[Google] Socializing Google Products

 

 When I first reviewed Google+ back in July, I stated that I didn't feel it was a Facebook-killer, nor was that the goal. Recent moves by Google to introduce Google+ related elements into their other products clearly supports this idea, and the whole thing fascinates me to some extent.

Okay, okay, it fascinates me a lot - you know I tend to go batty for almost anything that Google does.

[Daily Geekery] November 23, 2010

I share a heck of a lot of stuff on my social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, but it's not usually stuff about me. In fact, it tends to be stuff I found online via all my RSS feeds in Google Reader in an effort to share interesting updates with my friends.

But since not all of you readers (1) follow my Twitter account or (2) even have Twitter, I figured it might be fun to run a quick summary of all the stuff that I've shared over the past 24 hours. Since most US news comes in the wee hours of the night while I'm at work (yeah, yeah, graveyard shift and all) the bulk of my shares tend to come in at that time.

So here's the round-up for today!
Links:

• Official Google Docs Blog - A bridge to the cloud: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers - As a Google Docs user for many years now, this is tremendous news. It's interesting how instead of just making Google Docs more and more distinct from MS Office, they've taken the smarter path by trying to integrate better with it. So why use the online MS Office at all when Google syncing will become that much easier?
  
• "io9: Jason Stackhouse's pulls on the pleather for his superhero film Griff So apparently Ryan Kwanten, who plays the stupid yet physically impressive Jason Stackhouse on True Blood is appearing in a superhero movie. I didn't really pay much attention beyond that since we all know his core demographic just want to see him in tights (or a heck of a lot less). So that's enough for now.
  
• Scott Adams Blog: Scan or Pat Down - Scott Adams, creator of the geekily popular comic Dilbert, had a pretty awesome post about the new TSA security measures. Believe me, it's worth the read.
  
• Task Force Pride Philippines: 2010 LGBT Pride March - Guidelines and Reminders for Participants - For those interested, here's a detailed run-down of what you need to know if you're going to participate in this year's LGBT Pride March in Quezon City.
  
• io9: Tintin meets H.P. Lovecraft in this mind-bending mash-up art - Tintin + Cthulhu = AWESOME!
  
• io9: It's really happening: Warner Brothers reboots Buffy The Vampire Slayer without Joss Whedon - Sadly, Warner Brothers has announced a non-Joss Whedon Buffy reboot movie. And soon the Four Horsemen shall appear on the horizon.
  
• Cracked: The 20 Stupidest GI Joe Vehicles Ever - While I was never a big G.I. Joe fan, should I still feel guilty that I happened to have #3 on this list?
  
• "BusinessWorld Online Edition: Improving the transport system - This was an interesting analysis of what it might take to fix the horrors of Manila traffic. While I doubt that anything will be done related to this article right away (if at all), it'll probably help to keep passing this along.

Images:
Geekosystem: Schrödinger’s Cat Is AliveDead
And that's your Daily Geekery for today!

[Firefox] Integrated Gmail Extension

Despite my eternal love for all things Google, I still use Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. Sure, I can certainly appreciate how brilliantly fast Google Chrome is and I'm glad they've worked out the initial bugs the browser had in its early months, but the lack of full extension support always holds me back.

I know, I know, there's experimental extension support currently being toyed with in the developer version of Chrome, but that doesn't account for all the fun bells and whistles I get with the robust library of Firefox extensions already out there on the web.

Today is all about discussing one of my newest extensions of interest that pretty much taps into my love for Google as well.

[Google] Leaked Comic Heralds Google Browser

Looking at my recent entries, I realize that I haven't been writing all that much about Google. It's not that I don't love the search company, because you know I do, but more because given the large number of Google-following blogs out there, I didn't really see the need to add to the noise based on every little Google movement. I do save my efforts for the big stuff, though.

Things started with Google Blogoscoped announcing that they had received an email from Google with a 38-page comic book announcing their new open source browser, Google Chrome. Google Operating System eventually chimed in with their initial analysis.

Eventually Webware added in their own detailed analysis of Google Chrome's many promised features and by then pretty much the entire blogosphere (myself included) was really excited about this new product.

Were it not for the fact that actually had to work last night, I would have immediately drafted an entry for the Geeky Guide. Given my personal rules about not blogging from the office (although I'm okay with checking on my Google Reader feeds, hehe), I was pretty keen on getting home quickly to write about all this.

