Hipmunk totally saved my butt when I had to travel back to back from San Francisco to Park City, Utah to speak Friday and then depart the next day for Los Angeles, CA to speak Saturday!

I met with Florence (@flo_hipmunk)  from Hipmunk for coffee to talk about the travel service.  At first was a bit unsure about using it because I’ve been using Priceline since 2000 and have been using Yapta for price tracking on flights for the last year so I didn’t see where Hipmunk could fit into my travel planning for the public speaking I do…until last month.

When you travel to multiple cities before returning to your departure city, it’s known as “open jaw”.  Searching for flights can seem like a “hit or miss” type thing but there are strategies like flying mid week and buying your tickets between Tuesday and Thursday (when airlines let go of tickets reserved by travel agents over the weekend that were not fully booked) and buying at least 21 days in advance.

For $352 I was able to travel from San Francisco on a Thursday to Park City , UT, speak Friday morning then fly out that afternoon so I could speak in Los Angeles, CA Saturday morning. It was friggin’ awesome to plan out my flight using Hipmunk because I could see all the legs of my flight and choose them by departure time!

This is one of the screenshots I took in early June when I was researching flights.  I needed to make sure my departure and arrival times would allow me time to get to the conferences, socialize, network and of course speak!

Check out this fun video Grumo media did explaining Hipmunk:

Many people have experienced the frustration being booted out of their Gmail and Google Apps account after Google’s transition of all Google Apps accounts to proper Google accounts.

You can enable account switching without using multiple browsers by using the following page multiple sign-in settings page:

When multiple sign-in is turned on, you can click the arrow next to your address (at top right) to switch between accounts with these Google products: Gmail, Calendar, Google Voice and Google Reader

Once you agree, you’ll be able to go back and forth between your personal Gmail and your Google Apps account:

Use multiple Google Accounts in the same web browser.Select each of the checkboxes below to confirm you understand how to use multiple sign-in:

• The account you’re currently using is displayed at the top of most Google product pages, or at the bottom of most pages on mobile devices. Always check to make sure you’re using the account you want.
• Not all Google products support multiple sign-in. When switching between Google products, the account you’re currently using may change.
• Google products not listed above will default to the first account that you signed in to using your current web browser session.
• Offline Mail and Offline Calendar will be disabled. You may lose any unsent mail.

You may need to sign out of your browser to activate this.  Use Google Chrome as your browser for the best experience in setting this up ^_^

After I activated this, I was able to go back and forth without problems between my accounts.

Here I’m signed in with my personal gmail account:

and now I’m in my Google Apps account:

Summary

Now this doesn’t work for every service that Google offers and there are some known issues but overall I found this account switching feature to be a great way for people to transition stand alone Google accounts into a Google Apps setting as well as stay focused within a single browser to increase productivity.

Google released a new feature last month which allow you to search using your voice.

From the feature page:

Introducing Voice Search Now on your computer. It’s easy to search out loud. All you need is Google Chrome and a built-in or attached microphone

I did voice searches for hamburgers, directions to the San Francisco airport and funny YouTube videos:

Google has been developing voice capabilities for several years with products like Google 411, Google Voice (Grand Central acquisition) and voice commands on the mobile Android OS platform.

Have you tried Google Voice Search yet?

Know those forms that have that annoying box at the bottom with a bunch of scrambled words in it that look like this?

Well that’s a CAPTCHA and it’s an acronym that stands for:
Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart

Let’s talk about how CAPTCHA’s make websites suck.

I was motivated to write this article after Allison responeded to my Tweet sharing what the acronym stood for:

The goal is to prevent automated systems from submitting data, usually via a form. While it may seem like a good idea to block fake submissions and registrations, it can often leave the end user feeling frustrated.

You will usually encounter a CAPTCHA when:

• Signing up for a new email account
• Listing something on Craigslist
• Filling out forms on a government website

The CAPTCHA is a reversed verision of the Turing test created by Alan Turing used to identify answers a computer when would give vs a human answering.

Accessibility has been questioned for a long time when using CAPTCHAS because if you’re visually impaired, you’re going to have trouble entering in the text.  The workaround has been to add in audio CAPTCHA but what if you’re have both visual and auditory impariments?  How about physcial impairments like Glenda Watson who blogs at Do It Myself and only uses her left thumb because she’s living with cerebral palsy?

Even if you don’t have an impairment, general readability of CAPTCHAS is usually a pain to fill in and you often have to try more than once before getting it right.

