Use deliveredto: Gmail filter to capture non-typical SPAM

For past 3-4 months I started experiencing a very weird (?) kind of spam:

  • Always landing in Gmail’s Spam folder
  • That I couldn’t filter out using typical methods

Because:

  • Somehow sender (and sender’s domain) was always white-listed and legit
  • Sender was always different (auto-generated)
  • Recipient was also always different and always not my mailbox(es)

In fact, the only common thing about these messages was that always landed in my Spam box in three copies, ultimately (no matter what the recipient was) delivered to my personal and company mailbox.

The word “delivered to” told me what solution I should consider.

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Sending executable file through Gmail in Windows

For obvious security reasons, Google will do anything that is in their power to stop you from sending .exe, .apk and other executable files as email messages’ attachments. But, sometimes it is very needed to send such file (in a completely legitimate scenarios). And doing so in Gmail becomes a serious task.

This is, because simple encrypting (password-protecting) such files isn’t enough right now. Since password-protected files encrypts their content only and thus list of attached files is available. Gmail can scan such file and learn that you’re trying to send an executable file even without knowing the password.

Simple extension rename: .exe –> .nothing also doesn’t work today. Google is somehow able to check mime-type of files attached in encrypted archives and doesn’t rely on file extensions anymore.

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From Google Maps to Strava…

…or any other service, software or device that supports .gpx files. In one… two… six… steps! :)

  1. Plot any track in Google Maps
  2. If there are alternative routes found by Google, make sure that you’ve picked just one
  3. Copy entire URL and paste it into Maps to GPX service
  4. Download resulting .gpx file
  5. Create a new route in Strava
  6. Click Upload GPX button and upload downloaded .gpx file

And… you’re done.

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Enable FTP support in Chrome / Edge (August 2021)

There’s an answer at Super User that explains how to enable FTP protocol support in Chrome. It is dated May 29th and right now (Chrome 92 / Edge 92) it is already out-dated / no longer valid. It took only two months to make enable-ftp flag completely gone from Chrome and Edge browsers:

Right now (August 2021) you still have a chance too access FTP address in Chrome / Edge (details below), but I expect that my answer will become outdated in next couple of months just as in the above mentioned case.

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Get rid of Redirect Notice from Google Calendar

Google wants to know everything about you. One of the way of achieving it is to put every link, you paste or write into any of their services (i.e. Gmail, Calendar etc.) through their own sniffing tool. In other words, anything like http://www.example.com, it will be turned into https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.example.com or something similar.

For most Google services this being done nearly silently. You’re still sniffed at all paces, but your user experience isn’t affected. Sniffing and redirects are nearly invisible. All you can notice is a difference between URL you’re looking in browser and the one that you see in browser’s status bar.

However, there’s a on exception. It was proven many times that Google Calendar developers are a complete morons. And yes, they wasted up even their very own sniffing tool. Thus, whenever you click any link in Google Calendar, you see a supremely annoying “Redirect Notice” middle page.

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Force certain contact to be always on top in Google Contacts

Google Contacts by default orders contacts in each group / label alphabetically. Because Google knows better than you what you need there is no sorting option or any other way to change it.

However, if you need certain contact to appear always as first (even if its name doesn’t start with “a”) there’s a small workaround to Google stupidity.

The idea is to add + (plus sign) as Phonetic first (name) to such contact. You can get access to this field after clicking Show more:

Phonetic first field in Google Contacts

Google Contacts gives Phonetic first field bigger priority than to First name and any contact that has anything except empty value or space in this field will appear over all other contacts.

Find all e-mails sent or received in Gmail after office hours

Someone gave me a task to find all e-mail messages sent or received in Gmail:

  • in given period of day — after 16:00 given day and before 08:00 the next day and
  • in given period of week — between 00:00 and 23:59 during weekends,

so, generally speaking, outside office hours.

Gmail has a quite powerful filtering mechanism, but it:

For some internal reasons I couldn’t follow the “automatic way” suggestion (i.e. to upload messages from Gmail to Google Sheets and try to filter them there) and thus I decided into semi-automatic way.

Meaning that I wrote an Excel sheet which generated Gmail’s filtering queries for me for all required dates and I only have to manually copy-paste them into Gmail’s search box.

You can get similar results Epoch Converter’s batch tool, but I wanted to play a little bit with Excel instead.

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Migrate all your messages to Gmail or other mail account using imapsync

This article covers:

  • all the information, that I managed to find out or figure out,
  • all the bottlenecks I had to resolve and all the walls, I hit,
  • some additional info or alternative methods,

about migrating all messages from some mail account to Gmail, using imapsync and IMAP protocol.

The imapsync is an extremely flexible and powerful tool, that also has an on-line counterpart (so you don’t get your hands too dirty), and its documentation simply surpasses imagination, so it is certainly able to transfer all the messages between virtually any IMAP servers, not just between Gmail.

But this article focuses on external IMAP server –> Gmail scenario. For other scenarios, you should find some tips here, but you may need to consult imapsync documentation and the Internet or to use another solution.

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Use Gmail with different account than in Chrome [updated!]

There’s a well know bug in Google Chrome that forces you to use the same Google Account (let’s name it account A) both in Google Chrome and in all Google apps that you have run in this browser. Logging-off this account in any of Google apps causes immediate log-off in Google Chrome as well and also causes your Google data synchronisation to stop.

This may be obvious and convenient in most cases, but fails completely in certain scenarios.

For example, I am using Google Chrome in my office and I am syncing all Google data to a separate account B (to have i.e. separate set of bookmarks, for my work only and to not mix them up with my private bookmarks), but when opening Gmail, I want to be logged in to account A (private one), because I’m checking my private e-mails this way (I am using Outlook for office e-mails).

