Connecting the dots ...
Probably a joke but there’s a mockup of what a Google – Alienware (owned by Dell) phone would look like. Personally, I find it ugly. Perhaps if they bundle it with a light saber?
More on: CrunchGear, Engadget, Gizmodo, Gadgetell, Technology Questions, PalmAddicts and Mobility Site
Big brouhaha this morning over the fact that Google’s Toolbar “hijacks” 404 error pages and displays their own promo instead. “Google is evil” – say some webmasters.
I don’t see it a big deal. 404 pages are not exactly masterfully designed pages anyway, in fact I’m not really supposed to see them at all.
By the way, it’s not such a new idea either: it’s the very foundation of OpenDNS‘s business model.
Update: Google’s Matt Cutts explains how 404 works.
Web forms are increasingly popular, as they provide an easy way to solicit user input, manage a database in the background, and display data in a controlled form. Typical uses are contact forms (this blog has one), surveys, signup-sheets. Wufoo is perhaps the most popular standalone form builder, but as popular as they are, Google’s entry to the space will likely bring more visibility to Web form use cases.
I set up a very rudimentary web form to demonstrate their use, but I am cheating: I took the data from Google Operating System and populated my database – sorry, Ionut, I don’t get anywhere close to your huge reader base.
Please fill out the form below.
Although the form captures the time of entry, I am not displaying it below, to demonstrate that once can control the re-use of data after user entry.
You can manipulate the above data, filter it, sort it by clicking on the column headers, search the contents…etc.
Oh… is this more than you’ve seen on the other Google forms? And they’ve told you the lists were not embeddable? Sorry .. I’m cheating: I’ve re-created Ionut’s form in Zoho Creator. 
(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho – but I am making a point by doing this.)
Different people will always prefer different tools. I don’t have any statistics, but I would assume the number of users for database-like tools (MS Access, Dabble DB, Zoho Creator & DB) is by an order of magnitude less than the number of spreadsheet users. A lot of basic spreadsheet users don’t perform calculations, don’t use pivot tables – they just create tables to track lists. (See my earlier rant on why JotSpot’s tracker is not a real spreadsheet). For their sake it’s nice to be able to have simple form support inside a spreadsheet, which is what they can now get from Google.
Several reviewers of the new Google Forms were missing field verification, calculated numeric fields…etc. These features and more are supported in Zoho Creator, which in fact allows you to build mini-apps by dropping script elements, without actually coding. Those who want more database manipulation can use Zoho DB. These are powerful applications, but which one to use when can be confusing to less technically inclined users (like yours truly). Hence simple forms in a spreadsheet are a good idea. But let me dream a little – here’s how I’d like to see web-based collaboration some day:
It won’t be about formats and applications – it will be about free-flowing thoughts and the data encapsulating them. Of course there will be differences in application capabilities, but it’s entirely likely that what you can manipulate in your database application, I will access using a spreadsheet. Likewise, I may write something in a wiki, and you want to edit it in an online word processor. It’s not a dream, we’re heading that way. For example Zoho’s wiki and Writer apps share a basically similar editor, Zoho DB introduced pivot tables which will show up in Sheet in the near future. I am impatient, would like to see this sharing happen faster, but have to accept the realities of how the leading Web companies work: individual products first, integration later. But we’ll get there… to the vision of format-less web-collaboration.
Oh, and until then, Welcome Creator Mini Google Forms.
Related posts: Rev2.org, Download Squad, Digital Trends, Sunny Talks Tech, Webware.com, Compiler, Search Engine Roundtable, Googlified, Search Engine Journal, CenterNetworks, Google Operating System, TechCrunch, Google Blogoscoped, SEO and Tech Daily, Lifehacker, Gear Diary and Techmamas
This is a speculative post. As it is widely known, JotSpot, a very user-friendly wiki and application-platform-wannabe was acquired by Google in October 2006, only to be closed for new users for a long time. Existing users could continue to access their information free.
There was a lot of speculation as to when it would re-surface and in what shape. I certainly liked the wiki before they “disappeared”, and was hoping The Goog would take the opportunity to do more than just re-label it and make it more scalable:
I hope that means they rethought everything and integrated JotSpot well into a number of offerings.
- It could provide for much better document management than the current Docs & Spreadsheets UI.
- It overlaps with Page Creator, also with the simplified version found in Google Groups – in fact Groups which is no longer just email lists but a rudimentary collaboration platform and JotSpot could very well be merged / integrated.
- Finally JotSpot tried to provide primitive applications (spreadsheet, calendar..etc) all of which have a better Google counterpart, so one would hope they will be replaced, too.
