A better solution, if you have a Google Apps-run domain, is a service called Google Short Apps. This is a Google powered URL-shortening service you can run using your own domain and which you can customise the way you want it. 

The advantages include :

• With every short link you send out, the name of your domain is attached to it. If that link goes viral around the web, so does your web domain name. Good advertising!
• Most importantly, you can decide what the short URL should be called. So instead of the ending being 28jenq (which tells people nothing about where the link leads to), you can instead tell people that a link comes to MakeUseOf by inserting makeuseof into the tiny URL link.
• It requires zero setup on your part. Unlike other domain-based URL-shortening services we have profiled in the past which seem to require that you have a degree in IT to understand how to set it all up. With Short Links, you just press a button and it is instantly installed on your Google Apps domain. Then you just need to do a little tweaking to get it the way you want it. Typically Google – very easy, direct and to the point. No messing around.

To get the whole lot set up on your Google Apps domain, first go here and press the “add it now” button. This immediately puts a new link on your Google Apps Dashboard.

You’ll see on the screenshot, the URL http://tinylinks.markoneill.org. That isn’t there on your Dashboard immediately. You have to go into the options and decide what you are going to call your URL-shortening service (and “tinylinks” is what I decided on).  It’s to your advantage to not make it a long name though because all of that becomes part of the shortened URL. The longer you make the URL….well you would be eventually defeating the whole purpose of a short URL service in the first place!

So, the next step is to customise things the way you want them. Go to the Service Settings at the top of the Apps Dashboard page and choose Short Links. The first option you will see is naming your URL service. As I said, I chose “tinylinks” but you can choose whatever you want. But being a short URL, make your choice as small as possible. I initially contemplated “tl” but I wanted to give my shortening service a proper name. Saying that, you can have as many links as you want. So I have http://tinylinks.markoneill.org but I will also shortly set up http://tl.markoneill.org (which I will probably exclusively use from then on as it’s shorter and therefore easier to remember and type.

Once you have chosen your URL-shortening name, you then have to your domain webhosting panel and make what is called a CNAME record.  This is basically an instruction to your website that everytime someone goes to your URL-shortening weblink, it should automatically redirect to Google so they can do their shortening magic. Once you have set up a name for your service, Google then sets out, step-by-step, what you have to do to set up a CNAME record and it is very easy.

The other options are not really that important, such as enabling API access and creating IP Whitelists. There are a couple of good options though that you should consider.   They are :

• Only Administrators can create new links :  this is handy if you have other people using your Google Apps domain for email and you don’t want them using the URL shortening to send out their own links.
• If a link cannot be found, do a lowercase search
• Convert all new links to lowercase

OK, now that you have successfully set up your very own URL-shortening service, it’s time to start using it.   Just go to your weblink that you set up and you should now see this screen :

To make a short URL, just enter the URL into the URL box. Then on the left hand side, decide what you want the link to be called and enter it into the box after your domain name. So a link to MakeUseOf could be called http://tinylinks.markoneill.org/makeuseof (click it, it works).

You can also have a “hashed short link” created which is the same as TinyURL. By entering the URL and then pressing the button for a hashed short link, you would get something like http://tinylinks.markoneill.org/vhzvc. But as I said at the beginning, URL’s like that tell you nothing about the link destination so I personally won’t be using that option.

You are also provided with bookmarklets which you can drag up to your browser toolbar. So any time you want to make a Google short link, just go to the webpage link you want to send out and click on the bookmarklet. You will then be taken directly to the Short Links page with the URL boxes already pre-filled with the website URL you were just on.

The last feature I should mention is the stats page.  The Short Links service gives you a page where you can see how many people have went to your short URLs :

On this page, each entry has an edit button so if you messed up typing the destination URL or if you want to delete one of your short URL’s, then you can do so at the click of a mouse button.

All in all, this is a very nice service and I have noticed visits to my personal domain increase since I started using this.  So if you do short URL’s a lot and you are also looking for a free easy way to advertise your domain, then give Short Links a try.

If you don’t have your domain attached to Google Apps, then I highly recommend that you do it now. Your email can be run via Gmail and you can store all your documents via Google Docs, as well as some of the other usual Google Services (but not Google Reader, which is very strange). Plus you get little Apps goodies like Short Links.  Setting up on Google Apps is also very easy and can be done in under 30 minutes. I showed you how to do it here.

