Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with google

Jumping ship to Android (Google's S4) and need a Mailbox equivalent

0bvious — Sat, 18 May 2013 09:25:26 -0800

I think the time has come for me to jump the iPhone ship. The announcement of the Google version of the Galaxy S4 at I/O was the clincher. But I am not 100% sold on the idea, mainly because the S4 is an ugly brute, but also because I fear for the apps and innovation I will miss. Help me out, specifically in finding a worthy replacement for my beloved Mailbox app. I waited. I pondered. I looked longingly at the horizon. Now it's time to go.

I am a concerned jumper for a few reasons:

1. I use an ipad extensively, and don't see this changing anytime soon. Iphone/Ipad integration is pretty solid.
2. My girlfriend and close friends will be sticking with Apple and iMessage will be missed
3. I recently started using Mailbox app and it has revolutionised the way I use email. I don't think I can go back to the old cluttered inbox, BUT, Mailbox's plans to make an app for Android look vague at best.
4. Related to this, it seems that the Apple app store is still the top of the list for developers, even though there are now more Android devices out there than Apple. I like innovation. Will I have to wait around a lot?

I am jumping because I am sick of having to jailbreak my phone to have it do what I want. I am a heavy HEAVY mobile internet user, I use a lot of apps for a variety of things. I reckon most can be replaced, and fed into Dropbox or something to take the place of iCloud, BUT, I'm not sure, and I am worried that once I jump I'll be stranded.

I really wanted Google to announce a new Nexus at I/O this week, but they failed. The current Nexus 4 looks lovely, but the lack of 4G put me off. The HTC One also is a sweet looking device, but with only 4MP of camera to play with it would've felt like a downgrade. Google announced a new partnership with the S4 at I/O, so I am hoping to get one now, and root it when the Google rich version gets released in June.

My contract has been up for renewal since February, so I have already lingered long enough. The battery in my trusty iPhone 4 is pretty crap these days. Time to move on. Please help me out here.

Help me understand the new Google Hangouts service.

modernnomad — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:21:08 -0800

For a unified messaging service, I am a little confused. So I've downloaded the new iOS Google Hangouts app. Upon connecting to my google account, it shows a list of contacts, some of whom are in Google+ circles (though I never use Google+), but some of whom assuredly do not have any kind of google/gmail account whatsoever (ie my parents). What happens if I send a message through Google Hangouts to them? I sent a message through it to someone with a gmail account but who has not installed hangouts with the question "did you get this as a chat or as an email?". I've yet to receive a response suggesting to me they might only get it when they turn on gchat/gtalk through gmail. But there's no way of knowing this.

There is also no indication in the Hangouts app as to who is actually online or capable of receiving a message, yet when I turn on the hangouts plugin for chrome, it lists who is currently online just as Gchat/gtalk used to.

In sum, how am I supposed to use this app? Is there a setting within the app that will show me only people who have google accounts so I can actually be sure my message will get to them?

Best tablet and workflow for blogging

melissa — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:57:44 -0800

I would like to purchase a tablet so I can do more blogging without lugging a laptop around. What are the best tools/apps/workflow tips to be able to do this without tearing my hair out? Special snowflake stuff inside. Here are my snowflakey specs:

I blog using self-hosted Wordpress, and I can do basic maintenance on it myself.
I already have a Bluetooth keyboard I like, and that works with both iOS and Android.
I currently have an iPhone 4S and my husband has a Nexus 7 tablet I can experiment on.
I'm leaning towards an Android tablet because there are more options at various price points (read: cheaper).
A 7 inch tablet is ideal - will fit in my purse with the keyboard and all my other purse stuff.
I would love to be able to insert Flickr/Instagram pictures easily, but the more I search, the more I see that this isn't really done outside of the iPad-only Blogsy app. That app looks like what I'd like to use, but I can't justify spending so much more on an iPad (with all new connectors/accessories) on the basis of one app that may or may not stick around.
I am reasonably comfortable with HTML. I just think it's ridiculously difficult to insert Flickr images into the WordPress mobile app.
I have and use both Dropbox and Evernote. I know that Evernote works in rich text and can cause unusual formatting when exporting to Wordpress. Should I consider a plain text editor and work in Markdown? (I've never worked that way before, but it looks easy to learn.)
I have no problem paying for apps if they're worth the money.
Outside of blogging, I would be using this tablet mostly for various social media (Twitter/FB/Pinterest) as well as reading web stuff from Pocket and ebooks via Kobo/my local library. I'm not a big gamer, but I'd probably watch occasional videos on it too
I'm in Canada if that affects any tools/toys I can purchase.
I'm willing to wait if the Next Big Thing is worth it. (I need to save my pennies too!)

