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H: How can I go to previous Google doodles? I want to try solve the Alan Turing doodle I found this link: http://www.google.com/doodles/finder/2012/All%20doodles It does not however let you interact with the interactive doodles, like the Alan Turning code solver. I want to be able to interact with the doodle and try solving it again. I would also like to be able to go to any of the previous Google doodles. If anybody has links to previous Google doodle or knows how to activate them, like the google search for zerg rush. AI: Most of the interactive doodles can be found by searching the repository. However, some of them are working only from Chrome, and the Turing doodle is one of them.
H: Is there a way to forward email from Facebook? I found a lot of information about forwarding email from other accounts to Facebook. But I could not find anything about going the other way. I want to forward email from my @facebook address to Gmail. AI: It’s not exactly a forward per se, but you can use the notifications feature to receive the messages to your email address associated with your Facebook account—not the @facebook.com one, but the @at_your_email_provider.com one—which needs to be set as the primary email address. The problem is that it doesn’t discriminate between emails sent to @facebook.com and Facebook messages, it forwards everything. Also note that it’s not really reliable, sometimes the messages being delivered and sometimes not.
H: How do you delete a tweet in TweetDeck (web version)? I want to delete a tweet in the web version of TweetDeck. How can I delete a tweet? Where is the delete tweet icon or menu entry? I found many old howtos that do no longer apply. AI: Click the right-most icon - And I hope @Newsweek is your own account. Or else you cannot delete the tweet.
H: Can I follow someone on Tumblr without seeing their posts on the dashboard? Recently, I gave Tumblr another try and started to somewhat liking it. Some of my friends who are already on Tumblr followed by Tumblr and as a nice gesture, I followed them back. But, unfortunately, I don't really like what they are sharing. Most of them are rather emotional and I use social networks to cheer myself up. Not get depressed. But I don't want to unfollow them either. So, is it possible to prevent their posts from appearing in the dash board but still follow them at the same time? AI: There is a Chrome extension named Tumblr Savior that helps you "blacklist" the users' posts on Tumblr. It lets you whitelist and blacklist posts with a word of your liking (or disliking, whichever you prefer). So, add the person's Tumblr handle in the list of blacklisted words and the post won't show up fully in the dashboard. You can at any time remove the blacklist if you wish to see their posts in your dashboard. There is also a Firefox extension for Tumblr Savior.
H: Change Default Language in Google All of a sudden, whenever I open any Google Page now, (whether logged in or not), it appears in the language of Hindi and I have to use Google Translator to Translate into English and use it. How can I fix this? How can I have English as my default Language and never have any page of Google appear in any other language? AI: First of all, I recommend you to start with clearing your Google cookies, since I think it can be that Google stores your language in a cookie as well. After your did that, head over to https://www.google.com/settings/language and select your language. Normally all Google services should be in that language by default then, but I know of some that manage languages by themselves. Like f.e. the Google Play Store.
H: In Twitter, how can I search the hash tags related to a particular region? In Twitter, how can I search the hash tags related to a particular region? Like #trends in New York. AI: #trends near:"New York" within:5mi 5mi = 5 mile. Defines the radius to search around New York.
H: How to share a photo album with people on restricted list on Facebook How can I share photo album with friends from restricted list? When I go to New Album > Custom Privacy > Specific people or list... and manually add them in the text field, they still can't see the album, and Facebook says, the album is visible for List1, Friend1, Friend2 except Restricted (Friends 1 & 2 are on the restricted list). AI: This isn't possible. The only way they can see the photos are if they are tagged in them. Scenario You have a restricted list with your family and share your jokes to your friends. Having just come back from a family event, with family members from restricted list, you tag them in the respective photos. These users will now be able to see those photos.
H: How to setup Google Apps for Business email on iOS I use Google Apps for Business to manage email for one of my domains, and I have all emails to xyz@domain forwarded to admin@domain and I would like to receive set this account up on my iOS device. Does anyone know how to do this? or where there are instructions on how to do this? AI: The easiest method would be to install the Gmail app for iOS. Otherwise you can add your Google Apps account using IMAP to the built in mail app using the method below (taken from this Google help article): To configure the 'Mail' app on an Apple device for access to Gmail, just follow these steps: Make sure you've enabled IMAP in your main Gmail settings (usually on by detault for Google apps addresses) Open the Settings app on your device Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars Tap Add Account... Tap Gmail Enter your account information, being sure to use your full Gmail address, including '@gmail.com' (or in this case '@domain') Tap Next Tap Save Also, Google Apps has another method called Google Sync which uses Microsoft Exchange. This method allows you to enforce device policies. Instructions on setting up Google Sync on an iOS device can be found here. There is also a comparison of using Google Sync vs. IMAP vs. Mobile Browser
H: Embed Google+ photos on website Is it possible to embed Google+ photos on a website, much like it used to be possible with PicasaWeb? AI: Actually, Google's PicasaWeb and Google+ are always in sync. So if you have any image in Google+, you'll find it in PicasaWeb. From there you can get the code to embed the image and more. Here is a sample code to embed one of the photos - <table style="width:auto;"> <tr> <td> <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/m2Ne5aZLhC2RQfmtbw-8TtMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite"> <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-rNKwZkk5X68/Tg2cunuxA0I/AAAAAAAAAOM/-62AZtBNhd4/s144/threadlist-large.png" height="92" width="144" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right"> From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/100089984211197410017/20110701?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite">2011-07-01</a> </td> </tr> </table>
H: Put a section of an article into a category on Wikipedia I'd like to place sections of articles into categories on Wikipedia. (for example, placing "Pollution in India#Water pollution" into the category "Water pollution in India") Is there any way to do this besides creating a redirect page for the article and then putting the redirect page in the category? AI: First, let me say that I don't think doing this is a good idea. Category description pages on Wikipedia shouldn't contain article text, that's not what they're for. If you want to do this, make sure there is a consensus to do it. For some more information, see Creating category pages. If you're sure you want to do this, I think the only way (ignoring custom or some existing extension) is to use template transclusion. This can be done two ways: If you know that you'll always want only this specific section, you can enclose it in <onlyinclude> tag. Then you can transclude the article to the category page (e.g. {{:Pollution in India}}) and only this section will show up. But if you want to transclude different sections of the same article to different categories, that won't work (unless you also added some {{#if}}s to the article, which I don't think is a good idea). What you can do then is to split the article into multiple parts, each within its own template. So, the text of the section Water pollution might be in Template:Pollution in India/Water. Then you can transclude that template to both the article and the category (using {{Pollution in India/Water}}).
H: Can a username be inferred from a Dropbox referral? I clicked on a Dropbox referral link from a random user on one of the SE sites. Following through with the installation, I couldn't find any reference to who the user was that shared the referral. I'm curious if my information too is hidden from them or if they have access to it. Is it possible: for you to know who (userid/email/username) the referrer is? for the referrer to know who you are? AI: Your referrer can see your email associated with the account in the history of bonus space (requires login to your account).
H: How can I alphabetize a unique result in Google Spreadsheets? I'm generating a list based on using the UNIQUE function. How can I get the output to be alphabetized automatically? AI: Use Sort and Unique together. =sort(unique(A:A)) Here are the descriptions of the filter functions for Google spreadsheets.
H: Create input field in Google Docs form allowing only numbers We need to create a form asking the clients for their age. Is there any way to create a field where you can only fill in numbers - maybe only 4 numbers like 1976 or 2011? Another field input would be date. It would be perfect if I could limit the number - something like "not lower than 1800 and not higher than 2012" to prevent invalid numbers. I can create a question with drop down list, but creating a list of all possible years would be stupid and uncomfortable to choose from. AI: Google Spreadsheet now takes into account Data Validation when submitting forms. So you can set a rule on your Age column to only allow numbers greater than 0. When submitting a response which doesnt fit this rule the user is given this message: I found out about it after reading this post.
H: How to delete all of the Instant Upload photos on Google+? I managed to disable Instant Upload, but it already pumped hundreds of photos from my iPad to my Google+ account. I'd like to delete them en masse. I can't find a simple way. I can drag a selection, but it's very slow to scroll down in Chrome (the pictures are big in the Instant Upload view, G+ slowly scrolls the selection down). I can't find a way in the iPad/iPodTouch version of G+ either... This thread addresses the issue, but I can't make sense of it (perhaps on the Android version it's obvious?). AI: I did some experimenting, although I didn't actually delete the photos (since I want to keep them). But I was able to select them all. I'm using Chrome on Windows 7. Open "Instant Upload" under your Google+ Photos Hit the End key. Your browser window will scroll down to the bottom of what's currently displayed. Google+ will load up more photos. Hit End again. Repeat as necessary. Click and drag from below and to the right of your photos to start selecting them. You'll have a shaded box to guide you. Start painting up and to the left to start selecting photos. Without releasing the mouse button hit the Home key to scroll all the way back up to the top. You should be able to fine-tune the select area to capture all of the photos. Click the "Delete" button (only visible at the top of the page). I hope this is helpful.
