Today, when using Gmail I got a new message when I was trying to compose a new email. It was asking me to try out new composing experience. I always opt in for new things, so I decided to proceed. Here is the message I got. You might have already got the same message too.

Then I clicked on “New compose experience” link and it restarted whole Gmail. After that when I click on compose button, I could see the new composing window.

New Compose and Reply Windows

A good thing, they display on screen instructions to use new composing window. It appears as a chat window from right bottom corner. Here we go with the screen shot.

You can see that composing window is simplified and less clattered. Most of the options are hidden in icons, even text formatting tool bar.  Previous drag and drop file attachment system still works. Here you can directly include image to compose window by dragging and dropping.

Best part here is you can compose an email while going through other email folders. You could not do this with the previous interface. By clicking on title bar you can minimize it like a chat window.

Then I took a look at reply window. Again they show on screen instructions. Same as compose window it’s highly simplified. By default quoted text are collapsed and uses icons to display message type. Here we go with a screenshot.

Pros and Cons of New Gmail Compose Experience

UI is very simple, faster and focuses on what we use the most. This would be great for people who are typing lots of short emails. Ability to compose several emails simultaneously and browsing through other emails while composing adds an extra value to this. It’s like chatting, the only difference is you are sending an email.

However if you are a person who are typing few lengthy emails with lots of text styling, this might not be your cup of tea. You have to keep scrolling through the compose window and keep expanding text formatting tool bar. This would be a real pain for a busy person.

You can try this for yourself right in your Gmail box. If you feel like going back to previous composing window, you have that option in drop down menu in right bottom corner.

Try this out and tell us what you feel about this new change.

Tags: #Email #Gmail #Google

Google Trends and Google Insight for Search are definitely in any bloggers’ top ten most used Google services list. Using Google trends you can get an idea about latest search trends in Google. For that they have country specific top list as well as global top list. Google Insight for Search could be used to analyze a trend for given keyword and their relative volumes.

However, there had been a question in my mind as to why Google maintains two different services like this. Basically both of them do the same thing in different ways.  Recently Google have merged both of those tools to make one powerful tool called Google Trends, a wise move. Now all the traffic that goes to Google Insight for Search will be redirected to new Google Trends.

What’s New in Google Trend?

The main change in new Google Trends is the totally revamped interfaces. Now they are clean and more Google-ish. In home page you have search box to enter search terms which you need to explore. If you enter comma separate list they will automatically go to comparison mode. Right below the search box you can find a slider which displays trends.

For a start, enter a search term and hit explore. It will take you to another Google-ish interface where you can explore trends for a given search phrase, almost as same as Google Insight for Search. On the left hand side you can add more search terms and compare location and time ranges. Below that you can find filtering criteria.

In page you can see a chart displaying trend for given search term over a period of time. Below that it shows regional interest, top terms and rising terms. In case you enter several search terms to compare them, data for each search term will be displayed in a well organized tabbed interface.

New Google Trends is equipped with entire features of the previous Google Insight for Search in a much better interface. But what happened to Google Trends features? True, there is a slider in main page but is that it? No it’s not.

When you are in the ‘Explore Trends’ page, in the top left corner you can find a link to go to hot searches. There you can see hot searches and narrow down them by selecting a country out of four. Again everything is organized in a very clean interface.

The objective of this merge is developing more powerful and better search term and trend analyzer. I’d like to say “Yeah! It’s working”. So bloggers, internet marketers and anyone who like to analyze Google search trends try new Google Trends out and tell us what you feel as a comment below.

Tags: #Blog #Google

Previously I introduced you a browser plug-in which is tweaking Gmail and letting you to schedule and track emails. If you have already tried that you know it is getting integrated with Gmail seamlessly and working just great.

Quick Catch-up

• RightInbox – Schedule and Track Emails

By the time I was writing above article email reminder feature was not there in RightInbox. In the case you want to get a reminder to follow up sent email or filter out sent emails which didn’t receive a reply in a certain period of time, you had to use another tool called Boomerang.

