Google Docs Offline

May 3, 2008 | Comment

imageSo 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

1571 Online

May 1, 2008 | Comment

image Here’s a great idea and a real life saver too – access to your BT home voicemail (1571 service) from any browser. As you can see from the image your messages are listed along with the number that made the call. You then have the opportunity to listen to the message or save it to your machine for archiving – something that could be useful.

One thing that the service doesn’t do is tell you when there is a message waiting. Clearly when I get home and I pick up the phone the interrupted tone lets me know that I … 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

WordPress woes

April 25, 2008 | Comment

I wrote a while back about my love of WordPress but after my experiences this morning I am feeling a little less charitable. I am currently setting up a new site (spokenlikeageek.com) for which I had intended to use the latest build of WordPress (2.5). As part of this I wanted to transfer some existing entries from this blog and so I exported out all entries (the only option) and imported them into the new blog. This seemed to work well and, as an added bonus, also copied across all the files that had been uploaded as well. … Read the rest

Nationwide Online Banking Card Reader

April 23, 2008 | Comment

image This little device arrived through the letter box this morning and while it looks like a three year olds first calculator it is, in fact, my banks attempt at improving on line security. Now you might think that I would welcome this but actually I have mixed feelings on its use. It seems that it will be used for signing on to the internet banking service and then to carry out some of the more "dangerous" transactions. I say "it seems" because the accompanying documentation is, well, pretty much non-existent other than a short letter – all the documentation is … Read the rest

Xobni – the Essential Outlook Plugin

April 22, 2008 | 2 comments

imageOver the last week I have been trying out a new beta plugin for Outlook called Xobni (Inbox backwards) that helps you make sense of the mess that is your email.

Xobni appears as a column down the right hand side of Outlook that displays information about the sender of the currently selected email. At the top is a picture placeholder which is a little redundant in my case as I don’t collect pictures of my contacts. Below this is details of your email activity with this individual and their rank.

The next block has telephone number details (if available) … Read the rest

Installing Windows #2

April 20, 2008 | Comment

At the end of yesterday I had a fully functioning laptop again having completely wiped it and done a fresh install. This process involved a trip into the office to join the machine to the domain and synchronise Outlook to my Exchange folders, all of which took an hour or so. One thing that this exercise has shown me is that installing the software is the easy part – anyone can double click an installer and get the files onto their machine – no, what is really challenging is getting right all the settings for all the programs.

As … Read the rest

Installing Windows

April 18, 2008 | 3 comments

imageMy laptop has been giving me increasing problems over the last few months and I have been putting off the inevitable need for a rebuild. Today, however, the final straw arrived in the form of a very untimely "Blue Screen of Death" so I decided to rebuild from scratch.

Before blatting the laptop I took a good look at what I already had installed and came to the conclusion that I had an amazing amount of stuff that I used on a regular basis that would need to be reinstalled. I was equally amazed at the even greater … Read the rest