Google AdSense Publisher Toolbar for Chrome

The extension, known as the AdSense Publisher Toolbar, offers a summary of your AdSense earnings for the current day, the previous day, the current month and the previous month. In addition to daily earnings data, it also show revenue data for top channels that you have created in your AdSense account.

There’s an interesting “lifetime revenue” section in the report that shows your total AdSense earnings from the day your account was approved for AdSense.

Once you install the extension, it connects to your Google AdSense account using OAuth and then uses AdSense APIs to fetch your earnings data. You need to authorize only once and thus, if you enjoy checking your AdSense report every hour, this extension could save you plenty of time.

I have multiple Google Accounts (for security reasons) and my AdSense account uses an email address that is different from my primary Gmail address. Earlier, I had to log out of Gmail to check my AdSense reports but with the AdSense Publisher Toolbar now available, I can get my basic earnings data without having to switch accounts.

On a different note, I have no idea why the Google team is calling this extensions the AdSense Publisher Toolbar when it only adds a button near your Chrome address bar and there are no toolbars anywhere. You click the AdSense button and your earnings report are almost instantly display in an overlay.

And if you activate the AdSense extension while you are on your website (that is running AdSense ads), you can turn on the "site overlay" mode and it will display a quick summary of each ad unit’s earnings that are available on that page. Channel names are confusing, especially when you have tons of them, so this visual mode will come very handy.

This story, Google Launches an AdSense Toolbar for Chrome, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 17/01/2012 under Google Adsense, Google Chrome, Software.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2qPt1_Cf8

The next version of YouTube video player will have one very useful feature – you can hover your mouse to any point in the video, without actually moving the playhead, and the YouTube player will show you an image thumbnail of the video frame at the position. Thus you can easily get a visual gist of the whole video while the clip is still buffering.

I recorded a screencast video and that should give you a better idea of this new feature.

YouTube Storyboards

YouTube, as you know, generates three thumbnail images to represent a video and these images are captured using the frames at around 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 points in the video. For instance, if a YouTube video clip is 60 seconds long, the image thumbnails would be generated around frames at the 15s, 30s and 45s mark respectively.

For the new video player, YouTube generates one big Storyboard of 100 thumbnails per video and these thumbnail images are arranged in the Storyboard like a 10x10 grid. As you move your mouse to different points in the video player, it quickly grabs the corresponding thumbnail for that position from the storyboard.

This should save time as you can quickly jump to the most interesting portions of a video based on the scenes shown in the thumbnails. Alternatively, you can skip the video completely if the description doesn't match the inner thumbnails.

Here are some sample storyboard images that I downloaded from the YouTube website. The new YouTube player was available with quite a few popular videos but not all.

This story, This is the New YouTube Player with Storyboards, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 12/01/2012 under YouTube, Internet.

Not a problem. You can still use your Facebook account in India by dialing *325# (or *fbk#) from your mobile phone – this service requires no data plan or Internet and it will even work on phones of the Stone Age. Here’s a quick tour:

Use Facebook without the Data Plan

Facebook India has partnered with Fonetwish to bring Facebook on every mobile phone without requiring any apps or even the Internet.

You dial the *325# number, then enter your Facebook username and password and you are in. You can then send number based commands to access various features of Facebook, chat with friends who are online, add new people to your friends list, and more.

I played with the service for some time and it was a nice experience overall. If there were a Unix-like shell interface for Facebook, it would be much similar. Fonetwish says that this service is currently available for Airtel, Aircel, Idea and Tata Docomo users in India.

It may be too much work to read your Facebook news feed stories one by one but this is a good option to quickly update your Facebook status or for chatting with friends who are online. The price is reasonable too – you just have pay a subscription fee of 1.00 per day for unlimited usage.

Related: If you have an old mobile phone, you can search Google by SMS without requiring a data plan.

This story, Access Facebook on any Mobile Without the Internet, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 12/01/2012 under Facebook, India.

The Best Web Apps for Dropbox

Dropbox has 50 million users worldwide and, because of such immense popularity, an entire ecosystem of apps has been created around Dropbox that add new functionality and extend the service beyond the realms of online storage. Here are some of the best apps that you should try with your Dropbox account.

1. Use Dropbox to Host a Website or a Blog

Your Dropbox has a public folder and files that you add to this folder can be accessed by anyone on the web as long as they have a link to that file. You can thus put all your HTML, JavaScript, CSS and image files into this folder, map it your domain and your mini website is ready for public consumption.

