systemBash » Google

Google Adds Two-Factor Authentication To Google Apps (For Real, This Time)

Dave — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:21:00 +0000

I’m not trying to say I had anything to do with Google adding two-factor authentication to Google Apps. I’m really not. But on September 9th, MakeUseOf published an article named How To Secure Your Google Apps Account with Two Factor Authentication. In this article, I wrote:

All of this brings up the question: why doesn’t Google enable a direct way to use two factor authentication with their Gmail, Calendar and other services? Many folks such as myself use Google services for all too many things in their lives, and that login is potentially the most important one of their online life. I would suggest that Google gets onto the security boat and enables this as an option for everyday folks.

Today, 11 days later, Google released their own Two-Factor authentication scheme for Google Apps account (Premier, Education and Government). An example of accurate prognostication? Or just dumb luck? Either way, great job Google!

If you are a Google Apps user, your Administrator will need to enable the feature for your account. Standard edition users will have this feature available shortly. Highly recommended for password and data security if you store your data in the Google cloud.

Find Your Oldest Messages in Gmail

Dave — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:03:59 +0000

At some point in the past, Google removed the Oldest » link out of everything except for your inbox and labels. This makes it hard to find the “first” or an early email of any sort if you have a lot in your search result. I wanted to find an email of which I had a lot of, to see what was the first one, of 10000s. Fortunately there is a workaround for this!

Updated 4/11/2010!

There is a simple URL you can visit to get to the last page of all of your messages. This will show you the first message you ever got in Gmail, and when you signed up for Gmail. Simply visit:

https://mail.google.com/mail/#search//p99999

This will return an error, then send you to the last page of all of your messages, inbox and archived.

Thanks to commenter Josh for this tip!

1. Perform your search.

To search all archived messages and not just the inbox, do a blank search.

2. At the top of the url, add /p9999 or other sufficiently large number to go beyond the last result.

Gmail will show you an error and not display any messages.

3. Click “Refresh” – you will end up at the last page of the search result.

If anyone has an idea how to do this in an easier, less complicated way, please let me know in comments! I would hope that Google will add a sorting function to Gmail, bringing the oldest message at top, but I guess there is not a lot of demand for that.

Tip from Google Help forum.

Official Google Chrome Themes Coming?

Dave — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:11:50 +0000

I just restarted Google Chrome after clearing out my cache, and found a link in my tabs box showing a themes tab:

I thought: Wait a second, Chrome has themes?! Hadn’t heard of that one. Excited, I clicked on the link. However, it takes you to a 404 file not found page.

https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/themes/

It looks Official Chrome themes are coming shortly. I am running the dev channel version 3.0.195.4.

Edit: Looks like cnet has an article about Chrome theming!