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H: Are there third party Facebook clients?
I want to access Facebook without logging into facebook.com. Are there third-party Facebook clients (web-based) in which we can view posts, comments, etc and like and comment in them?
AI: Seesmic Web can do it. |
H: Is there a way in Trello to link cards?
Is there a way to maintain an inventory together with a shopping list, for instance?
That is, when the inventory gets below a certain threshold, an item should be added to the shopping list, and when it's bought it should go to the inventory, etc.
AI: No, there is no way to do this currently though it might be possible through the API. |
H: My Gmail business account not receiving email
I'm not receiving any email to my Gmail business email account.
What reasons could this be for?
And what would I need to do to fix it?
(It is being sent.)
Recently my site was switched on to a different server. I don't know if that might be relevant.
AI: The possible issues are:
GMail or another mail server outage - nothing you can do.
Incorrect MX records. See the detailed Google Help article since the instructions depend on your configuration. |
H: Responding inline to ordered lists
I often receive emails with ordered lists, and I want to respond line-by-line. If my responses are short enough, I can just do this:
something // my response goes here
something else // my response goes here
and so on. However, if I have a long (paragraph-sized) response to an item, I want to start it on its own line. But of course, Gmail then renumbers the remaining items, so I end up with something like this:
something
[A verbose response here]
something else
[something overly wordy here]
See how they are both now numbered "1" ? Usually I end up reformatting the email I'm replying to (switching the list to a bulleted list or something).
Do you have a good solution for this problem?
AI: On a previously made list within the quoted section, it is tricky if not impossible. The time taken in making it work, if it is even possible is much greater than just copying the list. The quotation markup seems to break it.
Grab (copy) the list into the composing section (above the quoted text), it should still remain in numbered list format. Then at the trailing end of each item that you would like to make a comment press Shift+Enter
Rock
Rock always beats everything
Paper
Scissors
The same works here at Stack Exchange except one must manually insert spaces pass the indent of the list. |
H: Web resources for specific types of funny pictures?
No, not lolcats. And I'm not really looking for a specific site, either.
I have often wished that I had some funny picture to illustrate a presentation, a website, a post, an email, or something else. Google image search and stock photo services have hardly ever helped me, although that may be because I'm doing something wrong.
Jeff Atwood seems to have no problem to find funny pictures for his codinghorror and stackoverflow blogs, as well as for the error messages on the trilogy sites. One of my favorites was this elephant. Other bloggers also seem to be quite good at it.
I'm wondering if I simply lack the creativity or if there's sources or methods I don't know about. I could think of the following ways to get pictures, but I'm not sure whether this is really "how they do it".
keep a collection of pictures that you stumbled upon and liked (takes quite some time to build up to a proper library) when you need a picture, there's one in there
maybe have pictures on paper, too, like from magazines or ads.
when you are looking for a picture, search online (Flickr, Google, stock photos). This has never really worked for me, I don't know why.
produce the pictures yourself, i. e. have a good library of source material or find some online and apply some creativity and suitable software. I could imagine that this could work well once you have the practice.
AI: The best method: sign up with StumbleUpon.com and install the toolbar. Set your preference to humor related categories. SU is the best when it comes to finding the quality content of your taste.
But beware, it's very very addictive.
There are other blog sites(typical Tumblr blogs) that metablog most current funny photos. Here's a list that I frequent:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
http://www.9gag.com
http://www.reddit.com
http://thedw.us/
http://thisisindexed.com/
These blogs often link to sites they metablog from, and you can discover even more from there.
All that said, let me warn you. Looking for funny pictures on the internet can lead to long-term addiction, trust me, I know. You'll be hopping from one site to the next, and share them with your buddy on aim, Skype, Twitter etc. Eventually, you'll start your own Tumblr to meta-blog these even further.... and next thing you know, you're going to bed at 4 am every night.
The end. |
H: Does Google read my email?
I'm considering getting a Gmail account. I've always been hesitant about privacy with Google, though, and especially with the new privacy policy (which is hard to understand), I have some questions:
How much of the information in my messages does Google save? For example, do they scan the entire text of every email I write (to tailor targeted ads)?
In what ways can Google use the information they save? For example, are they allowed to publish the emails I wrote on a blog? What about emails I received?
Are there any special circumstances (such as a "court order") which can increase the amount of information from emails Google is allowed to make available to the public?
AI: Here is a link to the privacy policy.
Now to answer your questions:
How much of the information in my messages does Google save? For example, do they scan the entire text of every email I write (to tailor targeted ads)?
As of late 2017, Google no longer scans your email to target ads. While there are still ads in Gmail, Google uses other information that it already has about you.
In what ways can Google use the information they save? For example, are they allowed to publish the emails I wrote on a blog? What about emails I received?
Your emails are yours, they don't use them for funny blog entries. Or
any blog entries for that matter.
Are there any special circumstances (such as a "court order") which can increase the amount of information from emails Google is allowed to make available to the public?
this is a direct quote:
Google only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of Google in the following limited circumstances:
We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of
processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these
parties agree to process such information based on our instructions
and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures.
We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such >information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy
any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable
governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service,
including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect,
prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or
(d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google,
its users or the public as required or permitted by law. |
H: How private is private data on trello?
I volunteer as a governor on a school governing board. Lots of people, teams, tasks (current, deferred and over-arching), meetings, committees, sub-committees, etc.
Trello would be an excellent tool for managing all of these complex tasks, ensuring none get dropped, and providing visibility to all. However, we have a legally binging duty of confidentiality.
So: since there is no locally installable product, how private is private? Can Fog Creek peruse the data? Or is it perhaps encrypted?
AI: It would depend on what kind of legal promise you needed.
Specific employees from Fog Creek have the ability to look at your data (sys admins, trello devs), although, as a company policy, these employees have all been instructed to get your permission first if they needed to do so. General Fog Creek employees cannot access your data.
The data is not encrypted on our servers (so if someone were to hack into our system, the data on your boards could potentially be available to them).
You can also read more on our Terms of Service, but the legal version says that Fog Creek makes "no warranty or representation regarding ... the security of the Service".
TLDR; We promise to try our best to keep your data secure and private. We won't look at your data without your permission. But legally we make no warranties about the security of the Service. |
H: How do you stop Google from using your search preferences in their ads?
Google uses what I search for in the ads that it shows me on different websites, and I don't want that because it will tell people what I'm interested in.
How do I stop Google from doing that? Is there an option somewhere I could set?
AI: The easiest way to opt out from personalized advertising is via this plugin: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/intl/en_us/plugin/
If you don't want to install the plugin you can set the Google Opt-Out Cookie on this page: http://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/
For an opt-out on multiple sites (including Google) see this page: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp |
H: How to send multiple contacts via Gmail?
Is there a way to attach multiple contact information to an email? Manually copying field-by-field to text body is even worse than sending them via SMS.
AI: From the web-based version you can using the export functionality. Select you contacts in the contacts browser, select More->Export and select vCard format for your selected contacts. You can then download the file and attach it to your email. |
H: Load multiple KMZ files or geoRSS feeds into Google Maps
I have multiple KMZ files/geoRSS feeds I want to use as different layers in Google Maps (Not Earth).
How would I do this?
I know of two ways to use KMZ files with Maps:
My Maps You can import KMZ files to your heart's content, but the problem with this is that it paginates the results after about 10 items. I want to have both KMZ files displayed, in their entirety, simultaneously. Consequently, this route does not work.
Maps search for KMZ file This groups the entire KMZ file into one layer. Awesome and exactly what I want. However, how do I get this to work with multiple KMZ files?
I can't simply combine the data into one KMZ file because I'm wanting to combine a live geoRSS feed of planning applications with the shape file I link to in point 2.
AI: I think you should be able to do this using a KML file which contains Network Links to your KMZ files.
The nice thing about the Network Links is that it doesn't have to be KMZ files it can be a script or feed that outputs a KMZ/KML file. There is a demo of how to do this here under the section Generating a Random Placemark
Basically you create a KML file in the following format:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">
<Folder>
<name>Network Links full of awesome</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Network link example to show how to overlay several KMZ files on one map</description>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 7</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 7</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag7.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 6</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 6</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag6.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 5</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 5</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag5.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 4</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 4</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag4.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 3</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 3</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag3.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 2</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 2</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag2.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
<NetworkLink>
<name>Earthquakes Mag 1</name>
<visibility>0</visibility>
<open>0</open>
<description>Earthquakes Mag 1</description>
<refreshVisibility>0</refreshVisibility>
<flyToView>0</flyToView>
<Link>
<href>http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/kml/2012_Earthquakes_Mag1.kmz</href>
</Link>
</NetworkLink>
</Folder>
</kml>
Then in Google Maps, search using the full URL pointing to your KML file and you get something like this:
This displays 7 different KMZ files on the same map but using only one URL - the KML file with all the links in. |
H: Google Apps Gmail missing import from other email service
My instance of Google Apps Gmail is missing import from other email service as shown in the screenshot below:
I was expecting what I get below with normal/personal Gmail:
Any clue?
