by Fadia, Ankit
36. How to block ads on websites
< 120 Seconds
Let’s admit it, no one likes ads. They are a waste of time, slow down your browsing experience, clog up valuable bandwidth and clutter up web pages. However, the good news is that it is possible for you to block ads from being displayed on your favourite websites with the help of the Adblock Plus browser extension. It is available as a free download from http://adblockplus.org and can be installed on most popular browsers.
Once installed, Adblock Plus will automatically block all ads on websites you visit and prevent them from getting displayed on your screen, including the following:
Adblock Plus and the Adblock Plus logo are registered trademarks of Eyeo GmbH, used with permission.
1. Google ads in search results
2. YouTube video ads at the start of a video
3. Facebook ads
4. Banner ads
5. Pop-up ads
Moreover, with AdBlock Plus it is very easy for you to toggle between enabling and disabling ads on a particular website based on your personal preferences, by simply clicking on the AdBlock Plus icon in your URL address bar. Not that there will be too many occasions when you want to enable ads on a website!
Adblock Plus and the Adblock Plus logo are registered trademarks of Eyeo GmbH, used with permission.
With AdBlock Plus in your browser, you will never need to worry about being bombarded with annoying ads on your favourite websites and instead will be able to enjoy an ad-free browsing experience.
37. How to update your Facebook status or tweet in the future
< 60 Seconds
Have you ever wanted to update your Facebook status at a future time and date when you may not actually have the time to do it? Have you ever wanted to tweet something in the future, but type it out now in the present? Perhaps send out a reminder for an upcoming event that you are organizing or managing?
Postcron is a web-based free app that allows you to schedule Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets at the predefined time and date in the future.
To use this app start your browser and connect to Postcron (http://www.postcron.com) and sign in to your Facebook account.
You will need to select the time zone that you are in, so that Postcron can accurately update your Facebook status in the future at a predefined time and date specified by you.
Once you have connected the Postcron app to your Facebook account, you can specify what message you wish to post on your Facebook account and at what future time and date. Click on Schedule and let Postcron do the rest. Not only can you schedule plain text updates in the future, you can use Postcron to send out updates with photos and links as well.
You can also connect Postcron to your Twitter account and Facebook pages that you manage and send out updates or messages in the future.
Postcron and the Postcron logo are registered trademarks of Postcron Inc., used with permission.
Several other apps allow you update your social networking accounts in the future. Some of them are:
Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com)
LaterBro (http://laterbro.com)
TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com)
Social Tomorrow (http://socialtomorrow.com)
38. How to save money on your mobile phone data plans
< 60 Seconds
Do you want to save money on your mobile phone data plans and get more data on your phone at the same price? Normally, whenever you need details about your phone data usage, you either have to guess or rely on the usage trackers provided by your mobile phone provider, which may not be completely reliable. This leads to unexpectedly exorbitant bills.
You can stop guessing your phone data usage and put an end to exorbitant bills by getting the Onavo Count app on your phone. It is available as a free download for both the Android and the iPhone platforms. Once installed on your phone, Onavo Count will tell you how much data has been used on your phone by each app segregated by 2G/3G/4G/LTE, so that you can monitor, tweak and control your data usage.
Onavo Count and the Onavo Count logo are registered trademarks of Onavo Mobile Ltd, used with permission.
It is also possible for you to extend your data plan by installing the Onavo Extend app on your phone (also available for free for both Android and iPhone devices). Once installed on your phone, it will compress your data usage by up to 500 per cent, hence allowing you to get five times the data at the same price.
Onavo Extend and the Onavo Extend logo are registered trademarks of Onavo Mobile Ltd, used with permission.
39. How to organize, search, manage and share your pictures easily
< 300 Seconds
Nowadays, taking photos has become extremely easy with high-quality cameras built into smartphones and tablets. The popularity of social networking websites has made it even more compelling for people to capture even mundane aspects of their daily life using pictures.
However, a common problem that many people face is how to store, organize, edit, share and publish all their photos in an easy manner. The answer to all your photo-related problems lies in the wonderful free Picasa software from Google, which is available as a free download from http://picasa.google.com. In classic Google style, Picasa does a fantastic job of automatically searching, importing and organizing all your photos and videos from various sources on your hard drive and the Internet into different albums. These albums are then automatically classified by Picasa based on their year, folder name, import source (the Internet or local hard drive), geographical location and also by the people in the pictures. This makes it very simple for you to search for specific photos using Picasa.