Quick Catch-up

• Add Scheduling to Gmail with Boomerang

I always love to have one plug-in to do maximum amount of work. When you install many plug-ins your browser sometimes becomes less responsive and unstable as well. The good news today is RightInbox is now offering you email reminder feature as well along with Scheduling and tracking.

How to Set Reminder for Email with RightInbox?

• Get the latest version of RightInbox plug-in for your browser.
• Now go to Gmail and compose a new email.
• You are already familiar with Send later and track buttons. Now you have new button, Remind Me.
• Clicking on that you can open several options to get reminders.
• You can get unconditional reminder at a given time. There are few predefined time frames and you can set specific time as well.
• If you want to get reminder only if you won’t get a reply check Only if nobody responds.
• Then you can select how you want to get reminded. There you can several options such as return to inbox, star it, label it etc.

This new feature makes the RightInbox a complete tool which is giving you scheduling, reminding and tracking. Get your plug-in updated and enjoy the new features.

Tags: #Email #Gmail

Back in early 90′s there were very popular search engines such as Alta Vista, Yahoo, Excite and HotBot. In 1998 Google came in to picture. By that time it was not having mush popularity among surfers but after 15 years, everything has changed.

Surfers hardly ever use Alta Vista, Excite and HotBot. Yahoo search is still there. Google is the master and Bing is trying to give good competition. Search engine war has changed the face of internet search engines drastically in such a short time.

I’m really happy with Google search engine and using it many times every day. But is there any way to improve it further? When I was seeking a solution for this problem I came across with a search engine called Slikk. It’s getting search results from Google and Bing, then present them in much improved way. Slikk is under NOG spotlight today.

Attractions in Slikk.com

You can access this new search engine via URL Slikk.com. The interface looks like just another search engine. You have a text box to enter search query, a search button, types of search as tabs, check box with label “SearchBrowse” and few more buttons.

The first impression is search suggestions. It’s snappy, relevant and accurate. When I start typing some search, it narrows down the suggestion rapidly and feels better than Google suggestions. Once you submit the search query it will take you to search result, again with performance at a greater level.

It’s showing you the search result in conventional pattern with title, description and URL. Next to URL you have options to see cached web page and share it on social media. Next to that you have a link called Add it. Once you click on that, it will ask you to create an account. Once you are done with that page will be bookmarked in you MySlikk dashboard.

Search Browse

This feature is unique and very useful. It’s something similar to page preview in Google, but here you can actually browser the page right in the search engine. It’s having tabbed interface, so you can open several pages and browse them while you are in search result page.

MultiView

MultiView is automatically getting enabled when there are relevant results. What it does is, divide the web page into two sections and show different kind of results. Ex: web result and image result. You can select the type of secondary view from menu bat at the top.

You can switch to LionV mode from tabs. Once you do that, it shows all the pages which you have open as tabs. When you are in tabbed view you have social sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter.

Note to Slikk Developers

Slikk Development team, you have done a great job and hats off for that. When it comes to technical aspect I have no complaint. But you should pay more attention to user interfaces. No point of having solid state-of-the art backend, without smooth and friendly UI. Especially, you can make MySlikk interfaces a lot better and simpler. If you manage to solve those simple issues, I believe you can make this a blast.

So people, try out Slikk, explore more features there and never forget to share new things you get to know about it. Comment thread is open for you, and subscribe to FeedBurner to get latest articles right in to your inbox.

Tags: #Bing #Google

Did you ever wanted to send a message to a friend whish will self destruct after he read it. This may sound like mission impossible move, yet there can be such a serious requirement. The solution is definitely not Email or a SMS.

Once you send a email to someone a copy of message is there in your outbox as well as inbox of the sender. In addition there can be lots of copies in the servers of the email service provider. The situation is same with the SMS as well.

When I was looking for a service which is giving you self destructive messages service, PrivNotes caught my eyes. Using this online tool you can send a private message to any one and it will get self destruct after reading.

How to Use PrivNote?

The usage of this tool is very simple and you don’t even have to register or provide any personal information.

