Tip of the Day

Yes.  Ask Leo tells you why and how.

You've finally decided to move all your email online to Google's web-based service, Gmail. Great! But what about messages still going to your old email address(es)? You don't have to notify all your contacts that your email address has changed—again. Gmail is not only an email host, it's an email client, which can fetch mail from any number of external services and consolidate it all right there in your Gmail inbox. Here's how to move your email to Gmail without missing a single message from an existing account.

Consolidate Multiple Email Addresses with Gmail

Search Speedcine to Watch Movies for Free

Want to watch movies for free? Speedcine indexes movies and where they can be watched for free—and legally—across the web.

Speedcine indexes feature length movies—by their definition at least 60 minutes long and not television shows—they currently have 13,000 movies in their database. When you search for a movie, you're provided with multiple ways to watch the movie.

The primary link is to the free streaming source—movies come from providers like Hulu, Jaman, and Crackle, all of which are authorized to stream the movies. Other links, when available, point to services like iTunes, Amazon VOD, Netflix (Watch Instantly), and so on. Part of Speedcine's revenue stream is generated by referrals to these services, although if you already have a Netflix account, for example, you can just sign in and add the movie to your queue.

Speedcine is a free service and requires no login.

Speedcine [via MakeUseOf]

www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html

Google Labs -- the public playground where Google lets users try out new products or services that aren't yet ready for prime time -- is my secret weapon for learning about cool new stuff. My favorite new discovery in Google Labs is Google Squared. It's a demonstration of a search engine trying to provide answers instead of just sites, and at a higher level than the simple "smart answers" you see when you search for "time in Rome" or "area code 909". Rather, Google analyzes the retrieved pages, identifies common elements, and creates a table with the information it has compiled.

This is a fascinating tool that helps you compile facts into tables that Google builds on the fly. Hard to describe, easier to show. Go to Google.com/squared and type in a query that will retrieve a number of similar things -- organic farms in Colorado, for example, or women CEOs... even superhero powers.

Google Squared generates a table of facts extracted from its index, with the items you are searching for as the left-most column, along with columns for whatever related characteristics are relevant for the topic. For organic farms in Colorado, for example, the table in the search results has columns for the name of the company, an image from the farm's web site, a snippet of description about the farm, and columns for telephone number, location and "season." Note that some of these columns may have few entries in them, depending on what information Google analyzed. For women CEOs, the table includes the CEO's name, a photo, a snippet that indicates what her position is, her date of birth, and her nationality. For superhero powers, you will find the superhero's name, a photo, a far-too-brief description of said superhero, the hero's first appearance (in print, that is), publisher and even the hero's "abilities".

Interestingly, you can insert your own items in a Google Squared table, and either let Google populate the rest of the row or type in whatever content you want in that row. I added Catwoman to my superheroes table and Google filled in the new row with her photo and description; I could provide the rest of the info. For some tables, Google even suggests additional columns. For my superheroes table, I could add columns for Aliases, Alter Ego, Profession (the Joker is a lawyer, of course), and so on. You can add your own columns, as well.

You can also delete a row or column that isn't relevant to your search. If you log in to your Google account, you can save your customized tables for later use. And you can export the table into Excel (the images are exported as URLs).

Google Squared is never going to compete with a real human's analysis of a collection of facts, but it can be a great way to start brainstorming, as a quick way to organize the results of your search, and as a starting point for a nicely-presented deliverable for your client.

Find the User Manual for Almost Any Gadget at Manuals Online

You've had your power drill, blender, or media keyboard for a couple of months now--and all of a sudden, it's behaving strangely. The issue you're having might be addressed in the troubleshooting section of the product's manual, and you want to to take a look before diving into whatever information a Web search may provide. Sadly, you can't find the manual that came in the box.

With Manuals Online, you can search for the product, find a downloadable PDF of the manual you need, and store it digitally so you never have to look for it again. If you still can't find the answer, you can engage the community at Manuals Online for help with your device as well.