52 Great Google Docs Secrets

Google Docs is such an incredible tool for college students, offering collaboration, portability, ease of use, and widespread acceptance. But there are so many options, both hidden and obvious, that there’s a good chance you’re not using Google Docs to its fullest capability.

We’ve discovered 52 great tips for getting the most out of Google Docs as a student, with awesome ideas and tricks for collaboration, sharing, and staying productive.

1. Access your documents from anywhere: Whether you’re in your dorm room or the school library, you can access your Google Docs. Take advantage of this to make it easy to do your work on-the-go.
2. Use Docs reference tools: Take advantage of the Define option to use Docs’ built in dictionary, as well as a thesaurus and an encyclopedia available for use right in your document.
3. Go mobile: Google Docs is available on most smartphones, and has a number of capabilities available on the go.
4. Save to different file types: You can easily save your documents and spreadsheets to commonly used file types like DOC, XLS, CSV, and HTML.
5. Use keyboard shortcuts: With keyboard shortcuts, you can speed through all of your tasks in Google Docs.
6. Use templates: Google Docs has a template gallery for just about anything you can imagine, from an apartment bills organizer to a doc for organizing college visits.
7. Convert PDFs to images and text: Use Google Docs to make PDFs easily editable.
8. Create forms: Gather research information, ask for opinions, and more by creating Forms in Google Docs.
9. Search EVERYTHING: Search through pretty much everything you’ve got by searching Docs and Gmail together, thanks to Gmail Labs settings.
10. Autodetect links: Simply add links in Google Docs by having them automatically detected, instead of having to input full URLs.
11. Adding video: You can embed video in documents, slides, and more to dress up your presentation.
12. Insert photos with drag and drop: Instead of going through the process of attaching, you can just drag and drop files from your hard drive into the document, then wrap text around the photo.
13. Create graphs: Visuals are great tools for getting your point across. Using charts in Google Spreadsheets, you can create your very own information-sharing graphs.
14. Look up live finance data: In Google Spreadsheet, you can use special formulas to pull live information from Google’s finance service.
15. Self-update spreadsheets: In addition to inserting live finance data, you can create a live link to that data for a document that constantly updates itself as accurate.
16. Draw in Docs: Using Polyline, snap to guides, and other drawing features, you can easily create the images your documents need.
17. Insert facts: Using Google Spreadsheet, it’s easy to insert facts, like the population for a city, which is simply pulled through the Google search engine.
18. Simply add equations: Google Docs has found a way to make it easy for students to take notes in class, offering an Equations editor for adding equations onto your pages.
19. Embed Docs anywhere: Get a link to your document or spreadsheet, and you can embed or publish it anywhere, including Facebook or a class blog.
20. Just share: Get the ball rolling on collaboration through Google Docs by sharing your document through email links.
21. Turn it into a webpage: Download your document in HTML, and you can share it as a webpage with a minimal amount of hassle.
22. Chat away: In Google Docs, you can see anyone who is currently editing the document, and if needed, send a message to chat with them.
23. Team up with anyone: Using Google Docs, you can collaborate on a document with friends, classmates, and professors.
24. Share an entire folder: If you’ve got a collection of documents to work on together, just open up a shared folder that everyone can access.
25. Work on documents all at the same time: Google Docs allows users to simultaneously work on a single master document, so you can come together with other team members and professors to work on a document at the same time.
26. Allow editing without signing in: If you’re sharing a document with classmates who don’t have a Google login, just make it available to edit without signing in.
27. Track visits: Using Google Analytics, you can track how much traffic a published document is receiving.
28. Set notification rules: Find out about the changes made by your collaborators on any given document by setting up notification rules.
29. Use Docs instead of emailing attachments: Rather than emailing revised versions of documents over and over again, you can just use Google docs and see revision histories.
30. Kick slackers off of a project: Simply remove collaborators doing more harm than good by clicking None next to their name.
31. Freeze to stop editing: If you’ve perfected certain rows and columns in your spreadsheet, just freeze them so they’re not accidentally edited.
32. Revert back to old versions: If your group doesn’t like a certain set of changes made, it’s very simple just to revert back to automatically saved previous versions in the revision history.
33. Save brainstorm notes for group projects: Get everyone’s ideas all together in one place by using Google Docs for brainstorming.
34. Use data validation: Make sure that your collaborators aren’t adding a mess to your spreadsheet by using data validation on shared documents.
35. Use color coding: You can change text colors based on rules, like setting green for one classmate, blue for another, and red for yourself.
36. Clean up your main Google Docs page: Move items to individual folders, and you can make your landing page a lot cleaner and easy to navigate.
37. Insert a bookmark: Make it easy to access other parts of your document, like a table of contents, by inserting bookmarks throughout.
38. Create subfolders: For an extra step of organization, create folders within folders.
39. Get color coded: Color code the names of your folders for quick and easy identification.
40. Get synched: Using tools like Syncplicity, you can get all of your Google Docs synched up with documents from Microsoft Office.
41. Create your own shortcuts: Put together shortcuts to launch Google Docs, create a new document, and even access frequently used documents in a flash.
42. Print multiple Docs at once: If you need to speed through printing several documents at one time, just download and open them as a zip file.
43. Quick View PDFs: When you see PDF files in search results, you can just Quick View them to open them up in Google Docs.
44. Check your translation work: Google Docs has added a translation tool, which can easily be used to double check your work when writing a foreign language essay.
45. Get a grade before you turn assignments in: Using Flubaroo on Google Docs, you can get quick feedback on your assignment, giving you a chance for improvement before you need to turn it in.
46. Write in full screen mode: Make your toolbar, menus, and other tempting distractions disappear by displaying your Google Docs in full screen.
47. Automatically correct your common mistakes: If you have words that you just can’t spell to save your life, set up a preference to automatically find and replace your mistakes with correctly spelled words.
48. Customize your styles: If you like a consistent look for your documents, set up a customized style so you don’t have to go back and fix it with every new document.
49. Work offline: Use the offline feature of Google Docs to work on the bus, plane, or anywhere you plan to go without an internet connection.
50. Save web pages to your Google Docs account: Turn any web page into a PDF for viewing later by using the send to Google Docs extension for Chrome.
51. Back it all up: Google Docs itself offers a great way to back up your documents, but it never hurts to save elsewhere, right? Back up and download all of your Google Documents and save them to a hard drive for safekeeping.
52. Use Google Docs for everyday stuff, too: You can use Google Docs to track expenses, maintain your calendar, and more.