AI: Google Apps accounts get new features on a delayed time basis - quite possibly they are meant for enterprise deployments where stability is paramount.
You'll get the import feature in due course. |
H: How can I calculate how often one string appears in a column compared to another string?
I have a column in my Google Spreadsheet which contains either OK or NOK (acceptance testing).
How can I calculate the percentage for how often OK appears compared to NOK.
AI: How about:
= COUNTIF( A1:A; "OK" ) / COUNTA( A1:A )
A1:A defining the column in which the OK/NOK values are defined. If you have more values than OK and NOK, use this:
= COUNTIF( A1:A; "OK" ) / ( COUNTIF( A1:A; "OK" ) + COUNTIF( A1:A; "NOK" ) ) |
H: Can't turn off Google Personal Search, the option isn't displayed
I'm trying to turn off personal results in Google search but I can't find where the settings are.
I am directed to my Google account's Search Settings but the section I need - "Search plus Your World" - is not on my list of options.
How do I bring this up to disable the thing?
AI: It's not under "Search plus your world", it is under "Personal results".
Make sure you are signed into your Google account, go to www.google.com, click on the gear on the top right of the page, and select "Search settings". |
H: How do I specify a filetype in a Google search?
Is there a syntax to specify a filetype in a Google search? What is it? (I'm looking for PDFs.)
AI: From Google Help about Special Search:
If you prefer to see a particular set of results without a particular file type included (for example, PDF), simply type “-filetype:pdf” within the search box along with your search term(s).
Actually, the correct syntax is – without the dash:
filetype:pdf |
H: How to hide Mutual Friends from others on Facebook ?
The new Timeline allows you to hide the friends list by going to friends tab and change the privacy to "Only me", but it still shows those friends in common .
Is there a way I can hide them?
AI: Although there is no control to hide this, it will only show a mutual friend to someone if one of the two people's friend lists are already visible. So if you hide your friend list, someone visiting your timeline will only see mutual friends that have their friend list visible to that person. So although Facebook makes it easier, the visitor can already tell that you and their other friend are friends by checking their other friend's friend list. If Facebook did not already display it, someone could just write a script to get the same information. |
H: What kind of data does TrelloScrum keep?
TrelloScrum is a Chrome extension for doing Scrum in Trello.
It 'has access to all your Trello data'.
Does it transmit anything to a server? If so, what information does this server retain?
AI: TrelloScrum stores nothing to any server! You can check it out in the code at GitHub.
Disclamer: I'm a TrelloScrum co-author. |
H: How to delete a Sify Mail account
I have created a Sify Mail account but now I want to delete it. What do I need to do?
AI: Send a request email to [email protected] to de-activate / delete your account |
H: Twitter at underscore (@_)
What does the twitter @_ mean/do? I was under the impression it might be a private message, but I don't know how to search for it to confirm!
AI: It's somebody's account. |
H: Finding the changes within a Google Doc's revision
I can use the revision history within a Google Doc to see who made what changes, but I have to search through the entire document to see which sections were touched by each change. Is there any way to find which page or sheet was changed by the selected revision?
I've experimented with both spreadsheets and documents, and neither of them scroll to the affected area. Even worse, I made a change to page 1 followed by a change to page 2 a few seconds later, and they were included in the same revision. I was using the more detailed history.
This question is similar to viewing or comparing revision differences in a new Google Docs document, but I'm not trying to compare arbitrary revisions. I just want to see what changed in the selected revision.
AI: Until Google adds this functionality, you can't do it within the web app itself.
However you could copy and paste the data from Google Docs into two text files and then use a text-comparison tool to compare those files. Of course, this is a bit cumbersome. |
H: Rap/Instrumentals on Pandora or other web apps
I like having music available anywhere I go. I also like to freestyle. I'm looking for a web app that has a good selection of rap beats. Really I want something that has a shuffle mechanism, where it will play a random one.
On Pandora, the best I could find were hip hop instrumentals, and the selection was very limited. I need it to be free. I don't mind making an account and having to log in to use it, but not registering is better for me. I'm running out of search queries to find something like this.
Where can I find such a service?
AI: Have you tried SoundCloud? Here is a group called "Hip Hop Beats", that contains more than 7500 tracks. |
H: Why is my Google Talk buddy list now full of people from Google+?
I use Pidgin to log into Google Talk every morning and as of Friday, Feb. 3, 2012 my buddy list is full of people from Google+. Did Google announced this change?
As far as I can tell, these new "buddies" are people who are in my Google+ circles and who also have me in circles.
I've found plenty of people talking about this. . .
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/topic/chat/u31u9g-DfoE/discussion - Google+ people are invading my Gmail Chat Contacts - How to prevent this?
https://plus.google.com/107770072576338242009/posts/gcfPDKiwbXL
https://plus.google.com/118066158458334363097/posts/jNNRhMA5P8n
https://plus.google.com/117301572585814320386/posts/BS285PnqNCZ
https://plus.google.com/102930814978271622526/posts/J9pkoiZDiko
https://plus.google.com/115434541762653083349/posts/Ebwssahjw7w
. . . and in this post I asked a Google employee for more information. . .
https://plus.google.com/106101825462477894946/posts/T6Q5c8Saki3
. . . but I haven't seen any announcement from Google about this change. Some people in the posts above make reference to some change they agreed to a month ago, and I very well may have clicked something, but I'd be curious to see a post from Google about what I agreed to.
It seems rather brash of Google to alter their users' buddy lists. Again, I may well have agreed to this, I guess. . .
Update: After learning more about the issue and posting an answer, I visited https://plus.google.com to look at my chat settings.
Along the left side, I see "Enable Chat" and when I click it, a dialog pops up with. . .
New! Chat with the people in your circles
You can now chat with the people in your circles (who also have you in their circles). Change which circles you can chat with by choosing Privacy Settings from the chat menu. Learn more
|OK| |Not now|
. . . and this is certainly the dialog I saw before. I don't remember if I ever clicked "OK" or not. Perhaps I clicked "OK" and then later disabled Chat? I'm not sure. Either way, without any use of the Chat feature of Google+ this week, people from my Google+ circles suddenly showed up in my buddy list in Pidgin, as I've indicated.
(Side note: I've always called it Google Talk and it's confusing to me that it's now sometimes called Chat. This issue would be better addressed in a separate question, however.)
I'm trying not to editorialize too much, but I think changing users' buddy list is a big deal. It reminds me of the privacy problems Google Buzz had at launch. I'm ambivalent about the change, however. I chatted briefly with a few of these new "buddies" and it was nice. But I'm still a little alarmed that Google would change my buddy list. I'd like to keep this question focused on the facts, but if you want to editorialize about this with me, please take it to my post about this on Google+.
Update #2: On 2012-02-06 a Google employee posted, "Do know that this sudden opt-in was a known issue that our team quickly learned of and was working on addressing. Thanks for your patience and understanding."
Within a couple days by buddy list was back to normal; the people from Google+ who had been added to my buddy list were gone, as I reported in Google's forum. (I still haven't clicked "Enable chat" in Google+.)
Perhaps everyone's buddy list is back to normal now. Perhaps this question is now too localized, if it only applied to a relatively brief period of time. I do think it helps document an event that makes me somewhat wary of Google's actions, at least. Again, I'll probably enable this feature in the future anyway, but this event seems to have upset a number of people.
AI: As another answer kindly points out, http://www.blogworld.com/2011/11/21/new-google-feature-chat-with-people-in-your-circles/ explains that in November 2011, Google+ started showing the following dialog:
"New! Chat with the people in your circles.
You can now chat with the people in your circles (who also have you in their circles). Change which circles you can chat with by choosing Privacy Settings from the chat menu."
|OK| |Not now|
That post links to http://mashable.com/2011/11/21/google-plus-circle-chat/ which links to a Google+ help page entitled "Chat with People in Mutual Circles", which seems to be the definitive article from Google on the matter. That article links to the Google+ Known Issues which has an entry under "Chat" that says "New contacts have been added to my Chat list". It reads:
If you've noticed that your Chat list is longer, it's likely because you're using Chat in Google+. All of the contacts in your Google+ Chat enabled Circles are added to your Chat lists across all Google products (ex. Gmail, iGoogle, orkut).
If you don't want someone to be able to chat with you, you can add them to a circle that's not enabled for Chat.
