Computer Tips and Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

“Find My iPhone” App Locates and Remotely Locks Your Device; MobileMe Mail Updates

Apple’s premium web service and-then-some, MobileMe, updates today with a new Find My iPhone app for tracking down your lost gadget from another iOS device. They’ve also pushed out a significant update to their MobileMe Mail service. At $99 per year for a service that’s historically shaky at best, we don’t know a lot of people who are all that keen on using MobileMe, but some features—specifically, the Find ..read more

Chrome Notepad Syncs Notes Across Multiple Computers

Google Chrome: Chrome Notepad is an effective extension that syncs notes and even the last place you left off in your document across multiple computers, using Chrome’s built-in bookmark sync functionality.

There’s not many note-syncing extensions that remember the last caret position you left off on, but Chrome Notepad will sync that information across any Chrome installation.

The size of the notepad is configurable. In order to enable syncing, you’ll need to turn on bookmark syncing ..read more

Use Google Docs for Quick, Disposable Collaboration Without a Google Account

Real-time collaboration tool Google Docs is handy for simultaneously working on projects with multiple people, but it requires a Google account for all users. The new Google Docs Demo creates quick collaborative documents with a 24-hour shelf-life, no Google account necessary.The Google Docs Demo includes the ability to create documents, spreadsheets, and drawings. The document is shareable via a copy-and-paste link, which can be sent to any user. Documents created ..read more

MapDroyd Downloads Free Maps for Offline Navigation

Android: When you’re traveling where a cellular connection is fairly certain, Google Maps’ own Navigation tool is a total GPS replacement. For those without data plans, or heading into the wilds, MapDroyd makes for a nice offline map backup.

When you start the app, you’ll want to hit the Menu button and head right to “Manage Maps,” where you can then drill down from continents to countries, to states and provinces and districts, and check ..read more

Better Gmail 2 Updated

Google’s Gmail tweak broke some of the more popular features of my Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension this week, including Folders4Gmail and Hide Spam Count. Thanks to the quick work of Arend v. Reinersdorff, the problems have been fixed. If you’re a Better Gmail 2 user and your labels aren’t collapsing properly or your Spam count is showing when it shouldn’t, hit the “Find Updates” button in Firefox’s Add-ons dialog to get the fix, or download the ..read more

Namebench Helps You Find the Fastest DNS Server for Your Computer

Windows/Mac/Linux: Last week Google announced a free DNS service designed to speed up your browsing, but just because Google wants to be fast doesn’t actually mean they’re the best option for you. Namebench finds the fastest DNS server for your connection.

After you download and fire up namebench, just click the Start Benchmark button to test out a handful of free public DNS services, from Google Public DNS to OpenDNS to ..read more

The Google Phone Edition

Rumors fly that Google will soon release their own phone build around Google Voice (not just another Android handset), the upcoming Chrome for Mac beta will be lacking several important features, and Gmail’s creator thinks Wave could someday integrate nicely with Gmail.

Features Chrome For Mac Beta Will Be Missing When Chrome for Mac hits sometime this month, it’ll be missing its bookmark manager, Fluid-like app mode, possibly the task manager, and definitely Gears, among other potentially missing features. ..read more

An Early Look at Chrome’s Extensions System

It’s not officially released, but a gallery-like site for extensions has made itself known into the latest development builds of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux. Take a peek at what’s coming, presumably very soon, in these development screenshots.

The Download Squad blog was the first to notice the new new thing in Chrome—namely, a jigsaw-like page corner in Chrome’s new tab page, next to a message at the bottom that reads “New! Chrome now ..read more

The Gaia Desktop

Reader Sweetshop Union’s Windows 7 desktop has been completely transformed with the Gaia09 skin for Rainmeter, complete with widgets, wallpaper, and a visual style to match.

The desktop is a combination of:

Rainmeter with the Gaia09 theme. Rocketdock Gaia09 Visual style for Windows 7 (includes wallpaper) Full instructions for installing Gaia09 Rainmeter skins can be found here.

This desktop not your style? Why waste time complaining? Instead, get started creating your own killer desktop with the easy-install Rainmeter 1.1 package and show the world ..read more

Google Tasks Goes Full-Screen in iGoogle

Google Tasks, the to-do manager that has everything but its own dedicated page, gets the next best thing with an iGoogle gadget that can go mostly full-screen. That makes doing everything beyond adding tasks easier from a desktop browser.

Tasks brags on its home page about its accessibility inside different Google apps, but from a standard browser, you have to settle for the condensed sidebar views inside Gmail or Google Calendar. Hitting the “maximize” button in ..read more