How to block people on Google+ from emailing you 7BE3DQXW6U4C

One of Google's primary goals, besides knowing more about you than your better half, is to integrate the company's Google+ service into its other services.
Since Google+ is not as popular as Facebook, some say it is a ghost town but that has changed a bit over the past year or so, Google attempts to increase its popularity by making it mandatory for many of the company's other products.
Just recently, Google+ commenting was rolled out on YouTube, the world's most popular video hosting platform, and while Google claimed it would improve the commenting culture on the site, it actually made it worse.
Yesterday the company announced that it has started to integrated yet another feature to make Google+ more appealing to users.
The new Gmail integration means that anyone on Google+ can email you even if they do not know your email address. While your email address is not shared with those people directly, it means that anyone who has a connection to you on the site, meaning has you in their circles, can send you an email without knowing your address.
This works only on the Gmail web client for know and not on other clients (e.g. the mobile app). As long as someone on Google+ has you in one of their circles, they can mail you.
If you have enabled the new Gmail inbox category system, then you will notice that messages from primary contacts, people you have in your circles, land in the primary folder on Gmail. Messages from people that you do not have in your circles land in the social category instead.
If an email arrives, you can decided to block future messages, allow future messages, or report spam and abuse.
The issue
This looks great on paper, as it improves the message sending (even though you could just fire off a private message instead).
We have identified two issues with the new system.

• First, it is opt-out, meaning that it is enabled by default.
• Second, since anyone can email you, you may see an increase in spam or other unsolicited emails.

The fix
You can disable the feature on Gmail. To do so, open the settings on the Gmail website. Here you find the new Email via Google+ option which defines which people can email you via your Google+ profile.
The default is set to anyone, which you can change to extended circles (meaning your connections and their connections), your circles, or no one.
If you set the preference to no one, you effectively eliminate the possibility that someone on Google+ uses the new feature to send you an email.
They may be able to contact you in other ways though on the site itself, for instance via the site's own "send a message" feature that you find on profile pages.

7BE3DQXW6U4C

Unshorten: speed up the opening of short urls on Android

Whenever you try to load a short url resource on Android, one that will redirect you to the original address in the process, you will be taken to the system's default browser first before you are taken to the native application handling those links.

Say, you spot a link on Twitter that points to Instagram. Without Unshorten, activating that link opens your web browser of choice first, where the link is expanded before it can be opened in the native app.
With Unshorten, the link on Twitter is automatically resolved so that it is directly opened using the native Instagram application.
Here is how it works in detail.
Once you have installed the Unshorten application on your Android device, supported are all versions of the operating system from 2.2 on, you will notice that it adds itself as a potential handler for select short url services such as those used by Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, Google, Facebook, WordPress or The Verge.

When you tap on a supported short url, a "complete action using" screen is displayed to you. Here you need to select Unshorten from the list of available options. You can use the service only this one time, or select the Always option to make it the default handler for these types of links permanently.
You can tap on sample links that the application lists when you start it to make it the default handler for these types of links.
The core benefit that Unshorten provides you with is speed. Once you have configured your Android device to open those links using the application, you will save time each time such a link gets opened on your system as the web browser middle-man is bypassed automatically.
So who is this for?
If you run native apps for supported services, say Instagram or Twitter, and come into contact with short urls regularly, you will benefit from Unshorten as it speeds up the process of opening those links for you.
Unshorten supports a wide variety of online services that make use of short url services, and more are added by its author regularly so that any missing ones will be available eventually. If you use at least one of those services natively, and come in contact with short urls of that service, then it is very likely that you will find this app useful.