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DEBBIE LIU: Hey guys, welcome to our first Apps Show episode
of 2015.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season
and are looking forward to a brand new year.
DEBBIE LIU: In this episode, we're
going to take a look at improving
your productivity with Chrome.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: But first, the news.
For those of us using Google Hangouts,
you can now add custom status messages.
In Gmail, you can change your status
by clicking on the triangle next to your name
and typing it here.
To see other people's status messages,
click on the Contacts button.
And to see the last quote of conversations,
click on the Quote symbol.
DEBBIE LIU: There's also a change
in how you share Drive files using Gmail.
It used to be that you could only
share those files using a link.
Now you also have the option to share
the file as an attachment.
This only works for files that weren't created on Drive.
So Google Docs can still only be shared as a link.
All right, so now we have some tips
on how to make your life easier using Chrome.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: The first tip is Chrome Profiles.
So if you already use the Chrome browser
and you're logged in with a Gmail account,
that's your first profile.
It saves your bookmarks, your most visited sites.
And if you have two Gmail accounts,
then Chrome Profiles can make your life a little easier.
DEBBIE LIU: I'm always surprised about how underutilized Chrome
Profiles are.
If I have my personal account set up,
then I don't have to keep logging in and out to get
into my corporate account.
Not that I ever email anyone personally at work.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: We believe that, but here's how you do it.
Click the Chrome menu, what I call the hamburger menu,
and go to Settings.
Go down to People, and Add Person.
Choose a symbol and a name.
And I'm going to choose a ninja, because that's how I roll.
And call this Personal.
So now you can see that I have two profiles.
The first user is my work profile,
and you'll notice that a symbol has appeared here
to let me know which profile I'm in.
I can switch profiles by clicking it.
And as you can see, I get a different window
for each identity.
You can also sync Profiles separately.
DEBBIE LIU: So my team runs a community
for customers called Google for Work Connect,
and I often help them do testing.
But since my normal profile has full administrator access,
I usually have to switch to a demo account,
so I can see and test features from the customer
point of view.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: And that's the same with me.
When I do client demonstrations, I actually
use a demo account instead of my corporate account,
so that I can see all the information even
interact with the data.
DEBBIE LIU: This isn't to say that Chrome Profiles protects
you from other users.
To truly protect your data, you should
use the built-in user accounts in your operating system.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: And that's right,
but it also syncs across multiple devices.
DEBBIE LIU: This means you can access open tabs
or even recently opened and closed tabs on one device
from another.
So for example, if I have a useful article
open on my laptop, and I'm on my cell phone.
I can open Chrome on my phone, click on the Clock icon
and see tabs from other devices.
Now I can open up the article on my phone.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: I hope you know by now how important
your comments and feedback are to us,
and this is how we find out what's important to you.
DEBBIE LIU: In fact, that's how we found our next tip.
Thanks for sharing it with us, Rich.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: Now, this is one I didn't know,
but it saved me a lot of time.
I have to compile documents from a lot of different sources,
like websites or emails.
When I use the keyboard shortcut,
Control-C and Control-V to copy and paste,
my document ends up full of text in all sorts of colors, sizes,
and fonts.
But if you also add Shift, so it's Control-Shift-V
when you paste, the text arrives without formatting.
DEBBIE LIU: A tip I love and rely on all the time
is using the Recently Closed option
under Recent Tabs in the hamburger menu.
If you've recently closed a browser
window with multiple tabs open, under Recently Closed
it'll tell you how many tabs there were.
Clicking on that opens a browser window
with all the tabs you last had open in it.
I often use my browser tabs as sort of a to-do list.
So if I need to restart my computer to install an update,
or my laptop shuts down because I've run out of power,
it's really helpful for me to be able to restore
all of those tabs.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: And on that same note,
if you've ever closed a tab, and you really need it back,
just press Control-Shift-T, and it appears.
And on a Mac, you can press Command-Shift-T.
DEBBIE LIU: Now, for a bit of tab management.
Like I said, I sometimes use tabs
as a kind of to-do list, which means
they can be open for while.
Also, I tend to always have Gmail open in one
and Drive in another, and then lots of docs and spreadsheets
and websites that I'm working on.
It can get pretty busy.
So what I can do is pin the ones that I keep open
the whole time, like Gmail.
Right-click, select Pin Tab, and it pins to the left-hand side.
And then there's Drive-- again, I'll right-click and Pin Tab.
And see how much less space they take up?
I can still spot where they are from their symbols,
and then I can drag the other tabs into a logical order.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: There are some useful keyboard shortcuts
for moving between tabs.
Control-Page-Down will let you step forward through your tabs,
and Control-Page-Up steps you back.
DEBBIE LIU: All right, here's one more.
Chrome has a built-in calculator in the address bar.
Type your formula in using the symbols
you would in a spreadsheet.
So an asterisk for multiply and slash to divide.
You don't even need to hit Return.
The answer comes up right here.
If you don't know the symbols, you can type the word.
So 3 times 12 is 36.
Or square root of 9 is 3.
Or maybe work out your sales tax 20% of 6.99 is 1.398.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: Even cooler is that you can convert units
right there in the address bar.
So pounds to kilos, or 2 gallons into liters.
Or we can convert, say, Debbie's height into meters.
So, what are you like, 5' 5", 5' 6"?
DEBBIE LIU: I am actually 5' 1" and proud of it.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: I forgot about the box.
Well, that's it for us this time.
Next week, we're actually talking
about how to manage your time through Google Keep and Google
Calendar, so we'll see you next week.
DEBBIE LIU: And don't forget to subscribe.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: I just forget.
I forget.
DEBBIE LIU: I think I need to ask for a bigger box.
JOHN MERRIFIELD: That would be helpful.