Quickly Crop, Resize Images on Google Drive - No Download Required

Google Drive is our easy option when it comes to sharing files — be it for personal or work team collaboration. And it’s easy to see why. Aside from the fact that it’s free, it got a plethora of apps you can use to even supercharge your workflow and save your time in the process.

One of those Google Drive apps that I stumbled upon is BeFunky Photo Editor. If you live in a country where internet is an issue (read: slow, expensive, and often capped internet), BeFunky Photo Editor will do you a favor.

Few days ago while finishing a customer’s website, a client shared a Google Driver folder containing a bunch of images to load up into his landing pages. The problem: the images came straight from a DSLR camera and were almost 30mb each. And we’re talking about 70-100 images.

Imagine the frustration I felt realising I had to download them all using my capped internet data so I can crop, resize them offline. I only needed at least 1200px wide versions of those images.

5 Handy Google Sheet Tricks To Help You Work Fast & Save Time

Just as you can unzip files on Google Drive without downloading them, there has to have a way to also crop, resize images straight from Google Drive without downloading them for offline editing. So I ended up rummaging through Google Drive apps directory and discovered BeFunky Photo Editor.

Easily Crop, Resize Images on Google Drive without Downloading them

BeFunky Photo Editor is a top-rated photo editor on Google Workplace Marketplace with 4k+ users as of writing. It’s one decent, full-featured photo editor that works straight from your browser. Probably the biggest strength of this app is the simplified editing controls, making it easy to edit photos with a few click.

BeFunky is a uniquely powerful online and mobile photo editor. Think Photoshop, but simplified for everyday users. With BeFunky, you can easily create stunning, professional-quality images with a single click. The process might be simple, but the results are incredibly sophisticated. Thanks to BeFunky, there’s no need to choose between a powerful, do-it-all tool and an easy, user-friendly interface. We’ve got it all!

Here’s how to get started:

1. Navigate to your Google Drive folder

2. Right-click any image > Open with > Connect more apps. This will bring the Google Workplace Marketplace popup

   

3. Search for “BeFunky Photo Editor” and install

4. Once installed, follow the on-screen prompts to authenticate the app to manage your Google Drive files

Once done, you’re good to go. Just navigate back to your Google Drive folder and refresh. You should be able to right-click any image and open with BeFunky Photo Editor.

While BeFunky got all the image editing tools you’re familiar with from desktop apps like Photoshop, I specially like the crop/resize feature and support for Google Drive to quickly import, resize, and crop Google Drive images.

How To: Extract All Images Embedded In .DOC Word Documents All At Once

And if you need fancier editing experience like text and graphics overlays for your ad banners perhaps or social media stuff, BeFunky got you covered. How cool is that?

Go check out BeFunky Photo Editor.

Get A List of All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished you could get a simplified list of Google Drive files and folders in a Google Sheet?

If you’re working as a graphic designer or web developer, chances are you’ve probably gone through that occasion where you needed to juggle through multiples files and folders just to get the file you want.

Google Drive’s built-in file explorer isn’t that intuitive enough. Rummaging through hundreds of files can be too overwhelming, to say the least. Well right now, not anymore!

How To List All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

Meet Drive Explorer, it’s a tiny little add-on for Google Sheet that lets you export all (or selected) files and folders into a much readable spreadsheet format.

Drive Explorer (formerly Drive Direct Links) lets you pick folders/files from your Google Drive, Shared Drive or the files shared with you to export to the Google Sheet. Sheet columns contain metadata of the files like name of the file, containing folder, folder path on your Google drive, direct download link, etc.

How Drive Explorer works:

1. You install the add-on and connect your Google account
2. Once connected, go to your Driver folder and create a spreadsheet
3. Inside your spreadsheet toolbar, click on Add-ons > Drive Explorer > Select files/folder.
4. And finally, wait for a few seconds until your spreadsheet is automatically refreshed containing your files/folders’ meta info such as folder names, filenames, folder paths, links, etc.

When is it useful?

Being able to view your Google Drive files and folders in a list helps us save time and improve team collaboration. If you own an online store and works with VAs to manage inventories, this add-on definitely comes in handy.

In our day job, for instance, we constantly update images on our client’s websites. And our clients usually just share a large Drive folder containing all the images that need to be uploaded to their website. With Drive Explorer, we can now easily get a decent list of files in that shared folder so our team can easily collaborate rather than going back and forth on Google Drive.

5 Handy Google Sheet Tricks To Help You Work Fast & Save Time

How To Score Cheaper Airline Tickets with Google Flights’ Fare Alerts

Dreaming to hit Philippines’ white sand beaches this summer? Don’t book that tickets just yet! Chances are, you could be getting pricier round trip airline tickets if you’re too excited booking those tickets a lot sooner.

With just a few clicks, I’m going to show you how you can snap up the best airline deals for your upcoming trips using Google Flights.

