Google in the Classroom: Google Presentations

I've been using Google Docs  for quite some time now and absolutely love it. I had used Documents and Presentations quite a bit, but had rarely used Presentations until recently. Last week I decided to slowly get away from PowerPoint, and start using Presentations. So, for this weeks lab I did a Google Presentation, it went excellent. I uploaded last years PowerPoint file, which went well, except for exit and entrance animations being removed. Next I modified the text, easily added images from the web and my computer, and the best part, I inserted a YouTube video. Another excellent aspect of using Presentations is that I created the presentation at work last week, and over the weekend I had some good ideas, and since this is accessible online, I could easily add these without any file transfers. The actual presentation went excellent, the only problem was  playing the YouTube video, it was very choppy, and based on the speed of Google Chrome, it was probably my poor internet connection (my university needs to invest in this). Some things that needs improvement in Presentations are:

1. Drawing Options: Right now this is very limited, basically a few shapes and arrows, with no rotation. Maybe PowerPoint goes overboard on this, but Presentations definitely needs more.
2. HTML/CSS Editing: Documents allows HTML editing and the use of CSS, if this could somehow be incorporated into Presentations, maybe for just text boxes. Now for any special editing such as subscripts, I type it in Documents and paste it in Presentations.
3. Animations: The only thing available now is incremental reveal which adds items one at a time. Again, more should be added so presentations can be "spiced-up."

If Google can address these 3 points, than they would definitely have a Microsoft PowerPoint killer. I almost forgot another advantage of Presentations, they can easily be inserted into Google Sites or Blogger, check out the presentation that I gave my lab today. 

Note: I did not mention any of the collaboration features (i.e., chatting within presentation) since these are currently not allowed at my university. 

Google Roundup for September 21-28

Hello everyone, welcome back for another weekly summary of Google news, lets get started:

• Google Earth is amazing for checking out the solar system. For example, check out the Google Earth add-on for Mars. More great solar system addons can be found at the Google Earth Blog.
• Download this KML file to get a geo-biography of Sen. John McCain. Also, check out this Google Earth blog post for the top 10 games in Google Earth.
• If your into the US presidential election, and want to search quotes by Obama and McCain, check out In Quote.
• If your a chemist like myself, get the periodic table for google desktop gadget.
• The latest version of Google Toolbar for Firefox is now released and available in 29 languages. I probably won't be downloading it because all is use is Chrome these days.
• Adobe and Google have teamed up in Adobe Creative Suite 4. Google Site Search allows users to search for product help, tutorials, notes etc.
• Happy Birthday Google!!
  
  

Coolest Feature of the Week: Well, this won't actually be released until next week, but it should be so good. I am a huge Google Docs fan (using it now to type this blog), and this week the Spreadsheets interface is going to get a big makeover, check out the screenshot below. This was badly needed, no matter how many times I used it, I could not get used to the interface. Way to go Google Docs team!!!

New Google Book

A new book has been released by Randall Stross, a professor of business at San Jose State University and author of the New York Times column Digital Domain. The title of the book is Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know and he recently did an interview with cbc news, my favorite part of the interview is the following:

"CBCNews.ca: You've had access to many employees and executives of Google. Within the company, is there a real hatred for Microsoft? Are they really trying to take Microsoft down?

Stross: Yes, they are. Microsoft is their number one target."

Awesome, be sure to check out the full interview.  

Google: The Big 10

Happy Birthday Google!! This week Google celebrated its 10th birthday, for this Google has done a couple of things:

1. They launched an interactive timeline that begins with Larry met Sergey and lists major events up to the present. The layout and feel of this timeline is super. My current favorite date is October 11th, 2006, the launch of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which I am using right now to write this blog and will use most of tomorrow to prepare educational assessment material and next week to present a lecture about glaciers.
   
   
2. Google is wanting to change the world, and offering 10 million big ones to ideas that are world changing. This amazing idea is referred to as Project 10^100. Once all Google will select the best 100 ideas, followed by public voting to bring this number down to 20, judges will reduce this to 5, and the $10 million will help put these into action. Note that the deadline for submission is Oct. 20th, 2008, and the final winners will be selected in mid-February, 2009.

Enjoy the big 10 Google, you have and will continue to change the world.

gPhone!!

