Share files from within Facebook with Drop.io

Drop.io, one of the simplest ways to share files online, has released a Facebook app that allows you to share files from within the site. With this you will be able to quickly and privately share pics, vids, music, and docs from within the social network. Head over to drop.io/facebook to read more about it and let me know what you think.

Firefox Extensions I cannot live Without

A little over a week ago Google released their browser named Chrome. I love Google and all but I didn't like the idea of a browser. I just think that having their own browser means that other browsers are going to lack Google support eventually. Having a new product to develop means there will be some slacking with their other products. And, that's one more browser entering the unnecessary Browser Wars.

Since everyone has been blogging about Chrome ever since the release, I decided to talk about Firefox instead. Here is the list of Firefox Extensions I cannot live without:

• StumbleUpon Discovers web sites based on your interests. I had no idea how HUGE the web was untill I installed this extension and started playing with it. Just sign up, fill in the information about what your interested about, install the extension and start Stumbling!
  
• ReaditLater Whenever you land/Stumble on a page that you want to read but might not neccesarily want to bookmark, add it to your readitlater list. If you use more than one computer, this extension can be installed on each of them and will keep the list current accross your computers.
  
• Foxmarks Again if you use many machines, foxmarks will keep your bookmarks synchronised accross all of them seamlessly. You can even access your bookmarks online if you are on a lab computer or something similar.
• DownThemAll Ever been on a page with 20 pictures that you wanted to download? Instead of going through each of them one by one, just DownThemAll!
• Cooliris Formerly known as Piclens, this extension makes browsing(pics and vids) a wonderful 3D experience. Check it out, trust me, you will never look at Facebook pictures the same way again!

I know there are plenty of great extensions out there that I did not mention. I would love to hear about what you guys(the readers) use. Let me know in the comments.

Moving Towards a Better Use of Gmail [part3]

By now, you guys should have mastered some keyboard shortcuts. Some of you probably created a few filters and labels(I doubt it). Today I was setting up a few things for my upcoming trip to Boston(Celtics and Patriots pride baby!!!) and I remembered a very important gmail feature that most of you probably don't know about: the Vacation Responder.

When you are going on vacation and will not be accessing your email, you don't need a secretary to reply to them, you need vacation responder.

To create a vacation responder, click on “Settings” at the very top of the page on the right-hand side. Scroll down until you see the section entitled “Vacation responder”. Click on “Vacation responder on”. Next, type a custom message in the boxes provided to let others know that you are away on vacation. In your message, you may want to include when you will be back so they can get a better idea of when they can expect a response from you. Then click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.

Now you can go away and not have to worry about that Employer trying to reach you for a position, or that client that needs your help ASAP.

I also wanted to talk about the search bar today. I was helping a lady out the other day with an attachment she was trying to send out. She was looking for an old email but instead of searching for it through gmail's search form, she was going page by page looking for something sent to her last year!

I stopped her and asked:

"You know that you can search for an email by typing some of it's credentials in the search form right?"

She looked at me like I was speaking Portuguese and said no.
Im guessing that most of you are in the same boat so I am going over a few examples:

1. Let's say you get messages from john on a regular but your looking for a specific message that has a recipe in it. Goto the search bar and enter: "from: john has: recipe"
2. You need an email that you recieved between february and march 2007. Goto the search bar enter: "after:2007/02/01 before:2007/03/01"
3. You can get an email by just typing one of the words that were in the email. You're looking for the message you got that contains your insurance information. Just type "insurance" in the search bar and you will get a list of messages that match the criteria.
4. You can even pulll up all the emails from a specific email address. Just type "from: jojo55447@gmail.com" and you will get all the emails you've ever recieved from him.
   

Hopefully you understand now how easy it is to use the search bar. Give it try, leave me a message if you have a question. If your query has no results just add more criteria or approach it from another angle. See you guys next time.