Google Flights, by the way, is another service of Google launched back in 2011 that lets you search flights in seconds. Unbeknownst to many, Google Flights has a ‘fare alerts’ feature that notifies you in real-time through email if there are downticks (or upticks) of ticket prices from your selected flight. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do in order to get the best deals in real-time from different airlines.

Here's how to monitor airline ticket prices with Google Flights

1. Go to Google Flights website

2. Search for your desired flight. You may opt for a round trip or one-way ticket (there are additional filters too such as desired stop-overs, which cities, airlines, etc.) Best to leave them as is to get the best possible deals)

   

3. As soon as you specify the desired departure date, the page should automatically pull a list of flights you can choose. The best flights for the chosen date will appear first on top of the page. So in case you’re happy with those prices, you can book them right away.

4. If the best flights are too expensive for you, you can activate Track prices toggle. Basically, it will monitor the lowest price for the trip and you’ll be notified through email in real-time.

   

As long as you don’t omit those tracked prices, Google will automatically alert you when there are downticks of those chosen flight, as seen below's screenshot:

Both Skyscanner and Traveloka have "price alerts" functionality, but it doesn't hurt to add Google Flights into the mix to get the best possible airline deals.

Google Launches New Recorder App with Realtime Offline Transcription Support

After announcing the latest iteration of its flagship Android phone the Pixel 4 recently, Google introduces a new voice recorder app for Android with built-in offline speech recognition support. Well, thanks to AI.

The new Recorder app uses speech recognition and AI to transcribe lectures, meetings, interviews and more—and makes them easy for you to find later. (English only right now, with more languages to come.) #madebygoogle pic.twitter.com/fdKRItuS4b

— Google (@Google) October 15, 2019

The voice recorder app, as seen on the above demo, can transcribe audio recordings in real-time with utmost accuracy. And the best part: it works offline. You can transcribe whatever is being spoken during meetings, lectures or interviews even without internet connectivity.

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Google’s newest voice recorder app is a massive upgrade from traditional audio recorder apps, which require decent internet connectivity to enable real-time transcription. And in most cases, the experience can be a bit clunky, unpleasant. That’s because your speech is being processed on a remote server before finally returning the transcribed text.

Search Parts of Recorded Audio by Sounds

The new voice recorder app comes with impressive search functionality too. Imagine you have this 2-hours long recorded lecture and wanted to re-visit that part of the lecture but all you can remember is a phrase or word? You can search by voice and the app will automatically highlight playback bar where those spoken phrases or words are mentioned. No more horizontal scrolling.

Google’s offline transcription technology is made possible by combining the power of real-time speech recognition and AI. And with the company’s unlimited resources being pumped in their Machine Learning department, we can expect a better and heaps clever AI-assisted voice processing in the future.

Google Maps Now Predicts Bus Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

So, next time you’re in a meeting or lecture, you can pretty much ditch writing notes and just intently listen to whoever is speaking. Let your Android phone do the note-taking.

Again, the app is initially being rolled out on the new Pixel 4, and the offline speech recognition is currently available in English. But with Google’s intention to reach as many users as possible, we can expect it to support other devices and other languages.

How To: Enable Google Chrome’s Built-In Reader Mode

Google’s Chromium team has recently introduced a few enhancements to its beloved Chrome web browser. One of the features it added albeit hidden is the experimental “Reading Mode“ for Windows and Mac, which essentially strips off unnecessary web elements and gives you a simplified view of a web page.

Google Chrome’s Reader Mode is disabled by default. So you’ll have to enable it yourself. Here's how:

Activating Reader Mode on Google Chrome

1. Ensure you’re using the latest Google Chrome’s Canary version

2. In your Chrome address bar, type chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode

   

3. Enable it and restart your browser

Now, every time you lands in a page and you want a simplified view of it, just go to Settings > Distill Page. It should declutter the page, removing background web clutters such as banners, ads, etc.

While it’s good Chromium team finally brings the long-overdue Reader Mode for desktop without installing a third-party extension, Google Chrome’s default Reader Mode is still in its infancy and begs a facelift. Currently, you can’t change the font size, styles, and colors. Such reading mode features are sure a delight once they’re made available in the next iteration of Google Chrome’s version

LOOK: Upcoming Google Chrome Feature Lets You Organize Active Tabs into Groups

So, if you spend a couple of minutes a day glued on addicting BuzzFeed articles and whatnot, then, Google Chrome’s built-in Reader Mode will do you a favor.

Freshly-Minted Google Maps Now Predicts Bus Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

Google introduces a few updates to its Google Maps iOS and Android apps that give commuters live traffic delays updates for buses as well as predictions how crowded your bus or train will be all in real-time.

The updates are welcome addition to Google Maps app that proves useful if you constantly commute your way around the city, helping you see the bus delays and how long it will be as well the recalculated time it takes to get from point A to B. With those live information at your fingertips, you can manage and plan ahead your trip; whether it’s a simple trip to your workplace or back to your apartment.

