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Tricks to Amp Your Productivity

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PCQ Bureau
New Update


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1. Check Your Site for Malicious Content

Do you know you can check manually if a website contains malicious contents? While Google protects users from malicious web pages showing “This site may harm your computer” signal in Google's search results, they also offer a free tool called Safe Browsing Diagnostic which enables you determine if a site is suspicious. To use the tool, just add a URL to the end of this link: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=.

For instance to test PCQuest site, we added the URL as below http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://pcquest.com. Google returned four sets of security information about that page.

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1. What is the current listing status for the site in question? (Here they provide the current listing status of the site and also information on how often the site was listed in the past.)

2. What happened when Google visited this site? (This included information on when Google analyzed the page, when it was last malicious, what kind of malware they encountered and so fourth.)

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3. Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware? (This provideed information if this site has facilitated the distribution of malicious software in the past).

4. Has this site hosted malware? (Google provided information if the site has hosted malicious software in the past. It also provided information on the victim sites that initiated the distribution of malicious software.

2. Access & Manage All Your Files Across Cloud Services

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Today, we have many cloud services including Google Docs, Amazon S3, Dropbox, MobileMe that help us store our files online. While most of these services are free, you can have multiple accounts to use the services to the fullest. However, manageability is an issue as you might have files scattered across various free services. Plus, you might want to transfer some of the files from your Google Docs account to Box or Amazon S3. How about going single sign on way and manage all your Cloud files from one single interface without having them to download them to your PC first?

Otixo lets you connect your favorite online services like Dropbox, Box, Google Docs, MobileMe, FTP, etc to better manage your files in the web. It is just like Apple's Finder or Window's File Explorer, but for the cloud. With Otixo you can search and find your files across many cloud-based services in one simple step and move files from one service to another without downloading them first to your desktop.



Steps

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1. Create an account in https://otixo.com/

2. Once logged in successfully, from the mail dashboard select the services that you want to associate with Otixo and enter login credentials for the respective services and you're done.

3. Under 'My Cloud Services', in the left side you can see the list of services associated.

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4. Click on any service, for instance Box, and you can see all files in the right side pane of the dashboard.

5. To transfer files from one services to other, select the files and drag them to the account you want to move them in.

6. To preview a file, just click on it, to upload a file simply click on Upload.

3. Convert PDF to Doc or Text using Google Docs

We use PDF as the most commonly used format while sharing documents. Unless you have an editor, you cannot edit PDF files. There are lots of converters out there to convert PDF to word including both free and paid. One of the best tools is Google Docs, it offers the service for free. The OCR in Google Docs use computer algorithms to convert the file into a Google document.

1. Open the Google Docs file upload interface, click on Upload, select the file from your PC and check the box against 'Convert text from PDF or Image files'.

2. Click on the Start Upload button. Once the upload is completed, open the file in Google docs.

3. Make changes if you want to and then select the file menu -> Download as-> Word. This will save the document in Word file on to your desktop.

For best results, the image or PDF files need to meet certain requirements. For instance, high res images works best. Plus, you'll get better results if your file includes common fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman.

File size limitations: The maximum size for images (.jpg, .gif, .png) and PDF files (.pdf) is 2 MB. For PDF files, it only looks at the first 10 pages when searching for text to extract.

4. Add Google Calendar to Thunderbird

If you're using the Thunderbird email client, and are tired of managing its calendar separately from the one on your smartphone, then try the Google Calendar Tab 3.9 Add-on for Thunderbird. This simply creates another tab in Thunderbird and shows you your Google Calendar's web interface there. You can use it as if you were using Google Calendar from a web browser. Since Google Calendar is available for most smartphones, you will have access to all your meetings and appointments from anywhere.

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