Jonathan Ong's Blog

My OCD kicks in when I see someone’s Gmail account with thousands of unsorted e-mails. Gmail is the most efficient mail client ever designed by man kind, yet people don’t know how to use it efficiently. It saves a lot of time if you spend a little time setting up Gmail. I literally spend less than 10 minutes a day checking and replying to my e-mail not because I don’t receive any, but because I set my Gmail so that I know which ones to automatically discard and which ones are important.

1. Archive EVERYTHING and NEVER delete. You have gigabytes of storage on your account. E-mails are ridiculously tiny. You should never delete anything unless you are close to this maximum limit which is impossible unless you’re extremely popular or you’re sharing files. Your inbox should always be empty by archiving all the e-mails you’re done reading or don’t care to read. Your inbox should only have e-mails you have not processed yourself.
2. Star your important e-mails, but still archive them. This is useful since your inbox won’t be cluttered and you can easily find these e-mails by typing “is:starred” in the search field.
3. Setup labels. This is Gmail’s version of folders except e-mails can have more than one label. There are only two folders in Gmail: inbox and archive. This is how my left menu looks like with all my labels. Notice that you can rearrange your menu on your left.
4. Setup filters. You can create specific criteria so that Gmail will label them correctly. The criteria can be: From (sender), To (recipient), Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have words, and Has attachment. Most of my filters are either from sender (for example @berkeley.edu or specific people. I only wish you can filter groups of people…) and subject (for example e-mails with a [MATH228A] tag). This is why I wish grouped e-mails have tags in the subject line (for example [HOC] in the header). After you create the filter, you can choose what you want Gmail to do with e-mails that match the filter. For e-mails you don’t care for, Skip the Inbox and archive it. Otherwise, I would apply a label. The best part is that you can retroactively apply the filter to the e-mails you already have . For example, I automatically archive all e-mails from “CALmessages@berkeley.edu” since, as an employee of UC Berkeley, I’m unable to unsubscribe from the mailing list and, to me, it’s equivalent to spam.
5. Organize your contacts. Gmail makes it ridiculously easy. Gmail remembers everyone you’ve ever contacted and clicking contacts allows you to choose who to put on your contact list. The best part is that if you take some time to make everyone’s name accurate, there’s a simple “Find & merge duplicate” function that saves so much time and effort.
6. Setup Microsoft Exchange with your smartphones, e-mail clients, address books, and calendars. I have another blog post that covers this for smart phones. This will automatically sync all your e-mails, calendar, and address books with your Gmail account and, for iPhone users, push notifications. You will never worry about losing any data ever again unless Gmail somehow fails.
7. Create unique Gmail addresses simply by adding a + after your account name. For example, I would register for Reddit under the account name jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. It will still go to my jongleberry@gmail.com e-mail address, but I would be able to filter it by to: jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. This is helpful if you’re getting a lot of spam as you would know where they are coming from.
8. Similarly, you can create unique e-mail addresses by adding periods in your e-mail address. For example, jongle.berry@gmail.com is equivalent to jongleberry@gmail.com.
9. Unsubscribe from all your mailing lists. Alternatively you can filter them, but I prefer just to be unsubscribed. You can easily do this by searching “unsubscribe” and unsubscribing from every single spam mail you get.
10. Find useful gadgets from Google Labs. These can be found and installed on the settings page in Gmail. My favorites are Hide Counts and Multiple Inboxes. Hide Counts simply streamlines your left menu so that there’s less numbers everywhere. I’ll know that there’s unread e-mail by that label being bolded. Multiple Inboxes is especially useful since I star my important e-mails. Every time I log into Gmail, I’ll see both my inbox and my starred e-mails. There are countless possible gadgets that you can install to make Gmail more efficient for you, but these two suffice for me.
11. When writing e-mails, press the “pop out” button so that you’ll compose the e-mail in a new window. This is helpful when you’re replying to a long e-mail and you want to read what the e-mail says while you write.
12. You can easily manage multiple e-mail accounts. I have all my e-mails forwarded from my Berkeley e-mail to my Gmail. The best part is that I can by default send either from my Gmail address or Berkeley address. I have the option to choose every time I send an e-mail. Google also just added functionality that allows better management of multiple Gmail accounts, but I don’t see the point since I got two different Gmail accounts so that they’ll be separate. These options can be found in Settings -> Accounts and Import.
13. Make sure you go to Settings -> Web Clips and uncheck “Show my web clips above the inbox”. These are basically advertisements from Google and to me is spam.

These are the only tips I can think of right now. Let me know if you can think of any others.

I’ve gotten ridiculously bored with social networking as most of my friends refuse to self edit their own content and rarely post anything interesting. Instead, I’ve made it fun by trolling Facebook. Try to make the most ridiculous comments on everyone’s posts, links, pictures, anything. It might explain why the number of friends fluctuate quite a bit.

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. – Wikipedia

1. Ask obvious questions:
2. Answer rhetorical questions:
3. Take figurative language seriously:
4. Grammar Nazi:
5. Make an all-out awesome comment:
6. Ask the obvious question of, “are they hot?”:
7. Pick a victim and like everything on their page. Unfortunately this girl disabled my ability to comment or post on her wall:
8. Pick a victim and consistently insinuate sexual relations with her:
9. Reiterate the last statement except replacing the noun with the word “you” or “you’re”:

Half the Facebook events I receive are where people try to get everyone’s numbers after losing their phone and somehow people are willing to post their numbers in public. I purposely ignore these invitations as retribution. Here’s a simple guide to setting up your contacts so you never lose your numbers ever again while having the most complete address book possible with minimal effort.

