– Lifehacker is currently running a poll to see if folks would switch to Google Music (presumably from iTunes). Although the options are a bit biased, right now it is still leaning WAY toward folks switching to Google Music.

77.6% – I’d have to be sure, but if it does for my music what Gmail did for my email, count me in!

7.3% – I doubt it; I’m pretty picky about how I manage my music.

5.3% – Google already has enough of my data; I’d rather not give them more.

7.3% – No thanks; I’m perfectly happy with my current media.

2.4% – Other

What stands out to me here is the small percentage of folks that are worried about Google owning a lot of their data… and Lifehackers readers are typically techie type folks. This is one of the arguments that come up time and again with Google products, but it doesn’t seem to have as big of an impact on people when the product is good enough. Not sure if that is good or bad.

– “YouTube has a new video editor that lets you create videos using excerpts from the videos you’ve already uploaded. You can also add a music file from the AudioSwap library.”

This is a great development as we look forward to ChromeOS and web based applications. We are getting closer and closer to not needing a local computer where everything is stored in the cloud.

– Google published a GREAT video today that really explains and shows off what Google TV is going to be. Really it is going to be a fantastic multimedia device where you can access so much information. The ability to install any android app is also going to be incredible. Check out the video.

– “If you’re a fan of Google Tasks and you’d like to put quick access to your task lists right on your Android home screen, gTasx is a simple wrapper for Google Tasks.”

– Google posted an article today that pointed out 16 new applications that are available in the Google Apps domain. One of them that looks really promising is Harvest! It is a time tracking application. It costs per user, but this app and apps like this could really increase the functionality of your google apps domain… and no need to maintain the infrastructure of this great service. It’s all inclusive.

BENEFITS
* Fast to setup and deploy to your team
* Access your data from anywhere
* Easy-to-use time tracker, no training necessary
* Track time/expenses on the go from a free iPhone application
* Stay on budget with project tracking features
* Desktop widgets, Twitter, and many 3rd-party add-ons
* Fill out timesheets quickly within Gmail

ADDITIONAL FEATURES
* Login with your Google Apps or Gmail account
* Export data to QuickBooks, Excel or Google Docs
* Generate and send invoices based on tracked time
* Create and send job estimates
* Use Harvest with other leading small business web applications

– “Another big positive in Buzz’ favor is that it rarely goes down, thanks to Google’s infrastructure. Have you seen all the Twitter outages in the last few days? The last one was a doozy, lasting at least six hours.

Twitter noted on its status blog: “We’re currently experiencing site availability issues resulting from the failed enhancement of a new approach to timeline caching.”

That is so 2000! It’s like the dot-com boom days when engineers didn’t compensate for traffic spikes. Why does this keep happening?

I don’t know, but that alone could be reason to drive Twitter users to use Buzz.

Buzz can’t replace Facebook, whose network is too large, its functionality too rich and its applications too popular.

But there’s no reason to believe Buzz can’t become the new go-to Web service for messages and conversations.”

– Google launched a new piece in their Google Docs a couple of months ago called Drawings. I have been using it plan out my business, as well and create some really awesome drawings. They make it really easy to just post drawings directly into docs.

Today they posted a great article about gettings started and some possibilities on their docs blog. You can read more below. ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/16/interesting-items-june-16-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/15/interesting-items-june-15-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/15/interesting-items-june-15-2010/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:00:43 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-15-2010/

– “Android phones already keep their contacts, settings, and app choices synced and backed up, but what about your SMS and call records, your application data, and other Android essentials? There are ways, and the Tested blog runs down the best of them.”

– “Chrome: If you like how Apple Mail adds sender’s pictures to messages, or you’re just better with faces than names, the Gmail Sender’s Picture is a no-brainer. It simply inserts a person’s Google Profile pic into your Gmail conversations with them.”

– “They don’t believe in wires — they think your phone should always be in sync with your Google account, over the air. When you visit the Google music store, you will be presented with a giant catalog of music that can be sent to your phone with a click of a button. No more wires needed, the songs you buy will begin downloading immediately on your phone.

If Google does it right, they may even have a streaming service that lets you log into your account, and play your purchased music through a web-based player (or Google TV?). Gone are the days where you need to store your music on your hard drive, and have it all backed up for the day when your computer dies.”

– Great rundown from Lifehacker about the pros and cons of Microsofts office web apps and Google Docs.

– There is a new beta service out there that will allow you to auto-complete your writing in any application (on a PC). It is called eType.

