google

Making Feeds Fun and Friendly

I’m disappointed with how hard it is to get people to use feeds to track updates on websites. The idea is pretty simple. You start your online browsing experience from a special feed reader tool that collects updates from your favorite websites. It’s a real time-saver because you don’t have to visit the websites to keep up, the latest stories are delivered to you. I think one of the barriers to these tools is that the user interface to track the latest stories often looks more like an email program – it just doesn’t draw in users.

Those "boring" days should be ending with new feed tools that create special custom pages and integrate social networks. The new FireFox tool called Feedly is a great example.

So what’s cool about this? Feedly works with Twitter and Google Reader (feed tracking tool) to create a magazine-style page with graphics, summaries, and more. I can use the navigation tools at the top to pick categories like "nook" or "news". When I view a story I see the latest tweets on the topic. The only thing missing with Twitter integration is for me to share stories with people in my Twitter network. Very nice work, I like it!

So what’s cool about this? Feedly works with Twitter and Google Reader (feed tracking tool) to create a magazine-style page with graphics, summaries, and more. I can use the navigation tools at the top to pick categories like “nook” or “news”. The only thing missing with Twitter integration is for me to share stories with people in my Twitter network.  Very nice work, I like it!  If you are a Firefox user check it out at http://feedly.com.

Google Reader has just rolled out a new feature aptly called “Play” that does a slideshow of your latests website updates. It makes it fun and easy to recommend and favorite items. Check it out at http://www.google.com/reader/play/

Google Wave, email for the next generation?

The folks at Google decided to re-invent e-mail.  What would e-mail look like if we could “start over” and re-create it? You might think, “e-mail isn’t THAT old is it?” Actually it is. Internet e-mail and the specifications that define how it works have been around since 1982 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821). In the last twenty-seven years we’ve seen many fresh ideas about how to use technology to exchange information – Wikis, blogs, SMS, and IM are just a few.

Think about it. What if e-mail was more collaborative? What if an e-mail thread (the conversation) occured in a shared medium that could be updated realtime? What if, as you typed in information, others could watch your updates? Maybe we could combine e-mail conversations with the real-time aspect of instant messenger and throw in a little wiki-style editing for collaboration and history? How about having the ability to embed this conversation on a web page for a larger audience! That’s Google Wave – part document, part web, part conversation.

We’ve all become used to using a variety of communication tools that share a lot of similarities but aren’t integrated. Wave tries to merge communication and collaboration into a single interactive tool that you can easily extend and build upon.  In a large business we often use email and IM to communicate changes we are making on wikis and other collaborative sites.  I’m not sure Wave completely hits the mark for me but I love the idea of making email more like IM and placing collaborative tools in the space with the conversation.

What I like:

  • Live update.  As you type, add pictures, or do anything the wave (the shared conversation) is updated realtime. I’d like a way to have it share only when I hit return, though!
  • Put a variety of content types in your Wave.  You can write your own plug-in and make it embeddable in a wave.
  • Very easy to create waves and add people to them.
  • Interesting protocols built on XMPP.

What I don’t like:

  • Not completely open source. Parts of it are, but you can’t download all the components and run it internally on your corporate intranet.
  • Too discussion-focused.  I’d like a “shelf” that I can put collaborative documents in the wave to draw attention to that as separate from the conversation.
  • UI is more “cool” than intuitive. I’m sure a lot of people will start with Wave and say, “huh?”.  Of course the answer is to watch the video demonstrations. Let’s just say it’s “google-ish”.
  • I’d like more structure to the wave (see shelf idea above).
  • Not available yet.  You have to be lucky enough to get an invite. 🙂

Anyway, that’s my half-baked opinion from a couple of days of use. If you haven’t seen Google wave you should watch the video. It’s much easier to see it in action.

Why Google is Winning

Google is winning because it works.  People like things that “just work”. 

Let’s look at home computers.  They have become more complicated and error prone.  This has to do with Viruses, half-baked software, Microsoft engineering, and too many options on hardware.  Users get frustrated when their IT friend says, “Just buy a new PC from Best Buy”.  The answer is usually upgrade the hardware, wipe the drive, put better virus software on…. But the answer to “just make it work” is get a new PC.  Wonder why a lot of people are trying the Mac?

How about Google?  What “just works”? For an experiment I tried the Yahoo search bar in my browser first for two weeks. After a few searches I usually reverted to Google, and got what I wanted on the first page of results.  Today I’m switching my default search bar back to Google.  Remember “just works”?  Try putting “buy Mark lunch next Friday” in your Google calendar.  Yes, it will figure it out.  Google Calendar “Just works”. 

Rather than wrangling over features and functionality I’ve started just asking the question “Does it just work”?

More Google Map Fun…

Mashed up a few of the locations for missionaries from church and google maps (using GMaps from Firestorm Technologies) on the church website I’ve been developing. I was worried about finding some royalty free country flag icons that would work for markers but those were easily found.

Wondering what is in the new “Pro” version of GMaps…?
Trust me, well worth the $5-10!

Stupid Google Map Tricks

I’ve seen all these great applications of google maps, read a bit about the API, and think someday I’ll try that out. Well I got a key and started playing around with it. Quickly I was overwhelmed with JavaScript. I’m a Java programmer and we just don’t get along with JavaScript (well I don’t). I do a bit of research and uncover an easy to use JavaScript library that does everything I need AND more with NO programming. Part of me says, “what’s the fun with that?”. The other part says, “Where is the download link?”

Check it out, neat tutorial format too.

Google AdSense

Well after hearing a few people adding Google AdSense to web sites to pay for hosting fees, or even make some extra cash I decided to add it here to try it out. I’m also working on another website, http://lifeinnorthernmichigan.com to see if I can actually make some money with it. A co-workers neighbor that doesn’t really have a lot of web knowledge is making 1K/mo from three pretty aweful websites (but I can see how they generate clicks). Well it is an experiment.

Interesting blog on the topic.