H: Finding and repairing broken section links on Wikipedia I want to find broken section links on Wikipedia so that I can repair them. How can I find links to non-existent sections on Wikipedia (such as [[Google#fbffgfd]]) and replace them with working links (such as [[Google#History]])? Is there a specific category for broken section links such as these, or are tools available for finding them? AI: Make a comment here in Wikipedia to ask that the report be updated.
H: Is there a way to automatically post to a Facebook group? I would like to be able to add blog posts to a Facebook group via a service like RSS Graphiti. I know this is possible for Facebook pages, but is this possible for Facebook groups? AI: The list of targets in RSS Graffiti contains both groups and pages that I'm an admin of. (Though I haven't tried whether it actually works.)
H: Dropbox Referrer Bonus not applied I have a problem with Dropbox bonus for contacts' referral. I have a PC running Ubuntu and since my Mother and my Father use the laptop very scarcely I simply added 2 users for them, so I have on the same PC the followings; me mother father Now I had the necessity to give some files to my Father and the first thing that came to my mind was to use Dropbox. So I invited him and configured his account to use Dropbox. I gave him the files and all works fine but the famous Dropbox bonus! In fact I didn't get any 500MB for the new Dropbox user I referred. Is this because the user is on the same machine I am? Is there some error of mine? AI: Yes, it is because you used the same computer. This is covered by the explanation of the different Dropbox referral statuses: Ineligible means that the recipient is ineligible for the referral program. Either they have already registered an account with Dropbox or are attempting to register using the same computer as you. These restrictions are intended to prevent people from gaming the system (cheating). If you feel you this status is inaccurate or applied unfairly, double-check the email address of your recipient and try again.
H: Twitter hash timeline in RSS I know to RSS a user feed, it's https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/username.rss But what if instead I want to pull a hash?...what's the RSS URL? AI: http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=%23hashtag Here %23 = url encoded #. There are even more parameters other than query(q) you can try.
H: How can I rename a category on Wikimedia Commons? Is it possible to rename a category on Wikimedia Commons (or another Wikimedia-based wiki) so that all of the pages in that category are moved to the renamed category instead of being left in the old category? AI: It's not directly possible to do that. But some wikis do have bots that can assist you with moving the items from the old category to the new one. For Commons-specific information, including how to request renaming both to run, see Commons:Rename a category. I expect other large wikis will have similar pages.
H: Add multiple files to a category in Wikimedia Commons There are some instances where I'd like to add multiple articles to a category on a MediaWiki site such as Wikimedia Commons (for example, adding multiple images of airplanes to the category "Airplanes.") Is it possible to add multiple articles to a single category without manually editing each page and copying and pasting the category into the page's source? (By any chance, does AutoWikiBot or a similar tool help to automate this process?) AI: Yes, if you have a list of pages that you want to add to some category, AutoWikiBrowser can help you do that. But, as with any other mass change, you should have a consensus to do so, or the change should be uncontroversial. Also, to be able to use AWB on Commons, you need to be approved first, see Commons:AutoWikiBrowser for more information.
H: Verify Domain Ownership for Google Apps I've got Google Apps set up on my domain. Recently, I've moved my domain from GoDaddy to Hover. The transfer process has just completed and I'm currently changing the necessary DNS settings. As per the instructions on Hover's site on verifying my domain, I went back to my Google Apps dashboard. Based from this instructional video by Google, I navigated to the Setup tab on the control panel. However, the 'Verify domain ownership' sub-tree is missing on the page. I watched the video again, and tried to modify the latter part of the URL from WELCOME_AND_VERIFY to VERIFY_DOMAIN_OWNERSHIP_TASK, but it just goes to the 'Users and groups' section instead. In addition, on the Settings tab and Email section, it says that there's no MX records found for my domain. I've successfully changed other settings (MX, CNAME), but I'm currently stucked on this step. Help! AI: If your Google Apps account was already verified whilst you were at GoDaddy you don't need to re-verify after a move to Hover (and hence can't). p.s. You may have missed a redaction in your image in the location bar.
H: Add newsletters to Labels Gmail I subscribed to Stack Exchange newsletters and receive 8-9 newsletters per week. I want to add them to "Stackexchange" label. After reading this post , I created a filter, but don't know how to filter these newsletters i.e. what to write in sender's email field. What should I do? AI: This is the procedure for creating a filter. open a message that you want to filter and label. Click on the "More" pull-down button. Select "Filter Messages like these. It will then open up the create filter wizard with the From filled in In the background you should be able to see all the conversations that will be flagged by this filter. Modify the value in the wizard if any need to be adjusted to capture more or fewer messages. On page 2 of the wizard you will specify the label to attach to the messages, you can also create a new label at this point. You must select "Also apply this filter to X matching conversations" to get the filter to process all the previous messages that the filter would have caught. Click Create Filter Button Notes: You can tweak this filter to add other addresses, or to change the actions (Archive, Forward...). All filters are found via "Gear Button/Settings/Filters. Multiple filters can use the same label.
H: Filter files by multiple categories on Wikipedia How can I find files on Wikipedia (or the Wikimedia Commons) that are in two or more specific categories? For instance, if I was searching for files to put into the category "dogs and cats", I would want to find all of the files that were in both the category "dogs" and the category "cats." How can this be accomplished? AI: You can use CatScan to do that. For example, to query files on Commons, you can start with http://toolserver.org/~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php?language=commons&project=wikimedia&ns[6]=1 and enter the categories you want into the Categories box.
H: Can I remove the Recent Photos without disabling the People Widget? Google has added a box displaying recently received photos in Gmail to their People Widget, which can present a huge privacy concern when checking your email in a public place: I know that I remove this by disabling the entire People Widget using: Settings > General > People Widget > Hide the people widget The rest of the widget is helpful, though. How can I keep it while removing just the recent photos? AI: You can remove the Recent Photos box with a single custom CSS rule. First, install Stylish for Firefox or Chrome, then navigate to Gmail. Locate your Stylish options and select "Write new style... for mail.google.com" Add the following to your new Style: div.am0{display:none;} For example, using Firefox, your style should look like the following: @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); @-moz-document domain("mail.google.com") { div.am0{display:none;} } Now the Recent Photos section of the People Widget will not be displayed* while you are using that browser (and as long as Stylish and the style are enabled.) * I believe that the Recent Photos section is the only div.am0, and will always be hidden by this style, but if anyone notices otherwise, please let me know.
H: Is there a way to remove the date part from a blogger URL? Blog posts on blogger.com always have the date in the URL, e.g. http://myblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-awesome-blogpost.html. I'd like to get rid of the date part in the URL slug. Is there any way to set this option? I wasn't able to find it. And if not, does anyone know the decision from Google why to keep the date in there? I mean, for most "normal" blog posts it makes totally sense, however, especially on technical blogs you might update the blog posts a couple of months later and bump the date to the current day, however, the date in the URL still remains the old one. Of course you can always create a new blog post and copy & paste the old content, however, that would break all the links pointing to the old blog post. AI: No, you cannot change it. If you do choose to create a new post and move the old content (best done by copy/pasting the HTML), then you could set up a custom re-direct from the old post to the new one, using the features recently introduced for this. Sometimes I just keep the old post, and put a note at the top saying to see XXX for an update. This is nice if the old answer was key-word rich, but the new one is so simple and elegant that you can't relatistcally work the keywords into the post. Update: this question, and a couple of posts in the Blogger product-forum, inspired me to write up a fuller answer. In case it's interesting to future readers, you can find it here: http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/take-numbers-out-of-blog-post-web-address-urls.html
H: Flickr and/or Yahoo account for a company or institute I want to set up a Flickr page for an institute, but if want to fill in the sign up form I have to fill in birthdate, gender, surname and so on. Should I fill in fake data or is there a smoother way? AI: I think you can create a Flickr with a google account. That's what I did and I don't remember having to fill these informations. (apparently not) EDIT: After reading the terms of service You can use Flickr for non profit, but it seems to be tolerated more than encouraged. In any case you must be register as an individual. Maybe using the company owner, or director identity is a valid alternative to entering your own details (if approval is given). And since you can control the visibility of the informations in your profile it's not such a big deal to enter personal details. Change the visibility of personal details to "friends and family" to hide them. I would't recommend flickr for a commercial activity as they can close down the account for that reason.
H: Is it possible to delete a Google Analytics account? I have several redundant Google Analytics accounts for the same site and I wish to remove a few as their data is invalid. How does one go about removing them? AI: This is covered in the Google help page Delete/Cancel Analytics Accounts: 1. Remove the Analytics javascript code snippet from all your pages. 2. Click the Admin tab at the top right of any Analytics page. 3. Click the account that you want to delete. 4. Click the Account Settings tab. 5. Click the Delete this account link.
H: Google Calendar sending the same SMS each day at a specified time How can I set Google Calendar to send me the same SMS Daily (or every Thursday or after every 45 Days) at a specified time? If this is not possible in Google Calender, then is there any other Web App that has this feature? AI: IFTTT is great for stuff like this. The Date & Time channel is the one you're looking for.