All you have to do is, well, um, type. By default, eType starts auto-completing words on the third letter, but this can be changed up or down. Word suggestions are based on machine-learning and offer the most probable suggestions, based on what the user is typing out.”

You can then just hit the space or enter to go to the next word. Really neat stuff.

Right now they are in Beta, but you can find out more with the link below.

– TechCrunch has an article today that points out that the Google Voice app is stil being tested, but may not be launched. The reason? Google is steering away from desktop software and wants to do everything in a browser (read: Google ChromeOS… the future of computing).

I really hope that they at least release something. I would love to have a desktop skype-like google voice app… and then later they can release the HTML 5 browser only version.

– “Today, Google Earth released a new edition of its desktop app which hikers, runners and cyclists are going to love. They call it Google Earth 5.2. I call it the Hiker;s Edition. One of the new features allows you to recreate the path of a hike or bike ride by ingesting geo-data from one of your GPS devices. The visualizations show you the speed, elevation, and other stats from your hike, which you can see as an animation inside Google Earth.” ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/15/interesting-items-june-15-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/14/interesting-items-june-14-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/14/interesting-items-june-14-2010/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:01:11 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-14-2010/

– Garret Rogers has an interesting post this morning on Googling Google where he points out that Google’s Chrome OS will be able to remote desktop to regular computer to run the applications that will never be able to run in a browser. That is a good move on their part.

I hope that one day we will be able to have all of our applications in the cloud, and we are really getting there for about 80% of the people, but for folks like me that use programs like dreamweaver and photoshop we will probably need a computer to remote to for a while.

That being said, it would be great if we had a virtual remote desktop we could remote too… maybe Google will create one of those for us to run on their massive server farms. ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/14/interesting-items-june-14-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/13/interesting-items-june-13-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/13/interesting-items-june-13-2010/#comments Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:02:04 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-13-2010/

– I love Google Alerts… it is a great way to keep up with the VanDrimmelen name. I set an alert to send me notifications anytime my last name is published on the internet. I have met distant relatives all over the globe from this neat little feature.

You can also use it to keep up on a research topic, or do some vanity searching. You can even determine how often you want it to notify you (daily, weekly, etc.).

They updated their product recently and now include all news, web, blogs, video and anything else they index. Really a neat little tool.

– Google recently updated their pop-up functionality. If you pop any mail message, or even your TASKS out in a new window you can now close Gmail without closing out your tasks or anything else you pop out.

Read the following post from their main blog for more information. ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/13/interesting-items-june-13-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/12/interesting-items-june-12-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/12/interesting-items-june-12-2010/#comments Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:04:44 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-12-2010/

– If you are looking for an easy way to create your own template Google’s Blogger has a nice template designer that will do the trick! Check it out! ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/12/interesting-items-june-12-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/10/interesting-items-june-10-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/10/interesting-items-june-10-2010/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:00:00 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-10-2010/

– This is an interesting development. Use your Google Docs account as a type of backup storage space. Great for folks that have already upgraded their Google space limits! Might be worth checking out.

– “If you have to park your car in a huge lot, a side street, or elsewhere it might be hard to locate later, you can use Google Maps’ “Starred Items” to pin it down for later locating.”

– Another great example of their global mind… I so want to try this in German!

– I think it is amazing how much work Google does on a Global scene! And all for free!! Can’t beat that!

– “This WaveThis button provides an easy way for me to discuss stuff I find on the Web in a wave post with friends and colleagues. No more cutting and pasting.”

– This is huge!!

“A new feature will allow users to make voice calls over the Internet and it’s likely that it won’t be limited to Gmail. In April, TechCrunch reported that Google “built a Google Voice desktop application to make and receive calls” and that the application is tested internally. Google used technology from Gizmo5, a VoIP service acquired by Google last year”

For now, it’s not available to everyone… but hopefully it won’t be long! ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/10/interesting-items-june-10-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/09/interesting-items-june-9-2010-2/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/09/interesting-items-june-9-2010-2/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:01:16 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-9-2010/

– This title is from an article published on CNN this morning? It is really a great article that points out the flaws of the iPhone 4. They also point out that the HTC Evo (Android Powered) also has a front facing camera for video chats.

My personal opinion is that this is starting us down the right path. The big problem right now is that you can only call to other iPhones… and only in wifi.

I think that for now most folks are going to use secondary apps like Fring, or Skype for video chats because they work across all platforms.. but I hope to see the day when we can make video calls to all network, and to landlines, etc. That would be great.