One time, Craigslist gave me a rediculously hard CAPTCHA to complete:

So did Facebook:

Also let’s consider people who don’t speak English as a second language.  I know if I had to complete a CAPTCHA with Arabic or Japanese letters, I’d be at a total loss.

How do software development companies add CAPTCHA to their websites and applications?  Well most, use a third party solution and layer it into their software.  There are public services like ReCaptcha (now owned by Google) which developers can use to implement CAPTCHA’s in their form submission tools.  Here are some examples of bad CAPTCHA’s which are easy to crack by computers and scripts.  There are viable alternatives like KittenAuth which simply offers you the choice of identifying an animal instead of trying to fill in a bunch of cryptic number and letters.  KittenAuth FTW!

Another option is to consider a filter between the application and the form that will screen out bogus submissions using methods similar to Postini for email spam identification. @freedomvoice on Twitter had a great example of using a conditional CAPTCHA when someone enters an email adress into a from that is from a free email provider like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail:

Even if companies add in CAPTCHA as a preventative measure, it can be hacked.  That’s right.  Everything from using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) programs “read” to using live humans to enter the CAPTCHA’s.  In places like India and China, people can be paid as little as eighty cents to type in 1,000 CAPTCHA’s.  Another method is to capture the session ID for a known CAPTCHA and reuse it or even display the needed CAPTCHA’s on a different website and have unknowing users fill them in.  Think porn site + iframed CAPTCHA’s from Craigslist.

One time (not at band camp), Cragslist gave me a swear word in the CAPTCHA:

I have a client that wants to use an application but unfortunately the default form has a CAPTCHA that cannot be turned off.  This will require me to create a custom submission form to go around the CAPTCHA which is a pain and will delay completion of the work for the client.  Developers, please make CAPTCHA’s optional!

In case you were wondering, the CAPTCHA concept was thought up by four guys at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000.  They tried to trademark it but gave up in 2008.

Do you love or hate CAPTCHA’s?

New feature in Gmail today to copy + paste images and photos right into the body of your email!

In this video, I copy an image from my desktop and paste it into a new email draft.  This new feature is available now to all Gmail and Google Apps users.  Start using your keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste (or right click) the the image you want to add and paste it into the email.

You’ll need to be using Google Chrome to take advantage of this feature so download it today.  Sorry Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer users!

Send photos of that couch you’re selling to someone on Craigslist.

Create an informal newsletter that you send to a small circle of friends about your recent trip abroad.

This will make for killer documentation emails as you explain how to get something done or show the problem you’re having.  Of course, if you find yourself writing a lot of tutorials via email, you may want to consider a tool like ScreenSteps which allows you to organize and layout screenshot heavy tutorials plus export them to PDF, HTML, Microsoft Word, MindTouch, Zendesk and WordPress.

Keyboard Shortcut Refresher

Your keyboard is your friend so remember to use shortcut combinations when possible.  Keyboard shortcuts are faster and cut down on wrist pain from repetitive mouse use!

Keyboard shortcuts for Windows

copy (CTRL + C)

paste (CTRL +V)

Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts

copy (Command + C)

paste (Command + V)

Are you excited about this new feature?
How are you going to use it?

Adria Richards is a technology consultant located in San Francisco, CA. Adria has been using Gmail since 2004 and deploying Google Apps for clients since 2006. Read about her services and contact her to find out how to streamline your business workflow with the right technology.

(via Official Gmail Blog)

Following up with the blog post from a few days ago announcing the new Google Calendar feature called Appointment slots, I’ve created a video on how to use them. Enjoy!

Make sure to think about using Bit.ly or another url shortening service to make it easier for your potential clients and visitors to reserve time!

Are you using Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds for your blog or website?

Are you also using Clicky real-time web analytics to track visitors?

You can combine the best of both worlds by pulling in your Feedburner info onto Clicky’s dashboard to have an easy, one stop dashboard to view how your site is doing and more importantly…what people are doing on your site!

Why You Want To View Your RSS Feedburner Activity in GetClicky

I saw this question asked at and made this screenshot to explain how to get it done:

Feedburner & Clicky

Where is the setup? Is this a feature still, I don’t see a button or anything.

Why would someone want this?  Because in one location, you can see how visitors are interacting with your websites, content and which article are causing them to visit your site or blog.  Make sure to always subscribe to your own RSS feed so you can do quality checks on how the formatting and rich media embeds like YouTube videos are displaying.