There’s a workaround for this problem (“best answer” here). However, it turned out to be not working for me.

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Always display certain pages in mobile mode

I pretty much like and enjoy Wikipedia in mobile version, even when browsing it on desktop PC. I would like to see it that way anytime. I asked about this on two Stack Exchange sites and got a great answers that this is possible both in Wikipedia itself and in browser.

The second solution maybe thus used for virtually any website, not just for Wikipedia.

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Compare of some family-like or child-control solutions

Having kids in these digital days may become a challenge. Especially, if you wish your sibling to get their hands on their first device — either a PC, Mac or some mobile stuff. Challenging, because soon you’ll discover how much you don’t know and how better your kid is than you! :>

Limiting access time and reviewing what is she or he watching, playing or reading is a must and soon you face the problem of remote family control.

Hope that this article will help you in this adventure.

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Google Calendar: Quickly edit new event’s details

By an accident I have discovered a handy feature (bug?) in new Google Calendar’s interface:

  1. Point your mouse pointer to desired date and time.
  2. Press left mouse button and then quickly right mouse button.

This will add a new event to your calendar and redirect you directly into editing that new event’s details (without need of moving your mouse toward “More options” button and clicking it).

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Say bye, bye to website screenshot stuff. Chrome DevTools 62 are here!

If you’re using any kind of software or browser’s plugin for capturing entire website, viewport areas longer than current screen or just a small pieces of website then with new Google Chrome DevTools 62 you can say bye, bye to all of them!

You can now capture screenshot of selected node (which includes capturing entire page, as I’ll show you) directly in DevTools in Google Chrome 62.

It is said that you can also capture a screenshot of selected part of viewport, but I managed to get this working only two times per ten on less than 10% of websites. Thus, I decided to not write about it.

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Solutions for Google Chrome loosing all passwords…

…and other synced data.

If you purge your local sensitive data in one of computers (i.e. on shared PC) while you’re logged-in to your Google account then — due to some serious stupidity in Google Chrome — you will purge the same set of data from your Google account as well. Each device that syncs data with this account will, as a result, purge its local sensitive data next time it contacts Google servers.

This article presents a list of solutions you can try to apply in situations like this.

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Static map from Google with no API key required [updated]

You must be a member of Google APIs Console and obtain a valid API to embed Google Maps into your website or web application. That’s a well known fact.

Not everyone knows that this is required only, if you want to embed a fully-featured Google Maps, i.e. with ability to scroll, zoom, use markers, calculate routes etc. For embedding a static image of Google Maps showing requested location you don’t need API and required Javascript code is nearly a one-liner.

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Google AdWords ads and Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign

Google AdWords ads uses two URLs: the one, to which ad points to, and the one displayed in ad. These two URLs must follow very strict rules (discussed below) or your ad will be rejected from displaying. Currently Indiegogo uses indiegogo.com domain as main campaigns’ URL and igg.me site to make long URLs short.

For the reasons discussed below, if any Indiegogo campaign’s name is longer than twelve characters, then it’s URL in invalid for Google AdWords and such campaign can’t be marketed using world’s biggest ad network!

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Google Drive for Windows does not sync anything

I had a problem on my Windows 7 x64, that Google Drive for PC was was not syncing anything, when these two factors occurred:

  • a default setting of Automatically detect proxy settings was checked,
  • local Google Drive folder was set in root of a disk (i.e. D:).

Changing Automatically detect proxy settings to Direct connection and moving local Google Drive folder to C:\Google Drive solved problem and files started to sync immediately.

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Chrome keeps crashing, even on Google pages, like Calendar or Gmail

Nowaday browsers has become very large and complex pieces of software, so believe it or not, there could be theoretically thousands of reasons, why your Google Chrome keeps crashing. Here you’ll find some tips and solutions, on what you can try to do, before you start screaming and bloating forums, saying that Chrome sucks and Firefox is the best.

I have filtered all the “good ideas”, that says, you should drop Chrome in favor of this or that browser, that you should go to the mass and pray or that you should buy a gun and shot yourself or your computer. Here you’ll find only serious idea, on what you may try to check or do, to get your Chrome back working.

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Google Loader and ClientLocation object for IP-based geolocation

Google Loader is a convinient way of loading other libraries and APIs.

And, if you know, where to look for you can even find nice examples of now undocumented ClientLocation object, which can give you location of your visitor — less accurate than GPS (navigator.geolocation object), but based on IP address and therefore not requiring user agreement on using this feature.

Problems installing Google Earth client or plugin

Sometimes any attempt to install Google Earth standalone program or a plugin for your favorite browser ends up with error message: Error during execution of GoogleEarth.exe. Cannot find specified file. If you’re installing a plugin, directly from your browser, you can see an additional message saying that installation failed with error number 9. I don’t know, what exactly causes this to happen, but found an easy workaround for this.

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Sending app written in Yii through Gmail

Just a small notice, if you’re ever going to send a Yii application through Gmail. Make sure, that you browse archive, that you’re about to send, and delete all *.bat files from framework folder. If you miss that, Gmail will refuse to send email with such attachment, due to “executable file inside”.

Pity is, that this error pops up after attachment is uploaded to Gmail. An archive containing full framework code can take 10 MB or more and can waste some time to attache it to Gmail.

Running Google Chrome in app mode [updated!]

If you have a web application, you can run it on any computer equipped with Google Chrome, in so called “app mode”. Chrome will display your page in a regular way, but will limit its own user interface to absolute minimum. If you’re web application has user interface somehow similar to Windows, you can even pretend, that this is not a web browser showing web page, but a regular Windows-based application.

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