Just in case you haven't heard, Google, T_Mobile, and HTC released the gPhone today, which is a HTC phone running Google's android operating system. This is not released in Canada yet, hopefully soon though, but some American specs include; (1) a cost of $180, which is cheaper than the iPhone, (2) goes on sale starting Oct. 22nd, (3) it has a GPS, WiFi, a touchscreen, an accelerometer, a camera, Gmail, Google Maps, a Webkit-based browser (just like Safari on the iPhone), and an App market, (4) keyboard that flips out, (5) a built in compass, (6) more than one app can be ran at a time, (7) and in the words of Google's founders, its as powerful as a computer made just a few years ago. Check out the video below.

Google Roundup for September 16th-21st

Hello folks, welcome back for some more news in the world of Google, and I may sound like a broken record or mp3 player, it has been another busy week in the house of Google:

• For iPhone users, there is a new application called Earthscape and is available for free at the Apps Store and is very Google Earth-like.
• For all you people who don't want to upgrade from the free Google Earth version but want GPS tracking with Google Earth, check out this application called Navigator. This is able to automatically log tracks to a KML file and also has USB interface support.
• There is an updated version of the Arctic ice animations, check out the 30-day animation , 60-day and 90-day animations. These new animations have better coverage and higher resolution.
• Check out before and after photos of Hurricane Ike by clicking on this file for an overlay overlay image .
• Something that I didn't know was released on the Adsense blog. It is not a violation of program policies to perform searches on one's own Adsense for search boxes. But, it is highly recommended that you do not do this because it will increase the chance of invalid clicks and provide an false view of activity on your site.
• Google Desktop 5.8 has been released and is much faster than previous versions and search covers more Outlook folders and gadgets now have support for flash.
• Gmail labs has some new features; (1) ability to put labels and chat friends on the right and left side of the window instead of being stacked and (2) "Mark as Read" button can be added to top of inbox (this was created by a guy named Mark).
• Gears has been released for Safari on OS X, it can be downloaded at http://gears.google.com.
• Google Maps for mobile has been released and now included Street View. Check out the video below (the guy should invest in a new bicycle!!!). Note that this is available for Blackberry and most Java-enabled phones.
  

• Google Audio Indexing has been added which as allows searching of audio within videos, super awesome!! This can be found at Google labs.
• Those environmentally-sound Google people have joined forces with GE to allow consumers better energy choices. They basically want all aspects of power to be improved and the smart grid implemented.
  
• Google search is now available in Pirate, yep that's right, pirate.
  

Coolest Feature of the Week: For all of those people out there who forget to attach the attachment in a email, Gmail labs has a Forgotten Attachment Detector. When this is activated, an alert will occur when you forget to attach a file. Neat hey?

Google Maps for Mobile

Remote Signout with Gmail

To start with, I'll give you my email history. Prior to 1999, I was not a computer person, in fact, I hated them. This changed when a professor at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College gave an assignment that required 3 references from the world wide web. I though, "what the hell is this?" Then a friend introduced me to the internet and this thing called "electronic mail" and showed me how to sign up for a Hotmail account. I was blown away. Now, fast forward 6 years to 2005, I was a Bachelor of Education student at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a friend told me about Gmail and sent me an invitation to sign up, which was required back in those days. Within a week I sent out an email telling my friends to send emails to Gmail, I loved the huge storage of over 1 GB, its well designed interface, and mostly, threaded replies. Now fast forward to 2008, I am still a Gmail user, and have abandoned the hotmail account. Gmail has grown tremendously with a host of new features. One of these is Remote Signout. Basically,you can remotely sign out from any computer from anywhere. This was very useful for me today. After doing some East Coast Trail maintenance, I stopped into a friend's house, checked my email, drank a Corona, and left. I got back home, surfed the web with Google Chrome and then realized that I forgot to sign out of Gmail at my friends house. Next, I signed into Gmail, looked at my last account activity, examined the details and saw that I was still signed in on my friends computer, and then clicked on sign out all other sessions; this signed me out from Gmail at my friends house. Once again, Google has made life a whole lot easier.

Remote Signout Works Wonders!!

I Want a Blackberry Storm!!

