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The Geekcast #112
The Geekcast #112 
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.co
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Items of Note: This is a quick edition of The Geekcast. Enjoy a little tech and an easter egg at the end of the show.
**************
Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
Test a geek: Three questions, three answers. Enjoy a brand new edition of our quiz segment.
**************
How To: Free up space in GMail
GMail is fantastic in the amount of storage space you have but at times you want to clear it out. There are filters you can use to help delete messages off of GMail but not delete something important.
1. Start big and narrow down. The trick that works best is to first delete stuff that you absolutely know you would never miss and then narrow down deletions to stuff more on the borderline. It's both safer and faster.
2. Add labels to certain senders to avoid losing important emails. You know there are people whose emails you want to keep about 99% of the time. Create a filter that only shows messages that are from that certain group of people. You can use Gmail's advanced search operators to do so using the "or" (|) operator. For example, From: john | paul | ringo | george returns all emails from either John, Paul, Ringo or George. Set your filter to label those messages with a good, safe name. I used "nodelete."
Careful: Although the OR operator should include all messages from everyone included in the search, it acts a little quirky and sometimes leaves out messages that should, in theory, be included. Since you're doing this for the sheer purpose of protecting your messages, it might be safer to create your filters one name at a time. Now you can exclude all messages in this label from your upcoming search and destroy missions.
3. Eliminate heinous offenders. Although the has:attachment search operator yields a good list of space-hogging messages, it does not give you the option to sort by file size. So, with 2.7GB of email to sort through, it's pretty worthless. But, you can search by file type and narrow down file sizes a bit that way. You can use the following search phrases:
filename:wmv -label:nodelete
filename:mov -label:nodelete
filename:mp3 -label:nodelete (this one can be weak since MP3 is common in text)
filename:doc -label:nodelete
filename:pdf -label:nodelete
For each of those phrases, go through the message and decide what to delete. This is the most time-consuming step, but it's not that hard. Remember that if you press shift while selecting two messages, Gmail will select all messages in between. That's useful for big chunks of messages to go.
4. Delete stupid forwards. You should have a filter to label all Fw:, Fwd:, Forward:, etc. emails with a Forwards label. Create such a filter by simply specifying the common forward subject lines listed above. Then, use this search string: label:forward -label:nodelete and start deleting manually.
5. Delete emails from people that send you nothing but junk.
6. Carefully delete emails from those people in your nodelete label.
7. Empty trash and delete spam. Gmail does not do this automatically, so don't forget to throw out the trash when you're done and go ahead and empty your spam while you're at it (even though spam doesn't affect your quota). This also gives you one last chance to give your deletions a glance to see if you deleted anything you didn't mean to delete.
Tip via lifehacker.com
**************
Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.co
**************
Items of Note: This is a quick edition of The Geekcast. Enjoy a little tech and an easter egg at the end of the show.
**************
Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
Test a geek: Three questions, three answers. Enjoy a brand new edition of our quiz segment.
**************
How To: Free up space in GMail
GMail is fantastic in the amount of storage space you have but at times you want to clear it out. There are filters you can use to help delete messages off of GMail but not delete something important.
1. Start big and narrow down. The trick that works best is to first delete stuff that you absolutely know you would never miss and then narrow down deletions to stuff more on the borderline. It's both safer and faster.
2. Add labels to certain senders to avoid losing important emails. You know there are people whose emails you want to keep about 99% of the time. Create a filter that only shows messages that are from that certain group of people. You can use Gmail's advanced search operators to do so using the "or" (|) operator. For example, From: john | paul | ringo | george returns all emails from either John, Paul, Ringo or George. Set your filter to label those messages with a good, safe name. I used "nodelete."
Careful: Although the OR operator should include all messages from everyone included in the search, it acts a little quirky and sometimes leaves out messages that should, in theory, be included. Since you're doing this for the sheer purpose of protecting your messages, it might be safer to create your filters one name at a time. Now you can exclude all messages in this label from your upcoming search and destroy missions.
3. Eliminate heinous offenders. Although the has:attachment search operator yields a good list of space-hogging messages, it does not give you the option to sort by file size. So, with 2.7GB of email to sort through, it's pretty worthless. But, you can search by file type and narrow down file sizes a bit that way. You can use the following search phrases:
filename:wmv -label:nodelete
filename:mov -label:nodelete
filename:mp3 -label:nodelete (this one can be weak since MP3 is common in text)
filename:doc -label:nodelete
filename:pdf -label:nodelete
For each of those phrases, go through the message and decide what to delete. This is the most time-consuming step, but it's not that hard. Remember that if you press shift while selecting two messages, Gmail will select all messages in between. That's useful for big chunks of messages to go.
4. Delete stupid forwards. You should have a filter to label all Fw:, Fwd:, Forward:, etc. emails with a Forwards label. Create such a filter by simply specifying the common forward subject lines listed above. Then, use this search string: label:forward -label:nodelete and start deleting manually.
5. Delete emails from people that send you nothing but junk.
6. Carefully delete emails from those people in your nodelete label.
7. Empty trash and delete spam. Gmail does not do this automatically, so don't forget to throw out the trash when you're done and go ahead and empty your spam while you're at it (even though spam doesn't affect your quota). This also gives you one last chance to give your deletions a glance to see if you deleted anything you didn't mean to delete.
Tip via lifehacker.com
**************
Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************