Update: A Google employee posted, "Do know that this sudden opt-in was a known issue that our team quickly learned of and was working on addressing." |
H: How to resume auto focus on Google Hangout
When I start a Google Hangout, the video is auto focusing with the person talking. But once I click on just one of the person's video, it just focuses on that person. I want it to return to the auto focus video mode again. Is there any way to do this?
AI: Just click on the focused person's video again to return to auto focusing. |
H: Control Trello list visibility to members
Is it possible to assign a per list visibility to certain Trello members?
I deal with contractors who I want to be able to assign tasks to but don't want them seeing all of the lists (I have "pending quotes"/"pending quote acceptance" lists) and I'd love the ability to assign visibility to a list or even better, only to tasks that a member is assigned to.
I've looked through Trello's work board and can't see any planned feature around it. I've asked members I've added if they can see all lists/tasks and they can, so by default they can see it all.
Is this currently do-able? I don't want to create separate boards, as it segments the whole workflow too much and defeats the purpose of using Trello.
AI: It's not possible to assign visibility to certain members per list or per card. |
H: How to create a workout station on Pandora?
I know Pandora now has the ability to create genre stations, but I'd like to create a station with a decent variety of up temp songs for working out. The only option I can think of is to curate a station until its shaped into a format good for working out, but I am hoping for an out of the box solution.
So other than spending time to curate a station is there a way to create a workout station?
AI: Pandora doesn't offer the option of creating custom stations by genres but it has an extensive list of curated genre stations, which includes just over a dozen of workout stations in different styles. |
H: How to migrate all my Google data to another acount?
I'm using Gmail, Google Reader, calendar, Picasaweb and other services.
I've decide to change my Google ID. And I am moving Gmail data first (via POP3), but it is a very hard job. I'm afraid to move other services' data. Does Google supports migrating from one account to another?
AI: It is not currently possible to merge Google accounts, but it can be done on a per product basis. Otherwise, you will need to find workarounds that are not official Google protocol. |
H: Gmail: jump to all emails just after the one I searched for?
In Gmail, I go through all emails starting from the last one, and I make sure none of them needs answering. If I find one that needs answering, I answer it, but then I lose track of where it was in the list, to keep going through the ones after that. How can I search for that email and then jump to "see all" again from that point on?
For example, I go through 1120 emails, I answer the 1120th, but then I want to go back to reading 1121th and subsequent. How can I quickly jump to email 1120th then go to all the other older ones, without having to manually go to 1120th in batches of 50?
Any ideas?
AI: You can increase the number of conversations per page to 100 by going into Settings -> General (the first tab) and changing the number in Maximum page size (2nd from the top).
The new interface also has human-readable pagination links: http://mail.google.com/mail/#all/p2
Also, if you find yourself going through 1,100 emails, you should really consider Inbox Zero, using labels, and creating filters - it will save you time looking for emails. |
H: Download all of someone else's Facebook photos
Is there a way to download all the photos from a Facebook user in a single click way?
There are several tools which will download every photo in an album, but if the user has many albums then even that can become tedious.
AI: No. This isn't allowed per section 3 clause 2 of Facebook's Terms of Service:
You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission
The popular album downloader PhotoJacker was abandoned because of that. (Disclosure: The former developer is my friend.) |
H: Does Google+ have something similar to Facebook's groups?
I'd like to discuss a certain topic with some people and have all posts related to that discussion in one place so they can be checked separately and not become lost in my feed.
AI: There is a workaround that might work for you
You could create a google+ site regarding the topic and add the contributing people to circles.
https://plus.google.com/pages/manage
http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=1710599&hlrm=de&ctx=topic&answer=1710600 |
H: Why doesn't Trello notify me of actions that happen on my boards, even though I've set it to Instant Notification?
We started using Trello within my company, and we love it. But there is one thing that could be a total deal breaker: email notifications are not working as expected. According to this post, we should receive notifications via email when added to a card, invited to something or a card we were assigned to changed. None of these happens to us. Yes, we did turned on email notifications, I even have it set up to send them immediately.
Also, when I first started using it on Google Chrome, it asked me if I wanted to allow Trello show notifications, which I did. Never seen a chrome notification popping up either.
Are we missing something?
AI: This is a common misunderstanding of the way Trello notifications work, not a bug. We only notify you on stuff you don't see. So if you keep a browser window open with Trello on it, you won't get notifications (for now).
Subscriptions to boards and cards, which is forthcoming, should address the need for email notification on new actions. For now, notifications only notify on stuff that happens while you're away. |
H: Google Calendar "URL is too long to process and That's all we know" error
I recently received an email from Google (it was an email address ending with @google.com) On the right hand side of my gmail, there was a link Add event to Google Calendar. Upon clicking this link, I received the following error message. What could be the reason for this and how do I resolve this issue?
AI: Refer the information about this error FIX: "414 Request-URI Too Large" Error Message from ISA Server and HTTP Error 414 Request URI too long |
H: On Flickr, how do I set a photo location using latitude and longitude coordinates?
On Flickr, while browsing my photostream, I can click "Add this photo to your map!" to add location information to a photo. The "Add this photo to your map!" input field then allows locations to be entered by name, or by scrolling around on a map.
How can I enter a location directly via latitude and longitude?
Entering text like "51.7991 N 10.6156 E" does not work.
AI: It looks like you are entering the coordinates in the wrong format.
These are valid formats for coordinates:
37.794721, -122.401388
37°47'41"N, 122°24'05"W
37°47'41", -122°24'05"
37°47.6833', -122°24.0833'
geo:lat=37.794721 geo:lon=-122.401388
Or you can search for addresses or landmarks, the more specific the
better. These are good:
475 Sansome St, San Francisco
101 Oxford Street, London
The London Eye
And these are bad:
The West End, London
Adelaide, Australia
France
Taken from this Flickr article on Geo Formats |
H: What's static.ak.fbcdn.net that appears on the status bar of my browser everytime Facebook is loading?
I find the message: "waiting for static.ak.fbcdn.net..." on the status bar of my browser everytime I load Facebook and many a times even while loading other websites.
I searched on net and found out that static.ak.fbcdn.net stands for Static Akamai Facebook Content Delivery Network. I reckon that static.ak.fbcdn.net is the server URL from where Facebook delivers contents to our browser. Am I right? Can anyone elaborate?
Also, why does the above mentioned message appear while loading other websites too?
AI: Not sure, but this looks like serving static content from akamai on behalf of the FaceBook Content Distribution Network,
For even big webservers, many times it isn't efficient to have common items like the Facebook logo or ads from facebook.com. Akamai (and others) have built efficient content caches all over the world that route to the closest to you (network wise) cache. This in theory makes things faster as you hit a local cache, and lowers the hits on facebook.com, making it faster too. The domain fbcdn.net is actually run by Akamai, on Facebook's behalf.
Other websites probably have a bit of HTML/JavaScript code hitting 'Facebook' but in reality hits Facebook and the Facebook Akamai servers as well. |
H: Disable the shortcuts feature in Yahoo! Mail
I've noticed that Yahoo's shortcut feature has come back (presumably because a cookie or account setting got flipped). I tried finding the setting to disable it but alas, no luck.
I have already reviewed the instructions here, but unfortunately the option doesn't appear to be available.
I'm referring to the feature where certain words in the email body are highlighted and you can click on the link.
AI: I think I've found a solution - Yahoo! changed the turn off option from search box (question mark). You must go to the bottom of left menu (folders, etc.) and click settings icon of Applications and then find the Shortcut app and remove it.
More information here |
H: Why do some YouTube videos repeat by themselves?
Examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ1dYrjuYf4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu3j3Qh7sTE
This happens in all my browsers (some which doesn't have any extensions installed).
Why does this happen?
AI: YouTube users can loop their videos by abusing the annotation system, specifically the pause function. If you turn off annotations when viewing the video, you will notice that it no longer loops. |
H: Posting in Google+ that is automatically reposted on Facebook
How can I post in Google+ that is automatically reposted on Facebook?
Are there any browser extensions for this in Google Chrome or Firefox?
AI: You can use this Google Chrome extension.
You can also have a look at this article for a more generic solution |
H: How do I link to an image with the new (early 2012) Facebook lightbox?
I love the new lightbox, but one thing I miss from the old lightbox was the ability to copy the URL directly from the addressbar of the current picture, to send someone to a page to see the picture with comments.
The new lightbox only shows the url as facebook.com. How do I get the URL to the new lightbox?
AI: If you want to link to the image lightbox, just right click the gear icon & click on copy shortcut /link.
To get a a direct hotlink to the image, clicking on the Gear brings up a Download option, so right click that to get the hotlink URL. |
H: How can I set up Trello desktop notifications?
