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iCloud Email Address: One Productivity Tip You Probably Didn’t Know (Plus 3 Things About Gmail, Outlook.com, & Yahoo Mail)

@maheshoneMarch 11, 2018By

I never blogged much about iCloud Mail or Yahoo Mail as I never find it useful or interesting --- except the disposable addresses in Yahoo Mail.

A disposable address lets you create up to 500 temporary email address within Yahoo Mail. You can create a disposable address any time and delete it after use. It's a good thing if you don't want to reveal your "real" email address to anyone.

It's a feature that is really missing in Gmail or Outlook.com but both Gmail and Outlook.com support sub-addressing though it's not as useful as disposable addresses. Anyway, I didn't want to switch to Yahoo Mail only to get that feature. But a few years back I realized that an iCloud email address (@icloud.com) is also useful --- and interesting --- as it supports both sub-addressing and disposable addresses (sort of).

The Best Dictation (Voice To Text) Software Is Here (And It’s Free!)

@maheshoneFebruary 10, 2018By

maheshone

I'm a desktop kind of person who almost always prefer a computer over a phone --- unless I'm away from my desk. I have already mentioned on several blog posts that I take a lot of time to create a blog post --- from researching to writing to editing to formatting. And that's why I'm always trying to find a way to streamline my content creation process --- to make it more consistent, stress-free, and efficient. Obviously, the biggest task involved in publishing a blog post is actually the writing process itself. Once the first draft gets done, the rest happens like magic!

Don't Miss: The Fantastic Ten Tools (Free) To Skyrocket Your Productivity

Over the past several months/years, I tried several dictation or voice to text software --- including the super-popular Dragon Speech Recognition Software (but I tried it several years back) --- and nothing really worked for me. Not anymore!

Meet "Voice typing..." On Google Docs

I was an active Google Docs user until few months back and then almost stopped using it. A couple of weeks back I noticed that Google introduced "Voice typing..." to Google Docs. However, it's not supported in its iOS (on iPhone and iPad) apps, yet.

How Does Google Make Money? (Hint: It’s All About Ads)

@maheshoneFebruary 1, 2018By

maheshone

If there are three companies that are dominating the technology space, they are --- Apple, Microsoft, and Google. And you know how Apple and Microsoft makes money. But, do you know how Google makes money?

Sixty billion dollars ($60 bn). Guess what? That was the annual revenue (and it was $37 billion when I first published this blog post back in 2012) of the world's largest search engine, Google, in 2014.

But how is that really possible when they hardly have any tangible products or when they don't charge a penny for most of their products and services?

Don't Miss: Over 151 Google Products & Services You Probably Don’t Know

Well, it’s advertising, and again advertising. Google's majority revenue comes from two advertising platforms --- Google AdWords and Google AdSense. In fact, 96% of Google’s revenue is from advertising.

Recently, I came across this interesting thread on Quora.com where Oliver Emberton answered the question "If I want to become an entrepreneur, where do I start?".

Oliver answers:

Think of a company as a machine you design and build. Your 'machine' always has certain parts. It sells something to someone, and re-invests some of that to help make more sales in future. What's left over is profit for the owners.

How Much Traffic Do You Need To Make $100,000 With Google AdSense

@maheshoneJanuary 31, 2018By

maheshone

Is it really possible to make $100,000 a year from Google AdSense (or by selling ads on your website/blog)? If so, then the real question is how much traffic do you really need to make big bucks with Google AdSense?

While it’s true that we can’t predict the Google AdSense income exactly, we can optimize the ads in different ways so as to make the most out of it.

Also, you must make sure that your website category is advertising friendly because your AdSense income depends a lot upon the category of your website. You can use Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to find out the competition in your industry.

If there is enough competition (i.e. if the suggested bid by AdWords for keywords in your niche is high) then we can assume that Google will fill your ad spaces with high paying ads (see how AdSense works).

For example, if you Google search "loans" then you'll see a lot of ads so it means that if you have a blog related to personal finance then there will be enough competition for your ad space.

Now I’ve randomly added few keywords to Keyword Planner to find out its suggested bid by AdWords. Here they are:

As you can see, the competition for keywords related to “finance” is very high compared to keywords related to “food”. Of course, the suggested bid is just an estimate and the real cost-per-click varies a lot.

But still, even if it’s $5 then it means a lot. Why? It’s because the cost per click to advertise on Google is very high compared to cost per click on Google Display Network. So if an advertiser is paying $0.50/click on Google then he may be paying only $0.10/click on Google Display Network.

