How to get maximum out of your Gmail Account using Firefox Greasemonkey scripts

If you work on the web you in all probability own a Gmail account. Also, you may be using Gmail for managing your important communication -official or personal. Many of us own multiple google accounts and we know how irritating it is to log out of one and then log in to other and then switch back. Also you want to take notes at times but don't get it in Gmail. Moreover you may want to sort mails in a hierarchical folder structure but can't do this using default Gmail Labels. You can do all this and more.How?? Read on. . .

If you are using Firefox as your primary browser (if you are not then I will recommend a switch!!) you can increase your productivity immensely using these five Greasemonkey scripts.Greasemonkey is a Firefox Add-on to use java scripts to enhance the usability of your browser.These scripts allow you to

• Add Notes to your mails
• See the attachment type in Inbox without opening mail
• Switch seamlessly between multiple Google accounts
• See your Google Calender events and notifications in Gmail
• Sort your mails in a hierarchical folder like structure

Lets take a close look at these five scripts.

1. Add Notes to your mails

Add an annotation application to your Gmail account and take notes while going through your communication.You need to log in once using your gmail account and from then on as soon as you open a mail a create note link appears in the Notes client which can be used for notes making.

All notes can also be browsed together making it an excellent to-do application as well.

Thanks to Script Author: Johntray

Install this script here

2. See the attachment type in Inbox without opening mail

Its a nice little utility that lets you see what kind of attachment is there in your mail i.e. whether it's a documnet , pdf image or zip fille. This can save a lot of time on slow connections and help you decide which mails to see first in time of haste.

Thanks to Script Author: DMaster

Install this script here

3. Switch seamlessly between multiple Google accounts

Switching between multiple Google accounts has been a major irritant for me and this script has saved me a lot of hassle.

A nice dropbox appears in your Gmail interface in place of signout button that lets you choose which account to log into.Accounts have to be added once and then you can switch quickly between different accounts.

Thanks to Script Author: Jerett

Install this script here

4. See your Google Calender events and notifications in Gmail

If you are an active Google calendar user and rely on this service to remind you of important dates and events,then this script will help you see all those important events in Gmail itself.

This will help you to communicate effectively and quickly and also to plan your appointments in accordance with the scheduled events.This Calendar opens up in a right pane and shows your current tasks/events.

Thanks to Script Author: Jeff Killingsworth

Install this script here

5. Sort your mails in a hierarchical folder like structure

Again a very handy script.You may want to arrange your mails in an explorer like folder structure to help you organize them better.This script does exactly that for you.Just install it and all that you need to do is add new labels as "Family/Dad" or "Family/Mom";this will create a folder "Family" folder has two subfolders "Dad" and "Mom" as shown in figure below.

You can SORT and GROUP mails as per your wish and click on the little "+" sign on a folder to view subfolders. Impressive indeed!!

Thanks to Script Author: Arend

Install this script here

Install these scripts and you can make the most of your Google account.If you use other scripts which help you in using Gmail more effectively, please consider sharing it in comments.

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Baregrep – Free desktop search utility for Windows Vista/Xp and Other Windows versions

If you use windows Vista you must have faced the annoyance of using Windows Vista’s search.Its claimed to be fast by Microsoft but we all know all about it .It's simply irritating to see that green bar shining intermittently without showing that important as hell, file, you know exists!!!!! Windows XP search is also inadequate though less annoying as compared to Vista. After a long struggle with Vista’s inbuilt search I decided to look for alternatives.My search took me to myriad forums and blogs where people were venting their frustration with Windows Vista search.Some users even demanded XP search function in Vista which obviously has no takers at Microsoft. But extensive search brought me to a great free utility named Baregrep by Baremetalsoft.com which serves amazingly well to answer most of my desktop search needs on windows based machines.

Its tiny (No installer.Click to use) but powerful.It has a clean interface and simple to understand GUI based navigation.Most importantly..ITS FAST. It searches as you type and has support for Wildcard (*.doc,*.c etc) and regular expressions or Regex (literal like “India” or(\S+\.pdf)).

It supports a lot of numeric and alpha-numeric quantifiers to make your search a breeze.You can also search text within the files and perform subfolders search. It searches Hidden folders by default.Baregrep search utility has both free and pro versions.The only difference is you see a startup splash screen in free version (which is for a few seconds and is lot more tolerable than that shining green bar :D).Give Baregrep a try and I am sure you will never have to grope in the dark for your own files on your own system.You can download the free desktop search version here.

