Saving a Copy of Gmail Data

If you get locked out of your Google account you could lose all your email history In recent years, Google have become much more insistent (to the point of irritation) that you provide “recovery information” so that you can get back into your account if you lose your password or if your account is hacked. …
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Google to include Ad Blocking in Chrome

Yes, that’s right. Google has become one of the biggest companies in the known universe thanks to its advertising revenues, and it’s going to include an ad-blocker in its browser Actually, that’s not strictly true. They are not going to block all ads. Instead they are going to try to filter out ads that are …
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More Google Search Tips

How to get more from Google Search I’ve written blogs before on the subject of googling (see the links at the bottom of this post), but there are ever more ways to use Google more efficiently. From watching my computer support clients at work, it’s clear that Google is a central part of most people’s …
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Google Instant Answers

As well as searching websites, Google Search can also offer instant answers to common questions I did try searching Google to see if they publish a comprehensive directory of “Instant Answers”, but (ironically) I couldn’t find anything from them. However, here are some examples that I’ve gleaned from other sources: Time Zones eg Type “time …
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Free Cloud Storage

We are being bombarded with offers of “free cloud storage” The phrase “in the cloud” just means that computers remote from our own local network are involved. I covered this in a blog three years ago called Cloud Computing, but then I was thinking more of the provision of software in the cloud rather than …
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Some Easy Refinements in “Google Search”

Have you been missing some helpful refinements to “Google Search” that are right in front of your eyes? Working one-to-one with my computer support clients, I often have the opportunity of watching how they really work with their computers. It’s all very well talking to people, giving tips on how to work more efficiently, but …
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Gmail’s New Inbox

How do you like the new Gmail inboxes, then? Google have been rolling out the new Gmail inboxes, whereby your incoming email is pre-sorted into one of five tabs. These tabs, together with Gmail’s definitions of what goes into them by default are: Primary – “person-to-person conversations and messages that don’t appear in other tabs” …
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Firefox Bells and Whistles

One of the great strengths of the Firefox web browser is the ability to bolt on goodies – bells and whistles, if you like – that add useful features to the browser. These “bolt-ons” are usually free but the authors may invite you to make a small donation of a couple of pounds. There are …
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Internet Privacy (2)

We may be fighting a losing battle with online privacy. As mentioned in last week’s blog on Internet Privacy, companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon hoover up every crumb of information they can glean about us and use it to target us with ads and content that they think will appeal to us. As far …
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