Posted by Michael Santerre, Consumer Operations Associate

As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind you about smart password practices. Help ensure you’re protecting your computer, website, and personal information by checking out our security series on the Google blog or visiting http://www.staysafeonline.org.

Phishing, a topic that’s been in the news, is unfortunately a common way for hackers to trick you into sharing personal information like your account password. If you suspect you’ve been a victim of a phishing attack, we recommend you immediately change your password, update the security question and secondary address on your account, and make sure you’re using a modern browser with anti-phishing protection turned on. Keep an eye out for the phishing warning Gmail adds to suspicious messages, and be sure to review these tips on how to avoid getting hooked.

Creating a new password is often one of the first recommendations you hear when trouble occurs. Even a great password can’t keep you from being scammed, but setting one that’s memorable for you and that’s hard for others to guess is a smart security practice since weak passwords can be easily guessed. Below are a few common problems we’ve seen in the past and suggestions for making your passwords stronger.

Problem 1: Re-using passwords across websites
With a constantly growing list of services that require a password (email, online banking, social networking, and shopping websites — just to name a few), it’s no wonder that many people simply use the same password across a variety of accounts. This is risky: if someone figures out your password for one service, that person could potentially gain access to your private email, address information, and even your money.

Solution 1: Use unique passwords
It’s a good idea to use unique passwords for your accounts, expecially important accounts like email and online banking. When you create a password for a site, you might think of a phrase you associate with the site and use an abbreviation or variation of that phrase as your password — just don’t use the actual words of the site. If it’s a long phrase, you can take the first letter of each word. To make this word or phrase more secure, try making some letters uppercase, and swap out some letters with numbers or symbols. As an example, the phrase for your banking website could be “How much money do I have?” and the password could be “#m$d1H4ve?” (Note: since we’re using them here, please don’t adopt any of the example passwords in this post for yourself.)

Problem 2: Using common passwords or words found in the dictionary
Common passwords include simple words or phrases like “password” or “letmein,” keyboard patterns such as “qwerty” or “qazwsx,” or sequential patterns such as “abcd1234.” Using a simple password or any word you can find in the dictionary makes it easier for a would-be hijacker to gain access to your personal information.

Solution 2: Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols
There are only 26^8 possible permutations for an 8-character password that uses just lowercase letters, while there are 94^8 possible permutations for an 8-character password that uses a combination of mixed-case letters, numbers, and symbols. That’s over 6 quadrillion more possible variations for a mixed password, which makes it that much harder for anyone to guess or crack.

Problem 3: Using passwords based on personal data
We all share information about ourselves with our friends and coworkers. The names of your spouse, children, or pets aren’t usually all that secret, so it doesn’t make sense to use them as your passwords. You should also stay away from birth dates, phone numbers, or addresses.

Solution 3: Create a password that’s hard for others to guess
Choose a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols to create a unique password that’s unrelated to your personal information. Or, select a random word or phrase, and insert letters and numbers into the beginning, middle, and end to make it extra difficult to guess (such as “sPo0kyh@ll0w3En”).

Problem 4: Writing down your password and storing it in an unsecured place
Some of us have enough online accounts that we may need to write our passwords down somewhere, at least until we’ve learned them well.

Solution 4: Keep your password reminders in a secret place that isn’t easily visible
Don’t leave notes with your passwords to various sites on your computer or desk. People who walk by can easily steal this information and use it to compromise your account. Also, if you decide to save your passwords in a file on your computer, create a unique name for the file so people don’t know what’s inside. Avoid naming the file “my passwords” or something else obvious.

Problem 5: Recalling your password
When choosing smart passwords like these, it can often be more difficult to remember your password when you try to sign in to a site you haven’t visited in a while. To get around this problem, many websites will offer you the option to either send a password-reset link to your email address or answer a security question.

Solution 5: Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure
You should always make sure you have an up-to-date email address on file for each account you have, so that if you need to send a password reset email it goes to the right place.

Many websites will ask you to choose a question to verify your identity if you ever forget your password. If you’re able to create your own question, try to come up with a question that has an answer only you would know. The answer shouldn’t be something that someone can guess by scanning information you’ve posted online in social networking profiles, blogs, and other places.

