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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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:

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.

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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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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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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File size and message size limits when posting to Google Groups

I was aware that a limit of 25 MB per single message posted to Google Groups exists, but I wasn’t aware of any other limits and thus I was quite surprise to find out that Google Groups web interface block me from sending a message with just a two files, having 16 MB size in total.

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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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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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Searching PHP.net using Chrome omnibox

Adding a omnibox shortcut to quickly search some site or language reference isn’t a hard task and it is discussed in thousand of blogs. However, by an accident I have found something better — an ultimate solution to PHP shit-littering and cretinism.

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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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