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Top 25 Google Chrome Extensions I Can’t Live Without

@maheshoneJanuary 2, 2018By

maheshone

First published: 2012; Last updated: January, 2014

Unlike Internet Explorer, Google Chrome is not just a web browser it’s a super productive tool. Some of the Chrome features that I like the most are Chrome Sync (as it can backup passwords, auto fill form, history, bookmarks, preferences, extensions, apps automatically on the Google servers), Multiple Users, ability to “Open link in incognito window” and much more. Also, there are tons of apps and extensions on Chrome Web Store and that makes Chrome addictive.

Read: 10 Google Chrome Tips & Tricks You Probably Don’t Know

11 Reasons Why I Love Google Photos — And You Should Too

@maheshoneApril 27, 2017By

maheshone

I hated Google+ when it was launched as a social network as it was forcing us to sign up for a Google+ account to use other Google services (like YouTube, Gmail, Picasa Web, etc.). But then I learned to love Google+ because of Google+ Photos. Google+ Photos was a revamped version of Picasa Web Albums. I was able to explore all my Picasa Web Albums (oh yeah, it was my favorite photo storage service) in Google+ Photos and then there was a handful of powerful features like Unlimited Storage (up to 2048 x 2048 px), Auto-Backup (to backup every single photo on your phone to Google+), Auto-Enhance (a fantastic online photo editing tool), Photo Sharing, etc. As you probably know, Google dropped the "+" from Google+ Photos and now it's simply known as Google Photos (in other words it's now a standalone product). That's not all! Google Photos offers free unlimited storage for photos up to 16 MP or around 4,000 x 4,000 px (up from 4 MP or 2,000 x 2,000 px). Voilà! Google Photos is a standalone product and it's got over 200 million monthly active users. In fact, it's one of the best Google products ever. It's great because Google+ Photos was such a great application for photo storage and organization but was actually hidden inside an ugly social network.

Don't Miss: Over 201 Google Products & Services You Probably Don't Know

The 13 Best Google Chrome Extensions I Can’t Live Without (Plus 13 I Can Live Without)

@maheshoneOctober 9, 2015By

maheshone

Google Chrome is much more than just a browser and that's how it became the web's favorite internet browser. And it was perhaps the first cloud-integrated web browser. That is, everything you do inside Google Chrome was automatically synced across all your computers (and today mobile devices as well). And there are literally hundreds of thousands of Google Chrome extensions that can make this super-browser even more powerful.

Don't Miss: Productivity Tools: The Fantastic Ten To Skyrocket Your Productivity

The good thing is, there must be an extension to make Chrome work the way you want. For instance, I often end up accidentally close a pinned tab. So, I can install an extension called Lock Tab to prevent it (I'm not using it though). The only problem with Chrome is that... it's so resource hungry that it eats up your computer's memory (RAM) in a big way. So make sure that you don't overload your browser with a ton of add-ons or extensions. It will not only slow down your computer but also make it a mess as most of the Chrome extensions can access your browsing history (or much more). So it's always a good idea to install only the trusted ones. Today, I have sorted some of the best Google Chrome extensions and apparently they are also my personal favorites.

13 Google Chrome Extensions I Can't Live Without

Here's a quick reminder. It's really impossible to come up with a definite list of Google Chrome extensions as its selection depends upon a person and his/her nature of work. For instance, if you are a gamer or a graphic designer then you may not find much helpful extensions. But if you are a blogger or even a writer then you would find at least few of them helpful. That's why this is a list of my favorite extensions. And I have divided the list into two: the first 13 are the ones that I can't live without and it's enabled all the time. And the next 13 are the ones that I activate on-demand --- that is, when I want to do something with it. If you're looking for a comprehensive list then check out: Top 50 Google Chrome Productivity Extensions and Top 30 Google Chrome SEO Extensions.

iCloud Email Address: One Productivity Tip You Probably Didn’t Know (Plus 3 Things About Gmail, Outlook.com, & Yahoo Mail)

The Best Dictation (Voice To Text) Software Is Here (And It’s Free!)

Meet "Voice typing..." On Google Docs

Top 25 Google Chrome Extensions I Can’t Live Without

The 13 Best Google Chrome Extensions I Can’t Live Without (Plus 13 I Can Live Without)

13 Google Chrome Extensions I Can't Live Without

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