Gmail has a lot of tricks up its sleeve and we just witnessed some more. To make users comfortable with labels, Gmail introduced several new features which will enhance the way you use labels in Gmail. Now those you who you are used to folders for your mails will feel more at home in Gmail.

New Label Features:

1. Labels move up!:

Yes, now labels get  a more prominent location. Yes they’ve moved up so that they feel more important. (But for people who don’t like or don’t use labels, we didn’t notice any way to send labels back to where they were – if you found a way, please share it with us)

2. Hide and Seek:

You can now hide your less important labels and can only work with the ones you need frequently. In case you need some of your old labels, you’ll always find them under the ‘more’ link.

3. Drag and Drop:

Now you can enjoy a two way drag and drop. Drag labels on to mails or drag mails to a label. It is as easy as it sounds.

For more information on these label features and how to use them, go to the Gmail blog.

Hi!, If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

SimilarSites is a free online tool that helps internet users find sites similar to any site that they may want in a jiffy. How would this be useful - you may ask. For eg, if you are looking for video sharing sites similar to YouTube, just key in the URL of YouTube into the text box present on the SimilarSites homepage and click on ‘Find Similar Sites’.

SimilarSites also has addons for both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer and you can download them from their website.The addons provides you with a list of similar sites without having to go to their main website at the click of a button.

If there’s an interesting site that you think must feature in the list but has been accidentally missed out, SimilarSites allows you to make a suggestion and once you key in the necessary information as shown in the screenshot below, the site will be added to the list.

I tried using SimilarSites for various sites and it came up with pretty good results and overall, I’m very happy with it. If you are looking to add more sites to your feed reader like the ones you already have or are looking for website alternatives, SimilarSites is the tool to use to find related sites. Check out SimilarSites.

Many a time it so happens that we are searching for a particular word with it’s meaning but the word never strikes us even though we know it and have used it previously. This situation may occur to both professional writers as well as amateurish one timers alike and as all would agree, it’s quite nerve-wracking. OneLook’s Reverse Dictionary saves us from such a predicament.

OneLook calls itself  the search engine for words and phrases. As per the website, OneLook search engine indexes over 5 million words in more than 900 online dictionaries along with encyclopedias and other reference sites. While, with OneLook, one can Define Words, Find Words and Translate Words, in this post, the emphasis is on OneLook’s Reverse Dictionary.

How do I use OneLook’s Reverse Dictionary to find the words I’m looking for?

This is best explained with the screenshot below that I’ve taken from the OneLook website.

The Reverse Dictionary also enables the usage of Wildcard Patterns which help you shortlist or find the right word easily. Quoting the website:

1. The asterisk (*) matches any number of characters. That means that you can use it as a placeholder for any sequence of letters or symbols. For example, if you enter blueb* you’ll get all the terms that start with “blueb”; if you enter *bird you’ll get all the terms that end with “bird”; if you enter *lueb* you’ll get all the terms that contain the sequence “lueb”, and so forth. An asterisk can match zero characters, too.
2. The question mark (?) matches exactly one character. That means that you can use it as a placeholder for a single letter or symbol. The query l?b?n?n, for example, will find the word “Lebanon”.
3. The number-sign (#) matches any English consonant. For example, the query tra#t finds the word “tract” but not “trait”.
4. The at-sign (@) matches any English vowel. For example, the query abo@t finds the word “about” but not “abort”.

The dictionary definitions in OneLook are arranged according to categories of - General, Art, Business, Computing, Medicine, Miscellaneous, Religion, Science, Slang, Sports, Tech and Phrases making it easier for people to search for words. It is also possible for you to customize the appearance and use the OneLook dictionary straight from the browser with the IE and Firefox search addons.

Check out OneLook’s Reverse Dictionary.

The folks at WordPress Themes Archive have have collected over 2ooo WordPress themes and are offering the themes as a single archive for the benefit of the users. Currently at around 390 mb, users are given the option of downloading the entire collection of WordPress themes as .ZIP, .TAR.GZ or .TORRENT.

