TechLifeWeb

I’m a big fan of the web app Remember the Milk. I love how flexible it is at letting you manage your tasks the way you want. One of the biggest struggles in any system you use is ubiquitous capture. That is, being able to capture an idea or task where ever you are.

A while back, I got to thinking that it would be really cool if I could quickly create a task in Remember the Milk (RTM) via SMS. RTM on the various mobile platforms is great but this way is even faster (for me at least) and you can do it from any SMS enabled phone. The magic that let me realize this dream is the wonderful IFTTT (If this then that) service.  It isn’t hard to set up as long as you have all the right pieces in place.

The things you’ll need are: Your RTM inbox address, an SMS capable phone, a Gmail account and an IFTTT account.

So, to get started, you’ll need your RTM inbox address. Get that by looking in the info tab of the settings section.

Next, go over to IFTTT and create an account if you haven’t already. Then click on Channels and go through the set up process to create an SMS channel and a Gmail channel.

Once all that is set up, head over to my channel http://ifttt.com/recipes/49882 You’ll need to put your RTM inbox address in the “To Address” field. That’s all your really have to do. It isn’t necessary to alter the body section. New SMS’s will go right into you RTM inbox.

Personally, I have other ways my RTM is set up so I don’t like email going into the inbox if there is no need. No reason to clear out a second inbox if I don’t have to. I have a catchall list called Central so I like to use that. I also like to automatically make these next actions so I pre-populate the tags section. You can add several tags separated by comma.

This is all based on the syntax RTM uses for mailed in tasks. More details on that if you haven’t used it is here: https://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/email/#inbox

So for example, this is how I have the Body section of my IFTTT channel filled out:

List: Central<br>
Priority:<br>
Due:<br>
Repeat:<br>
Estimate:<br>
Tags: next<br>
Location:<br>
URL:<br>
—<br>
{{ReceivedAt}}

Hope this helps you be more productive!

Yesterday, Google announced that you can now invite others to Google events. The idea is that doing this will let you all share on Google+ your photos and other event details. When you set up an event, an invitation goes to all who you have invited. A side effect of this is that when you get an invitation, even if you choose to ignore it, a place holder is put onto your Google Calendar. To me, my calendar is the hard landscape for what I am going to do. I don’t need to see these thing cluttering up my calendar.  Fortunately the fix is easy:

• Go to your Google Calendar and click the gear icon in the upper right and then click settings.
• Scroll way down until you come to “Automatically add invitations to my calendar”
• Select “ No, only show invitations to which I have responded”
• Click Save

The nice part is this is retroactive. So if you have a bunch of entries on there you haven’t responded to, they’ll all automatically disappear from your calendar when you set this up.

One of the coolest things about the Kindle is that it keeps your content in sync via the Amazon Whispersync service. So you can skip between your kindle, the iPhone app or even the Cloud Reader in your web browser and stay on the same page in your reading material. Amazon takes care of all of this in the background for you. The problem is, if you for some reason decide to skip way ahead on one of your devices or, if you liked your book and want to read it again in the furture, Whispersync thinks you are done and continues to ask if you want to sync to that furthest location. The awesome Whispersync becomes more of a nusance at this point.
There isn’t a quick method that I have found to be able to reset your furthest point read. What I am about to detail is not hard but you have to go methodically through the steps and don’t skip any.  You may want to print this page.

1. Grab one of your devices and try syncing your book. Make sure you get a message that you are at the furthest location. If you are not, then go ahead and sync to that location.
2. Close out of your book.
3. Open the book again and try syncing. You should get a message that you are at the furthest location across all devices.
4. Set your device down and on your computer
5. Visit the Manage Your Kindle page http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle.
6. Click Manage Your Devices under Your Kindle Account on the left side of the page.
7. Under Whispersync Device Syncronization at the bottom of the page, click “Turn Off.”
8. Stay on this page on your computer and pick up your device again
9. Got to the beginning of your book and try syncing.
10. If you do NOT get a message that you are at the furthest location, click No.
11. Close your book
12. Click sync to refresh your library
13. Open your book and be sure you are at the beginning then try syncing again. If you do NOT get a message that you are at the furthest location, click No and go back to step 12.
14. Close your book
15. Set you device down and, again at your computer, click “Turn On” on the Whispersync Device Syncronization page.
16. Pick up your device again and, to be safe, sync your library again
17. Open your book and try syncing it again. It should now be at the furthest location and you are done.
18. If you have another device, pick that up now.
19. Sync to refresh your library
20. Open your book and go immediately to the beginning
21. Sync your book and you should now be at the furthest page read across all your devices.
If you have more devices, go back to step 18.