Alternatively, if you want a more simple solution, check out apps like DropPages.com, Scriptogr.am and Pancake.io all of which let you publish simple websites using Dropbox for free. DropPages and Pancake are more suitable for publishing regular web pages while Scriptogram is geared towards the blog (reverse chronological) format.

2. Keep Google Docs and Dropbox in Sync

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could write a document inside Google Docs and access it offline inside your Dropbox folder. Or vice-versa where you add one or more files to Dropbox and they magically appear inside your Google Docs account?

There’s an excellent service called insync that keeps your Google Docs files in sync with your desktop folders and with a little trick, you can get it to work with Dropbox as well. Launch the Insync utility (it’s available on Mac and Windows) and under Preferences, just change the default Insync directory to one of your Dropbox folders. The other alternative is cloudHQ though their free plan has a few limitations.

3. Save Email Attachments in Dropbox

With attachments.me, you can quickly save file attachments available in your Gmail account to your Dropbox folder with one click.

There are two ways of doing that. You can either install the attachments.me Chrome extension and, as you are reading a message thread in Gmail, send any of attached files to your Dropbox without leaving Gmail. Alternatively, you can use the attachments.me website to save any of your email attachments to Dropbox.

4. Save Web Clippings to your Dropbox

Gimme Bar is a neat bookmarking service that lets you clip web pages, photos and everything else that you see on the web. It even grabs screenshots of whole web pages so the archived pages look exactly like what you see on your screen.

You can connect your Gimme Bar account with Dropbox and it will periodically dump all your saved web clippings to your Dropbox folder. The backups aren’t instant though.

5. Download Online Files to your Dropbox

With URL Droplet, you can download any of the online files to your Dropbox folder even from a remote computer.

Simply copy and paste the URL of any web file to URL Droplet and the app will save that file to your Dropbox folder in the background. This is especially useful when you want to download an online file to Dropbox but the computer you are working on, say your office computer, is not linked to your personal Dropbox account.

6. Request Files in your Dropbox Folder

Do you want other people – like your clients - to upload files to your Dropbox but without having to share any of your Dropbox folders with them?

There’s a free service called DropItToMe that lets you receive files from anyone, anywhere and the files are added straight to your Dropbox. Alternatively, you can create an online form using JotForm and any files uploaded through this form are again sent to your Dropbox.

7. Transfer Dropbox Files to any Cloud Service

If you are looking for any easy way to transfer files across different cloud services like Dropbox, Google Docs, Picasa, etc. or if you need to move files between Dropbox and an FTP server, Otixo is a near perfect solution.

Otixo connects to all popular cloud services, including Dropbox, and lets you access all your online files at one place. Then, like Windows Explorer or Apple’s Finder, you can copy or move files from service to another using easy drag and drop.

8. Upload Files to Dropbox via Email

Dropbox, unlike SugarSync, doesn’t offer an option to upload files by email but there’s a free app called Send To Dropbox that can help you do that.

Once you connect your Dropbox account with the app, it will provide a unique email address and any files sent to that address will get saved to your Dropbox account. This is useful for uploading files to Dropbox from a mobile phone or when you want to quickly save Gmail attachments to your Dropbox. There’s a DIY alternative as well.

Related tip: Print Files from Mobile Phone using Dropbox

9. Dropbox for Distraction-Free Writing

Write Box is a minimal writing app for your browser that auto-saves your text document into any of your Dropbox folders. You can also open any of the existing Dropbox text files into Write Box and edit them in the browser.

The app has no toolbars and you can switch to your browser's full-screen mode (press F11) for more comfortable and distraction-free writing. Press Ctrl+S anytime to quickly sync your edits with Dropbox.

10. Add More Power to your Dropbox

With tools like IFTTT and Dropbox Automator, you can easily glue your Dropbox with various other services like Facebook, EverNote, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and do some really clever stuff that would otherwise require programming.

For instance, you can setup a task that will auto-upload your pictures to Facebook as soon as you add them to your Dropbox folder. Or a task that will auto-deliver your ebooks and other documents to your Kindle when you put them in a designated Dropbox folder. The possibilities are endless and if you spend some time understanding IFTTT, it will probably be the only add-on that you’ll need for your Dropbox.

One more thing..

These apps connect to Dropbox using OAuth so you’ll never have to share your login credentials with either of them. That said, if you have tried a Dropbox app and don’t plan to use it later, go here and permanently remove that app from your account.

Liked it? Here are some more Dropbox tips and tricks.

This story, The Best Apps for your Dropbox, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 11/01/2012 under Dropbox, Internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGWQBjt95AY

When you double-tap the home button of your iPad or iPhone, the dock will show a list of all the recently used apps and some of them could still be running in the background.

