Posts tagged Google
Google Chrome to get bookmark syncing
Aug 3rd
Google Chrome will be getting bookmark syncing according to http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sync
Update: The sync is to make sure different Google Chrome instances have the same data. The first step is bookmark syncing, but surprisingly bookmarks won’t be synced to Google Bookmarks but will use the Doclist API. This may mean that your Google Chrome bookmarks will be pushed to Google Docs!
Google Contacts and iPhone Sync – Birthday blues
May 13th
So, I was all excited that Google finally introduced the birthday field in the standalone version of Google Contacts. The official Google Apps post announced this yesterday. Alex Chitu, who maintains the wonderful blog, Google Operating System also mentioned this in his blog post.
Luckily, my Google contacts were synced to my iPhone and I immediately went ahead and updated the birthday fields of all my friends on Google Contacts. I just wanted to make sure things were fine on my iPhone, but to my surprise – iPhone was showing all birthdays a day earlier.
Google, please fix this soon!
Random Ideas
Apr 14th
Hypothesis: Building the Grand Unified Web 10.0
It’s a complex idea and I’ll try to explain it in as few sentences as I can. Imagine a single device that keeps you connected all the time. There are two things I’m targetting here.
1. The device itself. Something bigger than the iPhone and something as useful as a netbook (with a real keyboard).
2. The software that runs on the device.
I’m assuming someone already built the device. I’m here to talk about the software. What I wish to see, to build is a mash up of everything that is successful today and is attracting users everyday. Think of it as the Google-Facebook-Twitter-Yelp-Loopt/Latitude-Craigslist-Youtube-Scribd mash up. You see where I’m getting at. More about this idea later.
I’ve moved to Google Voice!
Mar 20th
So, finally Google decides to upgrade me from Grandcentral to Google Voice. And then what did I do?
All the contacts on my phone are synced to Google Contacts, so I had no problem in accessing them through Google Voice. So, I sent an email to all my friends about my Google Voice number!
You can call me from right here!
Changing my Default Browser
Mar 16th
Today, I decided to make Google Chrome my default browser and not use Firefox at all. Let’s see how many days this will last. I’m already missing Adblock 
.
The Google Friend Connect Experiment
Mar 12th
I’ve added Google Friend Connect support to this site. Just click on the ‘Join’ button on the Google Friend Connect panel on the left column of this page. And let’s see how that works!
Tools I use (and would recommend) – Part 2
Mar 12th
Techmeme and Live Mesh covered here.
Google Desktop (without the gadgets) – I always had problems with GD whenever I had installed it. I would use it for a few days, realize what a memory hog it was and uninstall it. I realized the real memory hogs were the desktop gadgets and not the background Google desktop process itself. The only bad part about GD is the indexing. I had some 50+ GB of data on my work laptop and it took GD almost 3 days to complete indexing. But now, I can’t live without Google Desktop. I’ve usedLaunchy for launching my files, applications etc. but the Google Desktop search bar is just super cool. I can use it to launch programs, search my desktop and even search the web.
Windows Live Writer is for all the blogging fanatics. If you ever felt the need to blog from your desktop, without taking the pains to use a browser to login to your blogger account, upload images and then publish the posts, then you definitely need Windows Live Writer. And from this post, you very well know how yours truly posts his blogs.
If you are a heavy user of Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar, you need Google Calendar Sync. The name says it all.
Talking about Multimedia players, I know everyone’s favorite is VLC or Media Player Classic. But my favorite is The KMPlayer. Use it and tell me if it isn’t better than VLC. With an active forum and active development community, KMPlayer is by far the best multimedia player I’ve seen.
Paint.NET – Do you need to crop a photo, or do you want to resize, or may be save a screenshot that you just took? Paint.NET is the best way to do it. MSPaint doesn’t have the quality and the images saved look grainy. Use Paint.NET to add that professional look to your edited photos.
Talking about web apps, I guess everybody’s favorite mail client is Gmail. Of course, even mine, but the best part of Gmail I like is Gmail Labs. As of today, I have 15 lab features enabled and I use everyone of them. My favorites are Offline Gmail, Right-side Chat, Mark as Read button, Tasks, Quick Links (looks like, I like all the labs features I’ve enabled 
). In fact, I stopped using Google Talk desktop client (do you know it’s a drain on your system memory?) and started using Gmail chat.
Buxfer – my life saver. The best expense management application (at least, according to me). I’ve tried Mint but I’ve never liked the sharing of my bank, credit card credentials with Mint. It’s like giving away your identity. Buxfer on the other hand, lets you import statements without actually giving your bank credentials.
Google Reader – when not immeresed in Techmeme, I use reader. The new UI tweaks are really good!
Google Docs – my favorite destination for spreadsheets, forms and documents.
Flickr – Somehow, Picasa doesn’t seem so refined in terms of UI. Also, in terms of storage space. On the other hand, Flickr gives you a 100MB per month which I think is pretty reasonable. And the Flickr UI – just amazing.
Firefox Add-ons – Needless to say, Firefox is my default browser. I use Chrome for quick browsing. My favorite Firefox add-ons – Adblock Plus, DownThemAll,Download Statusbar, Screengrab and Xmarks.
Let me know your favorites and if there are any errors!