Picasa also makes sharing your photos and videos a breeze by seamlessly allowing you to upload your photos to a web album (which can be shared with the public or specific people), publish them on a blog or just email them directly to friends.
Picasa also makes it very easy for users to do the basic editing, cropping and retouching of photos from within the app itself. What makes editing fun with Picasa are its various image-processing options. They can really help you make your photos a lot of fun and perhaps even more professional. Try the Pencil Sketch, Cinemascope, HDR-ish, Cross Process and Focal Zoom options for some very cool-looking pictures.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
If you travel quite a bit or simply want to show off your exotic travel adventures to your friends, you can even use Picasa to Geotag your pictures on Google Earth. Simply select all the photos you wish to Geotag in the Picasa app.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Click on Tools > Geotag> Geotag with Google Earth and this will open the Google Earth app. To Geotag your pictures, simply navigate the entire world to the location where you took the photos, position the crosshairs icon and then click on the Geotag button.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Google Earth and the Google Earth logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Now you can share these photos with your friends with the relevant geographical location Geotags visible!
One of my favourite features in Picasa is the Picture Collage feature that allows you to create a collage out of a bunch of selected photos in a matter of a few seconds. If you just came back from a memorable vacation and want to create a collage out of all your favourite photos or if it’s a special occasion and you want to surprise a loved one by creating a collage of some special photos, then in simply select the photos that you would like to use in Picasa and click on Create > Picture Collage.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
The best part is that Picasa gives you lots of options and ways to completely
customize the collage based on your personal preferences. It is also possible for you to individually click on any photo in the collage to change its position, angle and size. Moreover, if you don’t like the overall shape of the collage or the positioning of photos within the collage, you can make use of the Scramble Collage and Shuffle Pictures button below the pictures.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Using the left column in the Picture Collage feature of Picasa, it is possible to further customize the collage to suit your personal preferences and requirements.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
You can click on the Page Format drop-down menu to change the size of the collage to any size of your choice depending upon where you plan to use it.
You can also choose from a range of styles (Mosaic, Frame Mosaic, Grid and others).
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Once you are happy with the style, size and look of the collage that you have created, you simply need to click on the Create Collage button in the left column for it to be processed.
The best feature in Picasa is called Face Detection, which has built-in intelligence to scan through your complete photo collection and detect faces of all your friends and identify them by their names! Whenever Picasa detects a new face for the first time or finds a face it can’t recognize, it will ask you to give a new name to it. Once you have given a name to a new face that was found, Picasa will automatically search the rest of the photos and recognize other photos of that same person. No need to individually open each photo and tag your friends one by one. Once Picasa has tagged photos of a particular person or face, it also allows you to use the search feature to search for photos of your friends and family members by name. The only thing that Picasa can’t do, unfortunately, is make us look prettier and nicer!
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
A very cool experimental feature in Picasa is the Passport Photo functionality that allows you to convert absolutely any photo of your choice into a passport-sized photo with a single click of the mouse button. Most countries require the dimensions of a passport-sized photo to be approximately 2 x 2 inches or 35 x 45 mm. All you need is a good high-quality colour printer and even you can start creating your own passport photos at home with the help of Picasa.
To create a passport photo, all you need to do is to select the photo of your choice that you want to convert into a passport photo. Click on Tools > Experimental > Passport Photo and, within a few seconds, Picasa will convert the selected picture into a passport-sized photo, all ready to be printed immediately with an attached printer. If you are not too happy about how the passport photo was framed by Picasa by default, you can crop the photo according to your needs before processing it with the Passport Photo feature.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
If you are a heavy Picasa user, it probably will make sense to further integrate Picasa with your Gmail account. There is a useful Gmail Labs feature called Picasa previews in mail, which, like the name suggests, shows you photo previews within Gmail whenever you receive a Picasa photo album link from any of your friends. To enable this feature, simply log in to your Gmail account and click on Settings > Labs > Scroll down to Picasa preview in mail > Click Enable.
Now whenever you receive a photo album in the form of a Picasa link, you will be able to see the photo previews within your Gmail account itself.
Picasa and the Picasa logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.
It is also possible for you to download the Picasa mobile app to your smartphone so that you can manage, view and share your photos with your friends from your Android or iOS device.
40. How to automatically back up everything on your mobile phone
< 300 Seconds
If your mobile phone ever goes missing, won’t you be relieved if you had backed up your data at a secure place so that you can easily restore it? I recommend that all mobile phone users back up all their data on a regular basis.
