Web Apps on Lin's Blog

Using Google Calendar to Easily Schedule Times with Friends and Clients!

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 11:30:39 +0000

Scheduling a time is an art! Every time I go back and forth over email to settle on a meeting time, I wish I could just send my calendar to the other person so they can pick a slot that works. Clean and simple! I kept thinking that the powerful Google should have a feature like this. Sure enough, after some research, I found that Google Calendar lets you share your calendar with anyone as a URL. All your events are anonymized as “Busy,” so the other person can only see that you’re occupied during that time, but can’t learn any details about the event (content, time, participants, and so on).

Pocket: A Read-Later Helper for Saving Articles You Don't Have Time to Finish

Sat, 29 Jun 2013 20:29:33 +0000

Pocket was formerly known as Read It Later. It has extensions for Chrome and Firefox that let you save articles you don’t have time to read to its database, so you can read them later when you’re free. Its reading app is available for iOS and Android, and it supports offline reading. You can also add tags to articles to make them easier to find later. Many RSS apps also support saving articles to Pocket, and that’s my favorite feature. The reason I gave up on Evernote was that many mobile news reader apps don’t support Evernote. If I came across a good article, I had to use a computer to save it to Evernote. Pocket is different: popular reading apps like Flipboard and Feedly all support saving directly to Pocket. If you’re reading in a mobile browser and want to save an article, that’s easy too. Just send it through Email.

Pocket also helps you make good use of your time. I often come across good articles online while I’m coding or busy with something else, so I can’t read them right away. That’s when I save the article to Pocket, then take out my phone and read it when I have some free time. It also supports offline reading, and you just need to sync the content every so often. Evernote, by contrast, requires a paid plan for offline reading. For now, I put temporary articles in Pocket, and articles I want to keep permanently or study notes go into Evernote.

Backing Up All Your Google Docs Files with GDocBackup

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:30:16 +0000

Like many people, I’m used to handling documents and reports in Google Docs, and over time it piles up a lot of material. So what if one day you want to back up all your Google Docs files to your computer? Google Docs doesn’t offer an export service, only downloads. If you have just a few files, you can download them one by one, but if you have a lot, it gets to be a real hassle. Here I recommend a program called GDocBackup.

Google Takeout: One-Click Backup of Your Google Picasa, Contacts, Google Plus, and More

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:07:31 +0000

I have a habit: every new year, I back up all my data, so I won’t regret it if my computer ever breaks and all my files disappear. Google Takeout, which I’m introducing today, is a backup service provided by Google. You can download the backed-up files to your own computer. Most importantly, since it’s a service provided by Google itself, you don’t have to worry about your account data falling into third-party hands!

Want to Know Who Unfriended You on Facebook? Let Unfriend Finder Help (Currently Unavailable)

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:09:23 +0000

Unfriend Finder is a Chrome-only extension that lets you find out which people have secretly removed you from their Facebook friends. Some people don't care about this kind of thing, but someone like me really does care! (I care a lot, but I still really want to know who unfriended me...) We were already friends, so why remove me :(( But then again, if you haven't installed Unfriend Finder, you won't know when someone unfriends you, so maybe that makes you feel a little better...

Google Dictionary Was Suddenly Shut Down. What Do We Do Now!?

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:10:31 +0000

A few days ago, Google Dictionary was shut down without warning, and a lot of people panicked. We had all gotten used to looking up unfamiliar words on Google Dictionary whenever we came across them. Google said the dictionary’s features had been merged into Google Search and Google Translate, so the dictionary had completed its phased mission and it was time to say goodbye~

Did You Know You Can Write Evernote Notes Through Twitter?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:59:57 +0000

Today I’m sharing a neat trick: writing notes directly on Twitter. I got the idea from Plurk. Lots of people like to reply “note” to Plurk posts when they come across gossip or news, so I started wondering whether notes and microblogging could be combined. After looking into it, I found that they can! The well-known Evernote offers a similar feature. Just follow its official Twitter account, and it checks your tweets and does the note-taking for you. Even if you don’t use Twitter, that’s fine. Several sites, including Facebook and Plurk, can sync their content to Twitter!