H: URL of a deleted page is not available I have a created a page that I had given the wrong URL to, Facebook said I could not change this URL, and so I created a new page with the correct one. I have since discovered that you can change the URL of a page (it requires a certain number of likes) so I deleted the new page and tried to change the old one to the correct URL. This gives me an error saying the URL is not available, but going to it returns 'a page does not exist' error. Will this URL ever become free or have I locked the URL forever? AI: I assume you mean the vanity URL. If so, then the username should be freed eventually. Deleting a profile seems to free the username so I assume the same is true for pages. Some pages that have brands that are trademarked for example, may not have this option.
H: Does Facebook block IFTTT backup recipes? I've started using this IFTTT recipe to automatically backup all Facebook status updates / posts to Evernote (so I can finally make them searchable). However, it doesn't seem to do anything - no statuses are backed up at all. The recipe log says "Trigger Timeout Error": Could Facebook be blocking this recipe? Should I open a support ticket with IFTTT? AI: I had a problem once with an IFTTT task and I wrote to them. It was fixed within a day. So why don't you drop a mail to [email protected] with your recipe ID and see what they have to say about this.
H: Is there a “is:” filter for mail in my Gmail sent folder? I want to create a Gmail filter that identifies all sent messages. If I were to do the same for all spam messages, I know I could use is:spam. Is there a similar command for sent messages? Something like is:sentmail? AI: Sent messages are labeled as "sent", so you can use that to search for them. Either is:sent, in:sent or label:sent should work.
H: How do I remove an account from Google multi-login? I have three accounts among the multiple accounts I have for Google's products. One of them belongs to a friend who accidentally made his account one of mine when he was using my PC. How do I remove his account from my Google multiple accounts? Logging out from his account doesn't work. His account still displays under the user dropdown even though I can't log in to it. AI: I have two accounts logged in as well. If I go to google.com, click 'Log out', it logs me out from all accounts. I have to login back with some account and the second is not visible in the menu that time. So I assume logging out logs you out from all accounts and required you to login with each of them separately again. (Because of this I don't understand why you say logging out doesn't work.)
H: Make new responses appear as a row at the top of a Google Spreadsheet I made a web form based off of a Google spreadsheet. New responses currently manifest as new rows on the bottom of the spreadsheet. There is a "Timestamp" column marking the time of submission. How do I make newer rows appear at the top? AI: I would simply suggest that you use the Timestamp column to sort the rows from new to old (Z-A).
H: Add 3 hours to Date value (DD/MM/YYYY 00:00:00) I have cells with dates in this format: DD/MM/YYYY 00:00:00 and I want to add 3 hours because I'm in a different GMT zone. Is possible to use dates in a formula? Something like: 30/12/2012 22:15:00 should become: 31/12/2012 01:15:00 AI: All date/time values in spreadsheets are internally handled as floating point values. To add 3 hours to a date/time just add (3/24) to the original date/time. =F3+(3/24) This also works in MS Excel.
H: Check which Dropbox files are currently syncing Is it possible to see which files are being currently synced? (Searching around for badged icons won't work.) For example, large files that are within different folders that just got added to the queue. AI: No, not possible. Can't see it on the web interface or on any of the apps on linked devices. Your only near option currently is to see what has been done after the fact by checking out the recent events page on Dropbox.
H: Is there a way to configure Google Scholar to only show results where the document is freely available? When I do a search, many of the papers are only available to subscribers of a particular service, listed as for sale, or behind some other kind of pay wall. However, if a document is available, there's often a link next to the paper title to view the PDF, HTML, or some other format that isn't behind a pay wall. Is there a way to only show these documents? AI: Unfortunately there isn't an option to restrict results like that in Google Scholar (I appreciate the idea, running into paywalls is very frustrating). I guess the argument could be made that you are limiting the articles/knowledge you could be exposed to be only looking at the free things. That and Google's recognition of what is accessible isn't 100%. That said, some other ideas: All Versions - Hit the "All X versions" link, occasionally an alternate site will have a viewable version - or at least show more of the article than the first linked site does. Use the site: parameter - If you do find a some sites that are more generous about freely hosting full articles, just search them for your subject matter with site:domain.com Library Links - A newer feature in Google Scholar is Library Links. It hooks into libraries you might have access to so you can access articles via them directly from Google. You just need to set what libraries you are a member of in Scholar Preferences. Obviously this works best if you are a uni student/staff member, but it looks like they are incorporating public libraries as well.
H: How can I read an updated book version on Amazon Cloud Reader using Firefox? I got an email that an e-book I purchased from Amazon was updated. I logged on to Amazon, found the book in my Kindle library, and clicked the link to update the book. I figured out how to update the copy on my Kindle and the copy on my Kindle for PC, but I cannot seem to figure out how to update the book on my Amazon Cloud Reader. I tried clicking Actions... then Deliver to my.. then Deliver to: Ben's Kindle Cloud Reader, but the copy of the book is still not updated. How can I update my book on Amazon Cloud Reader? I have been using Firefox (currently 14.0) to read ebooks on Amazon Cloud Reader. AI: Amazon Cloud Reader is not updating the book because it is being cached by Firefox. Clearing the cache will force Firefox to redownload the book. First, in Firefox select Options. Then under the Advanced > Network tab, there is a section for Offline Web Content and User Data. You should see read.amazon.com in the list of websites allowed to store data for offline use. Simply click Clear Now and the next time you open the book in Amazon Cloud Reader, it will be updated. If you have already located the book on the Manage Your Kindle page, you can select Actions... then Deliver to my... and then Deliver to: Ben's Kindle Cloud Reader and then click Deliver to open a tab with the updated book using Amazon Cloud Reader.
H: How to open MS Office docs with Google Drive by default? I don't have MS Office installed so it's pretty annoying to have to upload the file to Google Drive every time I need to open one. Is it possible to set up Google Drive to open my .docx, .pptx, etc., files by default, as for Google Docs files? AI: You have several options: Install openoffice.org Install http://www.gdocsopen.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/
H: Split or individually edit repeating Google Calendar events Our company just moved from Microsoft Exchange with Outlook to Google Mail, Calendar, etc. and I am trying to modify a calendar event where it repeats, but the times across the days are not the same. I created an event from 10h00 to 16h30 and made it repeat for two days. Now the times need to be adjusted independently for the two days. I could just cancel the repeat and book a new appointment for the second day but the event has a confirmed room booking and with rooms at a premium I worry that someone else may grab the room before I can create the new second day event. Outlook had a way to modify repeating events individually but I'm not seeing anything like that in the Google Calendar web client. So my question is whether there is a way to individually edit repeating events, or failing that, to split the repeating event into individual ones? AI: Click on the instance of the event you want to modify and edit it. You'll be prompted to change just that instance, future instances, or all instances.
H: See all ambiguous links on a specific Wikipedia page Lately, I've been trying to fix ambiguous links on Wikipedia. On one specific Wikipedia page, I want to be able to see every link to a disambiguation page so that I can repair it. Is it possible to do this without clicking on every single link on the page? AI: You can use dab solver. Enter the name of the page and it will automatically find the ambiguous links on that page and it will also help you disambiguate them.
H: Why does my Gmail “drafts” folder have an unread count? Obviously, it's a draft, therefore I've read it! This is annoying as I use drafts to record a “follow up note” against an email received (but not replied to as there is no way of adding notes to emails in Gmail). Anyone know how to stop it showing this? Also odd is the fact that Drafts and Sent mail do not seem to conform to the labels model of Gmail. I.e. there aren't really any folders as such, you are just seeing views of labels in the All mail folder. AI: The count helps you to keep track of how many drafts you have, which is a number most people care about. You can either Hide Unread Counts (from settings-labs) but unfortunately, this applies to everything, not just draft Use GreasyMonkey (but you'll have to create your script, I don't believe anybody has already such a problem) Fix the problem in the first place: these are not email drafts that you might send one day, but notes from yourself to yourself, right? Then, send those drafts to yourself as emails! (and possibly star or label them accordingly). They will remain neatly threaded as with the rest of the conversation
H: How Can I Really Turn Off "Close Friends" Notifications? Recently Facebook has begun notifying me of random things. It started when it would tell me about everybody's check-ins. That wasn't so bad, because it doesn't happen very often and I can appreciate Facebook wanting me to immediately know where my friends check in, just in case I want to go join them. So it was ok. But now, Facebook has escalated the situation. Now Facebook wants me to know a lot about what my friends are up to. If they post a photo, if they change a status, darn near anything. Maybe my Facebook habits have given the application cause to think that I'm a stalker? If so then it could use a little tweaking to properly identify the target individuals. A little research indicates that somehow Facebook has decided that some of my friends are closer than others and that I should be notified of their actions immediately. The notifications menu seems to agree with this, because the useless notifications all have what I've come to believe is the "close friends" icon (though it may be a different icon that's quite similar, there's no alt text to specify): Upon further inspection, however, it would appear that I have no close friends. And, just to be sure, I also turned off the notifications for my lack of close friends: So why is Facebook continuing to badger me on the trivial updates of everybody in my life? Does it hate me? Has it caught some kind of illness from Twitter? Is it judging my friends and finding some less wanting then others? Or is this not a "close friends" thing at all and Facebook is just toying with me to test some other feature? My phone's notification area and I both humbly beg your assistance. AI: It looks like Facebook has done another update so everyone gets more notifications. This thread on the Facebook forum has a couple of solutions suggested, this one seems to have the most love: Go to the top of your screen and click the little globe symobol where you can view your recent notifications. Hover over one of the them on the top left and click the X. It'll ask if you want to turn off "top friend" activity notifications. Click yes. They will still appear in your news feed, you just won't get notifications for it all. On a side note I think the icons you've circled in the first picture have more to do with identifying the notification than close friends (photos & status get the star, links get the pin). Updated Click the Notifications globe at the top of the Facebook window and when the drop-down drops click the Settings link (the little X's next to each notification have been removed recently). In the "What You Get Notified About" section, you can edit and turn off "Close Friends activity"
H: Highlight the text that precedes a "citation needed" tag On Wikipedia (and MediaWiki in general), is it possible to highlight the text that is preceded by a "citation needed" tag, in order to clarify what the tag specifically refers to? AI: On Wikipedia: Use the {{Reference necessary}} template. It adds a dotted gray underline beneath the text selection of your choice. Plus it adds a "[citation needed]" inline template at the end. On other MediaWiki websites, you may have do do it yourself using CSS or something. Let us know how it works out.
