Google’s mail service GMail is built on the idea that, instead of sorting emails into different folders, you use the search functionality to find your emails. If you insist on sorting your email, GMail offers labels rather than folders, the idea being that an email may belong to more than one logical group of sorting, and you should be able to find it in both.
The system really shines when you start using the search operators that are available, both separately, and in combination. Here are the operators:
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Category: How To
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Search, don’t sort – Using GMail search operators to the fullest
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Creating your own ringtones on iPhone
One of the most annoying things to me as a user, is the fact that I’m not able to assign my music files as ringtones. The “offical” way of adding more ringtones, is by buying them from Apple, however, you can generate them yourself, using your iPhone and a computer. To do so, you need an app that will create the ringtones for you, I use RMakerPro, but you may of course choose whichever you want. Here’s how I do it:
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Assign ringtones to specific contacts on iPhone
Assigning ringtones to contacts has become basic functionality for mobile phones, and the iPhone is no exception. It’s very easy to do so, here’s how:
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Functionality of the iPhone Microphone button
The iPhone headset has a multitude of functionality. The obvious ones are listening to music, and using it as a hands-free device when talking on the phone. However, the microphone also has a built-in button, which can do a lot of things:
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FotoStation: Building a custom Metadata editor for Flickr
As I’ve mentioned in several blog posts, I’ve recently started a new job, working for Norwegian software developer FotoWare. Their client-side software is called FotoStation, and is a very powerful tool for processing photos.
Having been an amateur photographer for a while now, I have got a Pro account at Flickr, and upload a number of photos every year. Combining my job and my hobby is great, and I have used FotoStation for a number of tasks involving my own photos already.
The best way to do this, seems to be to create a custom Metadata editor, which shows only the fields relevant to uploading photos to Flickr.
The first part of this, was finding out which fields of the XMP metadata are utilized by Flickr. I used the Flickr Uploadr, and found that the three fields shown there, grabs data as follows:
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Unmuting a conversation in GMail
Ever since I started using GMail a few years back, it’s been my primary mail service, with all my other email accounts feeding into it. A while back, I was unlucky enought to mute a conversation. The mute option, while great when getting tons of emails about updates to threads on boards, can be annoying when you manage to mute an email that you actually need to read.
The solution is fairly simple, and centres around Google’s approach when it comes to GMail; archive instead of deleting, searching instead of sorting. What the mute function actually does is automatically archiving new emails in a given conversation, bypassing the inbox altogether. To get the emails back to the inbox, you need to do the following:
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Taking screenshots in Mac OS X
My fiancée has been using a Mac for close to a year now, and it’s a pretty nifty machine, I’ve gotta say. However, things are fairly different to what she, and I, are used to. One thing she does fairly often, is take screenshots, which she had a bit of trouble with until we figured out how.
The problem, of course, is that Mac OS, unlike Windows, does not have a dedicated key on the keyboard for taking screenshots. Instead, they use hotkeys. The hotkeys and their effects are as follows:
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How to: Set default save format in Open office
At work, I use Microsoft Office, and have done so for as long as I have been working. At home, however, I use Open Office. It suffices for most of my needs, and works nicely. The problem with using a different set of software at work and at home is that Microsoft Office by default uses its standard formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) and Open Office by default uses its standard formats.
The reality of life is that most people use Microsoft Office, and that they don’t have OpenOffice installed, so it makes sense to save in Microsoft Office formats, instead of in Open Office formats. Of course, you can do this manually for each file, but that’s a waste of time, and really doesn’t make sense. Instead, why not set it so that OpenOffice automatically saves in Microsoft Office format? Here’s how:
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