Faster: 100 Ways to Improve your Digital Life
Page 13
Google has completely changed the way we look for and access information. Google allows users to search for information in a variety of different ways. My favourite search method on Google is to use Google Goggles.
Google Goggles is a free mobile app that can be downloaded from Google Mobile (http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/) and runs on both the Android and the iOS platforms. Once installed, it allows you to take photos of everyday objects and landmarks around you and instantly search for more information about them. It only requires you to have a data Internet access on your mobile phone.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
There are many everyday situations in which Google Goggles ends up being a very useful app. Imagine that you are exploring a foreign country and, while walking around, you see an interesting building and want to know the history of it. All you need to do is take a picture of it using Google Goggles and automatically Google will give you more information about it.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
To use this feature, start the Google Goggles app on your mobile phone. In this example, I am going to use an Android phone.
I have taken a photo of the monument about which I seek more information. Google Goggles will now scan the entire photo and try to identify the monument. It will also make use of my physical location (through the GPS feature on my phone) while trying to identify the monument in the photo.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Within a few seconds, Google Goggles recognizes the monument in the photo as the famous Chichen Itza pyramid in Mexico and displays links at the bottom to pages where I can get more information about it.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Clicking on any of those links will allow me to get more information about the Chichen Itza pyramid. You can get information about the history, background, location, directions and other details about a place with a single photo! This will work not only with very famous monuments, but also with lesser-known landmarks and locations.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
After a few hours of walking around, if you get hungry and decide to get lunch, only to realize that the menus are in a foreign language, once again, all you need to do is take a picture of the menu and Google Goggles instantly converts it into the language of your choice! No need to feel foreign in a foreign country again.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
If you walk into a bookstore and see an interesting book and want to see what kind of reviews the book has received online and whether there are cheaper prices available online from other bookstores, all you need to do is take a picture of the book cover using Google Goggles and it will instantly display reviews, prices from various websites and a lot of other information about the book.
Once you are back at the hotel, if you notice a pillow cover that you really like and want to find out if something similar is available online, once again Google Goggles will come to your rescue. Just take a photo of the pillow cover and feed it into Google Goggles. If it is available online, Google Goggles will identify it and give you links to the website from where you can order it for your home!
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
If you meet someone at a conference or a business meeting, instead of exchanging physical business cards and then manually entering all the data into your computer or mobile phone, you can simply use Google Goggles. Take a picture of the business card, and Google Goggles has the capability of recognizing the information from it and automatically entering it into the address book of your phone.
Ordering a fancy bottle of wine at a classy restaurant and want to show off your knowledge about the history of the wine? Simple—take a picture of the wine bottle using Google Goggles! While writing this book, I tried Google Goggles on numerous bottles of wine, but did not get successful results each time. I imagine that Google is still perfecting this feature.
Overall, this is quite an interesting and useful app that allows you to make better sense of the world around with a simple picture!
Google Goggles and the Google Goggles logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
63. How to customize the background and colours on Facebook
< 60 Seconds
If you are not happy with the plain white background that is normally visible on all Facebook accounts, it is possible for you to change it to something that you prefer. Install the Facebook Background Changer browser app in your Google Chrome browser from the Google Chrome Web Store (https://chrome.google.com/webstore). It will add a new icon to the address bar of your browser, which will automatically appear only when you visit Facebook. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can use the Stylish browser app to change the background in Facebook.
To use the Chrome app, click on the Facebook Background Changer icon and you will be able to change the background by choosing from its database of images. You can also upload a photo from your own computer. Besides, you can also change the colour of the header bar that appears at the top of all Facebook pages.
64. How to download entire photo albums from Facebook
< 180 Seconds
Facebook has become the primary platform for most of us to upload, view and share photo albums with our friends and family members. However, although it is possible to download individual photos from a friend’s Facebook profile to your computer, you cannot download an entire photo album at once—you need to open and download every single photo in that album individually. Imagine how long it will take to download a photo album with a hundred different photos!
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
SocialFolders is a free app available at http://socialfolders.me. It allows you to download, manage and even upload photos across all photo-sharing social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Picasa and others.
Once installed, the SocialFolders icon will appear at the bottom right corner of your desktop in the Windows taskbar. Right-click on it, and select the Manage My Channels option. This will open the web interface of the SocialFolders app in your browser, where you will be able to manage all the different websites on which you wish to download, manage and upload photos.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
Click on the Add a new service button to connect SocialFolders to any social networking platform of your choice. In this example, since we want to download an entire photo album from Facebook, I have selected Facebook.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
Facebook will now ask you if you wish to allow SocialFolders to access content from your Facebook account or not. Click on the Go to App button and select whatever permissions you would like to provide to the SocialFolders app.
Once SocialFolders has connected to your Facebook account, it will allow you to select all the photo albums you wish to download from it. Select as many photo albums as you want and click on the I’m Done button to continue.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
Not only does SocialFolders allow you to download entire photo albums from your own Facebook account, but in the next step, it will also allow you to sele
ct any photo albums of your friends that you wish to download as well. Once I have selected all the photo albums I wish to download, I will click on the Choose button to continue.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
Within a few minutes, SocialFolders will download all the photos from the selected photo albums to a special ‘SocialFolders’ folder on my computer. This folder can be accessed in the ‘My Documents’ folder of my computer. On my computer, the path of the folder is C:UsersankitfadiaDocumentsSocialFolders.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
Not only does SocialFolders make it easy for you to download pictures from photo-sharing platforms, it also makes it very easy for you to share photos from one platform to another. If, after downloading the photo album, I want to share it with some other friends on Picasa, I need to simply connect SocialFolders to Picasa, just the way I connected it earlier to Facebook. Then, I will go to the special SocialFolders folder on my computer, copy the photo album from the Facebook folder and paste it into the Picasa folder. Within a few minutes, SocialFolders will automatically upload the photo album from my computer to my Picasa account.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
The best thing about SocialFolders is that it is very intuitive and user-friendly. The moment you start uploading photos from your computer to a website, you will be shown a notification in the Windows taskbar. It will also notify you once the upload has been successfully completed.
