We’ve all experienced it – that infuriating moment just a day or two after a password change when you realize that you’ve forgotten what you chose (although you’re certain that it was witty and brilliant).  In truth, there isn’t much that I can do for your lost passwords… but I can probably help you create *better* passwords that might be easier to remember.

The recommendations in the articles referenced above will help you understand what makes a password strong.  If you don’t like those, there a millions of other sites – try searching for “how to make a strong password”.  To summarize the common themes, anything that relates to you is bad (names, addresses, etc).  Things that are random and not English are good (extra points for numbers and symbols).

You might be wondering “but then how do I remember it?”.  I’ve given this some thought in past so I figured that I would share my secret.  Here is what I do:

1. Choose a completely random, absolutely impossible to guess phrase like “i ate a watermelon once while naked at the zoo”.  Make yourself laugh, be witty or stupid, but for gosh sakes pick something that you’ll remember!

2. Create an algorithm.  Be creative but not crazy – you’ll need to remember how you did this later to recover the password.  Here are some examples:

- take the first letter of each word in your phrase (iaawownatz)

- take all the vowels only (iaeaaeeooeieaeaeoo – with the current example phrase this would be bonkers)

- before each 3 letter word, count the letters, then add the 3 letter word, then count the letters until the next 3 letter word, etc (1ate27zoo – so much work for a rather lame password, but it shows how far you can take this)

Ok so that’s a fun guideline for creating crazy but not impossible passwords, but we are advised not to use the same password for each site, so how many phrases do you need?  Very few!  You could include the name of the site in your password phrase.  For example, if my phrase was “I’m a lover not a hater”, I could include nytimes.com in there to make “I’m a nytimes.com lover not a hater”.  My first letter password would be “ianlnah” for nytimes, but “iacinah” for CNN and “iaginah” for Gmail.  Not bad eh?

If you’ve followed along so far, at this point you have a unique, strange, password for every site in your life.  I recommend that you do yourself one last favor – create another pass phrase for the really sensitive sites, like banks.  The burden of protecting your data increases as the sensitivity increases – so a bank is obligated to do cartwheels to protect you, but yahoo.com isn’t (as much).  It makes sense to have at least two levels of security in your system.

Finally, for those who think the above solution is a waste of time, you could ignore all that and use a password management tool.  This is a place that saves all your passwords behind a master password.  I’ll leave it to you to decide which you believe is more secure – personally, I trust my way of remembering passwords far more than I trust any one company to hold my data – but that’s just my paranoia speaking…  If you want to try some out, take a look at LastPass or 1Password.

Enjoy creating your new passwords!

~ab

1. Fast greetings: I sign most emails with either “Thanks, {Return}Alex” or “Best, {Return}Alex”.  To save some time, I use “t,” and “b,” for those phrases, respectively.  This permits me to quickly finish an email and then send (using Alt + s in Microsoft Outlook or Tab then Space in Gmail).

2. Personal data: If I type “Addy”, Texter types out my home address.  ”mynum” types out my phone number.  Both of these are simple time savers that I’ve used a lot while communicating travel plans or shipping information.  When I was in the UK, I used “uknum” for my local phone number.

3. Loyalty info: “starwood#”, “skymiles#”, “wbs#” and about a dozen other word + # combinations make up my library of travel numbers.  As a frequent traveler, I got tired to looking at my cards or a spreadsheet to keep track of all my numbers.  Instead, I just type “hhonors#” and Texter inserts my Hilton Honors number.

4. Dates: “dt” and “dts” are the Texter codes I use for long date and short date respectively.  One of the great features of Texter is the inclusion of built-in commands.  In this case, I put %dl in the replacement text for “dt”.  This tells Texter that when I type “dt”, I want today’s long date (Monday, 30th of July 2010).  %ds produces a mm/dd/yy value instead.

5. Email lists: I find that email programs are generally quite annoying when you want to maintain groups of people in mailing lists.  For each program you have to setup your contacts into lists.  Instead, if I have a group of people that I’m emailing often, I just create a “@emaillist” hotstring, which tells Texter to put in my list of email addresses.  This can be a great time saver if you switch between Outlook and Gmail regularly.

6. Quick replies: For the same reason as number 5, Form emails are another great use for Texter.  If I type @Comment into Gmail or Outlook, Texter asks me who I want to write to (a little prompt appears) and then puts in “Hi person, Thanks for your comment on Justanasterisk.com. I’ve posted a reply to your message which you can see on the site.  Best, ab”  Obviously, person is the name that Texter asked me to provide in the beginning.  If you want to try this, include %p in your script.