10 tips to make money with Google Adsense

When thinking about website monetising, Google Adsense is probably the first thing that came to the mind of many people. Created in 2004, Adsense is the easiest way to make money online. Making real money with Google Adsense is not as easy as it seems, but if Adsense wasn’t an efficient way to make money online, people would stop using it.

In this article, I’m going to show you 10 efficient tips to really make money with Adsense.

Understand on which sites Adsense works
Is it possible to really make money with Adsense? The answer is definitely yes, but not on all kind of sites. If you have difficulty and always had terrible results with Adsense, it's because tech-savy people will not click on Adsense ads.

Know which niche are good and which ones are to avoid.

Avoid “SmartPricing” like the plague
Smartpricing is when Google automatically gives the advertiser a discount based on the perceived value of your web site. Certain types of sites supposedly generate more sales so get a higher cost per click while others are typically more lookers and get paid less per click.

If Google placed your blog in the second category, no luck for you. In fact, for the same click on the same ad, a website can earn $1 while another will get on 10 cents!

To avoid getting “Smartpriced” by Google, you have to try to keep your CTR high. Low CTR sites (under 1 or 2%) generally ends up by being smartpriced.

Place Adsense ads on old posts only
To avoid smartpricing, display Adsense ads on old posts only because the vast majority of your regular visitors don’t click on ads. By showing Adsense on old posts only, you’ll definitely keep your CTR high.

The following functions have to be pasted in the functions.php file of your WordPress theme.



Once you successfully inserted the code into your function.php file, you are now ready to call the functions in your single.php template as shown below:



To appear on Adsense ads, advertisers have to bid on a specific keyword. Some keywords, such as “mortgage” have a way higher CPC than others.

A great way to maximise your Adsense income is to identify those high paying keywords and use them in your blog. Several lists of high paying keywords are available on the Internet, some are free and some aren’t.

A good list to start with is this one, which is completely free.

Work with keywords
Although you can’t directly control which Adsense ads appears on your site, you can work with keywords in the hope that Google will display related contextual ads.



For example, if you’re writing a post about Javascript, the keyword “javascript” has strong chances of being used in Adsense ads. If you want Adsense to display ads based on high paying keywords, you have to put these keywords on your document. Don’t abuse though; you may be penalized by Google.

To check your keyword density, here is a great tool : http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Use section targeting
As I said before, in order to maximise your revenue you have to work on keywords, but what if Adsense is displaying ads based on a keyword you don’t want to be used? Using section targeting, you can emphasis some text as well as asking Adsense to ignore some other.

The following example shows how to use section targeting in your posts:

Another way to avoid being smartpriced is definitely to display Adsense ads only to visitors who came from search engines.

The following WordPress hack will do that job perfectly. To apply it to your blog, insert the code below in your theme functions.php file. Note that the $SE array is where you specify search engines. You can easily ad new search engines by adding new elements to the array.

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
foreach ($SE as $source) {
if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
}
return false;
}

Once done, open the file where you want to display the ads and paste the following code:

if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
}
}

Save the file, and you’re done. Thanks to Stephen Cronin for the hack!