You tap and hold your finger on the app icon until it begins to jiggle and you can then press the red “minus” sign (screenshot) to close one or more of these background apps. If a particular app is not running, this action will simply remove its listing from the multitasking bar.

Close All Background Apps at Once

If you would like to close all the background apps at once, here’s a free app for iPhone and iPad that can help. You don’t even have to jailbreak your device.

Launch the app and then shake your iPhone / iPad to terminate every single app that could be running in the background. Alternatively, you can just pull and release the processes list (see video) to close all the background running apps at once.

Should You Quit Background Apps Manually?

If you are on Windows or Mac, you always quit applications that you are not using so that more memory (RAM) becomes available to front-running apps. However, you many not see any improvement in performance by closing background iOS apps.

Here’s an excerpt from a Q&A that Engadget had with Steve Jobs:

Engadget: How do you close applications when multitasking?
Jobs: In multitasking, if you see a task manager, they blew it. Users shouldn't ever have to think about it.

John Gruber explains why closing background apps isn’t required:

The iOS multitasking bar is not like the command tab switcher on Mac or Windows. It is not a list of currently “running” applications. It is simply a list of your most recently used applications, whether they’re running in the background, suspended in memory, or completely inactive.

Exception – Kill the Misbehaving Apps

In the past, I have seem apps, especially games, that became unresponsive (freeze) and force-quit was the only way to get them working again. The Process Killer app mentioned above might be helpful in such situations though else you need not worry about shutting down suspended background apps.

This story, How to Close All Background iOS Apps at Once, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 06/01/2012 under IPad, IPhone, Software.

There are however some limitations in Gmail’s auto-forwarding feature:

1. You cannot auto-forward old emails. For instance, if you have a bunch of old emails that you would like to send to your EverNote or Instapaper account for archiving, you’ll have to manually forward them one-by-one as auto-forward only works for new incoming emails.

2. You cannot auto-forward to a non-verified email address. When you set up auto-forward in Gmail, it sends a verification message to the other email address before you can forward messages to that account.

Gmail Auto-Forward with Google Docs

If you would like to auto-forward Gmail messages (including the older emails) to another email address in bulk, or if you would like to forward them to another address without confirming, Google Docs can help you overcome those limitations very easily.

The trick is simple. You set up a trigger in Google Docs that watches some of the labels in your Gmail Inbox and as soon as it finds a message, it auto-forwards it to a designated email address. You just have to set it once and it then runs in the background without requiring any manual input.

Setting up Mail Forwarding – Step by Step

Create a copy of this Google Sheet in your Google Docs account and fill the columns A and B. You should put valid Gmail Label Names in column A and the corresponding auto-forward email address in column B.

Go to Tools –> Script Editor –> Triggers –> Current Script’s Trigger and Add a new Trigger. Set the Event as Time-Driven and choose either Minutes or Hours for the duration. If you want near-instant mail forwarding, set the timer to Every Minute.

Since you are running this Google Docs sheet for the first time, you’ll have to authorize it to access your Gmail account. Just follow the authorization prompts to grant Google Docs access to your Gmail.

That’s it. You can close your Google Docs sheet and it will magically forward your Gmail messages that are in particular labels. Once the message has been forwarded, the label will be removed automatically.

Video: How to Setup Gmail Forwarding with Google Docs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wszZ1EaalQ

To quickly summarize, you set up one or more “watch” labels in Gmail and any emails that you add to these labels are automatically forward to the corresponding email addresses as you have specified in the Google Docs sheet.

This Google Docs based auto-forwarding method will work for both plain text emails as well as HTML mails that have attachments but there’s one limitation – the size of individual email messages that you are auto-forwarding should not exceed 20 KB. This is a requirement of the Google Apps Script service.

Also, mails forwarded through Google Docs will still count towards your Gmail’s daily sending limit which is around 500 messages per day.

Related: Mail Merge with Gmail and Google Docs

This story, How to Auto-Forward Gmail Messages in Bulk [Video], was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 05/01/2012 under GMail, Internet.

If you have an account on Twitter, you should try Tweetsheet.

The app reads you Twitter activity and turns it into a visual infographic (see sample) revealing your top followers, your most-retweeted posts, and some other interesting details. The stats mentioned in the infographic are calculated using the last 3200 tweets that you have posted on Twitter.

One good thing about Tweetsheet is that only requires “read access” to your Twitter account during authentication so it won’t tweet your results without asking.

There’s however no option to save the infographic as an image. Thanks @Shankar.

