Oh boy…I crashed and burned on using the Google presentation tool. 

I tried, really, even accepting that I would have a simple plain b&w presentation which will emphasize the content over the presentation aesthetics.

I gave up when the bullet points on my bullet point list drew inside of the first character of the line. The same thing happened when I tried to create a numbered list. No dice. 

So I happily googled “best online presentation tool” and found SlideRocket, currently in beta.

It looked slick, had an Adobe Air desktop “offline interface” and had some nice cool looking transitions and a cool looking blue slide background. 

After exporting my Google presentation to PPT and then importing to SlideRocket, I just started working. Trying to make up for the time I lost futzing with the Google presentation app, finding SlideRocket, installing the offline interface, etc. 

After about 10 minutes of seeing that simple things like change the color of the background on a selected list of slides was more complicated than simply selecting the slides I want changed and then applying a new color, I gave up. 

Don’t get me wrong, SlideRocket looks like a great tool and I’m hoping they continue their lead in the online presentation space because it will rock when all the bits and pieces are worked out. 

After deciding I was spending too much time trying to figure out how to get my online apps to work at putting text on a page and things like that, I had to punt and go back to trusty Powerpoint. 

Strike 1 for “Living In The Google World”.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

“Living In The Google World” Noon Day 4 – Crash and burn

Do you want to know what Google is thinking about the future, the future of Chrome and the apps you run on it?

They talk about it all the time. It’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together. 

The very smart Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, shares his thoughts in a post to the official Google blog.

A summary of his thoughts on the future:

• In the next decade 70% of human race will have mobile or fixed Internet access at gigabyte speeds. 
   
• Our devices will automatically reach out and connect to other local devices, offering benefits and services which will seem almost like magic (my words not his).  He uses the example of asking your device (think your handy dandy gPhone) where your reading glasses are and having it reply with the last location where the RFID tag was seen. 
   
• Streaming content will become as interactive as static web pages are today. 
   
• Devices in our homes will connect with consumable products (your refrigerator knows the food in it, your washing machine knows the detergent on the shelf) and we’ll be able to measure and control aspects of our lives most important to use (power consumption for example). 
   

Of all of Vint’s observations, one stands out as a beacon of clarity for Google’s vision for the future.

He comments that we’ve learned that “the Internet is essentially a software artifact” and that “if it can be imagined, it can be programmed“. 

Imagine with me for a moment this future he’s outlined. 

Smart devices everywhere. Small compact smart devices. Appliances which have interfaces to display their content, their status, and allow us to interact with them in a smarter more complex way than we can imagine today. 

The software powering everything will have to be a small, tight, well written and fast performing.

This software has to be less about the features of “itself” and more about exposing the features of the machines, and devices using it. 

This software would need to effectively act like a “window into the functionality of the device”, and in the process, make sure that it doesn’t get in the way of your interaction with the device itself. 

If any of this is sounding familiar, here are a few quotes about Chrome from Sundar Pichai, Google’s Vice President of Product Management:

• “We think of the browser as the window to the web”.
   
• “it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience.”
   
• “we’re going to make you a great tool that’s very important to the things you do, but at the same time, we’re doing everything we can to be an invisible part of that process.”
   

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Chrome’s Critical Role In Google’s Vision of the Future

How has it been “Living In The Google World”, only using Chrome and online apps?

Ok, I have a confession to make. Actually a few of them. 

The last 2 days have been relatively light in terms of producing work online. There was a good amount of offline things I’ve had to do (if you filed for an extension on your taxes in April, you know they’re due now).

I also started using my hard drive for storage. More on this below.  

In any case, I have done some work and have a few new insights. 

1.  I’m crawling along still without Robofrom, but things are getting easier on the password front because Chrome is remembering all of them. Unfortunately my upgrade to the Chromium nightly build means I’ve had to re-enter the passwords I had already stored in Chrome. 
 

2. I ditched the online storage issue. I’m sure there’s an answer out there somewhere waiting to be found and I’ll find it sooner or later, but right now, I store images on my hard drive and then upload them to Amazon’s servers. Doing this made my life MUCH easier. I can still edit in Photoshop.com but not having to save the image over to Picasa Web Album removed a few steps and reduced frustration. 
 

3. Chrome is a little finicky with the refresh on some sites, Awstats (stats program that shows information about your website and it’s visitors) is one of them.

When I hit the site’s “update” link, the screen flashes like it’s doing an update, but then I have to do a “refresh page” with Chrome to get the page to redraw.
 

4. When I select a bit of text to copy, I sometimes stumble into the situation where the whole page is selected by Chrome. This means I have to unselect, go back and more carefully select the text I want.

I think this happens more often when I’m selecting text in a text box, but I’ll keep watching and see if I can figure it out. 

So there ya go.

Not much drama, but then again, I wasn’t doing much hard core work online today. Tomorrow will be a much different story as I have a couple of deadlines to hit. 

I haven’t bit the bullet yet to convert all my email accounts to flow through Gmail, but I always know it’s there for me. 

If someone knows of a simple and transparent “online hard drive“, please post a comment.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

“Living In The Google World” – Day 2 and Day 3

So the idea of a cake with a stick of dynamite in it isn’t new.