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Ten features of Opera 10 to help you surf the web better

1. First things first

The browser scores high on all vital parameters like speed, stability and security.I used it for hours at stretch and it did not eat up my system resources.It didn't hang for a single time and seems to be quite responsive.It has all standard security features as well as an option to delete all browsing data when Opera closes.Firefox 3.5, IE 8 and Chrome users may miss the "Private browsing" feature here. Opera 10 has Fraud Protection and Extended Validation (EV) Certificates which gives added layer of security.Its pretty fast and surfing speed is comparable to Firefox though slower than Chrome. For more on speed comparisons see here.

2. Revamped Tabbed Browsing


Opera pioneered tabbed browsing and it has injected some freshness again into this feature.In Opera 10 you can drag down the tabs bar to see thumbnails instead of plain tabs.Not only it jazzes up surfing experience but increases your tab finding and switching speed too.

3. Opera Link

This feature is mainly for people who virtually live online.Those who are permanently tied to the web will find this feature immensely useful.With Opera Link in it doesn't matter where do you surf the web, you will always be using your updated browsing data like bookmarks, history etc.Basically its a service where you have to log-in once and from then on, all your bookmarks etc will be automatically synchronized with a common database.That is if you bookmark a site at home computer with Opera Link enabled, you will find the same bookmark in your office computer if it also has an active Opera Link service. What's more, If you happen to surf the web from public computers then you can use the web version of this service.Also, you get to choose what things to synchronize.

4. Native Bittorrent support

Anybody hooked to internet has used torrent applications to find download and share files.Now Opera 10 has native support for Bittorrent client.The moment you click on a torrent file this bit torrent feature gets active and handles your torrent downloads exactly like a standalone application like utorrent or bitcomet.

5. Opera Turbo

This is one feature which surely other browsers will take a serious look at. As the name suggests it boosts up slow internet connections (Dial-up,Wi-Fi,GPRS etc.) to speed up your internet surfing.It uses server side page compression technology to do so and the results are pretty good.The service has to be enabled (which is a single click on the icon in the lower left corner) and effects are visible in a few moments. However,there is a downside that such acceleration services are discouraged on firewalled and proxy dependent networks (you may not be able to use it on your office network). But nevertheless its a great feature for an average home user.

6. Sleek and intuitive Design

Its difficult not to talk about Opera 10 design as its feature.I have been used to Firefox and IE browser interfaces (Most of us are!! isn't it?). Period. Using Opera 10 has been a fresh and entertaining experience.Design is pretty simple but intuitive and customizable.

A cool feature is Panel where you can choose to see commonly used utilities like bookmarks,history,page info, widgets etc.When clicked, a left pane opens up to show the contents.It can be shown or hidden by clicking on a button in the main bar which makes it pretty simple and clutter free.Tabs are easy to work with as described earlier.You have customizable search bar in the main bar and standard buttons like back,forward and home are placed conveniently around.One thing I miss here is a "bookmark it" button like in Firefox/IE.There is a Personal Bar to show your favorite bookmarks.There is a fit width button (Good addition!!) to help you re-size and fit horizontal or vertical scrolling pages.For many other common functionalities like social networking sites etc. Widgets are available and they work pretty well too. Though we mustn't expect a Firefox like addon warehose in Opera, almost all common services and functions can be used via inbuilt widgets.Opera 10 also has some innovative additions like Mouse Gestures and Opera voice to voice control your browsing.

7. Notes

You can take notes while surfing the net using inbuilt Notes function.Simply select the text you want to copy and right click to save it to Opera notes.Notes can also be accessed via Opera Panel.You can send your notes to anyone using default mail client (like outlook) or using a web service.Unfortunately option to add your favorite web service is not there so you can't use Gmail,Rediff,Hotmail etc. here.Opera developers must give that option as this "sending notes via webservice" functionality is pretty much useless right now.

8. Bookmarks

In Opera 10 you have the option to import bookmarks from Firefox,IE,Netscape and konquerer.Also bookmarks can be imported/exported in HTML format.Managing bookmarks is easy and standard.Users will miss single click bookmarking like Firefox/IE.Bookmarks can be used portably and dynamically using Opera 10's synchronizing features.

