Here’s a nice Gmail tip that will make you feel like a million bucks: empty out your crufty email inbox. There’s nothing like an empty inbox to motivate you and give you a fresh start for the year.
“But Matt,” you say, “my inbox is my to-do list!” I know, me too. So here’s how to do it without losing that to-do list. Add a label like “oldinbox” to everything currently in your inbox and then archive all the email in your inbox. Presto! Your inbox is clean and empty, but you can still visit the “oldinbox” label when you’re ready to whittle down those older emails. I know it sounds scary, but there’s only two simple steps, and both can be undone.
Step 1: Add a label to all the email in your inbox. Click on “Inbox” at the top left of your Gmail. Then look for “Select: All” and click […]
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Written by on January 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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Tip #1: See what you’re ordering. You’re at a restaurant and looking over the menu. But you don’t know the difference between a turkey bolognese and a turkey piccata. What to do? Fire up your iPhone, Android, or other smartphone and go to images.google.com and do a search for turkey bolognese. In just a few seconds, you’ll see what to expect:
Ah, turkey-based sauce over spaghetti or pasta. Why couldn’t they just say that?
Tip #2. Comparison shop. A few days ago I was in a college bookstore that wanted to charge $178.60 for a copy of Mathematical Physics, by Eugene Butkov. $178.60? For a used, paperback book? Grrr. I took a picture of the UPC code and/or ISBN number:
You can search for an ISBN or UPC code (e.g. [9780201007275] ) on Google or other search engines and usually find out a product pretty quickly. I found a copy for […]
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Written by on September 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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I’ve been learning how to stop receiving junk mail, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.
Reducing Junk Mail
There are several services that will help you reduce your junk mail:
- GreenDimes offers a free basic service, but I decided to do their $20 one-time fee because it offered a few extra things I wanted. GreenDimes walks you through some easy steps that will reduce unsolicited mail, and also lets you decline catalogs. Each time you receive an unwanted catalog, you go to GreenDimes and type the name of the catalog in. GreenDimes takes care of removing you from that catalog’s mailing list. I’ve been quite happy with this service, especially since it’s a one-time fee.
- ProQuo is a free junk-mail reduction service. In the future, they intend to make money when consumers opt-in to request offers; ProQuo will make money from those advertisers. I tried this service today. It lets […]
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Written by on July 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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I’ve been learning how to stop receiving junk mail, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.
Reducing Junk Mail
There are several services that will help you reduce your junk mail:
- GreenDimes offers a free basic service, but I decided to do their $20 one-time fee because it offered a few extra things I wanted. GreenDimes walks you through some easy steps that will reduce unsolicited mail, and also lets you decline catalogs. Each time you receive an unwanted catalog, you go to GreenDimes and type the name of the catalog in. GreenDimes takes care of removing you from that catalog’s mailing list. I’ve been quite happy with this service, especially since it’s a one-time fee.
- ProQuo is a free junk-mail reduction service. In the future, they intend to make money when consumers opt-in to request offers; ProQuo will make money from those advertisers. I tried this service today. It lets […]
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Written by on July 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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I wanted to write down 3-4 easy steps to protect yourself from identity theft and help you check your free annual credit reports.
Credit check options
- If you haven’t checked your credit in the last year, visit the official site that lets you get a free credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus. The site is annualcreditreport.com and you’ll have to be on the lookout for upsells like “Find out your credit score for $5.95″ or “Sign up for a credit monitoring service.” But this option is a safe and free way to get access to your credit report from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.
- Suppose you don’t want credit card companies sending you offers by snail mail. After all, a thief could steal the offer from your mailbox and use it to open a credit card in your name. Again, there’s a free, official service from the three […]
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Written by on July 1st, 2008 with no comments.
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Start->Run and type “diskmgmt.msc” then right-click the drive and select “Change drive letter and Paths” and change the drive letter to something completely different like T: or W:.
Hat tip to Java Jane.
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Written by on June 1st, 2008 with no comments.
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You never know when your brain is going to flash on an idea, a great gift, or something you need from the store. That’s why I carry a small notebook around with me most of the time. Here are some productivity tips on how to use a “hipster PDA” effectively.
Get one. I got mine for about a buck at Office Depot. It looks like this:
Write the date on the outside of the notebook. If you start using notebooks a lot, you’ll find it very handy to be able to sort notebooks by time.
Clear out your brain. When you think of a task for work or a book that you want to buy, just write it down. This lets you concentrate on important things instead of remembering small items.
Avoid the temptation to write on both sides of the page: just write on one side. You’ll see why in a minute.
Keep each […]
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Written by on April 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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I really like Gmail, but I also like having backups of my data just in case. Here’s how to use a simple program called getmail on Unix to backup your Gmail or Google Apps email. We’ll break this into four steps.
Step 0: Why getmail?
If you browse around on the web, you’ll find several options to help you download and backup your email. Here are a few:
If you use Windows, you can back up your email using Thunderbird or you can use Outlook to backup your email.
If you run Mac OS X (Leopard), you can back up your Gmail using Apple Mail. For the rest of this post, I’ll assume you’re running a flavor of Linux such as Ubuntu.
If you need a ton of flexible power or run your own mail server, fetchmail could be a good choice.
If you want something really fast, retchmail might fit your needs.
If you want […]
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Written by on March 11th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Linux/Ubuntu and Gadgets/Hack and Productivity and How to and Google/SEO.
One of Google’s goals is that you should be able to throw just about anything into a search box (package tracking numbers, airline flight numbers, etc.) and Google will try to do something reasonable, such as return the status of a flight. Recently I was trying to reverse engineer a USB protocol and needed to convert some numbers between base 16 (hexadecimal) and base 10 (decimal). On a hunch, I threw the conversion into a Google search box. Sure enough, it worked fine.
Converting hexadecimal to decimal with a search query like [0×607a in decimal]:
Convert decimal to hexadecimal with a Google query like [1854 in hex]:
You can even convert hexadecimal to binary with a query like [0×770 in binary]:
Of course, you can also use alternate queries like [convert 0×770 to base 2]. Pretty handy.
Bonus tip: did you know that you can do currency conversion too? Just type something like [one dollar […]
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Written by on February 10th, 2008 with no comments.
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Wow, I can’t believe how many people commented on my late-Friday night post about desired features for Gmail. If you want to suggest something for Gmail, that thread is the better place to do it. But looking through the comments, I saw a few requests that can already be done today. Considering that real Gmail users didn’t know about these options, I’m going to call them power tips.
Wayne Schulz said “I want to be able to paste images into the email.” Wayne, it’s not quite the same as pasting images into emails, but one thing that makes image attachments easier is the dragdropupload Firefox extension. You know how you can click “Attach a file” and then you’ll see the familiar “enter a file location or Browse..” form appear? With dragdropupload, you can drag any file (e.g. from your Desktop) and drop it in that text box. It’s a fantastic extension […]
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Written by on January 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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