July 2014 – NCU Training

5 useful things Google can do (and a couple of useless ones)

Lets face it, Google is helpful. I sometimes ponder about life before Google, about those arguments with friends that used to last days or those pub quizzes where only the geography buff knew the capital of Indonesia. Google is something familiar, a way of life (of sorts) and having great search skills can really open you up to a universe of useful and useless information.

Here are some things you might not have known Google can do.

1. Google is a translator

2. Google is a currency converter

3. Google is a calculator

4. Google is a Weight converter

5. Google is a timer

Did you know there is a hidden game inside Google called “ZERG RUSH”?

Search Zerg rush in Google to start a hidden game, quickly click the incoming 0’s to kill them before they destroy your search results.

Google will also tell you what time sunrise is at!

So there you have it, some things to explore in your next searches. Remember, there is a universe of information out there and your search engine is your vehicle. Learning how to correctly search and developing your search skills will greatly increase your chances of finding the information you want.

Keep on searching

Keith Byrne

Digital media manager

NCU Training

How to share files with Google drive

As we know Google drive is a great place to store your files online for easy access from any location, but what if you wanted to share the files stored in your drive? In this tutorial I will discuss two ways you can share the files stored on your Google drive.

Sharing files is a very useful feature built in to your Google drive, you might ask why? well imagine a job opportunity arises that requires immediate action. But wait! your CV is at home on your computer! not to worry there’s hope, you have a copy of your CV on your Google drive. Logging in on any computer will give you access to your Drive and to your files. You can share your files in two ways that only differ mildly.

Sharing directly from your Drive: This essentially means that the file remains in your Drive and you share access to the file with the recipient. You can share with multiple recipients at once, set permissions (who can edit, who can read etc) and monitor who has downloaded the file.
Attaching files from your drive to an email: In much the same way as you might attach a file from your computer to your email you can attach files from your Drive as an email attachment. (you will be given to option here to either share from your drive or send as attachment)

1. Sharing directly from your Drive

Access your drive from the Google apps symbol (small grid of black squares in the right hand corner) and click Drive. Once in your Drive, tick the little box on the left of the file you want to share (tick multiple boxes to share more than one file at a time)

Then click on the share button top middle left.

once you click this you will then see the share box appear with options for sharing this file. The highlighted blue text is the address directly to the file.

The middle text will show you who has access to the file already. If you click the mouse in to the box under where it says invite people you will see more options appear.

You can type in the email address or addresses in to the invite people box (for multiple address separate with a comma). You can edit the permissions for the recipient/recipients with the drop down options. You can add a personal message if you want to but not necessary and you also have options to send a copy of the email to yourself or paste the actual file in to an email to send. When you are finished you can click send to send. You can go back in to this box after you have send to edit the permissions etc if needed.

NOTE* If you delete a file from your Drive it will in turn effect your share options and people you’ve shared it with will not be able to get the file after it’s gone.

2. Attaching files from your drive to an email

From the main Google page, click on the apps icon (small grid of black squares in the right hand corner). Click on Gmail icon. When in your Gmail click on compose on the left hand side at the top of the page. A little box will open in the bottom right hand corner of your page. Enter the email you wish to send the file to, the subject and your email message. At the bottom of this email window you will see a small paper clip icon (this is the attachments icon and is used to add attachments directly from your computer) If you hover over this icon you will see the Google Drive icon appear.

Clicking this will bring up your Drive attachment options box

You have lots of attachment options here and you can go the traditional attachment route by adding it from your computer if you wish but clicking on the Drive option on the left hand side will allow you to add files from your Drive.

You then select the file or files (holding the CTRL key whilst clicking files will allow you select more than one, this works elsewhere also) then you can click insert. You might get a dialogue box saying you haven’t shared this item on your Drive but you can click add anyway and it will add your files directly to the email. You can now click send and find the nearest person to high five! You are now a Google drive sharing ninja.

What is Google drive and how do I use it?

In short, Google drive is Google’s cloud storage platform. You might have heard the words “cloud storage” before and been confused but these are just marketing buzz words. Cloud storage simply means that instead of your files being stored on your home computer, they are stored in a remote location on one of Google’s computers or servers. There is nothing new here really if you’ve had an email account with Google or any third party (hotmail etc), your emails are already stored outside of your home computer. This is why you can access your emails from anywhere.

In the diagram we have three devices in different locations all able to access the same files because they are stored on the Google server.

Having your files stored externally has many benefits.

You can access your files from any computer / smartphone / Tablet
You can recover your files easily (if your computer is stolen or gets broken)
You can free up space on your home computer (every Google account comes with 15GB cloud storage but you can add more if you need it for a small fee)

Google drive sounds great, but how do I use it?

To start with Google drive is part of Google’s apps so you are going to need a Google account. To sign up for a Google account go to www.google.ie and look in the right hand corner. Click Sign in.

Once you’ve clicked sign in you will be taken to a sign in page, below this it will say create an account

You can then fill out the form to create an account. Once you have this done you will have access to Google services. Go back to Google homepage and click on the small grid of black squares.

this will open Google’s app panel and you can click on the Google drive icon.

Once inside Google drive there are a number of things you can do.

If your internet browser is Google chrome you can upload whole folders of files otherwise you will have to upload on a file by file basis. Documents created inside of Google drive will auto-save which is a very handy feature if your doing a CV, college work etc as you will never lose work again. You can also export the file to Microsoft word for some more intense editing if needed.

This should get you started with Google drive. In the next Blog post I will cover sharing files from your drive and also how to attach files from your drive to an email and send.