Which URL shortening service do you use? Do you use Google Short Links? If so, what has been your experience with it?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Well not anymore, thanks to Offisync which allows you to use, update and synchronize your Google Docs onto Microsoft Office – as well as offering the ability to search on Google from the Office interface and insert images into your Office documents from Google Images.

This is one of those services that will prove to be insanely useful if you are in the habit of switching between them both all the time.   For it to work though, you need :

• Either Office 2003 or Office 2007
• Windows XP / Vista or Windows 7.
• Microsoft’s .net framework version 3.5, which will automatically be installed on your computer if you don’t already have it.
• A Google account to be able to use Docs (that one is a bit obvious!)

You first have to install a small toolbar which sits in your Office documents.   It looks like this :

To open a document from Google Docs, just press the small yellow folder icon on the far left and a box will appear asking you to enter your Google account name and password.   I was initially a bit concerned about entering my Google account password so I emailed OffiSync and asked them if they store the account details on their servers.   Their answer is an emphatic no.

User Names and Passwords are stored in the Windows Credentials Manager (CredMan) service on your computer. OffiSync does not store any credentials on our servers or on the Google servers.

That reassured me somewhat so I proceeded with entering my password.   When your details have been accepted, your list of Google Docs files will come up (I don’t normally use Google Docs so I created a test document for this article).

Just double-click on the Google Docs file that you want to work on in Microsoft Office and it will immediately open in Word.  If you have lots of documents and you can’t find the one you want, just click the black binoculars in the Offisync toolbar and you can filter out the file you want by entering keywords.

Now this is the file that I created with a simple short sentence.   All you basically need to do now is just work on your document and periodically save the changes using the Offisync toolbar.

Say, I want to add “Now I’m updating it” to the document -

When you’re finished with the document and you want to synchronize your changes with the copy in your Google Docs account — all you need to do is click the black disk icon on your Offisync toolbar and you will see this -

After a few seconds, that box will disappear and the updated version of the document will now be in your Google Docs account. Let’s check on that.

Yup, there it is!

There are other features to Offisync too. Basically the app gives you all the power of Google Docs but inside Microsoft Office instead.   Offisync allows you to do the following :

• Add or remove collaborators to the online Google document



• Email the online Google document to someone



• Paste the link to the Google Docs copy of the file in your Word copy.

But the best part of Offisync (in my opinion) is the ability to insert images from Google Images into your Word document.   Everything opens in Offisync’s custom-made mini browser.

Since I’ve just been to see Transformers 2 at the cinema, let’s see what pictures there are of Optimus Prime on Google Images.

As you can see, you can filter the images down to size, type and also by creative commons.  When you have found one you want to use, click “Insert” and you will receive a box notifying you where it has come from :

If you accept it, click “Accept” and the image will then be embedded into the Word document.

Offisync doesn’t only support Word though.   You can also use the feature in Microsoft’s Excel and Powerpoint to keep those documents synchronized as well.

And that’s it!   This one is going into my “keeper” pile of software apps as it has already motivated me to use Google Docs more and so far I haven’t found any bugs or really irritating features.  I really hope Offisync continues to be developed and I can’t wait to see what other features they come up with next.

Let us know what you think.   Is this something you would use?  What features do you like the best and what new features would you like Offisync to introduce?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Google Updater is a part of the Google Pack (Google’s own apps and a few third party tools like Firefox, Norton Security Scan etc.). Google Updater is the small itsy bitsy “installer” that downloads and installs the software. But its brevity goes beyond that as it also monitors the apps for updates and manages their run. In short, it’s a meta-installer and auto-updater.

The two hitches …

Being a package management app also means that Google Updater continues to run behind the scenes though in the new version it is controlled by the Windows Task Manager to run once every hour. You can see it running in the background by doing a Ctrl + Alt + Del and going down the Task Manager entries. Some users feel that apps should give the option of self-timed updates rather than the auto-updater butting in. (It is especially annoying when the firewall catches it while auto-updating). Also, a separate service running in the computer (and consuming resources) for update checking is the exception rather than the rule.

