A Consuming Experience

Gmail Priority Inbox - review & wishlist

2010-11-22T11:12:00.000Z

This post gives thoughts, tips and suggestions on Gmail's newish Priority Inbox feature.

Google have provided a "Priority Inbox" feature for Gmail since they launched it in the late summer of 2010, clearly with their sights set on wooing over enterprise and SMB users (and educational institutions) to Google Apps, trumpeting the potential time savings and productivity gains - to some external coverage, and even available to a limited extent on Android phones.

It was highlighted as a new feature when you logged in to Gmail for a while, but not any more. From my experiences of using it, it's generally helpful - even though normally I'm a control freak who doesn't like anyone else, least of all software, automatically making decisions for me.

If you're a new Gmail user, or you didn't activate it when it was featured, this post gives an overview of this feature.

What does Priority Inbox do?

If you activate "Priority Inbox", you get a new Priority Inbox view which splits your incoming Gmail email into 3 sections:

"Important and unread",
"Starred" and
"Everything else".

The idea is that Gmail sorts and prioritises your email - the important stuff goes at the top so that you see it first. (See the Google video promo at the top of this blog post.)

At first, it guesses what to "file" under "Important" and what to put in "Everything else".

You "train" it by clicking icons to indicate an email is Important ("Mark as Important" has a + sign) or "Mark as not important" (- sign), so that over time it should learn and improve. There are icons both at the top of the Inbox (outlined in purple below) and also (outlined in red below) of the individual email, so you can "promote" or "demote" a single email or a selected batch in one go.

When you've read an Important email it goes into the "Everything else" section. Unless you starred it, in which case it goes into the Starred section. Or unless you archived it, in which case it disappears from the Inbox altogether.

How to activate Priority Inbox

Go to Settings (top right) and the Priority Inbox tab (or while you're logged into Gmail click this link).

Then select "Show Priority Inbox" at the bottom and click the "Save Changes" button.

Tips

The Gmail help pages have some further help and tips. Google have also blogged some specific tips.

Especially in the early days, be sure to check the "Everything else" section in case important emails get shunted there by Google. If an important email gets put in that section, use the "Mark as Important" icon to tell Google (and hopefully it'll do better next time with similar email).

Note that if you star an email it appears in the Starred section, but if you then archive it, it won't be shown there. Useful for keeping just the "star starred" items there and preventing less important starred items from cluttering up that section.

It's worth checking out your Gmail Settings for Priority Inbox (click that link only after you've logged into Gmail).

Do you find Gmail sometimes goes to the Priority Inbox, other times to the "normal" Inbox? Probably that's happening because "Default inbox" is set to "The last inbox I used". Really confusing and bad for usability. If people choose to turn on Priority Inbox, then this setting should default to "Priority Inbox". Change it to that, and click "Save changes" at the bottom.

For keyboard shortcuts fans - the g then i combo takes you to whatever Inbox has been set in the Default inbox section. So if you change it to "Priority Inbox" the combo will always go to that page, rather than sometimes one and sometimes the other.

Another tip - the Priority Inbox sections' Options let you choose how many emails you want to see in each section, and other options. For "Starred" I personally use "Show up to 10 items" so that the "Everything else" emails don't disappear too far off my radar.

Still too many starred emails in the Starred section? (even though only the latest 10 are displayed). Just archive the ones you don't need or want to see in that section.

Observations / suggestions

Personally, perhaps for cultural "left to right" reasons, I found it a bit confusing that the "Mark as Important" icon is on the left and "Mark as not important" is on the right. I keep expecting the one with the + sign to be on the right and the one with the - sign to be on the left, and had to stop myself from clicking the wrong icon to mark emails as important (or not) at first! I'd find it easier if they swapped the order of the icons.

A more important suggestion - I think that when you have read an email that's in the "Important and unread"section, it should NOT go to the "Everything else" section but should be automatically archived, so as not to clutter up the "Everything else" section and get in the way when you try to scan the emails in "Everything else". You've read it, you don't need to see it again.

So I wish Google would add an option in the Settings which you can select, something like:

When I read an email in the Important and Unread section:

archive it
put it in "Everything else".

