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. 

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 to find equally annoying free online converters, or – best one, but not always appropriate – send it back. 

Luckily Zoho- the online office suite – had a response . They launched import functionalatity for Docx for their Writer app.  So no more annoying converters. And while you’re at zoho, have a look around.There is a lot to see!

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 need for an actual  need for browser windows now and than. The one displayed actually opened by google docs, as the web apps can’t keep a pop-up in a web app window yet (and how would they differentiate between an app “native” link or an external?) Todist helps me see what tasks i am not doing et the moment and statcounter keeps me informed of my real time website performances. I am still figuring out what to do for an online image editor, hence the multiple icons in that field. There is a couple of the mandatory social networking sites, obviously Google Notebook to keep track of offline stuff (one of the few apps for which i miss my firefox plug-in) . As the last quick launch icon you can see Prism in which i load a additional google account.

I have to say i love my new task bar and happy that i become less depended on the operating system. The only thing that keeps me in windows is ironically apple’s itunes with last.fm plug-in to build an online library, but i might disattached from that as well….

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 a breeze, especially the abbrivations come in handy. Like google calendar it is able to understand words as today, tomorrow or wednesday, but in addition there arequick and easy abbrevations that you can use like tom, tod etc. If the task list app is really set to be daily efficiency tool, memorizing a few intuitive abbrevations is not all that more of an effort. They come in pretty handy in the prominent search box where, once a bit used to the syntax, you can find anything in a sec.

Conclusion

Remember the milk certainly has the cuteness that could give you a smile on your face and has the ability to work offline with google gears. Todoist, however, is very basic looking, but has a more efficient usability, and that might just be what you needed.

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?

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.

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.

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).