The collection contains themes classified in terms of columns too - single, two column, three column and four column WordPress themes which are available for download as separate files. An additional link is added to the footer as a small price to feature in the WordPress Theme Archive. However, if you’d like to remove your theme from the list, you may contact them and they’ll remove it immediately. You can add your theme to the archive list in the same way.

Check out WordPress Theme Archive.

Scriptalizer is a free online tool that helps you shrink your Java and CSS scripts significantly. It is a nice tool that allows you to save system space by greatly decreasing the code size. Scriptalizer is pretty simple to use and does it’s job very efficiently in a matter of seconds.

How does Scriptalizer work?

Scriptalizer takes all the codes from the script and puts it under a name like scriptalizer.js or scriptalizer.css . This reduces the number of characters drastically and hence saves you a lot of space. Scriptalizer actually minifies the whole script by removing all unnecessary characters from the source code. These unnecessary characters include white space characters, new line characters, comments and sometimes also block delimiters. Given below is an example of how scriptalizer works.

The original scripts:

Java script:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery/jquery.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery/jquery.form.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/myOwnScriptFile.js"></script>

CSS script:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style/longstylesheet.css" type="text/css" />

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style/anotherlongstylesheet.css" type="text/css" />

After the scripts are run on scriptalizer, here is the shrunk version:

Java script:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/scriptalizer.js" ></script>

CSS script:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style/scriptalizer.css" type="text/css" />

How do I use Scriptalizer to shrink my Java and CSS scripts?

Using scriptalizer to shrink your java scripts has never been this easy before.  Just follow these steps to shrink your scripts:

1. Select the file to be processed using ‘Choose File’ under the required file heading.
2. Now click ‘OK’ to start the shrinking process.
3. You’re now done with the shrinking process and within seconds the compressed code is ready.

This is a very useful tool for a Java or a CSS programmer as it saves a lot of their server space. Check out Scriptalizer.

Have bookshelves of old books lying in the dust unused? Here’s an excellent way to give a new life to those old books of yours. BookMooch is an online community that helps you exchange your old books and trade them for other interesting ones. The basic plot of this online community is to make people circulate their old books around to improve their knowledge and enhance the value of books.

Features of BookMooch:

1. BookMooch serves as a very good online platform that helps you look out and share books online for free.
2. You gain a point everytime you share a book with someone and using your accumulated points you can trade for books with anyone online. BookMooch is an absolutely free to use online tool.



3. You share the list of books that you want to exchange and everytime you lend a book, you receive one. The only cost that you incur would be your posting and courier charges.
4. Once you’ve read a book using BookMooch you can keep it forever with you and you can also lend books through BookMooch to others forever.
5. BookMooch offers you a wide range of languages to choose from too. Simply select your language and get going.
6. The interface of the whole website is neat and user friendly. It is very simple to use.
7. You can register yourself for free at BookMooch and from then on you can start exchanging books for free as a member.

BookMooch is a brilliant way for people who want to get rid of old books and swap them for new ones. Book readers will definitely benefit a lot from this online community. Check out BookMooch.

Planning to switch over your e-mail account to Gmail? Worried about losing your all your earlier mails and contacts? Gmail has thoughtfully now included a unique feature into their mail accounts that allows you to copy all your mails and contacts completely from your previous account ensuring that you don’t need to keep toggling between your e-mail accounts in the future.

How do I import mails and contacts to my new Gmail account?

It is really a very easy process and you can copy your all your mail data in minutes. Just follow these simple steps given below.

1. Click here if you are yet to create a Gmail account.
2. After you are done with creating your Gmail account, login in to your account and click on Settings present on the top right corner of your screen.

   

3. Now click on the Accounts and Import tab in the screen that opens and select the button Import mail and contacts.



4. A new window will now open asking you for your e-mail ID to import data into Gmail from your previous mail account.



5. Key in your e-mail ID from which you want to import your mail data from and click on Continue.
6. Gmail now checks your ID and asks you for your password. Key in your previous account’s password.
7. Then in the next the screen select the data that you want to import from your previous account and click on Start Import.

   

8. Now click on OK and you are done with the process. Gmail will take time to import all your data depending on the size of your account. You can log out from your account and even shut down your PC but Gmail will continue transferring your data to your Gmail account.