1. If you don’t have one, get a GMail account.
Nothing compares to Google when it comes to integration. I do have Yahoo and Microsoft accounts, but that’s only for Flickr and Bing Shopping respectively. If you refuse to use Gmail, don’t tell me because I will lose respect for you.

2. Take an hour or two and sort your contacts in Gmail.
This isn’t too hard if you never set it up, but I imported all my Facebook contacts information back when FacebookSync was legal and I had more contacts than I ever wanted. This is important because you’ll need proper names to sync your contacts with other services. This is also easy with the suggested contacts feature. And don’t use nicknames, and separate first and last names.

3. Setup Microsoft Exchange on your smartphone and on your PC.
The crucial step: this syncs your contacts, calendars, and email on your smartphone, and syncs your address books and calendars on your PC. It works for both Apple’s Address Book and Microsoft Outlook. Thus, when you set it up, all your contacts and calendars will be synchronized, and iPhones will have push notifications!

4. Download contacts from 3rd party applications.
This includes Facebook and LinkedIn. Whatever information your friends let you see, you can easily transfer it all to your phone using their applications. The only problem with this is when your friends don’t use their real names.

5. Go to your GMail and reorganize your contacts.
Use “merge contacts” since you’ll probably have a lot of duplicate entries. Finally all your contacts will be organized, the same address book will be available to you on all your devices, and you’ll never lose your contacts again.

Even if your smartphone doesn’t have data service, you can use wifi once in a while to sync your contacts.

This is my list of my favorite websites that I actually use.  I’m not including social networking websites since those are more subjective.

Finance

Mint and PageOnce – These are both services that aggregate your financial information so it’s easier for you to see. Mint is more well written, but Pageonce has a paid app, app for iPads, includes more than just finance. The free version of Pageonce doesn’t let you refresh all your information all at once though. I use Mint more often.

Shopping

Google Shopping – Best place to find the best prices online. Bing Shopping used to be good, but they stopped their cash back program.

Ebates, Mr. Rebates, FatWallet – Sign up, go to online stores through one or all of these websites’ links and receive cash back on your purchases! There’s no risk, I’ve already received $100+ from online shopping.

RetailMeNot – There are a lot of coupon search engines online, but this is by far my favorite due to its user interface.

MapsKrieg – Looking for a place to live? MapsKrieg maps all the craigslist listings in the area.

Other

GeoIPWeather – Gives you weather information based on your location. No more typing in Zip codes!

Imgur – Free image uploads! By far the best for quick sharing. Don’t use it for portfolios and presentations.

Ninite – Automatically install a bunch of free software on  your PC! I use this every time I set up a new PC.

Grooveshark – Stream your favorite songs online for free! It isn’t like Pandora.

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe? – Checks if a website is down on your side or their side.

LetMeGoogleThatForYou – Ever annoyed when someone asks you a question online that can be answered by a quick Google search? Use lmgtfy.com and send them the resulting link that shows them how to do a Google search!

Newsmap.jp – Visual news aggregator. Let’s you quickly see which news is making headlines.

EZTV.it – Tells you what episodes are new today and when torrents on the new episodes are out.

Of course there are plenty more websites, but these are the ones I use regularly. For more websites, I recommend you look at this Reddit post.

Collapse all comments / just show parents:

javascript:(function(){$(“.child%20.comment%20.noncollapsed%20.expand”).click();})()

Upvote everything on the page (don’t use too often as you can be branded a bot):

javascript:$(“.up”).click()()

Downvote everything on the page (don’t use too often as you can be branded a bot):

javascript:$(“.down”).click()()

Show all directly linked pictures:

javascript:%20var%20x=%20$(“.content”).find(“a”).each(function(){var%20href=$(this).attr(“href”);if((!$(this).hasClass(“drowsapMorphed”))%20&&%20($(this).next(“.drowsapMorphed”).length==0)%20&&%20href%20&&%20(href.indexOf(‘imgur’)>=0%20||%20href.indexOf(‘jpeg’)>=0%20||%20href.indexOf(‘jpg’)>=0%20%20||%20href.indexOf(‘png’)>=0)){var%20ext%20=(href.indexOf(‘imgur’)>=0%20&&%20href.indexOf(‘jpg’)<0%20&&%20href.indexOf(‘png’)<0)%20?%20′.jpg’%20:”;%20var%20img%20=%20$(“<a%20class=’drowsapMorphed’%20href=’”+href+”‘%20target=’blank’%20style=’display:block’><img%20style=’display:block;max-width:780px;’%20src=’”+href+%20ext+”‘%20/></a>”);$(this).after(img);}});

Hide or show comments up to a certain depth level:

javascript:

var depth = prompt(“Choose maximum comment depth (min = 1, max = 10)”) * 1;

if (depth >= 1 && depth <= 10) {

(function toggle_children() {

$(document).find(“.comment .child .entry .collapsed .expand”).click();

$(document).find(“.comment ” + Array(depth + 1).join(“.child “) + “.entry .noncollapsed .expand”).click();

})()

}

javascript:var depth = prompt(“Choose maximum comment depth (min = 1, max = 10)”) * 1;if (depth >= 1 && depth <= 10) {(function toggle_children() {$(document).find(“.comment .child .entry .collapsed .expand”).click();$(document).find(“.comment ” + Array(depth + 1).join(“.child “) + “.entry .noncollapsed .expand”).click();})()}

Fix the Reddit search feature by using Google:

javascript:void(document.forms['search'].action=’http://www.google.com/search‘); void(document.forms['search'].onsubmit=function() { document.forms['search'].q.value=’site:www.reddit.com ‘ + document.forms['search'].q.value; });

A new and improved Javascript bookmarklet to view all images in a thread. You can also read the comments in the link to Reddit.