Hopefully that worked for you. It has worked for me for several books.

I really like the new Beach theme in Gmail. The problem I have with it is that the scroll bar on the right becomes invisible in Google Chrome.  On the right is a snip from my screen.

Fortunately, we can fix this with an extension and some script.

First, go get the Stylish extension and install it.

Then go to this page where my script is: New Gmail – Visible Scroll Bar and click the Install with Stylish button. Once you do that and go to Gmail, the scroll bar will be a nice blue color. And it will stay blue no matter which theme you try.

If you don’t like my choice of blue, you can right-click on the Stylish icon at the top of your browser and then click Options. Then you click the Edit button under the name of the script.  You’ll then see a line that says rgba(0, 122, 255, 0.7) The first 3 variables are RGB code (search around the web for help with finding the code to a color you like). The 0.7 part has to do with transparency so you can experiment with that. Just click save and go back to Gmail (or, easier, open Gmail in another tab).

Hope that helps some people out.

Recently I posted an article about a great extension for Google Chrome to share to Google+ from Google Reader.  Of course the downside here is not everyone uses Chrome.  I’ve figured out a way to work around that and let people share from any browser using the Chrome send to feature and a hack of the Google+ Mobile interface. It is easy to implement with just a minute or two of your time. Here is how to do it:

Log into Google Reader.

Click the gear icon in upper right corner
Click the send to tab
Click Create Custom Link
Fill in the fields like this:
Name: Google+
URL: https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?content=${title}%20-%20${url}&v=compose&hideloc=1
Icon URL: http://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/favicon.ico
Click Save

Now when you are reading an article in Google Reader and wish to send it to Google+, click the Send To link at the bottom of your article. A drop down will open showing Google+. Clicking that will open up a new tab showing the title and url of your article. You can edit the text and change who you are sharing with. By default, the sharing is public. Then click post.

Is it perfect? Well, like my share from anywhere bookmarklet, the good part is that it should work just fine whether you use Chrome, Firefox or even IE. Probably others too but I haven’t tested it. The caveat is that it uses the mobile version of Google+ which if you want to post publicly is easy but takes an extra step if you want to just post to some of your Circles. The mobile interface doesn’t post links as pretty as the native method but at least this saves you some time.

Edit 11OCT11: A site called HowToNew figured out a method to do this an instead use the native Google+ +1 interface.

If you use the following in your URL field, clicking on the link will +1 the article and give you the chance to share it with your circles. This is similar to +1 on a page on the web. It does open another window or tab.

https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=${url}

So, now you have 2 choices!

I’ve started reading RSS feeds again.  Recently, most links and news I’ve been finding has been through social services like Twitter and Google+.  I decided to declare ‘RSS bankruptcy’. By this I mean I went to Google Reader,  deleted all the feeds I never read and marked everything as read. Blindly. Face it, life is too short to go in there and get all worried that you missed some scoop or something fascinating. If the news is that big, you’ll hear about it elsewhere.

I’m not sure what prompted my return to RSS but I can tell you what has helped a lot. It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Google+ and recently I started using an extension for Google Chrome that makes sharing within Google Reader a breeze. It is called RSS Share for Google Plus™ and Google Reader™.  It is great, but but I’m not a fan of the defaults.

