Personalized ads might be coming to Gmail Android

Recently updated, the Gmail application for Android carries signs of the imminent arrival of advertising.

The Android Police website, analyzed the last updated Gmail for Android 4.6. The site was not disappointed, since among the novelties of this version, they came back with clues about the arrival of advertising on the app.

A new library named "ads" - has appeared. In it, a series of XML files evoking multiple ad formats, but also a command that refers to the page of the user's preferences, suggesting that the custom settings (used for targeting) could be part of .
 

Even thought Google has already started sending Sponsored mails via Gmail, the service does not appear, for the moment, to include advertising. This situation could change in the future, at least for the Android application, if the company decided to integrate the elements cited above in its APK.

Stay tuned!

Microsoft shows you how you're getting scroogled

The Competition is fierce between Google and Microsoft. The latter recently accused his rival of disguising advertisements in emails and sending them directly to the user's inbox. A technique that Microsoft has named Gspam.

Following an update of Gmail users now have a "Promotions" tab to separate the commercial emails from the rest of the electronic correspondence. The idea might seem a bit silly to you, but Microsoft accuses Google of scanning mails from its users, analyzing keywords and then sending advertising messages among the "Promotions".

Microsoft styling this technique "Gspam" and invites users to no longer be "scroogled". Indeed, the role of a mailbox is to filter spam and not to drag some more or less discreetly.

Of course, I can invite you all to leave Gmail and end my post, but it would be pointless and ridiculous since I have no better viable alternative ( Unless you are willing to try self-hosting and take full responsibility for your own security). 

However, the only advice I can give you is not to use OUTLOOK, because how could you trust the firm who released windows 8, willingly handed the NSA Skype data, and are shamelessly advertising the Xbox one (a spy in your home).

Read more about Scroogled

5 privacy issues you probably didn't know about

1. Apple's IPhone is secretly tracking your movements and storing your data, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Learn more..
2. Facebook's app automatically tries to activate your GPS whenever it is launched. There's no setting or option to disable this.
3. Gmail reads your email. Google never said that it  reads our mail, however, it publicly acknowledges that it "processes personal information" via cookies and on its servers, so it can provide "our products and services to users," as well as to keep its service running well. Learn more..
4. Facebook Home: Facebook latest "innovation", is trying to be the gateway to your virtual world. It's a layer between the OS and the apps, it is the gateway to any data exchange. Which means, that Facebook will possess every bit of data passing through. The problem is that Facebook is going to use all this data not to improve our lives but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us.
5. Over than 24% of online time is spent on social networks. And a major social network site, according to Neilsen, will experience one major breach, which will expose a terrific amount of personal data.

Use Twitter as a Gmail notifier and get SMS for new mail

Before starting I have to state that this project is created by the genius Mr.Amit Agarwal, I'm just creating this tutorial to demonstrate and explain the process.

So, as Mr. Argawal mentions this idea will let  can turn your Twitter Timeline into a Gmail Notifier and get notified (via tweets) as soon as new email messages arrive in your mailbox.And since you can link Twitter to your phone number, you can even get SMS text alerts for new Gmail messages.

This three steps process should take you 5 minutes and it is really easy to follow. Let's start: 

1- Creating a new Twitter app Gmail:

First I'm going to create a brand new twitter account and I'm gonna call it h20platform. Then, we'll have to go to the twitter settings and check the option “Protect My Tweets” and uncheck the option “Let others find me by my email address.” 

Now to create the application, go to https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new, sign in with your new twitter account and fill the fields as the picture below shows:

Google Glass first apps unveiled

It was at the SXSW Interactive (from 8 to 12 March 2013) that Google has introduced some of the applications that will be included in its famous glasses, Google Glass.

Four applications are already in the pipeline: Evernote, Gmail, Path and the New York Times. 