– As many of you know, speed reading using technology (or flash players) is one of the things I recommend for saving time in the gProductivity system. Here is an article that talks about some of the best tips and tricks for speed reading.

– Lifehacker has a great article on how to mount USB drives and keyboards from your computer on your Nexus One. While it is really techie right now and you probably wouldn’t want to try it on your own, it does open the door for a possible future end user application that would do the same.

Being able to connect all sorts of devices to our super phones is always a nice thing.

– Google collaborated with Pixar to create one of those funny “Search Stories.” Check out the link below to see a nice Toy Story search story.

– Google announced today a new way they are searching the internet. For most of us that really just means that their content will be faster and more fresh. In layman’s terms.

It looks like instead of indexing entire pages only periodically they will take dynamic information (the power of the internet now a days) and be able to add that to the index they maintain without having to rescan the entire website. That is pretty amazing.

There will certainly be some implications for SEO and webmasters.

You can read more about it at the link below.

– Google updated their chat client to include nice little icons at the top of the chat window for enabling video chat and group chats. I guess I won’t be the cool guy any more that knows how to do all this “cool stuff” with Google… dang…

It’s alright though…

You can read more about it with the link below.

– “Share, annotate and review your documents online.” That is LetsAnnotate.com’s tagline. TechCruch pointed them out today and I think they have potential!

They are really a nice Googellize technology in that they have not only an online interface, but the ability to collaboratively annotate PDF’s on an iPad as well. That is pretty neat.

There is a FREE forever plan for up to 2MB and 2 collaborators. They also have some paid plans for more collaborators and more space.

– There is a great extension for you Google freaks out there that easily allows you to open all links to PDF’s and PowerPoint presentations in the Google Docs viewer without having to download them locally. With the recent addition that allows you to easily save things to google docs there is no need to save locally!

Nice! This will be very helpful in the Chrome OS!

– Lifehacker’s Gina posted an article today about digitizing your life. She did a fantastic job of breaking it down by the following categories.

1. Paper
2. Images
3. Audio
4. Video
5. Storage and Organization

This deserves a good read for any modern knowledge worker! ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/09/interesting-items-june-9-2010-2/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/09/interesting-items-june-9-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/09/interesting-items-june-9-2010/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:01:09 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-9-2010/

– This title is from an article published on CNN this morning? It is really a great article that points out the flaws of the iPhone 4. They also point out that the HTC Evo (Android Powered) also has a front facing camera for video chats.

My personal opinion is that this is starting us down the right path. The big problem right now is that you can only call to other iPhones… and only in wifi.

I think that for now most folks are going to use secondary apps like Fring, or Skype for video chats because they work across all platforms.. but I hope to see the day when we can make video calls to all network, and to landlines, etc. That would be great.

– As many of you know, speed reading using technology (or flash players) is one of the things I recommend for saving time in the gProductivity system. Here is an article that talks about some of the best tips and tricks for speed reading.

– Lifehacker has a great article on how to mount USB drives and keyboards from your computer on your Nexus One. While it is really techie right now and you probably wouldn’t want to try it on your own, it does open the door for a possible future end user application that would do the same.

Being able to connect all sorts of devices to our super phones is always a nice thing.

– Google collaborated with Pixar to create one of those funny “Search Stories.” Check out the link below to see a nice Toy Story search story.

– Google announced today a new way they are searching the internet. For most of us that really just means that their content will be faster and more fresh. In layman’s terms.

It looks like instead of indexing entire pages only periodically they will take dynamic information (the power of the internet now a days) and be able to add that to the index they maintain without having to rescan the entire website. That is pretty amazing.

There will certainly be some implications for SEO and webmasters.

You can read more about it at the link below.

– Google updated their chat client to include nice little icons at the top of the chat window for enabling video chat and group chats. I guess I won’t be the cool guy any more that knows how to do all this “cool stuff” with Google… dang…

It’s alright though…

You can read more about it with the link below.

– “Share, annotate and review your documents online.” That is LetsAnnotate.com’s tagline. TechCruch pointed them out today and I think they have potential!

They are really a nice Googellize technology in that they have not only an online interface, but the ability to collaboratively annotate PDF’s on an iPad as well. That is pretty neat.

There is a FREE forever plan for up to 2MB and 2 collaborators. They also have some paid plans for more collaborators and more space.

