Mail coming in from gmail automatically marked as read

Jul 16, 2014 | Tech Tips

For a couple of weeks or maybe more, new email messages coming in from my gmail accounts were automatically being marked read before I ever opened them. It was maddening.

I’ve spent a couple of days looking into this and there seem to be several things which might contribute to this happening: (the suggestions all are under the Settings, upper right of the Inbox which looks like this

1. Check your filters. This will be in Settings –> Filters. If any of them are purposely setting a ‘Mark as Read’ this might be the problem.
2. For me, this was under Settings –> Accounts and Imports –> Other Google Account settings. On the next page, click Security at the top of the page. Then, on the lower right, in the Account permissions section, next to Apps and websites, click View all. On the next page, look at the Apps and websites which have access to your account. I’ve been looking for the ‘ideal’ gmail client for my iOS devices so there were were quite a few Apps which were no longer on my devices. I clicked each one, then over on the right side, clicked Revoke access. In all honesty, I don’t think it was the now gone Apps. There was also an item for Amazon, and I have no idea why I would have granted Amazon access to any email other than the one I use to order stuff. After revoking the Amazon privileges, the problem seems to have disappeared.

Why this suddenly began, I don’t know. But it appears to be gone now. If this helps you, consider the hours it took me to solve this; consider making a contribution via PayPal.

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High CPU Usage in Google Chrome?

Aug 31, 2013 | Tech Tips

Ever had the fan on your MacBook Pro just run continuously while Chrome was open? Me, too! I knew it was Chrome because I opened Activity Monitor and sorted the CPU column. When I did this so the highest CPU usage (which is what causes the fan to kick in) was at the top, it indicated Google Chrome Renderer was the culprit.

So, how can one tell what page is causing the high CPU usage? It’s actually pretty simple.

Switch over so Chrome is front running application. Once you’re there, click on the three horizontal lines in the upper right hand corner. Like so:

When you click that a menu will open. Select Tools, then Task Manager, like so:

Now, you can see the pages you have open. You can sort this by CPU by clicking on that column head. When you do, you should see the page that’s rocketing your CPU and thus your fan. For me, it was a page on box.com

Close that page and the fan should crank down. That’s it!

Simple and easy.

Now, get back to work 🙂

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Home Shared iTunes not showing all music on iOS device

May 5, 2013 | Tech Tips

Recently, I’d been having a problem where my main computer’s Home Shared music wasn’t showing all the music in my iTunes Library when I opened it on one of my iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) devices. After some research, this is the solution to fixing that misbehavior.

1. On you iOS device open the Music app and make sure you aren’t connected to sharing. If you are, disconnect from sharing and return to the Home screen. Make sure the Music App isn’t running (bring up the multi-tasking bar at the bottom, tap and hold on the Music app and then click on the red X.) You may have to reboot your device
2. Open the Settings app (grey, looks like a gear). Scroll down to the Music selection. Sign out of Home Sharing and exit the Settings app.
3. Open the Music app again. Make sure sharing isn’t available.
4. Back to Home screen and re-open Settings, Music. Re-enable Home Sharing (you’ll probably need to put in your Apple ID and password.)
5. Finally, re-open the Music app. Go to More, then Shared. Select your Shared Library and if everything is right with the world, all your Music should be there now.

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Use Google Calendar Delegation

Sep 16, 2012 | Tech Tips

With Google Calendars, you can have others in your business act as delegates, or a trusted representative, for your calendar.

Here’s the instructions, directly from Google:

To delegate your calendar:

1. Sign in to your calendar at http://calendar.google.com/a/your_domain.com.
2. Click Calendar settings at the top.
3. Click Calendars.
4. In the Sharing column for your calendar, click Share this calendar or Shared: Edit settings(whichever appears).
5. In the Share with specific people box, type the email address of the person to whom you want to delegate your calendar.
6. Click Add person.
7. In the drop-down box under Permission Settings, select Make changes AND manage sharing.
8. Click Save.

After you’ve delegated your calendar, your delegate can sign in to their calendar and manage your calendar. For example, your delegate can follow these steps to create a new event on your calendar:

1. Sign in to Calendar (the delegate’s calendar).
2. Verify that the delegated calendar shows up in the My Calendars list.
3. In the drop-down list by the delegated calendar, select Create a new event on this calendar.

That’s it.

