Google Reader gets revamp
Apart from the 'vi' shortcuts, I was slightly underwhelmed by Google Reader when it was released last year.
Imagine my surprise, when I just used Google Reader to quickly check that I had reinstated full text feeds for this blog. Unless I see it with my own eyes, I just don't believe it.
Google Reader launches with a modest splash screen with some exciting announcement (which I immediately skipped) and I was greeted by some unexpected and welcome changes to the interface.
All my feeds appear in a hierarchy grouped by 'label'. However, I must admit I am confused. They used to be 'labels'. Now it appears 'labels' are dead and my categories are 'folders' or 'tags' depending on the context.
Google has also added:
- Shared articles (but not grouped feeds)
- Reading feeds via bookmarks which is an interesting idea
- Integration with Google Homepage
- Quick subscribe
- Support for mobile phones (err, no thanks)
Even more strange is the fact I have happened upon something brand new all by myself.
Nothing on the blogs which I just scanned a minute ago. Nothing on Technorati. Nothing from Robert Scoble. Nothing on the RSS related blogs. No text message from the wife. Nothing on the Google blog. No IM from my son. Nothing on the Google Reader blog. Nothing on digg. Nothing on reddit. Nothing on del.ici.ous.
This is it. I am finally going be famous. My 15 minutes is here. I am going to be dugg and the WordPress servers will creak under the strain.
Apart from the fact it took me 7 minutes to compose these words, by which time this exciting Web 2.0 development will be yesterday's vinegar stained fish'n'chip paper.
Mozy - remote backup
I briefly used Box.net as a virtual 1GB memory stick. Briefly because after the initial transfer of important files, the onus was on me to identify files I had changed recently and upload them. Mozy seems better suited to lazy people. You simply download a lightweight client, identify folders you want mirrored and Mozy encrypts and mirrors them, quietly in the background. When you add new files, Mozy mirrors the incremental changes. Mozy offers 2GB of storage for free. Also, Mozy includes the phrase 'Reticulating splines' during initialisation.where’s your blogroll ?
No-one ever asks me: 'Hey Norman, why don't you have a blogroll with 457 interesting, thought provoking sites for me to look at ?'. Firstly, while I find the reading lists of others interesting and a useful means of discovering new sources, I don't particularly want an lengthy blogroll adding yet more clutter to my (sort of) minimalist blog. Secondly, my RSS reading lists are stored on a Netvibes server. I have separate tabs for 'Oracle', 'WordPress', 'Sport', 'News', 'Blogs', 'Tech', 'Software' and a small one called 'UK'. I would love to be able to publish these tabs and share the contents with everyone. Ideally, I would like to publish all my Netvibes tabs somewhere which would always reflect my subscriptions. This would ensure that the lists are always up to date and reflect my current reading list so transient blogs (like World Cup 2006) and dead blogs would be removed. Netvibes has a ecosystem for sharing resources but I am not quite sure whether this does precisely what I want. If I wasn't so lazy, I might investigate further. One thing I like about Bloglines is the tight and seamless integration of the 'My Feeds' reading list with the Bloglines blog. The blogroll on the Bloglines blog is always synchronised with the Bloglines reading list. Automatically. No need to think about it. No need to export your OPML and upload it (again). Bloglines manages this for you. OK - it was the only thing I liked about my Bloglines blog but still. This is exactly how it should be and what Share Your OPML is sadly lacking. Share Your OPML has some promising features for popular and common feeds, feed discovery, recommendations and match making. However, while I can share my feeds on Share Your OPML, this is merely a static, outdated list. The onus is on me to remember to do something i.e. export my reading list from my current RSS reader and upload a modified OPML file at recurring, regular intervals. This is a lot of tedious work for me to do. Computers are much better at this sort of stuff than humans. We are in 2006 and using Web 2.0 after all. Finally, please remember that I am very, very lazy. So, that's why I don't have a blogroll.Google Spreadsheets
Inevitably, Google enters the online spreadsheet market to provide competition for ThinkFree. No charts (yet) and limited invite only but it's coming.
As an aside, I don't use Excel much. My kids are much more proficient at producing pretty, colourful pie charts and histograms than me.
However, I also find it quite staggering that many sensible, intelligent adults spend their lives in Microsoft Excel. A gentleman once emailed me a spreadsheet and I hunted high and low across all tabs for any relevant table data, pretty charts and forumlae.
Finally, I had to admit defeat and called him rather sheepishly. It turned out the 'data' was simply plain, good, old fashioned text (words) in various cells (paragraphs).