7. Meeting details: Meetings inevitably require a ton of similar information.  One thing that I use constantly is “mtg#’ which inserts my dial-in number and meeting ID for the participants.

In the end, Texter is a tool that can really speed up your Windows work.  I started with a small number of uses, but the list has grown.  I don’t recommend trying to think of every use for Texter at once.  Instead, it’s easiest just to start using it for a few things and then add as the inspiration strikes you.  Also, make sure you go back and delete the Texter hotstrings that you don’t really use.  I find that this helps avoid problems and unexpected results.

Good luck and share any cool ideas you have in the comments!

~ab

But anyway…

Here is what is really important:  Gmail has always supported signatures, but they were lame. You could write in plain text and split it into multiple lines. This all changed today when Gmail introduced “rich text” signatures, so I thought I’d walk through what you can do now.

Part 1: Rich is mostly about formatting

To see your signature, go to Settings and then the General tab. You’ll see the signature window about half-way down the page.

As you can see from my screenshot above, rich formatting gives you that toolbar that you’ve seen above your Gmail for so long. Using the simple buttons like bold, italic and underline, you can add basic flourishes. There are also font options, colors and high-lighting for your spicy new signature. One of my favorite additions is that you can insert true links into your emails.  For example, you can put a link to “my site” rather than spelling out the web address of your homepage.

Part 2: Inserting photos

Inserting photos into your signature is now much easier, although it still requires a bit of work. The first step is to click on this little button:

Once you’ve done this, you’ll be asked for a website where you’ve stored your photo. Yes, I realize that it’s a bit of a pain to have to keep the image online, but as you can see, once you have the link it is very easy to include a photo – even a very stupid one.

When you’re done typing the address, you should see the image appear in the box below the address field (as mine did above). Click OK to finish.

When you’re done with part 1 and/or part 2, don’t forget to save your work! You wouldn’t want to lose it!

Have fun with the new signatures. Feel free to brag about any cool ideas in the comments!
~ab

Hi all,

After a few weeks with my new MacBook Pro, I’ve probably installed (and then deleted) 100+ apps as I try to rebuild my digital life on a new platform. Finding apps that did what I needed was a bit of a chore (not to mention a bit pricey sometimes), so it was great to find lists like this one from Mac.Appstorm.Net (check it out).  Some of my favorites?

1. Firefox – My alternative to Mac’s Safari browser.  Firefox is better supported, and so I use Safari until I hit a problem.

2. Fluid – creates applications out of websites.  It sounds a bit strange, but it’s way better than just a bookmark for sites like Gmail, Remember the Milk, etc.

3. Cinch – Snaps windows around like Windows 7.  I grew to love the feature and feel less-productive without it (this is not evidence-based…).

Are there any apps that I should try out?  Anything that a mac user out there is dying to know?  Leave a note or suggestion in the comments and we’ll take a look.

If you’re in the same boat as me – enjoy the transition!

~ab

PS: Best of luck Curt with the auditions!

PPS:  You’ll probably want to make the video full screen…

~ab

What the program does

This program is for emailing new events to your Google Calendar. It checks your Gmail account for new events that were sent to a special label every ten seconds. It can only process one calendar entry every ten seconds (but if you’r emailing in more than that, it’s pretty impressive and you are far too busy to be playing with my software).

I couldn’t find any 3rd party services that do this, so I had to improvise using AutoHotKey and a script I wrote previously for quick adding events to Google calendar.  The result is a bit rickety, but it does the job. Improvements may or may not occur over time and currently it does not work with google apps (although it couldn’t be that hard to fix this).

Setup

It requires three pieces of setup (these are the defaults which can be modified if you know how to script):

1. Create a Gmail filter that puts take email sent to youraddress+jaacal@gmail.com into a new folder/label called jaacal.  You can also say skip the inbox so these emails don’t clutter things up.

2. Download the zip file from this link – Email to Google Calendar (452) – and unpack it to a directory of your choosing.

3. Change the logon.txt file to include your email, your user name (email without @gmail.com) and your password.  Make sure you keep this file in the same folder as the EXE file.

Workin’ it

Once you’ve done these three steps, run the EXE file and walk away.  Send an email with your quick add text in the subject line to the address above and it will appear on your calendar within about 20 seconds. An example of a quick add subject line could be something like dinner with Dave to thank him for such a good idea tommorrow 10pm.  It doesn’t matter what you put in the body, the program will just ignore it.

Download Email to Google Calendar (452)

And that’s about it! Let me know your thoughts at ab@justanasterisk.com or in the comments.