This saves me from having to go visit Feedburner later on to check on my stats.  Google made a big splash in the personal dashboard market a few years ago with iGoogle which allows you to bring in all sorts of interesting gadgets including email, calendar, news feeds, calculators, games and more.  Dashboards that tie in multiple services will continue to grow in popularity as businesses move into the cloud

Here we can see the most popular articles from this morning on my blog as well as which links generating actions from my visitors.

Tutorial Steps

Ready to get your Feedburner setup?

Let’s go!

1. Sign into Clicky real time web analytics at http://getclicky.com
2. Select the domain you want to add the Feedburner RSS feed to
3. On the left, select “Preferences”
4. From the Preferences sub-menu, select “Preferences”
5. Click on “Advanced Settings” to expand additional options
6. Fill in the Feedburner URI with your Feedburner name.
   (This is the last part of your Feedburner url)  Here’s a screenshot

   

Have you ever gone into WordPress and changed the URL in the settings area only to find you couldn’t login anymore or load your site?  Never fear!  Today’s question from @laurenthedark asked this on Twitter so here’s your video Lauren:

Steps

1. Sign into cPanel
2. Go to Databases > phpMyAdmin
3. Choose your database on the left (you can verify which one by looking in your wp-config.php file via ftp)
4. Go to **_options (the default is wp_options but you may have changed your prefix)
5. The SiteURL will most likely be the 2nd row and you will click the pencil to the left to edit
6. Edit the “option_value” box to reflect your correct website address and hit “go”
7. You will get a green confirmation that it was successful

So Lauren, there you go.  Make sure to sign up for my training newsletter to get tips and news on WordPress and business productivity tools.

Today on AskAdria, we covered Selecting A Microphone for Web Videos and Webinars.  Eddie (@EddieN120) had a great question about streaming a live event held outside. The event is called the Loving Day NYC Flagship Celebration. I saw photos on Flick that Eddie linked me to and it looked like they were have a bunch of fun at this event!

So how to capture that joy and happiness for a live audience to share?

Planning an Outdoor Streaming Event

Internet Connection. This is huge.  The system requirements at Livestream indicate a download speed of 500kbps is needed.  In reality, upload speed is more important since you’re pushing content to the web.  Use a site like Speedtest.net to figure out your upload and download speeds ahead of time.

Ideally, you want to be using a wired internet connection.  It’s as easy as scouting the location beforehand and asking a local business if you can branch off their public internet with an ethernet cable.  I just picked up a 50 foot weather resistant Ethernet cable from Deepsurplus.com for $12 bucks and I see a 100 foot cable is about $20.  (my roommate actually ordered it).

If you can’t get wired, try to do wireless using an access point you are in control of and have it within 200 feet.  Don’t count on using free wi-fi from the local coffee shop to have enough bandwidth for a stream.  You can also buy an internet card that you plug into your laptop via USB.  In the U.S. the big four cellular companies still require a 2 year contract but in the UK, you can buy the device and do pay-as-you-go for the service.  Thanks @s0l_ for the tip!

Sunlight. Glare can be a huge problem here as well as direct sunlight causing damage to your electronics.  Be prepared with an umbrella or plant to setup the web cam inside a tent to avoid weather extremes.

Webcam stand or tripod. Whether you are doing a stream with your iPhone via Qik or using your camcorder that is patched through your laptop, you’re going to need a steady setup.  Test your tripod or mount before the big day.

Audio windscreen. We humans love to see people smile.  We love the sound of laughter.  Capture memorable sounds by making sure to soften the effects of wind and background noise with some sort of dampening solution.  Try to setup away from the wind, traffic and any sort of busy spots like near an outdoor grill where there may be a lot of noise.

Power. Bring plenty of cords!  They make heavy duty power cords that are weather resistant.  If you’re having an all day event, you’ll probably arrive early when there is morning dew still on the grass.  Be careful about your setup and bring velcro straps, old blankets and masking tape along to secure your cords from the weather and careless feet that could trip and find the owner of said feet injured.

Have someone monitor the stream every hour or so to be sure it’s still running.  Based on the streaming service you use, you may need to disable comments for your event as people have been known to “crash” stream channels and leave a bunch of profane things in the chats.

Great question Eddie!  Thanks!  As always, if you have technology questions you’d like answered, send them over via the contact form on AskAdria.com

Today, I ran across yet another person who still provides their email in the following format as some sort of maladaptive coping mechanism to spam protection:

myname at mydomain dot com

Folks, you don’t need to do this if you have Gmail or Google Apps and I’ll explain why in a bit. I’ve also seen people put annoying third-party email verification systems on top of Gmail. Completely unnecessary.