How do you make blogging on a tablet work for you? What's your workflow? Thanks!

How can I send an invitation from iCal to a Google Calendar user?

The corpse in the library — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:37:02 -0800

When Mr. Corpse and I were both using iCal I could send him an invitation to an event; if he accepted it it blocked off the time in his calendar. Now that he's switched to Google Calendar this system doesn't work. The invitations I send from iCal look, on my end, as if they've gone through, but he doesn't get the invitations any more. They don't show up in his calendar (even though I'm sending them to his gmail address) and they don't show up as e-mails.

I want a solution that will show up in his calendar for him to accept or decline, and for me to be able to see if he's accepted or declined it. Please advise.

Google Voice calls from Playa del Carmen?

PSB — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:57:28 -0800

Can I make calls over the free Wifi at the Mexican resort I'll be at this week? I vacationed in Playa del Carmen about 5 years ago, and brought a prepaid calling card with me to use to call home, anticipating that I wouldn't have cell signal. The resort somehow blocked the use of calling cards that weren't purchased from them, so not only did I have to buy one of their WAY overpriced cards, I came back from vacation with the original unused card.

This year, I'm going to the Royal Playa del Carmen which includes Wifi with your room charge. I'm a heavy google voice user, so my plan is to just us GV to make my calls from my smartphone over wifi.

So, do the resorts have a port blocked or anything else in place that would foil my plan?

Thanks!

Chrome users I need help!

Rad_Boy — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:24:31 -0800

I'm thinking of moving from Firefox to Chrome on my work and home Windows PCs. I'm confused by bookmarking in Chrome, however. Can you help? First, it looks like there are two bookmark systems on Chrome: Google Bookmarks and the bookmark bar. Are they one in the same? Interchangeable? Do they both "synch" between machines?
Can I import my firefox bookmarks so that they will synch with Firefox?
What is the best way to move from Firefox to Chrome?

Thanks?

Secure archive for Gmail

ecmendenhall — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:23:22 -0800

I'm an avid user of Gmail and other Google services, but I'm increasingly uncomfortable keeping my entire email history on someone else's servers. Can I keep a week's worth of messages on the server and encrypt everything else? What are some other Gmail privacy compromises? A good privacy compromise in Chrome has been limiting my history to one week—I've found that I rarely look for anything older. I find Google Now extremely useful, but I'd like to keep it on a need-to-know basis, too. I use archive, search, and priority inbox a lot, and I've basically abandoned tags and all other organizational tools.

If I could have all the ponies I wanted, I'd like a "secure archive" button that encrypts stored messages and decrypts them on login so I could still use search (something like disk encryption), or some way to PGP encrypt incoming messages. I do not expect Google to roll out this feature any time soon.

What are some possible compromises and technical solutions here? If I keep only a week's worth of messages on the server, is there a good tool for searching locally archived messages on my machine? (I'm an OS X user.) Can I even configure an IMAP client this way? Is this a waste of time that will give me a fake sense of privacy? I'm open to both easy off the shelf solutions and more technical ones involving some programming—a Gmail client with a secure archive is something I'd like enough to consider making it myself.

