Offline Google Reader’s Ten Minutes May 31, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in blogging, web apps.1 comment so far
Intro: Web-based newsreader Google Reader now works offline, thanks to Google Gears, a plug in which promises offline usage of Google’s web-apps.
Exec Sum: The tool works as promised, converting Google Reader into a tool as useful as the best of the standalone RSS readers.
My tenminut.es: The offline reader involves installing something called Google Gears, which is pretty straightforward and works in Firefox and IE (and possibly Opera; I’m not clear about that). (More on Google Gears from Scoble)
Once the browser is restarted and you visit Google Reader a dialog box will pop up:
Once you accept that the Reader will load (taking a little longer than usual) and you’ll see another message in the top right hand corner:
Clicking the green button will begin the download of 2,000 items:
I‘m not sure why 2,000, and which 2,000; there doesn’t seem to be any way to configure what is downloaded and what isn’t. Downloading wasn’t smooth, either; after a fast start on unpredictable broadband connection, things got stuck at 28% and stayed there:
Don’t try cancelling and going offline before it’s finished: You’ll be asked if you want to go offline, and if you do, it will then tell you there’s nothing to read:
Clearly the entire download needs to happen before you go offline. That said, restarting the download process I had no problems the second time around, completing the download in a couple of minutes:
Thereafter you can browse as you would with Google Reader online (the 2,000 collected seem to be the most recent from each feed, minus any graphics.)
Gripes: Apart from the above, I also found the green button disappearing from time to time, meaning I wasn’t sure if I was online or offline.
Verdict: A glitch or two there but nothing to get upset about. A real step forward in the web app world; to be able to read RSS offline in a brower is a kind of special moment. Expect Gmail and Google Calender next.
Score: 8 out of 10
BlueOrganizer’s Ten Minutes May 27, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in bookmarks, browsing, organizers.add a comment
Intro: BlueOrganizer is a browser-based tool for intelligently adding information to what you’re looking at in your web-page. Instead of this information being added “bottom up” by other users via services like del.icio.us, it’s added top down, via BlueOrganizer’s parsers, services and algorithms. The result: contextual links on the fly.
How the company sees it: “BlueOrganizer is the new smart-browsing technology for Firefox. It automatically recognizes things like books, wine, travel destinations and offers contextual shortcuts between your favorite sites.”
Exec Sum: Useful but confusing tool for adding contextual information to your browsing. Only for geeks and people who buy a lot of stuff online.
My tenminut.es: Installation was pretty straightforward, but after that things were less clear. BlueOrganizer is at its most basic a button on your browser toolbar that changes color when you visit a website it has information on. Even if it doesn’t you can still access further links by either right-clicking on the page or the pull-down menu next to your address bar:
Visit a web page like Amazon, or anything that sells stuff like wine, music, books, videos etc, and you should find links to relevant sites, along with pre-prepared searches on del.icio.us, Google etc. Select a word, right click on it and the BlueOrganizer contextual menu will offer up a smorgasbord of relevant searches. (There are other features that BlueOrganizer offers but that would have taken me way beyond the ten minutes to figure out.)
Gripes: It felt slow and sluggish on my computer. Thumbnails of websites were slow to generate (they’re still generating.) And the way BlueOrganizer adds itself at the top of my pop-up menu meant I found myself having to wait until its submenu had loaded before I could do anything:
More importantly, I found myself not really getting it. I had to go some way beyond my ten minutes to figure out what it was about; I was surprised it was less intuitive and, frankly, mind-blowing, than I expected, given I’m an admirer of Alex Iskold’s ideas. The help pages weren’t particularly helpful either: I quickly found myself on a “page not found.” Even the example given in the tutorial, the Amazon page on the Nintendo Wii, didn’t always do as advertised, instead throwing up an empty submenu.
Verdict: Nice idea, and popular among the Web 2.0 crowd for bringing the Semantic Web a step closer. Needs a bit of work both on the usability and on the range of stuff it has information on and, ironically, more contextual help to bring it out of the techie ghetto. BlueOrganizer, for all the vision of its creator and its promise, needs to find a way of conveying its usefulnes to ordinary Joes in less time.
Score: 5 out of 10
Veodia’s Ten Minutes May 16, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in video.add a comment
Intro: Veodia is a web-based videoblogging and streaming service, designed for ordinary folk without a lot of tech knowhow, but powerful enough for pros.
How the company sees it: “Simply plug your camera into your computer, log on to Veodia, and press Start to begin broadcasting live interactive TV broadcasts over the Internet to thousands of viewers on computers and mobile phones. When you press Stop at the end, the recording is instantly available for on-demand playback on computers, cell phones, iPods and Apple TVs.”
Exec Sum: A good start to making live videocasting something anyone can do.