SocialFolders and the SocialFolders logo are registered trademarks of SocialFolders Inc., used with permission.
65. How to get the movie-theatre effect while watching YouTube videos
< 60 Seconds
It is possible to add a movie-theatre effect on YouTube such that the entire screen except the video will get dimmed whenever you are watching a video. There is a browser extension called Turn Off the Lights that is available for both the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers.
Once Turn off the Lights has been installed in your browser, a lamp icon will appear in your URL address bar. Clicking on the lamp icon will help you dim the entire screen, like a movie theatre, and put complete focus on the video that you are viewing. Turn Off the Lights will drastically improve your YouTube video-viewing experience by giving it a movie-theatre effect.
66. How to explore the night sky using your phone
< 60 Seconds
Have you ever looked up to the sky and wondered which stars, constellations and planets are visible just above you? We tend to notice stars while on vacation away from the city. Most of us don’t know what we are looking at when we look at the sky, but some of us would like to be more celestially aware.
Sky Map is an interesting Android app developed by Google which allows you to identify things that you see in the sky. It is available as a free download from http://www.google.com/mobile/skymap. Based on the GPS coordinates, the in-built compass and the clock in your mobile phone, Sky Map is able to identify celestial bodies when you point your phone at the sky. Sky Map gets automatically updated as you move. It will also allow you to search for specific bodies that you want to locate in the sky. Just download and install Sky Map on your Android phone and start playing with it by pointing it in different directions in the sky. In the example above, I have been able to identify various planets (Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Pluto), stars and constellations that are currently above me in the sky.
Sky Map and the Sky Map logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
67. How to download videos from YouTube
< 120 Seconds
There are more than two billion videos viewed on YouTube every day. Anyone with an Internet-enabled device can easily upload and share videos with the world in a matter of minutes. But one restriction that YouTube imposes on its users is that you are not allowed to download any videos. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could do that?
There are a number of video-downloading websites like Savevid (www.savevid.com), Keepvid (www.keepvid.com) and Zamzar (www.zamzar.com) that allow you to download videos from popular video-streaming websites. Just copy-paste the URL of the streaming video that you wish to download into any of these video-downloading websites, choose the format you want the downloaded video to be in and start downloading.
For example, start your browser and connect to Savevid.com. In the space provided enter the URL web address of any video that you wish to download and click on download. The website will retrieve the videos and you will be given the option to download it in any format of your choice (.flv, .mp4 etc.). Select the format and click on the Download button to start your download.
Instead of downloading the video, you may also want to extract and download just the audio from a video that you are watching on YouTube. This can be done through a website called VidtoMP3.com (http://www.vidtoMP3.com). Once you connect to this website, simply copy-paste the web address of the video from which you wish to extract and download the audio portion, and click on the Download button.
68. How to customize the look and feel of Facebook
< 120 Seconds
If you are not happy with the look and feel of Facebook, it is possible for you to completely customize it based on your personal preferences. Facebook users are normally not given any options to customize their Facebook accounts. This is where the Social Fixer browser app comes into the picture. It works on almost all the popular browsers, and allows users to completely alter the visual aspect of their Facebook account.
Open the Social Fixer website (http://socialfixer.com) and select the browser you are using, to download the app to your computer.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
Once you have installed Social Fixer in your browser, it automatically adds a new icon to the Facebook navigation bar at the top of your browser. You can use this to control the various options of the Social Fixer app.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
Some of the most useful features of Social Fixer are the following:
1. Find out who unfriends you on Facebook
Social Fixer adds a Friend Tracker box to your Facebook account, which allows you to keep track of all your friends, including finding out if someone has unfriended you on Facebook.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
2. Remove all ads from Facebook
Social Fixer will put a cross button on top of the ads column in your Facebook account. You can click on it to remove all ads from your Facebook account.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
3. Customize what gets displayed on your Facebook feed
You can customize what gets displayed on your Facebook feed.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
4. Customize the look of your friends’ profiles
You can customize the look and feel of your friends’ profile pages.
Social Fixer and the Social Fixer logo are registered trademarks of Social Fixer, used with permission.
SECURITY
69. How to detect if your account has been hacked
< 120 Seconds
Nowadays most people have extremely confidential documents, emails, pictures, links and private stuff in their email account. The very thought of someone else being able to access your email account and go through your private stuff can be quite scary. Have you ever been in a situation where you feel that so
meone else knows things about you that were not mentioned anywhere other than in your email account? Do you suspect that your email account has been hacked and someone is spying upon you? If you are in any of these inconvenient situations, or are just obsessive about maintaining the privacy and security of your email account, then this is the tip for you.
1. Gmail
In Gmail, there is a Last Account Activity feature that allows you to get information about when, how and from where your account was accessed in the last few sessions. This information can be very useful to figure out if someone has been illegally accessing your account. To get the last account activity details, log in to your Gmail account, scroll to the bottom and click on the Details link below where it says Last Account Activity.
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
This will open up the entire log-in history of your Gmail account up to the ten most recent log-in sessions. Not only does it tell you the exact date and time when your account was accessed, it also reveals the location of the IP address from where it was accessed and from what kind of a device it was accessed. By analysing this log-in history, you can find out about any illegitimate log-in to your account in the last few sessions.
Gmail and the Gmail logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.