Using Machine Learning to Generate Bus Delays Forecasts

To produce the most accurate bus delays predictions, Google cannot solely rely on transit agencies real-time data. Google combines data syndicated from transit agencies all around the globe and anonymized data collected from commuters who consented to share their data.

Back in October last year, Google Maps began to ask its users who commute during peak hours and prompt them to rate their experience within the app. Relevant transit information such as travel time, distance, and the total number of available seats were also collected.

Long Commute? Get Power Naps and Get A Phone Call When You Arrive At Your Destination

These information collected are all valuable training data that help Google develop a model that predicts crowdedness and delays with increased accuracy, thanks to AI.

If you're curious about the technology behind all this, check this out.

So next time you’re about to leave from work, pull your Google Maps app and see if you should wait a few minutes or squeeze on a crowded ride like a packed of sardines on a hot bus or train.

Be sure to update your app to get this juicy addition from Google Maps.

YouTube Introduces AR Beauty Try-On, A Virtual Makeup Experience that Lets Viewers Try On Makeup Within YouTube App

There's no way to protest that beauty regimen tutorials and makeup reviews are increasingly becoming more popular content on YouTube. Ask any of your girlfriends who are into beauty fad and you'll immediately get a nod they get most of their makeup skills from YouTube.

Thanks to thousands of YouTube content creators who regularly feed viewers with tutorials and beauty products reviews for their millions of followers.

Now, in another Augmented Reality (AR) initiative from Google, the company seeks to give YouTubers a notch higher experience when watching makeup tutorials on its YouTube app. With the launch of AR Beauty Try-On, viewers can now virtually try on makeup within the YouTube app.

Here's How YouTube's AR Beauty Try-On Works

Once available, your iOS YouTube screen will be split into two: makeup tutorial actively playing at the top, a stream from your own front camera at the bottom. And right within that screen, a palate of colors (maybe a shade of lipstick) can be tapped and virtually applied to your own lips and you'll immediately see how it looks on your lips in real-time.

It's really one powerful feature that should help you as a consumer decide what to buy next.

How YouTube's AR Beauty Try-On Benefits Brands

Other than casual customers who turn to YouTube for beauty tips and reviews, there's another real winner here: brands. Brands including M·A·C Cosmetics can easily tap YouTube's pool of influencers and launch AR Beauty Try-On campaigns to promote their products to over two billion monthly viewers.

This Augmented Reality App Lets You Create Your Own Portal, Teleport to New Places (iOS)

Google says it already tested this new, immersive YouTube experience and revealed that 30 percent of viewers activated the AR experience in the YouTube iOS app, spending over 80 seconds on average trying on lipstick virtually.

Source: Google

5 Handy Google Sheet Tricks To Help You Work Fast & Save Time

Just like Microsoft's Excel, Google Sheet has equally powerful functions hidden up its sleeve. It can help you do routinary, mundane tasks fast and perform time-saving complex operations.

With Google Sheet, being an open-source software and with its collaboration support, it's likely that you'll end up using the app more often than not. It's one indispensable tool every web master and virtual assistant can't live without.

While you may not use below's list of useful Google Sheet functions everyday, it pays to be familiar and well-verse with these shortcuts. We hand-picked this shortlist of five essential Google Sheets hacks to help you save time in dealing with spreadsheets.

1. Use SPLIT function and obtain the first word from a phrase

Suppose you want to extract the first word from a string in a Google Sheet column. You can use SPLIT() function to split a string and obtain first word , as follows:

=index(SPLIT(A2, " "), 0, 1)

With the above function, a string “10042 Ferrara” yields “10042”.

To obtain the n word, just replace 1 with n accordingly.

2. Use REGEXEXTRACT to retrieve number from a string

Suppose you have this data in a column and you wish to obtain the price

<p>Lined Linen Tunic with Silk Hem</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>RRP    $99.95</strong></p>

You can do so with REGEXEXTRACT function to extract the price, as follows:

=REGEXEXTRACT(C2, "[0-9]*\.[0-9]+[0-9]+")

3. Using CONTACT to combine multiple values

Suppose in Column A you want to get the first word and combine it with the value in Column J, you can achieve it using CONCAT function.

=concat( index(SPLIT(A2, " "), 0, 1), concat("-", J2) )

Or use ampersand to combine multiple values:

="RRP "&value(REGEXEXTRACT(E12, "[0-9]*\.[0-9]+[0-9]+"))

4. Use SUBSTITUTE() & RegexReplace() to search and replace

Say you have a column of data that contains HTML ASCII codes and you want to get rid of them. Here's how you do it:

=SUBSTITUTE(B2," ", "")

Or you can go creative, do a nested SUBSTITUTE

=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(B2, "</p>", ""),"<p>", "")

Or you can go use RegExReplace to get rid all HTML tags

=RegexReplace( B2, "<\/\w+>|<\w+.*?>", "" )

Or a combination of Substitute and RegexReplace

=SUBSTITUTE(RegexReplace( B3, "<\/\w+>|<\w+.*?>", "" ),"&nbsp;", " " )

3 Things You Didn't Know Google Spreadsheet Can Do For You (Part 1)

5. Use VLOOKUP to search by keyword and return a specified cell from another sheet

Google Sheet's vertical lookup is a powerful function you need to master. It lets you search down the first column of a range for a key and returns the value of a specified cell in the row found.

