LostInTechnology

5 Excellent Chrome Extensions to Manage Your Google Accounts

Umar.Anjum — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:00:28 +0000

I am an avid Google fan. From its search engine, to Gmail, to Calendar, I have used many Google services and have always noticed Google’s motto of improvement in action. Nowadays, the Google product I use most is Chrome. I like how quickly it responds to my actions and how it takes less time to load up webpages.

Recently, I started searching for Google-related Chrome extensions. I cannot think of a more fitting way to use Google’s services than through its very own browser. I came across many extensions, picked out the best 5, and decided to share them with all of you.

If you are looking for a Chrome extension for any Google product (from Gmail to Voice, from Reader to Gtalk), take a look at my list below, read each entry, and see which extension best suits your needs.

Google Mail Checker

The most used online Google service is undoubtedly Gmail. If you are looking for a way to be notified of your unread Gmail emails as you browse, then Google Mail Checker is for you. The icon it places in Chrome’s address bar carries a number indicating the number of unread messages. We can click this icon to get to your inbox instantly. This extension performs a basic task in a user-friendly and straightforward manner – many Chrome + Gmail users will benefit from it.

Google Reader Notifier

Google Reader Notifier performs the same task for Reader as Google Mail Checker performs for Gmail. The number of our unread messages can be seen right next to the extension’s icon. One difference is that when we click on the icon, a dropdown window appears in which we can preview the unread Reading messages. We can also use the icon to open Reading in a new tab. By viewing the preview of the Reading message before heading on over to our main Reading page, we can save quite some time.

One Number

A user comment for this extension states “This is greatest extension ever!” Chrome users who use other services of Google will find One Number to be a great all-in-one extension. It reports the unread messages over four Google services: Gmail, Reader, Voice, and Wave. The number with the extension’s icon shows the collective number of unread messages; to break them down for each service all we need to do is hover our mouse pointer over the icon. In order to reach a particular service, we need to click on the icon which drops down a window from where we can select a particular service and reach its page.

Submit to Google Buzz

Google Buzz is a great networking and sharing service which is getting increasingly popular. Submit to Google Buzz makes it easier for us share the currently open webpage on Buzz. With the webpage open, we simply click on the extension’s icon; this brings up a window where we can choose to add a short message with the Share. If we want, we can leave this field empty and click on Post Item to just share the URL of the webpage. Google Buzz users who share links often via Buzz will greatly appreciate this extension.

Squawk

Squawk is a quick and easy way to exchange messages with your Gtalk friends. A great Gtalk client for Chrome, this extension cum messenger has a great interface. The extension’s icon lets us quickly pop out the chat window. Through the built-in Message Counter feature, we are instantly notified whenever a Gtalk friend sends us a message. In addition to those features, Squawk supports voice chat, making it more than an instant messaging client. Gtalk users who want to stay connected to their friends within their browser will find Squawk very useful.

(By) Umar is a full time blogger who loves discovering and reviewing news and online services that are valuable to his readers. He blogs at www.techcityinc.com.

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Why You Should Use Google Voice

Squealing.Rat — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:47 +0000

Google Voice, previously Grand Central, is a free service that gives you the capacity to merge your phone numbers into one, transcribe your voice mail, send text messages from your computer and more. This service can be extremely helpful for the those who spend a lot of time on their computers and smart phones.

While Google Voice is still in an invite only stage, many have reported that they received an invite within a week after applying for one on the Google Voice invite form.

After getting the invite, you are invited to port your own number over or pick a new one for free. I would suggest that you pick a new number, because it is free and with that you get the full features list. I’ll call this account the full account, because with the full account, you not only get a new number and have access to all of the features, but also the option to port your own number over as well. You can see the difference between a full Google Voice account and a ported number Google Voice account here.

You can pick your Google Voice number by searching through their long list, either by number phrase or word phrase. Once you pick your number (which can have any area code), you are asked to enter your forwarding number. This can either be a cell phone or a land line. While Google Voice is ideal for someone with several numbers, one forwarding number will suffice.

