Gtricks.com

Sync Google Docs with Your Desktop

Abhishek Mandloi — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:10:43 +0000

If you are one among those, who regularly uses Google Docs then you must have felt the need of offline local folder that will remain in constant sync with your Gdoc Account. Just like the dropbox where you can keep all your MS documents, PDF’s, MP3′s and other files in cloud and in your desktop with real time synchronisation. Not much long ago, we have covered GDocsDrive, which transforms your Google account into a personal drive for making online backups. However, it did not provided real time synchronization and it was not free.

Introducing InSync – a free and a small software which keep files on your desktop in sync with GDocs. Just like dropbox, this useful software provides cloud based storage so that you can easily edit, update and share files between Google Docs and your computer.

Soon after installing, the program asks for your Google credentials. The program now makes a new ‘insync’ folder in your machine, within which other account name folders are created. After few seconds, all your Gdocs files gets downloaded to this folder. Now the folder and the account are in complete sync and any change made to files will get reflected in all the places. It’s simple! Copy a new file to that local folder; it gets automatically uploaded to cloud. Make a change offline; file at Gdoc will get changed. Much like dropbox with additional benefits like –

#. Sync multiple account with multiple machines. Any local/offline change gets reflected on online version.

#. You get 1GB free storage from Google. You can purchase more at 1/8th price of Dropbox (20GB at just 5USD per year) from https://google .com/accounts/PurchaseStorage

#. Easy sharing options that enables effective Google Docs collaboration.

#. Offline access or tension free automatic backups.

#. Desktop notifications for any change.

Syncplicity is another useful software to backup and sync Google Docs with Office documents on your computer. This software works in the same way as Insync and lets you edit your GDocs document offline using Microsoft word and then later sync changes with original docs. Though this offers more features than Insyc, There is a major disadvantage with this application – its complex to use. If you can understand detailed stuff, then Syncplicity should be your preferred choice. Here is a quick demo video –

Lastly, for the Google Apps users, we have Memeo. With natively developed GDrive technology you can upload, sync, edit and share any document on Google Docs, even when you are offline on multiple devices. Check their video below –

Tell us in your comments on how these applications helped you in your daily lives.

This article, Sync Google Docs with Your Desktop was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

5 YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts that You Ought to Know

Abhishek Mandloi — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:02:06 +0000

We all agree to the fact that keyboard shortcut makes life much easier. That is why we have previously covered shortcut keys for Chrome, GDocs and others. Shortcuts are a great way to speed up things and save time. Also, it makes the application very convenient to use. For example, you can skip videos by hitting 0-9 keys on top row of keyboard (numeric pad does not work). Press 1 to skip first 10% of the video and so on.

Here are the 5 keyboard shortcuts that you must know:

Keyboard shortcut	Used For
Spacebar	Play or pause the video
Left/Right arrow	Forwards or rewinds by 10 Second
Up/Down Arrow	Play or pause the video
Esc Key	Exit full screen view
Numbers 1-9	Jump to 10% to 90% of the video

These shortcuts will only work when the video player is in focus. To bring the focus try pausing and then resuming the video.

A single click will pause and another will resume the video. Double click makes video go full screen.

If you are interested in more, here is the complete list of shortcuts for your convenience:

Keyboard shortcut	Used For>
Number O (not on numeric pad)	Restart video
Spacebar or mouse single click	Play/Pause
Left and then Up arrow	Initiates mini snake game (only when player is paused)
F (doesn’t work for all)	Switch to full screen
Left/Right arrow	Move backward/forward 5 seconds
Ctrl+left/ctrl+right arrow	Move backward/forward 10 seconds
Home/End	Move to the beginning/End
Up/Down arrow	Increase/Decrease volume 5%
Numbers 1 to 9 (not on the numeric pad)	Jump to the 10% to 90% of the video

Let us know your favourites in the comments that you think are worth a share.

Related: Auto Replay YouTube Videos

This article, 5 YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts that You Ought to Know was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

Best Ways to Replay YouTube Videos Automatically in a Loop [Repeat Infinitely]

Abhishek Mandloi — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:03:19 +0000

Unfortunately, we do not have an automatic replay button in YouTube to keep video/song repeat in a never ending loop. Every time we have to manually click on that small replay button at the top of the video, which is both inconvenient and uncomfortable. The old trick of appending &loop=1 parameter was the easiest method and worked on all the internet browsers but lately it does not work anymore with the new revamped YouTube.