H: Is there a way to mark as read all mails before a certain date in Gmail? When importing a load of messages into Gmail they have all been marked as unread. I don't want to have to go through 15000 emails page by page to mark them as read, is there any way to do this in bulk? AI: Search for string before:date (date in format yyyy-mm-dd) and then choose More > Mark all as read. Watch out: This will select also emails from this date! I.e. before:2012-07-12 will select email received before 12 July 2012, but also emails received on 12 July 2012.
H: Does Trello support auto assign? I want to be assigned automatically to every ticket on a board. It's only me that is using this board, but I do not remember to myself every time I open a ticket. Is it possible? AI: It is not possible right now. You can send an email to [email protected] to propose this feature.
H: How do I query IMDb for movies that two actors have in common? So I know that John Wayne and James Stewart were both in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Shootist. How do I use IMDb to find other movies that they were both in? Conversely, was anyone else besides those two actors in both of those movies? Can I search for actors that two movies have in common? It's not at all obvious whether or not either is possible, despite the "database" portion of the site's name. AI: Yes, it is possible. Short version: here it is! Long version: First go to "Advanced Search", which isn't even linked from the main page; it's an option in the search dropdown: There is a link called "Collaborations and Overlaps": That takes you to this nifty search page, where both searches are possible. (The answers are "How the West Was Won" and "John Carradine, Chuck Roberson, and Ralph Volkie", by the way.)
H: Code snippet plugin for windows live writer Do you know of any Windows live writer plugins which formats code (php, html, css, js) in a good way? I've already tried: Insert Code Code snippet But they do not have what I want. First, they put up scrolls whenever the code that I input is long like this: I want something like this, from net tuts: How do I achieve that? Are the styles applied in here dependent to my current wordpress theme. AI: This one seems to lack WYSIWYG but lets you style the code with your WP theme instead of in the plugin settings.
H: How to get unpersonalized results in Google? I want to see a "normal" SERP, not affected by Google's custom search algorithms. I know that Google algorithms are pervasive (web history, mail, chat, cooky, IP...). What can I do to see "normal" results, as if I was born today? Is there an online service giving this output? AI: This isn't Google but it queries the Google servers for results: https://startpage.com/ This search engine does not store any personally identifiable information. Another thing you can do is disable javascript when using Google, this should reduce the amount of guessing it does. I haven't tested it myself but this plugin claims to do it for you.
H: How should I host images used on Tumblr? I would like to add some images into my Tumblr post (which is made up of text), unfortunately it is only possible to embed images by URL. Is it a good idea to upload the images first (as a photo), mark them as private and then use them when I post a message? I tested and it works, but I am wondering if it is a feature or a bug and it will be impossible when Tumblr fixes it. Is there another better way maybe? AI: Images in deleted posts, either uploaded as part of a photo post or inline, are not deleted if the post is. It is most definitely not a bug because otherwise when a post is deleted, there would be tons of problems with reblogs. Only access to the post is restricted (how would people find the images anyway? Have you look at their urls?). However, there is already a method to upload inline pictures: See that discreet link in the corner above the post area? You can use it to upload images.
H: How can I move my YouTube account from a Gmail to an Apps account? I've already tried the steps here but the last step isn't possible since there isn't a tooltip on the dashboard page. I have a Gmail account ([email protected]) that has my YouTube channel with uploads/etc. I want to move all the data to my Google Apps account ([email protected]). I don't care if views/etc are kept. I want to be able to stop using my Gmail account for non-Gmail things. AI: To use that tool you must have conflicting user accounts. From the support page you listed: If you did not have a conflicting account, you won’t be able to use the automatic data moving tool. For instance, you won’t be able to move data from an unrelated @gmail.com account to your Google Apps account. This video explains what a conflicting account is.
H: Open Trello's Mobile site on tablet How can I open the mobile version of Trello on my tablet? Right now it opens up the desktop version (which lags the machine). AI: From reading Building trello.com for multiple devices it doesn't sound like there is a separate mobile version. We built Trello from the ground up to work on just about any device. It’s not a simplified version with limited features, either. Trello responds to your device’s screen size and capabilities. It’s the same exact site and the same exact code; a consistent experience that looks, feels, and works the same everywhere. You don't say what kind of tablet you have, but that blog post suggests that if you can keep increasing the font size in your browser, Trello will eventually switch to a simpler layout.
H: How to configure Hotmail to delete emails on server? I use Hotmail to pull down emails from my pop server but I cannot find a way to have hotmail delete them on the server once they are downloaded. The result is my email box is full. I cannot find a setting that will delete the downloaded messages from the server. Is there a way? AI: There is an option to leave the messages on the mail server or not. If you are setting up a new account, click Advanced Options in the setup page (figure 1), or if you have already created the account, then click Edit in the account-management page (figure 2). Then in the account Add/Edit page (figure 3), un-check the Leave a copy of my messages on the server option. Figure 1: Add account page Figure 2: Account-management page Figure 3: Add/Edit account page
H: Not reveal indentity when sharing documents to the public by Google document and by Dropbox I would like to share some documents to the public by Google document and by Dropbox, so that the public can view the documents without downloading them, but without my identity being revealed. I wonder if the public will be able to see my account information at Google and at Dropbox? AI: Whilst you have the Google document open, if you are logged in to your account, users can (pretty much) see your email address in both the viewer list and the chat area. Even if you are logged in to an account that did not create the document, it is possible for your active account's name to be revealed if you have permission to edit the document with this account. See here for more information. By looking at File > View revisions... within the Google Docs interface, users can see your first name (regardless of whether or not you have the document open). They can also see a list of all of the first names of the users who have modified the document. Having viewed your document, upon viewing https:­//docs.google.com/#home I can see your document as well as your first name within what I assume to be a history list. There may be additional information that could be retrieved, but I am not aware of anything more than what I have explained so far. Having looked at the HTML of the Dropbox page, I cannot find any trace of your email address, or anything that looks like a user ID. Furthermore, I checked my Dropbox and it seems that the URL cannot be modified to guess the other files in an account purely from a link to one file. The template for the URLs I was seeing in my own Dropbox is as follows: https:­//www.dropbox.com/sh/foo/bar/baz Where... foo is a seemingly random string that remains the same for each link for a file within this folder. bar is a seemingly random string that is changed for each file (even if they're in the same folder). baz is the file name - the same as you have named your file. This means that users cannot view the other files within your Dropbox folder without you sharing the direct link to the folder. Note that the layout of your provided Dropbox link seems different. I don't know which route you have taken to come out with such a URL, but what I have said above about the URL might still apply. With both of your provided links, I haven't any specialist knowledge in the respected areas, so I cannot be sure that there is not more than I have found. Finally, the following pages might interest you: https://­www.dropbox.com/help/179/en http://­forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=52884
H: Prevent received mails in my Gmail from getting randomly marked as important automatically Recently I am encountering this problem while using new Gmail: it randomly marks my emails as important, the ones I recently received from other email addresses. Not all emails are marked as important; say for example I received 3 emails, it'll mark 2 emails as important and it won't mark the 3rd one as important—I mean it picks any random new received email and marks it as important. Is there any logic behind this? Any idea why this happens and how can I stop it? AI: The official priority inbox video explains very clearly how it works. Basically you need to teach to your Gmail how to recognise an important email to obtain a descent result.
H: Referencing a cell range relative to the bottom of a sheet I am developing a "Daily Personal Inventory" spreadsheet based off a related Lifehacker article. I've successfully made a few modifications based on my own circumstances/goals, but there is one particular change that I am having trouble with. I would like my scores to reflect only the most recent 30 entries (i.e., the last 30 form responses). How can I reference a cell range relative to the bottom of the sheet rather than the top? AI: Not familiar exactly with the way this particular sheet works but I would try using a =sumif and passing the timestamp. See here.