Google Voice will guide you through the process of setting up that forwarding phone. You will be called, and asked to enter a two digit number which is displayed on the screen. After that, you can press one to begin recording your greeting messages.

After that, you can begin tweaking your settings. If you have another phone you would like to add, click settings at the top of the screen, then add another phone.

If you and your partner both want to have Google Voice accounts point to one number, you are in luck. While Google Voice limits a mobile number to only one account, they do allow you to activate a home phone to two different Google Voice accounts.

Let me take you through some of the features that explain why I recommend Google Voice to others.

All Your Phones Ring

Many have a work number, a work cell, a personal cell, a car cell, a home phone, etc. For you, Google Voice rocks. you can give someone your Google Voice number, and all your phones will ring. Let’s say you only want your family members to ring all your phones. You can set up specific groups with rules, so that when family members ring, whereas if your co-worker calls, only your work line rings. You can also setup specific times phones will ring, so for example, you home phone never rings during the week.

Block and Customize Your Greetings

Say a spammer gets a hold on your Google Voice number. With a click, you can have his number blocked, so the next time he calls, he gets an out of service message. you can also customize greetings for different groups, for example, your family gets a casual voicemail greeting, and your boss gets a professional greeting.

Voicemail Transcription

Google Voice is free. You get a free number, which you can use to make free calls nationwide, any time, and very cheap calls internationally. Right there, I could stop. But here is another feature which I love. Voicemail transciption. Google Voice will transcribe your messages (using computers, not humans), and send them via text to you phone, and to your email if you chose. However, the transciption is not fabulous, only giving you the core of what is said.

Texting

Texting is one feature of Google Voice I use all of the time. With Google Voice, you can send free text messages to anyone in the US via the web. This can be incredibly handy for those who are constantly on the computer, but rarely use a phone.

On Your Android Device

If you have an android device, getting Google Voice is a no-brainer. On Android, making Google Voice calls is incredibly easy to do. Read more here.

Record a Conversation

On a phone interview? Want to record it? Use the Google Voice feature that allows you to record incoming Google Voice calls. Simply press 4 during the call, everyone on the line will hear something letting them know the call is being recorded, and you can rest your writing hand.

Lifehacker on Google Voice

Another cool feature.

What do you think of Google Voice? Let us know in the comments!

Photo: echiner1

The writer of this post compiles the latest tech news and more at Squealing Rat, and writes about tricks and tips of deception, trickery and survival at Lone Iguana. Find him on Twitter.

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Weekly Tech Links: March 15, 2010

Kyle Judkins — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:30:33 +0000

This is my weekly round up of the links I have followed over the past week. You can get this list every week by subscribing to my RSS feed or subscribing through email. You may also follow me on Twitter or join the Facebook Fan Page to get some of these links throughout the week. As usual, catch the links after the break.

How To

How to limit bandwidth usage in uTorrent [ and Save Money ]

How to Connect Two Windows Computers On LAN Using an Ethernet Crossover Cable – Make Tech Easier

Change texture of Windows 7 taskbar

How to flip Text upside down, reverse & invert

Software

Where to Get Cheap Mac Software

Surf More Securely on Public WiFi Networks with FreeVPN

Free Windows Registry Cleaners

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Verb: User Focused Task Management and Sharing

srikanth — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:25 +0000

VerbApp is a free web based user focused task management and sharing application. If you are looking for an effective task management application then, VerbApp is for you. It’s the perfect solution for freelances who would like to manage their tasks and collaborate in an organized manner.

Features

Task Management

Verbapp gives you full control over your tasks. It lets you create to-do lists, set priorities, tags and due dates. It makes it easy for you to know upcoming deadlines and tasks to be done. You can create multiple projects each containing multiple tasks. You can quickly search for tasks and sort them by priority, due date, title and date created. Once completed, you can close tasks accordingly.

