8 Cool Tips & Tricks to Make Most Of Google Chrome

The popularity of any software can be guessed from the number of hacks that trail it after a release. Or the number of add-ons. Google Chrome seems to be not only holding its own but also trotting along. As of April 2009, it is the world’s fourth most popular browser. Not bad for a browser which is few months away from its first birthday.

As user opinions sally back and forth about browser preferences, one thing is not open to question. Firefox is definitely more expandable and customizable than all others out there (Don’t they call it the Swiss Army knife for the web).

But if you like the Chrome’s agility then there are ways to make it more versatile. We at MakeUseOf.com have gone over quite a lot of ground with the Chrome. You can read about some tips and tricks here and here.

Here are some more ways to reach under the hood and exploit some handy Chrome features.

1. Make Chrome’s consume less memory

By default, Chrome is a multi-process browser. Yawn! What’s that? Simply, it means that each tab runs as a separate process asking for separate resources from the computer. The current working tab gets the most priority over the others. This was intentionally designed to make web apps run faster in Chrome. This feature makes the browser zippier and more stable even with multiple open tabs.
But if you aren’t a heavy user and use the browser to surf only a single site at a time then disabling multiple processes can free up some CPU resources. To handle each web process Chrome has three settings –
–process-per-tab The default mode; each tab gets an independent process of its own. This increases the rendering of webpages and makes the browser stable as each tab is a separate process from the rest. But it also consumes memory.
–process-per-site One process for each unique website; for instance a user with two tabs open for Gmail and another for MakeUseOf will have the two Google tabs running under the same process.
–single-process The simplest mode; all tabs run in a single process, much like the other browsers we have now. This setting frees up memory for other applications. This is what we are looking for.
Create a shortcut for Chrome. Open the Properties tab. Edit the Target field as shown in the picture by appending –single-process to the path.

Similarly you can create two more shortcuts for the other two processes to handle your web sessions in three ways.

2. Manage tabs with the Task Manager

This is an offshoot of Google Chrome’s multi-process nature which allows each tab to run separate from the other. This allows us to manage, reload or shut down each tab without affecting the rest of our browsing. All this can be done through the Task Manager. Press Shiftand Escape to start the task manager or right click on the blue top bar. An unresponsive tab can be shut down without bringing down the browser by a simple press of the End processbutton.


3. Some stats for nerds

There is a simple way to tell which browser is using the most resources on your computer. Chrome’s task manager lets you examine the memory use of the opened browsers on your computer irrespective of make. Open task manager and click on the ‘Stats for nerds’ link at the bottom. A new tab opens with detailed memory info for all running browsers. The second part of the page also describes Chrome’s process usage stats.


4. Some more stats on the Resources page

More for site administrators than for you and me but the resources page has a ton of info to offer. To track the resources used by a web page – right click inside the page. Select Inspect element – go to the Resources tab and reload the web page. You can view a list of images, scripts and objects from the web page and you can sort them by size or by loading time.


5. Drag to resize any text box

Do you feel that the size of a text box on any website is not worthy of your thoughts…then just place your mouse on the bottom right edge and drag to increase the size. Give MakeUseOf.com’s comment box the first drag.


6. Split Chrome into double-pane view

This bookmarklet from Chromeplugins.org is incredibly useful. The dual view feature is useful when you want to compare two websites or search results side by side. Drag the Chrome Split Browser bookmarklet into your bookmarks toolbar. When you click the bookmarklet, it asks you to choose the two websites you want and displays them in a double pane.


7. Startup with multiple pages

On launch, Chrome opens up with the ‘Most visited’ area. But it also lets us set options for starting the day by opening our most favored sites in several tabs at once. Click on the wrench icon (Customize and control Chrome) on the top right corner. Under Options – Basic tab we can add the pages we want to open on startup.


8. Drag and drop downloads from Chrome

After finishing a download, you can copy it to the desktop or to any other folder by a simple drag and drop directly from Google Chrome.

Did I miss any of your favorite tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments and lets help each other create a more sleek Chrome experience.

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How 3D Works: A Simple Picture Guide

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Adobe Prepares for a World without Apple's Blessing

Today at the Mobile World Congress 2010, Adobe announced several initiatives designed to cement their company's relevance in a world where Apple, one of the top smartphone players, has banned Adobe software from inclusion on all mobile devices including the iPhone, iPod Touch and the soon-to-launch iPad. Without Adobe's Flash runtime, thousands of websites don't work, streaming videos won't play and a number of online casual games are broken. Apple, of course, is fine with this, having worked around the issue thanks to the 150,000+ iPhone applications that deliver the same functionality...although sometimes for a fee.

Adobe, meanwhile, is focusing on the other up-and-coming smartphone platform, Google's Android OS, with the launch of their 'AIR for Android' offering. With this and the newly announced Flash Player 10.1, wannabe mobile developers don't need to learn specialized code, but can instead leverage their existing development skills to build Flash and AIR-based applications. They can then have those apps run anywhere: PCs, Macs, Linux and mobile...including, surprisingly, the iPhone.