Go Large!
Adsense ads can be displayed in various formats, but they don’t provide the same results. Although it depends of many factors such as your blog niche and layout, the large rectangle (336×280) has proven to be the best paying Adsense format. It is also one of the few Adsense block which can display video ads.

Use a personalised Google search engine on your blog
Many people don’t like the way WordPress search works, and I must admit that this is not the best feature of my favorite blogging engine.

The tools works very well, and you can start monetising it using Adsense. I found out that the search engine is very profitable.

Don’t break Adsense terms of service
At last but not least, one of the best bits of advice I can give to anyone who’d like to make money online using Google Adsense is to be careful with the terms of service. For example, if you click on your own ads, or display incentive messages on your site, Google will quickly finds out and they will consenquently ban your site from Adsense.

You have to play by their rules, so don’t thing you are smarter than them. Respect the terms of services, optimise your ads using the tips I just gave you, and write great content so people will visit your site and click on your ads.

Ask Google about bullfeathers and other random items

Asking Google a question is a routine everyday thing for most of us.

It's not unusual
Your question will simply be one of the hundreds of millions it receives every day from all over the world. The wonder of it all, is that in 2.8 seconds it has scanned some 30 billion Web pages and a couple of billion images, and produced scores of possible answers.

Bull filtering not possible
Pity the researcher who has yet to develop what Ernest Hemingway called an essential tool of the trade, a 'bullfeathers' detector.

Chinese Google play
The 300 million Chinese Internet users already exceed the population of the US by 100 million and less than half of China has access to the Internet. Future Internet Traffic will be dominated by the Chinese language users and that is going to be a substantial overhead on the pipes.

Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt sees a Web where Chinese is the dominant language and connections are so lightning fast that distinctions between audio, video and text will blur, all within five years.

By redirecting and filtering the Chinese users away from the English-language users, Google are bypassing a possible clash of interests and blockage in traffic. Hopefully, they are also ensuring that the English and other non-Chinese speakers, won't be 'hampered' by Chinese users. They, in turn will have their own slice of Google's globe.

In my cynical imagination, I believe the Chinese authorities would also be very pleased to have their people separated from the rest of the traffic. What big eyes you have grandma? All the better!

It's Official - Google says the Recession is over!

Google on Thursday declared the worst of the recession over and paved the way for a return to heavy spending on expansion as it reported a surprisingly strong 8 per cent jump in net revenues in its latest quarter.

Google has reported an 8 percent jump in revenues. The optimism reflected what the company said was an across-the-board recovery in online advertising, with even the struggling financial services sector showing a return to growth.

While search engine advertising has held up better than most other forms of online media in the downturn, Eric Schmidt, chief executive, said the advertising revival appeared to have spread across the internet more broadly.

The news pushed the company's shares up 3 per cent in after-market trading, to $544, capping a run that has seen the shares climb 120 per cent from the bottom late last year.

The figures for the three months to the end of September point to a return to sequential quarterly growth for the search giant after two periods in which its revenues were either flat or down from the preceding quarter, the first time in its 10-year history it had been through such a decline. Investors often pay close attention to sequential quarterly comparisons for high-growth companies since they provide a more immediate view of the growth trajectory.

Drawing a clear line after the downturn, Mr Schmidt praised the company's management team for holding down costs in recent quarters but said the time had come for a return to the company's earlier ambitious expansion path.

Google's Chief Executive in China Resigns his Post

In what is likely to be seen as a blow to Google’s ambitions in China, Kai-Fu Lee, the prominent head of the company’s operations there, is leaving for an unspecified new venture.

Google said in a news release early Friday in Beijing that Mr. Lee, who was president of Google Greater China and vice president for engineering, would leave the company in mid-September. Two current executives will take over Mr. Lee’s engineering and sales roles. Boon-Lock Yeo, currently director of Google’s Shanghai engineering office, will take over engineering responsibilities for Google China, and John Liu, vice president of sales and operations, will assume business and operational responsibilities.

Mr. Lee’s tenure began tumultuously. Shortly after he was hired as Google’s first employee in China in 2005, Mr. Lee’s former employer, Microsoft, sued Google, claiming that Mr. Lee had an agreement that precluded him from working for a competitor. The suit, which gained wide attention, was settled a few months later. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Google credited Mr. Lee with bolstering its operations in China, releasing Google.cn, the company’s Chinese-language search engine, and hiring a team of top-notch engineers and scientists.

“Kai-Fu has made an enormous contribution to Google over the last four years — helping dramatically to improve the quality and range of services that we offer in China and ensuring that we continue to innovate on the Web for the benefit of users and advertisers,” Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering, said in a statement.

But Google has struggled in China, where it has lagged far behind the home-grown search engine Baidu. It has also come under criticism from human rights groups and has had its services intermittently blocked by the Chinese government.