Dave’s Answer:

About a year ago when Google changed the Gmail interface and added a lot more customization options and themes, they also made it surprisingly hard to find the Gmail Invite button, so much so that it’s not an uncommon occurrence for me to receive requests from people asking me to send their friends invitations to the popular free Web email service.

Thing of it is, the option is still a part of your Google Mail interface, it’s just ridiculously subtle, to the point where most people — possibly you included — have no idea it’s there. Indeed, the only reason I stumbled across it was because I like to click and experiment, learning what buttons do what, where things are hidden, etc.

The key button is adjacent to the “Chat” button and they’re both on the lower left of your window. But don’t take my word for it, let me show you…

On your Gmail home page, on the left side:

It’s the ellipses (three dots) that exposes the invite box. Click on it and…

Enter an email address and click “Send Invite” and it quickly shoots off an invite to that person. The only visible indicator you’ll get is that your “50 left” will go down by one:

Of course, in most countries they can just go to the Gmail home page and sign up, but it’s still fun to invite someone, right?

Oh, and that little cartoon talk balloon graphic? If you click on that it reveals the Google Chat feature:

My favorite part of this is unquestionably the ability to make phone calls and chat with people on your computer without worrying about Skype, etc. You can see it above: “Call Phone”.

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Dave’s Answer:

It’s not clear to me whether your Dad has a Kindle reader or an iPad, but either way, you’re in luck because the most popular ebook reader is clearly the Kindle and their iPad app is terrific and offers 99% of the functionality of a Kindle. I’m a big fan and my iPad has supplanted my Kindle Fire as my reading device of choice. Just don’t tell Amazon.

The local Boulder Public Library uses a system called OverDrive for its digital lending library, and though the selection is relatively small, it includes audiobooks and movies, as well as a lot of ebooks. The ebooks themselves are in one of two formats: Kindle or Adobe epub format. I’ll show you how to work with Kindle — because I already have the app on my iPad — but there’s also an OverDrive app for iOS that lets you enjoy movies and other non-ebook content on your tablet.

Either way, I applaud the public library for keeping up with the times and recognizing that while there’s an aesthetic pleasure to holding and reading a printed book, there are many of us who also appreciate the portability of digital books.

Here in Boulder, the library’s home page offers up a big, easily found link to the digital library:

See it on the top right? Of course you do! When I click on it, I’m taken to the Front Range Downloadable Library, a shared venture by a variety of regional libraries here in Colorado:

This is where I found it a bit frustrating to poke around because digital library books have a “token” and when one person has the ebook on their device, no-one else can check it out and download it. The result was that because of the limited selection, many of the books advertised on the site were available to request a hold, not to actually download.

To avoid this frustration, note on the top of the page the “Show available copies” checkbox. That’s the secret. Click on it then click on “GO!” and it’ll only show you ebooks that are actually available for download.

When you find a book that has its “token” available for download, the system shows “add to cart”. If it’s not available, you’ll instead see “request hold”, which you can opt to do instead:

Again, notice that there are two versions of this ebook, Harry Potter and History, a Kindle Book format and an Adobe PDF Book format. The latter format works with the OverDrive app mentioned earlier, but since I really like the Kindle app, that’s what I’ll use.

I should also mention that there are two Kindle formats in OverDrive: one that says “Kindle via USB only” and another that just says “Kindles and free Kindle apps“. Not sure what’s what, but if you aren’t using an actual Kindle, you might need to pay close attention to the difference.

I’m interested in this book about the world of Harry Potter in Kindle format, so I click on “add to cart” adjacent to the Kindle icon. The result:

Yes, I’ve already queued up another ebook for download too, Morningstar. I figure that like any other library book, if it’s not good, it’s easy enough to return it, so I’m much more likely to try unknown authors and series than if I were buying the book.

To continue, I click on “Proceed to Checkout” and have to log in with my local library account:

You’ll forgive me if I don’t share my library account information with you, won’t you?

Once I’ve logged in, I’ll again see the Check Out screen, but this time I also see some stats about my library account, including that I have zero downloadable books checked out and can only check out a maximum of four at a time. Pay close attention to the lending period too: Boulder lets us check out ebooks for 7 or 14 days, after which time it vanishes from the device and the “token” is available for someone else to check out.