Sharing

Verbapp enables you to share tasks and projects with other users. It’s one of the best web applications to have all your tasks organized in one place. You can invite your friends to Verbapp and easily share project(s) with them. Verbapp lets you set privileges and access to the shared projects. Read, write privileges can be assigned with access set to all the tasks or assigned tasks only.

Apart from task management, one can also use Verbapp for note keeping. Under the ‘notes’ tab in the dashboard, you can store any important notes pertaining to your projects and work.

Some of the key Features on VerbApp are, it’s a web based task management application so, you can access it from anywhere at anytime. Users can organize tasks into projects and sets tags. One can quickly search for tasks and order them by priority, date added and due date. You can share projects and tasks with friends and grant privileges for shared proejcts as well.

Conclusion

Verbapp is a simple and flexible web based tool for task management and note keeping. You can easily share tasks among small teams and organize your to-do lists effectively.

by Srikanth AD from Techonaut. Contact him by email at adsrikanth[at]gmail[dot]com

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Two Major Security Flaws, A Rant and The Fixes

Squealing.Rat — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:01 +0000

I was recently staying at a hotel that offered Wi-Fi. On the network with my Macbook, I noticed the other computers on the network. Curious, I clicked on one, expecting to see a password prompt or an access denied message. Instead, I saw the computer’s public folder and another folder. Interested in what files someone would publicly display to anyone on the network, I opened it to see files that were highly sensitive, including financial data. My mind was blown.

What kind of person would do this? Perhaps a person who had no idea how to use their computer. Perhaps a person that didn’t realize the security flaws at risk. Perhaps a person that was not reading this article.

Mac Security

If you use a Mac, there are at least two different settings you should adjust to make sure your computer is secure. The first is the firewall. Unbeknown to most, the firewall on the Mac is not on by default. This means that when you first start using your Mac, you need to activate the firewall. To do this, go into your System Preferences, Security, and into Firewall. Turn the firewall on.

This means that all applications accessing the internet must be approved. If a rogue application gets on your computer, it cannot access the internet without your permission.

The second and perhaps more important setting is Sharing. From System Preferences, click Sharing, then make sure that what you want is checked. Most should un-check File Sharing and Screen Sharing, unless this is something that you use. If you do use these, go in and tweak the settings, to be sure that no one can access your files with out permission.

Auto Fill

I recently tried to switch from Firefox to Chrome, a task that I will detail in a later article. Finding replacements for my Firefox extensions was not difficult, and to replace my Auto Fill ability in Firefox, I grabbed LastPass. I began entering the information I would want to be autofilled. Then, I came across a box, requesting my Social Security Number. WHAT!?! Why on earth would you ask that?!?

Your Social Security Number is highly sensitive information. Giving it to someone else could wreak havoc on your life, entering you into the world of fraud, and identity theft. Which brings us to the over arching solution to this is never put anything into a form that you would not want the general public to see.

Rant

Hermia (an obviously fake name to protect the innocent) is the most computer illiterate person I know with a computer. She pays Aol for her free email account. She gives out her friend’s contact information to almost any telemarketer (I’m still receiving calls), and her computer is probably part of several botnets. People like Hermia make the internet more dangerous for the rest of us.

While, I could, like so many before me, demand “computer tests” that you must pass before you can use a computer, I’m not going to. Instead, here is one thing you should take out of this: Do not give out your personal information to people that you do not know. Preserve your identity and your privacy.

What do you do to protect yourself? What massive security flaws have you seen in the past? Let us know is the comments!

Photo: chefranden

The writer of this post compiles the latest tech news and more at Squealing Rat, and writes about tricks and tips of deception, trickery and survival at Lone Iguana. Find him on Twitter.

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How To Create Custom RSS Feeds for BitTorrent Clients

UzEE — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:03 +0000

I’m sure everyone here knows that BitTorrent is one of the most popular digital content delivery networks out there. The Peer to Peer distribution technology amounts for nearly 30% of the total web traffic and is used by a number of leading corporations, movie studios and media outlets including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Paramount, Spike TV, MTV, Netgear and D-Link.

