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Google Docs has recently dropped support for older Office file formats (.doc, .xls and .ppt) in favor of the newer file formats like docx, .xlsx and .pptx. →
You can still import your old .doc documents or .ppt presentations into Google Docs but if you are to export any of these files out of Google Docs, you’ll have to choose the new {doc|ppt|xls}x formats that are natively supported in Office 2007 and later.
Google Docs still supports the old Microsoft Office file formats
The newer file formats are definitely better but if some of your clients are still running the older versions of Microsoft Office, here’s how you can make your Google Docs documents compatible with their version of Office.
Option 1: Ask them to install the Office Compatibility Pack. This pack will allow users of Office XP and Office 2003 to open and edit files that are saved in the new Office formats.
Option 2: Save the files out of Google Docs as docx and then use any of the online conversion tools (for example, Zamzar) to convert these files back to the old format.
Option 3: Abhishek discovered a better solution. You can email any document, spreadsheet or presentation from Google Docs to yourself as an email attachment and Google will send you that file in the old Office formats (see screenshot).
To email a document from Google Docs, go to File -> Email as Attachment and then choose the appropriate format from the dropdown.
Bonus Tip: You can change the extension of a .docx file to .zip and it can then be viewed inside any web browser without even requiring Microsoft Office or Google Docs.
You can use any video editing software to add logos or watermarks to your videos before uploading them to YouTube but how do you put them in your existing videos that are already on the web?
Well, YouTube has recently added a new feature called InVideo Programming that will help you add any custom image to all your Youtube videos with a few clicks without having to edit the original video.
Put a logo inside your YouTube Videos
The image can be your brand’s logo (make sure it’s a transparent png) or use one of these YouTube buttons to promote your main YouTube channel inside all your videos.
You can choose to display the logo at the start of the video, somewhere in the middle or even for the entire duration of the video. Also, the logo can be placed in either corners of the YouTube player.
That said, YouTube internally uses annotations to display the images over the video and thus, if you a YouTube viewer has turned off annotations, your logo won’t be visible.
Thanks Ashish Mohta for the tip.
A warning message in Google Chrome v22.0
Google wants your Chrome browser safe and therefore discourages users from installing any web apps and extensions that aren’t available in the official Chrome Web Store. →
If someone tries to add an unapproved extension (CRX file) or a user-script (*.user.js) in Chrome, the browser will throw a yellow warning message as shown in the above screenshot.
There’s however an easy workaround to this problem.
First download the CRX file of any Chrome extension /web-app to your computer. Then click the Settings icon in Chrome (previously a Wrench icon) and go to Tools -> Extensions. Drag and drop the CRX file on this page and Chrome will gladly install the add-on.
Here’s a video demo illustrating all the steps in detail. The same technique can be used to install the unofficial Greasemonkey userscripts in Chrome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AQWUhHt35c
Also see: View Source of a Chrome Extension
How do you login to any web service if do not remember the password? The answer is easy. →
You will click the “forgot password” link on the sign-in page, the website will ask you to provide an alternate email address associated with your account and a password reset link will be sent to that address. Simple.
However, if you are using Yahoo Mail, Flickr or any of the other Yahoo services, recovering your account’s password involves a few more steps.
Yahoo will verify your identity before sending the password reset link.
You will be required to provide your date of birth, your country of residence and your postal code and Yahoo will only send the password reset link to your alternate email address if the entered information matches with the data stored in your Yahoo profile.
I created a second email account at Yahoo sometime back for testing but did not use the accurate birth date in my profile. I am therefore having trouble getting into that Yahoo account as I no longer remember the birth date I entered at the time of creating the account and without it, Yahoo won’t send the password reset link to my alternate address.
Do yourself a favor. Go to edit.yahoo.com and make a note of the postal code, date of birth and country that is associated with your Yahoo profile – you may need this information in case you ever forget your Yahoo account’s password like I did.
Bonus Tip: If you are a Gmail user, keep a record of your account creation date as that information will be required in case you ever lose access to your Google Account.
Create a Map of your Google Contacts
If you have been using Google Contacts (or any other address book*) to store the postal addresses of your friends and colleagues, you can easily create an online Google Map with all these address or even view them inside Google Earth. Here are the steps: →
Go to your mailbox and download the KML file to the desktop. You can double-click this file to directly open it inside Google Earth. You can click the pin /marker to read the full address and name of the contact.
Alternatively, you can upload the KML file to the web and copy-paste the URL of the KML file into the Google Maps Search box as shown below (see a sample map).
Also see: Google Maps Address Lookup
Internally, the Google Apps Script reads the home /work postal addresses of your Google Contacts and then uses the geocoding service** of Google Maps to transform these human-readable address into latitudes and longitude values. These points (or placemarks) are finally put in a KML file that you can open inside Google Earth or Google Maps.
[*] If you aren’t using Google Contacts, you can still use the script. Export the contacts data from your existing address book (like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail) as a CSV file and import the file into Google Contacts. [**] Google’s Geocoding service allows you make 2,500 requests per IP per day.
Amazon Glacier, if you are new, is an online backup service from Amazon where you can store files by paying as little as 1¢ per GB of storage space per month. Glacier is a recommended option for saving copies of files that are important but not accessed very frequently – like the photo archives on your disk. →
Amazon doesn’t provide a file uploading tool for Glacier but there are several third-party Glacier clients that you may use to easily upload files and folders from the local disk to the Glacier cloud with a easy drag-n-drop interface.
There’s another service in town called IceBox that eliminates the need for installing a separate Glacier client. The service links Amazon Glacier with your Dropbox account and any files that you add to a particular Dropbox folder are automatically uploaded to your Glacier vault.
The Dropbox files are queued for uploading to Amazon Glacier
This is a one-way operation so once the files have been uploaded from Dropbox to Glacier, you can safely delete the copies inside Dropbox without affecting the files that are already inside Glacier. You can also browse the file list on the IceBox website to verify that all your Dropbox files have been successfully added to Glacier.
To get started, go to the AWS dashboard to request your Access Keys for the Amazon Glacier service. Next follow the wizard on the Icebox website to link your Amazon and Dropbox accounts. This will create a new folder in your Dropbox folder and any files that you add to this folder go straight into your Glacier vault.
The service initially had a major security vulnerability – anyone could access your Amazon Keys by simply changing the URL – but the issue has been patched now. Alternatively, you may create a guest user in AWS for IceBox and grant access to only the Vault Archive and none of the other assets in your Amazon cloud.