Let us look at some of the best ways to automatically replay YouTube videos in an infinite loop –

Chrome Extension – Auto Replay for YouTube

This extension adds a checkbox at the bottom of videos, which lets you watch infinitely once you enable it. It also provides options to input the starting and ending seconds between which the video will be replayed. These input boxes also support keyboard shortcuts. Up and down arrows, increase and decrease the values by 1 second whereas pressing shift button along with arrow keys will change values by 5 seconds. Shift+Enter will take the current time of the video as starting point for next play.

Firefox Addon – YouTube Auto Replay

This Firefox add-on does the similar job except with better interface. Choose your starting and ending time or loop the entire video. Simple!

For IE or other browsers – Direct Websites

Sites like yourepeat, tubeencore, tubereplay and youtuberepeater lets you replay videos in any internet browser. All you have to do is replace the youtube word in the URL of the video with any of these sites.

These websites are almost similar with few different features like –

Tubeencore offers a slider from where you can adjust repeat duration and a download link at the bottom of the player.

Tubereplay offers you clean and distraction free UI though other features are not available. In addition, it provides a bookmarklet, which you can directly click while watching YouTube video to replace URL on the fly.

Youtuberepeater offers same functionality with precise position marking capability.

Use any of these methods to enjoy your favourite videos distraction free. If you have more ideas, tell us in our comments.

This article, Best Ways to Replay YouTube Videos Automatically in a Loop [Repeat Infinitely] was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

How to Change User Agent String in Chrome

Abhishek Mandloi — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:35:46 +0000

Very often old websites does not work in Chrome and asks you specifically to use IE or Firefox. Many a times you would like to change the user agent string in Google Chrome either to check the mobile version of the site on your desktop or to try out it with different browser platforms. Until now, there was no easy way to change the site behaviour, but now with the new Chrome versions, we can alter it either with command line or by chrome extension or from developer tools.

For those of you unfamiliar, User Agent String is an identity text sent by internet browser to the site server to tell about the platform on which the site will be displayed. For example, if my user agent is of mobile then I will see the mobile version of the site even if I am using desktop browser. This is an incredibly useful method to properly run some of the websites that only work in few browsers.

Here are the two convenient ways to switch user agent:

Easiest way: Use Chrome Extension User-Agent Switcher

Works only with Dev Chrome 17 or higher versions, this extension is offers extremely easy way to switch user agents. You can choose from Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, iPhone, iPad and Android.

For those who do not have latest Chrome version, they can download the same extension from Author’s site. But to install it you will have to first enable “Experimental Extension APIs” from the about:flags page and then restart the browser.

Though Chrome extension is the easiest way to change the string, unfortunately it works with the latest versions only. On the other hand, there is great news that in the upcoming versions, you can change the user agent right from the developer tools. Just hit Ctrl+Shift+i on Windows/Linux, Command+Option+i on Mac OS X and click settings on the bottom right of the window. Now check the box “override user agent” and select one of the given options or enter your self-made custom agent.

Permanently Change User Agent to Stimulate iPhone Browser

If you add a user agent command line parameter, then you can have permanent iPhone browser behaviour in all the tabs. Follow these steps to stimulate this change:

1) Right click on the Chrome icon. Select Properties.
2) Add the following text after the pre-existing text written in the Target box –

–user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3″

3) Click OK and restart the browser.

Now, for all the sites that you open will have iPhone optimized behaviour meaning mobile version with different features, layout and style.

Tell us in your comments about how changing user agent benefitted you or if you have a better way of doing switching them.

This article, How to Change User Agent String in Chrome was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

Ex-Google Employee’s Chrome Extension Lets You Read Shared Articles on Facebook without Installing Social Reader Apps

Abhishek Mandloi — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:29:04 +0000

Life was easy before the new Facebook changes. You can share articles without any hassles with your friends. Now, whenever you click any shared news article on Facebook, you are greeted by an App. You are forced to install it for reading that article. The new installed App with monitor your behaviour and will recommend articles based on your behaviour and from your friends. Also your activities get publish in your timeline without your consent. This can be considered as another infiltration of your privacy by big media conglomerates. Soon they can control what you see and read.