H: Exporting Facebook page events to Google Calendar We're developing a website for our non-profit book café. We're using Google Calendar for booking meetings and movie showings and lectures and everything else, but we're also using our relatively popular Facebook page to create events. We'd like to minimize double work, so we're looking for a solution that will let us have Google Calendar events created automatically when we create a new event with our Facebook page. Since so many people are wondering how to sync their own Facebook events to their private calendars, looking for a solution for this problem on the internet proved difficult. Note the difference: usually people want to sync ''events they are invited to'', I want to sync events created through my page. I believe it should be possible using Facebook's Event API somehow, however. Update 1: Some time has passed without answer. So I've started looking into coding it myself - as I suspected, it is possible to export the relevant information using Facebook's API - using the access token for the page, access the page's events, and then access the individual events for more detailed information. I will post it here as an answer when I'm done. Update 2: I am well on my way, except that I've hit a snag regarding Facebook Graph API authentication. Let's hope there is a solution. AI: I've solved this with a little help from my friends and iCalcreator. Code as follows: <?php /* To begin with, you will need an access token. This is complicated stuff - getting a regular one is easy, but we want one that lasts permanently. As described in Scenario 5 here: https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/ , we need to: 1. Get a regular short-lived access token 2. Exchange it for a long-lived access token 3. Using our new access token, get a permanent page access token. First, create a new Facebook app at https://developers.facebook.com/apps/ . It can be named whatever, it's not going to be really used. Fill in a domain - it doesn't matter which, just take one that shows simple HTML and doesn't do any redirects: I used my own static web page, http://jobjorn.se/ , but http://example.org/ may work too. As instructed by MPaulo on Stack Overflow here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11238327/564628 , use the app id - from your newly created app - and visit this page: https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=MY_APP_ID&redirect_uri=MY_SITE_URL&scope=manage_pages&response_type=token Be sure to replace "MY_APP_ID" and "MY_SITE_URL". Then, exchange your short-lived access token for a long-lived access token by visiting this page: https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=MY_APP_ID&client_secret=MY_APP_SECRET&grant_type=fb_exchange_token&fb_exchange_token=YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN Be sure to replace "MY_APP_ID", "MY_APP_SECRET", and "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" (the last being the access token you received from the first page) Finally, get your page access token here: https://graph.facebook.com/me/accounts?access_token=YOUR_NEW_ACCESS_TOKEN Be sure to replace "YOUR_NEW_ACCESS_TOKEN" (the access token you recieved from the second page) Paste it below. It should be permanent, but due to a bug it might only last two months - see https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/151056591697025 for details. It seems to have been fixed however. You can test it here: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/access_token */ // You will need to edit these variables. $access_token = ""; $page = ""; // We don't want to query the Facebook Graph API over and over, so we'll cache our results. You can force the cache to update by visiting the script and appending "?f=true", otherwise it will only run (rather than display the cache) if the cache is older than 3600 seconds (one hour). $cache = $page . ".cache"; $f = false; if($_GET['f'] == "true"){ $f = true; } if(!file_exists($cache) || filemtime($cache) <= time()-3600 || $f){ // Get and decode the data - your page's event list - from the API $graph_url = "https://graph.facebook.com/" . $page . "/events?access_token=" . $access_token; $data = file_get_contents($graph_url); $data = json_decode($data); if(!empty($data->error)){ echo '<b>$data error</b><br />'; echo $data->error->type . " error (" . $data->error->code . "/" . $data->error->error_subcode . "): " . $data->error->message; exit; } // Go through the list of events, and get and decode more detailed information on each event. foreach ($data->data as $event){ $event_data = file_get_contents("https://graph.facebook.com/" . $event->id . "?access_token=" . $access_token); $event_data = json_decode($event_data); if(!empty($event_data->error)){ echo '<b>$event_data error</b><br />'; echo $event_data->error->type . " error (" . $event_data->error->code . "/" . $event_data->error->error_subcode . "): " . $event_data->error->message; exit; } // Store it in an array for later use. $events[] = $event_data; } // We're now done fetching the data from Facebook's Graph API. Now we'll have to create an iCal file. // This requires the iCalcreator PHP class, which you can downloead from kigkonsult at kigkonsult.se/iCalcreator/index.php require_once("icalcreator/iCalcreator.class.php"); // Create the calendar, set up some basic properties $c = new vcalendar(array('unique_id' => $page)); $c->setProperty('X-WR-CALNAME', $page . ' events'); $c->setProperty('X-WR-CALDESC', 'Facebook events for ' . $page); $c->setProperty('X-WR-TIMEZONE', $events[0]->timezone); // We assume all of the events use the same timezone. // Loop through the events, create event components in the calendar foreach($events as $key => $event){ $e[$key] = & $c->newComponent('vevent'); $e[$key]->setProperty('summary', $event->name); $e[$key]->setProperty('dtstart', $event->start_time); $e[$key]->setProperty('dtend', $event->end_time); $e[$key]->setProperty('description', $event->description . "\n\nhttp://www.facebook.com/events/" . $event->id); $e[$key]->setProperty('location', $event->location); } // Remove the cache if it exists if(file_exists($cache)){ unlink($cache); } // Open (create) the cache file if(!$handle = fopen($cache, 'w')){ echo "Cannot open output file: " . $cache; exit; } // Write the calendar to the cache if(fwrite($handle, $c->createCalendar()) === FALSE){ echo "Cannot write to output file: " . $cache; exit; } // Close the cache file fclose($handle); } // Now we've got the calendar in the cache file, either newly generated and stored there just a few lines ago or from earlier. Now we'll just display it. header("Content-Type: text/calendar; charset=UTF-8"); header("Content-Disposition: filename=" . $page . ".ics"); require($cache); ?>
H: Why do some YouTube videos start loading everything again once you click somewhere? Possible Duplicate: Why do I lose my buffered video content when I let the video buffer fully beforehand? Why some YouTube videos start load everything again every time you click somewhere in the already loaded track? I have limited bandwidth, and if I want to see something repeatedly, it will load each time again... happens with some videos, with others it just plays again without reloading. AI: The YouTube video player is quite unstable in that sense. Sometimes it will reload the video and sometimes it won't (either because the resolution of the video changed, or the cache is full, etc). If you play the video completely and then go back and watch it again (pressing the replay button), you should be just fine. Additionally, if this becomes a grave problem, I recommend downloading the videos with the following websites: KeepVid Keep-Tube (Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with either of the sites; I'm just suggesting what has worked for me. However, I'm not responsible for the functioning/availability of such services).
H: How to reply to answers on Tumblr? I asked a question on Tumblr and ticked the "Let people answer this" option. Now a few answers have come in, and I wanted to reply to them, yet I do not see a way how. Is it possible? And if so, how? AI: Bad news, you can’t reply back to replies that were left in your own posts. However, if you have Discus Comments installed, that would be the solution, so you can start using that addon instead of allowing replies, which is an old and not very complete Tumblr feature. Source: tumblring.net
H: Is there a way to control your identity as a note-leaver/commenter on Tumblr? I have two Tumblr blogs within one account. Each blog has a URL in the form of somename.tumblr.com and a portrait photo. If I "like" or respond to someone's post, is there a way I can select which blog the response appears to come from? So what I'm saying is can I select which of my blog URLs and portrait photos I appear as in the list of notes? Or is it that you have one "main" blog and that's always who you appear to be? AI: It's ALWAYS the main blog only. The same reason you can't separate the likes linked to main and secondary blogs. When in doubt, always start a separate account (as irritating as it may be).
H: Google Music - Update metadata for multiple files? Apparently, a significant number of files that I've uploaded have incorrect metadata. Is there any way to (via the web interface) update this metadata in groups, rather than one file at a time? AI: You can Ctrl + click (on Windows) or Cmd + click (on Mac OS X) to select multiple files, then click on the menu triangle next to any song title and select Edit song info (x). (x) is the number of files you have selected. You can also click the first song in a list, then Shift + click the last song in a list to select both songs and all songs in between.
H: If Joe likes my Facebook status update, will Joe's friends see my update? The privacy settings of Facebook puzzles me. This is a thing I can't figure out: Scenario: I post a status update on Facebook, setting the privacy to "Friends". A friend of mine, let's call him Joe, likes my update. Which one of the following things happens after that? Joe's friends sees the like as well as my update in their feeds Joe's friends do not see the like in their news feed, but they can access it by going to Joe's page. Joe's friends do not see my update nor can they see the like or original post in any way. AI: If your status update is posted to only Friends, and no one is tagged in your post, then Joe's friends will not see the post or the Like on the post unless they are also your friends. This is (c) if there is no tagging or mutual friends. If it is posted to Friends and Joe is tagged in the post, normally that will make the post and Like visible to Joe's friends as well. Joe's friends may see it in their News Feed, although they may not (Facebook determines what it thinks is most relevant for your News Feed, especially if you have a lot of friends). Joe's friends may be able to see the post on Joe's profile/timeline, although Joe may have removed it from there or may have changed this using his Privacy Settings. If a post is not visible to someone then that person will not be able to see Likes on the post either.
