Get Your Own Personal Cloud With PClouds

Cloud storage has undeniably become a hugely important part of our daily lives. Now that we’re connected via multiple devices, having access to our files anywhere and everywhere is fast becoming a necessity instead of a luxury.

But the cloud comes with its own risks: you’re reliant on a third-party server and, especially now, there’s always the risk that the privacy and security of your data are compromised. If these issues often play on your mind, pClouds may just be the cloud storage solution for you.

PClouds is a personal cloud service that, instead of using a third-party cloud server, it links and uses all of your already existing devices and storage. Why opt for this model over traditional third-party cloud storage solutions? Firstly, the security and privacy of your data is preserved. Secondly, you don’t need to pay for extra cloud storage, since pClouds uses your own storage.

Getting Started With PClouds

PClouds is still in beta, so if you’re interested in trying it out you’re going to have to apply to join the beta program.

Since pClouds doesn’t rely on a third-party server, you’re going to need pClouds installed on all the devices you want access to. You also need to be logged in on these devices, and yes, you need to be connected to the Internet.

Here’s how signing in looks like on OS X:

Once you’re signed in, all linked devices should appear as folders on your desktop.

PClouds Features

Since pClouds links entire devices and not just specific folders, one of the big benefits of pClouds is that all the folders on all your devices are accessible through pClouds.

This lets you transfer files and folders directly from one device to another, instead of having to upload a file to a cloud storage service and then download it onto the device you wish to transfer to.

The pClouds app for mobile devices has its own file explorer, too. This makes moving, deleting and copying files easy, even on your iPhone and iPad.

Limitations

As with any application in beta, pClouds isn’t without some limitations. Firstly, it’s currently only available on Mac OSX and iOS. There’s also a Linux version, but it’s only usable via the terminal for now. Rest assured, though, that Windows and Android versions are part of the development roadmap.

Another limitation is that pClouds doesn’t have any collaboration features. Like Android and Windows versions, though, these features are in the pipeline and should be integrated into the service sooner rather than later.

Integrate CRM Into Gmail Using Streak

If you run a business or are involved in sales you probably spend most of your time in Gmail, communicating with clients, customers and maybe even potential employees. Thing is, Gmail isn’t designed for customer relationship management (CRM) tasks such as organizing and synchronizing sales and customer service. Sure, you could use dedicated CRM software, but what if it were possible to integrate CRM features into Gmail and have everything in one place? With Streak, you can.

Streak is an extension for Google Chrome that integrates with Gmail, providing advanced email organisation and CRM features. Streak lets you group emails into Boxes and create Pipelines for anything from sales to employee recruitment. In addition to these CRM features, Streak also includes a number of other useful email management features to enhance your Gmail experience. Read on to find out more.

Getting Started With Streak

First off, you need to use Google Chrome. You can download the Streak extension either from theofficial site or from the Chrome Web Store. Either way, once you’ve downloaded it, just log into your Gmail account and you should be greeted by a pop-up asking to grant certain permissions to the extension.

Once you’ve granted permissions to Streak, you’ll be greeted by another pop-up window. This time, the window contains a list of all the preset Pipelines that come with Streak, and choosing any one of these will create a Pipeline for you. This isn’t permanent, so don’t worry if you feel that you might use Streak for other things later on.

Streak will also offer to give you a quick guided tour. Once you’re done with the tour (or chose to skip it), you’re free to start using Streak how you please.

Streak’s CRM Features

At the core of Streak are what it calls Pipelines and Boxes. Correspondance is grouped into Boxes, and these Boxes are moved along the Pipeline as a sale, or any other business process, progresses.

A Pipeline is essentialy a spreadsheet of a particular business process. Streak comes preloaded with preset sales-related and business-related pipelines such as Sales / CRM, Hiring and Dealflow, plus some personal Pipelines such as Trip Planning. Of course, Streak also lets you create your own Pipelines, in case none of the presets fit the bill.

To create a new Pipeline, just click on the +New link beside Pipelines in the left Gmail sidebar. The previously-mentioned preset window will appear and you can pick the type of Pipeline you want.

Boxes are Streak’s term for containers that are used to store information about a client, customer, potential employee and so on. Boxes can store emails, files and even reminders. Boxes can only be associated with one Pipeline, and have to be tagged with one of the stages in the Pipeline.

Creating a Box is simple. Just select an email using the checkbox, then click on Boxes. You canname the box yourself or choose from a list of suggestions provided by Streak. After you’ve named the Box, you have to select a Pipeline for the box. A box will include all of the emails within the conversation, as well as attachments and contacts.