Then according to Google,

When Google Update communicates with Google servers, it sends IDs of Google Update-managed applications on your computer and general usage information for these applications. Google Update also uses its own, randomly-generated unique ID number to accurately count total users. This information includes version numbers, languages, operating system, and other install or update-related details, such as whether or not the applications have been run. This information is not associated with you or your Google Account. Additional information may be sent if you choose to send your usage statistics for Google Chrome.

It is this point where a lot of brow wrinkling has come about. Though the information is sent using random IDs, any user might feel a bit ill at ease with his usage information being uploaded however benign the intention. While Google has tried to ease the issues by open sourcing the Google Updater code (the Omaha project), a lot of us will still have a go at blocking it.

The 2 ways to disable Google Updater

A. Remove from startup

1. Click on Start – Run. Type in msconfig in the Open field and click OK.
2. The System Configuration Utility opens up. Select the Startup tab. Go down to the GoogleUpdate startup item and deselect it.
3. Restart the computer.

B. Stop the Google Update service from running

1. Click on Start – Run. Type in services.msc in the Open field and click OK.
2. In Services, scroll down to GoogleUpdate Service. Double click on it to open the Properties box (or right click and select Properties).  The Startup Type drop-down lists three options – select Disabled.
3. Click on Apply and OK.

The 2 ways to manage Google Updater

Manage Updates using the Task Scheduler

Spurred by the concerns of an automatic updater as a background process, Google now has added the option – Let me check for updates myself under the Preferences tab. Also, the Updater runs only periodically as per the Windows Task Scheduler.

To run the task scheduler, click Start – All Programs – Accessories – System Tools – Scheduled Tasks.

The default interval for Updates is to connect to Google’s servers once an hour. It will stop running after it checks for updates. You can change the schedule double clicking on the Google Software Updater and setting a new time in the Schedule Tab.

But as Google says, if the Updater or the Task scheduler is seen to be not working properly then Google Update resumes its automatic behavior. I am also not sure whether a new install of a Google app affect the user set update time.

The Google Updater can also be configured to update either all software in the Google Pack or only software developed by Google. And if you no longer use any Google apps, it uninstalls itself.

Manage Updates using the Group Policy Editor

In mid-May, Google explained how the Google Update could be customized (set update periods or disable it) for enterprise users using the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) using an imported administrative template. Power users can check out the detailed instructions given in the help.

Most software these days feature automatic updates. The need to keep applications updated is vital to plug malware attacks and remove bugs. But many users voice that there is no need to check for updates so frequently. If your voice is one of them then these methods would help in ‘caging the little beast’.

Do you agree with the concerns or do you feel that automatic updates are the way to go? Let us know in the comments.

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This was one of the reasons why I procrastinated so much – I am not much of a technical whiz and I was nervous that I would well and truly cack it up.  Then I would have to go through the embarrassment of asking someone to look at my mess and clean up after me.    Meanwhile, all my incoming emails would be disappearing into a black hole never to be seen again.

But it turned out to be a cinch.   I had the whole thing up and running in 30 minutes and the emails flowed in without a hitch (after being briefly slow at the beginning – but I put that down to the email servers being transferred over and my new Google Apps account being processed.  After a while, email service went back to the normal speed).

In case you have ever wanted to move over to Google Apps but you’ve been nervous about the set-up, I would like to help you end your apprehension and get you started.  Kudos to Google for making it so easy.

Fill Out The Online Application

If you are a family, private user or non-profit organisation, Google Apps is free to use (businesses can have a trial period and then $50 per year per person).   But for me and probably for most of you, the free “standard edition” is the one to go for.   Go here and fill out the application.

The first step of the application is to enter your domain name (or you can buy a new domain name though Google which automatically sets everything up for you).   You also need to verify that you own the domain or if you are a member of the domain.

Then click “get started” and a standard application form pops up.   Fill it out.

Assuming all of the information is acceptable to Google and you are authorized to set the domain up on Google Apps, you will then be taken to your new dashboard.