Thankfully, we have Frictionless Chrome extension developed by Google’s ex-software engineer Brian Kennish. This extension will let you view the shared article page directly without installing any app. Effectively it will bypass any of the loops presented by Facebook and take you to the desired article. Since it is a relatively new extension, it might not work with all news sources. However I have found it to work with almost all major news sources such as Washington Post, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Times of India and NDTV.

Interestingly, the ex-Google employee has another Chrome extension ‘Facebook Disconnect‘, which blocks all your data to flow to Facebook servers while visiting other different sites. It also hides like boxes and buttons for easy viewing of the web site.

Install Frictionless from here if you are annoyed by those dialog boxes and are more concerned about your privacy.

This article, Ex-Google Employee’s Chrome Extension Lets You Read Shared Articles on Facebook without Installing Social Reader Apps was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

Share Your Activities and Discover New Ones with Schemer

Abhishek Mandloi — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:25:54 +0000

Google has recently launched a new social service called Schemer which lets you share your schemes, or activities such as visiting a museum or learning how to dance, to people in your Google+ circles or general public. It might is very similar to FourSquare or Twitter in apprearance, however it is very different in a sense that it is inspiration and recommendation engine. It also allows you to discover new schemes from other users or schemes that you have in common with them.

Newcomers are greeted with the option to join the waitlist as Schemer is an invite-only service and only in the U.S. Once invited, users of Schemer will see that it is heavily integrated into Google+ as it recommends schemes from your circles as well as use your G+ profile to keep track of all the ones you want to do or have done already. It also allows you to search for schemes when you are looking for something to do or want to see what people are scheming in a particular location. These search results are curated based on categories and the people you have circled on G+.

When you choose a scheme, you have the option to indicate whether you want to do it, have done it already, and if you want to do it again or have done it again. You can also create new schemes and inspire others to partake in them by using the “heads up” button. You can comment on schemes to share your interest of it with others.

The profile section on Schemer displays an overview of the schemes associated with each user. There are also profiles from “accomplices” such as Lifehacker, Food Network, and Entertainment Weekly who Google has partnered with to recommend schemes for users.

For those of you who want to find schemes on the go, the team behind Schemer has just released an Android app with an iPhone app along the way to make finding schemes in nearby locations easier.

To know more, take a look at Schemer now to see what types of schemes you can do or have done. Also, download the Android app from the market today. For those of you who have not been invited or are still waiting, follow this forum thread on Gtricks Forum to get personalized invite.

This article, Share Your Activities and Discover New Ones with Schemer was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

“Let It Snow” Google’s New Easter Egg

Abhishek Mandloi — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:51:48 +0000

If you search for “let it snow” on Google, you will witness the new holiday easter egg. HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript make some beautiful animation to the page with snowflakes and frost covering up the screen.

Interestingly, you can write on the screen covered with fog with your mouse once it is all frozen. It gives an actual feeling of playing on real windows like on those good old days. The search button turns into a defrost button, which clears all animation. I wish it was replay button. The share button at the top lets you instantly share this easter egg with friends on Google Plus.

Google is also celebrating Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Search for Hanukkah to se series of light below the Google bar. Well played Google.

This is another of those search tricks like “do a barrel roll” where Google changes its behaviour based of search queries. Last year, Google added seconds to New Year countdown with the ‘I am feeling lucky button’, this year with advancement of technology, we can expect some good animation for the New Year.

Google’s Most Popular Search Terms in 2011 – The Zeitgeist Data

Abhishek Mandloi — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:31:59 +0000

Are you interested in knowing what grabbed world’s attention in 2011? What were the most popular search terms in 2011? Which celebrity or about which movie people wanted to know more? What did the world cared about this year? Google is ready with all these answers in into annual Zeitgeist 2011 data.

There are more than 1 billion searches each day on Google of which 20% are new terms for the day [source]. Analysing this search data, each year Google comes up with Zeitgeist, meaning the spirit of the times which is aggregation of millions of queries Google receives each day. Here is a beautiful and emotional video “We Made it” presenting the summary of the entire released list.

