Export all your Google Docs Files with One Click

See how easy it is to export all your Google Docs files as a zip file in a single click using the Google Takeout service.

Do you want to put all your Google Docs files on a USB drive before you take that road trip? The Google Docs website does offer an easy option to help you download all your documents in one zip file but there’s another simpler alterative that you may want to give a try– it’s called Google Takeout.

Once you have logged in to Google Takeout with your Google Account, select the Google Docs service and hit the “Create Archive” button. It will create a zip file with all your Google Docs files and you can either keep the browser window open while the archive is being readied or download that file later from the Google Takeout website.

Google Takeout will export your Google Documents in standard Office file formats by default – Excel for spreadsheets or PowerPoint for Presentations – but you also have an option to export files in either PDF or OpenOffice formats.

Google Takeout is part of dataliberation.org, a Google project that wants to make it easy for you to import and export data out of various Google products. The same tool may also be used to export your Picasa photos and Contacts data out of Google Servers though, surprisingly, it doesn’t offer Gmail export yet.

Coming back to Google Docs, here’s a quick video that shows how easy it is to export your Google Docs files using Google Takeout.

Upload Office Files to Google Docs From The Right Click MenuUse Google Docs To Compare Two Text Files OnlineConvert Web Files to PDF with Google Docs ViewerZoho Will Help Backup All Your Google Docs Documents LocallyHow Guest Can Upload Files to Your Google DocsAmit Agarwal is a personal technology columnist at WSJ India, author and founder of Digital Inspiration, a widely-read tech and how-to blog. Send him an email at amit@labnol.org.

View the original article here

How To Use Google Analytics Goals And Funnels

How to Use Google Analytics Goals & Funnels

Every website has a main objective. To obtain the objective you set goals.

Those goals are broken into steps that have to be taken in order to reach the goal which gets you one step closer to fulfilling your objective.The process of going through each step is your funnel.

Goals allow you to see the conversion rate and monetary value of your traffic.

Funnels allow you to monitor how frequently your site visitors start the conversion process, complete it, abandon it and at what point they abandon so you can work on ways to improve your return on investment (ROI).

Some examples of goals might be tracking how many people completed your sales process and reached the thank you/download page.

It might be monitoring what percentage buyers take you up on your upsell offer and where in the process the rest abandon the offer.

For this demonstration, we will be using Google Analytics goals to measure how well our about page works at sending visitors to our services page.

You will need:

1. To have your goals (up to 20) and funnel figured
2. To know the URLs for each page in your funnel (up to 10)
3. To know the value of your goal (optional) – you’ll find an explanation further down.
4. An existing Google Analytics account with the tracking code installed on your website.

Step 1: Choose Your Profile & Navigate to Goals Setup Area

Log into your account and from the View Reports dropdown, select the site in which you want to set up your goals.

Select Goals from the left sidebar.

In the Goals Overview section, click the Set up Goals & Funnels link at the bottom.

Step 2: Set Up Goal(s)

In the goals section, you have the option to add up to four sets of conversion goals. You can then add up to 5 goals per “set”. Click Add Goal next to Goals (set 1) to get started.

You’ll have several places to fill in to get your goal set up. Let’s quickly go through each item…

Goal Name: Name your goal something you’ll quickly recognize

Active Goal: Make sure your goal is turned “On” so it will track. Turning it “Off” will stop the tracking but not delete the goal.

Goal Position: This allows you to control the order in which a goal appears in your report. It also lets you move a goal from one set to another without having to set up a completely new goal.

If this is the first goal you’re setting up, from the drop-down menu, select “Set 1, Goal 1”.

Goal Type: There are three types of goals; URL Destination, Time on Site and Pages/Views.

Once you select the goal type you want to set up, a “goals details” box will open, allowing you to enter more details about your goal.

Match Type: You have three options for how you want to match your goal…

• Exact Match – An exact match of every character in your URL – without exception According to Google, you’d use this when your URLs are easy to read and do not vary.

• Head Match - This matches the identical part of the URL string you specify. So you can specify only part of the URL and it will only match that part.

Google suggests you use this option if your website has dynamically generated content, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.