Now that the dust has settled, Google officially explained the comic and how it was a bit of a mistake but all that aside, they also announced that Tuesday marks the official launch of Google Chrome for everyone to download.

And who says people don't work on Labor Day, right?

[Google] Reader in Plain English

It's been a while since I've seen one of these "In Plain English" videos, and you know that I'm a pretty big fan of the concept. It's a little like what the Geeky Guide aims to do - make more complicated or typically "geekier" content more accessible to others who are not so technically or geekily inclined.

The latest one again comes from Google's official YouTube channel and features one of my favorite Google services: Google Reader. Some years ago I was in a desperate search for an efficient and effective web-based RSS Reader and had tried a number of services until I ended up with Google Reader. I haven't looked back ever since.

If you want to know how RSS Readers like Google Reader work, this video really comes in handy...


Google Reader in Plain English

[Blogger] New Drafts Feature: Blog List

I've been a big fan of the Blogger in Draft concept, which not only brings to light new features for Blogger users but also talks about dedicated efforts to improving the platform given it seems almost neglected after Google first acquired Blogger.

The latest feature is the Blog List, which is more than just a your standard Links List derived blog roll. Instead of just being a list of links, it now taps into the power of Google Reader to check for the latest posts, update times and other goodies. I've added the widget to the site so now it'll help promote those of my blogging friends who update regularly since I've chosen to only feature the ten more recently updated blogs.

Given it's a Drafts feature, you need to log into Blogger in Draft to test the feature out. It's still a bit buggy and I'd appreciate any feedback you readers might have to share about it or even reports of the entire site not loading correctly (which I've gotten myself) given the new widget.

I hope to see more enhancements like this so we can all reduce our dependence on third-party widgets and applications.

[Web] What's on Your RSS Reader?

I was cleaning up my Google Reader feeds and subscribing to a few new blogs when the strange notion popped into my head to take a look at what exactly I've been subscribing to in recent years. Have you thought about what you've been adding to your RSS readers? The answers may surprise you.

Being the Google freak that I am, I used Google Docs to create the charts used in this entry. Go figure.

First, let's look at my generic feed distribution:


I group my feeds into four generic types (as seen above). Of course the big winner were what you could generally term as blogs - they compose 67.61% of all my feeds. In close second (as my LiveJournal readers should very well know) are comics, which make up 25.35%. Generic website update feeds are 5.63% and strictly news feeds are 1.41&. I think that's mainly because I have my iGoogle page pretty much set up with the news feeds I monitor actively plus for important topics I subscribe to Google Alerts.

It seems rather boring to just leave things at that so I decided to take a closer look at the kinds of blogs I subscribe to:


Majority of the blogs I subscribe to can be termed as personal blogs written in a non-professional manner - roughly 60.42% (not shown in chart). You'll see that when broken down further 35.42% of all blogs are tagged as gay, which means written by gay authors or that cover gay topics while 25% are the generic personal ones. 14.58% of my blogs are official Google blogs and both my technical blogs and my Gawker Media blogs account for 8.33% of the pie each. Lastly, blogs from CNET.com and those written by celebrities make up 4.17% each.

I was considering looking at active vs inactive blogs but that's always a little tricky to weigh depending on update frequency for the blogs / sites in question. Still, that's the way things stand for now.

So what do you have in your RSS reader?

[Google] About FeedBurner

The Google acquisition of FeedBurner went from rumor to official news fairly quickly as announced on both the Official Google Blog and the Official FeedBurner Blog. Then again, Google has been acquiring a number of smaller companies over the past, well, years and FeedBurner is one of those with logical interconnections with Google's current business strategies.

I know it's almost a week late to write about, but my work-related activities have delayed a lot of my blogging. Despite that, I still feel strongly about discussing this particular merger.

I've been using FeedBurner for a number of months now and over time I've grown to really appreciate the service. At first I didn't quite see the point - my blogs already had RSS feeds so there was no real need for me to create a new one. But then I figured that if even TIME Magazine was using FeedBurner, there had to be more to it, right?

FeedBurner feels like a mini-Google in its own right. It does have an advertising platform much like Google AdSense, but instead of providing general ads for your site, they provide ads for your feeds, which means you can still get advertising revenue even when users rely on RSS readers like Google Reader to follow your blog as opposed to visiting the site directly. FeedBurner also provides statistics of page visitors and more important feed subscribers similar to how Google Analytics, but again the focus is on site feeds. The list goes on and on in this tone.

