Sunday, November 18, 2007

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Put Gmail’s New Permalinks to Good Use

8:05PM Gina Trapani | Gmail’s latest revamp didn’t add a whole lot of obvious, showy features, but one new thing it does is change the URL of what you’re looking at—whether it’s a label, individual message, or search for messages. These permanent URLs (which are short and readable, not a long jumble of characters like the old version) have one obvious great use: bookmarks (including keyword bookmarks.) Weblog Google Blogoscoped suggests another we hadn’t thought of: You can now share searches with a friend, e.g. tell them “Check out the previous mail I sent you at http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/grab+coffee+at+starbucks …”. When someone tells you they never got your email, this could come in real handy. Link to Specific Content in Gmail [Google Blogoscoped] More »
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Choose Memorable Answers to Security Questions

4:00AM Gina Trapani | Blogger danah boyd’s sick of dumb password retrieval security questions on web site registration forms, so she uses a pattern to create (and remember) her answers. boyd writes: The basic structure is: [Snarky Bad Attitude Phrase] + [Core Noun Phrase] + [Unique Word] Although these are not my actual phrases, let’s map them for example: Snarky Bad Attitude Phrase = StupidQuestion Unique Word = Booyah Thus, when I’m asked the following question: What is your favourite sports team? My answer would be: StupidQuestion SportsTeam Booyah Love this idea; the same type of patterning works for choosing memorable—but always different—passwords, too. algorithms for dumb security questions [apophenia] More »
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The Thanksgiving Cheat Sheet

2:00AM Gina Trapani | Ok, people, the pressure’s on: the family’s on their way to your house this Thursday, and they expect a pumpkin pie and turkey with all the trimmings. Luckily, Real Simple’s put together a comprehensive Thanksgiving cheat sheet with a preparation timeline to help you get everything on the table, on time, at the same time, all Zen-like. Check out the sidebar for recipes, carving guides, and problem-solvers to help you figure out exactly how much and what kind of turkey you need. What’s your best Thanksgiving life or time-saver? Tell us in the comments. 40 Ways to Simplify Thanksgiving | Thanksgiving Cheat Sheet [RealSimple.com] More »
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Get Rid of Gmail’s Unread Spam Count

12:00AM Gina Trapani | So you never look at the contents of your Gmail Spam label, and you don’t want to see the unread count pile up any more? In lieu of the Hide Spam-Count Greasemonkey user script (which doesn’t quite yet work with the new Gmail upgrades), you can set up a filter using the in:spam criteria to automatically mark junk mail as read. For extra protection against false positives, add other criteria to your filter, like make sure the message doesn’t include your name, school, or company. Note: when you set up the filter, Gmail will pop a message saying that in: and label: criteria don’t work with filters, but in fact in:spam does seem to work in my test. Brilliant! Gmail – Mark Spam Messages as Read [The Quixotic Engineer] More »
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