• Regular Expression Match – With this option you can create wildcard matching. This could be useful when you’re tracking multiple items from within a folder such as download links.

For example, if you had multiple downloadable products in a folder called “downloads” that was housed in a folder called “members” you would enter /members/downloads/ in the regular expression field and it would track ALL of the files within that folder.

Case Sensitive: Are the URLs you entered above case sensitive? If so check this.

Goal Value: If your goal completion has a dollar value, enter it here.

Example: If your product sells for $100 and you know that 20% of the people who visit the page will buy, you could assign a $20 value to your goal.

If you’re going to add a Goal Funnel, click the plus sign. If you’re not, click Save Goal.

Step 3: Set up Funnel

We chose to do a URL Destination goal so here we will enter the URL to the first page of our conversion funnel.

This page should be a common page that all users working their way through your goal will land on – typically not your product page

Name the step so you can easily recognize it in the reports.

If this step is required to complete the conversion process, check the box.

Important! If you select this, any users reaching your goal page without going through this page will not be counted as conversions.

Repeat the process to set up the remaining steps in your funnel & click save when finished.

We only have one page for our funnel and one goal so we’re finished.

Once your finished setting up your goals and funnels, it’s time to wait. How long you wait depends on how busy your site is and how long you want to track everything.

Step 4: Checking Stats

When you’re ready to check your stats, log into your account, select the appropriate profile and then click Goals as you did in Step 1.

The first page you see will be your Goals Overview page. We set our goal & funnel up on March 28th so as you can see, there are no stats prior to that time.

From the above page, you can get many views of your stats.

Dates: In the upper right corner you’ll see the date span. You can select the drop-down arrow to change your date range. We changed ours to March 27th so we had a better view of just the dates being tracked.

You can also check stats by hours, days, weeks and months by clicking the icons directly below the date as shown below in the green box.

Goal Conversion Rate: Clicking the Goal Conversion Rate tab will allow you to change the view of your graph. You can view one at a time, compare two or compare one site to another (providing you have more than one site set up).

Advanced Segments: Clicking the “All Visits” above the date will allow you to choose what segments you want to view. You can also create new segments customized specifically for you.

Goal Verification: Clicking Goal Verification in the sidebar will bring up your main stats and show you the page URLs being tracked along with their individual stats.

Reverse Goals Path: Clicking Reverse Goals Path in the sidebar you’ll be able to see where your traffic came from and where they went to, to arrive at that destination.

Goal Funnel Visualization: Clicking Funnel Visualization in the sidebar will give you a visual look at your pages. Ours is not reading correctly because we only have on page in our funnel. You must have more than one in order for it to show correctly.

 

How To Set Up Your Google+ Account

Once you’re signed up on Google+, how do you actually setup your account?

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to add information to your profile, how to choose who can see what, how to set your notification preferences and how to link up other social networks to your Google+ account.

Step 1: Accessing Your Settings

To get to your settings page, click on the “Settings” dropdown button in the top right.

Click on “Google+ Settings.”

Step 2: Add a Phone Number

Adding a phone number allows Google to send you a text whenever you get a notification. To add a phone number, type in your mobile number, then click “Send Verification Code.”

You’ll need to get the code from your phone and enter it into Google+ before you can receive notifications.

Step 3: Choosing Your Notifications

When do you want to receive an email or text from Google+? Use the checkboxes to select when you do and don’t want to get notifications.

Step 4: Set Your Image Preferences

There are two main settings you can set with images.

The first is whether or not you want geographical location information to be tagged onto your photos.

Most modern cameras, including the iPhone and Android cameras now tag geographical information onto photos.

If you check the “Show photo geo location information” box, Google+ will automatically add the geo location tag to your photos.

Your other choice is who gets to automatically have their photos approved. Approved photos show up on your profile.

Use the blue drop-down box and the “Add more people” button to choose who can post photos of you and have them approved automatically.

Step 5: Access the Profile Edit Page

To edit your profile, click on “Profile and privacy.”

Then click on your profile.

Click on “Edit Profile.”

