Ok, I have to admit. It has recently been brought to my attention that I have a Google problem. Well, not a problem, but more like a strong affinity. I had recently been introduced to a new Google Gadget. When I was talking it about to a co-worker, I came to realize that I use, on a regular basis, many of the gadgets that Google has developed and have made available.
In the arsenal of Google Gadgets, I use the following:
The newest gadgets that I've begun to use are Notebook and iGoogle.
iGoogle
I was introduced to iGoogle by CW2 Thompson while I was at my annual training this year. He had all of these widgets setup to view news and cartoons at a glance. It was like an interactive bookmark area. Well, I have further come to find that it is a wonderful way to quick reference all of the tools that I already use by Google and incorporate them all into the Google web search interface. Yes, iGoogle replaces the functional centric design of their search bar interface.
For example, I have the following items in my Home tab on iGoogle:
They each show up in their own little box that I can drag & drop into whatever order or configuration that I choose. It is pretty nifty. the only bad thing is that navigating to www.google.com for me now is much slower loading than the non-iGoogle interface. However, since I use Firefox, I have found a work around for this issue. Instead of navigating to Google each time I want to search, there is a nifty little search engine bar built into the browser. Therefore, instead of using the address bar, I just hit the search bar (which I have configured to Google) and fire at will.
I've come to hold my iGoogle page open more often than not instead of the Gmail window I've become so used to having open. Within iGoogle, I can interface into my Gmail account without having the entire page open. This is not a fully functional interface, but it is enough to quickly check to see if I have new mail waiting. Using iGoogle has also helped me to keep up-to-date with my Reader selections. Before, it might have been once a week or so I would check my RSS feeds for updates. Now, since I glance at iGoogle periodically through the day, I can see what's new without any particular effort. Additionally, I have become quite the fan of the Reuters: Oddly Enough news feed. I have previously gotten these updates from the RSS feeds at the top of Gmail. Well, I don't have to wait for the ROE items to have their turn in my mailbox any longer. I can just reference my iGoogle page.
If you are feeling that you need just a bit more organization within your Google experience, iGoogle is a wonderful bridge to put all of the Google tools you use in one quick reference heads up display or dashboard. Also, iGoogle doesn't just do Google plug-ins. You can incorporate other widgets from other websites into your iGoogle interface. You can review the list of items that I have on mine where it is pretty easy to spot that they are not all Google.
Once last word on iGoogle. You can skin the way that your Google search bar appears. The skin/theme that I'm currently using is "The Beer Journal Theme #2".
Notebook
So, I have found 2 reasons to be interested in the Google Notebook application. I work on multiple computers. I have one for work and one for outside of work. Well, I have bookmarks on each and neither list contains everything from the other, but there was a little bit of overlap. Anyway, I got frustrated with having to run upstairs or downstairs depending on the machine I was on and the machine that had the information. So, I decided that I would find a place to put all of my bookmarks somewhere machine neutral. Since I'm such a supporter of Google and their products, I thought I would check to see what they had available before going elsewhere. Within their gadgets list, Notebook grabbed my attention. So, I just had to check it out.
I honestly don't know what Google had intended this application to be, but it immediately appeared to be what I was looking for. Once I added my account to the service, a book was created for me. Well, I immediately deleted it. I didn't need a book called "My first notebook" as I had other books in mind. The application not only allows users to create books, but also segment the books. There is also a place to put bookmarks without being in a notebook.
There were a few shortcomings that I found pretty quickly. These shortcomings are not showstoppers, but rather, annoyances. The items that I will discuss as issues revolve around sections, bookmark creation, and bookmark management.
As with just about any other Google application, the organization scheme that they provide to you is based on Tags or Sections. Tags are pretty straight forward and as flexible as I think they should ever need to be. However, the sections are where I have a complaint. A section cannot be created within a section. Therefore, these sections do not have the same attributes as a folder/directory would have. Folders or directories can be a parent and/or a child at the same time. These sections are not so. Therefore, one of the things I was attempting to do failed miserably and I had to reorganize. I wanted to create a notebook for items for my jobs. Then, create a section for each job with subsections of bookmarks. Well, the work notebook plan had to be junked and each job now has its own notebook.
Bookmarks. Well, bookmarks are a wonderful feature. Unfortunately, they have an annoyance about them. You can only create a bookmark within the "Unfiled bookmarks" area and once created, you can move it into a notebook. I don't understand why I can't create a bookmark within the intended destination. I can create notes there, but I can't create a bookmark. Why can't there be some UI option of creating a new note and converting it into a bookmark? Furthermore, why, once I create a bookmark, can I not modify the URL? I found this to be a bit on the surprising side. Once a bookmark is created, you can create notes related to the bookmark, but you cannot edit the URL that it points to. One of the things I was going to do during the creation of one of my notebooks was create a set of named bookmarks with bogus URLs and edit the bookmark once I got the correct URL for it. Well, a few days after I created the bogus bookmarks, I finally remembered to get the URL off of my work computer. I was quite surprised when I was unable when I tried to edit it. I deleted what I had and started over.
The last thing I would like to mention as an annoyance is the management of the bookmarks. Once you have a bookmark created into the Unfiled Bookmarks, you have two options for relocating them. You can grab the bar on the left and drag & drop them to a notebook. Note that I didn't say notebook section. If you wanted to move the bookmark into a notebook and a section within, you cannot accomplish this in one step via drag and drop. Instead, you have to use the dropdown menu for the bookmark. There is an option for move. Once move is selected, you can select the notebook and optionally the section via an AJAX interface. The only bad thing with this is that you have to do this for each individual bookmark. There is not a way to multiselect the bookmarks and move them in a bulk fashion. If there is such a way, someone please let me know.
So, now that I have my beefs outlined to you, lets talk about the other fine features of this application. Notebook will allow you to publish your work in multiple fashions. You can create a Google Document or HTML or PDF via Google Documents or even provide an RSS feed directly to your notebook. Honestly, I'm not so sure about the value of the RSS features, but I guess that would depend on what you were writing in your notebook. For my personal list of bookmarks, I doubt that there will be much use in attaching an RSS feed to any of my notebooks.
So, I have published one of my notebooks. I have utilized the HTML export of one notebook to generate an index for my development server. I had previously left my third level domain empty for except a message saying that my server was working. I think the message said, "Welcome to my space. Please come back when I have something to show you." Well, that message is gone. It has been so kindly replaced with my Projects notebook that I created more for myself than for others. There is a projects that I'm working on, slowly and intermittently, and have been slowly forgetting the URLs to find our developed code to this point. I would have to FTP into the server to find the paths that I needed to view what I wanted. Therefore, I decided that I would log this information somewhere. The problem wasn't that I had forgotten where the information was, it was that I couldn't remember the capitalization to get there. The site in question is on a Linux server and enforces case sensitivity just about everywhere. Therefore, if you knew the name of the directory for the information you seek, you still didn't have enough info.
Anyway, if you would like to see the published notebook, you'll find it here. Or you can view the export of the document here. I haven't looked, but I'm pretty sure that they should appear exactly the same.
So, there you go. I'm addicted to Google tools and can figure out ways to make their tools work for me. If you have found any information here useful, please leave a comment.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Google Junky
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