AIR for Android

The AIR for Android development platform allows designers and developers to use their existing skills in coding for AIR on the desktop to build standalone applications that run on the mobile Android operating system, found on devices like the Droid, the myTouch 3G, and the G1. With AIR, developers can include mobile-specific functionality in their devices including multi-touch, accelerometer input, GPS, screen orientation and gestures.

Already, Adobe has several developers on board. A company blog post today shows a selection of some of the first AIR-built Android apps, all games, including iTunes App Store classics like Alchemist, FickleBlox, Gridshock, Chroma Circuit, Red Hood, South Park Avatar Creator and Su (iTunes links).

Flash 10.1

In addition to the AIR for Android announcement, Adobe also debuted the Flash Platform 10.1 beta, now available to developers and content providers worldwide. With Flash, developers can not only build mobile applications for Android, but can build apps that run anywhere: desktops, laptops, netbooks and smartphones. All the major smartphone players (save one) will support Flash, including Android, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm's webOS and Windows Mobile. It will now also be available on LiMo devices, an independent and open smartphone platform with a Linux-based operating system at its core.


Flash isn't just about the apps, either. It's also used for website content display and HD videos, like those found on the popular U.S. TV portal, Hulu. Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox hardware, devices that let you watch live TV playing in one location on a remote receiver, also use Flash as part of their three-screen solution which delivers video to TVs, laptops, and mobile devices.

Flash for iPhone: the Workaround

Despite all the announcements, which lay solid ground for Adobe's continued relevance and importance in the ever-changing mobile world, the company has not forgotten about Apple. Although sour grapes could have easily had the company turn their back to the popular iPhone OS platform, Adobe did just the opposite: they made it easy for their developers to build for iPhone too. Using the Packager for iPhone software, announced previously at Adobe MAX 2009, developers can export Flash code as iPhone apps.


With these tools, developers can essentially write once and deploy anywhere - as AIR or Flash creations for the desktop or mobile web or as apps for any mobile device including Android or iPhone.

Will Apple Cave?

Apple's standoff against Flash has gained more public exposure with the recent announcement of the Apple iPad. Even consumers who don't pay careful attention to technology news will soon discover the iPad's shortcomings when iPad-launched websites don't include streaming video, content doesn't display as expected and video portals like Hulu are inaccessible.


While purists may feel the same as Apple CEO Steve Jobs when it comes to Flash's expulsion from the iPhone/iPad platform, (notably that it's 'buggy' and will soon be replaced by HTML5, an upcoming standard that can provide streaming video, too), the reality is that the new HTML5-enabled web won't be built overnight. In the meantime, developers and consumers alike want solutions for the content they expect to access when mobile - that being the web, the whole web, the fully functioning web. It's here that Adobe intends to deliver. Their goal is to have every platform but Apple supporting native Flash and AIR, while still supporting iPhone through a workaround. Will Apple eventually concede to this power play where everyone supports Flash but them? It's impossible to tell, but Adobe certainly isn't afraid to lay the pressure on thick. Read more...

MeeGo: A New Linux OS to Fight iPhone, iPad and More

Nokia and Intel have just announced the creation of MeeGo, a new Linux-based operating system designed for portable devices including netbooks and smartphones as well as other non-desktop platforms like connected TVs and vehicles. The new OS is a combination of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin, both Linux-based computing environments. This partnership is notable not just for combining two different Linux platforms under one roof, but for its cross-platform support of both Intel and ARM chips, the latter currently popular in mobile devices like Apple's iPhone thanks to its low power consumption needs.

The MeeGo operating system is designed to let developers write once and then deploy to a number of hardware platforms including everything from smartphones to netbooks and more, a popular strategy these days in an increasingly fragmented mobile world. The same strategy has also been recently embraced by Adobe, who now lets their developers write once and then deploy their Flash apps to any operating system, both desktop and laptop-based or mobile.

Applications that previously worked on Maemo or Moblin will work on the new MeeGo OS, too, say the companies. Also, the new platform is not intended to replace Nokia's own Symbian OS, Nokia assures. Instead, using the Qt application and UI framework, developers can deploy apps to both MeeGo and other platforms, including Symbian. The resulting applications will then be marketed through Nokia's Ovi Store, for all MeeGo and Symbian-based Nokia devices while Intel's AppUp Center will handle the marketing of apps for Intel-based MeeGo devices.

Open Source vs. iPhone OS...and More

Both companies are positioning the new OS an open source alternative to the iPhone App Store model. Although they don't come out and directly call out the popular Apple iPhone OS by name, they hint at it by stating that with MeeGo, people 'are not locked into one kind of device or those from any individual manufacturer.'


Both companies are also preparing for a new range of tablet devices that will compete against the trail-blazing iPad. In an interview with CNet, Renee J. James, a senior vice president at Intel, affirms that 'this kind of operating environment is targeted very well for a tablet-style device.'


