Google Gears, Google’s platform for running online applications while not connected to the internet, has been a ton of potential that wasn’t being realized, since Google launched it with Google Reader and then did nothing for five months. For Gears to be successful, it has to be more useful than a one-app pony, and Google wasn’t using it for anything.
Things have improved a bit, with two more Google products getting Gears functionality. Blogger can be made to work with Gears, thanks to some sample code whipped up by the Gears team using the new Blogger GData JavaScript library. They haven’t actually integrated with Gears, just shown a way other developers can build an integration, which might mean that the Gears team doesn’t have the time or resources to do full-fledged solutions.
The other service which is getting actual Gears integration is Google Calendar, as spotted by Andy Beal. Some slueths at Blogoscoped discovered you will be able to view and edit the next three months of your calendar after a Gears-enabled browser logs onto Calendar and syncs up. Presumably, you’ll be able to view a decent number of past appointments as well. No idea when this functionality goes live, but its promising.
I’m going to go speculating and say that it appears Google has decided to leave the job of integrating Gears with the various Google services to the actual product teams, which could be why its taking so long. Most Google teams have a lot of work on their plates, and might not have time to do this. I can’t imagine the Google Docs guys having a lot of time, with the high visibility and pressure of their products, which is a shame since Docs (and Gmail) are the most anticipated products to get Gears eventually.
Just in case you aren’t reading InsideMicrosoft, you probably need to know that Microsoft beat Google in some tough negotiations for an investment in Facebook. Microsoft now owns a very small percentage of Facebook, and pretty much owns the right to sell ads on Facebook for the next four year.
Amidst rumors that Google has pulled ahead of Microsoft in the race to buy a portion of Facebook, Google News now has its own Facebook application. You can select from five standard categories (Entertainment News, Sci/Tech News, World News, Sports News, Business News) or enter any number of keywords.
The app gives you a page featuring the top 3 stories in each of those categories (and you can select to see more, with a button to share them with your friends. You can also view stories sent and saved by yourself or by your friends who also have the application. Basically, you can use the application as a replacement for the regular Google News, as well as a means for socially sharing news with friends.
Since the application does not add a box to your profile or annoy you, you can install it and trust it will mostly remain out of the way while adding some nice functionality to Facebook. I like that Google has specifically avoided spamming your friends, selecting no one by default on the “Invite your friends” page. Hopefully Google will create a “Popular shared news” page, so you can see which news is the most popular among Facebook users.
Screenshot by Accuracast, who thinks the app will go unnoticed because it doesn’t annoy people like other Facebook apps. He’s right, in that spammy Facebook apps are more likely to succeed, but if a few users start heavily using it to share news stories, it will spread by being useful, not by taking up profile page space and messaging all your friends.
GOOG hit a per-share price of $666.66 yesterday and multiple times today, proving that Google owes its success to the devil. So close to Halloween? It can’t be a coincidence!
(via TDavid)
As Google has explained before, a black Google does not save energy, due to the way LCD monitors work, but this black Google may have helped contribute to lower energy usage by inspiring people to participate in Lights Out SF. In fact, its inspired me to turn off my 300-watt living room incandescent light bulb for up to three minutes a day.
Google has added IMAP access to Gmail, letting you use that protocol to access your email. IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol, is one way of accessing your email from outside Gmail (POP3 is the other), that works better syncing with mobile devices than POP3. According to Wikipedia, advantages of IMAP over POP3 include:
Connected and disconnected modes of operation - IMAP users stay connected to the server so long as they are using the email client, allowing for message content downloading on demand. POP3 users must download all the new messages first.
Multiple clients can simultaneously connect to the same mailbox
Can retrieve parts of a message as needed, instead of the whole message, like portions of a MIME structure or the text of an email without the attachments.
Can flag message states on the server, marking them as read or replied to or other things on the server, making syncing them with multiple devices possible
Interaction between multiple mailboxes on the server, including moving messages between boxes.
Searching the mailbox on the server side is possible
Allows extensions
Disadvantages include increased complexity, increased server resource usage, slow connections over mobile devices, and a requirement to transmit sent messages twice.
What does this mean? The biggest advantage for IMAP is that it works real well with multiple computers and mobile devices (albeit slower), meaning you can access your email from a Windows Mobile device or iPhone, or from your laptop, home computer and work computer, and have messages remain synced among all of them, almost like having an Exchange Server.
Bloglines beta keeps adding commands to the console. Here’s an update:
“echo help” now reveals new commands:
cat
cd
changelog
clear (previously available but undocumented)
ls
Echo, set and show are still available.
Cat has two uses:
cat folder_name
cat feed_name
No idea what they do, though entering cat and the name of a folder (case-sensitive) is not rejected by the system.
cd is Change Directory, a standard DOS command. It has three uses:
cd folder_name
cd ..
cd /
I was able to navigate into folders by entering “cd” and the name of the folder, case sensitive.
I cannot find the proper usage for changelog. It would not display the changelog no matter what I used.
Clear clears the screen.
ls is a list command. In any directory, it will give you the contents of the directory, along with some letters. It’s somewhat like this:
drwxr–r– Google
drwxr–r– Microsoft
Non public folders do not have the r– designation. The “d” means it is a folder, feeds do not have a d in the beginning.
Set has four usages:
set hotkey action
set theme theme_name
set text text_color
set background background_color
I cannot find the names of the hotkeys, but the themes can be changed simply by using the theme name, and the text and background can be changed to any color name or hex code.
Show has three usages:
show hotkeys
show themes
show profile
Show hotkeys doesn’t work now. Show themes shows you the four themes, white, black, old and burnt_umber. Old is green text on black, while burnt_umber is white text on brown. Show profile launches the User Settings page.
Ben Lowery and Bjorn Tipling explain at TechOpus that it’s a javascript Read-eval-print loop running inside the browser’s Javascript VM, and you can call into the Dojo or Bloglines APIs. Examples:
bl.feeds.refreshCounts() will update your unread counts
bl.feeds.load() will reload the feed tree
dojo.require(”bl.login”);
bl.login(”userName”,”password”) to login to an account
If you find anything else, let me know. I’m enjoying using this, though I’ve yet to figure out the cool things I can accomplish with it.