If you’re asked to choose a question from a list of options, such as the city where you were born, you should be aware that these questions are likely to be less secure. Try to find a way to make your answer unique — you can do this by using some of the tips above, or by creating a convention where you always add a symbol after the 2nd character in the answer (e.g. in@dianapolis) — so that even if someone guesses the answer, they won’t know how to enter it properly.

Read the rest here: 
Choosing a smart password

Posted by Sarah Price, Online Operations Strategist

Like many of us nowadays, I get a lot of email. So much email that going on vacation can be a little scary because I know I’ll have a mountain to wade through when I get back. A few messages I receive each day are time-sensitive or very important — but only a few. Lots of my mail can wait a few hours or a few days or even a few weeks, or in the case of that mailing list I’ve always meant to unsubscribe from, forever.

Thankfully, Gmail has a lot of features that keep me organized, from filters to archiving to keyboard shortcuts to Tasks, as well as a whole bunch of Labs features, like Superstars. I’ve developed my own system for dealing with all my incoming mail, but I’m always curious to hear about how other people manage their messages.

If you’re a Gmail expert and an organizational wizard, we want to see how you do it. So submit a short video at youtube.com/gmail to showcase your tips and tricks for managing your inbox. Submit a great one by August 15th, and your video could end up in our Help Center, our forum, or even on this very blog. And if you aren’t into making your own video, check out the videos that others have submitted and let us know what you like.

You can discuss these videos in the official thread in our new forum. The Gmail Help Forum isn’t just about “help” — it’s also a great place to connect with other Gmail users and share tips and tricks. We recently gave it a complete makeover, so if you haven’t been there in a while, check it out.

Original post: 
Submit a video: "So much email, so little time"

Byline is like many RSS readers, but this one really does understand how to be effective on an iPod Touch. For example, my iPod Touch is is not always connected online. I purposely turn off networking when I’m not in range to extend my battery. How many online applications have you launched that display an error message telling you that the network is not available? Well, duh, I turned it off. Why tell me something I already know? Byline elegantly ghosts the sync icon when you’re offline and makes it active when connected. It’s just done right.

And now, the great part: Byline optionally caches images for offline use! No longer do I feel cheated by not having always-on connectivity. Yes, it does take some to download all the images, but with multiple news feeds each having dozens and dozens of articles, it’s actually pretty quick.

The formatting is typical, and the inclusion if the images really rounds it out. Probably the only down side to this is that it requires setting up the feeds in Google Reader. At first, I was somewhat hesitant to go down this path, because this means that there is really no way to just add an ad-hoc feed, but realistically, I rarely want to do this anyway, so it’s not really an issue. Byline’s settings are located in the iPod Touch’s main Settings page, so you have to exit the application to get to it. I wish applications would be consistent with this. But once you set the settings, you rarely need to revisit them.

So the bottom line is that Byline provides an excellent news reading experience online or offline. It caches and displays images very nicely, so you don’t feel cheated by not being connected. So wherever I am, I always have something to read to kill some time.

Highly recommended!

Pros: Solid interface, ability to cache images for offline viewing, no annoying errors when not online, logical interface, very customizable.

Cons: Byline requires setting up your feeds in Google Reader. This is not really negative overall, it does eliminates the ability to add an ad-hoc RSS feed on the fly.

Tip: Your RSS feeds must reside in a folder. While you can put multiple RSS feeds in the same folder, if your article is not in any folder, it ill not display in ByLine.

When you move off of a link or when the page finished loading, the Status bar slides away when not needed. Slick!

To view your full browsing history, select the “Show full history” selection from the same menu, select “History” from the “Customize and control Google Chrome” button (the “wrench” icon), or simply press and a full browsing history page will open in a new tab.

Here is a list of other “about:” commands that provide interesting information and do some interesting things:

about:cache
about:crash
about:dns
about:hang
about:histograms
about:internets
about:memory
about:network
about:plugins
about:stats
about:version

Most of these can also be easily bookmarked by clicking the Star in the Omni bar.