Evernote is a universal note-taking tool, which works with any web site and includes a voice recorder, etc.  
Gmail is email tool made ​​by Google.
Path, is a social network where you can accept 150 contacts (a kind of anti-Facebook).  
Finally, the application of the New York Times that can show you the latest news.

All of these applications (already available on other platforms), should be completely redesigned to be adapted to the reality glasses.The Verge explains for example that the Gmail application must be reconfigured so that only the most important messages are loaded, the photo of the recipient appears, and it is possible to dictate a particular message without typing anything. Same for Evernote: it is possible to take photos and share them instantly on Skitch, without wasting any time on sub-menus.
 
The marketing of these glasses should always take place in the course of the year, but the first releases are currently reserved for developers.

For the record, it was reported that "5 Point Cafe", a dive bar in Seattle, has banned Google Glass, even before its release for Privacy concerns, including the fact that the glasses can be used to discretely take video.
The bar outlined its problems with the glasses in a Facebook post here.

Audacity.

For those who follow this blog regulary, don't worry this is still a tech related post; for the others, well, I don't really care about you. Unless you're planning to become a regular.

In this post we'll be talking about a behavior that really bugs me, which is audacity.
First I'm going to define it, then I'm going to show you some examples.

Definition: Rude or disrespectful behavior.


First example:

"She had the audacity to pick up the receiver and ask me to hang up".

Our second example will be "Scroogled"

When we talk about lack of security, vulnerability, spyware, malware and viruses the first thing that comes to you mind is Microsoft.

Microsoft, the mother of the infamous IE which seems to constantly be in the news for its security issues and vulnerabilities (take a look IE wiki page);
Microsoft the mother of the newly born windows 8 surface that sends data to Microsoft about each application that is installed in Windows 8, which is a very serious privacy problem.
(The process is well described by canadian security researcher Nadim Kobeissy )


Now, this Microsoft that earned its reputation is starting a campaign agaisnt google privacy (gmail to be more specific) just to promote their outlook.com, which, it happens, that also display ads.

This is audacity.

Our Third and last example is of course Google:

Google does read your sent and recieved mail. I just wanted to make clear this up. And here's Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

"We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are, with your permission; we know where you’ve been, with your permission; we can more or less know what you’re thinking about." - Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at the The Atlantic Washington Ideas Forum in 2010.

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on Consumer Privacy.

You all know, that google has this browser named Chrome. And what you might not all know is that chrome, like any other browser have a private surfing mode or "incognito" as Google named it.
Now when start you chrome with incognito mode, this is the message that will be displayed :

This is like me, trashing new readers at the beginning of my post and bitching later about how no one is following me.

And finally, I know this post might not be interesting for the most of you; but I think that "Audacity" is the word of this century and I wanted to have some fun with it.

A dilemma : how to get ideas for my posts

Whether you're a professional blogger writing for the most important blogs on the web or a not so professional who got his application rejected so many times, or just an amateur who just got started; Whether you're young, old, tall, short, clever, dumb, to make a successful blog post you need an idea.

A bunch of them actually, because let's face it: You can get away with bad writing (My case), but you'll never get away with a bad idea.

How to find an idea?

Normally there is three ways to come up with an idea for a new post:

1. An idea can just pop uninvited into your head, and you will come up with a great post. But, sadly, you can't rely on this all the time.
2. You can steal from other blogs, and maybe tweak it a little.(if you have a shred of dignity)

When does Gmail block your account?

One of the possibility why you can’t log in to your Gmail account is because of it having been locked by Google. This happens automatically when “abnormal usage” indicates that an account has been compromised. According to Google, it may take up to 24 hours before account access is reinstated.  Reasons for locked accounts include:

• Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail in a short period of time. If you're getting the error message, 'Lockdown in Sector 4,' you should be able to access Gmail again after waiting 24 hours.
• Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
• Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser3 extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
• Running multiple instances of Gmail.
• Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it's probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser's cache4 and cookies.

