An Alternate Way to Write Long Tweets on Twitter

If you are to ever write a tweet that’s longer than 140 characters, you have a couple of options. You can either split the message into multiple tweets or you can use a service like post.ly that not only lets you compose essay-style messages but you may also attach documents, pictures and other files to your tweets.
I wish to share one more idea here.

Twitter has recently rolled out the picture uploads feature to all accounts worldwide. What that means is you can include an image with your tweet and your followers, or anyone else who sees that tweet, can view the content of that picture inline without having to leave the Twitter website. See this tweet for an example.
The idea is that if you can convert your “long text” into a 317x317 image, people can read your message inside Twitter itself like in the following screenshot. And this works on mobile phones too.
Almost any photo editing tool – even Paint – can be used to create a text based images but remember to use the PNG or GIF image formats while saving these images.

Find Emails with Large Attachments in your Gmail Mailbox

This article describes how you can free up space in your Gmail mailbox by removing bulky email messages and large file attachments. If you are on Windows (2000, XP, Vista or Win 7) and use Google email, this may be worth giving a shot.

The Gmail Advantage

While Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Hotmail offer POP3 access to your email, GMail (and Google Apps for Email) is probably the only free web mail service that also provides free offline access to your email messages via the IMAP route.

The benefits of using IMAP4 far outweigh POP3 - the primary feature being instant synchronization of the action with the mail server. As an example, if you have configured Outlook or Thunderbird with your Gmail account using IMAP4, you can delete messages in the local client and they'll get moved to the Trash folder in Gmail as well automatically.

Free up Space in Gmail via IMAP - The Strategy

Now the more interesting part. Let's see how we can free up some important disk space in our Gmail inbox using a simple strategy:
Step 1: Track down bulky email messages in your Gmail inbox that contain large file attachments.
Step 2: Save these attachments to the local hard drive.
Step 3. After the attachments are saved locally, remove them from the online mailbox without deleting the corresponding email message(s).

 
Unlike Outlook, Gmail doesn't offer a "sort by size" feature so you would normally assume that to implement such a strategy, one may have to configure his desktop mail client with Gmail's IMAP, perform the operations locally and then do a sync. Well, that's not required anymore.
We'll use a portable (meaning it doesn't need to be installed) and freeware utility called IMAPSize - at the outset, let's be quite clear - this isn't an email client per se. This Windows only application has been created solely to perform maintenance tasks on any IMAP mailbox from the desktop.

Find space-hogging Email Attachments in Gmail

 Let's start off by adding a GMail or Google Apps for Domains mailbox.

Usually, on first starting the IMAPSize program, a dialog box pops up asking if you'd like to add a new email account. If it doesn't, one can always add an account from the Account > New menu option.
To configure your Gmail account, fill in your email address as the username and your Gmail password. Enter imap.gmail.com as your server and the port number as 993. Be sure to check the SSL secure connection option so that data sent between your computer and the GMail server can't be intercepted.
If you are a Google Apps user, please enter username@your_domain.com for the username field.

You'll now see a tree indicating the size of individual Gmail folders (labels). Even with the exceedingly generous storage quota offered by GMail, if you have an IMAP account with another provider like FastMail.fm, VFEmail.net, 1and1.com or RackSpace, it might be worth noting which folders in particular are occupying the maximum space.
Now the next step - double-click any Gmail folder in the tree to see all message within that folder. IMAPSize will only download the headers and not the entire message so the wait may not be that long.

Once your message list is available locally, invoke the "Advanced Search" function to filter out large emails (or ones that contain huge attachments). You need to specify the size in kilobytes so 500000 would filter out emails that are larger than 0.5 MB or 500 KB.
Go through the filtered list and select emails messages that you either want to remove completely or just need to detach the attachments. You can do that by right clicking the selected messages and choosing "Save Attachments locally" - this will save of copy of file attachments to the local drive.