Be default, the extension creates entries on the left side of your Google+ to your various Google Reader Feeds and shows the ones that have unread entries.  This lets you stay in Google+ and read new Google Reader entries as they come in.  Sounds great on the surface but I happen to like keeping all my feeds over in Reader and I think actually slows down and messes with the Google+ experience. Thankfully, this is an option you can  easily turn off.  To do that, click the wrench in the upper right of Chrome. Then go to Tools, then Extensions and find the RSS Share for Google Plus and Google Reader extension and click options. Deselect ‘Add Google Reader to Google+’ and ‘Show Read Items on Google+’.  After that, all the integration is over on the Google Reader side and nothing is messed with in your Google+ experience.

Now, when you go to your Google Reader, you’ll have a new option under each article called ‘Share on Google+’

Clicking that link with give you the standard sharing box you are used to if you use Google+.  The box appears in the upper right of your browser, lets you choose who you are sharing with and gives you to opportunity to add some text of your own.

Read more. Share more.

The other day i saw this article on The Next Web about adding a Google+ share icon to your WordPress blog.  It is based on the original article from Alex Moss.  The main limitation is that it uses the mobile version of Google+ to make it work. Not a big deal just not that pretty.

So I thought this is pretty handy and while WordPress is huge among bloggers, there are still tons of other sites and blogs that might want a sharing button.  Then I thought I could take it a step further and include a way to add attribution.

On Google+, you give someone attribution or address someone by putting a + in front of their name. For example +George Washington.  Google Plus then turns these into links and notifies the person they have been mentioned in a post. The problem is, if you “+” some one that isn’t in one of your Circles it doesn’t always work. Unless you know the little known secret: you can “+” a user number and it should work everytime. This also ensures your are attributing the right +John Smith! My code below will take advantage of this feature since people outside of your circles could be sharing from your site.

So, how do you get your user number? Just go to Google Plus and click on your profile. Your user number is that big bunch of numbers up in your url

right after plus.google.com.
Below is the code to place anywhere in your site where you want the share button to show up.

Note: If you want to use attribution, replace the numbers after via + with the numbers from YOUR user number. Be sure to leave the “+” there!

If you do NOT want to use attribution, delete everything between the quotes after attrib=. So it should read: attrib=’ ‘

<a href=”javascript:var d=document,w=window,attrib=’ via +123456789012345678901‘,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),f=’https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/’,l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,u=f+’?content=’+e(d.title)+e(‘ – ‘)+e(l.href)+e(attrib)+’&v=compose&hideloc=1′;a=function(){if(!w.open(u,’gplusshare’,'toolbar=0,resizable=1,scrollbars=1,status=1,width=450,height=295′))l.href=u;};if (/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent)) setTimeout(a, 0); else a();void(0)”><img class="scale-with-grid" src=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/118970/plus-share.png” width=”55″ height=”22″ alt=”Share this post on Google+” title=”Share this post on Google+”></a>

Here is the same code in a text file that should make it easier to use since these kinds of things with quotation marks can get confused by browsers.  share.txt

You shoud be able to use this code on any site that lets you add html. Google may have something else in the works to make this easier. But for now, this should fill the gap.

I’ve been spending more of my on-line time on Google+.  I love it because people share great things and it is really easy to add new great people to follow.

One wish I have is to have it be even easier to share things that I find around the web. Google has made it easy for sites to add a +1 button but it isn’t exactly easy to share content. It isn’t to copy a URL and paste it into Google+ but come on, shouldn’t computers help us out here?

To that end, I have put together this bookmarklet to make sharing easier.

If you aren’t familiar with bookmarklets, they are links you add to your browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar. The idea is that you save the link below to your bookmark bar or favorites. Then when you are out on the web and want to share a page with your Google+ followers, you click the link in your bookmarks and it will grab the title and URL of your page, open a new window and let you compose a post to Google+.

Is it perfect? The good part is that it should work just fine whether you use Chrome, Firefox or even IE. Probably others too but I haven’t tested it. The caveat is that it uses the mobile version of Google+ which if you want to post publicly is easy but takes an extra step if you want to just post to some of your Circles.

How to get the bookmarklet

First be sure that your Bookmarks bar is turned on (see below if not)

Drag this link: Share to G+ up to your Bookmarks Toolbar.

