Friday 28 August 2015
Monday 24 August 2015
Gmail AutoResponder is a Better Alternative to Canned Responses
If you find yourself writing the same email response over and over again – like a technical support request asking for instructions on how to do something or a confirmation email to customers to let them know you’ve received their message – canned responses in Gmail can help you save both time and typing.
The idea is that you compose a email message with the ‘generic’ response and save it in your Gmail drafts. Later, you can quickly insert that pre-formatted template into the body of your email with a click without having to manually write the whole response.
There are however 4 big limitations with Gmail canned responses.
- You cannot include file attachments in your auto-response emails.
- Canned Response are only available on the Gmail website. If you use Gmail on Android or iOS, or use an email client like Microsoft Outlook, you’re out of luck.
- There’s no option to auto-reply messages in bulk. For instance, you cannot select multiple email messages in Gmail and respond to them all with the same template. You’ll have to reply one-by-one manually.
- You can easily setup Gmail filters for auto-replying to emails but the recipients will easily know that you’ve sent an automated response. That’s because Gmail adds ‘canned.response’ in the sender’s email. For instance, my email is amit@labnol.org but if I use automated responses, the sender will show up as amit+canned.response@labnol.org.
Meet Email Autoresponder for Gmail, a new Google add-on that works like Canned Responses but without any of the above limitations. Watch this YouTube video (mp4) for a quick tour.
How to Use Gmail Autoresponder
- Create one or more draft messages in Gmail. You can apply formatting, include logo images, file attachments, and even put HTML signatures in your messages.
- Install the Gmail add-on and then, inside the spreadsheet, go to Add-ons > Email Autoresponder > Create New Rule to get started.
- Create mapping rules with the wizard much like how you create filters in Gmail.
For instance, you can have a rule that will auto-respond to all emails labeled “FAQ” with a particular draft message. Or you create an advanced rule that will send an auto-reply to only unread messages in your inbox that are newer than ‘n’ days and have the word ‘support’ somewhere in the subject line. In fact, you can use any of the advanced Gmail search operators to create such a rule.
Once you’ve created the rules, the add-on will work in the background. It will activate once every hour, fetch any matching messages from Gmail and will auto-reply using the corresponding draft template. If you have multiple email accounts, like work and personal email account, you can choose to reply from any of your email aliases connect to Gmail.
The add-on runs once every hour but if you cannot wait that long, go to Manage Rules, select the relevant rule from the dropdown and choose Run to send the auto-replies immediately.
Once a reply has been sent, the Gmail add-on applies the label “Responded” to the email thread so you know that the email has been processed and it would be skipped in the next iteration.
Using Gmail Autoresponder on Mobile
If you have to reply to an email on mobile with a pre-written template, just open the email message and apply a Gmail label that you’ve specified in the run. When the add-on runs in the next hour, it will automatically reply to that message with the corresponding draft.
After the rules are setup, you can close the Google Sheet and it will continue running the background. Simple.
Autorespond to Multiple Emails in a go
Say you have 10 emails in your inbox that you need to auto-reply with a message that is already saved as a draft in your Gmail. Apply any common label to all these messages and then create a rule for this particular label using the add-on. Next go to Manage Rules, select the rule from the dropdown and click Run to auto-reply to all the labeled messages in one go.
Also see: Mail Merge for Gmail with Scheduler
The story, Gmail AutoResponder is a Better Alternative to Canned Responses, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 24/08/2015 under GMail, Internet.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/1PNse9NSunday 23 August 2015
Wednesday 19 August 2015
Adjust the Volume of your Android Phone without using the Buttons
Most Android phones have physical buttons on the side for controlling the playback volume and, whether you are listening to podcasts or watching Youtube videos, these keys are sometimes the only way to control the app’s volume. The hardware buttons are easy to use but they are not as convenient as, say, the Control Center on the iPhone where one can change volume using the on-screen volume slider.
Does something similar exist for Android devices that would allow you to control the volume without using the hardware buttons? The Google Play store throws up dozens of ‘abandoned’ software based volume managers but there are at least two Android apps that seem to solve the problem through widgets.
Here’s a 30-second demo video of the Android volume widgets in action.