• Visit the PrivNote home page.
• There is a big text editor. Type your message there.
• Check Notify me when this note gets read if it’s required.
• If you check it, you will have to provide your email address
• Finally click on Create note.
• Then it will take you to another page where you can get a secured link to the message.

• There you can destroy the message without sending it or create another note.
• You can share the given link to message with anyone.
• Once someone accesses the link once, it will get self destruct. After that it won’t be available to read.

At this stage of development this tool is not ready for any serious usage. This is more a fun tool yet. But I see a huge potential of developing this tool for serious business and professional usage, probably with mobile devices.

I leave this note as a request to the development to seriously consider upgrading this tool with better integration with other messaging services.

In the mean time you can try sending few messages with PrivNote and share your experience here with Notes Of Genius community.

Tags: #Security

When you are searching web with Google, usually it shows you different content from WWW. In very early stage it only had web search, but now it has expanded to image, video, books, blogs, shopping, news, flights and many more. They keep improving search results to show you what you really need.

However Google can show you only public web content. If there is private content at securely shared storage Google has no way to access them and show that content in search result. One good example is your Gmail inbox. What you are really looking for could not be a webpage, image or video, but an email you got from a friend.

Existing Google search engine is not capable of searching your inbox once you do a general search. It’s a huge amount of data. My inbox is having more than 10 GB of email. However, in the near future Google is planning to show you search result from your Gmail inbox as well to further personalize the Google search result.

Try Gmail in Personal Search Result

This feature is still under lab testing and running on limited capacity setup. If you like to be a field tester for Google here is your chance.

• Go to experimental Gmail Field Trial page.
• Click the button ‘Join the field trial’.
• And you are done!
• You can come back to same page to leave field trial anytime.

Once you enable this, there will be a new box in Google search result on right hand side labeled as Gmail result. There you will be able to see emails in your inbox, relevant to current search. Remember appearance of this box is conditional. You must be using “https://www.google.com” in English language and there should be relevant emails in your inbox for the current search query.

This is another major leap in Google search and unbelievable expansion of search domain. Practically this is merging Gmail search with Google Search. This would be great when you are searching for people and travel bookings.

Try the Gmail Field trial and never forget to share your feedback with us.

Tags: #Gmail #Google

When you are going through WWW you come across with many interesting content. If they are lengthy textual content, computer monitor is not a good way to read it. Even if you have a Smartphone or a tablet, still it won’t solve the problem.

But if you have a Kindle with e-ink display, that is the ideal way to read textual content without eye strain. But how to read web pages on that kind of device? Some of those are coming with wi-fi connectivity, but more of them are not.

In that case you can convert web pages you need to read in PDF format and then read on e-ink display. This sounds like a plan, but how to convert webpage to PDF format.

I tried many HTML to PDF converter, but most of them were doing not so good job. The main thing I was looking for is customize the PDF to a reader friendly format rather than just convert the original web page to PDF.

Finally, I came to know this online tool PrintFriendly.com which is doing a great job when converting HTML to PDF and printing them as well. Today, it’s under Notes Of Genius post light.

How to Use PrintFriendly?

• Go to PrintFriendly home page
• There you can see a text box to enter the URL you need to be converted to PDF.
• Enter your URL there and click on print preview.
• It will take you to the print preview of the given web page instantaneously.
• There you have several options to make the final PDF file the way you want it such as text size and remove images.
• By clicking on sections in print preview you can remove them easily.
• After modifying the print preview, you can directly print it or convert it to PDF with just one click.

Now you have highly readable PDF as the output from the PrinterFriendly.com. All you have to do is transfer this to your e-ink tablet and enjoy it.

Even if you take the print out, yes it will be highly readable and not having complex styling as the original web site.

Tags: #Converter

Smartphone market is getting hotter day by day and especially 2012 is a eventful year. Lots of path changing things happened such as introduction of many Smartphone and tablets in various events, introduction of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and when I’m writing this we are just few hours away from Apple iPhone 5 launch.