However, the platform isn't meant to just compete with Apple products. It will also go up against the upcoming netbook OS from Google, Chrome OS, as well as mobile, tablet, and in-car OS's from other vendors, including Microsoft.


MeeGo will arrive in the second quarter of 2010 with products becoming available starting in the third quarter. Read more...

Top 40+ GIMP plugins

GIMP is the undisputed king of image editing in Linux platforms, and is next only to Photoshop in popularity in Windows and Mac platforms. With a large community of developers and an even larger pool of users, it is no surprise that GIMP is very popular.

Much like Firefox, GIMP’s strength lies in its plugins, which are developed by the open-source toting community. Since the users themselves develop them, they know all the needs and conceive a plugin for everything (well, except making a coffee for you ;) ).

And what better way for me to endorse GIMP than a list of good plugins? Most of them are aimed at web-designers and photographers, the main users of GIMP. There are also some to fix common problems of GIMP.

Web Design

• Snow: Generate realistic 3D snow. Caution: Requires large amount of memory and swap memory.


• Anti-aliasing: Smoothen and fix straight lines.


• Adaptive contrast enhancement: Intelligent adjustment of contrast.


• Fourier Transformation: GIMP plugin version of Fourier Transformation.


• Refract/Reflect: Refraction effects to simulate falling water drops.


• ShapeIt: Bend text or image according to information in map layer.


• Borders: Add borders to your image.


• SoapBubble: Create bubbles. Contains two versions, for GIMP v2.2 and v2.4.


• Aqua Bou: Create web buttons in ‘Aqua Bou’ style easily.


• Chrominium: Create a chrome logo with glow and sparkles.


• Cloud Generation: For easy creation of clouds. Updated to work with GIMP 2.4, the latest version.


• Gothic Glow: GIMP’s version of Gothic Glow action, originally for Photoshop.


• Liquid Rescale: Content-aware rescaling. Keeps the features of the image while rescaling along a single direction.


• Particle Deposition: simulates particle deposition on a surface. It generates small particles with random size and velocity and lets them fall onto the surface where they settle, increasing surface height in the place a bit.


• Stampify: Make your image look like a postage stamp.


• Plasma2: Newer version of the original Plasma plugin for GIMP.


• SaveForWeb: Find optimal compromise between minimal file size and acceptable quality of image quickly. Useful for designers.


• Steel Text: Create a text effect that looks like shiny steel (or gold) and a dropshadow.

Photography

• Pandora: Stitch together multiple images to make a panorama.


• Film Grain: Add film grain for a classic feel, to BW images.


• Black Ink: Transform an image to a B&W drawing made with ink.


• Copyright Text: Add a copyright text to image.


• DeNoise: Noise reduction plugin using a modified Gaussian blur algorithm.


• DustCleaner: Detect and remove the dust spots in digital image.


• Astro-plugins: A set of plugins for astronomical image processing.


• FocusBlur: Makes an image out of focus with luminosity and depth.


• Lomo: Make photos clear, sharp and crisp. Especially useful for outdoor photographs.


• ISO Noise Reduction: Implements an ISO noise reduction, using different methods (masking the edges, then blurring the individual color channels or the lumimance channel only).


• Photo Effects: A bunch of scripts brought together in one script-fu file. Contains cartoon, color pencil, conte crayon, cutout, Drawing, ink pen, note paper, paint dot image, palette knife, pastel, stamp, water paint effect, wrap effect, angled strokes, crosshatched, chrome image, cross light, funky color, soft focus, solarisation, brick wall, patchwork, stained glass, texturizer, high pass, scroll effects.


• RedEye: Quickly remove red eye effect caused by camera flashes.


• ShadowRecovery: Recover image information in darked regions.


• Shadows/Highlights: Eliminate shadows and highlights in photographs.


• Refocus: Opposite of FocusBlur(listed above), this refocuses images. Provides better results than Unsharp masking which is built into GIMP.


• PhotoToolbox: Perform several actions on a photo at once such as defocus, desaturate (several papers emulations), toning, add grain.


• Light Filter: Provides basic filtering by adjusting colour levels of each pixels.


• Gradient Along Path: Strikes a vector applying a gradient orthogonally to the path.


• Landscape painter: Creates interesting paint effect that looks best with landscapes.


• EZ Improviser: Improve dull, dingy images.


• Edgy: Make an image look edgy.


• Digital IR: Simulate a black and white infrared image.


• Colour saturation: Change the color saturation of your image.


• Blot: GIMP avatar of BlotBrush. Based on blot algorithm and works well with spatter or cloudy image.


• GimpPublishr: Publish images to Picassa and Flickr directly from inside GIMP.

Miscellaneous

• GIMP Dewierdifyer: (for Windows) Get rid of common window annoyances in the GIMP. It adds a background window that sits under GIMP. It groups other GIMP windows into one, so that when you’re alt+tabbing to other apps, only one icon of GIMP gets in your way.


