Firefox Through a Prism

June 30, 2008 | Comment

I have stated previously (here and here) that the main focus for my attention on my desktop and laptop these days is the browser as I have more and more of my key applications (email, calendar, documents etc.) in the cloud. This is all well and good but this has thrown up a number of issues namely: 15 years of working with Windows means I constantly press Alt-tab to switch applications only to find, now, that I didn’t want to do that as I wanted to remain in the browser; there is a large amount of wasted space … Read the rest

Xobni (L) LinkedIn

June 26, 2008 | Comment

There has been a new update to the Outlook companion Xobni that adds information from LinkedIn. It can now import pictures from the business networking site and also provides (brief) details on the selected individual, typically their title and company. This clearly only works where the email address that they have corresponded with you matches the one recorded in LinkedIn, nevertheless it is still a useful addition.

The Xobni blog also suggests that future updates will provide further integration between the two services when you are logged in but stops short of saying what this will provide.… Read the rest

Skydrive and Folder Share

May 8, 2008 | Comment

Microsoft has a couple of similar services that help you access your files (documents, pictures, mp3s etc). These are Skydrive (stupid name, I much preferred Windows Live Folders) which is an online document storage facility with 5gb of free space and FolderShare that allows folders between multiple machines to be synchronised. However, there is one area of clear overlap and that is in that they both allow you to share documents in a folder with multiple people – the difference being that with Skydrive they are held in the cloud and with FolderShare they are on you PC.

I have … Read the rest

Google Docs Offline

May 3, 2008 | Comment

So I have been testing the new offline (i.e. the ability to access your docs when you have no Internet coverage) capabilities of Google Docs over the last week on my trusty Asus EEE PC. This seemed like the ideal device for me to do the test on as it is so obviously designed for documents on the go.

Google Docs has been around for a while now and is being constantly updated. This latest update allows some offline capability but there are still some gaps as you will see. Unlike Google Reader where the offline synchronisation process has … Read the rest

Waiting on Google – Update

April 28, 2008 | Comment

I wrote in my previous post that I am waiting on Google to enable or give me access to a number of cool features. Well I can update you on a couple of these. Firstly the new contact manager within GMail has appeared almost as soon as I hit Publish on the blog entry and I am happy to report that it is a huge improvement over what was there previously. Much, more usable.

Next up was offline access to Google Docs and it turns out that I am the problem here and not Google. It seems that I am … Read the rest

Waiting on Google

April 25, 2008 | 1 comment

My browser is increasingly becoming the real hub of my activity on my PC and a lot of what I do is centred around Google. Whether it is Search, Reader, Docs or Notebook I am a regular user of all those services with widgets for each on my iGoogle page. Problem is, being a real techie, I want access to the latest updates as soon as they are available but Google tends to roll out changes on a gradual basis. So right now I am waiting on:

offline document access
the latest version of the contact manager
access to the

… Read the rest