I’ll click on “Confirm Check Out” and it’s a bit confusing because it pushes me to Amazon.com, where I see the books displayed as if I’m ready to purchase them:

Obviously, I need to click on “Get for Kindle” and go back and forth until all the books have been checked out (or wait to download the second until I’m done with the first). I’ll get Morningstar by clicking on the “Get for Kindle” button adjacent…

Hey, this book has tons of good reviews. That’s reassuring!

To download it to my iPad, I simply select the proper device from the “Deliver to:” menu, then click on ‘Get library book’.

That’s all there is to it. Moments later I see this on the computer screen:

And on the Kindle app on my iPad? Poof! A new book to read:

So that’s how it’s done. Not too hard after all, and I’m sure the second or third time it’ll be a breeze, and being able to get books from the library for my Kindle? Terrific!

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Dave’s Answer:

This has got to be the most complicated question we’ve ever tackled here on AskDaveTaylor, but the alarming thing is that I *do* know what you’re talking about! There’s been some controversy about the feature you’re talking about too, because I don’t think Google made it clear that when photos are uploaded they’re saved in a Google Plus gallery that’s private to only you. No-one else can see them.

In effect, it’s another of these much vaunted “cloud backup” features, just for photos that you take on your mobile device and are then ready to easily include in your G+ stream, as desired. I like it, personally, but can understand that it might not be universally popular.

Anyway, as you take pics on your iPhone and sporadically run the Google Plus app, it uploads all photographs and videos to your G+ account. Then you can share them as desired.

Here’s how I used this feature to share a bunch of pics I recently took while visiting Austin, Texas.

First step is to log in to Google Plus. Then click on the “Photos” button along the top (the snapshot icon, #2 counting left to right):

Now on the left side there are various categories of image collections you can access, including those photos from your circle of friends, etc. What we want, however, are “Photos from your phone“, as highlighted in red:

Lots of pictures show up, and I’ll click and shift-click to select every pic I want to share:

If you only want to share a single image, no worries, click on it and proceed. Otherwise go through all your images and select those that are going to work together. I’m going to publish my set of pics from Austin as an album, so on the top right, I find and click “Add to album” rather than the green “Share” button:

When I do that, it shows me all the images I’m about to share and lets me enter the name of the new album I’m creating:

I use the album name “Austin, Texas” and click on the blue “Add to album” button on the lower right:

Click, and… it’s all formatted and ready to share with a pithy or smart comment:

Notice above I can also change the visibility of the photos, though in this case I have selected “Public” so they can be enjoyed by the widest number of people. A short comment is added, and…

Easily done and Google Plus does its usual great job of showing a visually interesting photo album.

What? Haven’t followed me on Google Plus yet? Get to it! Dave Taylor on Google Plus. Thanks.
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Dave’s Answer:

You’re right that Google is aggregating its complex web of privacy policies and simultaneously creating a single data store of all your search and usage history, though it doesn’t seem to extend to your Google Map searches, Google Doc document content, etc. As Google describes it, “We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read.”

More importantly: “We use information collected from cookies and other technologies… to improve your user experience and the overall quality of our services. For example, by saving your language preferences, we’ll be able to have our services appear in the language you prefer. When showing you tailored ads, we will not associate a cookie or anonymous identifier with sensitive categories, such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health….We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services – for example to make it easier to share things with people you know.”

Some people are very anxious about this change and others see it as digital business as usual and nothing to worry about. If you’re worried, there are a couple of things you can do, the easiest of which is to simply log out of your Google account prior to doing a search or similar. How to do that? Go to the Google home page and look on the top right for your name. If you see something like this:

Click on the tiny triangle and choose “Log Out”. Instead, you’ll then see:

People who are more serious about this can have their Web browser go into “incognito” or “private” mode, but you can also delete your Google browsing and search history too, by simply going to google.com/history. Here’s what you’ll see:

If you never turned on Web search history, you might instead see a note that Google has no data in its archive about your searches. In that case, you’re good.

If you do have this history, your options are to remove the current history or all Web history. In addition note at the top you can “pause” the Web History tracking capability, which should effectively opt you out of the new service too.