Here is a list of most of Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts:

Window and tab shortcuts Window and tab shortcuts

Address bar shortcuts

Webpage shortcuts

Text shortcuts

DISCLAIMER
This process assumes that you are using the “Firefox Portable” application found at http://PortableApps.com, and that you do not have Firefox “installed” on your PC. If you already have Firefox installed on your PC, doing this will probably mess up your current installation to the point that you may need to re-install Firefox and re-build all of your customizations. Be sure to back up your Firefox Portable directory because you don’t want to do anything to mess up your working version. I take no responsibility if you mess things up.

Also, the specific directories listed here refere to Windows XP directories. As I get the information for Vista, I will update this article.

PRELIMINARY
First, close any instances of Firefox that you may have open.

Next, backup your Firefox Portable folder. Just copy it. It may take a few minutes. This will give you a backup should anything happen to your original folder.

Next, download and install Firefox. You can go to http://GetFirefox.com for the latest version. Launch the installer and install Firefox. You can keep all of the defaults as you will be uninstalling it later.

When the install completes, Launch the newly installed version of Firefox once to initialize itself.

Now, close Firefox.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
OK, at this point, you can follow two paths depending on how much you want to import into Chrome:

Option 1. Import only Bookmarks into Google Chrome

This first method simply does an export, and import, and anoter import of your Firefox Bookmarks. If all you want to do is make your Bookmarks available in Google Chrome, this is probably the easiest method.

Close the installed version of Firefox, open Firefox Portable, and click the “Bookmarks” menu item and select “Organize Bookmarks”. In the new window, click the “Import and Backup” button on the top and select “Export HTML…”. Give it a filename, and click the Save button.

Now, close Firefox Portable and launch the newly installed version of Firefox. Click the “Bookmarks” menu item and select “Organize Bookmarks”. In the new window, click the “Import and Backup” button on the top and select “Import HTML…”.

When the Import Wizard opens, select “From an HTML file” and click the “Next” button. Select the filename you saved above, and click the “Open” button. Your bookmarks are now imported into the installed version of Firefox.

Take this moment to re-organize your bookmarks to your preferences and then close Firefox.

Finally, open Google Chrome and click on the “Customize and control Google Chrome” button (the Wrench icon in the upper right) and select “Import Bookmarks and Settings”. Select Mozilla Firefox from the dropdown and check only the “Favorites/Bookmarks” checkbox and click Import.

Your Portable Firefox bookmarks are now imported into Google Chrome!

You can now skip down to the CLEANUP section to complete things.

Option 2. Import all bookmarks, Search Engines, Saved passwords, and Browsing History into Google Chrome

This second method will let you import much more personal data into Google Chrome. It’s actually fairly easy. Just be sure you do NOT do this on a previously existing installed version of Firefox as you will mess it up if you do.

With this method, you simply copy your “profile” from your Firefox Portable folder to your installed Firefox folder, launch the installed version of Firefox, and then import into Google Chrome.

You should have a portable version of Firefox and a freshly installed version of Firefox. Close all instances of Firefox.

First, open a Windows Explorer window and navigate to the location of your Firefox Portable folder. You should see the following three folders: plugins, profile, and settings. Open the profile folder.

Now, open another Windows Explorer window and navigate to settings folder for your installed version of Firefox. It’s buried deep–you need to look here: (Note: This path is for Windows XP)

C:Documents and Settings{username}Application DataMozillaFirefoxProfiles

…where {username} is the user you are currently logged into.

You should see a single folder called {something}.default where the {something} is some numbers and letters. This differs from machine to machine. Open that folder.

Now, go back to your first Firefox Portable folder and do a “Select All” on all of the files and then select “Copy”.

Now, go back to the seconf Explorer window (the {something].default folder) and Paste what you copied. A “Confirm Folder Replace” popup will display. Click “Yes to All” and all of the required Firefox Portable data will be copied. This may take several minutes.

Next, launch the installed version of Firefox. Check the Bookmarks to verify that they are there and reofganize them if you want.

Close Firefox.

Finally, open Google Chrome and click on the “Customize and control Google Chrome” button (the Wrench icon in the upper right) and select “Import Bookmarks and Settings”. Select Mozilla Firefox from the dropdown and check the checkboxes of what you want to Import and then click “Import”.