• Turing Pattern: Renders a kind of Turing pattern.


• Yin-Yang+: A seemingly useless plugin, but fun nonetheless. Add yin and yang symbols. Also optionally add drop-shadows.

Further resources

1. Writing a GIMP plugin: Plugin guide in PDF, HTML, archive and XML formats.


2. GIMP plugin template: A blank plugin template that has the basic structure and reduces the time required to develop a plugin considerably. The direct link is currently here, but may change in future (if it changes, click the link on “GIMP plugin template”.


3. Writing plugins: Another guide for writing plugins, this one from GIMP.org’s developer site.


4. Writing Plugin: Another guide at GIMP.org main site.

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Top 10 Google Settings You Should Know About

As the outcry over Google Buzz's privacy has shown us, it's smart to explore settings in Gmail, along with other places you're sharing data with the search giant. Let's take a look at 10 privacy, convenience, and annoyance fixers you should know.

10. Turn off auto-displayed pictures from Gmail contacts

By default, Gmail hides images embedded into emails from chain letters and unknown sources—and that's a smart move, given spammers' tracking tactics and malware tendencies. But it still shows images from contacts you've previously sent mail to, which can be a pain if you've got relatives who just love hi-larious forwards. Head to your Settings page, and look for the 'external content' setting, which you can switch off to always ask you to confirm showing images in any email. If you've got just a handful of offenders, open up one of the egregious emails, hit the 'Show details' link near the bottom of the to/from/subject details, and click the 'don't display from now on' link. (Original post)

9. Fine-tune Google Apps for your domain

Google Apps, formerly know as Apps for Your Domain, has a lot of goodies tucked inside it for anyone who owns their own site, runs a family name domain, or operates a small business. Unlike Gmail, however, the new features and disabled offerings aren't as apparent (or blogged about). Gina gave us a great tour of Google Apps, showing how you can control privacy and access, choose which Labs features make it into your domain's email, and otherwise set up your site to your liking.

8. Prevent Android from automatically signing into Gchat

Simple and easy, but also easy to miss: If you've got an Android phone and have launched Google Talk from it just once, you might notice that you seem to catch any and all chats throughout the day. That's because Talk can sit in the background upon launching, ready to pick up messages. That's fine if that's what you want, but if you want a choice in the matter, head to the Google Talk app, hit your Menu key, and choose Settings. Un-check the 'Automatically sign in' option, hit your back button, and then hit Menu and sign out of Google Talk. You'll need to sign back in if you're downloading apps from the Market (odd pairing, indeed), but you're otherwise free to chat when you want to. (Original post)

7. Turn off Buzz, Chat, and Labs in Gmail

Not big on Buzz? Chat more distracting than useful? Gmail Labs making your inbox feel lag-ish? You can kill all of them, if you'd like, and get back just a plain vanilla inbox. Scroll all the way to the bottom of any page inside Gmail, and at the bottom, you'll see two links to turn Gmail's chat sidebar and Buzz inbox on or off. Actually, you don't really 'turn off Buzz' so much as remove it from your inbox, so be sure and check your Buzz settings at your Google Profile, if you have a Google Profile. If Labs features seem to be slowing down, or even breaking, your Gmail experience, you can turn them off entirely by loading Gmail from this URL: https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0#. Bookmark it as your main Gmail link, or title it 'Gmail (Safe Mode)' if you'd like to still venture into all the goodies on occasion.

6. Disable SafeSearch (or lock it in semi-permanently)

Google's SafeSearch isn't an entirely comprehensive solution to preventing impressionable eyes from the worst realms of the internet. It is, however, a good stopgap until they learn to grow up and install other browsers, wipe out cookies, and customize user scripts. Whether you don't have any young ones in the house and want to turn SafeSearch off altogether or you want a complete SafeSearch lockdown on your computer, head to your search preferences, scroll down to the SafeSearch section, and find the setting that fits you. (In Google Image Search, they've helpfully placed the control right under the search box on your first result.) If you want to permanently enable SafeSearch, click the "Lock SafeSearch" link—and repeat for any browsers the little ones use. Now when they're performing a Google search, you should see some giant Google-colored balls in the upper-right corner—or else they've gotten too smart.

5. Set your default SMS location

For those without web-connected smartphones, or at least a decent data connection, Google's SMS service is seriously helpful—it's how I (used to) get by with just an iPod touch and a standard phone. To make it even more helful, text set location, followed by the city and state or ZIP code where you spend the most time. Now you can just text 'weather' or 'pet store' to get the skinny on what's happening. (Original post)

4. Link and integrate your apps

Taking off the privacy and preference hat for a moment, Google's apps have a lot of neat settings just beneath their surface that make using them all together a tight experience. You can turn emails into tasks, and then map those tasks on your calendar. You can send voice messages and SMS from Google Voice to Gmail, and mark them as read when you open them there. Gina previously ran down seven easy ways to integrate your Google apps, and even more seem to come along every week.

