Google

  • April 27, 2008

    Google Reader

    A few weeks ago I made the switch from my longtime feed reader, Bloglines, to Google Reader. Bloglines has been growing stagnant, their new site has been in beta for quite some time now, and I feel like there were better features in feed readers out there. I’ve got to say I have been very happy with Google Reader.

    First off, I feel Google Reader (Reader) has be a better design. It’s much cleaner and laid out better than Bloglines. Bloglines gives me the same look and feel I’d get from using a site with frames. Reader also has a lot more information readily available; this info is easier to find because of the better design choices made by Google.

    Reader recommends feeds to you based on what you read. It also tells you your trends- IE how many stories you’ve read, which feeds you read the most and the % of stories from each feed you read. My favorite feature of Reader, however, is the shared feeds.

    Reader has a list of all my friends (from my Google Chat list) who also use Reader. If they share a particular story they like, it will show up in my reader under “Friends’ shared items.” I think this is a particularly cool features because it’s an easy way to share stories. Between this and staring items, I’m quickly moving away from using del.icio.us. If Google integrates a way to star websites not in your feed reader, I will probably drop del.icio.us all together. If there is a way to do so already, please let me know!

    Finally, with Google Gears, I don’t even need to be online to use Reader, which is an awesome feature. All-in-all my experience with Reader (as with every other Google product I use) is great. I’m very glad I made the switch and can’t see myself going back to Bloglines any time soon.

    UPDATE 5/6/08: It’s like Google is listening directly to me..

  • April 19, 2008

    Getting Things Done

    Lately there’s been a lot of talk of Getting Things Done, or GTD. Lifehacker recently asked the readers about the five best GTD apps. My feed reader has also featured numerous articles on the topic of GTD; so in traditional blogging fashion I thought I’d weigh in. My best GTD ‘app’ is Google.

    Really it’s broken down into three different, nicely integrated parts with Google as the main player. Google, Firefox, and Remember the Milk make my life significantly easier. With GCal, GMail, Google Notebook, and Remember the Milk I don’t need a desktop application. And each app is accessible from within the others. Remember the Milk even has a Firefox extension that integrates it with GMail so you can not only view or edit your tasks, but add an email right to your tasks list. And of course, we can’t forget Google Gears.

    Gears allows me to access sites like Remember the Milk, Google Reader, and Google Docs even when I don’t have an internet connection. If/when they integrate Google Calendar, it will be perfect; I won’t need a desktop calendar program (sidebar- GCal also autosyncs with my Blackberry, so I don’t need to connect it to my computer either).

    All in all, Google has made my life easier and is quickly replacing the desktop applications I use. I’ve even been considering using Google Docs instead of MS Office, but that probably isn’t likely- though I am using it more frequently.

  • December 20, 2007

    Google + Other Services

    RTM on GMail

    As you might have guessed, I am a huge fan of all things Google. In the last week or so I have come across some great things that make Google easily integrate with other services I use, making it so much better.

    Remember the Milk in GMail
    I’ve written about Remember the Milk before, and how I thought it was a great product. Recently they created a Firefox extension that makes it so much better by integrating it directly into the new version of GMail. It’s extremely robust and easy to use. They have a great write up about it over on the RTM blog. This will definitely get me using RTM again.
    DocSyncer
    DocSyncer is a web/desktop app that automatically synchronizes your Google Docs with the MS Office documents on your PC. This is a fantastic tool with great timing as I was recently trying to figure out a good way to do just this. The product is still in beta, but proves to be very useful.
    Google Sync for Blackberry
    With Google’s latest mobile update, it made GMail faster, Google Maps faster, and included Picasa in the mix. However, the best thing that came out of this update was Google Sync, which provides automatic synchronization of your Blackberry and Google calendars. This is very nice as now I don’t have to worry about making sure Plaxo syncs with both Google and MS Outlook so it then syncs with my Blackberry.

    These changes will make my life infinitely easier and infinitely more attached to Google. But hey, I gotta organize my online life somehow, right?

  • December 5, 2007

    AIM in GMail Chat

    AIM in GMail Chat

    Yesterday while changing my status on GMail Chat I noticed something that I can only describe as ‘awesome’. Below my “busy” status messages I saw the AOL Instant Messenger icon accompanied by the text, “Sign into AIM.” Beginning yesterday, according to the Official GMail Blog, Firefox users and English IE7 users have the ability to sign into AIM using the Chat function in GMail. It organizes your buddies alphabetically by status, and any AIM buddies have the AIM icon to the right of their name. The different order is something to get used to, but I can live without the groups if it means GTalk functionality for my AIM screen name.

