About a month ago Google add a new feature to Gmail – rich signatures. Among other design capabilities, the new feature lets you add images (or icons) to your signature. Now, there is a really big problem with the way images are added to the signature.

Images might change

Instead of just uploading an image and adding it to the email, when you create your rich signature you are asked to give a link to the image (see screenshot below). The link is of a web address, not a location on your computer. When you send an email, the link is a live link.

This mean that whenever someone opens an email you sent, the image is retrieved from it's original location on the web. If the image changed in the meantime – your recipient will see the changed image, and if it no longer exists – he will see no image at all.

Continue reading “Don’t Use Images in Gmail’s signature!”»

Find where  your friends are with Foursquare without a smartphone

don’t have a smart phone but you want to know where your friends are? No problem. You can sign in to Foursquare from your desktop computer and find your friends. Then, go to foursquare’s mobile website (still from your desktop computer). There, you’ll see all your friends’ check-ins. That’s it. Quite simple, but it requires  breaking a functional fixation that make you think that you can’t consume location data if you can’t provide location data…

Continue reading “Some Tips About Web Stuff – June 2010”»

I often find that Google isn't quite tuned in to my search needs. Although I would rather that it only searched sites I know and trust, I often get results from sites that don't look trustworthy or aren't of high quality.

That is why I've created a custom search engine that only searches the best technology sites – The 'Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs' Search Engine.

Try it out

Continue reading “The ‘Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs’ Search Engine”»

Over the past year I’ve written several posts about different Google applications. These include Google search, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Maps, and more. In case you’ve missed some, here is your chance to catch up with some great Goolge practices and tips (note that some of them where published on MakeUseOf.com):

Google Reader

• Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users
• 4 Steps to Optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader
• Before Google – Use Your RSS Reader as a Search Engine

Gmail

• Top 5 Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts to Boost Your Productivity
• Make Gmail More Secure By Setting It to Use HTTPS Connection
• The Easiest way to Create a New Email Message Instantly

Continue reading “Roundup – Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google Tips and Practices”»

Do you ever feel that if you could only tell Google a bit more about what you're trying to find, the search results would be much better? Well, as you probably know - 

Google has some advanced search operators that help to refine search queries. You can use them to better focus your queries by specifying things like which sites to search, use placeholders, search for exact matches, and more.

Here is a quick guide to Google's advanced search operators.

Starting with Google's advanced operators

Double quotation marks (" ") for exact much:

When you enclose a phrase in quotation marks, Google returns only pages that contain that exact phrase. The results have to contain all the words and in the exact same order as you wrote them. Search for "The first Twitter user", for example, and you'll only get back pages that contain exactly that phrase. This advanced search feature is one of the most useful in my opinion.

Asterisk (*) is a placeholder for one or more words:

adding * replaces any number of words in your query. Example: let's say you want to find articles that teach Google search practices, like this one. You could use the following query for that task:

"how to Search * with Google"

The quotation marks will make sure that you'll get back pages with that sentence in them. But since there's Asterisk in the query, you'll find different versions of it. So, you might get back this sentence: How to Search Faces with Google, this one: How to SearchEffectively with google, or any other variation that matches the query. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself. Continue reading “Become a Google Ninja with Advanced Search Operators”»

If you’ve ever tried Twitter’s search, you’ve probably found that it’s not very good. Indeed, Other Twitter search alternatives exist, such as Trendistic, Tweefind, Tweetzi, and Twazzup. But wouldn’t you rather just use Google for the task?

To search Twitter with Google, all you need to do is add to the search query a limitation that tells it to search only within Twitter (and not the whole web). To do that, simply add the following string to the query:

site:http://twitter.com

So, for example, to find mentions of this blog, we’ll add the word ‘productivewise’ to the query, as shown below (notice that there is a space between the search term, productivewise, and the sit URL) :

site:http://twitter.com/ productivewise

The results are displayed in the image below.

Click this link to search Google with the above query (opens in a new window).

Continue reading “Search Twitter with Google – It’s Great!‎”»