H: How to track periodic payments with PayPal? I want to create a Webservice where companies can place their ad on my webpage. They have to pay money for the ad: periodically every month. I want to realize the payment with PayPal. But i have to track if the company has paid, and if not i want to deactivate the company-account on my website. In my opinion, i have to check the date when someone paid to PayPal, write the date in my Database and check one month later if the company paid again. I couldn't find anything on the PayPal API-Websites. Can anyone help me or give me a good explanation how PayPal handle those things? AI: Paypal does provide API access to manage this through the Recurring Payments API. The doco has a description of the workflow required, but of particular interest to you would be GetRecurringPaymentsProfileDetails. You could check the profile status or the date of last payment received to see if a payment has been made and act accordingly.
H: Is there a webapp which let's me email stuff to my colleagues, and they receive a daily summary of those emails? It should also archive the content of those emails in some sort of private online feed, for easy reference. I'm going to use it to notify them of new rules and coding conventions we're going to use. Having the conventions also stored in a central place would give me the ability to have new employees just read through that list. I've seen one before where the whole team submits their tasks and everyone gets a summary email. But I can't remember the name of it. :( AI: Google Groups will allow you to send emails to any number of people. Those people can elect to receive each email, or a daily digest. Groups can be invite-only, and you can prevent other group members from sending email if you wish. The emails are always viewable online later. If you always reply to the same subject line, they will be readable in one long thread; otherwise you can use subject lines to separate by topic.
H: How do I execute a filter in Gmail for the current email in my inbox? I know how to create a filter and once it's created it will execute this filter on all incoming mail. However is there a way to execute this filter on what I already have received? AI: Go to the list of filters in Settings, edit the filter you want to run, don't change anything, and before you click Update filter, check the box that says "Also apply filter to [x] matching conversations": Be aware that this will affect all conversations that match the filter, not just conversations with the Inbox label.
H: How do I invite people to like my company's page? One of my friends on Facebook did a mass invite that I am interested doing myself. I got a message in my notification section which linked his page. I could click on that link and directly "like" the page. The text in my notification's list read, "[Name of friend] has invited you to like his new page [name of page with a link]." I would like to do this for my own business's page. I have hit "Share" which makes the site show up on my profile, but people are liking my share, which doesn't give me the result I want. I would like people to be invited to like my site directly so they can get status updates and see our pictures and promotions. I'm fairly certain that these friends are interested in such a thing, they just aren't Facebook savvy enough to know how to do that. I'm hoping the notification to directly like the page will help them understand and streamline the process so the friends who want to connect with my business can "like" the site and I can leave my other friends alone. AI: First ensure that you are using Facebook using your personal profile. You cannot invite friends using a business account or if you are using Facebook as the Page, because business accounts and Pages do not have friends. If you are using Facebook as the Page, switch back to using Facebook as you using the ▾ menu in the upper right corner. Using your personal Facebook profile, which must be an admin of the page, choose Invite Friends from the Build Audience ▾ menu on your page's admin panel. From Facebook Help: How do I invite friends to my Page? To invite friends to your Page: Open your Page's admin panel Click Build Audience ▾ Select Invite Friends... Use the dropdown menu to choose a list or select Search All Friends. Next, scroll through your friends and check the boxes next to the names of the people you want to invite. You can also search for friends in the menu's search box. When you're done selecting friends, be sure to click Submit to send your friends invitations to your Page.
H: Sending Gmail email to "me" In Gmail, those emails originating from me appear with the sender "me". But when I want to send email to myself and I put "me" in the address, Gmail doesn't recognize it. I went so far as to create a "me" in "My Contacts" and I still cannot use "me" in the address (the To field). Any way to work around this? AI: You should be able to create a contact "me" which is then searched as you type "me" in the To: field when composing an email. You will then need to pick the appropriate "me" contact from the drop-down list of contacts that contain the characters "me". You can't simply type "me" in the To: field and expect it to be routed to you. I have an "@ME" contact for the same reason. I prefix it with "@" so that it is at the top of my contacts list and no other real contacts contain the "@" character in their name - so the drop-down list is very short. I have read that Gmail treats email that you send to yourself as duplicate(?) and consequently it does not appear in your Inbox - only in your Sent folder. Although this does not happen to me - it appears in my Inbox like any normal email. EDIT: I have found that after closing and opening Gmail it will no longer prompt with the "me", "myself" or "@ME" contacts in the autocomplete dropdown when filling in the "To" field! This is bizarre. Changing the contact name in some way - such as adding a real name eg "@ME (Joe Bloggs)" resolves the issue temporarily, but it disappears again when returning to Gmail later. Contacts where I have used my full name (without any funny prefix) remain in the autocomplete dropdown.
H: Forget remembered OpenID I accidentally clicked "Remember me" on a site requesting my OpenID. I'm using Gmail to provide it - is there a way to make it forget about that site? AI: The process is simple. Go to The Google Account Security Page, logging in to Google if necessary. Beside Authorizing applications and sites click Edit Click Revoke Access for the site you wish to remove access for your OpenID
H: Is there a right way to unfollow Twitter users? I get the sense that the follow-back ratio is important, and I would like to unfollow users that don't follow my account, but not sure what is the best way to do this. Guess the other thing is I really have not figured out a good way to know if someone I follow will follow back more than the average follow back ratio; meaning people that just follow anyone. AI: There are a number of tools out there that can give you this information. ManageFlitter is one. Among other things, it can tell you who you follow who doesn't follow you as well as who follows you that you don't follow. It also provides tools to make it easier to follow/unfollow in bulk.
H: Why do YouTube results in a Google search lead to a redirect page? I've noticed recently (last few weeks) that when I click on a youtube video from a Google search I get taken to a redirect page (happens instantly) before I actually land on the video on youtube.com. It means when you click the back button, you hit the redirect page and just get sent back to youtube. Obviously you can open the history and go two pages back to the search results but but I dont understand the purpose of Google doing this. (I can imagine it would annoy the hell out of people who dont understand whats happening...) AI: Possibly Google have only recently started doing this for YouTube, but this is standard practice for Google's search links and has been for some time. Perhaps since YouTube is a Google property they haven't bothered until now, the redirect is normally instant and doesn't appear until you actually click on it. Normally the redirect is clever enough to let you get back to your search results, so I'm not sure why you keep getting sent in circles. Possibly you changed a browser setting a few weeks ago? Maybe on relating to cookies? As covered by a similar question on the topic, it is essentially to allow Google to track which search results you select. This serves the dual purpose of refining search results and tracking you. There is a Firefox extension if you are using Firefox that removes the Google links, there are probably alternatives if you are using another browser. Edit: Some Opera users report this problem when they set it to "identify as firefox".
H: Find the total exposure of a tweet Let's say I (100 followers) tweet X. Users A (500 followers), B (300 followers, including 100 that overlap with A) and C (1000 followers, of which 800 are unique) retweet it. Is there a way to get a report of the total "exposure" of the tweet - all the people who have seen it? In this case, 100 + 500 + 200 + 800 = 1600. AI: You can have a look at TweetReach which looks like it provides the analytics you are after.
H: Is it possible to attach a file from Google Documents to an email by Gmail? Is it possible to attach a file already in my Google Documents account to an email written in Gmail, without downloading it? If yes, how? AI: There is a Google Docs Gadget that can be enabled in Settings/Labs. Adds a box in the left column which displays your Google Docs. Shows recent docs, starred docs, and has fast search. You can drag the document into the message
H: Trello now sanitizing URLs / disallowing custom url protocols? Up until about yesterday, I was able to add markdown links to a local application within the description area of my Trello Cards. The application uses a custom url protocol to produce a url like the following: ttstudio://server:99//Product/dfct?recordID=3836 I've been adding these references to my trello cards in the markdown format: [3836](ttstudio://server:99//Product/dfct?recordID=3836) where they'd render as <a href="ttstudio://server:99//Product/dfct?recordID=3836">3836</a> I just went back to one of these cards and noticed that the href now renders as <a href="#">3836</a> Which completely disables the link. Changing to a standard protocol (http, https, ftp) renders the href correctly, which makes me think they've recently disabled custom/non-standard url protocols. Anyone else experiencing this? Anyone know if this was changed on purpose and why? Is this documented anywhere that I can reference? Their development board doesn't seem to indicate any changes were made, but I'm sure they don't post every change they make. AI: Non-standard protocols were disabled as a security precaution, to prevent the use of dangerous URIs (e.g. javascript:) from being rendered. See https://github.com/evilstreak/markdown-js/pull/52 for a pull request with more details.
H: Can Trello roll back to previous revisions of boards or cards? I'm considering using Trello to replace lists we keep in FogBugz wikis and in Google Docs. But both of those allow version control -- I can see what the list looked like yesterday, and roll back to that version if I need to. Can Trello do this? AI: No. You can now export your data from Trello - see Is it possible to export my data from Trello, to back it up? - but there is no built in way to import historical data back in. The Trello FAQ makes no mention of importing even new data, and it says the API is read-only.