The first thing to do is activate your email. You need to specify whether you like the URL Google automatically makes for you. So for example it may have made :

http://mail.googleapps.yourdomain.com

But if you don’t like that URL, you can easily change it to something secret such as :

http://mysecretmailbox.yourdomain.com

Now to activate the email.   Go to the email settings page and there are two options – “create user accounts” and “change MX records”.   OK, no need to get nervous.   Let’s do them one at a time :

Create user accounts

You may have a lot of email addresses for your domain such as info, contact, your name, webmaster and so on.   You need to now input all those email addresses into Google Apps.    Or if you don’t feel like typing them all in, you can upload an Excel CSV file with the addresses already in it.   Google Apps will then insert the email addresses into your email settings.

Change MX Records

OK, now the biggie.   The MX records shows which company handles and delivers your emails.   You need to change the records from your old email provider to Google so your emails can be sent to your Apps account.

It’s not a problem as Google provides step-by-step instructions for whoever your old email provider is.   Just choose your hosting service from the drop-down list and you will get instant specific instructions on where to go and what to do.

It basically involves locating the MX Records list in your hosting account (Google tells you where it is) and deleting them all (you may want to take a screenshot first in case you need to revert back).   Then in their place, enter the following :

Then save the whole lot. And that’s it – email set up!

As I said, it may be a little sluggish at first with emails trickling in slowly but once your Apps account is processed and set up by Google and your MX records get transitioned over, the email will start to come in a lot faster. Just be patient.

If you had your Apps email address already previously set up to forward everything to your old Gmail address, you need to go to the old Gmail address and cancel the forwarding rule.   Otherwise you will end up with two copies of the same email – one in your Gmail account and one in your Apps account.

Next, you can decide if you want to change the destination links for your calendar, Talk app, Documents and Sites (just like you may have changed the URL for your email inbox).   Then activate each service in the settings.

The last thing to do is go to the CNAME settings in your hosting account (again, Google points the way) and you need to enter each URL along with ghs.google.com .  That points everything to the Google servers.   Save everything and you-are-done!   Finito, The End.

All that remains to be done is browse through the settings and customise everything to your liking (for example, you can replace the Google logo witb your own customised logo).

I highly recommend moving over to Google Apps.   It’s a nice all-in-one online email, calendar and documents application.  The only grumble I have about it is that you can’t import your emails over from a normal Gmail account.  Google doesn’t provide any email exporting function so your emails are stuck in the other account – unless you go the long tedious way of downloading the emails to Outlook or Thunderbird and then using an import tool to re-upload them.  We covered one of these tools in the past.    But it is very easy to import your filters and contact book over and I had the email purring along in no time.

Do you have any experience of moving your online presence over to Google Apps?   If so, how did it go for you?   Please do let us know.   If you haven’t moved over yet, has this guide persuaded you to give it a go?   Feel free to leave all your questions and comments below.

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Google Health still has a beta tag after having being launched in the early part of 2008. Those who are still unfamiliar with what it is all about, here is a walk around the service.

Consider Google Health to be our personal medical records folder, with the contents well protected and secure. With just a Google account we can store all our medical records online in one central place and access it from anywhere.

With web access being just a click away, Google Health helps us systematize and record all the tests and treatments we have gone through and keep them up to date. Of course, it is not a replacement for the original paper records but a backup in the event of an immediate information need.

In an age when accurate information is the most vital key, Google Health addresses it by providing its own abundance of accessibility, convenience and user-control by putting out some functional features.

Create health profiles

All you need is a free Google account to log in and start creating profiles – records of your physical measurements, conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries undertaken, test results and immunizations if any.

Create multiple profiles if need be. The information can be added manually or selected from a comprehensive list. Handy reference links also have been provided for further information regarding symptoms, causes, and treatments.

Import medical records from hospitals & pharmacies

Google has partnered with about 15 healthcare providers which helps you to securely import your pre-existing medical history from these services. This further enables centralization of all your health records in one place. Though the list seems to be short, for a beta application it can be considered as a wind up.

Manage your health with integrated health services

Google also has an online health services directory – a list of health service providers who provide consultations, health management and drug information services. You can grant permission to these services to read your health records and provide recommendations based on your medical history. Google has no financial arrangement with any of these third parties.

Share health information

In the truest tradition of the new age web, Google recently updated the service with a Share this profile feature. This enables you to share your personal medical history with trusted contacts like your family members or your doctor.