When Google Decides to Take On Facebook... Google Plus Is Here~

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:28:32 +0000

Google has tried to beat Facebook before with Buzz and Google Wave. I remember they got slammed by netizens. Google Buzz in particular was so bad I didn’t want to use it at all. Google Wave, on the other hand, I thought had real potential, but its weakness was that it had too few users, and it couldn’t connect with MSN or other instant messengers. The most important thing for an instant messenger is having lots of users. But this post isn’t about those two. It’s about Google+.

Pastie: A Site for Posting Code That Can Be Embedded in External Websites!

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:13:32 +0000

Sometimes you may want to share some code with a friend and ask them to help you debug it. In that case, sending the file directly is the best way. But what if they can’t receive files? That’s when Pastie comes in handy. You paste your code into Pastie, and the site gives you a URL. Just send that URL to the other person, and they can see your code. There are a lot of sites like Pastie these days, but Pastie’s biggest feature is that it can be embedded in external websites~

Making a Simple Online Business Card with Google Profile~

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 09:56:56 +0000

For a long time I’ve wanted to make an online business card with some of my info on it, like my email, contact details, education, birthday, and so on. But I never had time to build a site like that. Then I came across the “Google Profile” feature online, which was pretty close to what I had in mind. The “Google Profile” feature we’re introducing in this post is actually a lot like Facebook’s “Info” section. It shows some of your personal details, such as education, occupation, birthday, gender, photo albums, email, and so on. My approach is to print the URL of my online business card on my physical business card, which reduces how much information I have to fit on the physical card.

Google Cloud Connect: Bringing Microsoft Office Into the Cloud~

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:00:13 +0000

Google Cloud Connect is a small add-on for Microsoft Office designed by Google. It connects Microsoft Office to Google Docs, so you can save your documents to Google Docs in the cloud and collaborate online directly from Microsoft Office. The unfortunate part is that it doesn’t let you edit Google Docs documents directly inside Microsoft Office. It would be great if you could. To be honest, Google Docs is very handy, but it crashes quite often, and it has far too few features…

Plurk Paste - Easily Post Very Long Messages and Code on Plurk

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:18:07 +0000

Plurk is a well-known microblogging system in Taiwan. Each message is limited to 140 characters. That limit makes things awkward for people who want to ask the community a question or share something good. For example, say you see a really funny story, but it's 300 characters long, so you can't post it on Plurk. Some people solve this by splitting the 300 characters into three parts and replying to their own post with each part, but that's a bit inconvenient. Here I want to introduce a new site called Plurk Paste

AirDropper: Let Anyone Send Files to Your Dropbox

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:00:48 +0000

AirDropper is a plugin whose main function is to turn your Dropbox into a place where anyone can upload files. By default, you can share files in your Dropbox for others to download, but people without a Dropbox account can't send files to you (you can use a shared folder if the people sending files to you have Dropbox accounts). AirDropper gets around this limitation. The principle is simple: through an authorization process, AirDropper is allowed to access your Dropbox account. Then you just have people send files to AirDropper, and it automatically saves them into your Dropbox, which indirectly lets anyone upload. But note that this plugin doesn't work like FTP. Instead, when someone wants to send you files, you send them a link, and they upload the files using that link. Once the upload is finished, the link expires.

From my experience trying several Dropbox plugins, most of them are slow, and some won’t even load at all. This is especially true of the top-ranked ones. I guess Dropbox sends them so much traffic that their servers can’t handle it….. But AirDropper, which I’m introducing today, has been fairly stable. Its only drawback is that sending the email isn’t fast enough.

Google Docs Collaboration - I Personally Find It Better Than Office 2010

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:46:36 +0000

Recently, my team used Google Docs to write the web page content for a 2010 web design competition on charity, humanities, and technology, so I ended up using Google Docs' online collaboration feature. It's quite easy to use. Just set the document's sharing permissions, send the URL to your collaborators, and you can start editing the document together. It also has a simple built-in instant messaging program, so you can chat while you write. It's great for school group assignments or for anyone who needs to write reports at work.