My tenminut.es: You need to sign up and install a plug-in for Internet Explorer (won’t work in other browsers) and you’ll need QuickTime to watch the feed. Oh, and while it works seamlessly with TypePad it doesn’t yet support other blogging platforms. Apart from that it’s pretty straightforward.
Start a new broadcast, let the software find your webcam (you can select a different camera and a different microphone) and off you go. (You can choose to go live or record one to broadcast at a later date.) The software will first detect your bandwidth, which, in my case, took a few minutes. In your browser you’ll see what everyone else sees, as well as any messages sent in by viewers.
Just click stop once you’ve finished, and your videocast will be saved in your library, along with details such as when, how long and how big the videocast was. Previous videocasts will remain as separate posts on your chosen blog.
Viewers meanwhile will see a new blog post in your TypePad blog and an image from the broadcast. Clicking on the image should launch the QuickTime plugin and you’ll be able to watch the broadcast from the beginning. Previous
Quibbles: I couldn’t get the feed to load in another browser as a viewer quickly enough for my tastes but it could be the lousy connection. When the videocast did load it didn’t seem to capture anything that was still being broadcast live. Also the whole kaboodle seems to suck up a lot of CPU, resulting in a few more browser crashes than I’d like.
Verdict: Promising but needs to work a bit more seamlessly, and have a few more tips for both users and viewers, to gain a following.
Score: 6 out of 10
Ten Minutes With Ripple May 9, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in charity, search.3 comments
Intro: Ripple is a Melbourne-based charity that uses revenue from ads to help charities. You don’t give any money — you just view an ad — or set ripple as your home page.
Exec Sum: Great idea, and works well. Do it.
My tenminut.es: Nicely designed site, though I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do and whether I had to cough up money. I didn’t and you don’t. Either you click on one of four boxes denoting charities (water, food, education or money) and then view an ad before scrolling down to the Google search box. Alternatively set ripple as your home page and do your Google searches from there: a portion of any ad money made from your search goes to ripple which passes it all on to the charities.
Setting ripple as your home page in Firefox is easy: Just drag the icon to the homepage icon on your toolbar. Or you can download a ripple Searchbar.
Verdict: Beautifully simple and effective way to help charity. Only nag: One ad didn’t appear. Otherwise seamless, and nice to look at, too.
Score: 9 out of 10
Ten Minutes With BlogSigs May 5, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in blogging, email.add a comment
What is it: BlogSigs is software that inserts a link to your latest blog post (or any blog post) into your email signature.
Executive summary: Good way to publicise your blog without being too in-your-face, although some might disagree. Great that it works with clients and webmail, and Mac and Windows. Needs more work before it’s really roadworthy.
My tenminut.es: Downloading the software (Windows and Macs) and installation is easy; you have to choose your existing Outlook signature and enter your Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail account and password:
Worked smoothly for Outlook: Add the signature that you chose in the settings window above and it will appear below the existing signature text next time you write an email:
You can tweak the words although you can’t, for now, remove the Blogsigs reference and link.
Gripes: I didn’t find the Gmail part of things so straightforward — the Blogsigs bit erased my existing signature rather than append to it. When I went back to Outlook I found that my original signature had also been deleted, and when I tried to make a new one encountered an error message after another:
These things were eventually resolved, but I’d prefer not to have had to.
Verdict: Neat idea, check back in a few more weeks.
Score: 6 out of 10
Tip of the hat to: Lifehacker
Ten Minutes With Wakoopa May 2, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in social networking.add a comment
What is it: Wakoopa is “software gone social” — a sort of software equivalent of Last.fm. Share with the world what software you’re using and see what other people are using too. Official version here.
Executive summary: Very geeky, but kind of compelling.
My tenminut.es: Straightforward registration, you need to download a very small applet (Windows and Mac) which will then monitor what software you use. You can see this quickly take shape in a list in your profile:
Those programs in the list with an icon next to them link to a dedicated page containing information put together by other users about the software in question, including a link to the program’s own website, and any reviews that may have been written by other Wakoopaites:
If nothing has been written on the subject you can start the ball rolling. Beyond that you can add contacts, teams and reviews to your profile, building an ad hoc network of fellow software users. The idea here is that, as with music, individual usage and recommendations will be aggregated, allowing others to find good software and generally get ideas from other users about what to try out.
I know it’s horribly geeky, but it’ll be interesting to see what software other people are using, and, who knows, it might be, like Last.fm and its ilk: a good way to hunt through the bewildering array of software on offer and find the good stuff.
I can be found here and you can also see a Wakoopa badge somewhere on the tenminut.es page.
Downsides: It’s early days (the site was only launched today). Navigating around wasn’t as intuitive as I’d have liked, and there are probably too many lists.
Verdict: Simple enough, but with some interesting elements. Only worth trying if you really like software.
Score out of 10: 7