3. Turn off Search History, logged in or not

If you're logged into Google for Gmail or any other service, there's a good chance Google's keeping tabs on all your searches, months after you made them. If you aren't logged in, Google's probably still tracking and personalizing your searches based on what you previously typed in. This one-stop solution that should work for most users, but if it doesn't, log into Google and head to google.com/history. A notice at the top will tell you if you've 'paused' or otherwise stopped your search history, or else you'll see your recent searches listed with dates and times. You can clear out this history by hitting the 'Remove items' link on the left. If you aren't logged in, look for the 'Web History' link in the upper-right corner. From there, you can choose whether Google tracks your searches via cookie and IP address and customizes your results.

2. Back up Google apps' data

For all you've heard about Buzz, privacy, and Google this week, you still can't fault them too much for their efforts to let you take your data with you if you decide to leave their app ecosystem. The Data Liberation Front site, a pet project from Google's engineers, explains how you can pull your information, documents, and other data out of nearly any Google product. Gina's also covered some of Google's apps in a cloud backup feature, and Adam tackled the best-at-that-time tools for Google backups in 2007. (Original Data Liberation Front post)

1. Control what Buzz says about you on the web

Google's new social service Buzz showed up suddenly in everyone's Gmail accounts this week, and right away it wanted to get you connected with the people you contact over email and chat the most. Before you let it turn you loose, though, consider whether you want the world to see exactly who you 'follow.' Google has since improved the on/off visibility, but if you want to make sure you're not broadcasting your inbox to the web at large, we suggest visiting your profile and checking your follower counts. If you don't see a profile at all, or don't see the followed/following numbers, you're likely in the clear, but as with many aspects of Buzz in this early stage, you can't be too careful. And when you actually start using the thing, be careful not to broadcast private email addresses yourself. (Original posts: Buzz update, private emails).

Bonus item: Open search results in new tabs

Lifehacker copy consigliere Dustin Luck mentions yet another reason to hit up your search preferences from time to time. With a single click, you can choose to open the results you click on in new windows. If you've set up your browser the right way, those new windows become new tabs, and little research projects on Google just became far more convenient.

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What settings do you always make sure are set in your own personal Google universe? What settings do you wish existed for better control and privacy? Tell us about them both in the comments.

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Google Maps Get Labs With Nine Cool New Features

Here’s a nice surprise from Google’s Maps team: just like Gmail, Google Maps now also have the Labs feature (it’s the little green vial in the top right menu), which brings experimental new features for you to try out.

Right now, you can try out nine new features (all disabled by default):

Drag ‘n’ Zoom – lets you zoom in on a specific part of the map by drawing a box.

Aerial Imagery – gives you rotatable, high-resolution overhead imagery, but it’s only available in certain areas. Google plans to add more over time, though.

Back to Beta – OK, this one is a little weird. It lets you have a beta tag on Maps (just like Gmail). Only for hardcore Google users.

Where in the World Game – test your geography knowledge by guessing the names of countries from satellite imagery. I lost days playing a similar game on Facebook, and I forgot everything I’ve learned. Sigh.

Rotatable Maps – North facing up is just one way to look at a map. Now you can rotate it any way you like.

What’s Around Here? – Adds a second search button that searches for “*”, returning the top results in the current view. I’ve actually been waiting for this for a long time; it makes searching for certain POIs within some area a lot easier.

LatLng Tooltip – See the exact latitude and longitude next to your cursor.

LatLng Marker – Drop a marker anywhere on the map, showing the latitude and longitude of that location.

Smart Zoom – stops you from zooming into an area if imagery is not available.

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Google Buzz: The Missing Features

Google Buzz isn't even available to all Gmail users yet, but that doesn't mean that we don't already have some ideas for how Google could improve the service. Given how similar Buzz and FriendFeed are, a lot of the current discussion around Buzz feels like déjà vu to old FriendFeed users. In the early days of FriendFeed, for example, we used to have long discussions over how to increase the signal to noise ratio on the service and why FriendFeed should implement a lists feature. Buzz can still learn a lot from FriendFeed.

Here are a few of our ideas for how to make Buzz even more interesting and useful.

ReadWriteWeb's full coverage and analysis of Google Buzz:

• Make it easier to find friends and interesting people and don't assume that my Google Contacts are the people I want to follow: Google assumes that your social network is easily accessible from your Google Contacts, but for a lot of people who use their Gmail account mostly for work or to talk to their families, Google Contacts isn't representative of who they would want to follow on a FriendFeed/Facebook-like service. Google says that it plans to surface items from outside of your contacts that it thinks will be interesting to you, but we have yet to see these on Buzz.





• Lists: Twitter has lists, Facebook has lists, FriendFeed has lists and Buzz should have lists, too. Sometimes, you just want to see updates from your family and sometimes you just want to see what the bloggers you follow on Buzz are saying. Google could just integrate with with Google Contacts (though maybe that just leads to other problems).