Perhaps we’re getting close to the re-emergence of JotSpot (yes, I know it won’t be called GSpot, but why not have some fun?). Obviously this is the speculative part, but several users report that JotSpot wikis disappear from the net. Users are understandably getting excited:
Is it over? Just like this? Without notice?
I just finished a major rework on the site. And 4 hours after it:
boom, it disappeared.Any help?
Where is all the data gone?
The main jot.com page displays a Network Solutions domain capture page.
I can still access www.jot.com, which displays the standard notification about the Google transaction, and, more importantly I can get into my jot account using the direct URL: account.jot.com. I am using OpenDNS. Perhaps the difference is a matter of DNS propagation, and they are changing in preparation of the Google Wiki launch?
My previous coverage:
(Hat tip: Isaac Garcia, CEO of Central Desktop)
Update (2/6): Mashable list 14 of what they call Online Spreadsheet Applications (clearly, not all are) and surprise, surprise, JotSpot is one of them. That’s a joke. As much as Iiked JotSpot as a wiki, it failed to become an application platform, and it certainly isn’t (hasn’t been) a spreadsheet. Like I wrote before:
Just because a page looks like an application, it does not mean it really is. Try to import an Excel spreadsheet into a Jot Spreadsheet page, you’ll get a warning that it does not import formulas. Well, I’m sorry, but what else is there in a spreadsheet but formulas? The previous name, Tracker was fair: it’s a table where you track lists, but not a spreadsheet. (more)
But whatever we think of the former JotSpot Tracker capabilities, it’s hard to see it left intact once Google releases what they turned JotSpot into. Google themselves have a much better online spreadsheet, I certainly hope for their sake that they will integrate their apps with JotSpot, and kill off the overlap.
(FYI: The real online spreadsheets out of Mashable’s 14 are Google , Zoho, EditGrid, ThinkFree. )
A few years ago this would have been a crazy question. A bookstore against a search engine? Apples and oranges… not anymore. Still, we’re more used to pitting Google against Yahoo, Amazon against eBay. But think about it:
Adoption of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) continues to grow. As an indicator of adoption, bandwidth utilized by these services in fourth quarter 2007 was even greater than bandwidth utilized in the same period by all of Amazon.com’s global websites combined.
The above quote is from Amazon’s earnings release. There are more then 330,000 developers registered to use Amazon Web Services. Some of these new Web 2.0 offerings will actually take off, in fact some will get mass adoption. That translates to tens of millions of users whose online activity flows through Amazon, and this is where Google comes in the picture.
Forget Search, Google is the world’s primary Advertising engine. They need to have (I did not say own!) all our data. Nick Carr is right:
For Google, literally everything that happens on the Internet is a complement to its main business. The more things that people and companies do online, the more ads they see and the more money Google makes. In addition, as Internet activity increases, Google collects more data on consumers’ needs and behavior and can tailor its ads more precisely, strengthening its competitive advantage and further increasing its income.
The business models are different: for Google everything you do is secondary (and largely free to you), since they make their money on the ads, while Amazon directly charges for their individual services (albeit not much). Amazon will have tens of 
millions of users, and Google wants them, too.
If we buy into Nick Carr’s “Big Switch” vision of utility computing (and I do), are these two giants competing to become “The Cloud computer”? Or perhaps one of the 5?
Related posts: ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, Between the Lines, Data Center Knowledge, ProgrammableWeb.
This is hilarious: my blog stats showed hits for the Google search “gaining muscle”. It turns out that an older post titled Zoho Suite Gaining Muscle is on the first page of the Google results, amongst the real stuff for bodybuilders.
This is almost as funny as when an export/import trading company offered me link exchange, as my post titled How to Import All Your Archive Email Into Gmail came up second on Google for “how to import” 
Update: The combination of a little fun with the title and some Google juice can produce unexpected results. I’m not sure Robert Scoble and Shel Israel wanted to be listed in this company. 
Sorry if this post feels a bit tongue-in-cheek. It is. But I can’t help making the comparison when I see both Google and Zoho announcing new features of their Presentation Managers the same day.
We can’t stop adding features! – announces the Google Docs Blog. Today’s newbies are PDF support and adding vector shapes. Some shapes.. the pic to the left shows the available inventory.
The pic below lists the shapes available in Zoho Show:
Add to the above hundreds of clipart items in Zoho Show, all of which, as well as the shapes can not only be moved and resized, like those in Google, but also flipped, rotated directly by dragging them. And of course there’s Zoho’s theme gallery to jumpstart your presentation with… and a zillion more features.
Oh, well… draw your own conclusion. Bias alert:
I am an advisor to Zoho. Don’t just take my word – go and play with Show yourself.