What do I have to set up in Trello in order to get pop-up notifications through Google Chrome?
There's a bug on the Trello development board about strange desktop notification behavior, but I haven't seen any documentation or way to set these up in Google Chrome. Based on the comments on the card, there must be at least a few people who have gotten it to work.
AI: Unfortunately, this is a little bit hidden in the current UI. Here's how you enable desktop notifications:
Go to a board
Scroll to the bottom of the "Activity" widget (lower right)
Click "Allow Notifications"
This setting is per-browser (so you'll need to re-enable it if you use a different computer), and only works in Chrome.
If you don't see that link, check the Notifications section of chrome://settings/content to see what your notifications settings are (they may be set to "Do not allow"), and chrome://settings/contentExceptions#notifications to see which sites you're currently allowing/preventing notifications on.
Notes
You'll only get notifications when someone @mentions you in a comment (e.g. when they say "Hey @Derek, what do you think?") |
H: Birthday events area in Facebook Fan Page?
As we all know, in a normal Facebook account you get a small Birthday events area in the upper-right corner of the screen. I was wondering is it possible to have the same feature for a fan page I created such that the birthdays of the people who liked the fan page will appear similar in my admin interface like a normal FB account?
AI: No. DOB (when listed with a name) is part of the personal identifiable information and, thus, is protected by privacy agreements. |
H: Change default view (home) in Google Docs?
I hate Google Docs Home view. It contains a lot of documents that were shared with me and are marginally relevant to me.
I want to choose what shows when I open Docs.
In essence, I want "starred" to be my home view.
Any way to do that? Maybe a Chrome/FF extension?
AI: I have not seen any extension but you can make your own userscript to redirect any time your browser hits Google Docs homepage
// ==UserScript==
// @name Google Docs Set Homepage as Starred
// @description Redirects the homepage to the Starred page
// @include https://docs.google.com/
// @include https://docs.google.com/#home
// @exclude https://docs.google.com/#starred
// @run-at document-start
// ==/UserScript==
location.href= "https://docs.google.com/#starred"
Save as whateverfilename.user.js and let your browser install it
I didn't include the tab link on from the Google bar on top.
https://docs.google.com/?tab=oo&authuser=0#home |
H: Is there a way to recover Gmail messages that were deleted maliciously from an account?
A friend of mine fell victim to a mailbox hijacker the other day, and Gmail helped her recover the inbox (via whatever method they do so, I was not present for that). I showed her how to recover her contacts (that has a handy recovery menu option) but she's missing data for about a week of email. It's not "hidden" in a filter, it's not "in the deleted bin".
Is there any way to get all of that emails back?
AI: Once messages have been deleted by clicking Delete Forever it is not possible to retrieve the messages via the the Gmail interface.
In cases where an account has been compromised, you can file a report to Google and request that they investigate whether recovery is possible.
Recovering deleted Gmail messages for compromised accounts
Source: Google Help article |
H: How to scrobble Google Music to Last.fm?
Is there a way to scrobble my music from Google Music to last.fm?
I tried some extensions which did not work for Chromium (sorry for the vagueness, but I don't remember which I tried) so I was wondering if anyone had set something up which worked for them.
I don't mind if I have to use a certain browser, e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Opera -- as long as it works.
AI: Use Last.fm Scrobbler as Chrome extension. 11,862 users. It should work. Sorry, being in India, couldn't try it out. |
H: Any way to reorder photos on 500px?
I've been uploading some of my better photos to 500px, and thought I'd order my photos by preference, but I can't find any way to do that. Is it not possible?
AI: Currently there is no option to reorganize the images on your public profile, only within your portfolio can you drag & drop images to the order you like. We will be introducing an option to re-arrange and categorize your work, it is coming very soon.
Samantha
Customer Support
500px.com
From their Support Center. |
H: Sum column only if another column has an empty value
I am trying to get a sum of column values in a Google Spreadsheet only if there is no value in the adjacent column. Consider the following example:
A | B
-------
40 | 50
20 | 20
30 |
10 |
The sum of A should return 40.
I tried to use the following function:
=SUM(FILTER(A:A, ISEMPTY(B:B)))
but all I get is: Error: Unknown function name ISEMPTY. Can anyone tell me what's wrong or how to do it properly?
AI: Replace ISEMPTY with ISBLANK
Your formula should be as follows:-
=SUM(FILTER(A:A, ISBLANK(B:B)))
Now you will get the result as 40 |
H: Alternatives to Amazon SES
Not sure if there are other alternatives to Amazon SES...I have tried google but most I got are "Email Marketing or Campaign" services, but what I am trying to look for is something similar to Amazon SES, which just handles email sending...
AI: You have plenty of alternatives for email delivery services:
PostageApp
SendGrid
Postmark
Mailjet
Critsend
And these are just five of these services off the top of my head. All of the above services should have free accounts, so kick the tires a bit and see which you like best.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I am the Product Manager of PostageApp. Happy to answer questions!) |
H: Most suitable blog for private statuses & photos
Since the birth of my daughter I have been looking for the most optimum way of sharing events and photos in her life with my family. But I am struggling to finding a blog tool that fulfils all my requirements.
Currently I am using a mixture of email, Dropbox, Picasa and Facebook, plus the odd post on Twitter, Flickr and Google+. This is however a mess for family to keep up with, and I would like a chronological order of all posts about her, like a baby photo album of old.
My requirements are:
All or most posts & photos are private not public
Can upload a lot of photos
Can post the odd status (eg first tooth, steps, weight etc)
Will be around for quite a while.
My deductions so far:
Google+ has nice features. The Circles is a great way of restricting access. The Picasa integration for photos is excellent. However Google plus is a non starter as you cannot create an account for a minor, I don't think you can create multiple accounts, and I do not want to mix my own unrelated posts with hers.
Facebook is an alternative. The new timeline does browse nicely. But probably not allowed to create an account for 0 year old...
Picasa is a great online photo album for bulk private photos. But photos & videos only.
I used to run my own Coppermine, but prefer a hosted service. Again photos only.
Same for Dropbox.
A private Blogger blog is possibly a solution. Not sure how it does it with loads of photos per post. But will google kill it soon and merge it with google+?
The problem with Google+ & Facebook etc is to convince my relatives to create accounts. My mum is very anti FB etc... Sending a direct private link is usually the easier solution.
AI: Have you considered a Posterous private space?
From http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/09/12/posterous-is-now-spaces-a-photo-focused-app-for-private-sharing/ :
The feature that will make Posterous Spaces easy to connect with
non-technical friends or family members is email. When a Posterous
user shares photos with family members who are not registered on
Posterous, those family members will still receive the photos via
email [...] Unlike photo apps such as the popular Instagram app,
with Posterous you can post multiple photos in one post, and you can
create private groups. |
H: How do I opt-out of "Expert Alert" emails from Experts Exchange?
I get these alerts too often. Ideally I wouldn't receive them at all.
I have opted out of receiving the two categories of emails shown on the settings page, Newsletters and Marketing Email, but I can't find the area for Expert Alerts.
With out resorting to an email filter, does anyone know how to get rid of these emails?
AI: The question alerts are set in your Saved Search options. Login, then go here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/savedSearches.jsp
and either edit the saved search to remove email notifications or delete the search entirely. That will stop the emails immediately. It's not affected by Newsletters or Marketing because this is something you set. |
H: Gmail search Sent Mail / simple way to refer to myself
Let's say I want to search the items that I sent to other people for messages on a topic. In other email apps, I'd typically go to that folder then hit search (and only broaden to all folders if I couldn't find what I wanted there). Gmail assumes you want to search everything - what's the simplest way to limit this? (As I'm typing this, an idea occurs to me, but I'll ask a related question.)
How can I easily refer to myself in Gmail search? I'd like to say "to:me" or something similar to refer to emails sent to this account, or from this account, etc. rather then having to specify/select this account's address from my contacts.
AI: As you mentioned, the keyword "me" should work.
from:me label:sent "topic goes here" |
H: Reusable Card Format
Is there a way to make a reusable card format?
For example I have card that always has the same 3 checklist items on it. I would like to be able to save a copy of if it, so I can add a new card like it with the checklist already part of it.
AI: The team is working on reusable cards, lists, boards, and checklists, beginning with checklists (the simplest case). It's been made known that users would want the option to save with checklists, members, etc.
There is a card for it here: https://trello.com/c/LIqasVwP |
H: Set first day of week on Trello calendar to Monday?
Is it possible to set the first day of the week to Monday instead of Sunday for the due calendar?