But those are relatively minor, all in all I find Priority Inbox pretty useful to help me manage my email. I've even been able to use it to produce an "All unread email" view, which doesn't exist with Gmail. I'll blog about how to do that in a separate post.

Bloggers / tweeters - and libel / defamation

2010-11-21T15:27:00.002Z

For anyone who writes a blog or posts to message boards or forums, or who tweets on Twitter etc - the Libel Reform Campaign have just published a new guide "So you’ve had a threatening letter. What can you do?" - a guide for bloggers (English law only, but of interest given that libel lawsuits tend to be brought in England even against non-Brits…).

I mentioned "or post to message boards" etc because the guide may be of use not just to bloggers but also to forum posters and Twitter users who get threatened with defamation actions.

However, the guide only deals with the situation where someone has complained or threatened legal action over a blog post you made or something else that you wrote yourself.

The guide doesn't deal fully with -

what if you just run a blog or message board, and the complaint is about someone else's post - not one you personally posted (then, issues about editorial control etc may come into it) - it happened to Mr Hilton and his Labourhome.org site.
what if someone posts a defamatory comment on your blog - defamatory about you (self-help: delete it, or don't publish it!), or about someone else?
should you moderate posts on a team blog, or moderate comments on your blog, if so how? (probably not, in order to reduce the risk of being done for manually letting a libellous comment or post through - though I admit I myself do moderate for spam).

For more info you might want to see this post on defamation and other legal risks for bloggers (including on posting links to possibly defamatory material someone else wrote) - but be warned that while that post was up to date when it was written, some of it may have been superseded by later events.

If you want to defend your libel case (and bearing in mind that you can't get legal aid), see a note Legal help: where to go and how to pay - meant for MPs so it's worded quite simply! ;D

Like the guide, this post isn't legal advice etc either, of course.

Thunderbird: draft message "lost", or saved in or sent from a different email account ("from" address)? - possible fix

2010-11-17T09:53:00.000Z

If you use the free Thunderbird email software, you may have found that a previously-saved draft email gets saved into a different account when you edit it, ie under the wrong "From" email address (so you can't find the saved draft at first, because it's in the wrong place).

Worse still, a draft email may even get sent to recipients "from" the wrong email address.

This annoyance (and possibly embarrassment, if work email gets sent from your personal email address) happens because:

you've set up several different email accounts on Thunderbird, eg one for personal email, one for work email
you open a draft email you'd previously saved into one of your accounts
meanwhile you selected a different account on the left, eg clicked on the Inbox for a different account than the one for the draft you just opened, to check emails for that different account
later on, you go back to the opened draft email and then you edit it and save it as a draft or else you send it - and it gets saved or sent under the currently selected email address, not the original one you composed the email under!

One fix that has been suggested is to add all your identities to all your email accounts in Thunderbird (here's how, see under "How to add another identity"), but if you have lots of accounts it's a bit tedious.

In my view, the easiest solution to this problem (noted briefly on the same page as the previous link) is the following tip or trick. Below I include a step by step for non-techies.

This fix should hopefully ensure that a draft email you're editing gets re-saved or sent from the original email address you created it under, and not some random email account that happens to have been highlighted on the left when you eventually save or send the draft.

In Thunderbird go to the menu Tools, select Options, then click the Advanced button (with the cogwheel) at the top.
Under Advanced click the General sub-tab if it's not already on that page, then click the Config Editor button
In the about:config box that comes up, type or paste (without the quotes) in the Filter box "mailnews.reply_to_self_check_all_ident".
It should now look like this - it will say "false" under "Value" in the "mailnews.reply_to_self_check_all_ident" preference (if it was set to "true", you shouldn't be having this issue!)
What you need to do is to set it to "true". The easiest way to do that is just to doubleclick on the * line, and check that it now reads "true":

You can now close out of that box. Hit OK if you want in the Options window, but from what I can see it seems to save even if you hit Cancel.

From now on, Thunderbird should check when you save an edited draft email or send a draft email, and hopefully save or send it under the original email address! If it still glitches, raise it with Mozilla…

Gmail: "Loading", can't reply or compose email, chat not working in Firefox? - possible solution

2010-11-15T19:21:00.005Z

Is your Gmail stuck or hanging on "Loading…" in Firefox? Gmail chat not working either? The issue of Gmail freezing in Firefox seems fairly easy to find the solution to online, but given its huge annoyance factor here's step by step answers to help non-technical users to fix the problem.