Now use the Delete Attachments option for the same selection. This will make a copy of the original email in same the Gmail folder buts sans the attachment while the original message is moved to Trash after you choose "Expunge this mailbox". (Outlook has such a feature by default).
All this happens without the main body of the email getting downloaded thereby saving on bandwidth as well as on time. And this may be neat option for saving those images and media files for offline use when GMail is not available.

 

Last, but by no means least is an option to backup your IMAP account to your local disk while preserving the folder structure. Use the Account > Account Backup [CTRL+B] option to select the folder you want to backup - most GMail users would be better off backing up the All Mail folder to archive everything locally.
Naturally, expect a great deal of time to elapse if you have lot of messages and a slow Internet connection. Incremental backup is an in-built feature, so your next backup shouldn't take as long as only the changes made to the mail account will be taken into consideration.
For Desktop Mail Clients
If you are already using Outlook or another desktop client with Gmail, seee this guide on how to reclaim lost space in Gmail using a similar approach. And if you aren't happy with speed, here's another guide on improving Outlook performance with GMail IMAP.

Browse the Web Faster on a Slow Internet Connection

If your current Internet speed is very slow and you are living in an area where broadband connections are still not available, here are some ideas to help you download web pages faster on your computer. You may use the same tips to  improve your web browsing experience on a sluggish USB modem.

Surf the Web Faster on Slow Internet

1. Turn off web images, the Adobe Flash plug-in, Java Applets and JavaScript from your browser settings as these files are often the bulkiest elements of any web page.
2. Increase the size of your browser cache. If the static parts of a site (like background graphics, CSS, etc) are stored in the local cache, your browser can safely skip downloading these files when you re-visit the site in future thus improving speed.
3. Sometimes the slow DNS server of your ISP can be a bottleneck so switch to OpenDNS as it can resolve website URLs into IP addresses more quickly. If you aren't too happy about OpenDNS redirecting your Google queries, follow this simple hack.
4. Finch can serve a light-weight version of any website in real-time that is free of all bells and whistles. For instance, the New York Times homepage with all external resources can weigh more than a MB but Finch trims down the size by 90% so the site loads more quickly on a slow web connection.
5. Flinch (mentioned at #4) is good for reading regular websites but if you just need to check the latest articles published on your favorite blogs, use BareSite. This service will automatically detect the associated feed of a website and render content quickly inside a minimalist interface.
6. The Google Transcoder service at google.com/gwt/n can split large web pages into smaller chunks that will download more quickly on your computer (or mobile phone).
7. Monitor your Internet speed to determine hours when you get the maximum download speed from the ISP. Maybe you can then change your surfing schedule a bit and browse more during these "off peak" hours.
8. You can use a text browser like Lynx or Elinks for even faster browsing. It downloads only the HTML version of web pages thus reducing the overall bandwidth required to render websites.
9. When searching for web pages on Google, you can click the "Cache" link to view the text version of a web page stored in the Google Cache. Alternatively, install this GM script as it adds a "cached text only" link near every "Cached" link on Google Search pages.
10. Move your web activities offline as far as possible. You can send & receive emails, write blogs and even read feeds in an offline environment. Also see: Save Web Pages for offline reading.
11.  You can interact with websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. using simple email messages. Uploading a new document to Google Docs via email would require less bandwidth than doing it in the browser because you are avoiding a trip to the Google Docs website.
12. Applying the same logic, you may also consider using tools like Web In Mail or Email The Web as they help you browse websites via email. Just put the URL of a page (e.g., cnn.com) in the subject field of your email message and these services will send you the actual page in the reply.
13. Bookmarklets are like shortcuts to your favorite web services. You neither have to open the Gmail Inbox for composing a new email message nor do you have to visit Google Translate for translating a paragraph of text. Add relevant bookmarklets to your browser bar and reduce the number of steps required to accomplish a task.
14. Use the netstat command to determine processes, other than web browsers, that may be secretly connecting to Internet in the background. Some of these processes could be consuming precious bandwidth but you can block them using the Firewall.
15. Use URL Snooper to determine non-essential host names that a website is trying to connect while downloading a web page. You may block them in future via the hosts file or use Adblock Plus to filter out advertising banners on web pages.
16. If you don't want to spoil your web surfing experience by stripping images and other graphic elements from  a web page, get Opera Turbo. It will first fetch the requested web page on to its own server and then send it to your machine in a compressed format. Opera Turbo won't change the layout of a web site but can lower the image resolution so that they load faster on slow Internet.
17. Change the user agent of your desktop browser to that of a mobile phone like Apple's iPhone or Windows Mobile. This will help you browse certain web sites like Google News, WSJ, etc. much faster because they'll serve you a light-weight and less cluttered mobile version of their sites thinking you're on a mobile phone.

