Rob’s Personal Aggregator

Last week we announced that you can edit details about a business listing directly through the Place Page. But sometimes you may find a place in Google Maps that isn’t quite positioned where it should be. Let’s say you know that your favorite pizzeria is near the corner but the marker for it appears further down the block. You want all hungry pizza-cravers to be able to find this great spot, so you want to make sure the marker leads them directly to the storefront. You could use our map editing feature (the “move marker” edit) to move it to the right place, but moving the marker to the right location is not always that easy, especially in denser urban areas, if the only reference you have are maps or satellite images because you can only get a view from above. So now we have added one more very handy reference for making a map marker edit: Street View images. It makes the edit much easier.

Let me show you how the editing feature works.

When you find a place that is in a wrong location, click on the marker and get an infowindow open as what you did before.

Posted by Jie Shao, Software Engineer

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Posted by Emmanuel Pellereau, Software Engineer

My little sister recently setup her Gmail account to retrieve messages from her school address, so she can check all of her email accounts in one place. She no longer has to constantly log in to two email programs, and she likes using Gmail’s powerful interface for all her mail.

However, sometimes she knows an email has already been sent to her school address, and she just can’t wait for the next scheduled fetch to have it show up in her Gmail inbox. As any big brother would, I tried to solve this issue for her and millions of Gmail users.

Turn on “Refresh POP accounts” from the Labs tab under Settings, and the refresh link at the top of your inbox will not only update your inbox with your new Gmail messages, it will also fetch messages from any other accounts which you have set up.

Try it out, and let us know if you have any feedback.

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Gmail uses a common timing algorithm to fetch messages from POP accounts, one you can somewhat game, but sometimes you want to get at a message you know has arrived. A new Labs feature adds a manual refresh button for POP grabbing.

Head to your Labs settings and enable the “Refresh POP accounts” lab, then hit “Save changes” at the bottom or top of the page. From then on, you’ll see a “Refresh” link to the right of your inbox buttons. Hit it and Gmail will poll any email accounts you’ve set it up to fetch from. Want to get started importing your other mail accounts into Gmail? Check out Gina’s guide.

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One drop. Five minutes in a pocket with your keys. Three months of regular use. This is all it takes for an iPhone’s backplate to go from a mirror-like shine to a scratched-to-hell eyesore. Here’s how to fix it.

MacRumors forum member Shenaniganz08 salvaged an iPhone 3G from eBay, sanding, buffing and polishing it back from the brink of a life in a case, which would be dumb, because cases are dumb. (I mean, not really, but that’s kind of the premise of this whole process, right? Anyway.) Here’s what you need:

• Sandpaper 320(or 500),800,1000,1500,2000,2500,3000 grit
• 3M Rubbing compound
• Machine Polisher ( Power Drill or small buffer)
• Microfibers
• Sticky tack and or tape

What's great about this is that you don't need to buy almost anything. Half the stuff you need—the microfibers, the polishing disc and the rubbing compound—is included in a $15 3M headlight restoration kit , and you can use just about any crappy household drill for the buffing stage.

In any case, the results are stunning, and the documentation meticulous, so if you’ve got a few hours, a few bucks and an iPhone that looks like a piece of shitty sea glass, why not? [Macrumors via Gadget Lab]

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If you’d like a clever and cheap way to keep windows, goggles, and other glass and plastic surfaces from fogging up, you can use a potato to keep the vision-blocking condensation at bay.

Photo by jimmihomeschoolmom.

We’re almost out of the so-cold-your-breath-fogs-the-windshield weather in most of the US but this trick works for everything from windshields to swim goggles. Over at the how-to site wikiHow they’ve shared a guide to using a cut potato to keep your windows fog-free.

1. Cut a raw potato in half. Be sure to use a clean potato, so wash it first if it is coated in soil. This is a good opportunity to use up an old potato that has started to sprout and is past its best.
2. Rub the cut part of one half potato on the window. This will clean it and leave a layer that will prevent fog from forming on the window.
3. Use the other half if needed. You can also cut off dirtied slices and keep using the existing half if wished.
4. Leave to dry without touching.

We thought it sounded too cheap and easy to actually work so we grabbed a potato and went and rubbed a raw slice on the shower door, window, and mirror in the bathroom. After a few minutes of steamy hot water the surfaces did in fact remain fog free. How well it lasts over time and how it compares to a $7 bottle of anti-fog spray from your local sporting goods store is open for debate.

Have a clever use to share? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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