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Completely Uninstalling Windows Applications

When you uninstall a Windows application, the uninstaller doesn't remove all the files and registry entries created by the application. Sometimes the developers were too lazy or they thought those files might be needed if you reinstall the application. The end result is that your computer loads slower because your registry contains more entries and the hard drive stores unnecessary files.

Revo Uninstaller is a software that lets you completely uninstall programs and it's easier to use than the built-in "Add or remove programs". You can search for a program or locate it in a more intuitive way: enter in the Hunter Mode, open the program you want to uninstall and drag the target to your program's window.

After finding the program, Revo Uninstaller analyzes the program's data, launches the uninstaller and shows you a list of leftovers (files, folders, registry entries related to the application). The application does a pretty good job at identifying them, but you should still check the results before selecting everything. "Even if you have a broken installation, Revo Uninstaller scans for an application's data on your hard disk drives and in the Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry items so you can delete them."

Revo Uninstaller also includes a junk files cleaner and a way to remove the history from browsers, Microsoft Office and some Windows application, but CCleaner is a better application for this.

Invite Collaborators to Multiple Documents

If you have a lot of documents in Google Docs and you need to collaborate with the same people on all of them, it's pretty tedious to open each document, go to the Share tab, enter the email addresses and choose the right settings. Now you don't have to do this anymore, because there's a new button in the file manager that lets you invite people to collaborate on more than a single document: it's called "Share".

It would be nice to automatically add a certain group of people as collaborators for all the documents from a folder, but that's not currently possible.

{ via Google Docs Blog }

Google Reader Shows the Published Date

Besides a new favicon and a confirmation dialog displayed when you mark all the posts as read, Google Reader now shows the published date of a post in a tooltip. Next to the snippet, Google Reader displays the date when the post was indexed by Google, not the date when it was published. Sometimes the difference between these two dates can be a single minute, but it could also be much bigger.

Google Reader also added some new keyboard shortcuts: a to add subscriptions, g+d to open the feed directory, e to email the current item. You can see the list of keyboard shortcuts by typing ? in Google Reader.

Save Google Presentations as PDF Files

Google Presently, the poorest member of the Google Docs family, added some new features and they're almost as exciting as the previous update. Now you can finally save your presentation in a decent format: PDF and this is especially useful if you want to print the presentation. To select the number of slides displayed on a page before exporting the presentation, choose the printing option.

Presently also redesigned the rich text editor's toolbar and added a small number of shapes you can insert into your slides: block arrows, circles, bubbles.

While Presently's biggest problem is the poor performance, there are many basic features that are missing: export to PPT, slide master, tables etc.

Mobile YouTube Application

YouTube updated its mobile site available at m.youtube.com to include all the videos from the desktop version and to provide access to your account, the option to rate videos and post ~~meaningful~~ comments. To use the mobile interface, you need a phone that is able to stream 3GP files over RTSP.

But there's a better way to play YouTube videos from your mobile phone: a Java midlet currently available for some phones from Sony Ericsson (K800, W880) and Nokia (S60 3rd Edition phones: N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120). The JAR file for Nokia phones can be found here, in case you want to test it on unsupported phones. YouTube's mobile application also lets you upload videos from your phone. To install it, just go to m.youtube.com/app on your phone and follow the steps described in YouTube's help center.

"You may be wondering, Is YouTube for Mobile the same as what's available on the Helio Ocean or Apple iPhone? In a nutshell, yes -- YouTube for Mobile is all about bringing video to mobile phones. We believe in providing the best user experience possible for all users, which in some cases means different YouTube solutions for different phones," explains the YouTube blog.

Google Docs Uploader

Google released a basic application for Windows that lets you upload files to Google Docs by using drag and drop. The application is more like a sample for Google Docs API, but it's pretty useful if you want to upload a lot of documents. There's also an option to add "Send to Google Docs" to the contextual menu so you can upload files directly from Windows Explorer.

The application can be downloaded from this URL and requires .NET Framework 2.0.

Another way to upload more files at once is to send them to the email address displayed on this page, but this only works with documents and presentations and there are some restrictions regarding the size of the uploaded files: for example, you can send by email only presentations smaller than 500 KB. Google Toolbar for Firefox also has a feature that lets you open files in Google Docs.

Make about:blank Your Homepage

Many sites try to convince you to set them as your homepage: for example, every time you visit google.com using Internet Explorer, the site prompts you to make Google your homepage (Firefox's default homepage is already a skinned google.com).