Android Volume Control Widgets
Also see: Make a Desk Stand for your Phone
The first in the list is Virtual Volume, a free app from Italy. It adds a floating speaker icon on your screen and when you tap this icon, it opens up the Android volume slider to help you quickly adjust the device volume. You can control the size and transparency of the icon and it can placed anywhere on the screen.
The app has no complicated settings and you can configure the speaker icon to only show up when certain apps, like YouTube, are active. The ads only only show up when you are inside the app’s settings, not when you are using the widget.
Next in the list is Volume Notification that, as the name suggests, places the volume up and down buttons in the notification drawer of your Android phone. When you are watching a video in YouTube, pull-down the notification bar and tap the buttons to adjust the volume or mute the audio.
You can configure the notification widget to load on boot from the app’s settings. A volume slider would have been more convenient but, according to the developer, certain technical limitations in Android make it impossible to place a sliding volume bar in the Notifications window.
The story, Adjust the Volume of your Android Phone without using the Buttons, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 19/08/2015 under Android, Music, YouTube, Software.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/1TUS7oOTuesday 18 August 2015
Friday 14 August 2015
The Best Tools for Saving Web Pages, Forever
Web pages change or may even disappear with time. Thus if you would like to preserve a web page forever, you should either need to download that page to your computer (and put it on Dropbox) or you could use a web archiving service that will safely store a copy of that page on their own servers, permanently.
There are quite a few ways to save web pages permanently and your choice of the tool will depend on the kind of web content that you are trying to archive.
Archive Web Pages, Permanently
If you are essentially interested in the saving text-only content, like news articles, Pocket and Instapaper are recommended choices. You can save pages via email, browser extensions, bookmarklets or through apps. These services extract the text content from a public web page and make it available on all your devices. However, there’s no option to download the saved articles, you can only read them on Pocket website or their mobile apps.
Evernote and OneNote are impressing tools for archiving web content in your own private notebooks. They provide web clippers (or extensions) that make it easy for you to save complete web pages – from tutorials to recipes to your online transactions receipts – with a click. The clipped web pages can be accessed from any device, the original layout is retained (mostly) and everything is searchable – these services can even perform OCR to find the text inside photographs. Evernote also lets your export these saved pages as HTML files that you can upload elsewhere.
If you prefer something quick and simple that works everywhere but doesn’t require extensions, you can consider saving web pages as PDF files. Google Chrome has a built-in PDF writer or you can use Google Cloud Print. It add a new “Save to Google Drive” virtual printer and the next time you print a page on our desktop or mobile through Cloud Print, it will save a PDF copy of the page directly in your Drive. This is however not the best choice for saving pages with complex formatting.
When the layout is important, your best bet is to use a screen capture tool. You’re obviously spoilt for choices here but I’d recommend the official Chrome add-on from Google – it will not only capture full-length screenshots of web page but it will also upload the image to your Google Drive in the same step. The add-on can also save web pages in the web archive (MHT) format that is natively supported in both IE and Firefox.
The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive is a perfect place for finding previous versions of web pages but the same tool can be used to save any web page on-demand as well. Go to archive.org/web and enter the URL of any public web pages in the input box. The archiver will download a full copy of the page, including all the images and assets, on their server. It will make a permanent archive of the page that looks exactly like the original and will stay even if the original page goes offline.
Internet Archive doesn’t offer an option to download saved pages but Archive.Is can be a good alternative. It is very similar to archive.org in the sense that you enter the page URL and it will make an exact snapshot of the web page on their server. The page will be stored online forever but here you also have the option to download the saved page as a ZIP file. It too provides date based archives so you can have multiple snapshots of the same page for different days.
All popular web browsers provide an option to download a complete web page to your computer. It will download the HTML web page as well as the associated images, CSS and JavaScript to your computer so you can read it offline. You’ll however have to put effort in organizing these archives as the saved content may not be searchable through your desktop search programs.
eReader owners can use dotEPUB to download any web page as an ePUB or MOBI ebook, formats that are compatible with most readers. Amazon offers a Kindle add-on to help you save any web page in your Kindle device but, as with Pocket, these tools are primarily for archiving text based web content.
Most of the tools discussed above allow you to download a single page but if you wish to save a set of URLs in bulk, wget may be your savior. We also have a Google Script for downloading web pages to Drive automatically (like a cron job) but it will get the HTML content and nothing else.
