Brokekid.net

Did you know? – Cleaning up Gmail, Tip #1

If you have a lot of unread messages throughout your inbox, you can easily find them and bring them together using operators. Type these words into your Gmail search box:

label:unread label:inbox

This will bring up all your unread messages for you to quickly sort through and archive.

Did you know?

You can use the GoogleLookup function to insert live data into Google Spreadsheets. For example:

To insert the number of Internet users in Paraguay:
=GoogleLookup("Paraguay"; "internet users")

For more, check out this link.

Timelining

I’m sure you’ve either seen timelines used in class or run across them at some point on the web, usually used in a graphical context to highlight events and helping you visualize a stories bigger picture. Without the graphical context, it’s easy to gloss over important facts and miss the significance of an event’s timing.

A number of start-ups are helping users easily create attractive timelines for their own uses. Dipity, xtimeline, Dandelife and MyTimelines are a few sites competing in this space and let the user plug in their own data and rss feeds to populate timeline events.

Check out these examples:

• Barak Obama
• Disney
• Profile Example

MITs SIMILE Timeline is an open source project that lets users develop timelines and host them on their own sites. The application is fully customizable and lets you retain control of your own data. Check out their super awesome dinosaur timeline.

Timelines are definitely interesting for summarizing the importance of an event but are also useful for tracking the growth and evolution of a story in real time, picking out patterns and predicting future results based on past occurrences.

Why is the latest (among many) McCain gaffe so great?

(via anonymousliberal.com)

First, and most obviously, it underscores the economic message that the Democrats are trying to convey. We’re in the middle of a major housing crisis and people are struggling to keep from losing their homes. The economy is the number one issue, and the Democrats are trying to paint McCain as being out-of-touch and unaware of the problem. Obama’s sharpest ad over the last week was the one that played McCain’s prior statements about the strength of the economy and asked: “How can he fix the economy if he doesn’t even know it’s broken.” This gaffe plays beautifully into that theme.

Second, the gaffe badly damages the “everyman” image that all Republican presidential candidates, including McCain, try to convey. It’s hard to image a more out of touch statement. Comedians will have a field day with it.

Third, it goes a long way toward neutralizing McCain’s central attack theme: the “celebrity” charge. Who seems more like a “celebrity”: Obama or the guy who has to ask his staff how many houses he owns? Maybe Paris Hilton can sympathize.

Did you know?

You can add a table of contents to any document in Google Docs?

Alex Chitu found out how to insert a table of contents into a Google document by kidnapping some existing, but non-officially released code: just paste …

javascript:mr("TocSettings");

… into the browser address bar when in your Google Docs document and hit return. If you used headlines in the document, they will now be linked to.

Another useful feature not in the Google document editor menu for now, apparently, is a Thesaurus*. To see synonyms for a given word, select the word and paste …

javascript:MC=NC();GC("thesaurus");

… into the address bar, and hit return again (you may also want to add bookmarklets for these commands; also, try entering “encyclopedia” or “dictionary” instead of “thesaurus”).

D.J. Coffman at willdrawanything.com designed a custom Ghosthead illustration for just a few bucks, much along the same vain as Apelad at Hobotopia did in 2007. Take a look –

Did you know?

There are a ton of keyboard shortcuts you can use for Google Calendar and Gmail. For Gmail, you can quickly access them if you have shortcuts turned on, by pressing Shift and ?. They’ll save you a lot of time and frustration.

To turn them on in Gmail, go to the setting in the top right corner. You’ll then see this -

To turn them on in Google Calendar, go to the settings again and you’ll see this -

(via allhatnocattle.net)