UPDATE 29OCT11: New version! See the update at the end of this post.

A note about Bookmarklets in Chrome: Seems there is a bug in Google Chrome that doesn’t automatically set the title of a bookmarklet so you just get the default icon. The icon will work just fine but if you want a title next to it so you remember what the link does, simply right-click on the icon in your bookmark bar and click edit. Add a name like “Share to G+” (without the quotes) and then click OK. Update 29oct11: Since the original post, Google has fixed this issue.

How to turn on the bookmark bar in various browsers
To turn on the Bookmark Bar in Chrome:

• Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar.
• Select Bookmarks.
• Select Always show bookmarks bar.
• (or ctrl+shift+B)

To turn on the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox:

• On the menu bar, click View, select Toolbars, and then select Bookmarks Toolbar.

To turn on the Links bar in IE:

• On the menu bar, click View, select Toolbars, and then select Links.
• Note: in IE, it might be easier for you to right-click on the link above and then select ‘Add to Favorites’. Then in the dialog that pops up, choose the links folder.

Usage
When you are on a page and you click the bookmarklet you will see this screen. See the notes on it for more information:

UPDATE 29OCT11: New version does a +1 and Share using the interface well are all used to in Google+! Now your shares don’t look like they are coming from the mobile interface. Drag this one to your toolbar:
+Share on G+

When you are brand new to a service it is nice to have someone guide you along. Here are a few great resources to get you started with Google+.

First, if you haven’t seen it, Google’s own video that gives an intro to Circles is worth a watch.

Next, have a look at their video about Hangouts

Now if you are ready to jump in, you need these excellent cheat sheets developed by Simon Laustsen

• I’m gathering tips in Evernote here: http://bit.ly/googleplustips
• Here is a good post on configuring your Circles for privacy: Five Steps to Configuring Privacy on Google+
• If you use the Google Chrome browser I highly recommend the Replies and More extension. It adds some subtle changes to the page that make it more functional like being able to reply right to someone without having to type their name.
• Another Chrome must have is the Surplus extension.  It gives you notifications but the main thing is that it lets you share very easily from any site. Note 10MAR2012: I no longer use the Surplus Extension. I recommend Share on Google Plus Page that lets you share to your profile or any of the pages you manage.
• New 10Mar2012: I’ve also been using Golden View for Google+ for a long time. I has some nice features like User Mute and Default Circle.
• If you want an easy way to search Google+, you can try this search engine for Google+:  http://bit.ly/searchgplus
• Andrew Shotland has a HUGE list of tips here: http://www.localseoguide.com/google-plus-shortcuts-tips/

Twitter users:

If you want to make your Google+ profile show up if someone searches for your Twitter name:

• On the Google+ home page, click on your name (left side next to your picture)
• Click Edit Profile
• Scroll way down until you see Other Names
• Click Other Names to bring up the edit box and enter your Twitter handle there.
• Optionally set who can see this. I’d set it to Anyone on the Web because anyone could find out anyway but you may have different ideas.
• If you are done editing your profile, click Done Editing at the top of the screen
• Tip: While you are on the profile screen you can go to ‘View Profile As’ which is really handy to be sure you are sharing what you think you are sharing.

It is no secret that I love Evernote.  I use it to keep track or and remember all kinds of things. On of my favorite things to do is come up with new ways to use it.  Having that secret email address is a wonderful thing and makes it dead simple to save off link shares from Google+. You may not  yet be using Google+ but you will be soon so here is how to get this done:

• Open Evernote and click Tools –> Account Info
• Here you will see your special evernote email address, copy it down (hint: right click on it and click copy)
• Now go to Google+ and, under ‘In your Circles’ on the right, click ‘view and edit’
• Click on the first circle on the left to create a new one
• Name your Circle Evernote or some other short name
• Click ‘Create Circle with 1 member’

Now, when ever you want to save something to Evernote you simply share it with that one Circle.  This has the side benefit of also having all these articles in your Evernote Circle on Google+ kind of like a bookmark but also letting you share them with your larger audience after you read the article and find it worth sharing.