– There is a great extension for you Google freaks out there that easily allows you to open all links to PDF’s and PowerPoint presentations in the Google Docs viewer without having to download them locally. With the recent addition that allows you to easily save things to google docs there is no need to save locally!

Nice! This will be very helpful in the Chrome OS!

– Lifehacker’s Gina posted an article today about digitizing your life. She did a fantastic job of breaking it down by the following categories.

1. Paper
2. Images
3. Audio
4. Video
5. Storage and Organization

This deserves a good read for any modern knowledge worker! ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/09/interesting-items-june-9-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/08/interesting-items-june-8-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/08/interesting-items-june-8-2010/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:00:23 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-8-2010/

– There was a great article published today with this same title … perhaps my favorite line is “Apple has taken the lead once again, but I don’t think Android will be playing catchup for long.”

This is written by Jason Kincaid, who like me was an iPhone fanboy til 2009 (like me) when he changed over to the Droid. I would have to say he is spot on here. The new iPhone looks great, but I’m not going to get rid of my Droid for this… Android will catch up and soon.

Besides… I can always play with my iPad…

– You know I am very interested to watch how Microsoft finally develops into this online collaboration space. Google has years ahead of them in development, but I am hopeful Google will continue to innovate and stay ahead of the curve.

25 GB of free storage… not too shabby… And it syncs up with Skydrive… where is that Google Platypus drive we heard about so many years ago already?

– So Lifehacker is currently doing a little very informal poll to see which people prefer more… iPhone or Android. Right now it is an overwhelming 67% for the Android and 29% for the iPhone. That is no big surprise considering the techie slanted audience that reads lifehacker (like yours truly). We like freedom… we like the ability to do what ever we want with our device.

That being said, I do have a little iPhone envy today after giving up my iPhone about 6 months ago for the Droid (which I love). I take solace in the hope that there will be updates coming that enable video conferencing on the droid devices…

– Oh this is great! Now any address or google map URL in an email will automatically contain a google map! So enabled that one just now! Looking forward to having that functionality!

– If you want to know about the new iPhone this is the video to watch. 6 minutes and you know what everyone is talking about.

Things I love – Multitasking on iPhone – Faster – Video Chat

Of these, video chat is certainly the one that has the most potential for changing and pushing the limits of mobile devices. Love advances like this… because eventually it trickles down.

– “Schoology’s mission is to leverage the familiarity of popular social media tools to improve communication and collaboration inside and outside of the classroom. Schoology provides a full suite of learning management tools, including an online gradebook, attendance, test/quizzes, discussion boards, blogs, homework dropboxes, and collaborative course and group pages.”

This could be huge for schools… finally someone that gets how important social media is in schools… harness it, don’t act like it isn’t there!

– Google Sites is one of those tools that is really not used enough for collaborative groups. It really is a pretty powerful tool. This article goes over how to embed a doc into a site… really neat!

– Hmmm… maybe I’m a little sad today that I got rid of my iPhone and went to Verizon.. here’s to hoping they get a Verizon version someday….

– This is great… and long overdue. iBooks could never be a real serious device for academics and business people till we have some sort of annotation functionality.

I am still hoping they will eventually get a pen I can just write on my books with… that would be awesome! ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/08/interesting-items-june-8-2010/feed/ 0 http://edutechie.com/2010/06/07/interesting-items-june-7-2010/ http://edutechie.com/2010/06/07/interesting-items-june-7-2010/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:00:33 +0000 Jeff http://edutechie.vanswebsites.com/2010/06/interesting-items-june-7-2010/

– I love how HTML-5 and other new technologies are creating some awesome websites. Most of these use flash, but still great tools for increasing communication, and decreasing costs (although most of these cost money).

Missing from the list is Elluminate, which in my opinion is one of the best webinar programs out there.

Oh, and of course Google Chat, and even Skype now a days with multi-video chat.

– Another great article for those wondering if you can move your enterprise over to Google apps. I have long said that Security was probably better at a multi-billion dollar company than our 3 person security shop. And it certainly won’t put them out of a job. We still need those folks to make sure everything else on campus is secure. Just leave this piece up to Google.

– This is a great writeup from a CIO about Google heading into the Enterprise. I love the line “So far we’ve been very happy with Gmail, but aren’t ready to replace employee email and productivity apps with Google apps yet.”. Hopefully the gProductivity system will help him see how Google can be a viable alternative to Exchange for getting things done! ]]> http://edutechie.com/2010/06/07/interesting-items-june-7-2010/feed/ 0