When viewing a Box, there’s a sidebar where you can fill in extra information as well as select the stage that the Box is at. These fields and stages differ depending on the Pipeline. This is how the sidebar looks for a Box associated with a Sales / CRM Pipeline:

Streak’s Email Management Features

Streak also has a number of useful email management features that should further enhance your Gmail experience.

Email Tracking

Firstly, Streak has an Email Tracking feature. Email Tracking will let you know when the recipient has read your email. Streak will notify you when an email of yours has been read, and can even inform you of when, where and how many times a particular email has been opened.

Email tracking is enabled by default, and can be toggled on a per-email basis in the New Messagewindow. It can also be disabled permanently in the Streak Settings screen, which can be found alongside all the other Gmail settings.

Snippets

Streak also supports Snippets. Snippets are pre-written email messages that can save you the hassle of having to type identical emails over and over. Creating a snippet is as simple as typing a message in the New Message window, clicking on the Snippets button in the bottom row and clicking Create New Snippet From Current Message.

The Manage Snippets window will then pop up. This is where you name your Snippet, set the Shortcut Text and the Pipeline the snippet should be associated with.

Send Later

In addition to email tracking and Snippets, Streak has a Send Later feature. Send Later lets youschedule emails to be sent in the future. You can also schedule email responses. To use the Send Later feature, click on the Send Later icon in the New Message window and enter the date and time. Note that you can’t activate both Send Later and Email Tracking.

Mail Merge

Finally, Streak also has a Mail Merge feature. Mail Merge is a tool to send mass customized emails. Just click on the Mail Merge link in the New Message window. You can either upload a CSV file with a list of emails, or tell Streak to extract addresses from Boxes. Once you’ve gotten the emails, it’s a simple matter of writing out your email. If you want to customize the email sent to a particular address, just click on each email address and change the text.

Conclusion

As you can see, Streak is a great way to integrate powerful CRM features into Gmail. The Pipelines and Boxes are great for managing all your customer relations, while the extra features such as Snippets and Send Later should help you maximize productivity and reduce hassle. The best thing is that all this power won’t cost you a thing. Yes, Streak is free. The developers will eventually implement paid premium features, but Streak will always be free to use.

10 Ways To Tighten Up Your Gmail Security

Gmail is the most popular email service to date, thanks to its creator, Google, the name which is often associated with user-friendliness and security. Despite what the company does to keep your emails safe, you may still be preyed on by hackers, phishers and scammers from all over the Web.

Well, the good news is that Google has been forging its Gmail security system by adding new security features, most of which we do not know about. Today we want to show you 10 essential, technical and non-technical tips that will further strengthen your account security from any possible threat and scheme.

While some of them might sound complicated at first, their instructions are extremely easy and they can be completed without any further study, so embrace them and you will prevent one of the worst nightmares of your life – a Gmail breaking and entering!

1. 2-Step Verification

To combat the growing account theft issues, Google has introduced a security feature which will greatly strengthen your account: 2-step Verification. In general, it adds an extra layer of securityby enquiring a code that will be sent to your phone every time you request for the account access, thus making it impossible for anyone to hack into your account without your phone.

Sounds problematic? Probably not. The awesome thing is that the setup is fairly easy, you just need to visit the setup page and follow a series of simple instructions, and that’s all, you are good to go! In case you need any troubleshooting in the future, you can also visit the Help page to seek for a solution.

With this 2-step verification, you can even create a backup phone number and printable backup codes as alternatives to access your account if you lose your phone. For applications that cannot request for the verification code, you can also create an application-specific password for them. So basically your account will be inpenetrable, unless your closed ones betray you.

It might feel a bit annoying the first few times, but it beats getting your account hacked and then getting blackmailed to regain access to your own email account, doesn’t it?

2. Enable HTTPS Security

When it comes to accessing your Gmail account in public wireless or non-encrypted networks,HTTPS could mean your security. Leaving HTTPS disabled will only make it easier for attackers to crack open a path into your Gmail account. HTTPS is enabled by default, but past experience has taught me that it’s always better to perform a check to ensure that the HTTPS option is on.

To do the check, log into your Gmail account. A big gear-like icon will appear on the top right side of the interface. Click on the gear icon > Settings > General > Browser Connection and see whether the option, “Always use HTTPS” is checked. Remember to save the changes!

By doing this, your account is potected by a secure protocol that provides authenticated and encrypted communication. Oh, if you’re doing this on public computer, do remember to log out of your Gmail account after using it!