How do I embed a Google spreadsheet into a non-Sites webpage?

marylynn — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:36:41 -0800

I have a spreadsheet with about 3000 rows of data. I would like the contents of this spreadsheet to show up as a big list/table on a webpage. It's mostly text with one column of URLs. The contents will change not-infrequently (maybe every couple of months) and I would like people both inside and outside my organization (but not general visitors to the webpage) to be able to edit the contents. If it was just about sharing and editing the contents a Google Drive-hosted spreadsheet would be perfect for this purpose. But I need to take it the step further and show the contents on a webpage. It seems that I can do this by embedding the Sheet into a Sites page, but I don't want to use sites. I need to use our own hosted website.

Short of handing this mess to our developer and making some kind of mini-db that gets queried when someone accesses the page + a front end for editing, I figure there must be a way to do this. The page that shows up at the link when I publish the Sheet is almost perfect for my needs, it just needs a header/introduction and a way to not have the Google URL show up as part of the URL.

A script? Something super obvious I'm missing here? How can I get this done?

I Googled you and I found you! Nervous laugh...

telegraph — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:15:36 -0800

I have an internet friend (never met IRL) whom I met on a discussion board for a health issue we share in common. We connected because we live in the same city and are undergoing the same treatments. He has told me his uncommon first name, his employer, and the hospital where he's being treated, as well as the fact that (unfortunately) his most recent procedure had a lot of complications and he's still in hospital. Would it be really weird to send flowers and/or a card? I've sent him a message to let him know he's in my prayers etc etc, but the do-gooder in me wants to send flowers. I know his last name based on the information he's shared, so I easily can, but I don't want to be a creeper about it (since he never explicitly told me his last name). Do or do not? What does the hive say?

PS - His floor does allow flowers, I know many wards don't.

Should my tablet match my phone or my laptop ecosystem?

midmarch snowman — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 07:18:11 -0800

I am getting a Tablet for work, either a Nexus 10 or an iPad. I'm pretty well versed on the features and drawbacks for both, and I feel like if my other devices were either all Apple or all Google/Windows I'd make the choice based on matching my current device operating system ecosystem. BUT right now, each device I use has a different OS, so is there a better device to match my tablet operating system with? An android phone will be my next smartphone. I used to have an old iPhone 3G and liked iOS, but decided not to stay with iPhones because money.

I still have an old MacBook as a home computer, and I am pretty committed to OSX operating system for that purpose.

Also, at work I will be using windows, naturally.

The work I'm doing on the tablet will almost entirely be reading and annotating PDFs and Google Docs. Although I like holding the nexus better, it sounds like people prefer the PDF apps for the iPad better.

Since most other feature comparisons are similarly a wash, I wonder if there is any benefit of having both my mobile devices in the same ecosystem? Or is there a benefit from having my tablet be in the same ecosystem as my laptop? Or does it even matter?

Adjust Google Calendar training plan by one day

chesty_a_arthur — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:00:33 -0800

I have a Google Calendar with one of Hal Higdon's half marathon training schedules, and I'm a day off. I've been a day off for weeks. I'd like to adjust the calendar rather than my life. How can I adjust the events by one day all at once? I am happy to import or export, etc as necessary. It's such a small thing but it's driving me crazy.

send it on

fifilaru — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:49:14 -0800

Google Docs Sheets question I want to create a Google Docs Sheet with a form. The form would have the usual form fields, which I understand how to do and how to link to the sheet.

What I want to happen is for there to also be a kind of routing function. So once one person approves the form it gets sent to the next person to approve. It needs to pass through about 6 people before it ends up with the final person.

I know people can share it with the next person, but I want this to be built into the form. So the next person gets a link to the form and an email saying the form needs their attention.

I also want to keep track of the form.

How do I protect Ronnie Edwards?

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:58:04 -0800

I'm a female in the US, about to get married for the second time and taking my husband's name. Help me manage how my new name appears online before it starts to happen. Let's say that my first name is Veronica but I've always gone by Ronnie. Say my maiden name is Smith, my first married name is Jones, and my new married name will be Edwards. I have used Ronnie Jones, professionally and personally, for years. I intend to use Ronnie Edwards going forward.