• Better Filters: Some people love to share Google Reader posts, others tweet like there is no tomorrow. Google will pull all of these messages into your stream and as of now, you can't tell Buzz to just selectively ignore all Google Reader posts from one person or all the tweets of another without unfollowing all the messages from this person. According to Google, Buzz will automatically weed out posts you are likely to skip. For now, it doesn't seem like it is doing this yet.





• Speed up imports from third-party services: Currently, it can take quite a while before buzz pulls in tweets and shared items from Google Reader. Given how much emphasis Google is putting on the real-time aspect of Buzz, it would be nice if these updates came in a lot faster. Also, because Google seems to import updates in batches, you often get a huge number of tweets or Google Reader shares from one person that takes up most of the space on Buzz.





• Support more third-party services: You can only connect Buzz to a handful of third-party services like Flickr, Twitter and Google Reader. If your Google Profile contains the right links to other services like Yelp, it can also pull this data in as well if you follow these directions. It would also be nice if Google detected more video services when you attach a link to a post. Right now, it will show YouTube videos (and also Flickr photos) when you attach a link, but not videos from DailyMotion or Vimeo.





• Don't clutter our inboxes with new buzzes: By default, Buzz puts notifications about updates and new messages into your Gmail inbox. By the time you follow more than 20 active Buzz users, this can quickly clog up your inbox and drown out your regular email conversations. We shouldn't have to create a special filter with a relatively arcane command (label:buzz) to banish these messages.





• Allow mobile users to set fuzzy locations: As of now, you can either give your followers access to your exact location or not attach any location data to your messages at all. It would be nice if you could just set a town or neighborhood as your location so that you can share where you are, while still keeping your precise location private.

What Else is Missing?

Obviously, Google Buzz is just a day old, so it's only normal that there are still some bugs in the system and that the user experience could use some polishing. If you have used Buzz already, what features do you miss? Let us know in the comments.

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Using Amarok

Music is one thing I couldn’t live without. Especially while working, music keeps me sane. Whether I am writing a lot of documentation or testing software, background music helps me from going ballistic. And because Amarok was installed when I installed the Kubuntu desktop package, I thought of giving it another try.

So Amarok looks really overwhelming to me. The layout looks cluttered because of the amount of information available to me:

• playlist


• media library


• lyrics and wikipedia page

The playlist and media library are on two different panes, and they are loaded with information that will help us figure out what to listen to, who are the artists, what possible ways are there to view the information. There is a way to view the directories you have when you want to be specific about what media you’re looking into. Whether it’s your external hard drive or your local disk. Or your local media library. At first I did not realize that it was possible. I had a problem playing from my external hard drive because every time I right-clicked on it and selected the option “Read Device,” Amarok ends up hanging. Anyway, when you’ve decided on what view you will use, you could use that view to have a list of directories or songs and then drag them to the playlist pane. And then play your music. Sweet.

I have a Last.fm account so I am also taking advantage of the scrobler to see how many times I’ve played some tracks as well as mark some songs as loved. There’s a heart button on the top part of Amarok which you could click while the song is playing. It will show up on your Last.fm page as a loved track.

There are probably a whole lot of Amarok features but these are the ones I’ve only started maximizing this week, so far. If you’ve got more Amarok tips and tricks, please feel free to comment. I’d love to learn from you.

Post from: New Linux User

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Become a Gmail Master Redux

Gmail is easily the most popular email application among power users, and with good reason: It's an excellent app. But if you haven't gotten to know its best shortcuts, tricks, Labs features, and add-ons, it's time you made Gmail sing.

Photo remixed from Google's own Become a Gmail ninja page.

Way back in 2006, I showed you my favorite tips, tricks, and tools for making the most of Gmail. A lot has changed in the Gmail world since then, so much so that it seemed like a good time to revisit our favorite tips, tricks, and tools for getting the most from Gmail. Most, if not all, of these tips and features will also apply to the Google Apps accounts set up by businesses and organizations, but your administrator may not have enabled everything you see here.

No one really needs to be sold on Gmail anymore. Either you like the threaded conversations, powerful search, built-in filters, and awesome Gmail Labs functionality or you don't. I love these things, and below I've attempted to put together my comprehensive guide for turning Gmail into the ultimate communication and productivity hub. (I'm focusing on covering territory that I didn't cover in my previous guide, so if you're looking for a more beginner guide, read that first. Much of it remains true.)

I've broken things down into sections, starting with keyboard shortcuts, then moving down into the best Labs add-ons, third-party add-ons, search techniques, etc. Ready to power up your Gmail? Let's get started with how to set up and use Gmail's robust keyboard shortcuts—my favorite Gmail productivity booster.