The Firefox browser and Gmail don't always work well together. I've had previous experiences of Gmail being unusable for a while on Firefox after an upgrade to either, until the other caught up.

This particular problem seemed to persist however. (I used Internet Explorer or other browsers for Gmail, in the meantime.)

If you started getting this problem after upgrading Firefox recently (probably to version 3.6.12), one possible tip to solve the issue is this (it certainly worked for me!):

In Firefox, go to the address bar and type "about:config" without the quote marks and hit Enter.
You'll get the warning below, just click "I'll be careful.."
Now you'll get a window that looks something like this:
In the Filter box, type (again without the quotes) "dom.storage" and you'll see something like this; note the dom.storage enabled line which I've outlined in red:
Now doubleclick on the "dom.storage.enabled" line, outlined in red above, so that under the "Value" column it now reads "true", like so:
You can now close out of that tab, and try Gmail again.

If it still doesn't work I'm afraid the problem is something else and you'll have to try more troubleshooting. But it might well work - it has for lots of people.

Clearly Google are now using DOM storage for Gmail in Firefox - and you have no choice but to enable it if you want your Gmail to work properly. A stage on the way to full HTML 5, I suspect.

Telephone banking, NatWest and fraud

2010-11-06T14:32:00.010Z

In these days of increasing fraud and theft, it's very worrying that - in perhaps a misguided attempt to be "friendly"? - a major UK bank should stupidly make it much easier for criminals to snaffle its customers' bank account details.

Take this (nearly word for word) transcript of a call which a friend made to NatWest:

Ring ring.
Hello?
Hello? Hello? Who is this? Is this NatWest Private Banking?
Yes it is. May I have your bank account number?

What's wrong with that picture? Here's what it used to sound like:

Ring ring.
NatWest Private Banking, John Smith speaking, how may I help you?
Hello, I'd like to make a payment please.
Yes. May I have your customer number?

So if you dial a wrong number and a bad guy answers, you're stuffed basically. They can get all sorts of info out of you and you'll be none the wiser.

My friend said, "Never in my life have I encountered a business or professional firm which tells its staff to answer the phone by saying 'Hello'! Surely it is good commercial practice as well as common sense to identify yourself and the organisation you represent. Too much informality doesn't improve customer service but rather damages it." (Aside - I don't like companies that presume to call me by my first name without asking me if they can, either. Maybe I'm old fashioned but it smacks of disrepect. I'm the client, I'm the customer.)

UPDATE TO CLARIFY: Flabbergasted at the phone call being answered in this manner, my friend ask if their procedures for answering calls had been changed and was told that they had. On subsequent calls, unfortunately the experience was little different. My friend ranted to me first, hence this blog post; the next time, it's going to be a request to talk to a supervisor to ask them to change their procedures back.

Why on earth should the customer be forced to take steps to check with their bank that it is indeed their bank that they are speaking to? What's worse is, on different occasions subsequently different NatWest staff were found to answer in different ways too.

Not identifying yourself and not being consistent in how you deal with customer phone calls is not just disconcerting for customers, but creates unnecessary risks of fraud and theft.

Banks shouldn't be creating risks. Banks, of all institutions, should make it very very clear who they are. It should be banks' responsibility to do all they can to minimise fraud and crime.

This sort of thing isn't helping. In fact, quite the opposite. I trust no banks other than National Westminster Bank are doing it, and let's hope that NatWest sees the error of its ways soon and goes back to the old "script".

Of course, banks have a history of not doing the most sensible things when it comes to technology, to put it tactfully (and yes I count telephones as technology). Though it's usually consumers rather than banks who end up paying the price. So maybe we'll be hoping in vain.

Tech journalism, science journalism - tips & thoughts from London Girl Geek Dinner

2010-10-30T23:17:00.003+01:00

The recent London Girl Geek Dinner on tech journalism was one of the best and most useful ever, for anyone who writes or broadcasts video or audio - whether or not as a professional journalist - eg tips on how to shoot professional looking video. Thanks as always to Judith Lewis and the team for organising this practical and interesting event, I think the first I've been to since the Regent Street shopping event.