Step 6: Editing Your Personal Information

Fill out your introduction, things you’re proud of, occupation, employment, education and places lived information.

Then fill out your contact information, relationship status, gender and alternate names.

Step 7: Safeguarding Your Personal Information

Google+ makes it very easy to choose who can see what personal information. When you click on a field to enter your information, below it is a privacy setting button.

Just click on the button to choose exactly who can see the information you type in.

Step 8: Connect Other Social Networks

If you want to link other social networks to your Google+ profile, start by going back to the settings page and clicking “Connected accounts.”

You’ll immediately see a list of accounts that Google+ thinks belongs to you, based on Google+ searching the various social networks.

If you see any accounts that do indeed belong to you, just click the “Yes this is my” button to link the account.

If you need to add the account manually, just click “Connect an account” then select the specific type of account you want to add.

Then enter your username on that site or a direct link to your profile on that site.

Click “Add” and the account will be linked to Google+.

Congratulations! You’ve just setup your Google+ account. You’ve learned how to add a phone number, how to set notifications, how to setup your profile, how to adjust your privacy settings and how to link other social networks.

How To Set Up Google Adsense In Your Website

Google AdSense

By becoming a publisher on Google AdSense, you make your website available to the largest pool of advertisers on the planet.

Google will gather data on your website and contextually display advertisements from a pool of thousands of possible advertisers.

To sign up for Google AdSense, follow these steps.

Step 1: Preparing to Register

In order to sign up for Google AdSense, you first need to have a website. The website should be well designed and have plenty of original content.

You only need to sign up once for AdSense. Once you have an AdSense account, you can use it for any and all websites you own.

However, in order to actually get an AdSense account, you need to have one website for Google to look at and approve.

Use your best website for the signup process. In a way, this is like putting your best foot forward.

Show Google that your websites are of high quality and that their publisher network will be better off with your website there.

You should also read over all the AdSense policies and terms.

Webmasters who unwittingly violate the terms risk getting their accounts suspended.

It only takes about 20 minutes to read over all the rules; well worth the time investment to reduce the risk of accidental suspension.

Start the application process at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/

Step 2: Specify Website URL

Specify the website that you want Google to review. Specify also the primary language of the website. Check the two boxes that say you won’t incentivize clicks and won’t place ads on pornographic websites.

Step 3: Add Contact Information

Add your contact information. Make sure your name and billing address are 100% correct, as that’s the name and address the checks will be written to.

The account type will tell Google whether to write the checks out to a company name or to a personal name.

Step 4: Agree to Terms and Submit

Agree to the terms and conditions and click submit to submit your site to Google for review.

Then you wait. If Google decides that your website is of sufficient quality to be on their network, you’ll soon have a working AdSense account. If not, you’ll receive notice that your site was denied.

Note that even when you do get your AdSense account, you won’t be paid out until you reach your first $100.

When you reach your first $100, that’s when the “real” approval process happens. Every site that reaches the $100 mark is again reviewed by a real human.

If Google doesn’t find your traffic acceptable at the $100 mark, your account will be disabled and the $100 won’t be paid out.

On the other hand, if you get paid your first $100, that means you’ve passed all of Google’s hurdles and now have a fully fledged AdSense account.

That said, once you have your initial AdSense account, how do you actually use it? Here’s how.

Setting Up Ads in Google AdSense

Step 1 – Click My Ads, New Ad Unit

To start the ad creation process, go to the “My ads” tab and click “New ad unit.”

 A drop down box for creating your new ad will appear.

Step 2 – Name, Size and Ad Type

Name your ad. Select its size and choose whether you want text only or images and rich media as well.

Step 3 – Stylize Your Ad

Choose the display options for your ad. This includes the color, background, border and the fonts.

In general, the more you can make your AdSense ad unit look like your page, the higher your click through rates and the higher your earnings.

Step 4 – Channels and Tracking

Choose the channels you want to associate with this ad. Channels are properties that you can “tag” on to ad units. Later on, you can search by channels and see how each channel and groups of channels performed.

For example, if you tagged all your red ads with the channel “Red”, you could later sort for all the red channels and see how they all performed individually and as a group.