3. Check Granted Account Access

The first thing you must check to see if you have suspicious activities happening in your Gmail account, is probably your granted account access settings. I guess if a hacker had a chance to infiltrate into your account, he will probably add his own created fake mail account into your Gmail for easier future access, or for a re-hacking session if his other tricks were exposed and removed.

Well how can he do it? It’s really easy, he just has to hack into your Gmail account, click on the gear-like icon, select the Settings > Accounts and Import > Grant access to your account, then add any fake email account into it. Now that you know the route, it’s your turn to perform the steps mentioned above, except that instead of adding account, you have to check if there’s any account you didn’t authorize access to your Gmail.

Also, be sure that the option, “Mark conversation as read when opened by others” is checked, so whenever someone is reading your mails without authorization, you will know about it. Keep your eyes peel for this option.

4. Check Your Filter, Forwarding And POP/IMAP

In 2007, a famous designer, David Airey’s Gmail account is hijacked. To make the long story short, the hacking started when the user has its account signed on and he went to visit a bad site. The site added a backdoor to extract information from the Gmail account, and the backdoor is the Filter.Filters can potentially transfer emails as long as the victim has the filter in his account.

Therefore, it’s vital for you to actually check your account settings to delete suspicious filters. The check is real easy. As usual, you just need to log into your Gmail account, then after clicking the gear-like icon, choose Settings > Filters to check and delete the Filter you didn’t put there before.

You will also need to check the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab as well to confirm that there is no foreign forwarding address included in this tab apart from those assigned by you. Do perform a check on these stuff when you feel that something unusual is going on in your account. Your prevention methods will save you from experiencing problems in the future.

5. Revoke Unauthorized Access

Just like what you did to most applications in Facebook, you might have granted permission to any website or web application that requested for access into your Google Account, and that’s one of the hottest tricks that hackers use to access your Gmail.

Many Gmail users wouldn’t notice this security hole easily, as the option comes from your Google Account, not your Gmail account. And heck, it’s really easy to check if you’ve granted too much trust in them: log into your Google Account, then access this page, and you will see a list of sites and/or web applications that you’ve granted access to.

Click “Revoke Access” if you find any doubtful applications, and it’s a good practice to revoke access to any application that is unnecessary anymore, even if they are not harmful.

6. Track Account Activity

The best method to check if you’re actually hacked is to know your account activity. Fortunately your Gmail is created by the Google who can do wonders with security features. One proof of that is they have developed an Activity Information panel for you to track your account activities.

It’s really easy to access the Activity Information panel. We may have even scanned through it all the time without actually noticing it. Sign into your Gmail and on the bottom part of your mail, you could see the message saying “Last Account Activity: (number) minutes ago“; click on the “Detail” then you can see the access type, location & date that you have signed into Gmail in past few days.

Under the panel you can also set the Alert preference so Gmail could alert you when it detects certain unusual activities. Be sure to always check the Activity Information panel any time you notice any weird stuff happening in your Gmail.

7. Embrace Security Plugins

In the end, no matter how strong your security is, you might end up getting tricked by phishers and scammers. To combat these tricky situation, you can adopt browser plugins which will greatly strengthen your online security by aiding you in recognizing phishing sites and by removing threats, at the cost of hundreds of kilobytes!

Web of Trust (WOT) is an awesome browser plugin that checks whether you are accessing a bad site. When you entered a potentially bad site, WOT will show you a dark page covering the front page of the site, and inform you that the site has poor reputation, while blocking you from accessing the page. WOT is available for major browsers like Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and more!

On that matter, there is a double-edge sword called cookies. It stores certain user information and preferences for convenient site information access in future, but it also leaves a path for attackers to infiltrate your computer. That’s when BetterPrivacy comes to the rescue. Basically it removes special long-term cookies, thus greatly eliminating the chances for attackers to hack into your account.

Better Privacy is only available for Firefox, but you can get similar plugins by searching your browser’s plugin store with the term “privacy“. Other than that, you can browse the Firefox Add-ons Page, Chrome Web Store, Safari Extension Gallery or any other browser’s plugin store to get more security tools for your browser. But always remember to check the plugin before adopting it, as you might know, sometimes the help could be the culprit itself!

8. Enhance Security Question’s Answer

You will be surprised to the fact that hackers love to hack into your account from your mail recovery’s security question, than to confront your already strong password directly. It’s really reasonable though, since most websites teach you to create a strong password, but they didn’t tell you to spawn a tricky recovery question and/or answer.