Your Portable Firefox bookmarks, Search Engines, Saved Passwords, and browsing History are now imported into Google Chrome!

CLEANUP
Now, just uninstall yout “installed” version of Firefox by clicking Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs. Select Mozilla Firefox, click the Remove button, and follow the prompts.

First, the find box is integrated unobtrusively in the upper right corner of the page into which you type your search text. It’s clean and looks good. I never liked how Internet Explorer pops up a dialog box. It just gets in the way. Firefox, Safari, and now Google Chrome implement this well with Google Chrome behaving similarly to how Safari does it.

As you type your search text, hits are highlighted in real time and the number of occurrences is displayed in the box. Clicking the Up and Down arrows in the find box will step you through all occurrences highlighting the current one in a bolder highlight.

So far, this is all pretty standard, but look at the scrollbar on the right of the page. The relative locations of the hits is visually indicated by little lines in scrollbar in the same color as the highlight color within the text. This makes it quick and easy to tell at a glance where within the page you will find all of the occurrences.

Its subtle, but surprisingly useful!

All of the RSS Reader apps in AppStore provide pretty much the same content, however their method of presentation and execution spans a wide spectrum. Some apps require a network connection to display anything. With these apps, news feeds are loaded in real-time so you are always up-to-date, however if you are offline, you simply will not see any content. (I personally question this approach as I may as well just use a decent WebApp.) Others provide excellent offline reading capabilities with articles organized by feed, folders, date, etc.

The feature set is growing in this line of apps. Some have lots of eye candy (at least one uses the CoverFlow concept in presenting the feed list) and some provide synchronization to online accounts such as Google Reader and NewsGator ensuring that regardless of how you access these accounts, they will always be up-to-date. But despite the host of features and ease-of-use, there’s still one key feature that is missing from every application in this category: The ability to pre-fetch and cache embedded images within articles.

As an iPod Touch user, I don’t always have network connectivity, so offline functionality is essential. AppStore applications like WeDict, Acro Bible, and Bookshelf, and Jailbreak applications like Wiki2Touch provide incredible acces to amazing content that is always available online or offline. As of this writing, every RSS reader in AppStore lacks the ability to provide full offline content–both article text and associated embedded images. There are excellent applications that provide an intuitive, fast, and comprehensive reading experience, but if you want to see embeded images in articles, you must be online, or you must have at least viewed the article once while online. Omitting the images removes a significant part of the reading experience.

Now I do realize that syncing dozens, if not hundreds of images could amount to a much longer sync session, but that’s a tradeoff I would welcome if I could have offline access to all of the content. So here is my plea to all developers of RSS Reader applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch: Please add the option to pre-fetch and cache embeded images for offline reading. And to stand out ahead of the competition, provide more granular control so that the user can really tailor what gets updated. For example, let the user toggle pre-fetching on a feed-by-feed basis. Have a setting to only pre-fetch images for the n-number of articles or articles received within the last n-days, etc.

Most of the current AppStore RSS Readers are very well thought-out, well executed, and provide great information both online and offline. Just don’t stop short when the user goes offline.

This case is simple, yet elegant in design, but like similar “skin” cases it does not provide any protection for the screen, so a modest screen protector is included. (I personally use some left-over Palm PDA screen protectors, though the supplied protector will work just fine.) This setup makes the iPodtTouch very “front-pocketeble”, and I am much more likely to regularly carry it with me because of the small size and confidence in the protection. After all, what’s the point of having a device that contains your favorite content if it is too bulky to take with you? Currently, this is my case of choice.

Text entry on the iPod Touch's on-screen keyboard is surprisingly easy, but sometimes, it can be tedious to enter numbers, symbols, or special characters. But did you know that there are a few "shortcuts" that you can use to make this kind of entry quicker and easier? Read on for some tips on "shifting" letters, inserting numbers, symbols, and International characters, and making a quick entry correction….

Quick Shift

While typing on the Alphabetic keyboard, press and hold the Shift key, then slide your finger over to the letter you want to shift then release. The letter will be shifted.