If that doesn't make sense, imagine you have Sheet14 containing sku and color columns

Sheet14

And wanted to append the color initial found inside a separate table from Sheet15

Sheet15

You can do a quick search using VLOOKUP and return the color initial (from Sheet15) by providing color from Sheet14.

The full formula:

=VLOOKUP(I2, Sheet15!A1:B7,2, false)

Where I2 is the keyword, Sheet15!A1:B7 is the range, and 2 is column position from Sheet15 we want to retrieve.

Excel Gets OCR Support, Lets You Snap Tables and Convert Into Editable Spreadsheet

So next time you are asked to update a Google Sheet and do dead boring, repetitive tasks, try to look around inside Google Sheet list of functions and see if you can automate stuff and save huge amount of time in the process.

Create Single Multilingual Google Form and Display Questions Based on Selected Language

Google Forms, without a doubt, is still the best polls creation tool available to date. It's a free service from Google packed with all the essential features that make it tad easy to create quizzes or surveys on the fly.

While Google Form has all the components needed to create surveys real quick, it can be disappointing to note that the platform lacks the ability to collect users' inputs using the latter's language of choice. Google Form doesn't have multilingual support yet. However, as what the popular adage goes, there's always a way out.

In this article, we'll show you how you can easily create a single multilingual Google Form that prompts users their preferred language before finally asking survey questions. This is not a perfect solution but offers a neat workaround to collect users' info using their preferred language.

If you know a much better way, please buzz us off.

How To Create Single Multilingual Google Form

For the sake of this tutorial, we'll be re-creating this Demo Multilingual Google Form I previously built. Notice how it prompts you with preferred language before finally asking actual questions.

1. First off, you'll need to go and create your first Google Form. Give your form a sensible name.

2. Let's create your first question. Your first question should be of Multiple Choice type that asks users their preferred language. You can add as many language as you can.

   

3. Let's add at least three sections. In this tutorial, we'll be supporting three languages, hence, the three sections. Google Form's section works like a group that lets you separate your poll questions.

   

4. Each of this section holds the initial poll question from each supported language. So your three sections may look like these:

   

   

   

5. Now, scroll up and navigate back to your first question (Preferred Language prompt). Click any of the options to bring the destination selection box. At this point, you can now instruct Google Form to jump to English section when English option is selected, Go to section X (Spanish) if Spanish is selected, and so on and so forth.

   

If you wish to create additional questions for each supported language, just add another three sections and redo steps three to five above.

All responses will be automatically stored in a Google Sheet, and each question and answer gets its own column in that sheet.

Extensis Fonts Lets You Access, Use Google Fonts In Your Google Documents

Creating a multilingual Google Form may not be as straight-forward as you might think. Until Google rolls out an update to their poll-creation platform, we can take refuge at the above method to add a multi-language support to Google Forms.

Listen Google Podcasts on Desktop Web Browser Without Google Podcasts App

Trying to get its share from the pie in a market dominated by Apple, Google Podcasts was launched back in 2018 exclusively for Android, allowing non-Apple users to discover and enjoys shows at their fingertips. Google Podcasts democratizes podcast discovery and consumption, allowing podcast creators to connect with millions of untapped Android users around the world.

The app uses Google's algorithm that recommends shows based on people's listening habits. It has all the features we are all familiar with as a podcast app.

In spite of being a Google technology, Google Podcasts sadly lacks the ability to be played on a desktop or in a web browser. One has to download the dedicated Android app so you can access and enjoy publicly available shows.

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Now, if you're curious about how to listen to Google Podcasts on a desktop web browser, here's a neat trick.

Here's how to stream Google Podcasts on desktop web browsers

1. Obtain Google Podcasts episode feed URL. To do that, open the podcast episode on your Google Podcasts Android tap and then click the three-dot menu button in the top right corner, then click Share. Copy the URL or email it to a friend.

   

   The generated Google Podcasts feed URL normally look like this: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed={a-very-long-hashed-feed-url}

2. Rename the URL. Now, just rename the URL to https://podcasts.google.com?feed={a-very-long-hashed-feed-url} to make it playable straight in a web browser (no need for Android app).

See Google Podcasts in a web player in action.

Being able to play Google Podcasts on a desktop web player is prove useful if you want to share a podcast episode to a friend who doesn't have an Android device.

Do you find this entry useful? Share it to your friend or subscribe below.

LOOK: Upcoming Google Chrome Feature Lets You Organize Active Tabs into Groups

The Google Chromium team is currently brewing a new feature to its beloved Google Chrome browser that lets you mitigate tab overload, or at least that's what they try to solve.