~ab

You were right.  It took me nearly a year, I swore up and down that my Flickr account was the bees knees, I wrote articles and explanations of how to use Flickr’s advanced tool set, and I ruined perfectly good cocktail party conversations, berating all services that did not stack up to my personal choice.

A year has gone by and now, like a dope, I have to reverse my position.  Why?  Because Picasa just changed the game, and I can no longer ignore the beautiful integration between Picasa and all my other apps.  Before I start into the details, this isn’t to say that Flickr is a bad service – it’s just no longer for me (yes I’m trying to save face – but let’s not write off Flickr entirely… there are too many devotees).

Without any more ado, here are the top 4 reasons I’ve decided to change over.

1. I can host 80GB of files for $20 a year.

This was the clincher, so in a way, it’s normal that it be my number 1  reason.  Suddenly, Flickr and Picasa are essentially evenly priced.  Before this week, buying the required space for all my photos, and future photos, was simply exorbitantly expensive.  My last defense crumbled, which allowed me to acknowledge the next 3 points…

2. Integration

In Flickr, when I wanted to send a photo to someone, there were three options – 1. I had already done this before and saved the email address. 2. I had to go into my email and find the email address before hitting send back in Flickr.  3.  I could just copy the link and ignore the email functions because my address book wasn’t available.

In Picasa, I just click the share button below and poof – my contacts are available from Gmail.

As you can see from the picture, it even looks like a Gmail message.  This is what makes the integration between these tools so powerful.  You don’t have to learn anything new.

This doesn’t end with email.  There is integration with other Google products too.

For example, you can specify the site of the photo on a Google Map, exactly like you did when you were looking for takeout last night.

If your camera (or cell phone camera) can geotag to your photos (a longitude and latitude value), these will appear in the familiar Google Maps interface, just to the right of you photos.  This makes sorting photos by destination a very pleasant task.

As far as integration goes, using Picasa if you already use Gmail for contacts and email will save you a ton of time.  If you don’t use Gmail, you might not be better off…

3. Ease of use

Gmail caught on because it was easy and fast.   When I started evangelizing, often I heard “but I already have an email program” and “I just don’t get it”.  These same people are nearly all Gmail users now.  I have to believe that the snappy response time for searches and other tasks makes a serious difference.  I won’t rant and rave about how Picasa takes things to a new level – in most ways it doesn’t.  However, it does benefit from the same value created by Gmail and other Google products – a simple interface.

4. All the same features (or at least the ones I use)

Finally, it’s worth emphasizing that this is not a baby version of the other popular photos sites.  There are some serious features involved.  Hardcore photographers will be asking, where are the camera related details for each picture?  Where are the ISO settings?  Where are the exposure details?  Well these are all available (if you hit more info), but are hidden to make the screen less cramped and to provide a better viewing space for your work.

Other fancy pants features exist too:  We’ve mentioned geotagging above.  There is also facial recognition, allowing you to tag your friends photos (using their integrated contact information from your Gmail).  In addition, there are collaborative albums, fans, commenting, full tagging features, video capabilities, email upload, and mobile access…

In conclusion

Yes I was wrong, dear wife, but I’m working to fix it.  This probably won’t be my last change of heart in the technology department.  You do deserve credit for seeing most of this right from day one.  Nice work.  Feel like writing for JAA?

~ab

Filter one – Star messages that are confirmations of orders.

When I order something online, I often star confirmation messages of pending deliveries for quick reference.   I’ve had about 99% accuracy with this search:

((confirmation OR Thank you) and order)

Give it a try.  Put that same search in your search bar in Gmail.

Did it work?  The results should pretty much just be order confirmations… Click on to create your own filter with the same query.  Put the terms in the “Has the words” section, as shown below and click next step.

Check the box “Star It” as shown below, or you could add a new label for your orders.

Finally, click “create filter”.  In my case, I didn’t want to apply this to previous conversations, only new ones, so I didn’t check the box next to “Also apply filter to ### conversations below”

Filter 2 – Travel Itineraries

I travel quite a bit and my itineraries end up getting lost in a sea of incoming email.  I call them out with this query:

(Itinerary and confirmation) –unsubscribe

You might be wondering why I include the –unsubscribe.  This is to remove emails from vendors who are trying to sell me travel software (that can track itineraries and confirmations and therefore appear in my results).  Who needs a piece of software when I can make Gmail do it?

The setup for this one is similar.  Follow the steps above, but in the first screen put:

You could also have put unsubscribe in the “doesn’t have” field (without the “-“) and it has the same effect.