AI: It's not currently possible. There is more work to be done with date formatting, timezones, etc. |
H: Fan has posted to my Facebook page wall and it's not visible
I have set up a Facebook page for a club I'm acting as webmaster for. One of the people who has "liked" the page, has posted to the wall (it's visible in my notifications) but it's not visible on the wall.
How can I approve this?
How can set posts from fans to display by default?
AI: While you are on the wall of the page, click the link at the top that says "Everyone" - this is available just below the image strip. |
H: YouTube account switching issues
Possible Duplicate:
Getting Youtube and Gmail to work under two different accounts
I have two Gmail accounts, one provided by my university, the other personal. The school one does not support YouTube, the personal one does.
I have enabled account switching to log into both at the same time.
No matter what order I do it in, if I am logged into the school account in addition to my personal one, YouTube will tell me that my school account does not support YouTube, I have to log out of that etc.
How can this be "streamlined"?
AI: Try this. Log out of all your accounts, log into YouTube using your personal Gmail account and then log in using your school account. |
H: Format credit card numbers as four digit blocks in Google Sheets
I have this credit card number in a Google Sheets of the following format:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
How can I make it display like XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX or XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX where they're in four digit blocks?
AI: With dashes (-):
=CONCATENATE(LEFT(A1,4)&"-"&MID(A1,5,4)&"-"&MID(A1,9,4)&"-"&RIGHT(A1,4))
or with spaces ():
=CONCATENATE(LEFT(A1,4)&" "&MID(A1,5,4)&" "&MID(A1,9,4)&" "&RIGHT(A1,4)) |
H: How to add Picasa web album service to Apps account
I just created a Google Apps account (domain name) but only the core services like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Sites are activated. However, Photos (Picasa web album) is missing and I don't know how to add it as a service.
AI: Head over to https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain/SelectServices & add from there. |
H: Can you create rules in Gmail?
In MS Outlook, you can create rules so different kinds of mail can go in different folders. Can you do the same thing in Gmail, so all your emails from a list go in a specific subfolder instead of your general inbox?
AI: Yes. See the note on point 4 below.
Gmail's filters allow you to manage the flow of incoming messages. Using filters, you can automatically label, archive, delete, star, or forward your mail, even keep it out of Spam.
To create a filter
Click the down arrow in your search box. A window that allows you to specify your search criteria will appear.
Enter your search criteria. If you want to check that your search worked correctly, click the search button.
Click Create filter with this search at the bottom of the search window. If you need to verify the search results, you can click the x to collapse the filter options. Clicking the down arrow again will bring the window back with the same search criteria you entered.
Choose the action(s) you want the filter to take.
To keep organized, many people like to have incoming messages automatically labeled and removed from their inbox until they can look at them later at a more convenient time. If you want to do this, make sure to select Skip the Inbox (Archive it) and Apply the label: when you create your filter.
Click the Create filter button.
Also,
To use a particular message to create a filter
Select the message in your message list.
Click the More button, then Filter messages like these.
Enter your filter criteria in the appropriate field(s).
From the Gmail help page on using filters. |
H: How can I hide my friends list in Facebook?
I don't want people to see my friend list when they look at my Facebook account. How can I hide my friends list from people looking at my Facebook account?
When I google for this, I see about 100 different answers, but they all refer to old Facebook versions, with buttons that are no longer there, so I'm trying to find an up to date answer.
AI: As of 10/11/13:
Click on your name in top right corner
Click “Friends” at the top
Click the pencil image to “Manage”
Click “Edit Privacy”
Modify “Friend List” section by selecting from the drop down menu
If you have timeline (which I assume you have):
Go to your profile
Click on your friends list
Click on Edit
In the popup, click on the icon from the right—in this case the globe, but you might have a different icon, like friends
Select Only me (or whatever other option you want)
Is this what you are looking for?
Go to your profile and click Edit in the top right corner
From the menu in the left column, click Friends and Relationships
Go to the Friends section and use the audience selector on the right side to control who can see your friends |
H: Limit search results to a specific site with DuckDuckGo
Is it possible to limit the search to specific site using DDG? Much like site:*.co.uk on Google.
AI: Yes you can - it is the same syntax.
Site search:
You can add site:domain to your search to restrict the results to a particular domain, e.g. duckduckgo site:gabrielweinberg.com.
Click the site icons next to the results (on the left) to do a site search for the domain related to that result. You can also do the same
by clicking the 'More results' link to the right of the URL line for a
given result.
Extracted from this DuckDuckGo article
You can use the "bangs" functionality and directly search most major sites.
Or you can type in a command like !amazon bags, which will take you
to Amazon.com and auto-search it for 'bags'.
We call these commands !bangs, and this syntax works for 100s of
sites:
Most big sites work, e.g. !youtube (see full list below)
Most generic keywords work too, e.g. !images
There are also shorter versions, e.g. !g (google) !i (images) !yt (youtube)
!ducky or '! ' or '\' will take you to the first result.
!safeoff will run a search with safe search off.
See this DuckDuckGo article for more information on how the "bangs" functionality works. |
H: Backup Google Apps email
I am using Google Apps for email. Is there any way I can backup all the emails into another Gmail Account?
Please also let me know any alternative solution too.
AI: For new incoming emails:
In settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, add a forwarding address.
Also, you may want to set a filter "is:spam" then "Never send it to Spam" to also forward all emails. ( I prefer to have all my emails backed up, and manually remove spam later.)
For exisiting emails, first, in Google Apps email account, in settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, "Enable POP for all mail". then import them into your backup gmail account using POP3 in settings, Accounts and Import, "Import mail and contacts"
Important: In your main account, remember to select option to leave existing emails in your main account(In POP Download:, "2. When messages are accessed with POP keep Mail's copy in the Inbox"), else the import will move all the emails into your backup account.
Also, this might help: Migrating Gmail account to new Google Apps email and leaving a copy behind |
H: How to add comments or notes with attachments on Trello
I want to couple a comment and an attachment, but it seems that attachments exist separately from comments. I want to make a feature request, but before I do, I'd like to make sure it's not possible.
I use Trello in my research, almost as a lab notebook. I have comments about my progress on a task, and frequently I also include plots as image attachments. I'd like to add a comment specific to the image, and usually I have to do this subsequently as a separate comment: "The plot attached below shows ...".
Is there a way to add a comment to an attachment?
AI: No, there isn't currently a way to add an attachment to a comment. |
H: How to see how many Twitter followers someone else has gained or lost over time?
I'd like to see if certain Twitter users are growing their followings or losing followers. Is there any application out there that can give me access to this information, preferably in graph form? (Klout, it appears, fails again to offer anything of much use here.)
AI: TwitterCounter.com lets you see up to 6 months history of followers, following, and tweets. To see 6 months worth you have to tweet a message, but 3 months or less is available to see right away. Just sign in with twitter and search for a user and up it comes. Eg @spolsky: |
H: How can I delete a message from inbox without deleting it from sent mail?
I belong to a listserv that sends me copies of messages I send to the list address. When I delete the messages from my inbox, GMail also deletes the message from my sent folder. I'm aware that the whole deal with GMail and tagging is that you only have one copy of a message and if you delete it from one place it's gone. However, it doesn't seem like that should be the case with Sent mail.
Is there any setting or add-in I can use that will prevent emails I delete from other tags from being deleted from the Sent messages?
(I use both the GMail web client and Thunderbird; solutions for either one are welcome.)
AI: Don't delete it from your inbox. Archive it.
Seriously it is that simple.
You can put a label on the email if you want. When you archive the email the inbox label is removed. If it has no other label it will still be in "All Mail" and in "Sent Mail". |
H: Changing YouTube videos and descriptions
Once a YouTube video is uploaded, can I make changes to the video (i.e. re-upload a new video that will appear at the same URL)?
Can I change the description?
Or alternatively, can I make the YouTube URL forward to a new YouTube URL?
(I will be editing a video after it's uploaded, and I'll want to keep the newly edited video at the same URL.)
AI: You cannot make changes to the video once you uploaded it on YouTube. Each video has a unique URL that cannot be changed.
You can always change title, description, tags, and category. You need to go to your "Video Manager" page to change these.
You cannot forward a YouTube URL to a new YouTube URL. |
H: How to transfer a YouTube username to another email?
The question:
How can I transfer a YouTube username across to my another email so just that email address is associated with the YouTube username?
Or alternatively how can I connect the 2 accounts so that they both use that YouTube username?
Details:
I have a username on youtube that is connected to an email address that I don't use much. This is a gmail address.
I would like to use that youtube username with another email address. This is a @mydomain email address that I use with Google Apps.
The email address that I want to use also has a youtube account. But I don't mind getting rid of that youtube username.
I haven't uploaded videos with either of the usernames.
Is there a way I can switch my youtube username across to the email I usually use?
