking “Language Tools”, then choosing which countries sites to translate your query to.

88. Other features on the language tools page include a translator for blocks of text you can type or cut and paste.

89. There’s also a box that you can enter a direct URL into, translating to the chosen language.

90. Near the language tools link, you’ll see the “Search Preferences”. This handy page is full of secret functionality.

91. You can specify which languages Google returns results in, ticking as many (or few) boxes as you like.

92. Google’s Safe Search protects you from explicit sexual content. You can choose to filter results more stringently or switch it off completely.

93. Google’s default of 10 results a page can be increased to up to 100 in Search Preferences, too.

94. You can also set Google to open your search results in a new window.

95. Want to see what others are searching for or improve your page rank? Go to www.google.com/zeitgeist

96. Another useful, experimental search can be found at www.google.com/trends – where you can find the hottest search terms.

97. To compare the performance of two or more terms, enter them into the trends search box separated by commas.

98. Fancy searching Google in Klingon? Go to www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon

99. Perhaps the Swedish chef from the muppets is your role model instead? Check www.google.com/intl/xx-bork

100. Type answer to life, the universe and everything into Google. You may be surprised by the result…

101. It will also tell you the number of horns on a unicorn