Select the channels you want to tag your ads with here. If you haven’t created any channels, just click “Create new custom channel” to create a channel on the spot.

Step 5 – Submit and Get Code

Click submit and get code to save all your changes and generate the HTML code to place the ad unit on your site.

Copy and paste this code to your site. Give it 10-20 minutes before expecting the ad to appear.

That’s all there is to it! You’ve now registered for AdSense and created your first AdSense ad.

Place up to 3 ad units on any given page to receive the maximum return per visitor.

Google Finally Allows Teens (13+) Into Google+ [News]

Approximately 6 months ago, Google+ splashed into our lives with a much-publicized launch. Everyone wanted an invite, and as the days went by, most everybody got one. But there was one thing that marred this launch for a large group of people: Google+’s age restriction.
When Google+ first launched, no one under 18 was allowed in. As if it were some adult-only secret society, Google decided to forego this huge chunk of Google+ users, which left them no choice but to remain on Facebook and other competitors, unable to even check Google+ out (unless they wanted to enough).
Well, good news. Google has decided to change its age policy, and will now allow anyone over 13 to join Google+. This age restriction is the same as Facebook’s, and will allow many teens who currently use Facebook, to move over to the Google side and give Google+ a try. According to Google’s Bradley Horowitz, not only will teens be allowed on Google+, they will now be able to enjoy a sharing experience they currently don’t get from competitors.

While in real life, teens share information with relevant friends only, on Facebook and such there is sometimes the problem of “over-sharing” because there is no good way to share only with specific friends. With Google+, they will be able to share information only with classmates, friends, parents, teachers, etc., via circles.
Time will tell if all those 13-and-up users will herd over to Google+, or if these 6 months were enough to cool them off and dampen their curiosity about Google+. What would you do?
Source: +Bradley Horowitz
Tagged: Google • google plus

How To Use Google Sparks

Sparks is like a personal newspaper that goes out to find just the news stories and websites that most interest you and bring it back to you.
You can also think of it as RSS feeds, just much simpler.
Here’s how it works: You tell Google what you’re interested in.
Google will regularly go out on the internet and find articles, websites, news stories and blog posts related to what you’re interested in.
Anytime you want to check in on your sparks, Google will show you a list of the most recent topics they’ve found. It makes it very easy to stay on top of various topics.
Here’s how to use Google Sparks.
Step 1: Click Sparks
Click “Sparks” on the left sidebar to access the Sparks page.

Step 2: Featured Sparks
By default Google’s selected a few sparks to feature. Click on one of these if you’re interested. If not, skip to Step 3.

Step 3: Search for Sparks
Enter a keyword, phrase or description of what you’re interested in.

Step 4: Browse Listings and Add Interests
Take a look at some of the articles that pop up when you do a search. If you like what you see and would like to continue to get updates on that topic, then click “Add interest.”

Rinse and repeat this process until you have a handful of sparks that you’re interested in following.
Step 5: Accessing Your Sparks Feed
Click on a specific spark in your left sidebar to see what’s new in that spark.

The spark’s news feed will then be displayed.

Step 6: Giving Plus Ones
If you like a specific article, click the “+1” button in the lower left. This will be displayed on your profile, so your friends know what you liked.
It’ll also help the content that you liked get ranked higher, as content with more +1’s will generally get ranked higher.

After clicking +1, you’ll see this:

Step 7: Sharing Content from a Spark
If you find something in a spark that you liked, why not share it with your friends? Start by clicking “Share.”

Enter a post or comment along with the share.

Click “Add circles or people to share with…”

Then choose which circle(s) you want to share the post with.

That’s how to use sparks! We’ve covered how to access sparks, how to find sparks, how to add sparks, how to view the spark’s feeds, how to give +1’s and how to share content from a spark.

How To Use Google Circles

Circles is one of the things that really sets Google+ apart from other social networks.

In Facebook for example, your friends are your friends – It doesn’t matter if that person’s the janitor you sometimes talk to or your best friend from childhood.

In Google+, you can create circles and put different people in different circles. You can then choose to share things only to certain people and not to others.