Judging from the above screenshot, the upcoming release of Google Chrome enables users to declutter and organize multiple active tabs into one or more groups.

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Such a feature is sure a relief for those power user who constantly juggles between multiple tabs. You can simply move your work-related active tabs into one group and separate the others, creating a less messy working environment.

Google Chrome is not the first browser that implements such Tab Groups feature. In fact, Firefox used to incorporate it first but later discontinued because only a small number of Firefox users were actually using the feature and that maintaining such unpopular feature turned out to be costly for the Firefox team.

5 Best Memory-Saving Chrome Add-ons to Help You Manage Tab Overload

Tab Group is one of the biggest updates of Google Chrome so it might take a couple of months to finally hit the online shore. For the meantime, check out these third-party Chrome extensions that help you manage tab overload.

How To: Browse, Extract Contents Inside Zipped Files in Google Drive

You probably have noticed that while inside Google Drive, one cannot easily extract nor preview zipped files straight from Drive's interface. Google Drive is still deprived of that native functionality and one has to manually download the entire archived file to obtain its contents.

I've been using Google Drive since its initial rollout. Although not my main virtual drive for backups, I use it primarily to store personal documents and some work-related files. And Google Drive being developed by Google gives you tight integrations with other G Apps.

And for occasions when you need to recover a file inside a large compressed ZIP file hosted on Google Drive, you better skip the hassle of manually downloading it yourself and just browse it on-the-fly.

Use Mover.io To Copy, Move Files From FTP To Google Drive, DropBox, SkyDrive and Vice Versa

Here we will show you a smarter way to unzip archived files and browse extracted straight from Google Drive.

Browse Contents Inside Zipped Files On Google Drive

The trick is easy. While you're on your Drive's folder, just right-click any zipped file and click on Connect more apps. Just search for “Zip Extractor”.

Once installed, refresh your Drive's page. You can right-click again the zip file and Google Drive now gives you the option to open it with Zip Extractor.

Zip Extractor will prompt you a one-time authorization request so it can do its thing. After that, you can unzip and browse zipped files with its neat interface. You can also selectively extract specific files inside a zipped file. Just uncheck

Another decent Drive app is Zip, Unzip App. Just like Zip Extractor, it lets you preview and browse zip files straight from Google Drive. What I like about Zip, Unzip App is that it quickly gives you a unique URL for each file found inside your zip file. The UI may need attention though but for a simple task of obtaining a specific file inside a ZIP file on Google Drive? I would go for Zip, Unzip App.

Conclusion

There you go! Google Drive definitely needs a lot of catching up when it comes to dealing with common file types like ZIP files. Being able to preview what's inside a zipped file is already a built-in feature in DropBox, but not in Google Drive.

New Chrome Extension by Google Scans All Your Leaked Passwords Online, Alerts You To Update Your Credentials

Google launches Password Checkup, a Chrome extension that alerts you if your login information appear in a data breach known to Google.

Several months ago, the internet is awash with news of data breaches and scandals perpetrated by bounty hunters, ransomware and bored security scientists. A handful of apps and services have been affected including Yahoo, Spotify, Netflix, Facebook among others.

The incident expectedly sparked outrage, prompting tech companies to revisit and beef up their cybersecurity and alert its millions of users to change their passwords immediately.

Yours truly wasn't spared from these leaks. A few months ago I discovered that my Spotify account had been used somewhere by a device I don't recognize, which fortunately had been patched up by Spotify. And of all the horrors of data leaks affecting my own personal account, the one that takes the cake: I discovered that my Gmail login information was publicly being dumped in a public domain for everyone to see.

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That's where I began to take a serious look and acknowledged that there was indeed a data breach going on, prompting me to add few more security layers to all my online accounts including setting up two-factor authentication (2FA). Lucky to those who constantly monitor their online activities, but for those uninformed users who remained clueless of their exposed credentials, they might be in big trouble.

And that's what inspires Google to launch Password Checkup, a Chrome extension that alerts you when your passwords are no longer safe and prompts to re-secure your account.

How does it work?

As soon as you install Password Checkup from Chrome web store, every time you sign in to any sites, a hashed and encrypted copy of your login information are sent to Google in the background and it alerts you when your username and password are publicly exposed on the web. Password Checkup will then prompt you to reset your password immediately if it's deemed unsafe to use.

How does Google know if my passwords are no longer safe?

Google keeps a copy of virtually any dumped usernames and passwords publicly accessible online. And that makes it possible for Password Checkup to do a quick lookup against Google's internal database of around four billion usernames and passwords crawled from popular dumping sites like Pastebin and Github.

Google's Password Checkup is not the first of its kind that helps you identify if your accounts have been compromised. Popular password manager app 1Password previously gets Watchtower integration that compares your credentials against Have I Been Pwned's database.