I see there's a 'Close account' option in youtube, but if I use that, the username doesn't become available (I tried it on another account.)
If I go to google.com/settings for the @gmail user, I can't add my @mydomain as an email address because there's already a google account associated with that email.
So I'm looking for a way to transfer the youtube username across to my other email so just that email address is associated with the youtube username. Or to connect the 2 accounts so that they both use that youtube username.
How can i do this?
AI: It seems that you have a chance according to the official help page:
Transferring my YouTube account
If your current YouTube account is linked to a Google Account, it may be possible to transfer your YouTube account depending on when it
was created. Some settings will be available to you and,
unfortunately, some may not.
This is an option for users who created their YouTube Account before
May 2009 and then linked to a Google Account.
To transfer your YouTube account from an existing Google Account to
another existing Google Account, follow these steps:
Sign in to YouTube.
Unlink your YouTube account.
Link your YouTube account to the account of your choice.
The tips provided in the article are only for users who created
their YouTube Account before May 2009. These tips will not help users
who created their YouTube Account after May 2009. |
H: Request for somebody to comment on a section of a Google Docs document?
How can I request for one of the people with access to a Google Docs document to comment on a specific section of it? Can a section be tagged as "request for comments" towards a specific user of that document?
AI: Insert -> Comment. Then put + followed by the user's e-mail address. For example, [email protected] Please revise this section. |
H: Error 403 clicking link in Google Code
When I click the "dialone" link on this Google Code updates page, it gives a 403 error.
I would guess the dialone project has been deleted, but in that case wouldn't the link be disabled by Google's smart engineers?
Or is the project really deleted and it is a bug in Google Code?
AI: I'd assume you do not have proper permissions to view this link. There could be various reasons why.
For Example the content that was previously on that link may no longer exist.
This most likely is a bug. |
H: How do I customize font styles in Google Docs?
Google Docs provides several styles such as header 1, header 2, normal text, etc.
How do I customize these styles? I don't like the default color of light grey for header 4. I want it to be black.
AI: Set the default header style to the text you need
Change the style to your liking
Select the restyled text if it's deselected
Click on the style button then on the arrow next to the heading level you want to restyle
In the menu, select Update [style] to match selection |
H: In Facebook, how can I hide relationship status, profile pictures, etc?
It seems like there are a number of pieces of data that is hard to understand how to control privacy on.
How can I hide from the public:
Relationship Status
Profile Picture
AI: If you have Timeline (which will become default in the near future):
For Relationship Status:
Login to Facebook
Go to your profile (Timeline)
Click on About underneath your picture
Scroll down to Relationships and Family
Click Edit
In the popup, click on the privacy icon on the right, next to Relationship status
Choose Only Me (or appropriate)
Click Save
The profile picture can't be hidden, it's public. Even if you hide the Profile Pictures album, the current profile picture remains visible. |
H: Forward an email in the reply to another email through Gmail
I am using Gmail.
I know how to forward an email received from A to B, by simply choosing the forward option for the email to be forwarded, and putting B's address there.
But I wonder how to forward an email received from A to B, within a reply to another email received from B? Or what do people usually do alternatively in such a case?
AI: I think copy and paste is your only option here. There is (to my knowledge) no way of attaching another email to a new one in gmail. |
H: How does G+ hangout Screen sharing work?
I'm curious if it's using HTML5 or if there's a plugin/extension required to run it. Anyone have ideas on how this works, and if there's any known implementations of it outside of G+?
AI: Currently it uses the Google Talk voice & video browser plugin. If it is not already installed, you will be prompted to install it the first time you use a hangout.
As evidence that this plugin is responsible for screen sharing, if you look at the plugin on your computer you can see that it contains several strings related to screen sharing. (E.g. on a Mac see
/Library/Application Support/Google/GoogleTalkPlugin.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Localizable.strings
in a Terminal.)
Google began the WebRTC project to bring real time communications capabilities directly to the browser, and it is expected that Google will transition chat and hangouts to use WebRTC once it has been standardized. WebRTC is already available as part of development builds of Google Chrome. |
H: How to link to a certain part of a website?
Say I am reading an article on the New York Times or VICE and I want to send a link to my brother. Is there a way to link to a specific part of the article or site, much in the same way that you can link to a specific point in a YouTube video ie. by appending a tag to the URL?
Is there another way of linking and referring to a specific point on a website?
AI: You can link to any HTML element that has an id attribute set, by appending #id's_value to the end of the page's URL. This, of course, requires two things: 1) the specific point to which you want to link has an element with the id set; and 2) you search it in the page's source.
This is how a Wikipedia article's Contents links work, for instance, but I don't think it will work on the NY Times articles, since the entire article is made of paragraphs (<p>) that don't have the id attribute set.
On the other hand, there are apps like Citebite, that do exactly what you want.
Link directly to quotes in Web pages.
Paste a chunk of text and the URL of the page containing the text and in return get a link that opens directly to your selection and highlights it. |
H: How do I delete or edit a section in Google News?
I added a section to Google News with the wrong title/search and now I'd like to delete it or edit it. How do I do this?
AI: Update: Google News no longer allows you to add or remove sections, so the answer below is out of date.
For the latest on customizing what you see on Google News, visit the Google News help site here.
Click the 'Manage Sections' pencil icon
Hover over the mis-titled section and click the 'Delete' trash-can icon
'Save' your changes |
H: Amazon signed me up for almost all Amazon Web Services. Is this usual?
I wanted try Amazon SNS, so I clicked the Sign Up button on its tab on the management console. Amazon approved my signup and in my account under "Services You're Signed Up For" I see almost all Amazon's web services.
Is this normal?
Do they sign you up for everything in the hope you will use them?
They won't charge me for services I don't touch at all, right?
AI: That's strange, I recently added S3 to my account but didn't get all the other stuff lumped in.
AWS stuff is pay-as-you-go, so just having them activated in your account doesn't mean you're going to pay for them.
You can also remove 'activated' services from your account on that same page, if you just don't want them activated. |
H: In Facebook, is there a way to share images and posts across multiple people?
My wife and I both have Facebook accounts and our friends overlap lets say 70%. So if we get back from a trip, she will post photos. I don't want to also upload and post photos as:
Then everyone in that 70% overlap will get two different posts
We are maintaining the set of pictures in two places (and takes twice as long to upload)
That being said, I do want to show these photos to my other 30% of people that don't overlap with her.
I see I can just share her post but then the 70% of photos still get "hit" twice. What is the best way of managing this issue with out duplication? This duplication is not the biggest deal in the world but I just wanted to see if there was a more elegant way of dealing with this.
AI: You can try tagging yourself in the pictures, so you both your friends and hers can see the pictures. The best way to tackle it is by just adding the pictures on her Facebook (with privacy setting Friends of friends) and sharing it once on your wall.
Hope this helps you. |
H: Backup services on Amazon S3
What backup services are there that run through AmazonWS accounts?
I see ImageCloudLock, but the 'solution url' for this service leads to an error page, so I guess this product is not current.
Are there any others? I don't see any.
AI: The storage services I know that use S3 are:
JungleDisk can use either Amazon S3 or RackSpace Cloudfiles as its backing store.
smugmug (a photo-hosting service) has an optional Smugvault feature that allows you to store non-image files, and it's backed by S3.
Amazon Cloud Drive - 20 GB is $20/year, the first 5 GB is free, though I don't think there are very nice automated clients like, say, JungleDisk, for using it.
Now, if you're thinking of using Amazon S3 as a literal backup, it might not be very cost effective. 1 GB is $0.14 USD to store, plus you pay for put/get requests (though for backups, probably not significant). 10 GB is $1.40, 100 GB is $14, and so on until you start crossing the terabyte tier where prices start dropping per gigabyte.
Storing a small amount of data would be fine, but if you're talking about significant storage, there are plenty of alternatives, depending on your needs.
There are plenty of alternatives that are much more economical once you start scaling up your storage needs:
Backup-style services - these are ones that actually are about backing up your data, in case your computers explode and you need to get your data:
CrashPlan - they use their own internal storage cloud
BackBlaze - same, internal storage pods
Carbonite
More dropbox-y type services, where your files can be retrieved
Spideroak - zero-knowledge storage, you buy storage in blocks, at $10/month per 100 GB
UbuntuOne
And more, like Wuala and Windows LiveDrive. |
H: Find number in Google with wildcards
I want to find a number that starts with "221" and is an 11 digit number.
For example: 221XXXXXXXX
Does Google support any method to find something like this? Perhaps with regex or wildcards?
AI: This used to be possible. As far as I can tell, this capability has been removed. I suspect that they were uncomfortable with how easy it was to find lists of credit card numbers, phone numbers, and social security numbers using this function. |
H: How do I stop the Wordpress.com post editor from inserting nonbreaking spaces?