For example, you might share only professional updates with your work contacts, while sharing photos of a night out with your friend circle.

The people in your circles won’t know what circles you put them in. It gives you a whole lot of control over your data, without any potentially embarrassing situations.

Here’s how to use Google+’s circles feature.

Step 1: Click Circles

To access your circles settings, click on “Circles” in the top navigation boxes.

You’ll see a screen of the people who are already in your circles.

Step 2: See Potential Friends

Click on “People who’ve added you” to see who added you to their circles. You can think of these are your “friend request

Step 3: Drag and Drop Into Circles

To add someone to a circle, just drag and drop them into the circles along the bottom.

Step 4: Create a New Circle

To create a new circle, click or drag and drop into the “new circle” circle.

The create circle box will pop up. Choose a name for your new circle, then either add people to the circle or create an empty circle.

Step 5: Adding by Search

If you want to add someone who hasn’t already added you, do a search for them along the top bar.

Click on the name to go to their profile page. Then click “Add to circles” to add them to a circle.

Step 6: Circle Specific Stream

Want to only see photos and updates from your friends? Or want to see what your family is up to?

Google+ makes it easy to see only updates from the people you want to see updates from.

On the left hand side of your home screen, just click one of the circles whose streams you want to see. Google+ will update and only display updates from people in those circles.

Step 7: Circle-Specific Posts

To post an update to only certain circles, click on the status update bar and start writing a post. A box with who can view your post will pop up along the bottom.

To remove a circle, click the small “x” in the top right corner. To add a circle that can see your post, click “Add more people.”

You now learned how to see who’s in your circle, who’s added you to their circles, how to add people to your own circles, how to create a new circle, how to add people who didn’t add you to a circle using search, how to sort your stream by circles and how to post to only specific circles.

Google+’s circles features really makes it easy to use social networking without “leaking” updates you don’t leaked to the wrong people.

It allows you to connect with the different people in your life in different ways.

Powered by Article Dashboard circleadd to circleadd to circlescreate circle box

Perry Marshall’s Video on Google Adwords

Perry Marshall is the King of Adwords and if you watch this video, you will understand why. If you are into Pay Per Click Marketing or thinking about ‘dabbling’ in Adwords, this is a MUST WATCH video for you.

Even though there have been major changes in Google Adwords since this presentation was made, the basics of Pay Per Click Marketing still hold true.

a. Your ad should be relevant to the keyword searched on Google.

b. Your landing page should be consistent with your ad message and provide good user experience.

So basically you are expected to deliver what you promise in your ad.

If you are seriously interested in learning Adwords right, then you should buy Perry’s ‘Definitive Guide to Adwords’ This book is priceless and no matter which level of marketer you consider yourself to be in Adwords, you will invariably learn something that you did not know before.

Create Separate Profiles in Google Chrome for Family Members

Google Chrome 16 lets you create multiple user accounts but if you want to keep your web history and passwords hidden from other Chrome users, you need to create a separate profile as explained in the following tutorial.

If you have a common computer at home that you share with other family members, how do you ensure that your web browsing history in Google Chrome stays private and others don’t get to know what you search or which sites you visited from that computer?

Google Chrome does include support for user profiles now. You can create separate profiles for family members and then their bookmarks, passwords, themes and other Chrome settings won’t be visible to anyone else. For instance, if you install the ESPN app inside your Chrome user profile, that app won’t be available to mom when she uses Chrome with her own user profile.

There’s however one big limitation with user profiles in Google Chrome. It won’t hide your web history from other users even if you have signed out of your Google Account. Anyone can switch to your user profile in Chrome (see screenshot above) and they’ll have instant access to your complete web browsing and search history with Ctrl + H and even from the browser’s address bar.

If someone inadvertently switches to your user profile in Google Chrome, it can become a slightly embarrassing situation for either of you. You can however create separate user profiles, and not just users, in Google Chrome and then your browser history, bookmarks, search terms, etc. won’t be visible to anyone else in the family. Read on.

Unlike Firefox that ships with a Profile Manager, you can only manually create user profiles in Google Chrome. Here's how:

Step 1: Launch Google Chrome and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Del to clear your entire web browsing history.