The story, The Best Tools for Saving Web Pages, Forever, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 14/08/2015 under Internet.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/pY6ny7Thursday 13 August 2015
Tuesday 11 August 2015
Monday 10 August 2015
Use Quick Look on Mac to Preview Live Websites
Mac OS X has a handy preview feature known as Quick Look that helps you view the content of any file without having to launch the associated application. Select a file inside Finder (or on the desktop), press Space Bar and Quick Look would be activated. You can preview files of most common formats including images, videos, zip archives, Office documents, PDFs and more.
Place a web shortcut on your desktop
Quick Look however isn’t just an option for previewing local files, it can also display live websites without you having to open the web browser. All you have to do is create a shortcut for any website on your desktop from the browser and then preview that shortcut in Quick Preview.
This can be useful in several ways. For instance, if you routinely check your favorite news website for the top headlines, you can place a shortcut to that website on the desktop and use Quick Look to instantly check the site for any new content. Or you can create a shortcut to a YouTube playlist and watch the videos inside Quick Look outside the browser.
While you are inside Safari or Chrome or any other browser on the Mac, drag the website link to the desktop (see how-to). It will create a .webloc file. You can select the file and press the space bar to preview the source website inside Quick Look.
Quick Looks previews the webpage inside a fresh browser session and uses none of the existing cookies or cache so the website will treat you as a new visitor. Also, it disables scripts on the page but loads all the CSS and images.
What’s inside a .WEBLOC file
When you place a shortcut to a web pages on the desktop, it create a .webloc file which is actually a simple text (XML) file. You can replace the string value to make that shortcut to point to any other webpage. For instance, here’s the a sample .webloc file pointing to this website.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>URL</key> <string>http://ift.tt/1N3w0MU; </dict> </plist>
Also see: Essential Mac Apps & Utilities
The story, Use Quick Look on Mac to Preview Live Websites, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 10/08/2015 under Apple Mac, Software.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/1f3iPOaFriday 7 August 2015
Wednesday 5 August 2015
Here Are the Internal Documents that Prove Uber Is a Money Loser
Uber, Silicon Valley’s prized amoral unicorn, is presumed to be a financial titan and a sure-thing IPO in the near future. Which may be true. But one thing that’s frequently missing from the conversation about its inevitable dominance over virtually every facet of our lives is the answer to a fundamental question: Does it make money? According to internal financial documents obtained by Gawker, the answer is a resounding no. Uber has lost tens of millions of dollars since 2012, and the documents suggest that CEO Travis Kalanick’s boasts about the company’s exponential revenue growth may be overblown.http://ift.tt/1IpHZ1G...http://ift.tt/1MbdMKa...
via Valleywag http://ift.tt/1IpHXacA Lynx-like Text Browser that Runs on Google Servers
Text Browser is a Lynx-inspired browser that lets you read the web in text and strips all JavaScript, images, videos and other rich content that maybe embedded inside a web page. Unlike Lynx that require installation and run locally, Text Browser is a web app and runs in the Google cloud.
To get started, click here and authorize the web app with your Google Account. It requires authorization to sign-in and also for fetching web pages on your behalf. It will neither track your browsing activity nor will have access to any of your Google Account data.
Once a page loads inside the Text Browser, any of the internal links will also open inside the same browser automatically.
Text Browser as a Proxy Server
Why would anyone want a basic text browser? Well, you can also use the Text Browser as a proxy server to access news articles and other text-only content on the Internet that may otherwise be inaccessible at your workplace.
When you request a web page through the app, the underlying Google Apps Script will fetch the page on Google’s servers and then renders the content on your screen using Google Apps Script. Thus, even if a site is restricted, you should be able to view the page indirectly through the Google cloud.
And if a website is down for you, use the Google text browser to confirm if the page is really down for everyone or it is just your Internet connection.