Quick Number and Symbol Entry

While typing letters on the Alphabetic keyboard, sometimes you want to quickly insert a number or a symbol such as a comma or period. Just press and hold the Symbol/Number key (.?123) then slide your finger over to the symbol or number you want to insert then release your finger. The symbol or number will then be inserted and the keyboard will revert back to the Alphabetic keyboard for you to continue typing.

International Characters

If you want to enter special letter characters such as those with an accent or grave, press and hold the Alphabetic key you want to accent and a popup showing all the available choices will display. Slide your finger over to the desired choice, release, and the special character will be inserted.

Quick Correction

While typing, if you find that you have entered an incorrect letter but have not yet released the key, you can always slide your finger over to the correct character and then release. The correct character will be inserted.

I hope you find this tip useful in improving your keyboard entry!

The domain iPTTips.com redirects to this page, so you can always get to iPod Touch Tips by pointing your browser to http://iPTTips.com.

Apple’s AppStore has hundreds of applications for the iPhone & iPod Touch, so stay tuned as I give my thoughts and reviews of my favorite apps!

Zonbu Support stated specifically that due to financial reasons, Zonbu will not provide any OS updates for the Zonbu Mini.

In light of this, I am letting the domain ZonbuTips.com expire since I will not be adding or maintaining any tips for this device or service.

It was a great concept of a product that just couldn’t effectively get off the ground.

In the message list, any label that has a color assigned will display in that color. Labels with no color assigned will display as they always did. Here is an example:

To assign colors to a Label, click the Label selector on the left of any Gmail page to display the Labels. Hover your mouse to the right of the Label, and a small triangle will appear. Click it, and a color selector will appear. Select a color, and all messages with that Label will display the Label in that color.

As an added bonus, you can quickly and easily rename the Label using the new "Edit name" menu selection. Just be careful to double-check

(Note: Stephen uses his blackberry with a personal email account, not an enterprise server. -Jim)

"Here are two ways I’ve just started using Gmail to enhance my Blackberry:

(1) in order to have a running record of all sent messages, (a good business practice for me) I set up a BCC of all sent messages to a Gmail address.

(2) I find that there are some attachments which can’t be opened on the blackberry (for example, some .PDF files download but fail to open.) Also, if I want to forward an attachment, it usually arrives "corrupted" in the recipient’s mailbox.

My solution to both issues is to direct my domain and personal email addresses to a second Gmail address, place the Gmail quick access icon on my blackberry desktop, and use this on an as-needed basis either to forward an attachment directly from my Gmail account, or as a reader for some attachments."

Thank you Stephen for your input! ]]> http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-63-gmail-and-your-blackberry.html/feed 0 http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-62-enhancement-univeral-navigation-bar.html http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-62-enhancement-univeral-navigation-bar.html#comments Thu, 24 May 2007 10:04:14 +0000 Jim Barr http://www.barrweb.com/blogtest/?p=262 Google has recently enhanced some navigational features across most of
its offerings by providing a recognizable and (somewhat) consistent
"Universal Navigation Bar" at the top left of every page:

 

 

 

Well, it’s been just over a year since I moved to the Palm Z22, and so far, I’ve not looked back. The Z22 has proved to be a very useful and solid PDA, and has served my goal of simplifying things. Is it limited? Yes. Do I wish it had more features? Yes. Is it doing what I had hoped it would do? Yes! Read on to see how the Palm Z22 has fared, what I would like to see added to future models, and what are my future PDA plans….

It’s about a year later, I’m still using the Z22, and I have no regrets. I find it to be an amazingly powerful, useful, and productive PDA. Yes, I’ve been stung on occasion by some of its limitations, (notably, its incompatibility with a few applications) but overall, it’s been a very positive experience. I’ve honed my original list of installed applications to a solid set that works well for me. In fact, I just realized that it has literally been several months since I even installed anything new! For example, after having a couple "issues" with mNotes, I decided to just sync my PIM with the Palm Desktop and not worry about it. True, it no longer syncs with Lotus Notes, but I have access to Lotus Notes at work all the time. It turns out that almost all Palm-related alarms and appointments tend to be personal ones, so for me, it’s very manageable.

