Tutorials

A common problem and mistake made on windows computers is that when you have a computer that has an international keyboard, for whatever reason, people seem to always make the same mistake when changing the keyboard layout. It is an easy mistake to make but can cause absolute chaos when using office applications as it instantly changes the language of whatever document you are working on to the language of your keyboard which in most cases isn’t what you want.

To help people with this I decided to create my first screen-cast, showing how to change the keyboard layout on your computer without changing input language:

This is a quick blog explaining how you can use Yahoo Pipes and twitterfeed.com to automatically RT tweets from another account! The pipe used in this tutorial will be the first of many pipes that I Have designed that will appear on Twitter-Pipes.com which should be set up soon.

This pipe is designed to take any twitter feed then convert it for use on twitter feed for the purpose of automatically RTing another accounts tweets. This pipe automatically turns the tweet into a RT so that when it is posted the original author is given credit.

The first step required is to get the Twitter Feed URL. To do this, go to the twitter profile you wish to AutoRT then find where it says ‘RSS feed of flungo’s tweets‘ (with the user name changed for the whichever profile you are viewing). If you are having difficulty finding this link, view the screenshot bellow:

Once you have found this link there are 2 ways to get the Twitter Feed URL. If you are using a modern browser (like Google Chome or Mozilla Firefox) you can right click and you should be able to find something like ‘Copy Link Address’ or ‘Copy Link Location’. If you cannot do this then click the link and just copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.

Once you have this URL on your clipboard you will then have to go to the Twitter RT Feed Pipe and paste the Twitter Feed URL on your clipboard, into the Twitter Feed URL (see screenshot bellow – 1) then click ‘Run Pipe’. After the pipe has successfully run, you then need to find the link to the Pipe RSS Feed (see screenshot bellow – 2) and copy the URL as you did for the Twitter Feed URL.

Now that you have that link copied you need to go to twitterfeed.com. After you have logged in or registered and gone to your Dashboard you will need to click ‘Create New Feed‘. You then need to click ‘Connect your feed to your Twitter Account’ and follow the instructions to connect the feed to your twitter. One you are logged in you will need to set a ‘Feed Name’ and paste the Pipe RSS link into the ‘RSS Feed URL’ box. You will then need to configure the advanced settings as follows:

After clicking save, you should be all set-up and ready to go!

I know I have been saying that this blog post has been coming for quite some time but it is finally here! This is my first Tutorial on this Blog and it will show how to use filters in Gmail. I thought that I would do it on something basic just to see how to lay it out and just to get used to it!

This tutorial will explain to you how to keep on top of your Gmail account by automatically applying filtering to new and existing mail! By the end of this you will be able to set up filter and automatically perform tasks to your mail like adding Labels, Auto Archiving and marking emails as read!

1. To start with, log into your Gmail account then click “Settings” in the top right.
2. In your settings go to the “Filters” page.
3. At the bottom of the “Filters” page you will find a link saying, “Create a new filter”. Click that.
4. You will then be prompted to provide the criteria of your filter. This works exactly like an search, if the mail fits the criteria of the search then it will have the actions selected in the next step applied to it! In this example I will show you how I would set up a filter for emails coming from the FeedBurner for this blog. I know that all of these emails will come from the email address, feed@fabrizio.me.uk and no other emails will be coming from that. If, for example, emails other than feeds came from the same email address I would set a more detailed fill in a more detailed filter. Once you have completed your criteria you can click, “Next Step >>”
5. After doing that you need to set the actions you want to have applied to messages that fit the criteria.
   • Skip the Inbox (Archive It) – This is pretty self-explanatory; if this is ticked then rather than the message arriving in the Inbox it will be Archived.
   • Mark as Read – This auotmatically marks the email as read, even before you have actually read it. This is good if you want to receive the email but wont always read it and don’t want to go to the effort of reading all of the emails you receive. I usually use this in conjunction with “Skip the Inbox (Archive It)” and “Apply the Label” so that they are out of my way but can be quickly found using the label.
   • Star it – This adds a star to the email and puts it in your starred items.
   • Apply the Label: – This adds the selected Label to the filtered messages.
   • Forward it to: – This forwards all messages that fit the criteria to the email address entered into the text area.
   • Delete it – I don’t recommend ever doing this but it will automatically delete items that arrive! I believe it will place it in the Deleted Items for 30 days but I have NEVER tested this!
   • Never send it to Spam – This ensures that emails fitting the criteria will never end up in your spam box! I always enable this for trusted emails!
   • Also apply filter to – I highly recommend this setting! This means that the rule will be applied to all messages currently found in your account as well as new items! This is good for maintaining consistency and back-dating new filters.
6. Click create filter and you should receive this confirmation message!

I hope this tutorial has been helpful and I will be running some feedback polls to get your…. well…. feedback You can also leave a comment bellow with your thoughts.