The story, A Lynx-like Text Browser that Runs on Google Servers, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 04/08/2015 under Proxy Server, Internet.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/TroQBZMonday 3 August 2015
Here's What a Party for Elite White iPhone Daters Looks Like
Have you heard of “The League”? It’s like Tinder, but for white people people who fancy themselves “elite” and aspire to white collar crime. Business Insider, a website run by an actual white collar criminal, recently attended a party thrown by The League.
via Valleywag http://ift.tt/1P0JnfYGet Fare Estimates for Uber Taxis on Twitter
How much will it cost if you are take an Uber taxi from point A to point B? Uber’s mobile app has a built-in fare estimator but you can now also Twitter to calculate the fare. Write your query in plain English (see example), send it to @WhatTheFare and the bot will let you know the approximate fare for your ride in less than a minute.
@WhatTheFare is a new Twitter bot that will help you estimate the cost of your Uber trip. You’ll get to know the fare as well the different types of Uber taxis that are available on that route. And you can use the bot to estimate fare for trips anywhere in the world where Uber service is available.
Tweet me a command like "taxi fare from <<pick-up location>> to <<drop-off location>>" and I'll respond with the Uber price in a minute.
— What the Fare (@WhatTheFare) August 2, 2015
The bot’s response will also include a deep-link (see example) to Uber’s mobile website and it will directly populate the pickup/drop-off co-ordinates should you decide to book a taxi with Uber.
You can use the bot from anywhere in the world but the Uber prices are always provided in the currency of the pickup/drop-off address. Here’re some sample tweets that used the @WhatTheFare bot to know Uber prices.
@WhatTheFare How much does a Uber taxi cost from JFK Terminal 4, NY to Jersey City, NJ August 2, 2015
@WhatTheFare taxi fare from civic center, san francisco to SFO August 2, 2015
@WhatTheFare taxifare from Kondapur to jubilee hills August 3, 2015
Internally, like DearAssistant, the Uber bot is also written with Google Scripts.
It uses the Google Maps API to geocode postal addresses found in your tweet request, fetches the list of Uber taxis available for that route via the official Uber API and then tweets the response using the Twitter API. The taxis icons in the tweet are standard Unicode emojis supported by Twitter.
The story, Get Fare Estimates for Uber Taxis on Twitter, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/08/2015 under Twitter, Uber, Internet.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/1OKtgSJHow to Create a Retweet and Favorite Bot for Twitter
This tutorial explains how you can easily make a Twitter bot that will automatically favorite and/or retweet tweets that contain particular keywords or #hashtags. You need absolutely no coding knowledge and your Twitter bot will be up and running in few minutes.
Before we get started, you may be wondering why would anyone write a twitter bot that mindlessly favorites or retweets tweets? Yes, bots are often used for spammy behavior but, if used right, they can also help grow your Twitter network. For instance, when people share a link from your website on Twitter, you can favorite that tweet and it will give an hint to the original poster that you are author of that page. A brand may like to retweet tweets that contain positive mentions of their product. The list goes on.
Also see: How to Write a Useful Twitter Bot
The first thing you need to do is define a search phrase and any matching tweets will be retweeted or favorited by the bot. Add as many search conditions as possible to keep spam tweets away from your list. Some examples:
1. Tweets containing links to your website, sans retweets
example.com min_retweets:5 OR min_faves:5 -RT
2. Mentions of particular hashtag, but no links
#WhatAnAwesomeHashtag -RT -filter:links
3. All tweets sent from a particular location
#hashtag near:”New York, NY” within:15mi
OK, next we need to build our Twitter bot app. I suggest creating a separate Twitter account to test your automated bots.
- Go to apps.twitter.com and create a new application. Fill in the mandatory fields (name, description, URL) and click the Create button. Next go to Keys and Access Tokens and click the Create my Access Token button. Twitter will generate the Consumer Keys & Access tokens that we will need in the next step.
- Click here to copy the Twitter bot script to your Google Drive. Replace the search phrase and Twitter keys that were generated in the previous step.
- Go to the Run menu and choose StartBot to initialize your Twitter bot.
That’s it. The bot will run in the background, every 10 minutes, and favorite / retweet matching tweets. It will fave/RT a maximum of 1 tweet per minute. If you wish to stop the bot later, go to Run again and choose StopBot.
Also see: How to Save Conference Tweets to a Spreadsheet
Use with care and, as always, the full source of the Twitter retweet bot is available on ctrlq.org under the “do whatever you like” license.
The story, How to Create a Retweet and Favorite Bot for Twitter, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/08/2015 under Twitter, Internet.
via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://ift.tt/1heLEJ7
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