This story, Create an Infographic with your Twitter Activity, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 04/01/2012 under Infographics, Twitter, Internet.

First, Logitech dropped the price of their Google TV Revue box from $249 to $99 making the device much more affordable and second, the Honeycomb upgrade was rolled out that brought some popular Android Apps to your Google TV.

Logitech or Google aren’t saying how many Google TV units have they sold so far but the Android Market does offer some hints in that direction. The logic is simple.

Android Apps are now available on Google TV and some of these apps - like The Big Picture, Plex and Redux – have been developed exclusively for the Honeycomb version of Google TV. If you look at the install base of these apps (the numbers are available in the Android Market), you can get a rough idea of how popular Google TV really is?

A simple Google search - site:market.android.com intitle:google tv - reveals most of the Google TV specific apps that are currently available in the Android Market.

Some Google TV apps - like Twitter, Photos, Pandora and Napster - are factory-installed and thus there install numbers could be about the same as the total number of Google TV units that have been shipped (considering the response to Google TV, these install figures of 500k-1m are unbelievable though). Also, if you look at the 30-day install history of these apps, it is obvious that Google TV wasn’t a hit during the recent holiday season.

The other set of Google TV apps - like CNN Money, All Recipes or The Big Picture - are specific to Android 3.1 and have an installed base between 10k – 50k. This is purely unscientific but since people who have upgraded to Honeycomb are very likely to try at least one of these popular apps on their TV, my guess is the total number of active Google TV users would also be in the same 10k - 50k range.

For reference, the following chart has a big list of Android apps that are available for Google TV, their total install base and the 30-day install activity in the Android Market.

Icon	App Name	Total Installs	30-day History
	Redux for Google TV	10,000 - 50,000
	Twitter for Google TV	500,000 - 1,000,000
	TV & Movies on Google TV	500,000 - 1,000,000
	Napster for Google TV	500,000 - 1,000,000
	Plex for Google TV	5,000 - 10,000
	Pandora Radio for Google TV	500,000 - 1,000,000
	CNN Money For Google TV	10,000 - 50,000
	FOX News for Google TV	10,000 - 50,000
	Al Jazeera English GTV	5,000 - 10,000
	Clicker for Google TV	10,000 - 50,000
	Photos for Google TV	500,000 - 1,000,000
	AOL HD	10,000 - 50,000
	AllRecipes TV	10,000 - 50,000
	The Big Picture – Google TV	10,000 - 50,000

This story, The Number of Active Google TV Users is.., was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 03/01/2012 under Google TV, Gadgets.

The Zen of Steve Jobs is a new comic book that explores the life of Steve Jobs at the time when he was fired from Apple and particularly his friendship with Kobun Chino, the Buddhist monk from Japan who was Jobs’ spiritual guru as well.

Unlike Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs that is based on actual interviews with Jobs, this 80-page comic book is a mix of both fact and fiction. The illustrations were done by JESS3 and some of the book pages are available for reading on their blog.

The digital edition of this book is however only available for Kindle Fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfDI70ODu8

This story, Now a Comic Book on Steve Jobs, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 03/01/2012 under Book, Steve Jobs, Offbeat.

The address book of your Nokia phone is stored in the online Ovi Contacts – just like Android phones use Google Contacts – but with one big limitation.

Ovi, until now, offered no export feature so there was no easy way to download your phone’s address book from the web to the computer unless you had a Nokia device at hand. The Ovi Suite, Nokia’s desktop synchronization software, didn’t have an export option for Contacts either so your phone contacts were sort-of locked in Nokia’s cloud.

Shubha earlier wrote:

I was using a Nokia E-72 and the data was backed up on Ovi.com, so it’s online and not on my laptop. I am now using an iPhone and would like to sync my contacts but how shall I do that? The original Nokia phone was unfortunately stolen.

Well there’s an easy solution now.

Nokia is discontinuing the Ovi Contacts website (the service will stay but you won’t be able to access your address book from the web browser) and this could be a blessing in disguise for people like Shubha who have moved from Nokia to other platforms.

Nokia has set up a microsite - exportcontacts.ovi.com – where you can download your entire Ovi address book in the popular CSV format with a click. You don’t need the Nokia device or the Ovi desktop suite to export your contacts. The CSV file can can then be imported into Google Contacts and it will intelligently merge the duplicate contacts.

You got to do this soon as, according to an email from Nokia, the web access to Ovi Contacts will be disable after January 24, 2012.

Related: Transfer Contacts from One Phone to Another

This story, Easily Export your Nokia Contacts to another Phone, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 03/01/2012 under Google Contacts, Nokia, Internet.