While there’s plenty of overlap between desktop-based Microsoft Office and web-based Google Docs, each tool has its own strong points.
For instance, Microsoft Office offers excellent tools for you to create and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets in an offline environment. Google Docs lets can easily view and edit your Office documents using the browser itself – this comes handy when you aren’t carrying your laptop computer (that has all the documents) or are using a device that doesn’t have Microsoft Office (like your mobile phone).
One tool is good for creating documents while the other helps you access documents on the go and thus it is makes good sense to use both these tools together.

 

Using Microsoft Office and Google Docs Together

While there’s plenty of overlap between desktop-based Microsoft Office and web-based Google Docs, each tool has its own strong points.
For instance, Microsoft Office offers excellent tools for you to create and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets in an offline environment. Google Docs lets can easily view and edit your Office documents using the browser itself – this comes handy when you aren’t carrying your laptop computer (that has all the documents) or are using a device that doesn’t have Microsoft Office (like your mobile phone).
One tool is good for creating documents while the other helps you access documents on the go and thus it is makes good sense to use both these tools together.

Integrating Microsoft Office with Google Docs

An idle workflow would be that you create your document in Microsoft Office and it instantly becomes available in Google Docs (and vice-versa). Also, if you make any edits in the cloud, they should sync with the copy on the desktop.
Now there are quite a few tools that let you integrate Microsoft Office with Google Docs though, because of certain limitations in the Google Docs API, two-way synchronization between the two Office products is still far from perfect. Here are some tools worth a try:

1. Google Cloud Connect – This is a free plugin for Microsoft Office that will let you save your Office documents to your Google Docs account with a  click.
Compose a new document inside Word, Excel or PowerPoint and hit the Sync button to upload it to your Google account. This is a one-way street - if you make any edits to your documents in the cloud, those changes won’t be available locally.

2. Offisync – Before Google Cloud Connect hit the web, Offisync was the only good option for saving documents directly to Google Docs from within Microsoft Office programs

Unlike the ugly toolbar of Cloud Connect, Offisync adds a ribbon tab to your Microsoft Office allowing you to save the open document directly to the cloud. One unique and useful feature is that you may also use Offisync to open web documents, that are already on Google Docs, and edit them with Microsoft Office. When you hit Save, the changes get saved both online and offline.

3. Syncplicity – Syncplicity is a Dropbox-like online file storage and synchronization service that also supports Google Docs . Link your Gmail or Google Apps account with Syncplicity and then designate a local desktop folder that should be kept in sync with Google Docs. Now when you save a new document, spreadsheet or presentation to this local folder, a copy of it will automatically get stored to your Google Docs account. Similarly, if you create a new document inside Google Docs, it will become available inside your local folder automatically.

4. Gladinet Starter – With the help of Gladinet Desktop, you can quickly and easily ‘mount’ your Google Docs account as a virtual drive (say Z:) and access your online Google documents as if they were residing on the local hard drive.
You can then double-click any document in this virtual folder to edit with the corresponding Office program. Any files saved to this folder are uploaded to Google Docs. You can also drag-n-drop files to this virtual folder and they’ll get uploaded in a batch to your online Google Docs account. Similarly, dragging files out of this folder will create a local backup of your Google Docs.