The Wordpress.com post editor has an annoying habit of inserting the character in posts. This wouldn't be a problem if it inserted it appropriately, or even consistently. This is, alas, not the case; as far as I can tell, there's no pattern. It'll go for weeks at a time, barely using one; then filling a post with dozens of these things.
Sure, I could get BBEdit to strip these out, but is it possible to disable this in the first place? Even better, is it possible to set things up so that posts I get from other writers get these stripped out? (My guess, based on how their format tags fall, is that most of them use the visual editor.) Or am I just gonna have to tough this out until the site gets big enough to warrant a proper Wordpress.org installation?
AI: Try wrapping your posts in a div tag, it won't affect the layout and I found that helps when WP tries to add characters to my posts |
H: Can I see the like/dislike rating of videos before viewing the video?
All too often on YouTube there are videos with catchy names that are really still photos or otherwise worthless content. Is there any way to see the displeasure registered at videos before experiencing it myself?
AI: Depending on the browser you use, there are different extensions you can install to get a behavior like that.
Reddit user bmacs made a browser extension that shows you a bar next to each video on YouTube that shows the the ratio between red/green (downvote/upvote) for each video.
Installation links:
Chrome Extension (in-store)
Firefox YTShowRating (Firefox Addons site)
Safari Version (direct from bmacs site) |
H: Whitelist for Gmail
Possible Duplicate:
How to implement a white-list-based system in Gmail?
Is there a way to tell Gmail "Only allow into my inbox emails from the following email addresses. Send the rest to the trash bin."? I know how to blacklist specific email addresses by making a rule such as "If the sender is from a specific email address, send it to the trash" but I can't make a rule for every email in existence except the ones I want to let through.
AI: You can use the - operator. For ex. you can create a filter that says move all emails from:([email protected]) to trash. This will move all emails that are not from @abc.com domain to trash. |
H: Can I convert a checklist inside a card into a new card?
I created a card with several checklists in it.
As the number of lists increased, I wanted to spin off some of them. I can convert one of the items in the checklist into a separate card, but I cannot convert the whole checklist into another card.
How can I achieve that?
AI: Sorry, this is not possible. Though, we are working on copyable checklists, so you'd likely be able to copy the list to a new card. |
H: Google Apps Scripts API for Google Docs Table
If we take a look at Google Apps Script we can see API related to just about everything except Google Docs Fusion Tables that are supposed to be some sort of lightweight database tables.
Can anybody tell me whether we can access those using Google Apps Scripts? And how... Why? Because we could build even better dynamic Google Sites since these tables have indexes and are definitely faster than using Spreadsheets.
Just to make it clear. I'm talking about these tables:
AI: There is no official support for Google Fusion Tables in Google Apps Scripts as at Feb 2012. However, there is a sample App Scripts projects that provides simple CRUD wrapper against the Google Fusion Tables API
You can install the sample project by going to the Insert menu and selecting Script then searching for "Fusion"
Install this project and you will be able to query the Fusion Tables API via Google Apps Scripts. |
H: Why is my e-mail address sometimes considered invalid by websites?
It happens sometimes, when I sign up for a forum or a website that I get told my e-mail address is invalid. It looks like this: [email protected].
Is there any reason why this might be considered invalid?
AI: It's probably the underscore before the @ sign. It's not technically invalid, but it's not especially common, and I can easily see that badly written format checkers would flag it as invalid (you're not allowed to have a full stop before the @, so they might generalise that to all punctuation characters). |
H: Set up a forwarding email account with Gmail for Business
I want to create a forwarder email address in Gmail for Business instead of having to create/pay for another email account at the same domain.
I have an email address, [email protected] and I've set up my MX records in my domain to point to Gmail for all mail. I'm using Gmail for Business. Got that all working fine.
I'd also like to set up a secondary email: [email protected]. But I don't really need any storage for that email and I'd rather not pay for it -- the account will receive so little traffic that it isn't really worth it to pay for an entire second account. I'd prefer if that account was just a dummy account that was only going to forward to [email protected]. Is this possible with MX records or Gmail for Business?
I'm looking at the Email Routing config section for Email in the Google Apps control panel. Not sure if this is what I'm looking for.
AI: MX records control only the server direction (i.e. messages sent to @example.com will be handled by the server located at 123.123.123.123). It's the local mail server that decides that [email protected] and [email protected] correspond to the same inbox. Google uses the term nickname for forwarded addresses.
In order to create a nickname for an existing user/inbox in Google Apps, you need to do the following:
Go to your Google Apps admin dashboard
Click on Organization and users in the blue navigation menu on top of the page
Click on the user, to which you want to assign a nickname
In the User information tab (the default one) click on Add a nickname (it's right below Email quota) |
H: Skipping in dance videos
Dance videos are distinct from other videos in that you often want to rewind and play parts back many times for practice. I need a web application that will allow me to host a video and add bookmarks to make playback easier. Additionally, if I am bookmarking each move, many of the bookmarks will be only a second or two apart. Is there any web application that will allow me to do that easily?
AI: You can use YouTube - it allows to link at specific time. You can create multiple bookmarks to allow you to replay it from specific time. There is also a webapp that helps you create those urls.
It allows you to create play lists and in case you are using Google Chrome - there is an extension that allows you to replay your video from specific time. |
H: How to make Facebook page events visible to people who are not logged in.
I recently inherited a Facebook Page when I joined a band with my dad. (I guess I'm the most technically savvy amongst the group of aging rockers.) Anyway, I'm trying to make the events on the Events page visible to the public, i.e. visible to someone not logged into Facebook.
However, it's not working for me. The events say that they're public when I go to edit them, but still the Events page is blank when I navigate to it while not logged in. Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Any idea as to what could be wrong?
The address to the events page is http://www.facebook.com/fourbarrelband?sk=events
AI: The single event's page is accessible for everybody, if you set the respective event to be public. (See below an example I just created.) However, if I understand correctly, you want the list of events, and that's not visible for anyone that doesn't use Facebook.
You can, however, invite people that are not on Facebook to your events, via email.
You can invite people to an event who do not have a Facebook account. From the event, click Invite Friends. List your friends' email addresses (separated by commas) in the box labeled Invite by E-mail Address and click submit.
The recipients will be able to view the event information and RSVP. They will not be able to see any other Facebook pages unless they create an account.
From here. |
H: Does Yandex email allow "foreign" users?
BackStory: I've never been a fan of putting too many eggs in one basket. I had accounts for Gmail, Google Docs, Google+, YouTube, you name it. If it was Google owned, I probably used it. In an attempt to "spread the wealth", I ventured out and started experimenting with some alternatives (Zoho, DuckDuckGo, just to name a few).
Recently I heard a news report about Twitter making a deal with Russian search engine Yandex. I'd never heard of it before, so I gave their search and email service a try. To make a long story short, I really liked what I saw, and I'd like to integrate Yandex into my work flow.
Question: Are Americans allowed to use Yandex email? I signed up for an account without any problem, and didn't see any rules against it, so I assume it's okay. But I just wanted to make sure.
AI: Yes, of course. As far as I know, there are no restrictions (legal or otherwise) and I was able to use my Yandex mail account from the Europe and China with no problem.
Also, you can write a mail to their support (they usually respond within a few days) so you will get official information. |
H: LibraryThing: How do I tell the bug collectors that the site is completely broken?
First, most of the web page is completely broken when using HTTPS, because they're using the css.librarything.com and js.librarything.com domains to serve CSS and JavaScript (without which the site unfortunately doesn't work at all), and the certificate doesn't cover those domains.
Second, I can't submit a message to the Bug Collectors group via the HTTP site, because the JavaScript there is also broken:
Error: $("fp0") is null
Source File: http://js.librarything.com/minified/js/[...].js
Line: 823
Does someone know some way to alert the site admins now?
AI: Questions about LibraryThing in general, feature requests and bug reports.
Tim. Founder and Developer. (timspalding; tim{at}librarything.com)
Chris H. Developer. (conceptDawg; christopher{at}librarything.com)
Mike. Developer. (miketopper; mike{at}librarything.com)
From their contact page. |
H: How can I set up a Mailing List?
I'm the secretary for my university Chess Club. I need to be able to send emails to ~70 people about once or twice a week (possibly with attachments and using BCC).
I have set up a Gmail account for this purpose. However, it thinks I'm sending spam so is blocking the emails. Looking at the Google guidelines, it seems that I should make a Google Group. However, that would require people to signup for a Google Account and then sign up to the Google Group.
I need a simple and free way to send mass emails to everyone who is on the Chess Club email list. Can I do this with Gmail? What is the best option?