Step 2: Open Windows Explorer and switch to Chrome's User Data folder available at:

For Windows 7 and Windows Vista C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data For Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

Step 3: While inside Windows Explorer, select the subfolder called "default" and make a copy of that folder inside the same "User Data" folder of Chrome. Rename that new folder copy to, say, Your_Name as shown in the screenshot.

Step 4: We will now reset this new "Your_Name" profile in Chrome to the factory defaults. Open "Command Prompt", use the “cd” command to switch to the Chrome Application folder (where Chrome is installed) and run the following command:

chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\Your_Name" -first-run

Step 5: Your new user profile in Chrome is ready for use. To run Google Chrome using this profile instead of the default profile, let’s create a shortcut. Right click anywhere on the desktop, choose New -> Shortcut and type the following in the location box:

For Windows 7 and Vista:C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\Your_Name"For Windows XP:C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\Your_Name"

Give this shortcut a “hard to guess” name, change the shortcut icon to, say, Microsoft Word and you're done. Now your web history, bookmarks, cookies, and search terms won’t be visible to anyone else in the family and there’s no need to switch to incognito browsing mode ever.

Save Missed Calls to your Google Tasks with Any.do [Android]

Any.do is my favorite task manager for mobile. It is currently available for Android phones only but they are working on an iPhone app and also a web-based version that should make it available to all the other mobile platforms.

Any.do has a beautiful UI with large fonts and there’s voice input so you can add new tasks by speaking instead of typing on that small keyboard. My favorite feature though is the app's integration with Google Tasks. Any.do can sync your task list with Gmail both ways so you always have access to your tasks.

  

The new version of Any.do’s Android app adds another interesting feature.

If there’s a missed call on your mobile phone and you are too busy to return the call at that time, you can quickly add it to your pending task list with a simple click. Thus, you would remember to call that person and since Any.do synchronizes with Google Tasks, all your missed call notifications would also be available inside Gmail.

Google+ Now Up to 62 Million Users, Adding 625,000 a Day [REPORT]

Paul Allen, a Google+ watcher whose estimates about the social network’s growth have proved accurate in the past, claims that the site now has 62 million users and is adding 625,000 new users per day.

“It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouthmor a combination of all these factors,” Allen wrote on his G+ profile page Tuesday, “but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks.”

Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, takes an unusual approach to come by his estimates: He and his staff run hundreds of queries on surnames they’ve been tracking since July and then extrapolate the size of the network.

At this rate, Allen writes, G+ will reach 100 million users by Feb. 25, 2012 and 200 million by Aug. 3. By this time next year, G+ will have close to 300 million users.

Allen, however, doesn’t address how many of those 62 million are active users. Experian Hitwise, however, found that those users are on the rise as well, though they represent a fraction of G+’s base. Hitwise found that total visits to G+ hit 9.4 million for the week ending Dec. 17, the most recent full week it tracked. That was a nice jump over the 7.2 million visits G+ experienced in the comparable week in November, but below the 15 million visits to G+ for the week ending Sept. 24, when Google opened the previously invitation-only site to the public.

Google’s last official acknowledgement of G+’s membership came during a conference call with analysts, when CEO Larry Page pegged the figure at 40 million.

Google Activates 3.7 Million Android Devices on Christmas Weekend [VIDEO]

As previously noted, this Christmas was a big one for the smartphone category.

While Flurry Analytics found that 6.8 million Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas Day, though, the company declined to outline how much share each platform got. But now Google svp Andy Rubin has shed a little bit more light on the issue. Rubin on Wednesday tweeted that 3.7 million Android devices were activated on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25.

That’s a big jump over the 700,000 activations per day for Android that he had previously announced.

Did you get an Android device for the holidays? Let us know in the comments.

Publish your Blog as a Magazine with Google Currents

Google’s widely anticipated alternative to Flipboard is finally here. It’s called Google Currents and the next screenshot should you give an idea of what Currents is all about.

Google Currents is a Flipboard like app that lets you read blogs, news websites and other online publications in a magazine format on your mobile phone and tablet devices. The app is available for both Android and iOS platforms.