Online, the name Ronnie Jones is associated with some things that I use daily (Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google, Flickr, and my website, which is, say, "ronnie jones dot com").

Overall, all the various permutations of my names (Veronica/Ronnie Smith/Jones) are linked with some things I'm very proud of (my photography), some that are embarrassing (like projects that I wish I hadn't gotten involved in that I don't have the ability to edit/modify), and some that I wish were private (like Spokeo knowing my relatives and my addresses and my income...)

In terms of information about me online, is it possible to keep just the good stuff with Ronnie Edwards and disassociate from the embarrassing/private stuff? If I just change my name from Jones to Edwards, won't EVERYTHING end up following me? Do I need to just disassociate completely and create brand new accounts everywhere?

Chrome, how does it work?

Think_Long — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 06:51:58 -0800

I'm a recent Chrome user, and so far I'm having a hell of a time with the privacy settings. I like the idea of using the synch feature so I can have my bookmarks and things shared across the three or four desktops I use. However, I can't seem to figure out how to make it so it doesn't sign in automatically when I open the browser - I would like to be prompted to put in a password every time. I feel really stupid, but I can't figure out how to make that happen. Failing that, every time I try to unsync the chrome and go back to the old way of things (just using it like a normal browser, having to log in to my gmail manually every time like I prefer) my bookmarks get deleted, but it still logs into gmail automatically! (I uncheck the "stay signed in" box every time).

I've also recently hooked feedly.com up with my google account, so I'm not sure if that site's logging in is overriding another one or what.

So basically, can you walk me through how I can set up chrome the way I want? Please talk to me like I'm an idiot . . . but not disdainfully so.

Flight cancelation updates—how did Google know before the cabin crew?

TheDonF — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 03:13:22 -0800

Last week I was on an Air Canada flight from Vancouver BC to London Heathrow. It was a disaster. The flight was originally supposed to leave at 19:15, but was delayed to 21:00. Then it was delayed to 02:00, because they needed to fix something in the left-hand engine. After several hours, Air Canada brought the departure time forward to 01:30, and boarded everyone. It was only then that they decided to test the maintenance. The tests failed and the pilot announced they'd need another two to three hours to make further repairs. I asked the Cabin Director if the flight was cancelled and she said it almost certainly was but they were just waiting for final confirmation. As we were travelling with a 6.5-month-old baby, we wanted to get off the plane ASAP, so we grabbed our stuff and headed towards the front of the plane. We asked another member of the cabin crew if the flight was cancelled because we wanted to get off the plane now, and she asked us to give her two minutes to get a final confirmation. At that point another passenger came up and said he wanted to get off the plane as the flight was cancelled. The member of staff said they weren't sure it was, but the customer got out his phone and showed her Google's flight status, which showed it as cancelled. Right after that, the Cabin Director got back onto her phone and demanded (I assume from someone higher up at Air Canada) to know whether the flight was definitely cancelled. She was told they hadn't decided yet and would need a few more minutes. It took them about another five minutes to tell the cabin crew that the flight was indeed cancelled.

What's going on here? How did Google know before the cabin crew, and apparently someone in charge at Air Canada?

How can I efficiently harvest Google's entire cache of my website?

croutonsupafreak — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:35:33 -0800

I stupidly let a web hosting account expire without backing up and transferring my site to my new server. I'm talking to the host to try to get access to my data (fingers crossed), but in case that does not work out: Is there a way to efficiently harvest Google's entire cache of a specific domain? Something else I should consider? I would like to act fast on this, and I don't have any programming/tech-fu skills.

Picture being used for something unpleasant

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:40:41 -0800

If you do a Google search on my name, the only image that comes up via image search is an old picture that used to be hosted on my work website. But now it links to an... unsavory website. What is the deal? I've never been to this website, and it's not a very high quality one. What is even more bazaar is that under Google images when you do the initial search, it references another website as being the host of this image (which is totally legit, but still not my work website), but then it redirects to this a different (distasteful) website if you select "visit page." I thought perhaps it was a strange virus, but it seems to be doing this from other computers, as well.