For this one I will like to have my personal trick exposed to you: create a question with an absolutely wrong answer. It’s really simple, let’s say you made a question, “Who is the lover of my mother?” (please don’t use the combination of this question and the answer below since we covered it here), then you can put the answer as “my mother loves to eat burger“. Make it as nonsensical as possible, but keep the answer strongly related with your past, so you can remember it easily and only you will know the answer to it.

Once you got your own tricky question and answer, you can change your password recovery question by accessing your Gmail, clicking on the gear-like icon > Settings > Accounts and Import >Change password recovery options, then click “Edit” on the Security question option and replace it with your new question. One more job is done to fortify your Gmail account.

9. Create A Strong Password

Unless you’ve enabled 2-step verification, your password is the only entity that guards all your mails, contacts and sensitive information. In order to make your Gmail account more invulnerable to the hacker, you need to create an invulnerable password.

Avoid easy passwords like “iloveyou” or “password” or “1q2w3e4r“, all of these can be easily hacked. That said, you shouldn’t create 3 kinds of password, which are listed as below:

• Password which consists of words that can be found in dictionaries.
• Password which consists of words only or numbers only.
• Password which consists of your name or any personal information existed on web.

Now on the strong password creation, that’s a great memory trick called Mnemonic, in which you utilize your brain function to remember a password. Let’s say you want to create a long password, you can use a sentence like “icreatedthisaccountin2012“. But the password is too long and it still can be hacked easily, so you can take the first letter of every word and combine with the numbers to become something like “ictai2012“.

Well, it’s not really a strong password, so you should add in your own “unique symbol” like @ on every 2 letters/numbers, which becomes “ic@ta@i2@01@2” (please don’t adopt this password since we explained it here). This should look safe, and it takes short time to master.

Be creative! Otherwise you can go hardcore by creating 24 keys password with random words, numbers and symbols, and try to memorize it every day. Normally this only costs you around a week to get well-accustomed with it. You’ll be surprised at how fast you can memorize it since your brain is forced to retrieve this essential information every time you want to access your important account.

After you’ve set up your password, you can test your password’s strength directly though The Password Meter, and also possibly obtain some valuable tips from the site.

10. And Never Trust Anyone

Even (and especially) when you receive emails from your loved ones, because their account might be hacked and those emails are actually sent not by them and without their permission. I believe that most people already know about this but I feel it important to list this advice down nonetheless.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

The fact is that I can’t really count how many scam or phishing mails I’ve received from my friends’ hacked accounts. Fortunately I was calm enough to not open the “I love you” email, but there could be certain mails like “Robbed in China” scams in which "your friend" asks for your emergency help, and these are the ones that could really trick you as the request for help is coming from your dear friend.

Normally your first reaction would be to ignore the mail, but if you’re really curious about the situation, then reach out to the friend or his/her family members to verify the crisis before extending any help . Otherwise, you’re the one who will face the crisis, so please keep the warning in at the back of your mind any time!

Conclusion

Ther is one more truth that you might find disturbing: if a professional hacker really wants to hack into your account, there’s basically no way for you to prevent the attack. However, if you do your best to prevent the possible methods of attacks, then the chance of your account being hacked will be greatly decreased. Usually the thief won’t invest too much time on a random account.

Personally I prefer the combination of the 2-step verification and Web Of Trust add-on, since the thief cannot access your account if he doesn’t have your phone and the WOT would stop you from visiting a page and making yourself a victim so easily.

Have a better tip or thought on securing everyone’s Gmail account? Feel free to expose them in the comments!

Create Beautiful Presentations Easily With Slidebean

Presentations are part and parcel of our lives. Whether it’s a university assignment, monthly sales meeting or pitching a product to potential investors, a presentation has to look good and have great content. But there are always times when it’s difficult, if not impossible, to balance the two. Maybe you just don’t have an eye for design, or maybe you don’t have enough time to get both the content and design of your slides up to par. Well, that’s all a thing of the past with Slidebean.

Slidebean is a cloud-based app, currently in beta, that lets users create beautiful presentations quickly and easily. Slidebean changes the way you create presentations, by encouraging users tofocus solely on the content, while the app handles the design side of the equation. No more having to worry about trying to balance content and design. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in using, read on.

Getting Started With Slidebean

As usual, the first step is to register with Slidebean. You can either create an account or log in using your Facebook or Twitter account.

A nice touch is the fact that registering also logs you in instantly, without having to wait for a verification email or anything of the sort. Once you’re logged in, you’re taken to your Dashboard, which is where you create new presentations and manage the ones you’ve already created.