Beat Your Inbox into Submission from Your Keyboard

If there's one thing we love around Lifehacker, it's the productivity boost we get from keeping our hands glued to the home row. (Seriously, our love of keyboard shortcuts is almost pathological.) Anything that allows us to perform tasks from the comfort of our keyboards—without requiring us to drop everything we're doing, move over to the mouse, hunt for a link or button, and click—ranks high on our list of productivity boosters. If you share even a tenth of our enthusiasm for keyboard shortcuts, I've got good news: You can do absolutely everything in Gmail from the keyboard. Here's how:

First, go to your Gmail settings and make sure you've got Keyboard Shortcuts turned on. (That link should work if you're logged into Gmail—it won't work with a Google Apps mail account.) Be sure to save your changes after you've changed the setting.

Next, click over to Gmail Labs. Labs is full of experimental features capable of adding functionality to Gmail (which we'll get to in more detail below), but for now we're going to focus on just one, called Go to label. Find it, enable it, and save your changes.

Now you can do nearly anything you could possibly want in Gmail without once pulling your hands away from your keyboard. You can see a full list of shortcuts here, or view the shortcut help in Gmail at any time by typing '?' (a question mark), which will give you this shortcut pop-up:

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

That's all well and good, but it's also a little overwhelming, so let's break it down a bit.

Navigating Messages:

j and k go up and down: When you turn on Gmail shortcuts, you'll notice a small black triangle appears to the left of your messages. You can move this cursor up and down by hitting the 'j' or 'k' keys. Want to move down a message? Hit 'j'. Want to move back up? Hit 'k'. Simple, right?

o and Enter open messages: Now let's say you want to read the message next to the cursor. You've got two choices: either hit 'o' or Enter. (I prefer 'o' because it's less of a stretch.) Not bad, huh? When you're viewing an email, pressing 'j' or 'k' will move you to the next or previous email without going back to the list.

n and p move to next and previous messages: Once you're viewing an email thread, you'll notice the black triangle is still there, only now it's next to messages within a thread. You can navigate between different messages in an open thread with the 'n' and 'p' keys (think next and previous). Again, to expand collapsed messages, you just press 'o' or Enter.

Labeling and Moving Messages:

You use Gmail to do more than just read emails, right? Hopefully you're already taking advantage of Gmail labels (if not, this post describes Gmail labels in detail), and now it's time to learn to label to your heart's content from the keyboard. And—surprise—it's very easy.

l + label name adds a label: If you've already opened a thread, you can label it by pressing 'l' (for label) and then typing the name of the label you want to add. You don't have to type the whole label name—just enough so that one of your current labels is highlighted. Once it is, hit Enter to apply the label to the message. If you're looking at an inbox pane rather than an open message, you can apply labels to one or multiple threads at a time. To do so, you need to first mark the threads you want to label by ticking the checkbox next to those messages. Again, this is normally mouse territory, but you're a keyboard junkie now.

x ticks a message checkbox: Instead of moving to the mouse, again, press 'j' or 'k' to move between messages, then press 'x' to tick or untick the checkbox next to a message. You can mark as many as you want, and when you're ready to label, it's the same drill as above: 'l' + the name of the label.

You can also create an entirely new label using this shortcut. Just hit 'l' and type the name of the new label you want to create.

To remove a label that's already been applied to a message, you've got two options. You can use the same method as above, except rather than typing the name of the label you want to apply, you type the name of the label you want to remove; doing so when a label has already been applied will remove it.

y removes a label: Alternately, if you want to remove the label you're currently looking at (for example, if you searched for label:followup or clicked on your followup label in the sidebar), pressing 'y' will do the trick. From the inbox, 'y' will archive the message. ('e' will archive from any view.) From other labels, pressing 'y' will remove that label.

v moves messages: Last, if you prefer to think of your labels more like folders, you can move messages using the 'v' keyboard shortcut—which works the same way as the 'l' shortcut, except in addition to applying a new label, it removes the label you're currently viewing.

star, spam, and trash: When you're either viewing a message or have messages selected, you can press '!' to mark a message as spam, '#' to send it to the Trash, or 's' to star it.

Composing, Replying, and Forwarding:

You've got reading, labeling, and moving your messages down pat, but you do occasionally write email, too. These shortcuts are a breeze to remember. You can compose a new message at any time by pressing 'c', reply to an open email by pressing 'r' (or reply all with 'a'), and forward an email by pressing 'f'. Easy enough, right?

Update: Oh yeah, this always seems like a forgone conclusion for some reason, but to quickly send an email from your keyboard when you're finished writing, just hit Tab then Enter.

Search and Navigate Your Inbox:

The only major thing left to do is navigate your inbox and labels, which is part of why we installed the Go to labels feature above. Navigating anywhere in Gmail starts with pressing 'g', for Go. From there, it's a matter of knowing where you want to go.

• g then i goes to your inbox


• g then s goes to starred messages


• g then t goes to sent messages


• g then d goes to drafts


• g then a goes to all mail


• g then c goes to contacts


• g then k goes to tasks


• g then l then label name goes to that label. This also works to navigate to any of the other 'g' shortcuts that have quicker shortcuts; for example, you could press 'g' then 'l' then 'inbox' to navigate to your inbox rather than 'g' then 'i'.

