No not really, probably it was just a good and somewhat obvious idea, but on Feb 20, 2008 I wrote a post entitled "I Want a New Google Reader Feature" and here we are a little over a year and a half later and today they implemented it! Just thought I'd share. Nice. Labels: google
Today Google added some new template options to Google Docs including a slew of helper worksheets for wedding planning. Actually jsut browsing through all of the new templates, I can see that these might be really useful (like huge widgets), but that is another post. When Sara and I were getting married, we ended up doing 99% of our planning using Google Docs and it worked out really great. We always had out lists with us (invite list, attendance list, budget, gifts recieved, etc) and we could easily share those lists with other people who needed them (parents adding in guest's addresses, sub-lists for bacholer/ette parties, etc). They were always up to date, and were supprisingly easy to use. Google had made a lot of improvements to spreadsheets from when we had been trying to use them for househunting which at that point, they were unusable. I am a huge fan of the Google Docs, and recommend using them especially if more than one person will ever be viewing or collaborating on a doc with you. With the new templates too, I think they are turning into something really simple and useful. -=MovieQuoteoftheDay=-"Am I the only one who thinks his head looks like an octopus?"
I thought of a great idea for a new feature for Google Reader. Being obsessed with reading feeds like I am, I often get done with all of my unread items and then feel sad and alone as there is nothing more to read and I don't know what to do. So my idea is this. When you get done with your unread items (or any other time you wanted), you could go to the "Browse Recommended Feeds" area, but instead of getting a list of recommended feeds or seeing a bunch of items from one recommended site, you would actually start reading all your recommended feeds as if you were subscribed to them. That is, you would start reading one item from this blog followed by one item from a different site, etc., all in the river-of-news style. You could still click on the feed name to see all items from that one site, but otherwise it would be an amazing time killer and site discovery tool. Update: Hey! They implemented this today! Yep, on Oct 22 2009 this feature is, in fact, available. see the post on the Google Reader Blog! Cool! Labels: google
Dear Google Calendar Team, I love Google Calendar. I love it. I signed up the first day it was released and it has literally changed my life. I used to be late to appointments, forget birthdays and I even missed one of my own hockey games, just because I didn't remember to go to it. But ever since Google Calendar, I have yet to miss a hockey game, a birthday, a bill payment, or anything else I put in my calendar, mainly thanks to the SMS notification Google Calendar offers. Just before any event in my schedule, my phone goes off to remind me of what I forgot. Yesterday, I had to turn these life changing notifications off. You see, My fiancée and I were asleep, happily sleeping through the night when my phone started buzzing at 5am. It was an event I had added a couple months ago, a playoff hockey game who's time had yet to be determined. Well it scared my fiancée and her heart started racing. She wasn't able to get to sleep for the rest of the night (even though I was able to sleep again just fine, surely angering her all the more). That morning, after finding out why she was too jolted to get back to sleep, I did something that I never wanted to do. I disabled SMS notifications in Google Calendar. This is a plea to you, Google. Please allow quiet times for notifications in Google Calendar, user defined times when Google Calendar should not send you messages. Please help me continue to both be on time and have a happy fiancée. You have no idea how much I would appreciate it. Sincerely, Mark Husson Editors Note: I really did send this to The Google Calendar team. For an example of how to do this well, see twitter's sleep settings. "Because love is harder than crime."
A few weeks ago, there was an article on O'Reiley about how to use Google as a proxy. For those who don't understand that sentence, it means how to view webpages without actually visiting the webpage, in this case, through Google's website. Why would this be useful? Well, if you can figure that one out for yourself. But in case you need Google to translate a page into english and view it on a computer that allows you to use google, just drag this link into your bookmarks: Google Proxy Bookmarklet Then, when your on a page that you want to view, but can't for some reason, just click the bookmark you just added, and google will show you that page. "It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!" Labels: google
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