Two small pieces of recent Google news were just announced that merit a mention, since both have ramifications for web workers. First, Google has put a date on a Mac beta build of Chrome, meaning there’s finally an end in sight to one of the company’s most egregious oversights. Also, a new change to Google Wave should reduce inbox clutter, and maybe make it more usable for those finding it hard to adjust it (like me).
Let’s get to that great news first. While the “new” web browser has now been available for download to Windows users for over a year (the beta was first released last September), Mac users only recently got access to a stable developer’s build of Chromium, and that’s far from a release version of the software. Luckily, the new Mac beta is said to be on track for an early December release. Read the rest of this entry »
Now that Bing and Google will be displaying tweets from Twitter and status messages from Facebook, web workers will need to consider how much, and how publicly, we wish to interact with these two social networks.
Twitter
If you’re like I am, your Twitter stream is probably public. For me, the value of Twitter is its ability to let me share news and comments that current and potential clients may find useful. I also use it as a way of interacting with clients if our regular communication channels are down.
So I certainly don’t say anything using @chcs (my company Twitter account) that can’t be public. I also have a personal Twitter feed, @HamiltonChas, that mostly focuses on my comments regarding local politics. I also tweet using @GrowTrains, an account that reflects my interest in improving passenger train service. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bing, brizzly, Facebook, facebook groups, facebook pages, google, hootsuite, nambu, oneriot, personal branding, tweetdeck, twitter, twitter search
Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache, I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.
It seems like there was a lot of news coming out of Google this week — here are some highlights: Read the rest of this entry »
Google has apparently made enough progress with its pre-release Google Wave project that, starting today, the company is rolling out a preview version, although it’s only available to some users. Wave has been available for a small group of developers already, but now more than 100,000 invitations to try Wave in its newest incarnation will go out to active preview developers, the first users who signed up and offered to give feedback upon Wave’s announcement, and some customers of Google Apps. Read the rest of this entry »
As I noted over at TheAppleBlog, Google has turned on push for Gmail on the iPhone. That means that your incoming messages will be pushed from the Google servers to your phone, instead of your phone having to call in periodically to check for new mail. It means you’ll be more up-to-date, and your phone will use a lot less of your battery’s power than if you use Apple’s Fetch alternative.
For Gmail users with an iPhone who work from home, this is great news. Often, those of us not plugged in to the corporate world miss out on the little niceties like Exchange information syncing. Google Sync, now that it includes Gmail, offers a great free alternative for those of us who’ve left our office working days behind. And it uses Microsoft Exchange technology to do it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: apple, calendar, contacts, Email, Gmail, google, Google Sync, iphone, ipod, push, sync
“Cloud computing” has easily replaced “Web 2.0” as the current trendy buzzword. The state of California is even turning to it for government systems. I have to say, however, that I have serious reservations about heavily implementing cloud computing in my own work flow. I believe that cloud computing is the killer app of the future, but the future isn’t quite here yet.
Don’t get me wrong. I do make limited use of cloud computing applications, especially Gmail. But mostly, I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire computing life “in the cloud”. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »
It seems to be new Google features discovery week, with new search parameters for searching the web in real time, and now a Labs feature called Fast Flip making an appearance. Fast Flip is a visual browser of online publications, designed to give you a quick snapshot of what’s being blogged and talked about at many major news sources at a glance.
If you’re looking to take the pulse of the web at any given moment (and you don’t want the static or excess sensationalism that goes along with using Twitter), Google Fast Flip is as good a place as any to start. It sort of feels like a concise, pre-filtered Alltop that provides a macro level view of some of the web’s most influential and respectable news sources. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter, you’re not the only one with up-to-the-second search results. Google now boasts that ability, too, a fact revealed in an Omgili blog post. It isn’t yet a publicly-available feature, but with very little effort on your part, you too can narrow your results to “this past second,” or a range of other different increments.
The trick is in using Google’s “Search Options,” a new feature added in May of this year that allows you to filter your results a number of ways, including according to how recently something was published. The closest you can get to real-time results using the official Google menu options is “Past 24 hours,” which is handy, but if currency is central to how well you do your job, getting even closer is ideal. Here’s how to do it. Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