Here at Lost in Technology, we have covered torrent related topics in great detail including tips on how to make torrents, open ports, optimize bandwidth utilization and improve speeds. Today, I’m going to share a neat trick which lets you setup custom RSS feeds for your favorite torrent clients which allows you to control your client from anywhere in the world.

Creating the Feed

The first question that would pop up in anyone’s mind is that why would I need to setup custom RSS feeds for my torrent client? Well think about this scenario. You are on a business trip and want to download the latest release of OpenOffice on your PC hundreds of miles back home. Sure you can setup a Web UI for your torrent client but that’s a difficult task for someone who doesn’t have a static IP or isn’t sure even if his PC would be on or off when he’s trying to access it.

The simple solution would be to setup a custom RSS Feed and set your client to download everything from that feed as soon as you add content to it. Now you can just pop in a torrent file into your custom feed from anywhere in the world where you have internet access (even your cell phone) and your PC back home would download the stuff automagically whenever it comes online.

Sounds simple right? It is. And here’s how you can set it up for your self.

Head over to ReactorFeed and create a new Free account. If you already have an account with ShareReactor then you can skip this step.
Log in to the account you just created and you should already see a feed setup for you. For this tutorial, we’ll go ahead and use this feed in our client.
Copy the feed URL and open up your BitTorrent client, like uTorrent for example.

Now paste the Feed URL into the box and give the feed a custom name if you like.
Select Automatically download all items published in feed and uncheck the Smart Episode filter.
Hit OK and your new feed is all setup.

Now whenever you add a new item to your RSS feed, your client would automatically download it whenever it gets an update. In order to add custom items to your feed, you just have to:

Log in to ReactorFeed and click Add item on the feed you want to add items too.
Paste the URL of the download file and click the Add button.
Your client should automatically detect the feed and start the download in a few moments.

And that’s all there is to it. A simple yet powerful way to setup remote downloading of all the content you like without the hassle of setting up a Web UI interface.

Hope you enjoyed this article, and if you have some interesting tricks of your own to share, please do so in the comments.

Article by Uzair Sajid (UzEE), a technologist and a freelance blogger who also authors The Technopath.

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How To Access Google Services in Chrome with One Number

Umar.Anjum — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:00:52 +0000

Google is constantly trying to better their products. To enhance the functionality of their internet browser, Chrome, Google has released a number of extensions that complement the browser. Many of these extensions integrate many of Google’s existing services into Chrome. For example, there is a Google extension for Gmail which places an icon in the address bar showing the number of unread messages. A similar Google extension exists for Google Reader.

These extensions are quite helpful for a person who is using one of these services. But if somebody is using both services, then installing these extensions can create an unwanted clutter in the address bar.

Recognizing this, a third-party developer has combined the functionality of these extensions, added a few more functions, and created what is called One Number.

Overview

One Number is a great Chrome extension which is a must-have for internet users who use multiple Google services. This extension places an icon in the address bar which shows the collective number of unread messages in Gmail, Google Reader, Voice, and Wave. For a breakdown of unread messages (i.e. which service has how many unread messages) all a user has to do is hover the mouse pointer over the icon and a text cloud appears with the details.

If you notice an ERROR message then it either means that you have zero unread messages for that service or you are not using that particular Google service.

Users can also click on the icon and be presented shortcuts to these services in a drop down window.

Amongst other adjustments, we can access the extension’s options to reduce the number of services checked by One Number or change its color scheme.

Conclusion

One Number is truly a greatly creative extension that will facilitate countless Google users. Try it out today and personally experience how it makes managing all of your Google services that much easier.

(By) Umar is a full time blogger who loves discovering and reviewing news and online services that are valuable to his readers. He blogs at www.techcityinc.com.