As a consumer this competition gives too much information for you. You can’t really decide which phone to buy or what is the best one. If you have already made up your mind to go for an Apple product, the best thing that you can do is wait few hours till iPhone 5 comes. But if you like to go for an Android phone, what is the best one out there?

Galaxy Nexus vs Galaxy SIII

After few minutes of online research, any one would narrow down your scope to Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III and Galaxy Nexus. Galaxy Notes II is actually hybrid device, designed for specific needs. If that’s the one you need, search ends there. But if you feel like it’s too big, you have to continue with Galaxy S III and Galaxy Nexus.

Galaxy S III is having Quad Core processor, 4.8 inch Super AMOLED plus display, Scratch proof Gorilla Glass II, expandable storage, 8 MP shooter and 2100 mAh battery.

On the other hand Galaxy Nexus is having Dual Core processor, 4.65 inch Super AMOLED display. Couture display, 16 GB internal storage, 5 MP shooter and 1720 mAh battery.

After reading above facts you will say Samsung Galaxy S III is the best Android Smartphone to buy. But in real life, that not the case.

Galaxy Nexus is having latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Project butter gives it super smooth operations like never before. Samsung Galaxy S III comes with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. If you do a side by side comparison, you will come to know that Galaxy Nexus is way faster regardless of stronger hardware muscle in Galaxy S III. In addition factory unlocked price of Galaxy Nexus is $349 while Galaxy S III is sitting around $600.

Now you must have changed your mind about Galaxy S III and thinking Galaxy Nexus is the best Android Smartphone in the market. But it’s not that simple.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on Galaxy S III

If you are not considering price as a serious factor, only difference between Galaxy S III and Galaxy Nexus is its operating system. If you can get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on Galaxy S III, it will be the best Android Smartphone ever introduced to the market. According to Samsung, around October they will release official Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OTA update for Galaxy S III.

If you can’t wait that long you can try CyanogenMod 10. However in order to get this done you will have to unlock boot loader and root your phone which will void the warranty. And it require certain level of technical knowledge as well.

Conclusion

In short Galaxy Nexus is the best Android Smartphone in the market, till Samsung release Jelly Bean update for Galaxy S III or you flash it with CyanogenMod 10. If you are not sensitive to the price factor, go for Samsung Galaxy S III, wait till Jelly Bean update, of get CyanogenMod 10. Then you will be the owner of the best Smartphone in the world.

If you like to get pure Android experience for good price, your phone is Galaxy Nexus. It’s still the best Android Smartphone in the market, till Galaxy S III get it’s official Jelly Bean update.

Tags: #Android #Ice Cream Sandwich #Jelly Bean #Nexus #Samsung #Smartphone

Internet speeds are getting better by the day and along with that desktop applications are getting replaced by internet applications. Thanks to latest technology and with the improved connectivity they can work fast as installed applications. These are called as Rich Internet Applications and I talked about them many time before.

The major problem with Rich internet application is a conventional browser is not a good platform to run them. Previously I talked about Mozilla Prism, a specialized platform to run rich internet application, yet the project is discontinued. Then what are the other alternatives?

The next solution is Application Shortcuts in Google Chrome. Let’s see how it works.

Steps to Follow

• Go to the rich internet application which you want to convert to a desktop application with Google Chrome
• In Google Chrome go to Customize and Control -> Tools -> Create Application Shortcuts

• Once you click on that it will give you a pop up

• In here you can select where you need the application shortcuts.
• In addition Google Chrome will automatically grab application icon as displayed above.
• Once you click create it will place the application shortcut in the selected locations.
• Then you can run the Rich internet application as any other desktop application just by double clicking on it.
• If you want the application to be run on windows start up, move the application shortcut in to Start menu -> Startup folder.

The process is simple as that. Below is a screenshot of YouTube.com which is converted to a desktop application using Google Chrome application shortcuts.

