Google has just added a new feature to their Google reader. While in the offline world languages still separate us more than anything else, in the online world also this gap is closing slowly but surely. Google already introduced translated search which let you conveniently search in a different language, but now you can even keep track of blogs you would not be able to understand in any other lifetime. But than you probably weren't checking blogs in the first place.....

Christopher Dawson at ZDnet argues that the you should set aside your "Google scare": people fearing the company using all kinds of private data to deliver their ads and make their billions.  Don’t kill Google because of some naughty 1″x1″ pictures. Let the teachers be responsible for enforcing school policy and turn on Safe Search. Instead, use Google for everything it offers beyond a pretty fine search engine. .... Want to create an online photo album or website about the field trip? How about take a survey that dumps data in a Google spreadsheet about kids’ favorite parts of the field trip? Create an online presentation and then interact live with digital pen pals while they watch the presentation? All possible for free with Google. 

One of the anoying things about Microsoft is that they allways want to their own thing, instead of following a standard. It is what happened to the internet browser (the successful inernet explorer challange of netscape) and the ebook reader (Microsoft Reader failed to beat Adobe (Acrobat) Reader), to name two.  Often these new apps come with their own file name extension, making them incompatible with other software. Now they actually have one format where they are the absolute standard . I think at the moment every pc in the world is able to process a .doc file. Even if you dont have MS word, most alternative software will process .doc files, online word processors are keen to have an import feature, google search indexes the files and even windows "native" wordpad can open a .doc file. So Microsoft got bored with people having to much ease of use and decided to through the .docx extension at the world in Office 2007. To maximize annoyance they made it the default format to save files in. Suddenly i found my inbox cloaked with unreadable files. Google Mail didnt have previews and nothing on my pc would read it. The only option was ...

 My Taskbar and especially Quick Launch Toolbar have undergone a metamorphosis the install of Google Chrome Browser. See the image at the left. As you can see  I prefer the standing vertical taskbar. This allows me to have a lote more tabs open. Web apps were always a bit difficult to get to, but this instant access without even an address bar in the browser window, really has opened up a lot potential for me. The Old Guard But let me take you through all that is at display. For instant messaging and file transfers, i still depend on desktop software (not sure if file transfers would ever make it into a web app...) hence the pidgin, skype, google talk, filezilla, flashget and idrive icons. Than there is  two native window icons for the desktop and the recycle bin, as well as a bleutooth icon to get images from my phone. Itunes is for syncing my ipod more than anything else. Than my most adored desktop app: notepad++: always fast loading, instant savable, and again with ftp support. But the rest is pretty much web apps. The New Frontier Gmail is the core of it all, Google docs help me edit documents and articles. There is still ...

 This is comparison of two task trackers or to do lists: Remember the milk and Todoist. The basic idea of the two apps is the same: keep track of your tasks, organize them in due date, priority and category/project/tag. But the feel of the two is very different. Remember the milk is kind of quite, whileTodoist is very straightforward, very well represented n the logo of the 2 apps. Both have support for mobile phones and Remember the milk has offline support through google gears. The crux in task lists is that it is suppose to increase your productivity and so the essential is the usability and here Todoist wins from Remember the milk. Todoist is really based on the premis of how to get your tasks organized as quickly as possible.  For starters remember the milk does not give a comprehensible overview aff all the tasks, overdue until next year, in one glance. This gives me the idea that i might be missing something, and that is exactly what i try to avoid.  Additionaly todoist has an extreme efficient way of adding new tasks. Although i miss an add task button on the home page, once you are in the project it is ...

Michael Tan at CNET Asia goes on about how Alt-Tab doesnt work in Google Chrome, but is that actually the case? Michael claims the following: The short of it all, you can't do ALT-TAB between browser tabs. That means when once we could copy text from Excel, ALT-TAB and paste the text in Outlook, we can't do the ALT-TAB trick to copy text from Google Apps and paste it in Gmail. That's right, not even the superbrowser Chrome. Why didn't the engineers think of it? I guess they don't use web apps too much. I am not sure if Michael tried the brilliant application shortcuts or lift a tab out of a window but for me it works like a charm. Alt-Tab brings me from a tab to a tab and Ctrl-Tab from an app to an app. Or did i get it wrong?

Just days after a frustrating searches for online backup systmes for my 500gb external network drive (and in the end setteling for multiple free accounts at iDrive) i stumble on this rather amazing LifeHacker announcement(via Download Squad, via shankri-la , via Mark of MeAndMyDrum ja, ja): Web application Oosah hosts a whopping one terabyte (that's 1,024 gigabytes) of media online for free. In addition to hosting videos, photos, and music you upload directly to the site, Oosah also integrates with Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, and YouTube. Once you've connected your accounts, you can actually drag and drop photos between webapps—so, for example, if you uploaded a photo to Oosah that you wanted to add to a Flickr set, you can just drag and drop it onto Flickr in the sidebar.  The main thing that i didnt find is a mutliple file uploader with folder structures. Do i have to fill 1 terabyte with individual selected files? Ge! I might need a holiday.

InformationWeek has news form the Web 2.0 Expo in New York: Zoho, which makes an online office suite of 18 apps including word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, chat, CRM, and Web conferencing, plans a couple of upgrades in the next two weeks. The company plans the week of Sept. 29 to introduce an online app store for its Creator service. Creator is a drag-and-drop Ajax-based, browser-based platformfor database applications. Users can build apps such as customer record management, human resources, or tracking music collections, which are hosted on Zoho's Creator database services.

While SplashUp looks like a photoshop clone, Photoshop Express online doesnt look anything like it's Desktop uncle. It is a totally renewed concept completely designed for the online experience. In the signing upprocess you have to pretend you are from the US as it claims to available in the US only, but even in Mongolia it was possible to sign up without any trouble. That trouble is saved for the actual application, although the basic features - like cropping - work very well, there is no way i can get to import items from picasa, facebook or flickr.  CNET:   Photoshop Express, available for free with 2 gigabytes of storage at www.photoshop.com/express, is a significant departure from Adobe's desktop software business and a big bet that it can make money offering Web servicesdirectly to consumers. The application, which needs Flash Player 9 to run, pushes the limits of browser-based applications and will likely ratchet up the competition on the dozens of free and online photo-editing products available now (see our full review of Photoshop Express and gallery of screen shots of the application).