    As someone who accesses a multitude of different computers daily, I’ve got to say this is really convenient. Now my entire buddy list is mobile so if I do need to contact someone, I don’t need to worry about the computer having an AIM client or having to use portable apps. With this I can basically live my life out of a browser.

    Of course, I do have one simple request (incidentally, in programming simple requests aren’t usually simple): AIM support in the GTalk desktop application. If that happens, there is a good chance I won’t be using the AIM desktop client anymore. None the less, yet again Google has wowed me.

  • September 18, 2007

    Good Things from Google

    Google Presentations

    I know I have been skimping on the posts a little lately, but things are really starting to move with school and the business. Hopefully I’ll be able to write some cool things about what I am doing in grad school. Right now however, I want to talk briefly about 2 things from Google.

    The first is pictured above, and is new to Google Docs today. Presentations have been added to the Word and Spreadsheet support. And from what I have seen already, it looks awesome. You can create new ones or upload current ones, and the interface is pretty easy. You can also share a URL with people to view the Presentation online, and it tells you who is doing so. I will play with in more to review it in depth when I get some time.

    The second is Google Checkout, which I knew about and signed up for, but didn’t really use. I still use PayPal as my online payment method. Well, I did until yesterday. My friend Dan informed me that Google Checkout doesn’t (Does Not) take out a cut from invoices and money requests. That is completely awesome, because when I am requesting money from clients online, the PayPal fees can get a little pricey. It also seems it offers the functionality I was looking for to use in another project. Excellent!

    In the coming weeks I will [hopefully] be looking at these in more depth to write a review on them, but for now I suggest you take a look and let me know what you think!

  • August 11, 2007

    Blackberry Software

    bb8830.jpg

    Since getting my Blackberry, I have been scouring the Internet, looking for fun/free/useful software. There are a few programs I use everyday, but most of the useful stuff comes in the form of mobile websites.

    Let’s start with the software. The best of the blackberry software is Yahoo! Go. This is a clean, easy to use interface that nicely integrates your Yahoo! Account into your blackberry. Go allows you to get your news, sports scores, finance info, weather, email and even Flickr. On top of that it gives you your calendar and syncs your contacts right with your device. Also ranking on the free software list is TwitterBerry, which I mentioned in my Twitter post. Quickly and easily update your Twitter and get your friends timeline. The last piece of software is JiveTalk. This multi-client instant messaging program, while not free, is the best I have seen for AIM, MSN and Yahoo!. It also supports Google Talk, but I usually use the mobile version of GTalk for that. I did leave out the Google Mobile package, which comes with GTalk, GMail, Search and News. Frankly, while the GTalk and GMail programs are very nice, Yahoo! Go wins out for news and search.

    But as I said, most of the stuff I use is mobile web stuff. The sites I frequent on my blackberry include Facebook, Plaxo, MLB.com and Remember the Milk, all of which have very nice mobile sites. ESPN and CNN also rank on the mobile site list. Full functionality of these sites on my Blackberry is nice and convenient, especially with Remember the Milk and MLB. I love getting the play-by-play which I can’t catch the game on the TV or Radio.

    I have still yet to find: a good mobile FTP program (for free), a good version of Wikipedia for mobile use, and while I am not a huge fan, a mobile version of MySpace. I refuse to pay extra for a site I use for free.

  • June 26, 2007

    Google Calendar Updates

    Google Calendar

    As a big fan of all things Google, including Google Calendar, I am pretty happy with some new features GCal has recently rolled out.

    Im not sure how new this is, but I discovered it today- you can actually have the weather, in the form of a little icon on each day, displayed on your Google Calendar. I find this pretty awesome as it’s one less stop I have to make on this information highway.

    But the real reason I am writing this post is due to the fact that recently, Google released a mobile version of their calendar. simply go to calendar.google.com with your mobile web enabled phone and log in, it will display the next few upcoming events you have for whichever calendar you choose to view. With this and mobile GMail, I may not need to use any built in functions of my Treo. But I think this is a good move by Google. They see the obvious shift in the use of cell phones, and the increasing amount of people using smart phones and accessing the internet on them. If Google keeps this up with all of their products, they will no doubt own the mobile web realm.

  • May 12, 2007

    The Business: Document Tools

    Google Docs

    Hands down the best tool for documents is Google Docs & Spreadsheets. With Microsoft Office support and the ability to access the documents anywhere as long as you have an internet connection, why use anything else?