Dropbox: Super Simple Online Storage to Sync Your Data

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:22:42 +0000

Calling Dropbox an online hard drive actually sells it a bit short, but it’s the only name I can think of right now. If anyone has a better name, please let me know! Dropbox’s main function is that you install a client program on your computer. When you have a file to upload, you just drop it into the Dropbox client and it’s uploaded. Dropbox also gives free users 2GB of space, and if you recommend Dropbox to someone else, your space can grow too (up to 8GB). Personally, I feel 2GB is already enough.

FindBook: A Handy Book Price Comparison Website

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:31:23 +0000

FindBook is a website that compares book prices for you. Just enter the book’s title, the author’s name, or its ISBN, and it lists which bookstores carry the book and at what price. It also has a “Daily 66% Zone” that collects books sold at 66% of the list price. I’d recommend that anyone who wants to buy books check prices there first. I’ve compared prices there myself, and the difference is actually quite big. For example, if a bookstore’s list price is 500, FindBook can find it for as little as 300 (or even 250). FindBook also calculates shipping for you, which is really convenient~

4Shared: 10GB Total, 200MB per File, Free Online Hard Drive (Traditional Chinese Interface Supported)

Sat, 15 May 2010 11:13:41 +0000

4Shared offers a free online hard drive with 10GB of total storage and a maximum of 200MB per file (I remember it used to be 100MB per file…..). It also supports external sharing links. One annoying thing is that you have to log in once every 30 days. Otherwise, your membership is canceled and all your uploaded files are deleted. 4Shared also uses a membership system, so you have to create an account before you can upload files. But the sign-up process is really simple, with only a few things to fill in~ You can also sign in directly with your Google account. Also, the file upload interface of 4Shared is really cool. Take a look at the picture below and you’ll see what I mean ^^

Let Google Protect Your Browsing - Google Public DNS

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:27:13 +0000

Google Public DNS is a service Google recently launched that lets you browse the web using Google’s free DNS. The benefit of Google Public DNS is that it makes your browsing safer, and your browsing speed may also improve. By the way, openDNS also offers a DNS service, and it’s pretty good too, so feel free to check it out. Google Public DNS is also one of the few Google services that doesn’t require going to a website to use it (you just configure it directly on your computer).

Six Must-Use Gmail Labs Features: Complete Tutorial for Translate Mail, Undo Send, Canned Responses, and More

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:02:06 +0000

Gmail Labs is a recent feature from Gmail. It contains many things Gmail is still experimenting with (for example, offline mode and translate mail). In other words, the features in Gmail Labs are usually features that Gmail may release in the future. However, because Gmail Labs features are still under development, they are not very stable, and installing some incomplete features can sometimes cause problems. But don't worry too much about that! Gmail Labs provides a URL that lets you turn off a problematic Lab feature when something goes wrong. I have used Gmail Labs for over two months and have rarely run into crashes. Below, I will introduce several Gmail Labs features that the site owner recommends.

Got My Google Wave Invitations! (2 invites, leave a comment if you want one)

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:52:02 +0000

After a long wait, I finally received a Google Wave invitation. I’m sure many of you have heard of Google Wave. It’s a new service Google is about to launch, combining email with many other Google services. It’s a bit like MSN (because it’s real-time). Honestly, I don’t fully understand what Google Wave is about, so I’ll quote someone else’s article below. Google Wave is still in testing, and you need an invitation to use it. I’d been asking for invitations on various forums, and I finally got one.