How To: Watch YouTube, Netflix on Sticky, Floating Window While Keeping Other Apps Opened

Ever wanted to watch your favourite movies and TV shows on Netflix or YouTube while opening other work-related apps? Well now, you can continue to look busy and pretend working while enjoying your guilty pleasure movies on Netflix and YouTube.

Being able to dock YouTube or Netflix videos on a nice, overlay window that floats over other opened apps is one great feature Google Chrome and Firefox could introduce to its core. Sadly though, that picture-in-picture (PiP) feature is currently not supported in their recent version for both Windows and Mac. So we are all left in the dark, given the classic option of staying within the browser to continue watching your favorite stuff.

But, someone decided to change that.

A Chrome extension called Picture in Picture for YouTube & Other adds an unofficial PiP support for Chrome that works well with YouTube, Facebook and Netflix. Which means, you can pop out virtually any active playing video into a small, draggable mini-mode window that sits nicely on top of other opened apps.

Watch Netflix, YouTube in Foreground While Keeping Other Windows Opened

Picture in Picture for YouTube & Other promises to give you the best viewing experience (and distractions) on popular sites like YouTube, Netflix and Facebook. Essentially, it lets you watch Netflix or YouTube videos on overlay mini-window that floats over other opened windows.

Here's How to Watch Netflix In Floating, Resizable Windows

1. Launch Google Chrome and install Picture in Picture for YouTube & Other. Installation should take no more than a minute. Once installed, you should see this icon:

   

2. Now, go to Netflix or YouTube and play a video of interest.
3. Once a video begins to load, click on that tiny PiP icon. Netflix or YouTube video player should automatically dock at the bottom right of your screen as an overlay. Feel free to drag or resize it.
4. Now, head back to whatever it is you're working and continue juggling emails or pretend you're busy writing stuff, etc.

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The really nice thing about this Chrome add-on is that it continues to play your Netflix or YouTube videos in a nice resizable floating overlay even if you're opening other apps like office apps, CRMs, code editor, and just about anything. Just make sure the video is actively playing in a tab.

Here's me watching Polar on Netflix while opening my code editor.

Here's yours truly listening to TED Talks on YouTube

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Now feel free to share the good news below using social buttons below or subscribe via email to get notified for goodies like this in the future.

Drag Declutters Your Inbox, Turns Gmail Into Manageable, Organised Lists Similar to Trello's Boards

No matter how sophisticated online project management tools have become, chances are you still have this inseparable dependence on this classic, antiquated messaging platform ever created: emails.

Juggling through tens to hundreds of emails a day is the new normal nowadays, all the more if you work online. As a web developer myself, I constantly get batted with emails coming from sources like Basecamp, Asana, Project Turf and Trello. Add to that are the random newsletters, pesky marketing, and social media alerts.

And I tell you, sifting through unread emails is ain't fun.

Thankfully, Nick Timms has come up with a clever idea. And it's no clichéd idea, as the way you engage in emails is now about to change.

His recently launched app Drag, currently available as a Chrome extension, seeks to allay your email fatigue (or at least makes emails a lot less boring).

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What is Drag?

Drag is a browser add-on that transforms your Gmail messages into a manageable, much-organized list just like Trello. If you're familiar with the simplicity and intuitiveness of Trello, you'll surely love Drag.

Once you install Drag, you no longer get to see this boring list of email messages:



Instead, your inbox gets upgraded into this neat, intuitive layout:



And the fun doesn't end there. You can drag items from one column to another. Sweet.

Installation

Getting up & running is no rocket science. All you need to do is to install the Chrome add-on and connect your Gmail account. It's that easy. See Drag in action below:

The Good

Being able to organize your inbox messages into a Trello-like, draggable Boards is a welcome and refreshing take. And I think Nick's team must have hit the sweet spot for doing it first.

The Bad

As with the rest of the apps in the wild, there will always be some limitations. Drag currently supports Google Chrome and you can only use it on a single Gmail account. Multi-Gmail accounts support is in the works and Drag team hopes to roll this out within this month.

How To: Automatically Send Email Messages At Later Time

Rummaging through emails is the first thing I do in the morning. And I admit it, it's the same thing I do before I hit the bed. That chronic habit stems not from wanting to do and meet those tasks head-on, but because I want to know the size of my tasks in a given day, set priorities, flag those that need immediate attention, and see if I can spend more time on Facebook ranting by dropping the others in my procrastination basket. And Drag is sure going to alter that.

How To: Download Blocked Email Attachment in Gmail — Bypass Gmail Virus Scanner

Ever ran into a problem trying to download an email attachment in Gmail but you can’t because Gmail's virus scanner says it's a virus and unsafe to download?

Well, you’re not alone.

Few days ago, I ran into the same problem trying to retrieve my old email attachment in Gmail I sent five years ago. The file contains an executable file I wrapped in a zip file. But Gmail deems it as a malware and they cannot allow me to download the file at all cost (see screenshot below).