In comparison to other years, this year zeitgeist site is more interactive and aesthetic with CSS3 and HTML5. Even the fastest rising list is more surprising than ever. Rebecca Black with her awful song Friday makes to the top, followed by the most promoted product of the year, the Google Plus. Majority of the list is hijacked by American individuals and only Japanese nuclear plant accident made it to 8th number. Not to surprisingly, 3 spots where captured by Apple and Google secured only one. Some other important snapshots of the released data are:

#. Myspace is the worlds fasted falling search query. This is slightly anticipated because of the fact that Facebook has 800 million users and Google Plus is caching on.

#. Amazon Kindle Fire attracted more attention than iPhone 4S in fasted rising consumer electronics.

#. Facebook is fasted rising search in India leaving behind Cricket World cup 2011.

#. Anna Hazare followed by Poonam Pandey were the fasted rising people for India.

#. Katrina Kaif is still the most searched person from India after Anna Hazare.

#.. Bodyguard left behind Ra.One in Indian Bollywood film industry.

Interested in knowing more? Check out previous year zeitgeist data from here.

This article, Google’s Most Popular Search Terms in 2011 – The Zeitgeist Data was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

Add Any Website to the Apps Home Page in Chrome

Abhishek Mandloi — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:11:17 +0000

The current home page from the new tab shows the list of installed apps on Google Chrome. Most of these apps are generally links to your favourite sites, but unfortunately, not all websites have their app in the Webstore. So, normally you use “Most Visited” section to go to that specific site. Wouldn’t it be great if you could include that wanted site under “Apps” section? For that, you will have to make an app, which is not so practical for most of us. Luckily, there is a simple alternative. Just drag the site thumbnail wherever you want.

There are two ways to add any site to Apps section. Try any of these:

#. Either drag website thumbnail from the “Most Visited” tab to “Apps” tab. A new app will be automatically added with its favicon as the thumbnail. You can have this newly created app in already present app tabs or you can create a new tab by dragging the icon further to the right.

#. Or open a website and hold its icon from the omnibox to the “Apps” tab. This way you can have new sites as apps, which might not be in your frequently visited section as apps.

Another nifty trick, which was shared on reddit is that you can double click on a tab name to rename it.

Some people argue that why we have separate Apps section when they are just links to websites. What is the difference between apps and website links? The answer is that they are not the same. Apps can have different privileges than the regular websites and they can have unlimited local storages and background pages. However, there are only few apps like TweetDeck that take this benefit of differentiation.

Nevertheless, for quick access to any of your favourite website, just drag it to the app section. No need to search and then install it from the official extension gallery. Simple!

This article, Add Any Website to the Apps Home Page in Chrome was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.

Make Google Maps Street View Stop Motion Movie with RCZview

Abhishek Mandloi — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:42:07 +0000

Peugeot in association with Google has launched an interesting application [mashup], which allows you to make street view movies to promote its new car RCZ. As most of you already know, Google Street View lets you see real street maps of the world through 360-degree panoramic angle. Peugeot is leveraging this GSV technology to stimulate its sales.

Nevertheless, these views are discontinuous in nature and do not give a regular flow of images which does not add to any experience. Taking clues from this imperfection, Peugeot came up with web based Google Maps application. With this web application, you can see a continuous video of driving from one location to another location. For providing the RCZ car experience, you will notice a dashboard at the bottom of your browser, which you can hide by clicking on down-arrow link at bottom-right of the page.

Since, Google Street View comprises of images taken at regular interval, the video will be in a form of Stop Motion Movie. To experience GSV Stop Motion Movie, you will have to choose two end points. Unfortunately, you can have a maximum distance of 20 Kilometres between these ends. So, this application fails in making videos between two distance cities. However, within a city, this gives you an experience of driving yourself. Here is a short demo video:

Nonetheless, it is an innovative way to market a new car. We can expect similar applications in the coming future. Enjoy this application until it is there. A brilliant marketing idea! isn’t it?

Related: Some awesome GSV images

This article, Make Google Maps Street View Stop Motion Movie with RCZview was originally published on © Google Tricks Blog – Gtricks.com.