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[Online Tip] Clean Up Your App Permissions From a Single Webpage

There are literally hundreds online apps we enjoy using over time, but in reality we only use a handful of them regularly. For example I give some websites like Opinsy the option to connect to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. This is done by giving the app permission regarding the account. Users can usually review these permission given to apps and revoke them.

The problem for me is that I have to sign-in and check the settings for all the web services I use like Dropbox, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live ID for managing app permissions on all of them.

I found MyPermissions a very useful tool to clean up the apps I have given permission to connect. The site is actually not very complicated and does not require your ID at all. It simply links to the landing page of app permissions for the popular online websites which are used often to give permissions to apps.

MyPermissions also allows you to use your online profiles to give it permission to actively keep a watch on your app permission. It allows clean-up of permission with a single click and also alerts you to new permissions.

MyPermissions.org works with a Chrome extension for your browser and additionally has a mobile app for iOS and Android.

Unfortunately I could not find an add-on for Firefox. Try out MyPermissions and drop in your comments.

Link: MyPermissions

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Get Advanced Stats of Your Gmail Usage – Gmail Meter

Gmail Meter is a useful service that helps you get to know statistics about your Gmail account. This tool shows information like how many emails a month you get or send,on which day you send more emails, how many contacts send you emails, who were the top 10 contacts who sent your emails, top 10 recipients, top threads, what was the send/receive ratio, number of people who sent you email previous month and so on.

Once you set up Gmail Meter, it sends you an email on first day of every month containing different types of statistics about your inbox which helps you in analyzing your emailing habits.

Gmail Meter Features

  • Traffic report. It lets you know about email activity in your inbox.

  • Email categories help users understand the volume of email that your are managing and how you are managing them. A pie-chart shows various how many emails are archived, in Inbox, with Labels and in Trash.

 

  • Volume statics shows the number of starred & important message, how many mails you received, number of people send you emails, what percent of them are directly sent to your inbox and how many email you sent.

  • Word count tells you about the size of emails you are writing. Top senders and top recipeints help you understand who you connect with most.
  • Most importantly it shows time before first response to emails that you receive.

 How it works:

  • Open the Gmail meter and connect it to your gmail account by clicking on “allow acess” link.
  • Then a pop up window will open asking you to authorize. Click on the authorize button to grant access.

Thats it <strong>Gmail Meter </strong>will automatically send you an email once they prepare your report.You can any time revoke acess to Gmail Meter fromMy Account` section. You can also try out Gmail’s own account statistics report which is actually a lot less detailed than Gmail Meter.

Link: Gmail Meter

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Write more with less effort using Mou for Mac

I was a Windows user since the day I started using computers, but over a six months back, I switched to OS X. I loved it and prefer it to Windows, but there’s one thing which bugged me, and that’s there is no good free blogging client for Mac. Sure, there’s MarsEdit but it costs over 40$, which I think is really costly.

Windows on the other hand has Live Writer – Microsoft’s own blogging client which is pretty good. This is where Markdown comes in, making blogging on Mac awesome.

So what’s Markdown?

It’s a light weight markup language which converts plain text into HTML.

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It started as a project by John Gruber – famous for his blog, Daring Fireball.

The syntax is pretty easy to learn, for example, if you put a # before a sentence, Markdown turns it into a h1. Put ##, it’ll be turned into a h2.

To make a word bold, wrap it in two asterisks – like this.
These are just a few examples, the full syntax is available on Daring Fireball.

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Blogging should be solely about writing stuff and not code, that’s why Markdown is ideal for it.

Mou for Mac

Markdown clients are in plenty for OS X (and iOS) and that’s apparent as Markdown is made by Gruber himself. I’ve tried many of them, but Mou impressed me with its minimal interface and features while still being free.

The concept is simple, you write marked text on the left column of app and it shows the live preview on right. After you’re done, you can post to Tumblr or Scriptogr.am if your blog is hosted there, otherwise you can just copy the HTML (that’s what I do).

In the preferences, you can change fonts, default CSS applied and theme used.

Mou can also be great for web developers who want to quickly write HTML without any fuss.

Link: Mou

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Google releases YouTube Capture for iPhone enabling quick video sharing

While there’s Instagram for quick photo sharing, there’s isn’t such a product for video sharing. Though YouTube is available on mobiles, the process of uploading videos from the app isn’t streamlined, and hence Google has released YouTube Capture.

The whole point of the app is to shoot videos and share them quickly before the moment is gone, because – you know, life’s fast.

The process is really straight forward – you open the app, shoot a video, after which you add a caption and share it among social networks (here you can actually share it on Facebook and Twitter, not just Google+).

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There are few neat features included like video stabilisation which will be really useful for editing shaky videos. There’s also colour correction and ability to add free background music.

Too much iOS love?

One thing which has surprised me a bit is that, Android version of YouTube Capture is yet to come – Google has confirmed that in their blog post. With updated Google search, Gmail, Google Maps and now YouTube Capture, iOS seems to be getting a lot of Google love, lately.

Try out the app and tell us what you think.

Link: YouTube Capture

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TrackThisForMe lets you keep an eye on your daily activities

How cool would it be to keep track of all your daily routine activities like how many kilometres you jog, or time spent talking on mobile or weight gained/lost? TrackThisForMe tries to do exactly this.

It’s essentially an Android or web app which churns out interesting statistics based on input of your routine activities.

To get started, create a new category with a name and units for it – for example, time spent on watching TV, with hours as units.

