Tag Archives: Google

Google Reader will be soon out of service… What’s the next best solution? netvibes.com or theoldreader.com?

At this point it’s history: Google will be out of service by the next July. It could appear nonsense but I still think that RSS readers are the most flexible solution for people who need to stay updated. Social media represent a possible solution but, in my opinion, nothing is better and more powerful than RSS.

Digg.com has promptly announced the launch of its own alternative online reader but, for now, none is able to say when it will be ready. Moreover Digg has not provided any information about this new RSS reader and so we cannot comment any of its potential feature neither compare it with the “old” Google Reader.

Surfing the web, many possible alternatives will pop-up but just few are the right ones if you don’t want to wait Digg.com. At the moment netvibes.com (in the past it was also known as bloglines.com) is the most immediate solution because allows you to import OPML – XML setting from your Google Reader. In fact, you can save all your Google Reader settings in a OPML – XML file just using the Import/Export panel into the Settings Menu (Download your data through Takeout) into the Google Reader. Netvibes.com represents an easy and fast alternative but I personally don’t like the graphic layout offered by this free online service. It is easy to use, really flexible and cozy but it doesn’t run properly on old computers because dated hardware, with inadequate graphic cards or small RAM, will slow down your OS when you visit netvibes.com. Last but not least you can decided to keep private your RSS selection, share it on social media or allow people to visit directly the webpage containing all the feeds you selected and/or just a single RSS box.

My other choice is represented by t heoldreader.com that is the real successor of Google Reader. Theoldreader.com has the same features than the Google Reader and it is really nice to see and read if you like the clean, evergreen layouts. Theoldreader.com allows you to sign in using your Google account and it is possible to import the OPLM -XML configuration file you saved from your personal Google Reader. The only problem with theoldreader.com is represented by the time you have to wait before it will import the OPLM – XML file you uploaded from Google Reader. In my experience I had more than 22,000 people before me in the queue and I had to wait for, more a less, a week before I was able to use it with the imported parameters… Theoldreader.com has some advanced features which allow you to share your RSS selection and save the most interesting in order to create a more private collection for your specific interests. Not bad and useful!!

WordPress as search engine

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Are you starving for information or “really new news”? Why don’t you try to use wordpress.com as search engine? This feature, normally not well-known by many people, let you to dig deep into all the blogs hosted on wordpress.com. Just type a keyword and you will be able to find related news into all the posts or comments in just few seconds. Easy to use and reliable for all that people (like me) who still believe in blogs as ideas incubators.

Gmail advanced searching: how to create a powerful query to catch a “wanted” email – Computer forensic

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If you want to improve your Google searches you can find many useful queries on internet and, if have time, you can also attend a specific Google free course.

But just few people know that there are specific queries available for Gmail.

I found some of them casually when I need to search some specific, old emails into my accounts some days ago. Then I discovered that Google itself published a complete list of all the possible queries accepted by Gmail.

I warmly suggest you to spend some minutes reading and exploring all the queries because they are really useful when you use Gmail in a professional way.

Here, I just want to sum-up some of them that, in my experience, are the most common you can use when you are becoming crazy looking for a specific email you sent or received.

The powerful feature is represented by the possibility to mix the different queries to create super-queries that can intercept the “wanted” email or documents in a less than a second.

Time

after:2010/10/24 before:2011/09/24

Here you are defining the time range and Gmail will show all the emails sent or received between the two specified dates.

From or To

from xyz@zyw.com
to:xyz@zyw.com

Where xyz @zyw.com is the email address you are focusing on.

from:tom OR from:Luis
from:tom OR from:Luis -meeting

In this case you are looking for an email from Tom or (plus) Luis but it hasn’t to contain (- minus) the word “meeting”.

Bcc or CC

bcc:xyz@zyw.com
cc:xyz@zyw.com

Where xyz @zyw are specific email addresses you are looking for.

