Tech Marshal

Blogger has officially announced that the lightbox image view has been implemented on all blogger blogs. When you click an image it opens up with a large transparent black frame around it, exactly the same way photos are displayed on your Google+ account when clicked.

While for some, this feature is an awesome improvement to how pictures are displayed, but for most bloggers users, this addition has caused problems. The blogger help forum is filled with complains by blogger users, demanding that this feature must be removed and others who see it as a bug in the blogger template.

Unfortunately blogger did not offer it as an opt-in feature. The problem with this addition is that images on a blog post don’t show up enlarged when clicked, as the way they showed up before the changes were made by blogger.

Until blogger address this issue, here is a work around by Mark from EnglishJavaDrinker that removes the lightbox affect.

To implement the code, simply head to:

Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML and find the </head> tag.

Now copy the code below and paste it right before </head>

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
function killLightbox() {
  var images = document.getElementsByTagName('img');
  for (var i = 0 ; i < images.length ; ++i) {
    images[i].parentNode.innerHTML = images[i].parentNode.innerHTML;
  }
}
if (document.addEventListener) {
  document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded',killLightbox,false);
} else {
  document.attachEvent('onDOMContentLoaded',killLightbox);
}
//]]>
</script>

All Credit: EnglishJavaDrinker

Gmail users previously were able to backup their emails offline using Gears, a Google plugin allowing web apps to run offline. But recently in May, Google announced that it shifted focus to HTML5 and stopped the development of Google Gears. As a result, those users who installed the versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome released after May could no longer backup their Gmail account using Gears.

The good news is that Google has brought back the ability for Gmail users to access their emails even when they are not connected to the internet.

The functionality can be achieved by installing “Offline Google Mail”, a new chrome web-app based on HTML5 that updates in the background while you’re online.

Incase the internet is not available, simply open a new tab in chrome and launch the app. From there you can compose, read, search and archive emails. Offline Google Mail will automatically sync the changes once internet connectivity is available.

The streamlined user interface, based on Gmail’s popular tablet interface, provides an extremely fast response time with a pure, email focused experience.

Install - Offline Google Mail

For most of us, a compromise on an email account could mean a compromise on a dozen connected accounts. Its always a good practice to have separate public and private email addresses. A public email address that your would use to subscribe to online services such Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Quora and several other sites and a private one that can be associated with Bank Accounts, Hosting Company, PayPal, Amazon, Online file hosting service and any other place where account security is even more critical.

Having separate email addresses combined with a strong password maybe the best security measure but if you are a Gmail user there are other basic, yet important steps that you can take to make your Gmail even more safe and secure.

Here are two videos from Google. One providing the very basic Gmail security tips and the other about the recently introduced — 2 Step Verification method.

Basic Gmail Security Tips:



2 Step Verification:

This is nice. A really handy Google Chrome extension for you if you frequently use both long or short standard phrases, while you write emails, letters or anything online using Google Chrome.

Popchrom lets you create custom abbreviations for words and phrases which you can expand to the actual word when you hit Ctrl + Spacebar or any other key combination that you assign for it in the extension settings.

To setup words or phrases that you want to create shortcuts for, just go to the extension options and type in the abbreviation followed by the actual text and save.

It works for any page that has a text input field. The extension icon will appear in the chrome address bar whenever it detects a text field. When you type in the shortcut and press Ctrl+Spacebar, the abbreviated word will change to the actual phrase or sentence.

Install Popchrom extension

Searching for images by region is a new option that Google has added to its existing set of advance image search options.

If you want to search for images but wish to get the results returned from blogs and websites from a specific country, just visit the advance image search page and select the desired country from the dropdown menu in Region option at the bottom.

The screenshots below, display image results for the word “Protests” using Egypt and Libya as an example. The results are entirely different in both cases, with photos from the recent protests in the respective countries.

1) Search Term ‘Protests’ for Egypt

2) Search Term ‘Protests’ for United Kingdom

POP e-mail fetching is a great feature of Gmail to retrieve messages from your other emails accounts via POP and display them in your inbox alongside the emails that come directly to your Gmail account.

Anyone who has been channeling emails from various addresses to one master Gmail address, knows that Gmail uses a timing algorithm to retrieve messages from POP accounts. The problem, however is the time lag. Often you would want to instantly check whether the email you were waiting for has arrived or not.

Quickly Check If a New Email Has Arrived or Not :

To check or retrieve emails at any desired time, head to your email settings and under Labs, enable the “Refresh POP Accounts” option. Then save changes.

From now on you will see a refresh link at the top of your inbox. Whenever you refresh, Gmail will check and retrieve any new message from any of your associated accounts.

One of the many features that Google introduced in its newly launched social platform: Google+, is that it displays all your Picasa web albums in the photo section of your Google+ account. You can view photos from your circles, your phone, your own photos and of course, it allows you to view, edit or delete your Picasa web albums directly from the Google+ interface.

What’s the link between Google Plus Albums and Blogger Posts?

Many Blogger blog users are not aware that the photos they use on their blog posts are saved in their Picasa web album. So when they join Google+ for the first time and see all their photos from their blog, they assume that the photos are also viewable by their friends and family members or even anyone who isn’t in their circles.

This is when the problem starts. Some Google+ users start deleting their albums and can unknowingly end up deleting the albums containing photos they have used on their blog posts for years.