Creating A Presentation With Slidebean

Slidebean makes creating a presentation very easy. Clicking on Create new presentation in the Dashboard will begin the creation process.

The first thing you’ll be asked to do is to input the title of your presentation.

Then, Slidebean will ask you where the presentation is taking place. You have a choice of One on One, Classroom, Meeting, Auditorium or Online.

If you choose Classroom or Auditorium, there’ll be an additional screen where you’re asked to inputthe name of the institution where the presentation is taking place.

Once you’re done inputting this basic information, it’s time to get started on the content.

There are six types of slides that you can insert into a Slidebean presentation. They are:

• Header
• Text
• Bullets
• Quote
• Image
• Video

There’s also a Chart option available in the slide creator, but this slide type isn’t available yet.

Adding content to your presentation is simply a matter of selecting a slide type and inputting any required information. Here’s what inputting content into a Text slide looks like:

You have a few options when it comes to inserting images into your presentation. You have the usual options to upload your own images or link images already online, but Slidebean also has animage search function powered by 500px. If you don’t have the image you need with you, you’ll probably be able to find something suitable using the search function.

Designing And Presenting Your Presentation

Once you’re done creating the content of your presentation, it’s time to select the design. Just click on the Continue To Design link at the bottom and you’ll be taken to the design screen. You have a choice of six different designs and 11 different colour schemes to fit any situation.

After you’re satisfied with the content and look of your presentation, you can either download the presentation or present it directly from Slidebean. At the Dashboard, just mouse over a presentation and click on Present if you want to present it straight from Slidebean.

If you want to download it, click on More then click on Download. Slidebean will send you a link to a .PDF download. Be warned, though, that the .PDF will not contain any videos, animations or stock photos from 500px.

You can also share your presentation online. Just press the Share button and you’ll be given a public link, as well as buttons for sharing your presentation on Twitter and Facebook.

Conclusion

Slidebean is a great tool for creating beautiful presentations without the headache of dealing with a complex interface or having to come up with a great-looking design. Slidebean is free to use, but there’s also a paid plan that adds support for secure private presentations as well as the ability topresent offline. The paid plan costs $4.99 a month.

How To Send Mass Personalized Mail Using Thunderbird

Sending mass mail with personal and friendlier touch is quite a tedious job as you need to change some of the variables in the mail content. For example, you’re hosting a birthday party and need to send out invitations but you do not want your mail invitation to sound like it’s a spam or you want to personally address the person using their name in your invitation. In order to do so, you need to send one mail at one time since you need to change the variables.

This is where Mozilla Thunderbird and a little add-on of it – Mail Merge, excels at its best. With this two tool you don’t have to keep on changing the variables. Just create a spreadsheet and draft a mail, and let this two tools do the hardwork for you.

Recommended Reading: How To Import Windows Mail (.Eml) To Mac (.Mbx)

Install Mail Merge

First thing you have to do is to download Mozilla Thunderbird. After installation, launch Thunderbird and it will ask for your email account. You can create a new one or use an exisiting account of yours.

Now, to install the add ons – Mail Merge. On the upper right side, you can see a "list" icon. Click on it and then click on add-ons.

On the add-ons manager page, search for Mail Merge. Click install and restart Thunderbird for the add-on to work.

1. Create A CSV File

The first thing that need to be done before you can send out your mails is to create a CSV file. To create a CSV file you can use any spreadsheet tool, if you have Microsoft Excel, you can use that.

The first row of the spreadsheet is used to enter the variables you want to use, for example – first name, last name, mail and etc. After you’re done, save the spreadsheet in CSV format.

2. Drafting Personalized Mail

Click on File > New Message > Message or press Ctrl + N

Enter the variables at places that you want the values to appear. Each variable should be enclosed using the double curly braces, for example {{FIRST NAME}}. Enter variable exactly the same as in the CSV file, this includes spelling, spacing and capitalization.

After you’re done with message creation, click on File > Mail Merge. Set Source > CSV , Deliver Mode > Send Later and Format > Both.

Under CSV section, for File, click on browse to locate the CSV file (spreadsheet) you did earlier. After you’re done click "OK".

After clicking "OK", your mail and CSV file will merge. Earlier, we set "Deliver Mode" to send later, so the mails can be found in Local Folders > Outbox. Click on the mail and you’ll notice that your variables has been replaced with the values in your CSV file.

To send out the mails, click on the "list" icon on the upper right, File > Send Unsent Messages.

And voila! you’re done. With this trick you can stop worrying about sounding automated when sending mass mail and sending personalized mail is no longer a tedious task.