Include the email addresses of your inner circle and they will receive an e-mail with a link to your profile. They alone will have access to the information stored in your health profile.

Sharing health information assumes importance during medical emergencies when the user himself is under medical attention and unable to give out his historical details.

In the interests of security, the trusted contacts will only be able to see and not edit the records. Also, the link will automatically expire after 30 days though sharing access does not expire till you decide to stop it. A user activity report which monitors the visits to your profile adds another level of confidentiality.

Information on drug interactions

Google Health also correlates the medications being entered into the profile and finds possible causes of conflict between the drugs. It gives a generalized suggestion via a drug interaction checker from SafeMed which should be followed up with the physician.

Add your medical contacts or search for a doctor

In this section you can manually add details like that of your family physician. A Find a doctor search box allows you to find a doctor by speciality and area.

Print your records

The print feature gives two choices – a wallet-sized option that prints out a card with the user’s medications and allergies or a larger letter-sized PDF document with the user details.

Graph your health

The graphing feature gives you a visual cue of your health trends over time by outputting the data from your medical tests on a time scale. With a look a user can make out the progress of a treatment.

Is Google Health worth a log-in?

Yes, as a personal health record service it is in beta and still a bit rough hewn. Security of online health information is a debatable touch point. An important note is that Google Health does not come under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, though some of the third party service providers listed do. Google Health as of date remains only fully relevant for the United States.

The discordant noises aside, Google Health comes with a lot of possibilities. As Google continues to add functionalities (don’t they always do!), we could see the evolution of another widely used web app from the Google stable. Who knows one day, we could schedule doctor appointments by syncing our Google calendar with Google Health.

What do you think of this Google service? Do you think that sharing health information in a centralized space is important for safeguarding a life in case of an emergency? Give us an opinion.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Why do you need to use this? Well if you need to use contacts in more than one program or service (like email, IM, Skype, or others) or use a desktop app and need it on more than one computer, it’s difficult or even impossible to automatically keep everything in sync. The solution that iContact proposes is to have Gmail contacts as your central repository for everything having to do with people you know. When you need to look up one of them, instead of opening a full browser you open this small stand-alone contact manager to find or search for the person you want. It keeps everything in the cloud in your Gmail contacts, so they’ll still be available on any device with internet access and a decent web browser.

To get iContact, you can download it as a zip file with a portable executable and accompanying files, or an msi installer package (although the msi doesn’t seem to do anything special except extract the files and create a shortcut…um, I guess it’s good for people who don’t have unzip software?) and then run the executable.

Enter your Gmail credentials (if you’re using an @gmail.com account, you can just enter your username; if you’re a Google Apps user, enter the full email address, i.e. your_name@your_domain.com), and then watch as it loads your contacts. Certainly a lot faster than opening a web browser, signing into Gmail and navigating to the contacts!

You can edit your contacts by selecting one and clicking ‘edit’ at the bottom, add or remove contacts by clicking the (+) or (X) buttons, and all changes you make are made directly to your online Gmail contacts. I noticed, however, that if you modify your contacts in iContact, it won’t show up in Gmail until you refresh the page. The reverse is true for anything you do in Gmail, you have to sign out and sign back in to iContact in order to show the changes.

When you click a contact, you can then do a few things. If you have their email address stored, you can click the email category next to the address (Home, Work or Other) and click ‘Send Mail’ to open your default mail program and begin a new message to that address. For phone number, click the category (Home, Work, Mobile, Other, etc.) and you can choose ‘Call with Skype’ or display in large text. For addresses you can drop down the category and choose ‘Show Map’ to map it on Google Maps, and for any piece of information you can click ‘Copy’ to copy it to your clipboard. This solves the problem of having a separate contacts list in every program!

iContact currently doesn’t work with contact groups (in Gmail/Google Apps you can add contacts to a group, enter the name of the group in the To: field when writing an email, and send to all addresses in the group at once).

Also, unlike the Gmail contacts manager, there are no “actual contacts” and “suggested contacts” for people who you’ve communicated with but haven’t explicitly added as contacts. They all just show up in the same list.

These limitations aside, iContact does its job well. It’s certainly a convenience for people who use a desktop mail or chat client (especially Skype) and who wants all their contact information in one place without having to sync.

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