Top all-time · #268
Amit Agarwal
Personal blog · labnol.orgproductivityweb
Amit Agarwal writes Digital Inspiration, a personal blog at labnol.org about productivity and web. Since 2007, 178 different Hacker News readers have linked it 259 times, most often “Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Docs”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link labnol.org for practical how-to tips and Google Apps Script recipes: Gmail search, Chrome and Google tools, and scripts for monitoring and exporting. Commenters use it as a reference for these tasks.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter says the site is well written and that they trust what they find there.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Digital Inspiration offers tech how-to guides, software tips, and video tutorials around all things tech and productivity.
Most-linked posts?
- Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Docs5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-03-27
- Gmail Size Search – Find All Emails with Large Attachments (2019)3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-23
- How to Create a Mail Merge with Gmail and Google Docs3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-03-26
- How Does WordPress Make Money?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-03-01
- How to Use Google as a Proxy Server3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-07-15
- How to Easily Unsubscribe from Bulk Emails in Gmail – Unroll.me Alternative3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-04-23
- Using Outlook.com with your own Web Domain2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-12-07
- Track Gmail messages with Google Analytics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-03-31
- Show HN: Google Alerts for YouTube Videos2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-21
- Useful Bookmarklets for your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch Browser2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-01
What Hacker News says?
Check out the periodic table of SEO: http://searchengineland.com/seotable Kalzmeus on SEO (click around his blog for more, guy's a genius): http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ Also some quick, simple advice: 1. Blog 2/3 times per week minimum. Target a single, relevant keyword per blog post (relevant to your domain). The post title, H1s, H2s etc, image tags should all contain your primary keyword. Blog…
Comment linking /internet/personalized-mail-merge-in-gmail/20981/
on “Google Reader shutting down”Submitted Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Docs as a story · 195 points
HN discussionYou are incorrect. Chrome was widely bundled with third party installers for much of its history. https://www.osnews.com/story/25184/adobe-tricks-users-into-d... https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/201... https://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?style=246&... > nearly 10 % of the installers came with a third-party browser (e.g. Chrome) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S…
Comment linking /software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123
on “Android 17 is the first since 3.x to add new APIs without releasing to the AOSP”Submitted Passwords For Your Facebook Account as a story · 155 points
HN discussionProbably. Wow, you used the word "probably". I guess you aren't aware of the many cases wherein when a Chrome extension gets popular, indie developers are contacted by some company and many have sold their extension are let them collect data. Also yhis data gets sold to 3rd parties,many such cases with small-medium websites have occured. Remember Unroll.me Also, Google knows how to make profiles and it knows the imp…
Comment linking /internet/sold-chrome-extension/28377/
on “Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics”Submitted Using Outlook.com with your own Web Domain as a story · 98 points
HN discussion> Seriously was this ever possible? Yes. Many years ago the "..." menu on each search result had a "Block this domain" button, and you could manage your blocklist from your profile. I can't find much information about it online, but this page from 2012[1] mentions it was already disabled: Google also offers a web dashboard for manually blocking spam websites, one URL at a time. You can add up to 500 different websit…
Comment linking /internet/block-websites-from-google-search/24821/
on “uBlacklist: Blocks specific sites from appearing in Google search results”Submitted How to Find the Wi-Fi Password of Your Current Network as a story · 91 points
HN discussionAt that time, when Problogger started showing off the Google AdSense checks, many blogs also got “inspired,” and AdSense became the default for blogs. I still remember getting my first check all the way from Mountain View, which takes about 30-40 days to reach my home in India. I never encash that one, just like the few others that serve as nostalgia pieces for my Time Capsule: the first DCMA letter, the tiny dollar…
Comment linking /
on “Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?”Submitted How Does WordPress Make Money? as a story · 82 points
HN discussionHere's an open source Google Script that lets you easily unsubscribe from bulk emails in Gmail. Source on Github. https://www.labnol.org/internet/gmail-unsubscribe/28806/
Comment linking /internet/gmail-unsubscribe/28806/
on “Uber CEO Plays with Fire”Submitted Advice to read before buying a course from Udemy as a story · 62 points
HN discussionOpen source gmail script: https://www.labnol.org/internet/gmail-unsubscribe/28806/ Not by me. No affiliation. Found it after this news. [edit: typo]
Comment linking /internet/gmail-unsubscribe/28806/
on “Uber CEO Plays with Fire”Submitted How to reduce your Amazon S3 bill as a story · 49 points
HN discussionThe primary reason for Chrome’s success was literal billions of dollars in pervasive advertising (I remember years of Chrome TV ads and billboards), ads plastered all over Google’s products saying “better in Chrome”, and product bundling into many many pieces of software a user might download (e.g. Acrobat[1]). That’s not to say that it wasn’t a technically good product, but it wasn’t so much better than the competi…
Comment linking /software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123/
on “Mourning Google”Submitted Use an Old Linux Computer to Put your Baby to Sleep as a story · 35 points
HN discussionI use Google apps script for it. A filter labels a specific email. A timed trigger runs a script. Script fetches all emails with that filter. Script runs in loop. Convers each message into a blob, blob gets converted to pdf. Pdf gets saved in google drive. Email gets label removed. My code was based on this https://www.labnol.org/code/19117-save-gmail-as-pdf
Comment linking /code/19117-save-gmail-as-pdf
on “Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs”Submitted 0.01% of Wikipedia as a printed book as a story · 31 points
HN discussionGoogle doesn't really have any right to complain as they've had Google Chrome and the Google search bar as drive by installs in third party software installers https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/201...
Comment linking /software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123/
on “Microsoft to force Chrome default search to Bing via Office365 ProPlus installer”Submitted How to Hide your Email Address on Web Pages as a story · 28 points
HN discussionhttps://www.labnol.org/internet/disposable-email-address/280...
Comment linking /internet/disposable-email-address/28072/
on “My small revenge on Apple”Submitted 5 Things Yahoo Search Can Do That Google Cannot as a story · 19 points
HN discussionHere in India, Google has run a full-page print ad recently. http://www.labnol.org/india/google-chrome-ads-in-indian-news...
Comment linking /india/google-chrome-ads-in-indian-newspapers/17830/
on “Internet Explorer falls below 50% market share”Submitted Marissa Mayer Keynote on How Google Works as a story · 18 points
HN discussionReminds me of the infamous Rapidshare Captcha with cats. [1] There were hard to solve. However, also for humans. [1]: http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/cats-inside-rapidsh...
Comment linking /internet/favorites/cats-inside-rapidshare-captcha-images/3064/
on “How not to design a CAPTCHA”Submitted How to use Google AdSense Ads on Responsive Websites as a story · 17 points
HN discussionReminds me of a similar service that would email you a pdf of a site. edit: http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18...
Comment linking /internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18117/
on “Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan”Submitted Blog Incorrectly Gets Labeled as a 'Content Farm' by Google as a story · 17 points
HN discussionAmit from https://www.labnol.org/ has had a similar tool for 6 years - https://github.com/labnol/passwords
Comment linking /
on “Lesspass – open-source stateless password manager”Submitted Microsoft Word Tips and Tricks to Get Things Done Faster as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