Journalism is still very much a male dominated profession, about 60% male, and in technology and science journalism the percentage is the same if not worse.

Equally bad is the fact that, as the attendees agreed, far too many technology magazines and journals are seemingly aimed just at men (see my rant on tech magazine sexism in GirlyGeekdom - about T3 magazine, which I don't subscribe to anymore, quelle surprise. And, while I'm at it, much stuff aimed at women seems to be designed by men too, like pyjamas. Humph.)

Even Wired UK, who provided for the event free copies of their mag and some discounted subs, received some criticism for being written almost exclusively from a male perspective.

It seems that the market is nicheing or fragmenting. There is probably room for a magazine which caters for (or at least doesn't ignore) the growing female appetite for technology - indeed it's likely to be welcomed with open arms, at least by the attendees!

Now on to the individual talks.

The 3 journalists / broadcasters, who kindly gave their time to share their experiences and tips with us, were (in order of appearance) Angela Saini, Connie St Louis and Ramaa Sharma, and all of them have been or still are connected with the BBC.

Angela Saini - tips on being a journalist

Angela Saini, now a freelance journalist and author (blog), gave some practical tips on how to be a technology journalist or science journalist (her own background is engineering).

She doesn't seem to have put her slides online. I didn't make many notes as most of her points although very good and helpful seemed to be common sense to me.

Interestingly she was quite firm in her views on the distinction between bloggers and journalists. If you just sit in front of a keyboard, you're not a journalist. You have to go out there, collar and interview people, get exclusives.

See more on her blog post after the event, which also repeated her argument that the quality of media and news generally is going downhill as journalism is being devalued, both by "churnalists" who just copy and paste official or corporate press releases, and by people willing to work for free - interns as well as bloggers.

She thinks that journalists should demand to be paid, and paid fairly, for their work. (Apparently tech journalists generally get paid about 40 or 50p a word in the UK; more in the US.)

Surely editors and readers are partly to blame as well, for putting up with things like churnalism?

Connie St Louis - journalism qualification

Connie St Louis (blog), while still producing radio programmes for the BBC etc, is in charge of the Science Journalism MA at City University's highly regarded Department of Journalism. She too has a science background, in biology.

These days it's getting harder and harder to get a job in journalism, and having a formal qualification like a postgrad degree in journalism is one way to get your foot in the door.

The National Union of Journalists also offers training (it seems a bit chicken and egg to me though, if you have to have a journalism job before you can be an NUJ member, rather like trying to get an Equity card - not that I have one of those either).

Connie's Department also does research on journalism and media. One fascinating current project of hers is looking at the prevalence of churnalism by running plagiarism detection software on "news articles", as the source news releases are usually published online. The results will be published probably next year.

I'm looking forward to seeing them. I must say I had noticed the phenomenon myself, as I now subscribe to science / tech related news releases where I can, and had spotted the striking resemblances between many so-called news articles and the official news releases.

I don't read press releases so that I can copy them into blog posts - I don't hold with that, and never have. Too many people do it, bloggers as well as some professional journalists. In my view, either be the first to break the news, or else produce thoughtful reasoned analysis about it (which takes time and research). Don't just play "follow the leader" and repeat the press release or the first person who wrote about it.

I subscribe to news releases because I believe in getting the info straight from the horse's mouth as it's more likely to be accurate and reliable (assuming the body issuing the release isn't lying of course!), and more importantly it's less likely to be garbled or taken out of context - unlike in many secondhand reports, I have to say.

When blog posts or news stories don't provide links to the full original source, I really don't like it - there's no excuse for it, especially on the web (so what if "a government paper said…" - what's the full title of the paper, what department issued it, where can I get a copy?).

I often try to track the sources down for myself. In my own blog posts I certainly always try to link to the source where possible, so people can check the original if they wish, and hopefully see that they can trust my rendition.

Of course, it now seems obvious why many media articles don't link to the original - maybe they're worried readers will spot that they've just been copying press releases wholesale!

Ramaa Sharma - gadgets for multi-media journalism

Ramaa Sharma, who now teaches journalism internally at the BBC, is living proof that you don't always need a science background to get into tech journalism.