Other sites are created just to become your homepage: from classic portals like Yahoo.com to personalized homepages like My Yahoo, iGoogle or Netvibes. But none of the sites is better than about:blank.

According to Wikipedia, "about: is an internal URI scheme (also known as a URL scheme or, erroneously, protocol) in various web browsers to display certain built-in functions and Easter eggs. It is not an officially registered scheme, and has no standard syntax." One of the most common addresses is about:blank, whose only purpose is to display a blank HTML document. It's supported by most browsers and it has a lot of advantages:

* your browser loads much faster
* it works even if you don't have an Internet connection
* it's not distracting so you can continue your work
* you are free to decide where to go, without letting others decide for you
* if you open a new window, some browsers (for example, Internet Explorer) load the homepage
* it's the most minimalist homepage in the world

Fortunately, most browsers have an option to set the blank page as a homepage, but you can always type about:blank to replace the default homepage. And next time when you install a toolbar or any other popular software, keep an eye on settings like "Make Yahoo.com your homepage". By default, most software from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft has the mission to change your homepage and the default search provider.

Dividing Lines in Google's Navigation Menu

To separate the search and the non-search properties, Google added two dividing lines in the More menu. Another change is that the services are no longer sorted alphabetically, but probably by usage. The order for non-search services is: YouTube, Google Calendar, Picasa Web, Google Docs and Google Reader, while in the search area: Google Video, Google Groups, Book Search, Google Scholar, Google Finance, Blog Search.

It's still difficult to understand why Google doesn't let you customize the navigation bar, the same way you can customize it in the new iPhone interface. This will probably encourage more people to use the menu and to go to their favorite services more often.

{ Thanks, Kevin. }

Making Google Reader More Like Gmail

Google Reader could add a lot of features from Gmail that would improve the way it organizes information.

A filtering mechanism would allow you to automatically star, share, email, label or mark as read the posts that match a certain pattern. For example, you could receive an email for each post that contains GDrive in the title or automatically label as Apple all the posts that contain one of the keywords: iPod, iPhone, Mac, iMac, iTunes, Steve Jobs etc.

Conversations are a great way to group related messages and could also be used to cluster posts based on their topic and the backlinks. You'd see the chronology of the articles and read all the posts about a certain subject successively.

Colored labels should make it easier to identify related conversations, especially if you read them in a combined view.

To reply to a post, select a fragment and send it to Google Notebook, Blogger or another blogging platform. To forward a post, send it as an email, an instant message in Gmail Chat.

Create an inbox-like view that doesn't include all the incoming posts: only those that weren't automatically classified and archived using filters.

Mute annoying conversations: a post gets a lot of replies, but you don't think it's interesting. A special option would automatically archive all the future posts from that thread.

If you don't like the web interface, an API should allow those who develop desktop feed readers to implement synchronization with Google Reader.

Editors for Creating iGoogle Themes

igThemer is a simple way to create iGoogle themes. This week, Google released an API for creating themes, but if you don't want to read the documentation and create the theme files, igThemer lets you select the colors and the necessary images, while previewing the theme on the same page.

igThemer doesn't let you create themes with multiple scenes, but it hosts your theme so you can share it with your friends or submit it to iGoogle's directory. Regardless of the way you create a theme, an easy way to preview it is to use this URL:

http://www.google.com/ig?skin=SKIN_URL
(replace SKIN_URL with the location of your theme's XML file)

An even cooler solution lets you edit the theme directly in iGoogle and see the changes in real-time. Just go to iGoogle, copy the code below and paste it in the address bar (you could also bookmark the script):

javascript:var s=document.createElement('script');s.id="igteid"; s.type="text/javascript";s.src= "http://igoogle-theme-editor.googlecode.com/svn/" +"trunk/iGoogleThemeEditor/dist/ige.js?lang=en&" +new Date().getTime(); document.body.appendChild(s);void(0);

{ The first screenshot is based on the photo Colourful life, licensed as Creative Commons by BlueSunFlower. }

Associate Email Addresses with a Google Account

Alternate email addresses are useful if you forget the password of your Google Account and now you can add more than one. In your account, click on Edit next to "Personal information" and associate additional email addresses with your Google Account. Note that you can't add email addresses already associated with another Google Account or Gmail addresses.

After you associate an email address with your account, Google sends a confirmation message to authenticate that the address is actually yours. An added benefit is that your other email addresses are connected to your account and Google can use this information: for example, Google Calendar shows you the invitations sent to any of the associated email addresses. You can also log in by using any of the additional email addresses.

{ Thanks, Anonymous. }

Related:
Alternate Google usernames