H: jsFiddle: Default tab Is it possible to specify the jsFiddle default tab in embed mode? For example, I created this jsFiddle, which has no JavaScript, and embedded it into my blog: http://blog.rastasoft.ir/node/46/ But because I had no JavaScript in it, the default tab is empty. I want to set the HTML tab as default. How can I do that? AI: This feature is fully documented in Embedding the fiddle - Changing Tabs In example if to show the result as the first tab add result,js,html,css/ to the URL: src="http://jsfiddle.net/zalun/NmudS/embedded/result,js,html,css/"
H: What do these icons in Gmail indicate? In these icons, some have two >'s, others one or none. What are the meanings behind these icons (highlighted in yellow)? I know that clicking on them marks the conversation as important, but what do the >'s mean? AI: They are called “Personal level indicators” and show you at a glance whether you were the only recipient ( » ) or there were more than one ( › ). They can be turned on/off from the settings page.
H: How to see who else is included in message on Facebook Someone sent me a Facebook message and I replied but some other people I don't know replied too. Is there a list of everyone involved in the message? AI: You can hover your mouse over xx Others in Friend name and xx others and click on See All. It'll show all the people who are added in the conversation.
H: How to send email to all members of a Facebook group Is there any way to send an email to every member of a group in Facebook given that I'm the admin of that group? Or just send a message to every member of that group and they will see it on their Facebook inbox? If this is not possible may I know if there is a way to get all the Facebook email addresses of members in a group so that I can just use the usual messaging system in Facebook to send a message to each of those emails? AI: Instructions from Facebook on how to send messages to entire group. How do I send a message to everyone in my group? Any group member or admin can make posts in a group using the options at the top of the group. When a post is made, members are notified on Facebook and by email, and they can respond with comments. Members can change their notification settings, but they will always see new posts when they visit the group. Group admins can’t send private messages to all members of a group. The best way to reach all members at once and start a discussion is to make a post in the group. If this doesn't solve the problem go to Solution 2 Solution 2 This is going to require a little coding and some Facebook Open Graph knowledge. You must be logged into facebook :) First you will need to query all the members of your group. Here is an example query api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select+gid%2C+uid+from+group_member+where+gid+%3D+146797922030397+limit+50&access_token=AAAAAAITEghMBAJDmxL89UqxXbZAqR4PwcIIE8nj74hiPi618zMJLuzJh1otaVC2XIxjmA78yzsxZC9pDcBZBaAW4He2ZCh1sVsYAbahvXwZDZD&format=json This only works on groups you are a member of. Also my example link is set to take the first 50. If you need more adjust the Url query accordingly. The important number in this is the gid. Your gid can be found in the url of the group page. Now you have all the uid (user ids) These uid's can be used to get their user account names Example: Here is Brad's graph.facebook.com/220439 Take the account names and append @facebook.com Create a csv with all the email addresses copy this line into Facebook messenger. You would want to automate this in a script, as manually looking up each individual user name would be tedious.
H: Web app to monitor the status of Yahoo Mail, Twitter and Facebook Is there a web app or web service that can monitor the status of Yahoo Mail, Twitter and Facebook to check if they are down? In other words, I want to be able to see momentarily and easily when my favorite web services are down. AI: Downrightnow monitors the status of your favorite web services, combining user reports and official announcements to tell you when there's service trouble.
H: Getting Google Drive to open in a certain folder? I have a certain folder in Google Drive which contains most of my work materials and which I use many times more often than any other folder. How can I get it to go to that folder by default when I open Google Drive? I used to have it set up this way when it was still Google Documents, but then they changed it and it stopped working, and I can't seem to find whatever it was I changed all those years ago. AI: Actually it seems to be impossible in Google Drive. The only way that comes to my mind would be to open the folder in Google Drive and then bookmark it.
H: Download complete folder shared under Photos on Dropbox Is there any way to allow someone to download the whole shared Photos folder on Dropbox and not only individual files? Preferable a solution that doesn't require the receiver to register on Dropbox? AI: You could try this method posted on Mac OS X Hints: Just stick the folder of files into your public folder, and head to the Dropbox webapp. Click on the folder you want to share, then click the “Get Link” button at the top of the page. Add ?dl=1 to the end of it, and send that link to your friends. It’ll zip the file up for them and download it to their computer. (Lifehacker synopsis)
H: Set a circle as the default tab in a Google Plus profile When I click Myname+ on a Google site, it loads the G+ profile with the "All" tab enabled by default. That means, it shows updates from all streams (all the circles I have created more or less). I want to change it to show the "Family" circle by default. How can I change it? AI: You can adjust the "All" tab to only view the "Family" circle (or any other set of circles you want). To do this: View the stream of each other circle by selecting that circle. In the upper right hand corner above the stream, there is a slider that selects the volume. Set the volume all the way down (to the left). Repeat this for each of the circles you do NOT want in your main stream. For your "Family" circle, move the volume all the way up (to the right) to make sure you get all of the posts from that circle. The volume slider only controls what shows up in the main stream - you can still view all the posts in each circle by visiting that circle.
H: On OkCupid, how can I search through questions I haven't answered? I sometimes use OkCupid, a dating/friend-finding site. It works by matching up users based on their answers to a series of questions. But when I search through the set of available questions, the site searches only through the text of the questions I've already answered. How can I search through the text of all the site's questions, including the questions I haven't answered? AI: I've found a couple of possible solutions. The best one I've found is to search through the set of questions answered by someone who's answered several thousand questions.
H: Why can't I get my In-Page Analytics to work? I don't understand it. All my statistics are working perfectly, except the In-Page Analytics. It just says: We found no clickthroughs for this page. Try adjusting the date range or select another page. I looked on the web and only found this post on the Google Product Forums, but it contains only complaints, no solutions. Then I found this solution over at aillum that suggested that the issue with URI Filters. But I have no filters installed at all: What else could it be? AI: Please note that when you view In-Page Analytics, it displays the current URL at the top left: Google Analytics allows you to override that URL with a custom one when a user views your website. For the specifics, you can check out the question How can I set a Page Title with Google Analytics? You can simply check if this is the case, by looking at any other statistics. Does the same page show up there like this? There's your problem. As a side note, I encountered this issue through a TYPO3 extension (rsgoogleanalytics). When setting plugin.tx_rsgoogleanalytics.registerTitle to title or rootline, this causes the reported page title to be overridden.
H: How to get a Google Profiles name? I already have a Google+ profile with this ugly long URL: https://plus.google.com/106542087505398120198/ I recently discovered in this LifeHacker article that the author has a much shorter Google Profiles name (here: http://www.google.com/profiles/ginatrapani). I tried if I already had such a profile by using my Google nickname and the first part of my Gmail address as suffix but this didn't work. I checked all my Account settings but I can't find out where to apply or change for such a name. If I go to http://www.google.com/profiles it leads me straight to my Google+ account. Can anyone point me in the right direction? AI: It looks like under an older Google Profiles system (such as Buzz) it was possible to have a pretty URL like you've found above. Google axed it as a default however, in part because it effectively exposed users' username / email addresses. The best article I could find on the topic was this blog post, which mentions: if you had selected a vanity URL for your old Google Profile those have been grandfathered in to point to your current Google+ profile. They may be coming at some stage, in terms of anything from Google itself is this line in the product forum in March: The team has actually decided to take another look at vanity URLs based on user feedback and will be talking about whether or how to proceed - rest assured that they have not been ruled out. Stay tuned for updates. In the mean time there are a bunch of URL shortening services operating you could use, or if you have your own domain you can point that to your profile.
H: Is it possible to have clean URLs for Google Drive items? Is it possible to have clean URLs for Google Drive items? By items I mean folders (collections) and files. There are currently horrendously long strings of numbers and letters in a URL. They look messy and don't say much about the item that they link to. There are W3C guidelines on good URLS, Google Drive therefore clearly breaks them at the moment. Thoughts? What I am looking for would be something like: https://drive.google.com/users/<username>/mydocuments/afile.doc Where is a user name, e.g. johnsmith: https://drive.google.com/users/johnsmith/mydocuments/afile.doc or for a company that hosts its documents with Google Drive (paid service to Google, Google Drive for Business): https://drive.google.com/business/<companyname>/<username>/mydocuments/afile.doc Where and are replace with the user's name and the company or organisation that they work at: e.g.: https://drive.google.com/business/acompany/johnsmith/mydocuments/afile.doc Surely this makes a lot of sense? AI: Surely this makes a lot of sense? Actually, it doesn't work as well as you might think at first. The URLs Google is using are stable: they contain only the document's id. The owner of the document can change. A document can have many users with various and changing privileges. The title/name of the document can change. If any of these properties were present in the URL, then the URL would change when the document was changed. This would present a serious problem. Instead the URLs contain the only stable information: the unique id generated by the system. (this is more fundamental, but is in addition to the information leakage concerns noted by myselfpoddar) Update: A relevant article by Tim Berners-Lee titled Cool URIs don't change
H: Pause Google Analytics experiment I recall that I could pause an experiment on Google Website Optimizer, but now that experiments have been moved over to Google Analytics, I don't see a way to do that (and knowing Google, there's a good chance that they just dropped that feature). Can anyone tell me how to accomplish this (short of changing the code on my site)? AI: It looks like the feature isn't available in Google Analytics at this stage - one of the few places it is noted is in this blog post: ... details that are currently not supported include copy a test and pause a test. Users only have the option to stop a test but, because this is a big problem for all users, I expect a quick fix after August 1. These exclusions could not have been a technical limitation but most likely were features that did not make the August 1 launch. So hopefully it is coming soon. In the meantime you can stop the experiment, there doesn't seem to be any other work around.