These days journalists have to be able to do stories for the web as well as TV, radio and print; and they not only are expected to write the stories but also to shoot the videos, record the audio and do the editing and uploading.

Ramaa gave us some very useful tips on multimedia journalism, including tools which don't cost the earth and won't break your back lugging them around.

In my view the latter is a big factor, not just for people who've done their back in like me, but also because making the gear that you need for the job too huge or heavy can be a deterrent to women, as we're simply not built like men.

Her recommended equipment included:

Benk tripod - brolly sized and lightweight, yet opens out (to oohs and aahs, virtually) to quite a decent length. She said she got it from Maplins but I can't tell if it was this or this or indeed neither, as neither says "Benk" in the photo or description and they both cost the same, just £19.99).
Gorillapod - a range of tripods for cameras as well as video cameras; basically a small tripod whose legs can be wrapped round almost anything. (If I were T3 I'd probably be making a "joke" about that.)
Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera - relatively cheap at under £100, very portable, now used by the BBC following her comparative review of this camcorder, the Flip and the iPhone. It even has a socket for a separate mic which the others don't. BBC WorldWide's poignant video about the Afghanistan dancing boys was shot using one. The only con with this kit is, you can't monitor the volume or quality of the audio live as you're recording it, for audio limiting; but she wouldn't be surprised if the next model had this feature too.
Mic - most microphones will work with the Kodak, the one she had with her was a BeyerDynamic MCE 58. And from my own experience, don't forget that all important microphone shield or cover to minimise wind noise etc.

Her tips on shooting video that looks professional include:

Keep the camera steady - don't be tempted to follow the subject around if they move, frame it carefully and then hold still. And shaky video is a no no! Hence it's important to use tripods, as to which see below.
Take a mix of shots - at least one long distance shot, a medium distance shot and a close up shot, each one for about 10 seconds minimum; they can be used in your edits.
Should be an obvious one, this - but don't have the light behind the subject (eg shooting in front of a window), have the light behind you.
Video editing tools - when people asked for recommendations she suggested Final Cut for Mac, Adobe Premiere Pro (eek at the price, I say!) or Adobe Premiere Elements for Windows. (And here's me wiv Windows Movie Maker…)

You can hear these tips and more on Ramaa Sharma's video on pocket-sized video journalism.

Future Girl Geek events

The best way to find out about future LGGD events, which are generally free thanks to the generous sponsors, is to sign up for the London Girl Geek Dinners mailing list.

If you're male you can still go, as long as you're accompanied by a responsible female ;D (who signed you up for the event). I'm open to suitable bribes…

There are Girl Geek Dinners all over the world, just search to see if you have one locally.

Phone, mobile, internet, pay TV provider - get your refund, never mind ways to leave 'em!

2010-10-23T12:33:00.004+01:00

It's bad but sadly not surprising to hear that when UK consumers change their mobile phone, fixed line telephone or broadband or even pay TV (eg cable TV and presumably satellite TV) service, the comms service provider doesn't always repay the customer for any credit amount due - eg advance line rental payments, or promotional credits.

In fact the total unclaimed money owed to UK consumers was at least £10 million over the last 2 years, according to UK comms regulator Ofcom.

All this is because you can get stung for two lots of fees (from old and new provider) at once, during the "overlap" period when your contract with your new provider has started but the one with the old provider is still within its termination period, usually 1 month.

An example may help. Say you pay BadProvider £30 in advance monthly on the 1st of the month for use of their service during that month. If you terminate with BadProvider on the 2nd of the month and start using ShinyNewProvider's service, you're obviously not using BadProvider's service after the 1st, but you've already paid BadProvider for it in advance.

So from the 2nd to the end of the first month you move to ShinyNewProvider, you're paying BadProvider for rental for the 2nd to the end of the month (even though you've stopped using it), and you're paying ShinyNewProvider rental for their service for the same period too.

You're paying twice over, unless BadProvider refunds you for the advance payment you made on the 1st, for the period from the 2nd to the end of the month ie 29/30 (assuming 30 day month) of the amount you paid on the 1st of that last month, or £29 in this case - which can be a lot when you add up the customers who don't get a refund!

Obviously the amount of credit due will be less if you terminated later in the month, etc, and some people may actually owe money to BadProvider at the end of the contract, depending on their usage, but this is just to illustrate with a concrete example.