Usually I'd say screw it, but it's the only picture of me that shows up if someone is searching for me, and it's a negative association. So two questions:

1. Why is this happening? Did something that Google automates get its links and reference mixed up? Or, is a website doing something sophisticated to co-opt this picture to redirect it?

2. Is there a way to disconnect my picture from this website via a Google contact?

Thanks.

Which Social Media is "Best"?

CollectiveMind — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:07:01 -0800

II am trying to get a handle on web content and which content has, overall, the best stickiness. Sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr are, as near as I can tell, mostly visual. Blog and microblogging sites like Wordpress and Twitter are word based. Quora, Reddit and Metafilter are information sharing communities. Podcasts and music sites like MySpace or Soundcloud are, for the most part, sound focused. And then you have sites like Facebook and Google+ that are trying to combine the best of all of them. I'm not asking about raw numbers or surveys that show which sites are used by the most people, though I admit that may be the closest I can get to my question. It seems to me that those sites that give people the most freedom to do more than one thing, i.e., not restrict them to a keyboard or a screen, would be the most popular since time is limited. But is it simply that some people who prefer video or are OK typing into a keyboard don't care about how much time they spend focusing in one direction? And are they markedly different from people who only want to listen to podcasts?
Or am I just going to have to be satisfied with leaders in each genre rather than discovering which social media is the "best."

Why is google being spooky and filling in other people's gmails?

artychoke — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:13:06 -0800

This has happened twice now, and it is freaky. Google chrome on the iMac I use in my office at work (at a university) will have usernames and passwords for people who have never been in my office ever. The first time it happened it was my father's email, and the second time it was my stepmother's. Why would chrome be filling in these odd emails when it doesn't even save my own login information after closing the browser window? The only mechanism I can posit is that I did plug my iPhone into my dad's iMac some time before this happened, but does that make any sense? Do iPhones indiscriminantly absorb gmail information and then effectively transmit it to other iMacs it comes into contact with? This seems to be a glaring security issue if it is the case.

I don't ever sync my phone when it asks, but occasionally iTunes will start syncing without me noticing, so that might be relevant.

Also, the two incidents happened many months apart, with no weirdness in between.

The login info persisted even when the browser was closed and re-opened, but I think restarting the computer cleared the info.

I did check to make sure the password was right, and sure enough the login info was correct, and I had access to my father and stepmother's emails.

Usually on this computer, when I open chrome and go to gmail it will either be blank or just have my username filled in, with no password.

I find this all weird, and no one has any explanation. Thank you for reading!

CompSci/CompLit: Anyone have links to interesting "poetry" generators?

Broccoli Bear — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 07:38:10 -0800

I've found this (see more here), which seems to be defunct (links to the "generator" are 404), and this, which is less than satisfying. Here in the age of alleged "robot authors" I'm hoping to do better. Any leads, anyone? And if you're thinking, "Hey, how about a little something more, maybe tangentially related, just for amusement's sake?" then I'm thinking "Okay, here."

Google Play music alternative?

thrasher — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:49:48 -0800

Can I access my music in the Google Play Music cloud with something other than the Google Play Music app? I compared Google Play Music, Amazon's cloud thingie and the iTunes cloud thingie, and decided to try Google since it's free for 20,000 songs. I have 17,000. Uploading them all to the cloud is taking a while but should be done today. The app on my Droid 1 phonekeeps freezing, forcing close, and generally making my phone run very slowly, not to mention the fact that it's not showing me everything I actually have in the cloud. (And when I tell it to refresh, the app forces a close.) Is there another app I can use to access my music in Google's cloud?

(on Verizon, still have an unlimited data plan, phone is running Android version 2.2.3. Let me know if the kernel version, baseband version or build number is of any use.)