5. Insync – This is relatively new service that, like Syncplicity, provides offline access to your Google Docs files and can also sync your local document folder with the cloud. When you add or edit a file on the local desktop, it will automatically sync to Google Docs and vice-versa.
The desktop client for Insync is available for both Mac and Windows. The software has promising features but the version I tested for this comparison was buggy and did not work as advertised. Google Apps users may jump to Insync right away while there’s a waiting list for Gmail users.

Final thoughts - If you can live with that ugly-looking toolbar, Google Cloud Connect is neat because it saves Office documents to Google Docs in their native format. However, if you also need access to your old Google Docs files from within Microsoft Office, Offisync or Gladinet Cloud Desktop are good choices.
That said, when you save a document created in Microsoft Office to Google Docs, the original formatting is less likely to be preserved. That’s one area where the Office Web Apps and SkyDrive duo seems to enjoy an upper hand.

Easily Find the Serial Number of your Computer

You’ve got a problem with your computer, you call their technical support team and the person on the other side requires the machine’s serial number (also known as the Service Tag) before he can even log your request.

If you using a laptop computer, you can easily find the service tag by turning the machine upside but for desktops, especially the older models, the sticker that holds the service tag is often placed at a more harder-to-reach location. 


There’s a alternate way to find the computer’s serial number without you having to slide beneath the table.
Open the command prompt (Start –> CMD) and type the following command:

wmic bios get serialnumber

Another command that will also print the model number (or make) of your computer is:

Web designers have long used image maps in HTML to link different areas of an image to different web pages. For instance, what you see above is a single image of some well-known people and if you click on any of the faces, you’ll be transported to their respective sites.
Larry’s image links to his Wikipedia entry, Sergey’s face will take you to one of his video lectures on YouTube while Eric’s image is linked to his Twitter account. One image but with multiple links and all pointing in different directions. The previous chart, illustrating the most disliked videos on YouTube, also uses an Image Map.

Enhance your Website Images with Rich Tooltips

Web designers have long used image maps in HTML to link different areas of an image to different web pages. For instance, what you see above is a single image of some well-known people and if you click on any of the faces, you’ll be transported to their respective sites.
Larry’s image links to his Wikipedia entry, Sergey’s face will take you to one of his video lectures on YouTube while Eric’s image is linked to his Twitter account. One image but with multiple links and all pointing in different directions. The previous chart, illustrating the most disliked videos on YouTube, also uses an Image Map.

Rich Tooltips - An Alternative to HTML Image Maps

Image Maps are useful and easy to implement but have certain drawbacks.
You don’t get any clues about the page that an image area is linking to until you actually click the link. The other downside is that you need to hover your mouse over the full image in order to to identify which parts of that image are clickable.
Now let’s try something different. I have embedded the same collage below but instead of using HTML based Image Maps, it uses Thinglink, an online tool  that makes your static web images interactive with rich tooltips. Hover your mouse for a quick demo:

Like an Image Map, you define an area on the image that you would like to link to the other site. In Thinglink’s jargon, these are known as hotspots. When users hover on any of these hotspots, they can see the linked content, or portions of it, in the tool tip itself.
If you are linking an hotspot to a YouTube video or an MP3 song, visitors can enjoy the media on the image itself without leaving your page. If the link is pointing to a Wikipedia page, they get to read an excerpt of the page inside the tooltip. If it’s a book on Amazon, the thumbnail and price would display in the preview.
There are other interesting uses as well. For instance, you can create an annotated illustration /diagram and users can learn in detail about the different parts of the image by simply hovering the mouse. If you are sharing a route map, you can use these interactive hotspots to explain the route in detail with text and rich-media tooltips.

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