(I'm ignoring any possible twists from the monthly payment date being on a different date from the "contract month" that the payment is for!)

After Ofcom's intervention, the good news is that they've produced a guide to help you claim your outstanding credit when you move to another communications service provider.

The guide has a handy table showing some big providers and what you need to do. Just to summarise (please check the guide for full details), the current position on outstanding credits is:

BT	Automatic refund of any credit, whatever the amount.
O2	Automatically credits amounts over £20; you have to ask for it if less.
Orange Post Office	Automatic refund of credit, whatever the amount.
Sky TalkTalk (including AOL and Tiscali) Three	You have to contact them directly to arrange a refund, but they should now be giving you "improved information" about your outstanding credits.
T-Mobile	Will now automatically refund all outstanding credit. This suggests they didn't use to!
Vodafone	Automatic refund of any credits "for all customers who pay by direct debit" only. If you paid Voda by another method, you won't get a refund unless you specifically request it from them.
Virgin Media Virgin Mobile	The press release contradicts the guide so I'm going by the guide. I wish Ofcom were clearer about this, it's not going to help consumer confusion. Virgin Media - automatic refund for amounts over £1. It doesn't seem to matter when you terminate the contract. Virgin Mobile - for amounts over £1: - if you terminate before 28 days, automatic refund - if you terminate after 28 days, you have to request a refund (but from December 2010 the refund will be automatic). I guess you need to contact Virgin Mobile to get a refund of any credit under £1 - the paper doesn't say.

The bad news? There isn't mention of lots of other providers include broadband internet providers.

"Ofcom thinks that industry best practice should mean that all providers refund customers the outstanding credit they are owed automatically, and without any further action needed by the consumer."

Well frankly that should be legally compulsory for all providers, not just "best practice".

More help on termination process?

To help customers with switching providers another area, Ofcom should look at and maybe provide a guide on the termination / cancellation process.

Asking for your MAC or PAC number does NOT always automatically terminate your contract (broadband internet and mobile, respectively).

If they are given a MAC or PAC number by your new provider some providers seem to take that as notice of termination, but others don't, and may keep on charging or debiting you unless you actually contact them as well to say you're ending the contract.

I repeat, asking for a MAC or PAC isn't enough. You need to check with your provider as to their termination or cancellation procedure and at the right time tell them officially that you're cancelling their service, and (if they're not listed in the table above) also find out what is their procedure for reimbursing any credits to you and follow it.

And you might also try (if possible) to time when you give them formal notice of termination such that you minimise the period of "advance rental" anyway.

Firefox / Thunderbird: forced to enter master password multiple times?

2010-10-07T23:44:00.011+01:00

If "Please enter the master password for the Software Security Device" is driving you mad because you have to enter your master password several times whenever you launch Mozilla's free Firefox browser or Thunderbird email software, the easiest solution to the "too many master password boxes" problem (or annoyance!) is the following tip.

Simply install the StartupMaster add-on / extension for Firefox and, separately (if you use Thunderbird) also the StartupMaster extension for Thunderbird (if necessary see how to install a Thunderbird extension - you don't just click on the link unlike in Firefox).

Restart Firefox or Thunderbird (whichever you need to sort out), and thereafter you shouldn't have to enter your master password more than once for Firefox and once for Thunderbird.

Background - you may have to type the master password several times in Firefox or Thunderbird if you've set a master password (which is a good idea for security reasons) and you've also set Firefox's home page to open in tabs more than one web page with login for which you've stored passwords - or if you've set up Thunderbird for more than one email account.

You'll get one password box, which you have to fill in and OK, for each Firefox tab with saved password or each email account you've set up in Thunderbird.

You may also have to keep clicking Retry (after entering the password in every single popup box) if you didn't enter the master password very shortly after Thunderbird opened, eg you left the computer for a few minutes then came back to it.

In some earlier versions of Firefox you didn't have to tediously enter the same master password many times in this situation, but sadly you do now. Unless you get the add-on I suggested.

Google Reader: how to de-duplicate feed entries / items

2010-10-03T20:01:00.015+01:00

Duplicate posts or stories in Google Reader feeds are a pain to have to skim through - they take up space and time unnecessarily. Many people have been frustrated about this problem for a while - it's not just me.