If you use Android, Google allows you to automatically back up all your apps and device settings data to your Google account, so that in case you ever have to change your device, you can easily restore your lost data. The Google Backup and Restore service allows you to back up your device settings and application data like your contacts, calendar, apps that you installed from your Google Play account, browser bookmarks, user dictionary, Wi-Fi passwords and other data. All this data is backed up and securely stored on the Google server and can be easily restored whenever required. To enable automatic backup and restoration on your Android phone, go to Settings > Privacy and enable the Back up my data and Automatic restore options.
The Google Backup and Restore feature is a registered trademark of Google Inc., used with permission.
The Google Backup and Restore feature is a registered trademark of Google Inc., used with permission.
Next go to Settings > Accounts and sync > Select your Gmail Account > Select all the things that you wish to back up. The Google Backup and Restore feature is now set up on your mobile phone and in case you ever need to change your mobile device, then you simply need to log in to the same Gmail account using your new device and you will be able to easily restore all your backed up data.
Although Google’s built-in Backup and Restore feature is quite useful, it comes with its own limitations. It does not back up your valuable SMS messages and call logs. If you want to back up all the SMS text messages and call logs from your Android phone, then I recommend that you use the G Cloud Backup app.
The Google Backup and Restore feature is a registered trademark of Google Inc., used with permission.
It is one of the best apps for effortlessly backing up just about everything from your Android phone (photos, videos, messages, call logs, browser data, documents, device settings etc.) to a secure cloud so that you never lose any of it. The G Cloud Backup app is available as a free download from the Google Play App Store and gives you 1 GB of free storage space where you can back up data from your Android phone.
G Cloud Backup and the G Cloud Backup logo are registered trademarks of the Genie9 Corporation, used with permission.
Once you launch G Cloud Backup on your Android phone, it will ask you to create an account.
Once you have created an account, G Cloud Backup will ask you to choose data from your phone that you wish to safely back up on its secure cloud. Press the Done button when you have finished selecting the items you wish to back up.
G Cloud Backup and the G Cloud Backup logo are registered trademarks of the Genie9 Corporation, used with permission.
G Cloud Backup will now automatically back up all the selected data from your Android phone to its secure cloud on a regular basis. You can press the Settings button to choose various settings related to the back-up process. For example, you can schedule the back-up at specific times or you can specify that the back-up should only happen when your phone is connected on Wi-Fi.
G Cloud Backup and the G Cloud Backup logo are registered trademarks of the Genie9 Corporation, used with permission.
In case you lose your phone or switch to a new phone and want to restore your data, simply install G Cloud Backup app and press the Existing User/Restore button and you will be able to restore all the backed-up data.
On the other hand, if you are using an iOS device, it is easy to configure your device to automatically back up all the important data to Apple’s iCloud storage space. By default, every user gets 5 GB of free storage space on the iCloud. In case that is not enough, you can always purchase more storage space.
To enable automatic back-up to the iC
loud on your iOS device, simply press Settings > iCloud > Store & Backup > Enable the iCloud Backup option. Once you enable this option, all your contacts, photos, email, documents, device settings and accounts will be automatically backed up to the iCloud whenever your iOS device is plugged in, locked and connected to Wi-Fi. To choose what data from your iOS device gets automatically backed up to your iCloud, go to Settings > iCloud and in the right pane select all the data you want to back up. Once you have enabled the back-up to the iCloud feature, even if you lose your device or switch to a new device, you can easily restore all your backed-up data from the cloud.
In case your Wi-Fi access is slow and you have a lot of data to back up, it is also possible for you to back up all the important data from your iOS device to your computer using iTunes. Connect your iOS device to your computer using the USB cable and in the left pane of iTunes, under devices, right-click on your device and select Backup and your data will be backed up on your computer.
To restore your backed-up data, connect your new device to your computer and, inside iTunes, right-click on the device and select the Restore from Backup option.
41. How to send canned responses to emails automatically
< 60 Seconds
There are so many situations in our professional and personal lives in which we are required to send an email with the same text to different people. Normally, we have to type these standard emails over and over again, which is a colossal waste of time. A trick that many people use is to save a set of standard replies in a Notepad file and then manually copy-paste them into emails before sending them out. However, that too is quite inefficient. This is where a Gmail Labs feature called Canned responses can be a time-saver.