Chrome Application Shortcut vs Mozilla Prism

• Both come for Free.
• Mozilla Prism project is discontinued and Google Chrome continues to develop. Therefore Google Chrome supports all the latest web technology while Mozilla Prism is not.
• Mozilla Prism is a totally independent platform while Google Chrome is sharing its default browsing engine.
• Mozilla Prism is separately allocating resources for its application while Google Chrome treats it as another tab, yet opens in a separate window.
• If chrome got crashed all the converted application also get crashed. Mozilla Prism work totally independently.
• In Mozilla prism you can choose your own Application icon. Google Chrome auto-grab it online. In most of the cases auto-grabbed icons are having less resolution.
• In Mozilla Prism you can display progress bar, address bar and navigation buttons if required. In Google chrome it comes as a plain window.
• All the extensions you installed for Google Chrome will also be available for application shortcuts. (Ex: Internet Download Manager). Mozilla Prism doesn’t inherit plug-ins installed in Mozilla Firefox.
• Google Chrome application shortcuts are having better browser integration.

• Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
• Browser: Google Chrome Version 23.0.1271.91 m

Conclusion

When it comes to latest technology and performance, Google Chrome application shortcuts take the lead. But when it comes to customization and independent operations Mozilla Prism take the lead. No matter how good Google Chrome is, it keeps crashing. In that case Mozilla Prism is my savior. The setup I use in my personal computer is,

• Default browser: Google Chrome (Its loads rapidly, less resource consuming and render pages fast )
• Rich Internet application Platform: Mozilla Prism (Its run totally independently,Customizable, Application will not affected by Google chromes frequent crashes)

You may try out both the platforms and share your experience here.

Tags: #Chrome #Google #Rich Internet Applications

Skype is the best VOIP service in the world without argument. No matter how many services came in to competition, nothing was nearly as good as Skype. It’s giving you facilities beyond VOIP such as video conferencing, files sharing and multiplayer games as well.

When you are using your mobile phone, sometimes it’s very difficult to use Skype with unreliable 3G networks. Worst part is most of the time 3G networks are unreliable due to various reasons such as weather and signal corridors. In such a case how can you use Skype?

No matter how unstable the 3G data networks are, still 2G networks working just fine and serves its limited functionalities which are voice calls and SMS. When your 3G network is not so strong, what if you can utilize reliable 2G network to use Skype, or at least part of it? It will be great right?

Fortunately, there is a way and Three offer this service in many countries. Since it’s using 2G network infrastructure it’s fast, reliable and less costly than 3G data caps as well.

How Skype Work in 3G Network?

• You sign in to Skype and Skype server update your online statues to your contacts.
• You start dialing to one of your friends.
• Skype server gives your IP address to your contact and his IP to you.
• Now you both create peer to peer data connection
• Your computer or mobile phone directly stream digital media to your contact through above connection.
• Skype server overlook the communication process and manage connections.

How Skype Work in 2G Network?

• You sign in to Skype and Skype server update your online statues to your contacts.
• You start dialing to one of your friend.
• Skype server gives your IP address to your contact and his IP to you.
• In order to complete above steps still you need active internet connection. But for that conventional GPRS would be enough.
• Here comes the Magic, you don’t create direct peer to peer connection to your Skype friend.
• Instead you make a voice call to special number provided by your mobile service provider.
• This step is transparent to you since Skype application is doing this behind the screen.
• Your service provider streams your voice to your Skype friend using their internet connection.
• Incoming voice data also comes to your mobile service provider.
• He sends it to you as a voice call.

In this process you are not actually using 3G network to send your voice to your Skype friend. Instead you are using 2G network and plain old voice call, your mobile service provider take care of the rest of stuff.

Who Provide This Service?

Three is the one who providing this special Skype service all over the world.  They call it Skype-on-Three. There you have to install a special Skype application for your mobile phone and then you can make Skype calls without spending your data cap via 2G network.

Read more on Skype Official Website and Three Official Website.

When you picture this system, you will be able to figure out this works only for voice calls since 2G voice calls can’t carry any more complex data such as video or files. So if you want to make video call or file transfer, you will have to go the normal way and get it done through your 3G connection.

If you are already using this connection you must be having firsthand experience about this. Drop a comment and share those with Notes Of Genius community.

Tags: #VOIP