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.

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