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Weekly Tech Links: March 7, 2010

Kyle Judkins — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:30:38 +0000

How To

How to sort Gmail by attachment size of emails

How To Find Serial / License Key Of Windows 7 / Vista / XP And Other Windows OS | PCs Place

How to Gain Access to Your Hacked Email Account – Make Tech Easier

Internet

Download, convert Hulu video files free

Run a Total Background Check on Yourself with Free Online Tools – Consumer Protection – Lifehacker

10 Awesome Sites To Listen/Download Free Music Legally

Software

Send up to 100MB attachments with Outlook and drop.io – How-To Geek

Generate ASCII art from plain text & characters

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Top 5 Safari Plugins

srikanth — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:00:58 +0000

Safari has been one of the best browsers in the market, known for its speed, rich look and feel and standards support. Safari allows you to install plugins in order to customize your experience with the browser. The following are my five favorite plugins that take my browsing experience to the next level.

The List

Glims

Among all the plugins in Safari, Glims is one of the best. It adds many features, thereby enhancing your browsing experience. Glims lets you open links in a new tab instead of new window. It also lets you to choose whether a new tab should be opened to the left or right. Glims adds thumbnails to Google search results, and it allows you to change the search engine and configure search results.

FLVR

Have you ever wanted to download some of your favorite YouTube videos? There are many applications which lets you download videos from YouTube. FLVR lets you do it in just one click. With one simple click on the FLVR button present on the toolbar, you can actually download the video directly from video’s page right within the browser. You can download the trail version, and if you are impressed you can buy this plugin for $15.

TabExpose

TabExpose brings the power of Expose to the Safari browser. TabExpose exposes the contents of all the tabs in one screen in a grid format with just a simple click. It is really helpful when you want to switch between multiple tabs.

RedSnapper

Most of the time bloggers include screenshots while writing tutorials, guides and just about anything else. RedSnapper is one of the best plugins that lets you take screenshots with ease. RedSnapper comes with a price-tag of $8 and a 14 day free trail.

Saft

Saft is a competitor of Glims. It also provides many features which enhance your browsing experience. Some of the features provided by Saft are Adblocking, enable full screen mode, URL shortening, TabExpose feature and many more. This is the best alternative for Glims. Saft can be purchased for $12.

What are your favorite Safari addons? Let us know in the comments.

by Srikanth AD from Techonaut. Contact him by email at adsrikanth[at]gmail[dot]com

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What’s the Buzz with Buzz and Buzzers and Buzzing

Squealing.Rat — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:00:50 +0000

We all remember the beginning of Twitter, right? Before there were tweets, retweets, tweeters, and tweeps? And now, there is a new kid on the block: Buzz. Buzz, by Google, is slowly becoming quite popular. But, being so new, no “buzzwords” (no pun intended) have been officially christened. I thought I’d lay out the new buzzwords for Buzz.

1. Buzz n- The current news on Buzz. The buzz today is all about Tiger Woods.

2. Buzz v- (buzzing, buzzed, buzz) The act of updating to Buzz. I just buzzed about our new baby. He was buzzing constantly about his unbelievable luck. I buzz daily about my personal life.

3. Buzzer n- a user of Buzz. Everyone was talking about the buzzer who took a picture of Steve Jobs using Microsoft Word.

4. Sting n- a particular update that was widely talked about, an attention grabber. Did you see that sting about Obama that Gizmodo buzzed? What a zinger!

5. Boz/Buzz (used interchangeably) n- an update on Buzz. Leo’s buzz explained the what he like about the service while King’s boz was more negative.

6. Outbuzzed adj- an update on Buzz that was flooded with comments, making it desirable to mute. Boy, Gina’s latest boz was outbuzzed.

7. Unbuzz v- to stop following on buzz. I had to unbuzz him because of his constant barrage of buzzes.

To sum up, buzzers who buzz on Buzz will occasionally see stings, but for the most part, buzzers will see bozes and and outbuzzed buzzes which may cause them to unbuzz those people.

What are your thoughts on Google Buzz?

The writer of this post compiles the latest tech news and more at Squealing Rat, and writes about tricks and tips of deception, trickery and survival at Lone Iguana. Find him on Twitter.

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