But we’re not done. Look on the left side and you’ll see that there are subsets of your Web search history based on the individual services:

Here you can see that Google differentiates between its different properties – which makes sense – and can drill down to find out what searches have been done on each service. For example, when I click on video I find that I haven’t done much recent searching on YouTube:

Want to wipe all your history and disable future tracking? Go back, click “Remove all Web History” and it’ll do everything you want:

Me? I’m wiping everything to a clean slate and will see how things proceed with Google’s changes and consolidation of my search and usage data.

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Dave’s Answer:

Easy does it, pal. Before you throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater you do realize that the bane of all social networks is the same thing that makes the compelling and interesting too, right? Sharing. Instead of preventing Pinterest users from helping you gain additional visibility by pinning your images on the Pinterest site, perhaps you should instead consider adding a small copyright notice on the images themselves?

You’re not alone, however, and one of the greatest challenges that an image-based site like Pinterest has is respecting the copyright of images that users — usually with the best of intentions — republish to the site. I’ve done it myself, posting things like book covers or movie publicity posters so I can share favorites with my friends.

Whether or not you’re okay with Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter folk reposting your photos, it does turn out that Pinterest has heard the complaints and now has a simple way for you to stop people pinning your content.

Just add the following line to the “head” section of any page you don’t want pinned:

Do so and when someone clicks on the “Pin It” button, here’s what they’ll see:

A simple and straightforward solution, and if you have a blog or site based on an entry template, you can add the line of code to the template and every page will automatically be unpinnable.

Oh, and Pinterest says “Pinterest respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same.”

Dave’s Answer:

You teach cooking classes? Do you teach classes on Indian or Chinese cooking? We should talk. I’m definitely interested in your videos, needless to say, as I enjoy cooking myself, and those are my two favorite cuisines to tackle, albeit with mixed results. Hey, that’s why I need your classes or videos, right?

Meanwhile, what was it you asked me?

Oh yeah. how do you update the picture on your YouTube account or channel.

I didn’t forget. I swear I wasn’t sidetracked by thought of a fresh vindaloo or some perfect fried rice!

To change your account profile information or channel information on YouTube, you’ll need to log in, then… well, let me show you…

Yeah, first step really is to log in. When you’ve done so, click on your account or channel name on the top right and you’ll see a lot of options show up in a drop-down pane, notably including the following:

Select the “Settings” option from this list and, again, you’ll see a surprising number of different possibilities:

At this point you’ll choose “Profile Setup” and see the picture that’s currently associated with your ID, your description — if any! — and a Website URL:

Scroll down and you’ll find that there’s even more you can tweak, quite a bit, actually. To change your profile pic, however, click on the “Change Picture” button.

This is pretty cool, actually. If you want to be lazy, you can look at a series of pre-selected images captured from your videos and if one of them works, just click on it and you’re done. For me, I’d rather have the same standard graphical icon I use in all my social media profiles, so I’ll need to upload it. That’s done by clicking “Choose File” and finding it on my computer.

Once uploaded, the same profile picture will be displayed as the upload:

Looks great, so I click on “Save Changes” and I’m done. That’s all there is to it.

Want to follow my YouTube channel so you can see the new profile photo? Just go here: http://www.youtube.com/askdavetaylor, and thanks!

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Dave’s Answer:

I was also baffled when I started using Pinterest and realized I could add my own images or photos, but couldn’t figure out how to have them “clickable” to help people find my site or a specific article I’d written that related to the image. If I added a URL to the comment, it’d become clickable, but that wouldn’t make the image itself clickable. What the deuce?

Then I stumbled across the “Pin It” button — the “pinmarklet” — which you can find here: Pinterest Goodies. Knowing that exists, the secret to having an image point to a Web page is that you have to be on the Web page that contains the image you want to pin and click on the little Pin It button that you’ve previously installed on your browser toolbar.

In Chrome, I always have the bookmarks bar displayed, so it’s easy to literally drag the “Pin It” button from the Pinterest page onto the bar. Now, with that installed simply go to a page you’d like — you can try this one if you want — and click on the button.

All interesting images on the page will now be displayed in a grid:

I’m going to link to a different article on Pinterest I wrote here on my blog, so I find that particular image and move the cursor over it:

As you can see, the overlay “Pin This” shows up automatically. That’s the right one, so I’ll click it to pin it.