H: How do I make a cell highlighted if the date in the cell is today? Possible Duplicate: Advanced date logic in Google Spreadsheets I have a spreadsheet with many consecutive days. So Cell1 = 7/30/2012, Cell2 = 7/31/2012 etc. I want Cell1 to be highlighted if today is 7/30/2012 and Cell2 to be highlighted if today is 7/31/2012. How can I do this? AI: Similar to this question, you'll want to use conditional formatting. Select the cells and select Format > Conditional Formatting Select "Date is" "today" and select a Background colour
H: Make Gmail messages disappear from a label after they are read I have a filter on my Gmail account that puts messages from certain email addresses under a label "Job" omitting the "Received". Is it possible to make these messages appear also in "Received" until I read them? (then they should only appear in "Job") UPDATE Filtered emails flow: gmail > Job label [it doesn't show up in Received] Desired flow: gmail > Received [stays here until I read it] > [I read the message] > Job [no longer shows up in Received] AI: Strictly with filters, no. You can approximate this by using the Multiple Inboxes feature. Make the query string for one of the inbox panes something like this: label:Job is:unread You should also be able to do the counterpart to that: label:Job -is:unread The - is a NOT operator. With this you should have two special inboxes (that appear in addition to your regular inbox), one with messages labeled "Job" that haven't been read, and the other labeled "Job" where they have been read.
H: Did Relationship Status on Facebook Get Automatically Hidden? I was looking at my girlfriend's (non-Timeline) Facebook page, and noticed that where it used to say she's in a relationship with me is now gone. Was there a recent change to make this information automatically hidden, or is it still done manually? I should probably just ask her, but I'd rather know if there was a change in that setting first. AI: There doesn't appear to be any of the usual uproar that accompanies a change in Facebook's settings on this front. Facebook is in the process of forcing people onto the timeline format, so possibly it is associated with that change over. On the whole, it is probably easiest to ask her.
H: Multi size .ico generator I need to generate a multi size ICO file for a desktop software icon. It needs to contain the following sizes: 16x16 (32-bit) 32x32 (32-bit) 48x48 (32-bit) 96x96 (32-bit) 128x128 (32-bit) 256x256 (32-bit) Is there a web app that can do that? AI: ConvertICO.org can do it. Select the input file, then select the output icon type with Custom Dimensions (Multi-size in one icon) setting, and finally click Convert button. Now you can download your multi-size icon file.
H: If converting a Facebook profile to a Facebook page then is the username retained? Facebook provides a facility to convert a profile to a page. But is the username also transferred to the page? (that is what I want). AI: Yes the username becomes your new page username. Additionally your current profile photo will become the page's profile photo. Converting your personal profile to a page profile
H: Is there a way to delete single imported contact from people hub in Outlook.com? The title says it all. Outlook.com has the option to import contacts from several sources. However, I would like to delete some people which were imported from Facebook. Is there a way to delete people from contact lists, in the Outlook itself, which were imported from Facebook (or any other external source)? Deleting them on Facebook itself is not an option. AI: UPDATE: Outlook’s “People” feature lets you integrate contacts from Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as from other sites and sources. Note that I said “integrate,” not import. The difference is that when you “connect” to the social services, to use Microsoft’s term, it doesn’t really import them. In other words, it doesn’t copy the address book. It merely points to it. If you want to delete a contact “imported” from Facebook, for example, you can’t do it from Outlook.com. You have to do it from Facebook. Only contacts created in the Outlook.com “People” area can be deleted from Outlook.com. Source. I haven’t imported any contacts so I don’t know if they behave differently (I assume they shouldn’t), but can’t you just delete the respective contact(s)? Just select it/them from the left-side list and a delete button will appear in the upper menu.
H: Gray pixels in YouTube video I have posted a video on YouTube and it begins with many gray pixels (squares). What can I do? See this print-screen too: AI: YouTube officially supports WMV files, and the Flash Player seems to work for most videos, so the video corruption is likely due to a bug during the conversion from your original WMV video to the MP4 that YouTube stores on its servers (it may even be as little as one corrupt frame). You should try uploading the original again to see if conversion will work the second time. If it does not, you can try converting the video to MP4 yourself. SUPER is a popular and easy-to-use program for this. The dimensions of the video should not matter, so you don’t have to worry about re-sizing or anything. Just convert it to MP4 yourself (which gives you greater control over the quality) and YouTube may not even convert the it at all. They also have some tips for uploading videos that may help. If all else fails, you can use the Report a bug link at the bottom of the page or contact them about it (the contact page says AV sync issues, but the page that links to it does not: If you continue to experience Audio/Video issues with your upload, contact us and we may be able to help.)
H: Are Facebook accounts always re-attainable? If someone hacks my Facebook account, is it that no matter what he does, can I always get back my account? What is the maximum that he can and must do to ensure that I do not get my account back? NOTE: Kindly take this Question positively. AI: You basically can always get it back. According to this article if a hacker has got into your account and changed all the contact info you still have the option to specify another e-mail address which the Facebook staff will contact you at regarding a password reset. If the hacker deletes your account and changes your password you must have your password reset and log in before 14 days time. This is because an account is permanently deleted after 14 days of no use (and the user requested deletion).
H: Can Gmail recognise threads/conversations with non-English reply prefixes? In Gmail, when I receive a reply to a message with Subject: X, and the reply has Subject: Re: X, it correctly recognises it as a reply and sorts the message in the same thread/conversation. However, if the reply has a subject Aw: X or Sv: X, as may happen when people use non-English e-mail clients, Gmail appears to not recognise the message as part of the conversation. Is it possible to tune or configure Gmail to make it understand non-English reply prefixes? If so, how? AI: It should be using the References: header of the email messages. However, not all email clients provide a correct References header. There is nothing you can do about Gmail's processing of the mail headers. Some references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email#Header_fields http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2629 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=28017
H: Starred sent messages in Gmail Possible Duplicate: Label outgoing emails in Gmail when composing the mail I star incoming messages in Gmail to keep track of which ones need replies. I'd like to be able to do the same thing with sent messages. As I'm sending them, star or tag them so that I'll be able to view a list of them later, to make sure I got replies. Is there a way to do this, or in general deal with sent messages better within Gmail, so that the conversation doesn't just disappear if the other person doesn't reply? AI: You can add a label and/or star the message while you are composing: See this on unofficial gmailblog on blogspot
H: Does @MarsCuriosity have geolocation? I can't seem to get geolocation information for the Twitter account @MarsCuriosity . Am I doing something wrong, or does Twitter lack geolocation support for locations outside of Earth? AI: Geolocation is an optional field, in this instance it appears NASA has opted not to use it. You are also correct in saying Twitter doesn't currently support it. According to the spec for the Twitter API, the coordinates field is formatted as geoJSON (longitude first, then latitude). geoJSON does allow you to specify a coordinate reference system (CRS) which defines the map projection for the points. It defaults to WGS84, the standard used for GPS on Earth. Given there isn't an option in the Twitter settings to specify what planet you are on, it looks like you are stuck with points on the surface of the Earth. Even assuming it was an option, the lack of GPS around Mars (MPS?) means that granularity of the rover's location wouldn't be particularly good anyway.
H: Same e-mail user, different address? I was wondering why using [email protected] works but not [email protected]. In Gmail, [email protected] and [email protected] (and any combination of periods in the username) is equivalent. Is this a hidden feature in Gmail? AI: We could say this is kind of a hidden trick of Gmail. Here is what Google says about it: Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they’ll all go to your inbox, and only yours And the makeuseof article about it. Microsoft didn't choose to provide this for outlook, probably because they migrated the hotmail accounts where the . (dot) could be used a character in the username. Note that you also have two similar tricks: the [email protected] the [email protected] is equal to [email protected]
H: Can I resize an image (Drawing file) in Google Drive? Is it possible to resize an image (a Drawing file) within Google Drive? I created a new drawing in Google Drive. When I download the image as a PNG file and then upload it to where I want to use it (Google+ profile), the image seems to be too large (Google+ is cropping the edges out). I would like to try to reduce the size of the image before downloading the PNG. Note: I am doing this using only online tools since I am working on a Chromebook. Otherwise I would just use a desktop application to change the image size. Suggestions for other online tools that I can use to resize the image are also welcome! AI: I wouldn't know how to change the image within Google Drive, but there are several online services for re sizing images, I've use this one and works perfectly: http://www.resizeyourimage.com/
H: Site affected by malware Does anyone know of a site / service that provides an updated list of all sites which are known to be affected by some kind of malware? Ie sites that get the Chrome/ Firefox malware popup (This site has been affected by malware!) AI: I don’t know any (well known) site that does that, but there is Google’s Safe Browsing API if you want to do something programmatically.