    With Google Docs, I am able to upload Word and Excel documents, edit them, and export them into Word and Excel documents. They stay in your documents until you delete them, and there are multitudes of ways to organize them. Much like GMail, Google Docs has labels and the ability to star documents. You also only view your “Active Documents” (edited within last 30 days) until you choose other wise.

    One other really nice thing about Google Docs is the ability to share any document with anyone with an email address. Excellent for collaboration. With Google Docs, I can get a lot done, and have access to all of my important documents from anywhere at anytime. And best part is, it’s free!

  • April 26, 2007

    Sync Lightning with GCal

    provider for GCal

    A few days ago I wrote about how to get calendar functionality in Thunderbird with Lightning. Today I want to talk about making Lightning 100 times better by giving it the ability to sync with Google Calendar. Since Google is my primary source for Email, Calendar, online document storage, notes and whatever else they offer, I always look for ways to seamlessly sync these things with my desktop or PDA. Since I’ve started using GooSync to synchronize my Treo with GCal, I’ve been more productive, being able to check my calendar anywhere online. Now with Provider, I can synchronize my desktop calendar with Google Calendar, “completing the circle,” so to speak.

    Sure I could use Outlook or Palm Desktop, but why if I don’t have to. I have Google. Now I can have bidirectional synchronization between my desktop and GCal or my Treo and GCal. Plus, installation is easy and updates are automatic (and instant as long as you have an internet connection). Simply download Provider, open up Thunderbird, go to Tools>Add-ons and choose install. From there all you have to do is add Google Calendar to your list of calendars in Lightning. Click on the calendar tab (bottom right) and click New. Then Choose “On the Network.” From there choose Google Calendar and copy your Google Calendar feed in to the box. There is a nice step-by-step with screen shots here.

    I find this solution especially nice because it’s quick and easy. Now If I can’t get WiFi in a classroom, I don’t have to sweat not accessing my calendar and pulling out my PDA to add an important date. Since I take notes on my laptop, I just have Thunderbird open and add appointments and due dates that way.

  • April 16, 2007

    How Design Effects Users

    As a web developer, I feel I know a little bit about design and functionality on a website. Lately I have been noticing my use of a website depends heavily on design and functionality, as I’m sure it does for most people whether they realize it or not. Take, for instance, how I get my news online.

    CNN

    Fox News

    Here are screen shots of both CNN and Fox News. Click the images to go to the sites. While Fox News is more my brand of news (surprise surprise), I find myself going to CNN more often. This is because I feel CNN has a nicer, cleaner looking site. CNN’s logo blends nicely with the rest of the banner, unlike Fox’s, which just looks like it’s thrown there. There isn’t too much going on ‘above the fold’ for CNN. With Fox, it’s a different story. For example, Fox offers 27 links in it’s main navigation. CNN offers 20 (which was actually more than I thought). CNN’s navigation is also contained to one, solitary line. Fox has theirs on two lines, each a different shade of blue. Below the fold on Fox is even worse.

    Where CNN offers more stories organized in a pretty nice fashion, Fox offers links to all of their shows and a litany of thumbnail images. I feel that I get much more information from CNN’s homepage, which is what the user wants. Plus, CNN’s links are much friendlier. If you’ll notice, a link to a story on CNN appears like this, after ‘cnn.com’: /2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html. Year, region, month, day, name of story. Here is a link following ‘foxnews.com’: /story/0,2933,266463,00.html. This is not informative, nor very nice looking. But news isn’t the only problem area. Because of GMail, I never use my school’s email system.

    What got me thinking about this was Google asking students to take their survey about campus email. I am a staunch user of GMail and tell everyone I know to use it. It’s a good interface, easy to use, lots of space and has great IM and Calendar integration. I was also able to make it a one stop shop for sending and receiving email from the multitude of email addresses I have. “Royal Mail,” as the University of Scranton calls it, is not a good experience. It’s poorly designed and not very intuitive. Unless you change the settings, you get oldest mail first, and deleting a lot of email at one time is not easy. But the biggest annoyance I feel, is no search. GMail has excellent functionality here, allowing me not only to quickly find mail, but the search also allows me to use GMail as a file server. And with near 3GB of space, I have the capacity to do so too.

    Design and functionality is everything on the web. If your site doesn’t make the user experience easy, you’re app is dead in the water. GMail has turned me away from my school’s lousy email system, and CNN’s design helps me tolerate their particular branding of news (though CNN isn’t nearly as bad as MSNBC).