Some might see my move to the Z22 as an "innovative step backwards" but the reality is that I no longer focus on the nuances "of the device"–I just use it. While the imposed limitations of the Z22 can be both a blessing and a curse, so far, the positives far outweigh the negatives. There are a couple things I wish were improved (see below) but these limitations haven’t drawn me away from it.

Combined with the Palm Air Case, my Z22 is completely front-pocketable. This has been key to its usefullness because after all, if you can’t take it with you, you can’t use it, right? And because I almost always have it with me, there’s no no real excuse not to use it.

So, am I more productive?
Well, that’s debatable! The time I used to spend tweaking, adjusting, and playing with the extra features of my other PDA’s has definitely gone down. I rarely tweak the Z22 simply because I don’t need to. In fact, the it has truly become an appliance–it’s just there when I need it, and doesn’t get in the way. And that extra time can certainly be spent on more productive things. Obviously it’s what I do with that extra time that determines my productivity!

Unfortunately, I’m not the most organized person, and it is a continuous struggle for me to manage priorities and general organization. But now, at least I can’t attribute that to a PDA–it’s a personal issue. I’m slowly learning better organizational skills, and trying to pick up better habits. But the fact that I’m no longer distracted "by the device" means that I can at least spend that time elsewhere.

Some Wishes
No assessment of the Z22 would be complete without recommendations for improvements. After all, this PDA is not a feature-rich one. Amazingly, I have but two feature requests in improving the Z22 which, to be effective, would have to come without impacting performance or battery life:

1. SD Memory Card Slot
Believe it or not, after a year using the Z22, I have about 3.9MB free RAM. This is actually slightly more than when I started using the Z22! The limited amount of RAM and no memory expansion has been key to maintaining its simplicity by forcing me to limit the applications I use. But I admit that there are times that I wish it had an SD card slot. I would like to be able to have access to additional data and to be able to backup the system RAM. But is this a "must have" feature? No. But then again….

2. High-Resolution Screen
I find the Z22’s screen to be its biggest area of potential improvement. The 160×160 color screen is adequate, and that’s about it. It displays PIM data well, and overall, PalmOS applications are readable and usable. But it’s simply not stunning or impressive. But coolness aside, its readability could be improved. I’d like to see the screen replaced with a full, high-resolution screen extending into the Graffiti area as on newer PalmOS models. It would certainly be easier on the eyes. Fortunately, this is not a huge deal, but it does detract from the overall feel and readability.

And on a side note, when is someone going to come out with a decent color LCD screen that will look great in both office lighting and in bright sunlight? PDA’s suffer from this. Cell phones suffer from this. It’s simply annoying that when I go outside, the the screens become completely useless. I was playing around with an old Palm III the other day, and remembered just how readable the monochrome PalmOS PDA’s were in bright light. OK, so they weren’t high resolution and they weren’t color, but man, were they sure functional!

The future
Will I be replacing the Z22? Will I revert back to an older model? As it stands, the Z22 has really served its original purpose of simplicity well. I’m not saying that the Z22 is the best PDA out there for everyone, but half the battle in simplifying was buying into the concept that less features and imposed limitations would help in simplifying things. And for me, it worked. Other than the couple features I wish it had, I’m truly impressed with the Z22’s performance, capabilities, usefulness, and portability.

So, I don’t foresee purchasing a new PDA or reverting to an old one any time soon. This comes at an interesting time too, because I feel that the whole PDA world has really slowing down in favor of the Smart Phone and integration. Unfortunately, I don’t see much in real innovation happening in the PDA world, so an improved Z22 probably isn’t likely. That said, should Palm decide to release an improved Z22 with a full high-resolution screen and an SD card slot for a reasonable price, I’ll buy it in a heart beat. But until then, I’ll stick with my Z22!

But having a Gmail account means more than just Web-based email. A Gmail account opens the door to many other excellent  Google-related applications and services. By creating a Gmail account, you will gain access to personalize other Google-based applications including Google Maps, Google News, Picasa 2, Google Pages, Google Reader, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and lots of other goodies.

Admittedly, getting a Gmail invitation has not been a problem for most, but this should open up Gmail to a much larger audience. Oh, and as always, come here for your Gmail tips!