The result:

As you can see, it’s a pretty standard Pinterest “add an image” window. At this point you can specify what board you want (I have “Random” shown here) and add a description as appropriate. Here’s what I wrote:

Click on “Pin It” and, if it works….

Success! Want to now share it on Twitter? Click on “Tweet your Pin”. If you’re good, just close the window and get back to work.

Or, if you want, go to Pinterest and you’ll see how it came out:

Click on it once and you won’t actually go back to the other Web site, you’ll get the bigger picture on Pinterest…

Now at this point if you click on the picture it’ll go back to the other Web site you were viewing when you first clicked on the “Pin It” bookmark button. Oh, and you can see that by the comment on the top right: “From askdavetaylor.com”.

Done.

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Your timing is impeccable, dear reader! As you sent this in, I was busy migrating my new WordPress blog — GoFatherhood — to a new server so I was able to capture all the steps needed.

Coincidence, or serendipity? You decide.

Anyway!

This example is also taken from WordPress 3.2, so if you’re running an earlier or later version (like 3.3) then it’s possible that things will look slightly different. Still, the basic steps should still prove accurate.

Start out by logging in as the admin on your WordPress blog, then looking on the left side of the admin control area for “Posts”. Underneath that heading should be a group of options, including “All Posts”. Choose it:

Now click on the box just to the left of the “Title” column heading and it’ll automatically select every blog entry on the current page:

Everything checked? Good. Click on “Bulk Actions” and choose “Edit” instead…

Clicking on “Apply” shows you the selected entries and a bunch of things you can do, including apply new categorization, tags, change author, etc:

Most importantly on the right side is a menu “Comments”. Click on it:

Choose “Do not allow”, click on the “Update” button on the lower right of this section and…

Good job. Now you just need to duplicate that for all the blog entries you have.

Tedious? Yes. In fact, I surmise that there’s a way you can really select every single post before you take an action, but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps one of you readers can enlighten us? Thanks.

In any case, I hope this helps you migrate your WordPress blog from one server to another.

Dave’s Answer:

I’m a relative newbie to Pinterest too, so your n00b secret is safe with me. Well, with me and the people who read this blog now, right?

Pinterest is fun because it’s simple. Everyone who participates can “pin” images onto a thematic or topical “board” then others can “like” the images or even leave comments. Follow enough people and it’s quite a fascinating blend of what multiple people are finding interesting enough to pin, in a very visually oriented fashion. So to some extent, I suppose it’s like Digg and related, but way less geeky and way more fashionable and styling…

As with everything I do, I’ve been experimenting with Pinterest to see how it works and while I find the interface pleasantly uncluttered, I have to say that I cannot seem to get image uploading to work. I’ve tried multiple times and it invariably ends up with a broken image link on my board. Disappointing.

So for this, I’m going to kill the proverbial two birds with the same stone: I’ve uploaded an image to Flickr, and am going to “pin” the image to my Random board on Pinterest. If you found an image on another site that you wanted to pin, the process would basically be identical.

To get started, log in to your Pinterest account and locate the top navigational bar:

Click on… wait for it… wait for it… “Add +” and a window pops up:

To include a photo that’s elsewhere on the Web already (as we’ll have with the photo we uploaded to Flickr) click on “Add a Pin”. If you want to try your luck at uploading your own photographs or images, click on “Upload a Pin”. Want to create a new thematic or topical board? Click on … you guessed it… “Create a Board”.

I’ll click on “Add a Pin”, then, in a different browser window, pop over to Flickr and grab the URL of my image in its largest size by command-clicking (PC users should right click) on “Download the Large size of this photo” and choosing “Copy Image URL…” from the context menu:

Now that the URL’s loaded into the copy and paste buffer, switch back to the Pinterest page and copy it into the appropriate field on the “Add a Pin” window:

A click on “Find Images” and you’ll see a lot more, including a thumbnail of the image in question:

Pick which Board you want — I’ll choose “Random” — and add a description of some sort. Done? Click on “Pin It” and it’s now part of the Pinterest image stream:

Nice and easy.

As to uploading your own images? Lots of people tell me that they have no problems with it, but so far I haven’t been able to make it work for my Pinterest account. Perhaps I’m using bad image formats or a browser that’s not 100% compatible? I’ll keep digging…

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