Related posts: Download Squad, Googlified , Google Operating System, Google Blogoscoped
I’ve previously complained about the total chaos between Google Accounts and Google Apps accounts, which basically rendered all Google Apps, other than Mail unusable for me:
In the early days of Google Apps the only way to sign up was by linking to an existing Google Account, in the format of myname@gmail.com. If you have one of those accounts, there is no way to tell Google that you are now myname@mydomain.com. This means that Google Apps thinks of your original @gmail and new, @domain identities and two different ones. You can directly access (via URL) your own Calendar, Docs, Groups ..etc. all under your own domain, however, programs that need to access those apps only find the other version, attached to your @gmail.com account. A simple example is trying to save an event from Upcoming.org, Zvents, or any other services: there’s no way to use them with your own domain.
Even the Google Groups is messed up: when I am logged in as myname@mydomain.com, Groups that I am a member of won’t recognize me. I actually have to have duplicate identities created in Google Groups: one to be able to send email (my own domain) and one to be able to access Group’s other features via the browser (@gmail format).
It appears to have been (almost) fixed now. Google Account and Google Apps Account still remain to different entities, but there is a way to (almost) have them work seamlessly. The steps:
For the services that exist both in public and Apps version, e.g. Calendar, Docs, the Apps version will take priority, and becomes the default. (Warning: you won’t be able to access the “public” versions anymore). For other services, that don’t have an Apps version, e.g. Groups, Reader, you still need to sign in to your “basic” Google account. This may be a little confusing, especially if, prior to deleting the Gmail-based login you used a different password. Your Google Account now has the login name from the Google Apps account (your domain), but the old password. For simplicity, you may want to change the Accounts password to be identical with the Apps password. After this, although you may be surprised at the repeated login prompts, you don’t really have to worry about when you are in Google Apps or regular, public Google services, the experiences is fairly seamless.
Why “fairly”? There are still a few dead-ends. When you are in a public-only service, e.g. Reader, Groups, and click on some of the links in the upper-left corner, e.g Calendar, Google still attempts to pull up the “old” public version, and gives you some funny error message about a “null-calendar”… just ignore it.
I’ve done the transition, and with the exception of some of these bad links appear to be able to work normally now. I can save events from third-party sites, to my Apps Calendar, Plaxo synchronizes it happily, can participate in Google Groups with my own domain email, and even Doc’s come up properly. (There is an option to merge your old Docs account with the Apps version, but for this to work, every tiny setting between the two accounts has to be identical, down to the time zone).
Finally, there is some new information on Google Operating System today about associating additional email addresses with your Google Account. Google Blogoscoped has more details:
“This will allow Google services to recognize that [your additional email address] and your Google Account are associated (e.g. all invitations sent to this email address will automatically appear in your Google Calendar).”
For now, it seems the only benefit to doing this is for Google Calendar (although you can also then use any of your additional email addresses to sign in to your Google Account instead of using your username or Gmail address)
This may be the way to go in case you want to keep BOTH the Gmail account and the Apps email separately. (My process is a complete cutover), but it may not be a complete solution for services other than Calendar – at least for now.
Update: Warning! the process I am recommending essentially deletes your Gmail Account. You WILL lose all content in two days. See Ben’s comment and my response for details. A few more tips:
Update (Aug 15, 2009): See Troy Arrington’s posts on How to use Google Groups for Businesses that are using Google Apps.
Update ( Feb 21, 2010): Google changed things around authentication a few months ago, and the above solution is breaking down in several places. While obviously never a true solution, it was a decent workaround… now it looks Google is forcing users to split their identities between a branded (own domain) and gmail.com instance. Not good … will do an update post soon. In the meantime, read this new, related post: Fixing the Google Account problem. Update to the update: wow, everyone seems to be “discovering” the problem now…. here’s Gina Trapani: Google, Gmail, and Google Apps Accounts Explained.
Update (Mar 14 2010): Perhaps we will have a solution, after all…
Related posts:
This may very well be the first LinkedIn outage I’ve caught, and it comes on the day Google’s Blogger was down, and the Technorati Monster popped up it ugly head again. Oh, well, at least this one is cute.
We’re sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.
What request? I did not request anything. Did not touch my keyboard or mouse at all.
Describe what you were doing when you got this error.
I was simply reading this blog post when it blew up.
This is an error I’ve observed several times recently: click on a link to read a post on Google’s Blogger: the post comes up normally, but a few seconds after I start reading it, it just blows up and I get the above error. But I haven’t touched anything – is this a speed-reading test?
Update: apparently it’s a frequent error, but typically encountered while publishing, not reading.
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
I do most of my business blogging there, with occasional asides here. More...
Recent Comments