9. Productivity

Well, Its a lot of fun using Opera 10 for general browsing, but what about productivity?
A serious user will expect blogging tools and simple file manipulation functionality integrated into Opera 10.Unfortunately Opera has not paid much attention to this aspect which otherwise would have made it an all-in-one solution.From productivity point of view good things are - Opera Link and Sessions manager (which lets you save your sessions without losing data like an unfinished mail on Gmail etc.).Other great services that you get along with like Opera mail and Notes also help you a lot.But lack of apps to blog directly from Opera 10 decreases the attraction as I will have to look towards Firefox to accomplish this task.Wordpress blog widget is available but its also very basic.May be functionality may be provided later using widgets but Opera needs to push developers to do so.Until then it gets a thumbs down from me on this front.

10. Developers Tools


If you liked firebug and Aardvark addons in Firefox you can find similar functions in Opera 10 as Opera Dragonfly available in the browser as "Tools>Advanced>Developer's tools" .You can have full functionality of Firebug and Aardvark here.Moreover, Page source info is available from menu as well as via Panel.It comes in quite handy if you want to access CSS and java scripts used on a page.You can see the scripts and stylesheets as well as download them.You can also have greater flexibility and functionality by downloading the Debug Menu available for download on Opera Site.

Overall, Opera 10 is a good product which just fells short of being a complete one-in-all solution to your browsing needs but it still serves excellently for average internet surfer.Opera needs to push developers to add functionality through widgets or scripts.Meanwhile you can download it here and experience the novelties.

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Google Picasa-Manage images in style

Organizing your digital pictures can be a daunting task if you are an avid collector and have hundreds of digital pics to keep.Moreover you may want to retouch/edit/print/backup your pics on the fly while arranging them.Google Picasa gives you a great tool to reduce your image handling hassles in a major way.After getting frustrated for a long time i decided to finally do something about my pics and tried Picasa from the Google stable.Its a handy tool which lets you manage your images in a really cool way.Let's take a look at what it can do for you.


1. At first instance when you install Google Picasa your whole computer is scanned for images and all folders containing images are shown to you in a neat and user friendly interface.It can scan for videos as well but i will suggest you to keep it to pics only as not many video functions are available in the software. Picasa can be configured to scan selected folders (scan options are available under Tools menu by the name of 'Folder Manager') or you can exclude folders which you don't want to be shown in Picasa.

2. Clicking on images opens them in a picture viewer -in Picasa itself-and lets you browse through all pics in that folder.Standard features like zooming etc. are available here.What enhances the experience is the fact that almost all you may want to do to an image is possible in Picasa.You can edit image for brightness, color and contrast related adjustments.If the image is dark you can use 'Fill Light' option to light it up.You can tune the image for colors and shadows and you can choose image version from various applied effects to the selected image which are shown as thumbnails under 'Effects' menu.Beside this, images can also be edited in batch mode.

3. In same window in Picasa as above, you may find a picture tray where you can place pics from various folders by pressing the hold button.when you have selected images you have the option to email them(from Outlook or Gmail) them,print them in various sizes or save them to the disk.

4. A cool feature of Google Picasa is Collage (available under 'Create' menu) which allows you to make a collage of images placed in the picture tray.You can also create a Screensaver or movie of selected images.I tried all compression methods offered and in my view X-vid MPEG-4 option works best.You can also upload images to blogger directly.However it would have been great if uploading to image sites like flickr.com would have been provided.



5. Images can be categorized under labels and by adding stars for easy access.

6. Images can be viewed in a customized slide show or in a time line view which shows you time of image creation.

7. Images can be imported/exported from/to external drives and mediums.

8. Images can be saved to CDs and DVDs as burn disc option is available with picture tray.A thoughtful functionality is 'Gift CD' which allows you to choose images to be written to a CD which you can gift to someone special.

9. Backup facility lets you backup you images by writing them to a portable media like CD or DVD.

10. You can print images as contact sheets to be used with brochures etc.A really nice feature is 'Export as web page' which automatically saves selected images to a nice web page which can be directly uploaded to a site and made available online.

Besides this Picasa can show you EXIF (exchangeable image file format) data if available with the image.

Google Picasa can be downloaded here.

Google Picasa is for anyone looking for a clean and easy way to simply organize images and get the most enjoyment from them.Its not for someone wanting professional editing features but for general purpose users its a boon.So don't wait to handle your digital image collection in a better way.

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