Google Chrome on Mac OS keeps shutting itself

FarOutFreak — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:28:18 -0800

Chrome on Lion 10.7.5 keeps closing while I'm in the midst of browsing, and it's driving me nuts. And it doesn't seem to think there's a problem with that. I'm having problems with Google Chrome running on Lion 10.7.5, where it suddenly closes itself while I'm in the middle of browsing. No warnings saying it's closing, not even warning me even though I checked off Warn Before Quitting, and no errors showing up after it closes. It just up and quits.

It usually happens when I'm opening a new tab, or maybe even when I'm using Cmd-Tab to shift between applications. It just closes abruptly, and that's it. When I open Chrome back up, it doesn't ask to restore anything, so I'm assuming it thinks it was a normal quit operation. I do see it maintains pinned tabs, so nothing seems out of the ordinary.

And from checking Chrome, this is the most updated version they have out, version 25.0.1364.99. I didn't have problems with it closing before, but don't know whether this problem came with this recent version.

I went to Google's product forums to see if they've done anything about that yet, but the only thing I see are some other users on Mac saying that it is happening to them, with no resolution yet.

Just wanted to check if any of you guys have any tips on what else I can check inside of Chrome or maybe even OSX that can tell me what the hell is happening, because it's gotten pretty annoying to just keep opening and closing the damn thing.

Turn off Google Drive Preview "Feature"

decathecting — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:58:46 -0800

Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) has just unveiled a new "feature," that makes Google Drive open most files in a "preview" mode when you click on them, instead of just opening the file for editing/saving/etc. I would like to turn this "feature" off so that my files actually open. How can I do this? Apparently, CTRL+clicking or opening a file in Preview and then selecting "Open" is the only way to actually get the files to open so that they can be edited or downloaded or printed or whatever. But that's incredibly irritating! Multiple people have posted in Google's Help forums asking how to turn this off, but so far, no one has any answers. Google has these pages about it, but I couldn't figure out what they were talking about or how to do what they suggest. So I turn to the people of AskMe. Is there any way to fix this "feature?" Please explain to me like I'm your 80-year-old, computer illiterate grandma, just to make sure I understand it.

In search of

thomas j wise — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:02:12 -0800

I have a GoogleBooks library with 2650 books in it. This is good. For several months now, I have been unable to perform full-text searches on it. This is not. I've ascertained from other users that this is not a system-wide problem, so the bug is somewhere in the library. Full-text searches turn up, at most, 4-10 results, even though I know that my library should yield, say, over a hundred; moreover, the results tend to be random (e.g., missing books that have the keyword actually in the title). This happens across all browser platforms and on different computers. Using advanced search doesn't solve the problem, as that only pulls up results over all of GoogleBooks. There is no way to report this to Google using their form--it doesn't fall under their definition of "issues," I guess--and no way to contact them in any other fashion. (My previous technique for grabbing their attention--writing up the problem on my blog--hasn't worked this time, either.) Is there any way to fix this on my end (ha...), or is there some magic method of getting someone (anyone?) to look at what's going on?

Should I start to worry about identity-theft/phishing?

Nightly — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 03:25:55 -0800

I recently started in a new job and got a used laptop for my desk. I have utilized this with my Chrome/ Google account. Then, after a few weeks, I got a warning in gmail, telling me that a foreign state might be trying to hack my account or computer. My question is, should I start to worry about being tageted by hackers? Or is the alert from google and the phishing attempts a coincidence? After a few days, the same message appeared when I logged into gmail from my home computer (both running Win 7 and synched on my google account). So I have now turned on two-step confirmation for my gmail-account.

I also have my own company with its own non-google email. Here I was shocked to see how many phishing emails I've been getting lately. Often two of the same kind with a small time interval of a few minutes.

I also use a Windows Phone 8 synched with my google account, but I have now utilized secondary passwords for apps.

My question is, should I start to worry about being tageted by hackers? Or is the alert from google and the phishing attempts a coincidence?