You can have your Google calendars sync with your iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) and your Mac. Depending on which version of Mac OS you’re running, it can be easy or mor difficult. But typically it just involves setting it up. A couple of alternatives would be to use BusySync, BusyCal or Soho Organizer.

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How to Move Google Calendars to iCloud

Sep 2, 2012 | Tech Tips

I’ve been really happy with Google calendars for a few years. Until recently.

Within the last year, either Google or Apple or both did something that was causing me more work (and aggravation) than I will allow. Either something works or it doesn’t and when it doesn’t, I get rid of it. I’m speaking of technology, of course. 🙂

I had been using BusySync for a number of years with my 11 Google calendars (brought over from my Palm days) up until recently. They were working just perfectly until some time this year (2012). Then, I would change an event in my iCal on my Mac, and a new calendar would appear, “BusySync Conflicts”. OK, I found out if I made the change on my Mac, in iCal as opposed to doing it with the Google Calendar interface through a web browser, I would have this problem. It got to the point where I really couldn’t use iCal because I’d forget and the stupid ‘BusySync Conflicts’ would show up.

I resigned I would have to stop using iCal, except for reference, and start doing everything through the browser interface. Then, a new glitch. I would log in to my Google Calendars and a number of them would be turned off indiscriminately. By the time iCloud was released full blown, around late July, I had had it. I queried business associates who likely were using iCloud, members of the ACN, and felt comfortable I could leave my frustrations behind by switching to iCloud.

Here’s how I did it, make sure your Google calendars are the most up-to-date as these are the files we’ll be working with. This is very important! Do not proceed if this is not the case. Shortly, you’ll be deleting most of your iCal calendars. By the way, this tutorial assumes you are only using Google and the iCal/Calendar app for calendars. If you are also using any other calendars, including iCloud, STOP! This tutorial is not for you and I won’t be dealing with how to deal with that situation.

First, I logged into my Google Calendars. Once there, on the right side I clicked on the gear and selected Settings. Then clicked on Calendars on the upper left under the ‘Calendar Settings’ header. Once there, I scrolled about 2/3 down to find the Export Calendars link. Click that, and all your calendars will download as ‘your google account name’.ical.zip. If you’re using Safari, as I was, it will unzip the folder in your user account Downloads folder and trash the zip file. OK. That’s the beginning.

This is the part you might get nervous about. Open iCal on your Mac. First, just in case, select the File menu then choose Export and finally iCal archive. (If you’re using Lion or Mountain Lion, substitute Calendar for iCal as this is the new calendar in Mac OS X.) Now that you’ve got a backup of all your calendars, it’s time to delete them. You can delete all but one. You might possibly want to create a new Calendar called Calendar and delete all the calendars but that one. We’ll delete that calendar later. Your iCal or Calendar should now be clean of all calendar info.

From the iCal/Calendar menu on that app on your Mac, choose Preferences, then Accounts. Now you’ll create your iCloud account. If using Lion or Mountain Lion, you’ll click the + sign below the sidebar. The Add an Account window will open. From the Account type window, select iCloud and fill out the appropriate information for your iCloud account. You should now have an iCloud calendar on your Mac. (If you’re still using Snow Leopard, See the post, How to get Calendar & Address Book with iCloud on Snow Leopard to create your iCloud account on your Mac.) Once you have your iCloud calendars setup in iCal/Calendar, you can delete any other calendar (such as the one called Calendar, suggested earlier) which you don’t want to keep.

Now, you’ll go into the folder which you downloaded from your Google calendars and under the iCloud calendars which appear in your iCal/Calendar you’ll create calendars with names to match the names of the calendars you had on Google. (You don’t have to name the calendars the same, it’s just a suggestion.)

After you’ve created the additional calendars, you can use the Import function from the File menu in iCal/Calendar to bring your data from the Google calendars in.

With the calendars now in iCal/Calendar and linked to iCloud, you will now have calendars which can sync with your iPhone/iPad/Mac by using iCloud.

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How to have Mail, Calendar & Contacts all open in Outlook 2011

Jul 24, 2012 | Tech Tips

Back in the days of Entourage, one could open separate windows for Mail, Calendar & Contacts. With Outlook 2011, Microsoft has forced the use of one window with clicking on the options at the bottom left to change from Mail to Calendar to Contacts. Different even from the way Outlook for Windows allows inline folders. So what to do?