Whenever possible, I try to educate these folks and help them understand the root problem with spam and how Google addresses it for the millions of email users, businesses and organizations they support.

photo credit: SBeggsMiller

Why people get spam

Spam is unsolicited email.  Unfortunately, many people working at companies walk in, sit down at their desks and then wade through their email, much of it being advertisements, promotions and now phishing scams.

If they are done by 9:30am, they are feeling pretty good about their day!

photo credit: patriotworld

Email doesn’t have to be this way.

It is the responsibility of the email host to filter spam before it reaches your inbox.  If you are receiving unwanted emails on a daily basis, the company in charge of your email is not doing their job.  Many companies are still running email servers out of their offices like Microsoft Exchange and although there have been improvements in the last couple of years to this mail server platform, it’s complex and misconfiguration is common.

Another example is where the email is hosted remotely with the company who does the website hosting or…the company is using a free email service.  Again, the responsibility of getting rid of that spam fall squarely on their shoulders.

How to reduce spam in your inbox

First, figure out who hosts your email.  This may be as simple as asking your IT person, looking at your website hosting agreement or making a phone call.

Next, explain what and when you see spam.  If you can give 3 example subject lines like:

• “Discounted Viagra”
• “Buy A Home With Your Tax Refund”
• or “Authentic Rolex Watches For $300″

this will help immensely because your technology staff or email host can now scan for these specific items and work to determine their source.

The Difference Between Free Web Based Email Services

Maybe you are using a free service.  There is a HUGE gap in terms of quality when it comes to free email. Read this carefully…

AOL is very, very bad.

Hotmail is very, very bad.

Yahoo is very, very bad.

Gmail is excellent, amazing, awesome, easy and efficient!

Why are the first 3 bad?  They are horrible at filtering out spam (aka junk mail), they have distracting advertising throughout their web interface, they charge if you want to download your email (POP3) or connect to it with your favorite desktop app (IMAP) and they don’t even come close to offering the amazing list of features that Gmail offers including:

• 7GB of inbox space
• Works on the web, with your PC/Mac or Linux system
• Mobile clients for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, PalmOS
• Keep using your desktop client – Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird
• Built In Chat
• Calendar
• Online Google Docs
• and more!

I’ve had a Gmail account since June 2004 and receive less than two spams a month in my inbox.  That’s right!

I’ve been setting up Google Apps for clients since 2006 and think it’s one of the best email solutions out there.  It’s scalable for small companies with less than 100 employees and can give enterprise email systems a run for their money too!

Google Has Built In Spam Filtering

photo credit: tkjoseph

How is it possible?  Google made a smart move in 2007 and purchased Postini, a world leader in spam filtering services.  Not only do users of Google’s free, personal email service Gmail use it but business and organizations signed up for Google Apps benefit too!

This means if you have a Gmail account or are a Google Apps user, you don’t need to spell out your email address in hopes of tricking the robot scripts that harvest email addresses from websites.  In fact, I’ve had my email publicly posted on my websites, social networking sites and in forums for years and still have no problem with spam using Gmail.

You also have the option to add Postini’s excellent spam filtering services in front of your email server.  Here is what they describe as your new experience with Postini in place:

Your users will no longer have to spend hours sorting through spam. You will also see a tremendous reduction in your overall inbound email traffic (Google stops the bad traffic in the cloud). Also, most customers notice a dramatic drop in their mail server utilization on the first day the service is enabled. This gives you more scalability with your existing systems.

I agree.  I’ve seen too much time wasted chasing down blacklisted servers, inbox meltdowns and lost productivity from poorly configured email servers and overtaxes servers.

Email Inspired Blog Post

In an effort to double educate, I sent the following email today in hopes of helping the person save time and not continue using outdated methods to protect their email account from spam.

*First part of email removed for relevance*

Also, to let you know, it’s not necessary to spell out domain names as a form of spam control in general.  The real issue is that the company manage the email MX records is to blame and end users should not have to use “evasive” methods like that.  Also, the University of Minnesota migrated to Google Apps last year and Google purchased Postini to provide exceptional spam filtering.  I have been using Gmail since 2004 and Google Apps since 2006, receiving less than 2 spams a month.  My email address is all over the internet and on every single one of my contact pages like http://butyoureagirl.com/contact

You can read more about the University of Minnesota switching to Google Apps at the Minnesota Daily and on their own website.

Hope you find this helpful in your quest to be more productive in the office!

At this time, I am going to do a shameless plug that I offer Google Apps administrator and end user training.

Sign up to be notified of upcoming classes I teach online http://signup.freshworkshops.com