CogBlogged Tagged ‘google’

I’ve done a handful of web projects this year where it made sense to store data in Google Spreadsheets, and then use a bit of PHP code to make them be dynamically displayed on a web site. In many cases, these are tables of data that are parsed and presented nicely in the web site, but for a few NMC projects, it made sense as a way for a staff person to update data on our web pages w/o having to touch the pages. As a first example, I am cleaning up an older WordPress site I use for logging my running/training; in the past, I kept a spreadsheet on my desktop for keeping a run log and then manually transferred the totals/averages/graphs to my web site by pasting into some text files (they are embedded with a PHP include). It worked, but it did have that tedious manual smell [...]

I admit it. I still regularly review content RSS feeds in that archaic, pre-twitter-is-all-i-need thing called a “Feed Reader”. Me and 3 other holdouts. Go ahead, call me a throw back. Recently, in using Google Reader, I am seeing signs that the Great Google is subtly slipping in more social network features, that have me wondering if Google is becoming more like Facebook is becoming more like Twitter? Is the bird wagging the Goog? Blog experimentation notice- I am trying the Lightbox 2 plugin switched to z-Lightview to embed images… clicking will load in an overlay to see full size… if it works. Oddly enough, we have the most unlikely technology prognosticator, Conan O’Brien, to credit for peeking ahead to YouTwitFace and oddly enough, despite the Google -YouTube Connection; the Big G is not part of the acronym. But they are doing things in the space, all of which may [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by lamont_cranston One of my primary uses of Google Search is locating URLs for web pages I am creating, blog posts, etc. The way Google outputs search results in a PITA as the links to the results are obfuscated in redirects through google (things they do to harvest our actions). In the old days, the search result was a link to the actual result. You could copy it and move on. They changed it back and forth a few times on 2005, but since then, that blue link is worthless as a copiable URL. Since then, I have been doing the tedious manual copy of the real URL that is written in green text below the results. Until recently. For long URLs, Google is now even strealing that as useful information, as it abbreviates long URLs with ellipses in the middle. As is the only [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Slightlynorth My not so accurate radar is being tickled by some recent emerging technologies that some Big Shot may place as the next incremental digit following “Web”. Submitted for your approval, Mr Serling: A lot of talk of “real time search” The whole crazy growth of Twitter, Facebook, etc — built on answering the deep philosophical question– what are you doing NOW? Waiting for the Google Wave to land on shore — more promise of the web being not a pile of linked documents but a networked of linked flowing communications. One more today- I caught Joss Winn’s tweet about WordPress.com’s new experiment in Real Time Blogs: At im.wordpress.com we have been experimenting with instant delivery of blog posts and comments. Now you can subscribe to WordPress.com blogs in your Jabber IM client and receive posts and comments the instant they are published. It [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by misterbisson Yep my internet grandchildren, Old CogDog remembers when e-mail was pretty much it for everything on online activity, long before junk mail, phishing, spam, twitter, facebook. blogs, heck before the web. It;s refreshing when something nice just lands in thr box, and makes you pause and smile. Today’s gift: Hi Alan, I am a secretary at [Xxxxxx], and a bit of a tech geek, so I have been following your blog since you presented at our [school]. Anyway, I am sure you have already seen this, but on the off chance you haven’t… This site will compare bing and google search results side by side. http://www.furia.com/code/bg/bg.cgi I picture the shy secretary secretly tweeting and blogging, and the fact that this person decided to share something forward the old fashioned way, well heck, it’s just making me smile. As I wrote in the reply: [...]

New in Google Labs is an add-on for having embedded web search in your email space- this means while composing a message, there is right in the mail interface a search form. The results appear in a GChat pop-up/overlay, and the results can be directly inserted into your message. In this case, I am emailing my friend Cole a message, and need a URL for a site to share– I can search+find+insert all in the email composing window. So this saves having to tab over to another window, run a search, copy/paste the URL (especially since the one in Google Search results does not point to the actual URL, but a Google ByPassSnagSomeINfo URL). It’s Gggggggggreat!

Wow, the new interface for Google Maps Streetview is very slick! It fills the entire map frame, and you get a spinny controller (like in Google Earth) to rotate your view, plus drag and clicking the mouses gives a tilt-pan effect. So you can zoom down streets! I decided to pay a visit to the house I grew up at in Baltimore (I have blurred out the location and street name; the present occupants deserve some privacy). Fortunately they have painted my old room, but I did zoom in and see where I had carved my initials on the underside of the side steps (just kidding). I sure do not miss racking leaves or cutting grass, but there is where I lived until I was 18. I took a drive past my elementary school, and up through some old neighbor hoods, and did not really recognize much. Now the notion [...]

I’ve not written anything on a paper calendar or DayTimer for more than two years; my cal is on the clouds with Google Calendar– We have all of the NMC stuff using it on our enterprise set of GoogleApps, for individuals and several group/project ones, and I can access and schedule them with my typically logged in setup for CogDogBlog. It is almost fun to be organized. But a new little tool makes it even better than a fresh bone. Maybe this happens to you- you are looking at a conference event web site, or the airline booking page, or someone IMS and asks when the meeting is… and to get to your calendar, you need to open a new tab or window, fish around for a bookmark, and load it in a new space. If you install GCal Popup in Firefox, getting to your calendar is like reaching in [...]

I’m already pretty wired into iGoogle as my home, been so for like, well ever since it came out. But now, Gmail is getting the widget business to, as the Google Labs now offers options to add to the Gmail side bar, small iGoogle-like widgets for seeing your calendar, recent docs, etc. As described in the GMail Blog: To get you started, we’ve worked with the engineers from the Calendar and Docs teams on two highly requested features: a simple way to see your Google Calendar agenda and get an alert when you have a meeting, and a gadget that shows a list of your recently accessed Google Docs and lets you search across all of your documents right from within Gmail. All you need to do is go into your Gmail Settings, click the Labs tab, and enable stuff you want to add to Gmail. On of the most [...]

If you hear things repeated enough and from different sources, they grow into self truths, and next thing you know you help to spread them. In a week it is an Urban Legend. It’s interesting to see how some new tools can help poke holes in folk tales. Have you ever repeated the old adage that “the Great Wall in China is the only man made object visible from space”? Since something like 0.000005% of the world’s population has actually been in space, we have little to test our “truths”, but Dan Hersam took a spin on Google Maps to show that the Great Wall is not visible from space: I’ve heard from several different people that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object visible from space. I heard it so many times that I became convinced of its veracity, and having not had the opportunity to [...]