George's Technology Blog
» Smart Phones, Web Design, Google or whatever
iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows Mobile Get Push Email
Sep 22nd
Now get email pushed to iPhone and Windows Mobile with Google Sync. Evidently when Google Sync was released without this feature and Google responded to the
Once you’re set up, new messages are normally pushed to your phone within seconds. While this type of speed is pretty awesome, push connections tend to use more power than fetching at intervals, so don’t be surprised if your battery life isn’t quite what it used to be. We’ve done a lot of work to optimize power usage, but if you prefer to save battery life, you can always turn off push in your phone’s settings and fetch mail every 30 or 60 minutes instead.
No doubt many iPhone, Windows Mobile and iPod Touch users will be appreciating this new feature!
MORE
Google Sync
PHP – Do Until Certain Date
Sep 19th
UPDATE: Since I often use this bit of code to do things like display rel=”nofollow” on a link after a certain date, I’ve written a shorter, inline snippett to do the same thing. Keep in mind when copy-n-pasting the code below you may have to change the fancy quotes to regular quotes:
<?php if (date(“Ym”) > 201101) { echo ‘rel=”nofollow”‘;} ?>
I’m not deep into PHP, so I wrote this ‘hack’ to allow HTML or whatever until a certain date. The sample below will do whatever HTML is until a certain date…
<?php
$mymonth = date(“m”);
$myyear = date(“Y”);
$mycompare = $myyear . $mymonth;
// if its before Jan 2010
if ($mycompare < 201001) {?>
<p>Before 2010!</p>
<?php } else { ?>
<p>Its 2010 or later!</p>
<?php } ?>
Get Productive – Start Your Day Off Right
Sep 18th
A good friend of mine (that is organized) sent me this link today and I couldn’t think of a better way to file it somewhere I can find it than blogging aboutit, so here we go. A good way to have a productive day start it the right way. Although the orignal author’s post is written for freelancers,much of it could as easily apply to students, cab drivers or work-at-home freelancers!
Below are Mason Hipp’s 5 Easy Ways to Start a Productive Day along with my own comments. If you want to read Mike’s original tips along with details added, you’ll need to visit his website by clicking the link above.
- Get a good night’s sleep
George adds… brain boost - Spend 20 minutes being disciplined
George adds… a productive day will doubtless include discipline - Eat Breakfast
George adds… obvious – fuel your mind and body - Clarify EXACTLY what tasks are productive
George adds… planning makesa difference, so priorities are a must - Get into work mode
George adds… work mode, study mode, whatever applies to your life
Also…
- get ready the night before as much as possible such as…
- what you will be wearing
- preparing your breakfast and/or lunch
- make sure you have gassed up your car/truck
- check the weather – do you need raingear, get up early to shovel snow?
- stay focused on one task at a time
Play Google Voice voicemails in Gmail
Sep 18th
Not only can you listen to your Google Voice voicemail messages in Gmail, but they are also delivered with automated voice-to-text transcription so you can preview your voicemail before listening.
For those of you who already use Google Voice, you’re probably used to receiving voicemail notifications via email. A couple of minutes after someone leaves a voicemail on your Google Voice number, you’ll receive an email showing who called, an automated transcript of the voicemail, and a link to play the message. You can click the link to listen to the message right from your computer.
MORE GOOGLE VOICE
Check out Google Voice
VIDEO
Google’s Blogger Celebrates 10 Years Online
Sep 4th
Ten years ago in August 1999 Blogger.com was born and Google is celebrating the birthday. As blogger celebrates their birthday, Google also is celebrating the success of blogging in general noting that:
We’re proud that Blogger continues to be a force for free expression worldwide and that it is growing quickly despite its maturity. In the past two years alone, the number of people contributing to a blog has more than doubled, and every second of every day, a new blog is created on Blogger…
- Official Google Blog, “Happy 10th birthday, Blogger”
Indeed blogs have been gaining in popularity as the years go by, don’t be surprised in gthe near future when families commonly have blogs as a part of “everday life”, just like the age old photo album.
More Gmail Themes
Sep 4th
1. Update: Google has announced even more Gmail themes.
2. Let Gmail know you want to upload your own pictures to your Gmail theme… go to Gmail’s
Suggest a feature for Gmail page and click the “Suggest It” button next to More themes/create your own themes
Suggest a feature for Gmail page and click the “Suggest It” button next to More themes/create your own themes
4 new themes and I jumped all over the green one. Gmail has added these themes just in time, because I was getting a little tired of the last one and I was READY for something new. I’m glad they even care enough to add themes because I’d hate to have to learn to skinning Gmail myself, I’d rather just choose from pre-selected options with awesome pictures and so far I like many of them, so more kudos to Gmail!
Original Gmail Themes Post.
Old Gmail Themes Post.
Gmail Themes Help.
Let Gmail know you want to upload your own pictures to your Gmail theme… go to Gmail’s
Suggest a feature for Gmail page and click the “Suggest It” button next to More themes/create your own themes
Suggest a feature for Gmail page and click the “Suggest It” button next to More themes/create your own themes
Gmail Ninja Tips Goes More International
Sep 4th
Gmail announced today that you can now get your Gmail Ninja tips in more languages - Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and UK English. Plus they’ve also added some new tips to the English site received from user feedback.
Send your Gmail Tip and who knows, maybe they’ll use it!
Contact’s Birthdays and Sports Schedules in GCalendar
Sep 3rd
Gcalendar has added sports schedules and contact’s birthdays. Sports fans (baseball, basketball, hockey and more) will enjoy seeing their favorite team’s games on their calendars. Plus you can subscribe to “Contacts’ Birthdays and Events” which will pull birthdays from your Gmail Contacts.
Read their entire post and check out the screenshot!