But what about the idea that Google’s Chrome is actually a “gift” in many ways to Microsoft? 

Let me explain a few obvious examples of what I mean. 

1. History has proven time and time again that Microsoft is great at taking competitors ideas, incorporating them into their own software and selling a bunch of copies.

With Chrome, Google just gave Microsoft a whole lot of ideas. 
 

2. Chrome signals a new paradigm for the future and possible scary competition to Microsoft. Ever the competitor, this “crisis” gives credence to the demand for “CHANGE” and is many ways a “license” by the public for Microsoft to take bolder steps than maybe they felt comfortable with in the first place. 

In other words, Microsoft can now go into “Battle mode”, making rapid changes, upgrades, etc. which will all more likely than not, be better for their users. 
 

3. Chrome is a great example of the concept of completely separating the app from the OS. Sure it runs “web pages”, but when normal users start creating little desktop short cuts to their “Chrome Apps”, people look at things differently.

Indeed, given the release of Chrome, it makes sense now for Microsoft’s to release a slimmed down Windows 7 OS that encourages users to run online apps using Windows Live, eliminating the need to bundle Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker with the OS. 

4. Chrome inspires new thinking and new creativity. Combine it with Android and “WOW”, everyone’s imagination is fueled. Beyond more ideas to copy, web developers and programmers everywhere are inspired by it.

It’s likely that some of that inspiration and new creativity has touched some of the developers at Microsoft too. It will be great fun to see what pops out of it. 
 

See the idea now? We already know Chrome was Google’s gift to the “ecosystem”, but it’s also a gift to Microsoft as well.

If you know of other examples on how Chrome is a gift to Microsoft, speak up and post a comment. 

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Chrome: Google’s Present To Microsoft

Well…it’s the end of day 1 of “Living in the Google World” and it’s been a bit of a rough day.

Here’s the summary:

1. I WANT MY ROBOFORM! 

Without key extensions, some of the fast navigation I do from site to site was slowed considerably as I had to dig my passwords out of RoboForm to manually enter them into each site. 

Yes, I had to cheat a bit and use my RoboForm desktop app to access my password. 

Tomorrow I will use Roboform2Go that I have installed on a memory key. 
 

2. Is it Chrome or the Site that’s not working?

When I get to a site and find something not working, I immediately wonder whether Chrome is having a problem or the site is having a problem. With Firefox, my first thought is that the site has a problem.
 

3. Google “Presentation” app…am I missing something?

I need to work on a PPTx presentation. I figured I would open up the presentation briefly in Powerpoint to export it as a PPT and then upload it to Google. No dice. Some how the presentation got corrupted(?) and Powerpoint can’t open it. So I get to rebuild it from scratch using the Google Presentation tool. 

Ok. Upload my photos to Picasa Web Album and try to use them in the Google Presentation tool. I ran into the same error I ran into when trying to access a photo on The Chrome Voice this morning. The URL from Picasa Web Album isn’t recognized. 

Bleh. Searching the web to find out what to do. Fortunately for me the users in the Picasa forum figured it out…although it involves some editing of the link string (not for normal every day users), I can handle it. 

Next I’m distracted by the lack of obvious features in the Google Presentation app. I guess MS Powerpoint’s got me trained to add arrows and other visual guides. I may have missed them in the Google presentation app, but I had to settle for a functional presentation slides for now. Maybe I’ll learn more over the next 7 days, but I’m not really comfortable with the quality of what I have now. 

I did take a quick spin to see whether Zoho.com’s presentation app would do better. Unfortunately, I received the following message: ”chrome is not supported for editing”.

Oopsie…
 

Other work I did:

I did flit in and out of using a Google spreadsheet reasonably easy. 

Checking email was a bit of a hassle since I have all my accounts flowing into Thunderbird, but I worked around it by hitting each account from the web manually. I know I can consolidate all my email into Gmail, but I’ll save that for later. 
 

Summary of Day 1 of “Living In The Google World”

1. There’s a learning curve and it took much longer to do things I take for granted using my normal combo of desktop and online apps. 

2. The temptation to “revert back” and give up the 7 days of “Living In The Google World” was there, but I figure I just need to get through the acclimation process and things will get better. 

3. The thing I missed the most through out the day? All the little extensions and indicators I have plugged in to Firefox and have come to count on as part of my online experience. Things like Roboform, Compete.com’s tool bar and even the Google Toolbar for easy familiar access to all the book marks I’ve created across various computers. 

4. I also missed ability to know exactly where I could keep all my working files. If I give in on anything, the first will probably be to start making use of my computer’s hard drive. We’ll see. 
 

Bugs I found? 

1. In the process of going “back” to a previous page, I got the little tool tip saying “Click to go back, hold to see history” stuck in the middle of my browser window. It just hovers there, over everything, unclickable and only goes away when I minimize and then maximize the window. It’s not easily recreateable and not a big deal. 

Seriously…about RoboForm…

I am a true fan of RoboForm and have it installed on the 4 computers I use the most. Download a free trial version of RoboForm here.

Also, I use RoboForm2Go when I travel. It installs on a memory key and easily syncs with my desktop version of RoboForm. Download a free trial version of RoboForm2Go here.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

“Living In The Google World” – End of Day 1