Here are some Google Wave pictures for you XD. I’m still figuring out how to send invitations to other people~

Top 10 Reasons to Use Gmail, Plus a Gmail Tutorial

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:05:22 +0000

Gmail is my favorite email service, and there are plenty of reasons why. The main one is simple: Gmail’s spam filtering is very accurate. I’ve never seen Gmail mark a real email as spam. I’ve been using it for more than two years, and spam has never worried me. Gmail’s storage isn’t unlimited like Yahoo’s, but it keeps growing. In fact, the current capacity is so large that you won’t use it up in a lifetime, so there’s no need to worry about a full inbox. Login page: http://mail.google.com/mail

GooTube FLV - Easily and Safely Download MP3 Music

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:49:00 +0000

In this age of information explosion, pirated software and music flood the internet. I think very few people buy official CDs to listen to music anymore. Instead, they go online and grab MP3s! In this post, I’ll share a trick you really should know: how to grab music straight from Yam Tiankong. You might ask, “Can’t you already grab music from Yam Tiankong?” True, in some ways you can’t. But now we have a site called GooTube FLV, which parses out the real address of Yam Tiankong’s audio and video, so you can grab its music!

P.S. GooTube FLV also works for downloading YouTube videos.

URL http://kej.tw/flvretriever/

Yahoo's Official Web-Based Messenger, with Traditional Chinese Support

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:10:01 +0000

Yahoo!Messenger for web(referred to as WebMessenger in this post) is a web-based messenger released officially by Yahoo Kimo. WebMessenger comes with a variety of built-in languages, including Traditional Chinese. On top of that, WebMessenger automatically saves your chat history. The only catch is that WebMessenger requires Flash to work, and it doesn't support multi-person conferences. Still, overall WebMessenger is pretty handy — for a while, whenever my computer didn't have a messenger installed, I just used the online messenger on the WebMessenger site.

URL http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/

ebuddy: Online Instant Messaging with Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, and QQ Support (With Tutorial)

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:51:08 +0000

ebuddy is a web-based instant messaging site that I’ve found quite good so far. It supports many different instant messaging services, including well-known ones like Yahoo Messenger, MSN, GTalk, and QQ (which is popular in mainland China). ebuddy also supports Facebook, though I don’t really understand what Facebook has to do with instant messaging = =. Besides supporting many IM services, ebuddy also offers many languages, including Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and English, so you don’t have to worry about not understanding the interface. But what I like best about ebuddy is that it lets you sign up for one account and manage all your different IM accounts together. That way, you only need to remember one account, which is like remembering many accounts ^^

This article will introduce how to log in to ebuddy, change the language, and use your ebuddy ID.

Google Maps Gets Another New Feature: Street View Preview

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:57:29 +0000

Google Maps, the electronic map service from Google, has added yet another new feature. Calling it “new” isn’t quite accurate, though. It’s really the first time it has appeared in the Taipei version. The feature is called Street View Preview. What is it? I’m sure everyone has seen electronic maps before. They usually look like picture A:

Google Maps: A Free Online Map

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:17:42 +0000

I imagine many people need to bring a map when they go out to travel. Google Maps, which I’m introducing today, is a free map service provided by Google. You can print the map, so you don’t have to go buy one at 7-11! Google Maps also makes heavy use of AJAX, so you won’t see a blank white screen while browsing.

Website: http://maps.google.com.tw/

Google Can Also Look Up Movie Showtimes?

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:26:09 +0000

I actually discovered that Google can look up movie showtimes when I went to see a movie with a “friend” last time. We had agreed to see a movie, but we didn’t know what time it was playing, so I looked it up online. To my surprise, I found something that shocked me: Google, the all-powerful, even has movie showtimes = = .. And it’s very complete! Google may be a god, but even a god shouldn’t be greedy, you know~~ (I’m lecturing Google!!) Enough chatter, let’s get straight to this Google movie showtimes search feature.

Website: http://www.google.com.tw/movies

Funp: Easily Become a Popular Blogger

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:24:11 +0000

Worried that nobody reads what you write? Want to raise the visibility of your blog? Funp can help you get there easily. The idea is simple: you write a post on your blog, then submit it to Funp, and Funp puts the latest posts on its front page. Imagine how much visibility your post would get if it appeared on a page that thousands of people are looking at all the time. Of course, because so many people use Funp, posts move off the front page quickly. To stay on the front page for long, your post needs to be “pushed” (Funp’s term for recommending a post) by many people. The more people push it, the more likely it is to be seen.