This may have all sounded overly complicated at times, but trust me, all it takes a is a little bit of effort before it's all ingrained in your muscle memory—a task for which you'll thank yourself!

Note: Surprisingly, I wasn't exhaustive above, but I did highlight the shortcuts I use the most. For a more exhaustive rundown (minus the Go to label shortcut), see Gmail's shortcut help page.

Add More Functionality with Gmail Labs

You were briefly introduced to the the shortcuts feature above, but that's only the tip of the Gmail Labs iceberg. Gmail releases experimental features regularly in Gmail Labs, and some of them are must-haves for the true Gmail junkie. We rounded up ten of our favorites last year, so I won't go in depth beyond pointing out a few of my current favorites. (Remember, to install any of these Labs features, just point your browser to Gmail Labs and enable any you like.)

Multiple Inboxes: Turn your inbox into a dashboard capable of displaying up to five different searches (like, for example, your trusted trio of email labels)—in addition to your regular old inbox—by enabling Multiple Inboxes.

YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Docs, and Voice Previews: How many times in a week do you get an email pointing to a YouTube video or Flickr set? How about a new message notification from Google Voice or a shared Google Doc? Enable these features to view (or preview) the video, pictures, document, or listen to your Voice message directly inside your email without popping up a new window.

Forgotten Attachment Detector: Avoid sending yet another email missing an attachment with the Forgotten Attachment Detector, which will poke you with an alert message before you can send an email that appears to be promising an attachment.

Undo send: We've all accidentally hit Tab+Enter to send off an email the moment we also noticed a huge typo or other embarrassing problem. Undo send gives you five seconds after you hit the send button to retrieve your email.

Above I listed a few of my favorite Labs features, but if you take a few minutes looking over what Gmail Labs has to offer, you'll probably find others you like, too.

Beef Up Gmail with Extensions

If the functionality you're looking for still isn't available even after you've enabled your favorite Labs features, then browser extensions might be more your speed. You've got plenty of Gmail extensions to choose from, but I'm particularly partial to Better Gmail 2, a compilation of Gmail features put together by our very own Gina Trapani. Features include:

• Add Row Highlights: Highlights the letter rows in the new Gmail when you hover over them with the mouse cursor.


• Attachment Icons: See what kind of attachment an email has in list view.


• Attachment Icons (Native): Same as attachment icons, but uses icon images native to your system.


• Bottom Post in Reply (Plain Text only): Inserts cursor after the quoted message in plain text replies automatically.


• Folders4Gmail: Lists labels in a folder-like hierarchy.


• Hide Chat: Hides Gmail's Chat box in the sidebar.


• Hide Invites Box: Hides the Gmail invites box on the sidebar.


• Hide Labels in Message Row: Hides the labels that appear in a message row unless the user hovers over the message.


• Hide Spam Count: Hides Gmail's Spam message count.


• Inbox Count First: See unread message count first on Gmail tab title.


• Show Unread Message Count on Favicon: Shows the number of unread Gmail messages in the favicon in your Firefox tab.

If you're partial to David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity methods, then you might be especially interested in GTDInbox for Gmail, a seriously cool Firefox extension that helps you turn your email into GTD-friendly action items.

Last, the rest of the crew at Lifehacker would have my head if I didn't mention Remember the Milk for Gmail—available as either a Firefox/Chrome extension or gadget—that connects the popular to-do webapp Remember the Milk with your Gmail account.

Dissect Your Inbox with Laser-Precise Searches and Filters

Gmail's philosophy from the get-go was 'Search, don't sort,' which is why they replaced traditional folders with labels despite the occasional complaint from new users. It should come as no surprise, then, that Gmail's search is excellent, and in combination with Gmail's filters (which allow you to execute actions on incoming messages that match a specific search criteria), the sky's the limit for how you can slice and dice your inbox.

I won't go in depth on Gmail's search operators or how to put together filters here because I've done so in pretty good detail here, and not much has changed since then. For the full rundown of Gmail's advanced search operators, hit up Gmail Help's search page.

Manage All Your Email Accounts from Gmail

Last, the great part about Gmail is that—apart from being a killer service—it's also a great email client, and whether or not you want to use your @gmail.com address, you can still use Gmail to manage all of your other email with aplomb.

Gmail can fetch email from other accounts, filter that email into separate labels by the account they arrived from or just leave them all in one inbox, and send email from any one of them from inside Gmail. In fact, despite all of the great dedicated desktop email clients out there, Gmail is still the favorite Gmail client among Lifehacker readers. Rather than detail everything here, I'll just point you to Gina's previous guide on how to consolidate all your email using Gmail.

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A person could write a book on all the ins and outs involved in getting more from Gmail (this post somehow turned into a novella), so rather than do that I've tried to focus on some of the best and newest stuff above. If you've got your own favorite features or functionality that I didn't mention, or you just want to drop a 'hell yeah' about a feature I mentioned, sound off in the comments.

Adam Pash the editor of Lifehacker.

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