Another possibilities of why you can't log in to your account are:

1. Login problems.
2. Forgotten username or password.
3. Hacked accounts.

Stop spamming and advertising

This is a quick tip about how to stop spamming and advertising using 'Gmail Filters'. It's really so simple and doesn't take any effort.

This method isn't very sophisticated, it's based on a very simple logic and works 90% of the time.
What we're going to do is, to delete every  message that contains the word subscribe in it; Since all the advertising and spamming mails contain this word.
In case you are subscribed to some important mailing lists, you might want to not delete it. You could make it skip the inbox and forward it to a label that you create.

So to create a filter on Gmail, go to settings>filters>create new filter.
We want to apply the filters on every message that has the word 'unsubscribe'  and this filter should delete this message.

I hope this was useful, and be careful while applying filters.

5 Awesome Gmail tips and tricks

I'm sure that everyone who's reading this has a Gmail account ( or at least the ones who know what they're doing). It's simply the single decent mail service online and I'm sure you all know this. But what you might not know is that there is plenty of tricks and things to do to enhance you experience.



Here's the most efficient and useful 5 simple tips that you can do:

1 - SEARCHING IN GMAIL

Search All Emails

Entering search word in Gmail search box will search for all the messages including chat messages, emails in sent, drafts, inbox and all the messages that are archived and labeled.

Searching Emails in Particular Folders

“Searchtext in:foldername” will search for the given text in the specific folder which you specified.  For example, following will search for keyword geek in the Sent Folder.

The platform in:sent

Search Specific Type of Messages

Types of messages in Gmail

• Starred - messages which are Considered as an important
• Unread - messages which are unread
• read - messages which are read
• chat - Conversation messages

“is:starred”, “is:unread”, “is:read” and “is:chat” will search for the messages that are starred, unread, read and chat messages respectively.

For Example, the following will give you the list of starred messages in Inbox folder.

in:inbox is:starred

Use OR Operator

You can search messages based on either-or condition. For example, following search gives the message which has ramesh as recipient or sender, after 2012/12/01

from:h20 OR to:h20 after:2012/01/01

from:h20 | to:h20 after:2012/12/01

Note: OR is case sensitive and must be in upper case.

2 - ATTACH A .EXE IN GMAIL

You cannot attach an executable file like a normal file.  Gmail will display the error message –  “FILE is an executable file. For security reasons, Gmail does not allow you to send this type of file”.

To overcome this issue, do the following as a sender of the email.

• Rename the file without an exe extension,
• Compress it with any compression utility and then attach it.

Now it will get attached, and uploaded successfully. The receiver of the email should uncompress the attachment and rename it again with exe extension.

3 - Add Emphasis to Chat

Gmail's instant messaging Chat function is one of the more basic options around, but there are a few bits of formatting you can use to add nuance to your online communication.
Bold: *The Platform*
Italics: _ The Platform _
Strike: - The Platform -

4 -Gmail Desktop Notifications

  

Google offers a free Gmail Notifier as a quick download that will alert you with a visual pop-up and audio cue when new mail has arrived, even if you don't have Gmail open in a browser.
It automatically checks for new mail every two minutes, with the icons changing to show unread mail in case you miss the notification. The app is available for both Windows PCs and Macs. It should be noted that downloading this will also make Gmail your default e-mail program, which you might need to consider if you don't want this to be case.

5 - Create Variations of an Email Address

Personally, I find this feature very useful it helps you to organize your mail in a very efficient way and it prevents random news feeds splashing all over your inbox.
You can finally feel comfortable listing your mail in a news feed. You can create multiple gmail variations by adding a word after your name with a plus sign. So,yourname+platformfeed@gmail.com.

This alias system then comes into its own if you also set up filters to direct those messages where you want them. For example, they could skip the inbox and be archived, have a label applied, be forwarded to another account, and so on.

To set up a filter, go to "Settings," hit the "Filters" tab, select "Create New Filter" and follow the simple steps from there.