Gmail's Addon Streak Lets You Monitor, Track If Emails Are Read, Viewed By Recipients

Here's an explanation I got from their support page:

As a security measure to prevent potential viruses, Gmail doesn’t allow you to send or receive executable files (such as files ending in .exe). Executable files can contain harmful code that might cause malicious software to download to your computer. In addition, Gmail doesn’t allow you to send or receive corrupted files, files that don’t work properly.

It does makes sense, and it's a proactive step imposed by Google to prevent malicious programs to get inside and contaminate our computers.

But in case you need to access blocked email attachment and you're certain it's just false positive, then, here's a neat trick on how to circumvent this restriction and download blocked attachment in Gmail.

Bypass Gmail's Virus Scanner and Download Blocked Gmail Attachments

The trick is easy. Just launch your Gmail account in a third party desktop app like Outlook for Windows or Mail for Mac.

For Mac Just launch Mail app. Be sure to add your Gmail account in your Mac and navigate to that account to get all your emails.

Once you get there, rummage through your inbox and search for the email attachment you want to download.

How To: Automatically Send Email Messages At Later Time

For Windows Be sure you have your Outlook or Windows Mail correctly setup. If you're on Windows 10, the setup should be pretty straight-forward.

Once your Outlook is up, just search for that particular email attachment and you should be able to download it without any problems.

If you find this tip helpful, would appreciate if you can share it to your friends :)

How To: Send, Save Quora Answers In Pocket and Read Offline

As someone on Quora once said, “Quora is a giant campfire where random people come along, sit down, and tell their stories”.

Quora, without a doubt, is one great platform where Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, James Wales of Wikipedia and countless others including world-renowned NASA scientists, astronauts and engineers converge and embark into a stimulating and immersive discussion of just about anything.

So it's normally safe to assume that Quora hosts a plethora of smart & insightful discussions, answers and thoughts from qualified & experienced people with different professional background which are sure a delight to read.

Curiosity.com: Get Answers To Life Biggest Questions From World's Brightest Minds

And if you're like me who doesn't have the luxury of time to immerse and browse through Quora during the day, you probably have wished to just feed those interesting reads to your favourite news reader app like Pocket so you can read them later offline.

The thing is: Quora hasn't have this feature yet nor Pocket has integration support for our beloved Quora.

But fret not, there is a way out..

Add “Save To Pocket” Button In Quora for Offline Reading

Meet Quora Save To Pocket, a Google Chrome extension that allows you to push contents from Quora to Pocket. With this extension, you can save any answer, question or blog post to your Pocket account straight from your Quora feed. Sweet...

How it works

The add-on works this simply:

You install the Chrome extension. Once added, you connect the app to Pocket via the standard OAUTH authentication protocol, and you're done. Save to Pocket link should now automatically appear on every thread and answer on Quora, as seen below:

Wikipedia Gets Export-To-eBook Feature, Lets You Export Wikipedia Articles Into Instant Free e-Book

Pocket actually has its own vendor-specific browser extension that makes it easier to add links to your Pocket account. The problem with their official browser extensions, when used in Quora pages, is you can't selectively add those specific answers you find interesting. And considering how Quora renders its pages, Pocket's official add-ons meet an incompatibility with Quora as yet.



LINK: Quora Save To Pocket (Chrome)

Extensis Fonts Lets You Access, Use Google Fonts In Your Google Documents

Truth be told: Google Docs is one of the coolest word-editing software there is to get the job done like no other. Its collaborative editing and cloud-centric nature make it really a smart choice to make our digital lives a lot easier.

But despite its shiny reputation, Google Docs also has its surprising limitation: you won't be able to access and use thousands of sleek, custom fonts from Google Fonts collection. Yes, you read it right — Google hasn't pushed that feature yet to their Google Docs app which is being heavily relied by millions of users across the globe.

Filling this void is Extensis, a company specialising in font management software, who has launched Extensis Fonts.

Use custom Google Fonts in your Google Documents with Extensis Fonts (link)

3 Things You Didn't Know Google Spreadsheet Can Do For You

Extensis Fonts is a free Google Docs add-on that lets you access and use Google Fonts in your Google Docs files. So if you feel too limited and dissatisfied with Google Docs' built-in fonts, you've got to check out Extensis Fonts.

Getting Started

Now, let's get the ball rolling. Follow this guide on how to use custom Google Fonts in your Google Documents:

Step 1 Open any Google Document, or create a new one.

Step 2 From the Add-ons menu, click Get Add-ons

Step 3 In the Search Add-ons box, enter “Extensis Fonts” (without quotes)

Step 4 Select the Extensis Fonts add-on from the list.

Step 5 Click the Free button in the upper right hand corner.

Step 6 Click Accept to install the add-on to your Google Docs account.

Step 7 To launch the Extensis Fonts add-on, navigate to the menu and hit Add-ons > Extensis Fonts > Start.

You're done.

Once Extensis Fonts add-on is added to your Google Document, a new Extensis Font panel will be accessible on the right. This is where you access the thousands of Google Fonts collection and apply it to your Google Docs or current text selection.

