Google on Lin's Blog

Fixing Google Drive on macOS Defaulting to Simplified Chinese

Sun, 17 Sep 2017 13:36:54 +0000

After installing Google Drive on macOS, I suspected it was a bug in the program. Even though my system language is set to Traditional Chinese, Google Drive displayed Simplified Chinese. It looked really unfamiliar, so I researched it and found a fix to share with everyone.

Just open Terminal and enter the following command, then restart Google Drive, and it will switch to Traditional Chinese:

defaults write com.google.GoogleDrive AppleLanguages '("zh-TW")'

BigQuery Federated Google Sheets Table Access Denied Error

Thu, 14 Sep 2017 21:45:47 +0000

BigQuery lets you link a table to a Google Sheet stored in Google Drive, so the table updates right away whenever the Google Sheet changes. When you use this kind of federated table, some people run into an Access Denied error. Queries in the WebUI work fine, but when you query the table with the bq command line tool, you get the following error message:

Access Denied: BigQuery BigQuery: No OAuth token with Google Drive scope was found

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).

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!

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~

Turn On Google 2-Step Verification and Add Another Lock to Your Google Account with Your Phone!

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:09:12 +0000

Some people who play online games may have heard of the “communication lock.” It’s an anti-theft measure that game companies came up with. Before you can log in to your game account, you have to call a dedicated line from the phone number you registered with the game company, and only after the call connects can you log in. This method prevents a lot of gamers from having their accounts stolen. After all, hackers can easily get your username and password, but they surely can’t take your phone too, right? The Google 2-Step Verification I’m introducing today is actually a lot like that communication lock.

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…

Google Desktop: Search Not Only Files on Your Drive, but Also Gmail!

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:05:08 +0000

Google Desktop is one of the programs I install every time I reinstall my computer. It matters to me even more than Yahoo! Messenger! Simply put, Google Desktop is a file search and management program. You can find the files you need by searching for keywords. Windows has this feature built in too, but honestly the built-in Windows search is... slow and awful. It can take me 30 seconds to get results for a file, while Google Desktop returns results in just 1 to 3 seconds! Google Desktop isn't only for searching files, either. It has a built-in sidebar where you can add small gadgets such as Google Calendar, a to-do list, news, weather, and more. You can even write your own gadgets and put them in the sidebar~

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).

Google Webmaster Central - Find Where Your Site's SEO Falls Short & Submit a Sitemap

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:25:32 +0000

Today I’m introducing Google’s Webmaster Central. The Webmaster Tools are one of the tools most blog owners in Taiwan use. Besides analyzing where your site’s SEO falls short, this service also lets you submit a Sitemap to Google, which is a site map. The Webmaster Tools can also check whether your site has malware and how fast it loads. But to use any of these features, you first have to make sure your URL has been indexed by Google! So in this post, I’ll cover the following:

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~

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

How to Find Out How Many Websites Link to Your Site?

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:16:52 +0000

I’m sure you’re all curious about which websites contain links to your site! Here I’ll show you how to search with the link syntax. It’s a Google operator that lists the websites that link to your site, and note that the unit here is websites, not pages, so let Ting-feng walk you through this syntax!

Syntax:
link:URL
Replace URL with your site's domain, without "http://"

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

My Blog Is Now Indexed by Google

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:51:01 +0000

Recently I noticed that my popularity suddenly went up.

Do you know why?

It’s because this blog has been added to the Google search engine.

So now you can find this blog when you search on Google!

That brought in quite a lot of traffic XD

I never expected anyone to come visit, given how bad my SEO is………

P.S. This post now ranks above the original creator’s post = =