This can easily be avoided. Users must know two things to be on the safe side:

1) Albums that you have not shared will be visible only to you:

As a Google+ users, you shouldn’t be worried about your blog images showing up in the photo section of their Google+ account as only the images that you share will be visible to your circles.

2) Deleting Photos from Google+ will also be permanently deleted from Picasa web album.

Any Picture that you remove from your Google Plus account will also be removed permanently from Picasa web album, hence from your blog if you had used it on your blog.

When you are about to delete an album, a dialog box will be displayed stating that photos will also be removed from Blogger, Picasa Web and other Google Products.

Related: Backup your Picasa Web Photos and data from other Google Product

Google has launched a new social platform where people can earn money by solving problems.

Prizes.org is run by Slide, a gaming company that Google acquired last year for $182m. The Idea behind this new service is simple: Users create a contest where they post a question or task and fix a cash amount for the best answer or task to be done. For example users can ask for ideas for a new website, advice on a comprehensive “Get Healthy” plan, or planning an ideal summer vacation, etc.

Each task is to be done within a fixed amount of time, during which people can vote for the best answer or advice given. The user with the most votes wins the cash prize. The money on offer currently for the questions is between 10$-50$.

Interesting to note that the site features very little Google branding and the sign-in, currently is through Facebook or Twitter, not with a Google ID, which may be a smart move to reach a bigger audience.



Prizes.org is in beta but its available for everyone, although the contest creation like all recently launched Google services is still invites-only.

The Data Liberation Front, an engineering team at Google has launched a new service called Google Takeout, allowing users to create backups of data from various Google services.

Sometimes, for finding the desired images we need to rely on a different source. We need the search features that Google, Yahoo or Bing does not have. At least Yet.

Here are a couple of search engines that have a unique way of searching for images:

Pixolu - Pixolu helps you find images by their similarity to each other. Enter some keywords and Pixolu will search the image index of flickr and yahoo. Initially 200 images will be displayed. Select a few images that are similar to your desired results and Drag them to the upper right corner of the interface. Pixolu will refine the results and retrieve images similar to your selection.



Forisearch – Use your native language to search images from foreign language websites. Forisearch uses the image index of Google, Yahoo and Bing for its search results. It also uses YouTube for foreign language video results.



Ginipic - Ginipic takes image search to a whole new level. Now you can search image search engines, photo sharing websites or your own local picture collections simultaneously right from you desktop.



Everystockphoto - A search engine for free photos that come from many sources and are license-specific. View a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free and allows users to rate, tag, collect and comment on the photos.



Imagery - Imagery, probably has one of the best search interface. Enter a search term and it will open up the results in a new tab with 60 images loaded at a time. The tabbed interface lets you easily switch between your previous and new search results. Simply Click an image to load it in full size at the bottom of the page. You can change the preferences to select image format, Sort images by size, color and also choose the Safe Search option.



Xcavator.net - A stock photo search portal for the creative community. It lets you browse visually through millions of stock images, vector illustrations and flash files from the leading providers all in one place. Get more relevant search results, faster than at other sites. Give it a try.



FreeFoto – FreeFoto has the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet. There are over 130000 images with 181 sections organized into 3623 categories. Use these images for online and offline use under the usage guidelines.



Nachofoto: Find the most recent and relevant images with nachofoto. It is a Semantic Time-based Vertical Image Search Engine that delivers Fresh and Relevant image results for High Volume and Trending queries.



Incogna - Incogna process the shape in every image and uses this to build a large scale searchable visual index. Incogna's image search technology lets you explore visual data in a whole new way.



Facesaerch - Is an image search engine for faces. It uses the Google API for results.



Multicolr Search Lab - Select up to 10 colors and it will show the most interesting images containing those colors. Multicolr Search Lab extracted the colors from 10 million of the most interesting Creative Commons images on Flickr.



Visual Search Lab – Combine tags with visual search for never-before-seen combination of images from a database of nearly 3 million stock photos from Alamy.



PicFog - Using twitter and the connecting image upload services, PicFog shows pictures from twitter as they're posted, in real time.

The latest browsers: Chrome 12, Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 no longer support Google gears. Gears was required for browsers to enable the offline feature of Gmail, where all the necessary emails could be downloaded for viewing anytime without the internet.

However, there are alternate free tools to download selective emails for easy offline access. MailStore Home is one such tool. It maintains an archive of all your emails for easy and immediate retrieval.

Lets walk through the steps to download selective or even archive the complete mail box to view offline using MailStore.

1. Create a new label in Gmail.

a. Select dropdown menu under labels on the left pane and click ‘Create new label’.

b. Give it a name: ‘Important Emails’ or any other name that you desire. (Choose a name other than “Important”, it’s a reserved system label).

2. Tick all the important emails you wish to save and click the labels tab on the above or below the email list.

3. From the Labels dropdown menu select the label you created for important emails and apply. The emails will now be available under the new label.


4. Go to Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Select ‘Enable POP’. Make sure you choose ‘keep Gmail’s Copy in the Inbox’ for messages accessed with POP if you want to maintain a copy in Gmail as well.


5. Download and install MailStore Home, a free email archiving utility for private users.


6. Once installed, go to Archive Email and Select Google Mail. Now enter your Email ID (include @gmail.com) and Password.

7. From the ‘ Archive Google Mail’ window, Untick ‘Also Archive Unread Messages’ and click the browse button next to the folders options. If you wish to download and archive your complete inbox, skip this.


8. Click Add to include folders/Subfolders and select the newly created label and proceed. MailStore will download the emails specified and will archive it for viewing offline.