So the acquisition is pretty logical and I figure that it was only a matter of time before it happened. Now of course I'm sure this is creating an uproar with various groups depending on what they're protesting. Some will say Google is being evil with all these acquisitions as opposed to their company mission. Others will argue that this acquisition is bad news for FeedBurner and that they're become underdeveloped and marginalized and soon there will be nothing left.

Frankly, I feel this is going to be one of those acquisitions that will involve FeedBurner disappearing as a brand on the web. They have way too many overlaps with existing Google products that it doesn't make sense for them to remain an independent brand name similar to how YouTube survives today. Just look at how aggressive their integration timeline is - they expect to start migrating to Google servers by the 15th of this month. That's pretty tight!

Is this a bad thing? Not really, at least for me. The core technologies behind FeedBurner are still going to be publicly available and I'm certain that given their overlap with existing lines of business, this means the development of their product will continue and will be well funded as part of they larger products they will become integrated with. Not every Google acquisition has the potential benefit of being able to integrate seamlessly into existing products, thus become additional items on their current development road maps. The challenge for other acquisitions joining the Google family is figuring out where to put them and how to re-align their philosophies and development direction to match the overall Google plan.

So for now, I think it's going to be goodbye to the FeedBurner that we knew but at the end of the day we're all going to gain.

[Google] Another Look at the Web Accelerator

Given that it was only a few weeks ago that I had finally got broadband internet hooked up here at home (I know, shocking, isn't it?), I decided to give the Google Web Accelerator another shot. The tool aims to increase your surfing speed by prefetching frequently visited pages in the background. I had previously attempted to use the service when I was still on dial-up and I ended up not experiencing any significant change in speed. Of course the FAQ indicates that the service works optimally for broadband connections - go figure.

Now before all you privacy advocates out there get up in arms about the risks of using the tool, the amount of information you give Google and how it really is a form of spyware or something like that, just stop, okay? I think we've heard enough arguments about that and frankly the same arguments apply to just using Google as your primary web search application. I concede that they already amass massive amounts of data about their users.

What I do want to do is just talk about whether or not it really helps.

The theory behind it is sound - depending on how you behave in terms of mouse movements and of course the servers' history of your surfing habits, the tool is designed to speed up frequently visited pages. In reality, I didn't really experience that much of a speed increase, even on a broadband connection. Sure, prefetched pages loaded nearly instantaneously but my entire surfing experience actually slowed a bit since I think Web Accelerator was eating up a lot of extra bandwidth. Heck, it wasn't just taking up the "extra" - it was hedging in on the bandwidth I needed just to check my email.

After about a month of testing and frequent errors about Firefox being unable to access the page I wanted because the proxy server I was using was refusing connections, I decided to delete the tool.

Do I recommend it? Unfortunately no, at least not at this time. Technically, it is a Labs product so it's still under development in the same way Google Reader is also a Labs product, so perhaps we're expecting a bit too much. However given how long it's been around and the fact that they feel confident enough to include it on their More Google Products page (under Make Your Computer Work Better) unlike how they've treated somewhat more solid products like Google Notebook, which remains restricted to the Labs page.

They might get it to really work sometime in the future and perhaps they'll even appease the privacy advocates but for now, it's better left on the Google servers.

Related Links:

• Google Web Accelerator Help
  
• Wikipedia: Google Web Accelerator

[Geeky Guide] Additional Bells and Whistles

Hello again Geeky Guide Readers!

It's been a while since we first launched and I think the site has definitely made some progress. While consistency of updates remains a concern, we're doing a lot better these days than last quarter, and that's still something to be proud of.

To help make following The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything more accessible to more readers, I've added a few things to spruce things up a little.

First, you it's now easier to subscribe to the site's RSS / Atom feed directly using your browser or through popular services like Google Reader or Bloglines using the new buttons I've added to the navigation sidebar, all courtesy of FeedBurner.

For all you social bookmarkers out there, you can also vote for any blog entry that catches your fancy through the major social bookmarking services out there, namely Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati. These voting links will be visible at the end of entry here on the site and appended to each RSS feed entry as well.

Lastly, I'm now trying to see how the site will fare on blog ranking sites. For now I've only signed up for Blog Top Sites and Pinoy Top Blogs

I hope this makes your Geeky experience a lot more convenient. If you have further ideas for making the site better of if you too want to become a part of the Geeky Crew, just comment or email me and let's see what we can work out.

