Google Plus Photos now offers a new form of auto-awesome, their service best known for adding snow to winter photos, sparkles to Christmas tree lights, and turning successive photos into animated gifs. This one is called “Smile” and it truly lives up to its name. Read more
2013 was (auto) awesome!
Google Plus has been auto-awesoming photos for a while, meaning that they’ve stitched together images with similar composition into animated gifs. See my cover photo with Banksy, for example.
Well I was excited to see that they also auto-awesomed some photos from my 2013 to create this cute little video. Log-in to your Google Plus to see your version of 2013, auto-awesomed.
Featured in this video are (in order of appearance): Me, Sara Higgins, Tara Fournier, Tim Jones, Drew Higgins, Jim Higgins, Lorie Higgins, My fourth grade class at Langtree Elementary School, Aidan Dunfey, Sarah Greer-Pennington, Greg Rogers, Alicia Samfilippo, Audra Fournier, Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters), Simona Rodano, Luigi Rosa, Mike Citarella, Angie Melvin, Sarah Roddis-Martin, Jacqué Citarella, Giammario Piumatti, Francesco Piumatti, Lauren Citarella, Steve Farjam, Sue Fleming Citarella, Jeff Arcara, Agnetta Citarella, Allie Citarella, Jules Feiffer, Frank DeGrazia, Katie Bacus, Thompson, and Ian Warner.
Delete All Mail on iOS 6+
It always frustrated me that you have to delete POP3 messages individually on iOS 6+. If you have IMAP set-up for your accounts, they’ll automatically delete with each deleted message on your PC or other devices, however,POP3 doesn’t sync in the same way that IMAP does.
Naturally, Google implemented the easy and obvious option of deleting all mail on your phone with the click of a button. Apple, however, is a company that consistently thinks they know what’s best for you. Deleting emails individually is a surefire way to ensure you’re not accidentally deleting an email you need or haven’t yet read, spam included. I think of this as Apple’s version of eating your vegetables.
After much searching and tinkering, however, I’d nailed down the process of clearing my inboxes at the end of the night, an arduous task that used to involve 100+ clicks while sitting on the train-ride home. This process has reduced the number of clicks substantially to just five.
Note that I’ve added an additional step to clear the badge from the home screen mail icon, which taunts of phantom messages if this step is excluded.
- Click the Mail icon and go to “All Inboxes”
- Press the “Edit” button and select the first message.
- Hold down “Mark” and, with it still depressed, deselect the first message.
- Release the “Mark” button and click “Mark as Read”
- Click the “Edit” button and select the first message.
- Hold down “Move” and, with it still depressed, deselect the first message.
- Release the “Move” button and click the Trash folder.
That’s it, you’re done!
Update: 04/01/2013: Well, it truly is April Fool’s Day. Apparently, using the above method, the emails are deleted from the inbox and moved to the trash until you switch mailboxes and return to the “All Inboxes” folder, where they mysteriously return. Bah, Apple. You’ve done it again. Either way, you can still use the above method to “Mark as Read” all messages, removing the badge from your home screen mail icon. But, you’ll still see the “read” messages in the list when visiting “All Inboxes” and the folder size will continue to grow until you manually delete the messages one-by-one. Frustrating, innit?
Google Author Tag
Todd recently pointed me to the attention of Google’s new “author” tag, to help users read more articles by journalists and bloggers, and their new “publisher” tag, to help users find more articles by companies and organizations. Hopefully, within the next few months, you’ll be able to see my mug appearing by articles in Google search results pages, directing your attention to other articles I’ve written.
If you’re interested in learning more about author and publisher tags, read this article (and other information resources) on my design studio’s site: era404.com.
Find My Face
Google has always had technology that’s been both cool and creepy at the same time. In fact, I believe their upcoming “Google Now” was criticized for this reason, precisely, and CNET has a great article showing how Google products go from creepy to cool.
Anyway, Google now has a “Find My Face” feature which scours the social networking world for recognizable faces and then emails you to let you know it found your face. Take a look at this email I just received:
Here’s how Find my Face works:
After you turn on Find my Face, Google+ uses the photos you’re tagged in to create a model of your face. The model updates as tags of you are added or removed, and you can delete the entire face model at any time by turning off Find my Face.
If you turn on Find my Face, we can use your face model to make it easier to find photos of you. For example, we’ll show a suggestion to tag you when you or someone you know looks at a photo that matches your face model. Name tag suggestions by themselves do not change the sharing setting of photos or albums. However, when someone approves the suggestion to add a name tag, the photo and relevant album are shared with the person tagged.
As Zeh informed me, it’s fairly similar to what face.com used to do (before Facebook bought the Israeli facial recognition firm in June 2012) and Picasa and Facebook offer similar services. However, the idea that Googlebot is spidering the web with a model of my face, reporting back to me similarities is both creepy and cool. Creepy, because it brings to mind Sci-Fi movie gadgets where the government can spot your grainy likeness on any CCTV feed across the world. Cool, because it’ll help me to ensure no weirdo is montaging some shrine of my physiognomy somewhere in cyberspace, or some perverted derelict isn’t “catfishing” me by using my photos for a fictional online persona.
25 Tips for Optimizing a Blog’s Google Sitelinks
The following is an excerpt from a new Informational Resource I’ve posted on my company‘s web site:
What are Sitelinks?
The links shown below some of Google’s search results (1), called sitelinks (2), are meant to help users navigate sites. Google’s systems analyze the link structure of each site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.
Google only shows sitelinks for results when they think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of the site doesn’t allow their algorithms to find good sitelinks, or they don’t think that the sitelinks for the site are relevant for the user’s query, Google won’t show them. At the moment, sitelinks are automated, but there are best practices site owner’s can follow, however, to improve the quality of their sitelinks.
Note to Self
Android’s “Note to Self” feature has become a life saver for me. I remember things when I’m walking to and from meetings, sitting on the train, or generally away from my desk. And rather than keep a notepad or moleskine and pen with me at all times, I’d begun to use the message voice action that’s packaged with Android.
The only cumbersome aspect of this feature is that it doesn’t let you specify the recipient of the note to self. After all, in Google’s world, your Google Account’s main email/gmail address is (and should be) your “self.”
“Maybe I can recreate the main email address tied to my HTC Evo,” I thought, “so that it’s a more specific ‘self'”. I tried to change it from don.citarella to don.citarella+mobile, but had no luck. Apparently, once you’ve associated a main address with an Android phone, the only way to remove/change it is to perform a factory reset.
So, while it’s not the cleanest/best solution, Gmail Filters do the trick.