One big advantage with Google Currents is that you can read your subscriptions offline and it will even download the embedded images for offline access.

You can get Google Currents now from the Android Market and the iTunes Store. This is currently available only for US users but there’s at least an easy workaround for iPhone /iPad users.

As a web publisher, you can package one or more RSS feeds, image slideshows, tweets, videos, social network updates and any other HTML content into an “edition” and publish it to Google Currents which others can then subscribe to on their tablet or mobile phone.

[*] Digital Inspiration is also available on Google Currents.

There’s no programming required as Google Currents provides an web editor (screenshot) for publishers to create these bundles. You can also pull content from Google Docs and ePUB ebooks into Currents. The default layouts are beautiful but advanced users may apply their own CSS styles to further customize the appearance of their magazine.

Google Currents can also be used as a RSS reader to follow feeds that are not available as standalone editions. Simply subscribe to any RSS feed inside Google Reader and then pull it directly into Google Currents using Add More –> Library –> Google Reader. The plain feed will automatically be served in a magazine layout similar to other editions.

There are quite a few reading apps – like Flipboard, Yahoo LiveStand, Pulse, Zite and AOL Editions - that let you publish (and consume) online content in a magazine format. However, Google Currents is probably the only app that will share advertising revenue with publishers which is obviously a big incentive.

When Amazon introduced blog publishing for Kindle, there was a concern that people would publish someone else’s RSS feed as their own and monetize it through the Kindle Store. That is however unlikely to happen with Google Currents as it only lets you include content from domains that you have verified through Google Webmaster Tools.

Create Separate Profiles in Google Chrome for Family Members

Google Chrome 16 lets you create multiple user accounts but if you want to keep your web history and passwords hidden from other Chrome users, you need to create a separate profile as explained in the following tutorial.

If you have a common computer at home that you share with other family members, how do you ensure that your web browsing history in Google Chrome stays private and others don’t get to know what you search or which sites you visited from that computer?

Google Chrome does include support for user profiles now. You can create separate profiles for family members and then their bookmarks, passwords, themes and other Chrome settings won’t be visible to anyone else. For instance, if you install the ESPN app inside your Chrome user profile, that app won’t be available to mom when she uses Chrome with her own user profile.

There’s however one big limitation with user profiles in Google Chrome. It won’t hide your web history from other users even if you have signed out of your Google Account. Anyone can switch to your user profile in Chrome (see screenshot above) and they’ll have instant access to your complete web browsing and search history with Ctrl + H and even from the browser’s address bar.

If someone inadvertently switches to your user profile in Google Chrome, it can become a slightly embarrassing situation for either of you. You can however create separate user profiles, and not just users, in Google Chrome and then your browser history, bookmarks, search terms, etc. won’t be visible to anyone else in the family. Read on.

Unlike Firefox that ships with a Profile Manager, you can only manually create user profiles in Google Chrome. Here's how:

Step 1: Launch Google Chrome and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Del to clear your entire web browsing history.

Step 2: Open Windows Explorer and switch to Chrome's User Data folder available at:

For Windows 7 and Windows Vista C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data For Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

Step 3: While inside Windows Explorer, select the subfolder called "default" and make a copy of that folder inside the same "User Data" folder of Chrome. Rename that new folder copy to, say, Your_Name as shown in the screenshot.

Step 4: We will now reset this new "Your_Name" profile in Chrome to the factory defaults. Open "Command Prompt", use the “cd” command to switch to the Chrome Application folder (where Chrome is installed) and run the following command:

chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\Your_Name" -first-run

Step 5: Your new user profile in Chrome is ready for use. To run Google Chrome using this profile instead of the default profile, let’s create a shortcut. Right click anywhere on the desktop, choose New -> Shortcut and type the following in the location box:

For Windows 7 and Vista:C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\Your_Name"For Windows XP:C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\Your_Name"

Give this shortcut a “hard to guess” name, change the shortcut icon to, say, Microsoft Word and you're done. Now your web history, bookmarks, cookies, and search terms won’t be visible to anyone else in the family and there’s no need to switch to incognito browsing mode ever.