Thanks for your continued support!

[The Web] My Favorite Online Services

In this interesting Web 2.0 age that we live in, a lot of services are becoming more and more user-focused and dynamic. We're also seen a lot of developers move towards developing online applications that don't require files to be installed on your computers to work. While I have to admit I'm still exploring the full range of such web-based services, here are the ones that stand out for me:

1. GMail - this remains to be one of the best web-based email services out there primarily because of its interaction with other Google products. While some would argue that the UI for services like Yahoo! Mail beta and others is better, I've come to appreciate GMail's cleaner look. Throw in the ever-increasing storage capacity and the interconnections with other services like Google Calendar and Google Docs & Spreadsheets makes this a definite win for me. Oh, and I did forget to mention you can chat through GMail as well?
   
2. Preloadr - this is a great online photo editor for users of Flickr, the ever-popular photo sharing site purchased by Yahoo! It works seamless with Flickr once you enable permissions and you can upload and edit your photos that you host on Flickr.
   
3. Google Calendar - Google's online calendar tool is great for most users. It's fairly easy to use and the UI has that classic clean Google look to it that helps keeps things running fairly lightly. As with all other Google products, the lack of solid technical support apart from the Google Groups forums does get in the way at times but on the whole it's a pretty solid product.
   
4. Google Docs & Spreadsheets - What a lot of people believe to be the beginnings of "Google Office," Docs & Spreadsheets is a great set of online applications that handle basic desktop publishing and spreadsheet creation. Between the two, the document program (formerly Writely) is the more solid application with a great UI and intuitive controls. Spreadsheets is still somewhat lacking in the feature department especially when it comes to more advanced formulas and perhaps #1 on everyone's wishlists - charting. Despite these limitations, the two tools are great for the average user wanting to venture into more collaborative projects.
   
5. Google Reader - I know, this is beginning to sound like one long Google advertisement, but you have to admit they're one of the few companies really exploring this area of Web 2.0 development. Google Reader is another online tool, this time best for viewing RSS feeds anywhere. While some might argue that they prefer using the tools with browsers like Firefox or IE 7 or other such tools but I like Google Reader because of its mobility. I'm not tied to a single PC in terms of viewing my RSS feeds - perfect for viewing them at home or at work using a single list. The recent addition of Google Reader Trends adds extra amusement in managing one's feeds.
   
6. Gliffy - rounding up the list is Gliffy, an online charting tool similar to MS Visio. It's a bit clunky in terms of its icons and flowcharting symbols which appear a bit cartoonish but on the whole it's a pretty solid application that meets the requirements for basic process documentation and flowchart generation. The collaboration feature is a great bonus which is fast becoming something we're all accustomed to in these Web 2.0 times.

Whether you agree with the list or not, all of these tools are worth a shot in case you're interested in exploring the realm of online applications.

[Google] Updates to Reader and Others

This has been a rather busy week for Google. Apart from the fact that they celebrated their eighth birthday this week, we've been seeing a steady stream of updates to a variety of Google services.

Some of the more notable ones have been:

• New features for Google Notebook such as sharing, better drag and drop, a trash bin and others
  
• Google Calendar was enhanced with web content events which can display the phases of the moon or local holidays on your caledar
  
• Five more cities were added to Google Transit, a service previously limited to Portland, Oregon
  
• Google Talk is now open to the public so anyone can sign up for the service.

What is Google up to eh? We've seen more updates in this week compared to some previous months!



The change that struck me the most is the redesign of Google Reader just today, which has been long overdue considering how Google Reader has often been critisized as being all but forgotten in recent times. As discussed in the Official Google Blog and in the Official Google Reader Blog, the current paradigm around Reader has shifted to it being, "...your inbox for the web..." - definitely a nice advertising sound bite if I ever heard / read one. The structure is designed precisely like that - making the reader ressemble an email inbox highlighting how many items are unread (even in the window's title bar) and based on your labels which are arranged like folders.

The Google Operating System blog compares the new layout to Bloglines, which isn't a bad thing - it really is a change that should have been made ages ago.

As a Google Reader user myself, I welcome the changes. It's a lot more intuitive and the new arrangement makes one-click reading with the Space bar truly possible. I just wish they could do something about the additional load time I'm currently experiencing, even while using my office's broadband connection.

And of course there's that ultimate Google wish-list item - full integration into GMail.