Posts tagged Google
New Gmail Feature: Open in Google Docs!
Feb 4th
Today, when I logged into Gmail, I found a surprise – Gmail now lets me open some office documents directly in Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Here is the screenshot:
More About Picasa Web Albums
Dec 18th
Forgive me if this sounds especially arrogant or offends anyone, but I think I should be asked to join Google as the project lead for Picasa Web Albums, because I am really let down by what exists today and I think that I might be able to write something better myself with a week’s worth of programming and a server running PHP5.
Google has always been a “release now, update frequently later” kind of company, and I respect that. It’s cooler, as a user, to get something today and slowly and unexpectedly watch features trickle in, but Picasa Web Albums is a disaster right now. Read more for the details.
More >
I Found a Google Bug!
Dec 16th
Yes, I can now confirm that I have found a bug in Picasa Web Albums. Since the new “tagging” features are not validated – either client side or server side – you can use URL signficant characters in your tags. At first, I used a plus sign (+), which was URL decoded as a space. This lead me to try #, then ?, and finally &, which inexplicably – WORKS!
So I created a new tag D&psc=CONTACTS — and guess what? — it has some funny results. It searches all of your contacts’ photos for the letter D (which is common in default photo names, such as DSC001.jpg). Then I thought, “I wonder if I browse the JS source if I can find a command that is passed via URL GET variable that can be instantiated via an intentionally malcrafted tag?” I have posted on the Google USENET group and filed a bug through the standard complaint form. I consider this pretty big news, but I don’t want to submit it to digg or Slashdot or post on OSNews until someone has a chance to implement a fix, which is probably pretty trivial (URL encode the tag links) or fix it properly (validate tags on creation).
Anyway, I’m psyched, because I understand it’s pretty rare to find a bug in Google’s code.
Picasa Evolves
Dec 16th
Well, I’m very excited to report that Google has begun bringing Picasa into the Web 2.0 realm.
Today I signed in and found — tags! and search! and moire storage! Hooray! So this is fantastic, it’s the start of bringing this beast up to “usable” for large photostreams.
Now that Picasa is evolving, they are letting you expand beyond 6GB to 25GB, 50GB, and even 100GB. I can’t image how clunky and weak it would be with that many albums, but I have to assume they’re working on it.
Unfortunately, what’s really missing is the ability to tag multiple photos at once. I’m not going to tag 3000+ photos one by one. But still, nice to see some progress.
I did find a bug. It let me create the tag “A+J,” which is linked on the front page of my photos, but not wrapped with urlencode(), so it throws an error. I found a google bug!
What I’m Hoping to See in PicasaWeb 2.0
Oct 30th
Google’s PicasaWeb program has been out for awhile now, it’s had a chance to sink in and get a little more popular. It hasn’t taken off like Flickr, but no one expected it to, since it’s not feature-packed enough to make it an actual competitor.
I’ve got close to 1GB of photos in my PicasaWeb account now, spread across 46 albums, and PicasaWeb is getting a little clunky now. So, Google, now that we’ve shipped and rolled out fairly well, it’s time to start talking about how to kick it up a notch.
PicasaWeb is in dire need of several features just to keep it usable. We all have our “this would be cool” features – mine is “public groups.” But there are some that are just plan necessary. Read on for more.
More >
Nothing Says "I Love You" Like an Ass in the Box
Sep 28th
I can’t wait to buy an Ass in the Box for someone. What a novel idea. You get a gift in the mail, you open it, and it’s a giant ass. Lovely.
This article from CRACKED magazine had me laughing this morning. I really enjoy the new site. It’s – how you say? Ah, yes… – funny.
I registered for Netvibes today, and I must say, it’s what Google Personalized ought to be. It’s heavily AJAX and drag-n-drop based, and there are no page reloads when you switch tabs. It’s fast and simple, but not as simple and pretty as Google. C’mon Google, you’ve got a ways to go with Writely, Spreadsheets, Google Personalized, and Picasaweb. Don’t disappoint us, we’re counting on your to get these puppies as spit-shined as Gmail.
My SEO is working!
Sep 18th
Some time ago, I decided to learn a little bit about Google Pagerank. I wanted to improve my site’s rankings in Google’s search results. I learned about Google-dancing and many of the sports that involve optimizing your page in search results. So I took the advice and redid a lot of my page to work with what I knew. Those of you that actually follow my blog have seen changes: tags, topics, changes to my XML feeds, new prettier URLs, etc. I keep track of all referers when someone hits my blog. I see Yahoo! Slurp and the Googlebot crawl me everyday. But then I started noticing something. I started seeing really simple Google searches refering to me. As of this writing, by typing:
into Google, firsttube.com returns as the FIRST result. In fact, if you just search for “picasaweb,” I’m the fifth result, ranked only behind Google itself, ZDNet, and Miguel de Icaza. I have a ton of traffic coming to my Picasaweb vs. Flickr article, and lots of traffic goes to my “I want Picasa on Mac” article, even though it’s mostly worthless other than me pining away.
Anyway, I definitely want to make the same types of changes on OSNews, because clearly we could always use a boost in search engine results. As a direct result of the boost firsttube.com has seen, I think I’ll be adding friendly URLs to OSNews in the next few days.
Bye-Bye Slashdot, Hello IG
Sep 15th
Today is a fairly big day, well, at least for my internet habits. When I launch a browser and open up my tabs, they look like this:
Gmail|Slashdot|OSNews|My Yahoo!|Work|Bloglines|Digg
I’ve added to the tabs in the last year or two: I added the work tab (email when at home, our helpdesk at work), then added Bloglines when I got into RSS aggreggation. Then Digg is new as of the middle of last year or so.
But I realized recently that I don’t really read Slashdot much anymore. For one, their news is way too slow, especially compared to Digg. The same COULD be said for OSNews, although we’re typically MUCH faster (faster even than Digg can promote to the front page for huge news), we feature many more originals, and the comments are readable, whereas the Slashdot arrogance and the volume of comments has gotten to be too much for me. What has been my #2 tab since about 2002 (I started reading Slashdot sometime in 2000) is now used the least of all. So, with the introduction of tab’s on Google’s customizable homepage, I pimped out my Google and made it tab #2. I’ve got my main tab, my Tech tab, my Sports tab, and my Entertainment tab rockin’. It’s pretty cool. So, from now on, I’ll get my Slashdot fill from google.com/ig.
I wonder if Slashdot is losing people, or if I’m just a single person moving on.
Review: Picasaweb vs. Flickr
Aug 8th
Now that I’ve successfully used most of the features on both flickr.com and Picasaweb, I decided I would write a short review of the two services. The need for online photo storage is certainly a very real one, and different services have different objectives. Here’s a short breakdown.
Read more for the review.
More >
Picasaweb goes Gold …well, for me at least
Aug 8th
I’ve gone ahead and transitioned my photos from flickr to PicasaWeb. Picasaweb is simply so much easier to navigate. Yes, it’s true, there’s no easy way to include a photo in multiple albums. Yes, this is completely anti-tag-based-systems and therefore contrary to everything I preach about Gmail, but the fact is that many people simply don’t “get it” when it comes to Flickr, and I find myself frequently trying to explain to less technological relatives show to use it. I love it, but it’s simply too complex for the Average Joe to follow.
Picasaweb, on the other hand, integrates freely with Picasa and iPhoto, which makes it VERY attractive, it’s cheap ($25 a year for 6GB storage), and it’s drop dead simple. So for now, I’m on Picasaweb.