PRO TIP: You can get Extensis Fonts to display only the trending and the most popular Google fonts by sorting it out accordingly.

Get Notified When A Collaborator Made Some Changes On A Shared Google Spreadsheet

Final Verdict:

Extensis Fonts is one cool Google Docs add-on you cannot miss. You may not need it every day, but in case you want to give your Google Docs a facelift, then you should check out Extensis Fonts. It's FREE.

LINK: Extensis Fonts 

Use Google Spreadsheet As Website's Time-Machine (Web Archive alternative)

This is the second and the last part of our tutorial on how to get the most out of Google Docs to get things done the clever way. In case you missed it, here's the first part: 3 Things You Didn't Know Google Spreadsheet Can Do For You (Part 1)

LICEcap Is The Best Alternative To Recordit To Screencast & Create High Quality GIFs

Web Archive is everyone's go-to place when they want to see how a specific website looks in the past. It's a wayback-machine that randomly creates snapshots of your site as reference so you can anytime check back when your site's gone awry in the future.

While Web Archive is one reliable tool to do just that, you cannot however specify how frequent a snapshot should be created. If you want to automatically create a site snapshop daily or weekly, then, Google Spreadsheet can do you a favor.

Using Google Sheet as Archive.org Alternative

Here's how:

1 Go to Screenshotmachine.com and create a FREE account. After sign up you will get an account key necessary for the API request.

2 Sign-in to your Google account and make a copy of this Google sheet (File > Make a copy).

3 Provide the required parameters as required like Account Key, URL to Capture and Capture Frequency.

4 Click Verify Now button to see if the API works or not. If it works, a new folder called Web page captures should be automatically created on your Google Drive account. This is where all screenshots will be saved.

Note: you’ll get a pop-up asking for authorization. Grant the necessary access.

5 Click Start Capturing button. You're done.

Depending on the capture frequency you specify, Google Sheet should automatically instructs Screenshotmachine.com to create a site snapshot and send it back to Google Drive.

mHotspot Is A FREE Alternative To Connectify That Turns Your Computer Into Wifi Hotspot

(3/3) Use Google Spreadsheet to Scrape Web Contents Online

One of my favorite features of Google Sheet is the importXML function which basically allows you to grab contents from another site. It's one pretty useful feature of Google Sheet as it saves you time especially if you're asked to web scrape or copy the entire contents of a site.

Watch this video below and see how web scraping can be done so easily using Google Documents Spreadsheets:



The information you get can then be imported to your website using the right apps and tools like WP All Import (if you're using WordPress as your site platform).

How To: Extract All Images Embedded In .DOC Word Documents All At Once

So next time you're asked to export the existing content of a website, then, importXML of Google Sheet is one nice function you can exploit.

3 Things You Didn't Know Google Spreadsheet Can Do For You (Part 1)

There's no denying that we are all slowly becoming too dependent on Google apps. From a simple task of digging the world's information down to locating the nearby coffee shop, we always turn to Google and get the information we want in the blink of an eye.

One of the best web services that Google has ever made for everyone is the Google Docs suite. Its powerful, cloud-centric features along with its ever-improving mobile app makes it really a mature and capable platform.

Open and View Online Documents of Any Format Directly On Your Browser without Downloading Them

But just as every finest web app available in the wild, there are things that you might have missed & didn't realized you could do with Google Sheet app. And in this post, we are going to explore some of the lesser-known Google Sheet hacks and tricks to make your digital life a lot easier.

3 Clever Uses of Google Sheets You Might Not Know Yet (Part 1)

(1/3) Use Google Spreadsheet to monitor website downtime and uptime

If you have a blog or website, you know exactly how important web monitoring apps like Pingdom and Uptime Party can be. These are apps designed to monitor your website's uptime that should alert you in real-time when your site is down or inaccessible. These website monitoring apps work great, but they often come with a price.

In case you need a FREE Pingdom alternative, you can turn to Google Spreadsheet and use it as a website monitoring tool to track your site's downtime and uptime. As with premium apps like Pingdom, you get instant email or SMS notification delivered straight to your inbox once your site is down.

The process should only take about a minute or so to setup, and you're good to go.

Here's how to get started:

1 Sign-in to your Google account and make a copy of this Google sheet (File > Make a copy)

2 Put your website URLs in cell B2 (comma separated) and your email address in cell B3. If you wish to receive alerts by text messages, put Yes in cell B4.

3 You’ll find a new Website Monitor menu in your Google Sheets toolbar. Click Initialize and you’ll get a pop-up asking for authorization. Grant the necessary access.

4 Go to the Website Monitor menu again and choose “Start Website Monitor” to begin the monitoring process. Close the Google Sheet.

That's it. Google Sheet should now monitor and alert you in real-time when your site goes down, as seen below:

Get Notified When A Collaborator Made Some Changes On A Shared Google Spreadsheet

CONTINUE: 3 Things You Didn't Know Google Spreadsheet Can Do For You (Part 2)