Tips&Tricks Archives - Guy Shahine's Blog

The plus (+) in Gmail

If you have a gmail account like the cool kids these days, then there is an amazing feature that you didn’t know about, it’s the + feature (I’m not sure what google officially calls it), I also like to call it “catch the bastards” feature (explanation coming later).

So what is it about? Basically, you’re allowed to add a keyword, an identifier, a spell, whatever you want to call it after your username in your email address where you separate them with a ‘+’ (plus character).

Here’s an example: Let’s say I want to sign up to a new website, for instance, https://www.resoltz.com. My email address is “gshahine@gmail.com”, my username is “gshahine” so when I get asked to enter my email address, I set it to “gshahine+resoltz@gmail.com”. Now, when I receive emails from https://www.resoltz.com, they show up like this

How awesome is that??? I would kiss a goat right now (I look for the slightest excuse by the way Smile )

Now, you might ask me “But Guy, how would this make my life easier?”. Well, few things off the top of my head:

Making your life easier is up to you and it’s all in your head.
It allows you to label emails easier, for instance, adding rules for “+family”, “+friends”, “+FYI”…etc
It might allow you to identify the bastards that sell your email address to entities that want to you suck your fat (ladies) or enlarge your penis (dudes).
You can sound cheesy, where let’s say a beautiful lady that you just met asked for your email address to stay in touch, “gshahine+inlove@gmail.com, bamm, next thing you’ll realize is having breakfast together.

The Awesome Shift+Right Click in Windows

Sometimes it’s the small things that matter, I use my computer on a daily basis, and the fact that I work at Microsoft, my primary operating system is definitely Windows.

Working with people that are part of the organization that built the Windows OS, sometimes you learn small tricks (also called hidden features) that make your life soooo much easier (Most of those tricks are in command prompt and visual studio). You might say, “well it’s probably documented somewhere”, or if you’re more geeky, you might say “ohhh http://lifehacker.com mentioned those tricks long time ago”. Sorry to disappoint you my friend, I’m that kind of a guy that never reads the instructions manual for pretty much anything. And on many occasions I challenge myself by even not looking at the Ikea instructions to put a desk together (I just remembered how many hours I’ve spent pulling things apart and starting all over because I realized towards the end that I’ve put some screws in the wrong spot *sigh*)

Anyway, back to our main topic that’s highlighted in the title, “What’s awesome about Shift+Right click?”. Well, instead of giving you the answer, let’s play one of my favorite games that’s usually featured in newspapers, and since we’re still on missing the right spot topic Smile , it’s called “Spot the differences” (I’ll make it easy, I promise)

ok, so here’s a snapshot for a right click on a text file in Windows 7

And here’s a snapshot of Shift+Right click on the same file

Did you see it? Com’on, try harder. Ok, I promised I’ll make it easy, notice that “Pin to Start Menu” and the sneaky “Copy as path”, and here’s an example of what get’s copied to your clipboard when you use the copy as path [“C:UsersgshahineDesktopSomeFile.txt”]. The copy as path feature is really useful when you want to share with your coworkers a file location on a shared folder or a file location in your source control enlistment. I can’t even count on my hands how many times other coworkers were surprised when they saw me pulling a copy as path while working on the projector. (Well, probably 4 or 5 times, but it sounds cheesier when you use the “can’t count on my fingers” expression, it’s makes 11 sound like sooo much Smile )

Not impressed, try it on an Excel file and discover some goodies Smile . Still not impressed?? I’m sure you don’t even smile to a maple bar donut topped with bacon. It’s those small things that matter.