Until Google fix Google Reader to get rid of duplicate feed items, here's how to deduplicate feeds in Google Reader - this method greys out duplicate articles. It's just what I'm doing myself - if anyone knows of a better way please let me know (I find it easier than fiddling with Yahoo Pipes and the like, personally):

Use Google's free Chrome browser (download Chrome).
In Chrome, install the Reader Plus extension.
How to install a Chrome extension?

In Chrome, visit the extension page eg for Reader Plus, and click the Install button.
If you get more popups with "Install", click 'em.
If you get a warning at the bottom of the screen about Extensions, apps and themes, click Continue.
That's it, no need to restart Chrome or the computer.

In the Chrome toolbar, click the spanner icon, choose the Tools menu, then select Extensions:
In the Extensions tab that opens up, find Reader Plus and click Options under it:
In the Reader Plus options, click on Layout to expand it, and make sure "Filter entries" is ticked. (I'm not sure if you then need to click Save at the top right (not shown in the screenshot), but best to just in case.)
Now login to Google Reader in Chrome, and you'll see a new "Filter settings" button, top right (illustrated towards the bottom of this post). Click that button and make sure "Hide Duplicates" is ticked, then click the Update button below it.
Reload Google Reader for luck (it may work without refreshing it, but y'know...), and duplicate feed items should now be greyed out (see below) - however, note that sometimes I've found that UNticking "Hide Duplicates" and updating and refreshing the Google Reader page is necessary, especially if I've tried to change any of the the other Filter settings. Go figure. Kept alternating one or other till it worked.
"Excludes" also works as far as I can see, though I don't use it myself. Type a word you want to exclude in the Exclude box, tick Hide Excludes and click Update, and feed items which contain that word will be greyed out. And so on. Just play with it, but bear in mind point 7 above, that this feature can be erratic and sometimes it doesn't work, but refreshing Google Reader usually fixes that for me.

What about Google Reader in Firefox?

The Google Reader Filter add-on for Firefox is a Greasemonkey userscript (direct link to Google Reader Filter) which is supposed to be able to remove duplicates from Google Reader, but sadly it doesn't (on my system anyway).

Compare the following.

The first screenshot is of Chrome with Reader Plus - see how the duplicate item is greyed out? - and the second, of Firefox with Google Reader Filter (the same duplicate entry is unfortunately not greyed out).(Ignore the blocked out woody bits, that's just me hiding my Google Alert search from the world!)

Chrome with Reader Plus

Firefox with Google Reader Filter

Both the extension and the userscript add a "Filter settings" button to the top right of Google Reader, outlined in red in the two pics above, but I just couldn't get Google Reader Filter to hide or grey out duplicate items no matter what filter settings I tried.

I still prefer to view actual webpages in Firefox with TabMixPlus, due to Google's (to me) inexplicable and frustrating refusal to allow navigation of tabs in "most recently used" within Chrome. But that's another blog post…

iPhone 4 free case: last chance TODAY to get one!

2010-09-30T16:36:00.005+01:00

TODAY 30 Sept 2010 is your last chance to order a free iPhone case from Apple - see the Apple iPhone 4 Case Program - if you got yourself an iPhone 4, which I recently did.

The point of course is that the iPhone 4 suffered from signal problems if you held it in the way that most people hold their phones when talking, so in an attempt to firefight the resulting PR disaster Apple started offering free cases which solve the antenna issue.

These blogs have reviews and pics of some of the cases available.

To get your free case, on your iPhone 4 go to the App Store and search for "iPhone 4 case", you may have to scroll a bit in the results to find it. You order the case through the iPhone 4 Case Program app.

Personally, I went for the black Speck PixelSkin HD case (see photos) and I'm very happy with it. Smart, unobtrusive, and it seems pretty tough and hard-wearing.

Only downside is there is no screen protector (but most of the cases don't seem to offer any), and if like me you have feeble fingers, turning the iPhone on and off takes a bit more doing as you have to press it very firmly through the case for it to register.

I wasn't sure from the pic whether dirt might get trapped in the grid lines but luckily the design is such that the grooves are too wide and shallow for that to happen.