From The Tips Box: Avoid Wasting Groceries, Gmail In IFTTT, QR Code Lock Screens


Readers offer their best tips for avoiding duplicate items in your pantry and using Gmail in IFTTT.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Avoid Buying Extra Groceries By Taking A Picture Of Your Fridge


Adam Kochanowicz sends in a money saving tip:

Take a picture of your fridge before going to the store.

Often we waste money on buying things at the supermarket we didn’t realise we already had in the fridge at home. Those things end up going bad and money goes down the drain.

With everyone owning smartphones these days, it makes sense to quickly snap a pic before heading out the door. Refer to that picture later to make sure you don’t already have what you’re buying. Better, see if you can buy things to go with the food you haven’t used yet.

Might need to snap one from the pantry, too. Photo by Ollie Crafoord.

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Use Two Gmail Accounts In IFTTT With The Email Channel


Geekgirlbarbie finds a way around IFTTT’s limitations:

I use one Gmail account for all of my correspondence and such and one Gmail account for all of my newsletter subscriptions, which is nothing new, but you can take this a step further with IFTTT.

IFTTT doesn’t allow you to have two Gmail accounts to choose from, but it does allow you to use one email account for “Email” and a different account for “Gmail”.

I use my standard Gmail for correspondence account for the Gmail channel and my newsletter subscription Gmail account for the email channel.

This set-up is perfect for having things like weather alerts that I definitely want to see to my main account and having things like new job posts go to the second Gmail account for me to peruse when I have some free time.

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Use a QR Code as Your Lock Screen Picture


Martin Lim explains the reasoning behind his new lock screen image:

I take my personal laptop to work most everyday for work purposes and while I keep it pretty professional, the thing I felt “unprofessional” about was my lock screen icon. Using my profile photo seemed weird at work. The generic icons didn’t serve me much purpose.

Replacing my profile picture with the QR code looks cool and is also useful. If the laptop is “misplaced”, it is a clear indicator of who this laptop belongs to. My QR icon is a meCard containing my name, a (Google) phone number, address (in case the person decides to mail it back) and my non-personal email address. Obviously you don’t want your login password to be any of the above.


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