Related but different: How do I set up a small mailing list / newsletter with Gmail?
AI: This is how I understand your requirements:
One way communication. You send everybody an email with a short message, and an attachment.
They can't see other peoples email address, because you use bcc. So they can't send emails to each other
You don't want them to have to register for anything, like Twitter or Facebook.
It looks like you will need to use something like mailchimp, If you are getting rejected by Gmail.
I am not sure why Gmail would reject your emails because 70 people 2x a week is not a large volume. |
H: How can you tell who owns a page in Google+?
There are many fake pages in Google+ and I want to know who owns each page.
Where do I look to find out the owner of a Google Plus page?
AI: There's an option to include an e-mail in the profile of the page. If the e-mail address has been verified there will be a checkmark next to it.
How much you can trust an e-mail address and how much information you can glean from it all depends.
Further, one can add a G+ button to their website which points back to the Google+ page. I'd say that's a pretty good indication, as well. |
H: Where to report Gmail problems?
my gmail address is acting really strangely, it doesn't receive emails from certain email addresses, even though some emails get through. I've checked filters, SPAM, all folders - no problem there. It really seems to be problem on Google's side. But there is no way how to tell Google about this problem and maybe receive some reply about this.
Is there some special webform or address where I can report problems and get real answers ?
AI: You can contact them via the Google forum on this page.
The google team is actually reading this forum and will intervene if needed within your account. They will contact you more deeply if needed. |
H: How to query for count of dates in Google Docs?
I have a Google Spreadsheet of line items. One of the columns is a Date field. How can I query (or use a formula) to, for example, get the count of records where the Date field is within February of 2011?
Note: Could use a better title
AI: You need to use 2 formulas.
Create a month column and use the following formula to "display" the month and year:
=text(B1,"mmmm YYYY")
I assumed that the data was in column B, you will need to adjust accordingly. Copy this formula down the entire column
Create a column to hold the labels for the calculation.
Put the value for each month in the cells (January 2011, February 2011...)
Create another column to hold the results, you will need to put the following formula into the cell next to the January 2011 label:
=countif(C:C,D1)
I assumed that the labels are in column D and the results of the text formula are in column C, you will have to adjust accordingly. Copy this formula into the rest of the cells next to the labels.
countif() is a very useful formula. The key to this was the use of the text command to generate a result just showing month and year. |
H: How do you link to a Facebook Page in a comment using its PageId?
How do you link to a Facebook Page in a comment using its PageId? I remember it was something like:
@[id:name]
AI: @[id:linkname] will work if you know the Facebook Page ID.
linkname is anyname you want.
id is the Facebook Page Id |
H: How do I add new styles to Google docs?
Google docs has a nice set of styles such as "Normal text" and "Heading 1".
How do I add my own? I want to add a style called "code" for text that is programming code.
AI: Right now it's not possible to add more styles or rename the existed ones, but you can modify them to match your needs.
For example you could style your code as you wish and then by selecting one of the headers and choosing the Update Heading # to match selection, that particular style could become your new "Code" style.
Then select something else and apply that heading and you're done. |
H: How to sum values in a range of dates
I have a Google Spreadsheet in the format below — here's an example.
Column A → Dates
Column B → Numbers
I'd like to sum values in column B in a range of dates in column A.
Example:
Sum values between 01-feb-12 and 29-feb-12.
In Excel, I used the following formula:
=SUMPRODUCT(N(A1:A1000>=A35),N(A1:A1000<=A36),B1:B1000)
where:
A35 = Start Date
A36 = Last date
AI: This works, see F35 in your sheet:
SUMIF(E2:E33;">="&E35;B2:B33)-SUMIF(E2:E33;"<="&E36;B2:B33)
column E is done by calculating a value for the dates to be able to compare them (=VALUE(E1))
Note that separating the args for some reasons is done with ; |
H: How to undo card archive on Trello?
I accidentally hit c with a card selected and archived the card. I tried to undo the archive but couldn't find the option. I tried moving the card back to the list but that didn't seem to work.
AI: In the top right select Show menu
Then click More
Then click Archived Items
You then click the Send to Board button on the item and it will be reinstated to your board. |
H: Is it possible to link to a specific portion of a Vimeo video?
I would like to share a link to a Vimeo video and have it queue to a specific frame for beginning playback.
Specifically, I would like to point out the Loss Aversion section of the Everything is a Remix video and have people start watching at 3 minutes and 28 seconds to hilight the discussion on Intellectual Property and Loss Aversion
Is it possible to generally link to Vimeo videos while picking an arbitrary start point? If not, what workarounds are available whether it's an embed, or other means to reduce the effort for people to get to a specific point in a video. I'd rather not have to edit the footage directly and host it elsewhere.
AI: Appending #t=0m0s to the URL to point 0 minutes and 0 seconds past the start of the video.
Replace the 0s with your desired values and the link will scrub forward the specified amount in your browser.
Although this wasn't a feature when I asked the question, Vimeo now supports this across the board.
The forum post with the announcement of this feature and an example of how to link to a moment inside a linked video:
http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:49396
Basically, by appending #t=1m5s you can request the playhead be moved to one minute (1m) and five seconds (5s) of the video, so in the case of my question, the URL would be #t=3m28s:
http://vimeo.com/36881035#t=3m28s |
H: How to make a query with Google Spreadsheet, that checks for a date
I have a range that goes from B4:H124. All the cells in column B are dates. I would like to retrieve the data from a row (B:H), where the DATE equals to the content of a specific cell, lets say Q4.
How do I construct a proper query?
So far, what I have come up with this:
=QUERY(B2:G124; "select * where B = date '2012-02-28'")
It works, even though the format of the cells in B is DD/MM/YYYY.
How can I change 2012-02-28 to $Q4? When I try, I get the following error:
=QUERY(B2:G124; "select * where B = date '"&Q4&"'")
Invalid query: Invalid date literal [10/02/2012]. Date literals should be of form yyyy-MM-dd.
When I look at the cell, the format is yyyy-mm-dd, but when I doubleclick it, the format changes to DD-MM-YYYY.
What should I do?
Also, how can I sum up the values from the query, without including column B?
AI: I couldn't find the trick for the real date cell to work yet, but you could have a work around if nothing else by adding the the single quote (') before the date in a format: YYYY-MM-DD in the Q4 cell.
That single quote means that the it will be parsed as string. |
H: Upload custom YouTube thumbnail?
Is it no longer possible to upload a custom thumbnail for your YouTube videos using the new YouTube "info and settings" panel in the video manager? I read articles saying click the "Upload thumbnail" button, but I see no such button (see screenshot):
AI: Regular user accounts are unable to upload custom thumbnails for their videos, however, Youtube partners are able to upload their own custom thumbnails.
However, doing a little searching apparently there's a grey-hat way to do this for non-partner, but there's a pretty big risk in using this method since Youtube could ban your account: Custom Thumbnail for Non-Partners |
H: How do I use Google Web Fonts for Google Documents?
A number of 2010 blog posts from Google seems to imply this is possible, but I can't seem to move fonts from Web Fonts to Google Documents. Is it even doable?
AI: No. They announced that they are using Google Fonts API internally and added few fonts from that list. You're not able to add any font you like. |
H: Subscribe to Google Contacts Birthday Calendar from Hotmail
I'm currently trying to subscribe to my Google Contact's Birthday calendar from Hotmail, so far without success.
I've used the ical link from the calendar settings in Google to create the subscription and it appears to create successfully.
Going back into the calendar settings in Hotmail the same error is repeated five times:-
Errors: This calendar wasn't updated because of a problem with the
publisher's file. We'll try updating it again later.
A search on that phrase hasn't turned up anything useful to date.
AI: Currently this isn't possible due to the fact that the iCal address for your Contact Birthdays Calendar isn't a personalized URL.
This is the url that you get for Google Contact Birthdays: https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/%23contacts%40group.v.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
This will only work from within a Google calendar page. |
H: Slideshow of photographs automatically uploaded to Google+?
How can I view a slideshow of the photographs that have been automatically uploaded to Google+ from my phone?
AI: If you go to picasaweb.google.com you'll find an album that is called Instant Uploads. Enter and click on the Slideshow button on the top left. |
H: How to hide my likes from my friends on Facebook?
My friends say that they are notified when I like a post on Facebook. I don't want this. What is the privacy option that can help me?
AI: The privacy of your like is dependent on the privacy of your friend's post. if they only share the post with you, then you liking it will only appear in your friend's activity feed/newsfeed.
If they share it with a group of friends it will appear only in that group of friends' activity feed/newsfeed.
If they share it publicly. It will end up in all your friend's activity feed/news feed |
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