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Next, you can add elements to it everyday, reading which, the app will generate a graph. Along with graphs, it will also show the minimum, maximum, etc. stats of the category. You can also set goals and see if you’re reaching them.

There is a neat feature called Smart categories which gives statistics/graphs without asking any input from you. This includes SMS received/sent, Total calls in minutes etc. stuff.

The Android app is well designed with Holo written all over it and good usage of Roboto typeface.

While the app is not available for mobile platforms other than Android, there’s a mobile site which works pretty well.

Link: TrackThisForMe

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Snapseed: The Best Photo Editing App is Now on Android [Free]

A few months ago Google bought on the most popular photo editing app on iPhones called Snapseed. Yesterday, as expected for some time, it released the Android version of the app. More importantly the app which was previously paid on iOS platfrom is now available free. I decided to give Snapseed a bit of a test drive and I can admit their boast about being the best photo editing app is  actually true.

Snapseed on Android is a free photo editing app with Google+ integration. It uses swipe gestures on the touch screen to control the editing options.

 Snapseed on Android Features

  • Snapseed basically allows editing photos by changing lighting, add filters, borders and adjust brightness, contrast and more.
  • I could also carrying out a lot of adjustments to a photo like cropping, rotate and other details.
  • The real winner is it uses touch swipe to control all the changes we apply on an image. This is actually very intutive and the best way to actually use the touch interface by a photo editing app.
  • Finally you can share the image directly on Google+ directly from the app itself. But I belive that on Android (I and not tested it on iOS) the app can work with other apps to share the photo with Facebook, Twitter or even Dropbox.

Even though Snapseed is great for mobile phones. I think that it would really work best on tablet devices where every single change to a photo could be checked.

Try out Snapseed on your phone or tablet and drop in your comments.

Link: Snapseed Android | iPad

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Compare Prices on Your Android Phone with MySmartPrice App

Imagine you are a store that sells mobile phones or laptops. Usually I have used MySmartPrice’s website to compare prices offered by online retailers. It sometimes can help you get a discount from a physical store. More importantly you know if you are not getting ripped off. MySmartPrice has rolled out a Android app which also allows price comparison.The listed items are several and the prices are mined from several Indian e-commerce websites.

MySmartPrice’s Android App to Compare Prices

  • I found the app very simple. The focus mainly geared towards mobile phones, electronics goods and computers.
  • Browse through the categories and look up the name of the company under which various items are sub-categorized. It shows the list of those items available with their prices.
  • Tap on one of them and we get the cheapest price of that particular selection. We can swipe and look up specifications and also a complete list of prices from various online retail portals in India.
  • I was a little disappointed to not find a “books” category to look up the prices. I guess for books available on Indian sites, you might like to check out Low Price app.
Check out MySmartPrice’s Android app and do drop in your comments.
Link: MySmartPrice Android App
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Temporarily Remove Any Element from a Webpage with Your Browser

There are parts of a webpage which you do not want to really use. For example when you see a Facebook public post or profile, it also shows a login box, which you might not be interested in.

We can do this with Dynamite Extension for Chrome browser or Nuke Everything Add-on for Firefox.

For instance in the example below, I will be removing the highlighted element or part from the webpage I am viewing.

I am using Chrome extension Dynamite to show how it works. Just right-click on a selection select Dynamite icon and select hide element.

The end result that element from the webpage is removed immediately.

Ideally, these are very useful tool for web designers to check how the webpage would look by removing certain elements.

You might also like to check out the following extensions which are helpful for web designers.

Do try it out and drop in your comments.

Link: Dynamite on Chrome | Nuke Everything for Firefox

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Create Diagrams and Charts with Google Drive Integration

Diagrams and charts are useful for people coordinating in a group. I have written previously about Google charts, Lovely Charts and more recently about Creately. On similar lines, Diagram.ly also allows users to create diagrams and share using your Google or Google Apps account and integrate it with your Google Drive account.

Diagram.ly Features

The diagrams can be created with many predefined elements based on various categories. For example there are many clipart images, flowchart styled arrows and branches to choose from.

A diagram can be saved on your desktop from the browser itself as an XML file.

More important it can be shared with your friends either by embeding it on a webpage or even sharing it via a URL.

My favourite part of Diagram.ly is that is can be integrated with Google Drive, allowing me to share a particular diagram with anyone form my Google contacts.

It is free and one does not even have to sign-in or register unless integrating with Google Drive. Try out Diagram.ly and drop in your comments.

Link: Diagram.ly

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Realtime Visualization of Invisible Sites that Track Users

Do you know that when your browser connects to a particular, it can also connect to other invisible sites which users have no idea about. For example, Facebook runs its Javascripts of another domain which is fbcdn.net.

Sometimes these invisible sites also track your usage and store information about your browsing activity. Collusion is a handy Chrome and Firefox extension which helps users check if the sites they are visiting are also connecting to other invisible sites.

Just install the Collusion extension for Chrome and start surfing. The collusion icon shows the number of sites that are informed from the page you are viewing.

The sites with a red circle are the advertisers while the grey circles connecting are usually social media sites.

Not all invisible sites which are informed about a visitor are dangerous. Most of them are not. For example most blogs will inform Google Analytics about a visitor.

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If user clicks on “Block known tracking sites” the extension then shows which advertisers are known trackers and are blocked. They are displayed in the visualization with a blocked symbol.

If you are interested in more privacy tips, the following posts might be useful.

Try out Collusion on Chrome or Firefox and drop in your comments.

Link: Collusion on Chrome | Firefox