Some people wonder whether Funp really increases blog visibility. I think that as long as your article is good enough, it can also bring a lot of traffic. Don’t believe me? Try an experiment. Spend 5 days without pushing anything to Funp, and record the number of visits on the 5th day. Then pick another 5 days, and every evening between 7 and 9 PM, publish your article on Funp. On the 5th day of that second period, record the visit count and compare the two numbers to see which one is higher.

URL: http://funp.com/

PollDaddy: A Poll Service with Chinese Support

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:11:06 +0000

Remember the poll we ran on this site last time? That one used the service from PollDaddy. Personally, I quite like PollDaddy's online polling service. Although the interface is in English, its poll widgets accept Chinese input without garbled characters. It's also a free service, and it doesn't put ads on your poll widget like some other sites do. PollDaddy never does that~~

PollDaddy features:

Free
No ads
Requires a member account
Supports Chinese, with no garbled text
The poll widget has many built-in themes

Keywords: PollDaddy, online polls, free polls, blog plugin

For more details, check out their official website.

WhatTheFont: Identify the Font in a Picture

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:55:54 +0000

As the name suggests, WhatTheFont is a site for figuring out what font a piece of text uses. Its service is a bit unusual: you upload a photo, and it tries to identify the font of the text in it. Is it fun? To me, its only real use is that it gives you a helping hand. For example, the other time I was editing a MapleStory image and had no idea what font it used. If this site had existed back then, it would have been great! One thing to keep in mind is that WhatTheFont does not support Chinese fonts.

Site: http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

In general, WhatTheFont doesn’t place many restrictions on the images you can use for font lookup.

The only requirements are that the image can’t be blurry, and it can’t be too small either.

Building a Blog Broadcast Network with Google Reader

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:41:07 +0000

We already covered Google Reader in the post “Google Reader: Online RSS Reader.” I said back then that it had lots of amazing features, but I didn’t explain them very clearly. So now I’ll show you how to use Google Reader to build RSS applications. The first one is the broadcast network. If you blog a lot, you probably know what that is! It automatically posts the new articles from every participating blog, which raises the visibility of everyone’s posts. It’s a really great technique XD

Gmail Filters: Let Gmail Sort Your Inbox Automatically

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:37:15 +0000

Gmail has a built-in filter feature that can filter emails based on their information and perform certain actions, such as deleting every email from abc@gmail.com as soon as it arrives, or adding certain labels. Gmail filters can also help you block spam. Just set up a filter for emails from people you don’t know that have attachments, and you can block about 60% of virus emails. Making good use of Gmail’s filter feature will definitely save you a lot of time.

jetable.org Email Forwarding Service: Keep Your Real Email Address Private

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:50:10 +0000

jetable.org is a site that forwards emails for you. When you sign up on a website, it gives you a random-looking email address that you can use to register accounts or for other purposes. Emails go to their server first and are then forwarded to you, so your real email address is never exposed.

jetable.org features

Free
Supports multiple languages
Expiration time can be customized

Bing: Microsoft Launches a New "Colorful" Search Feature

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:53:16 +0000

URL: http://www.bing.com/

Bing sounds, in Chinese, like the first part of the word for “colorful” (bīnfēn), so I think Microsoft probably hopes its search can be “colorful” too! I tried it today and honestly I was speechless. I suspect it’s because it’s still in beta. Its language search only offers 3 restrictions, and its category search has only 3 categories: web, news, and images……………. It really can’t compare to Google. Its entry page looks very nice, but once you get into the search results page, everything is white = = It’s no different from Google either. And its search ability is actually the same as the old MSN search engine, so personally I think this will be a major failure for MSN.

Facesaerch: A Face Search Engine

Sun, 31 May 2009 10:22:38 +0000

Facesaerch is a search engine where you type in a keyword and it finds pictures for you. It uses Google’s API to find images, which I personally think is pretty amazing. However, it doesn’t seem to support Chinese searches, and when I typed in Chinese, it was hard to find anything. Its accuracy isn’t great either = = (the more famous a person is, the easier they are to find). But I just tried it, and when I typed in my nickname, linroex, it actually found my photos ㄟ :)

URL: http://www.facesaerch.com/