In this case, you might want to include a new label, creating a folder for all your travel plans.

Filter 3 – Work Emails need their own space.

This one is going to need to be customized, but it’s still a goodie.  I send most of my mail to the same place.  However, personal mixed with professional else gets a bit tiresome (and confusing).  Luckily, there is a simple solution.  A domain specific filter.  This will put email from a specific domain (like “gmail.com”) in a special folder.

Create a new filter and try this:

By including the @justanasterisk.com in your “From” field, you filter only the messages sent by that domain.  In the next screen you can apply a new label and save your changes.

I hope that these little filter tricks have either given you some new tools or some food for thought.  Let me know if you have any filter tricks in the comments.  I’d love to hear them!

~ab

We are know that web pages can be bookmarked.  The act of saving web pages for future browsing has become second nature.  However, today we’re going to talk about the bookmarklet, which is a bookmark but with magical powers (sometimes).

First off, let’s recap on what a bookmark does.  A bookmark is designed to copy a URL (the http://… thingy) into your address bar and send you to that location.  The key point here is that the browser simply gets passed a bit of information that it understands and it executes the command (GO HERE!).

A bookmarklet is the same thing, just with (sometimes) a more interesting result.  Instead of passing a URL to the browser, it sends a little piece of code (called JavaScript).  This little piece of code has some restrictions for security, but it can be very powerful when it comes to aesthetics.  Anything on the page can be fiddled with using JavaScript.

To show you what I mean, here is an example bookmarklet explained:

A good bookmarklet is available from Twitlet.com.  Here you provide you username and password to Twitter and the site generates a bookmarklet for you to save.  Anytime you click on the bookmarklet, you receive this box:

Anything you type is sent to twitter as an update without leaving the page you are visiting.

Once you’ve found a bookmarklet to use, you can drag it into your browser toolbar for quick access.  For example, here it is in Google Chrome.

And here is an example in Internet Explorer:

If you don’t see a bookmark bar or favorites bar, you might need to enable it.

Now that you know what a bookmarklet can do, try searching the web for bookmarklets to your favorite services!  They exist for Gmail, Google talk, twitter, Google calendar, etc…  Just about everything!

Finally, here are some (overkill) points before you go:

1. If you want to try out some of my bookmarklets for Google tasks, Google talk and Gmail (including bookmarklets for Google Apps users) go here.
2. On thegeekiness.com, I went into some detail on how to create bookmarks and provided some examples.  Check this out if you want to know how to create your own bookmarklet.
3. If you’d like to wade through a ton of possible bookmarklets, try out bookmarklets.com.

Good luck in your bookmarklet endeavors

~ab

Q:

Bill wrote:

I need to get some old emails from [my previous email provider] to be able to transfer them to Google so I can forward them to people. I can read and likely print the defunct notes, but can I transfer them to my Google email accounts?

A:

Thanks for the question Bill.  The good news is that I have an answer… the bad is that it’s not super easy and there isn’t a quick tool to help.  However, you can do it and I’m going to show you how.  There are three main steps:

Step 1 – Enable your email to allow IMAP connections.

IMAP is simply a way for your email program (like outlook) to communicate with your Gmail account (passing information like what folder a message is in and if it’s read or unread).  The procedure is pretty straight forward.

To enable IMAP in Gmail:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
4. Select Enable IMAP.
5. Save your changes.

See that wasn’t so hard!  Now for the next step.

Step 2 – Setup Gmail in your Microsoft Outlook

It may seem strange that we’re setting up Gmail in Outlook (when you wanted to setup your Outlook in Gmail).  However, this is the best way to transfer emails – we just need to get the two services speaking the same language.

To setup Gmail in your Outlook, click on the following links:

• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2007

It’s not that many steps – really the crux of the problem is the screen below (in Outlook 2003).  Be sure to follow the instructions carefully and you shouldn’t have any issues.

Step 3 – Drag and drop

Finally we come to the fun part.  Once your email from Gmail has downloaded from the servers into Outlook, you really have a combined portal for both your email accounts.  You can drag emails from one to the other!  I setup an example below – I dragged an email from my outlook drafts to my Gmail account.

And here is the result:

Conclusion:

This is the down and dirty way to move email.  If you need more control over the result, consider using the folders in Gmail.  There are several other tutorials out on Google.  In my case, when I first tried this, I simply needed to get the data onto my Gmail account.  I didn’t really care how.

I hope that this has been a helpful little tutorial.  Feel free to call out any problems in the comments!

~ab