It turns out, you can open separate windows for Outlook 2011. Here’s how: While viewing Mail, instead of on Calendar, which changes the screen from Mail to Calendar, do this instead. Right-click on any other mail folder (it doesn’t matter which one). Outlook will open a contextual menu, with the top choice being ‘Open In New Window.’ With this new window open, click on Calendar (or Contacts) at the bottom. Now, you have two windows: One with Mail and the other with Calendar.

If you are on any OS since Lion (10.7), you can use Mission Control to put one or the other in another window. And, if you have a Magic Mouse, Magic Track Pad or any portable Mac, you can swipe from window to window. On Snow Leopard, you can put each Window in it’s own Spaces.

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How to add Contacts from iCloud on an iOS 4 device

Jul 2, 2012 | Tech Tips

You can setup contact syncing to iCloud on an older iPod Touch (2nd Generation or newer), iPhone (3G or newer) or any iPad still running at least iOS 4. Sorry, 1st Generation iPod Touch owners, the maximum iOS which can be used on these devices is iOS 3.1.3.

You need to determine the unique number which is your iCloud account number. The way I did it was to log in to iCloud on the web. Then, click on your name or picture to get your account settings page. If you don’t have a picture there, you may need to upload one. Once your picture is there, right click on it (in Safari) and choose Inspect Element. (If you don’t see the Inspect Element choice, you’ll need to go into Safari Preferences, go to the Advanced tab and make sure there is a check mark for “Show Develop Menu in Menu Bar”.) Search for contacts.icloud.com. You’ll find something like <img src=”https://pxx-contacts.icloud.com:443/nnnnnnnn/wcs/…>. The number in the nnnnnnnn position is your unique number. It may be seven, eight or nine characters. Your pxx number is right at the beginning after the https://.

On the iOS device, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account. Choose “Other” and select “Add CardDAV Account” under the Contacts section. Enter the following information: Server: https://pxx-contacts.icloud.com:443/nnnnnnnn/carddavhome/card/ User Name: your iCloud login name Password: your iCloud password Description: iCloud CardDAV (This is a suggestion only; can be whatever text is meaningful to you) Choose “Advanced,” turn SSL On and enter 443 for the port. Press Done twice and the information will validate with the server. If all was entered correctly the device will verify the information and connect to your contacts. As in other areas, your iCloud contacts need to be the primary source of information. Make changes and additions to your contacts from iCloud (especially if you are still using Snow Leopard on your Mac). This should help with some of the problems seen on older operating systems and devices where duplicates might begin to be a problem. You can find other tips by going to the blog homepage. You can find iHelp’s main offerings, here. Was this helpful? Consider a Donation on PayPal: Donation

How to move an iWeb site from MobileMe to another web hosting service

May 14, 2012 | Tech Tips

I was going to publish an in depth article on this, but Apple has already done so with great pics to guide you through.

If you have websites on MobileMe, which is scheduled to end June 30, 2012, you’ll want to read up on how to move your sites now. If you need more help, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Look here first: .

Additionally, to make things a little bit easier, I’m linking to the how-to from GoDaddy with information on using them as a web hosting service (not affiliated with GoDaddy): 

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How to use multiple search terms in Apple Mail

May 12, 2012 | Tech Tips

If you’re using Leopard or Snow Leopard on your Mac (prior to Lion’s implementation of tokens) and you’ve ever needed a way to search for a couple of terms in Mail, here’s how.

You’ll want to use keywords. For example, if you and your friend, Seth, were talking about Google calendars on a couple of occasions and you wanted to find your emails from Seth with the search term Google in the message body, you’d want to use the keyword author and then search for Google. In your search bar you’d do that like this: 

You can also do more complex searches and you can use the same technique with Spotlight. Here’s a more complete list of keywords:

Keywords for Searching

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iPad Split Keyboard makes thumb typing easier

May 12, 2012 | Tech Tips

If you’ve ever tried to thumb type on your iPad (any version) but found it incredibly cumbersome, iOS 5 introduced a way to split your keyboard to make that much easier. You can either place your thumbs in the middle and pull the keyboard apart (reverse the procedure to put it back together) or you can tap and hold on the keyboard toggle at the bottom right to select the Split Keyboard option (do it again to reverse the procedure.)

Something else that’s cool about this, where the keyboard splits, phantom keys exist which will allow you to type a ‘T’ with your right thumb or a ‘Y’ with your left. In fact any of the keyboard items at the split allow this.

Play around with this and let me know if this helped you. Enjoy!

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