Filename

filename:invitation
filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png)
filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf)
filename:invitation(doc OR docx OR pdf)

Subject

subject:meeting

Attachment

has:attachment

Spam

in:spam

And you check into a specific folder. In my case: the Spam folder

Larger or Smaller

larger:25MB
smaller:250MB

Some complex query examples:

from:xyz@zyw.com filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png)

to:xyz@zyw.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf)

from:xyz@zyw.com filename:invitationfrom xyz@zyw.com to:xyz@zyw.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) subject:meeting

after:2011/10/24 before:2011/11/24 in:spam subject:meeting

Save Gmail attachments directly into your Google Drive

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The idea is simple but genial: how about saving your Gmail attached files directly into Google Drive without wasting time and doing it manually? Not a bad idea but till now it was not easy to realize.

Today Armit Agarwal did it and explained how to do that!

Moreover, automatically adding a simple label to your incoming emails (e.g. labeling all the email from a predefined account or all the emails containing a particular word in the text) you can be sure that Agarwal script will save a copy of the attachments directly into your Google Drive.

But I don’t want to simply copy Agarwal ideas and tips about this new feature because you can directly visit his website and download the script he created.

Here I also like to focus your attention on the potential features offered by the App Script language by Google. In fact, Agarwal demonstrates how simply could be this Script language and how it can be used to add personalized and useful features to Google services (in this case: Gmail).

Try it and if you want to share new Google App Scripts don’t hesitate to add a comment or send an email to this blog.

“Security by obscurity does not work with inquisitive minds. There are many things that should be changed and some that have. Though our bodies may not be free, our minds are – free to learn, explore, to resist. Hack the world!“, Anonymous Writer, 2600 Magazine, Autumn 2012

Take Action: Add Your Voice to Keep the Internet #freeandopen

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YouTube changed its website parameters and DownloadHelper immediately released an updated, on the fly, version

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Sunday night the (on the fly) updated version of DownloadHelper was released. After just few days of malfunctioning all the features offered by this add-on for Firefox are back again.

In particular it is possible to download again all the videos to have a local copy to watch when we are not able to use the internet.

The team of DdownloadHelper was professional and fast to solve this annoying problem which was caused by changes operated by YouTube on its website. For all the people who has not already used this add-on before, I remind you that DownloadHelper is, in my opinion, the most advanced tool to navigate YouTube videos, download contents for evaluation and directly convert the format from flv to mp4 or other video format you prefer.

For the record, this problem caused the same malfunctioning to all the software with similar features. In particular, you could have problems when using Gmediafinder for Linux (at least we have had this kind of matter during the past weekend).

Video – Mozilla Collusion privacy tracking add-on for Firefox

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Few Tricks to protect your web searches from Search Engines logging

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During the past weeks, we read many posts and articles about the new privacy rules that Google introduced for its web services. The goal of this specific post is not about discussing privacy agreements and the many interesting points of view about this kind of topics but we would like to focus your attention on a couple of “tricks” which can help you to increase the privacy level.

First of all, you can decide to use an alternative search engine which doesn’t log your activity and it is not possible to define your profile about your web activities.

Privatelee

Privatelee has been developed to offer better privacy to people who prefer not to have their web searches automatically analyzed by google.com.

This search engine can work on https mode and its search results are the mix between external search such as Google and Bing. You can also decide to use just one web engine or both. Comparing the results obtained we can affirm that Privatelee is really very effective and offers the same main features of Google and Bing.

Startpage

Startpage is based on Google and has many flexible features that can be selected using the “settings” page. This particular search engine deletes all the logs after 48 hours and you can anonymously visualize images and videos or define how to manage cookies. Moreover, Startpage allows you to save your settings without using cookies.

As for Privatelee, please be sure to type https and not a “simple” http when you insert Startpage address in the bar.

Secondly, if you use Firefox, you can use a specific add-on TrackMeNot. TrackMeNot is a simple but useful add-on you can install on Firefox to obfuscate user search data profiler on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu and others. TrackMeNot automatically issues random queries on the main search engines using a list a generic list of words. In this way, search engines are not able to create a real profile about you as web user. Your real searches will be just few between the hundreds fictionally created by TrackMeNot. TrackMeNot is completely configurable: you can choose the query frequency or define the klog of your automatic queries. By default, TrackMeNot uses the words contained in the RSS of four primary websites: The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and The Register.

Last but not least, if you are using your PC in any area with poor Internet connection, you can disable TrackMe Not with just a click. Easy and fast!