I mentioned sometime back that I am a recent cellphone owner and about after owning it for about 1 week, all I could think about was getting a smartphone. I have a 2-year contract signed with Telus and I'm giving myself 1-year with my current phone, then it's time to get a smartphone. The iphone is simply amazing, but up here in the Great white North, Canada, Rogers is the only phone company that has it and for us here in Newfoundland, that only means service in the St. John's area and Corner Brook. If you are outside of these areas, which I am for about 1 month a year, there is zero service. So, the iPhone is not an option for me. I definitely want a touchscreen, and I love Blackberrys, so I saw this story about the Blackberry storm, which is a touchscreen Blackberry. All I gotta say is that I want it......BADLY!! Up until about a few hours, there was a video of the Blackberry storm, but it has been pulled down, boo!!! Some of the specs of this phone are a very high resolution screen (highest for RIM ever), full html browsing, 3.2 MP camera, visual voicemail, and all of the standard Blackberry goodies. I can't wait for this storm (aka possible iPhone killer)  to head North. 

The Storm             

Google Roundup for September 7th - 15th

Well folks, its been a busy weekend up here in Newfoundland, with events ranging from installing HE washers to afternoon bicycle rides. In the past week, Google has been just as busy, here another round of news:

• All English users of Blogger can now use the Blogger Following feature.
• Check out these cool Google Earth links: PC World Top 10 Amazing Add-ons, 51 Places You Can't See in Google Maps, and this link about a giant tribute to Lenin.
  
• Picasa Web Albums can be used to directly upload photos from one's email and phone, check out this post for more details.
  
• New features have been added to Gmail labs: reply with only selected text; default reply to all, ability to set start and end dates for vacation auto response, create own custom color combinations, and drag and drop items in the Navbar.
• In the mobile world, Google has introduced Search with My location, which will provide localized search results. Note that this is available in the US and UK only (for now) and only works on certain phones.
• For Blackberry users, Google has released Mobile App for Blackberry. This acts as a central point for Google services and can be found at m.google.com on the Blackberry device.
• Once again, old is new. Google is making old newspapers new by allowing them to be available online. These can be accessed by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News.More and more newspapers will be added and the oldest newspaper, the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, is also available for search.

  

We're on the Moon!!!

Back to School = Updates for Google Docs

As I predicted back on August 20th some new features have come to Google Docs. For documents, words can now be "looked up", just go into Tools, definitions, synonyms and encyclopedia searches can be done. Also, under Tools, the web search can be done for a word along with images and these can be dragged and dropped in the document. Also, a Table of Contents can now be added to a document, to do this check out these instructions.

Finally, Google Docs has a thesaurus.

Presentations is now 1-year old, and to celebrate its anniversary, it has a completely new look, and slides can now be zoomed in on. This product still needs some more editing features and more shapes, but the fact that I can access it anywhere overrides these negative aspects. I like it so much, that I'm going to try my first presentation with Presentations in about 3 weeks, I'll let ya know how it goes.

Happy Birthday Presentations!!

Reducing Greenhouse Gases....The Google Way

Google is well known for taking initiatives for a greener planet now they released a patent application for a "water-based data center." Basically, it would sit on a ship in the ocean and use tidal power for electricity and actual water for cooling, neat hey?

Floating Data Center Schematic

The main purpose of these data centers would be to provide computing or telecommunications in times of emergency, but I kinda think it could be a more permanent thing. Data centers are expensive to build and maintain, and this low cost (environmentally and economically, no property taxes!!!) electricity would save Google tons of money. Google, you have such great ideas. Does Microsoft have anything to offer like this? Doubtful.

The Greenhouse Effect

Google Roundup for August 31st to September 7th

Most of the news has already been covered so far this week. The biggest item was the release of Google Chrome which is a super fast stable browser and this was followed by the release of Picasa 3.0 beta  which is a big improvement over previous versions. The rest of the news is rather limited but here it goes:

• New imagery has been released in Google Earth.
• There is a new sublayer in Google Earth called "Hurricane Season 2008", and what a season it has been so far. This has forecasted paths along with current positions of active Atlantic Hurricanes. 
• Check out this KML file showing all the satellites . All I can say is super cool, there are about 13000 of them up there. 
  

Since the release of Google Chrome, I have been using it a lot. Things I love about it are its speed, management of downloads (FF3 has this annoying blinking window), ability to add shortcuts to web applications (Google Docs) which has caused me to use them more often, and the layout. It looks like Google has another winner. 

Seinfeld and Gates

The new Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfeld ad was aired last night during the NFL game, it is 90s in length, check it out below and let me know what ya think. Personally, I find it brutal. Gates is an awful actor, Seinfeld gives a sub par performance, and Microsoft isn't mentioned until second 90 in this 90 second commercial. Microsoft, you just can't do anything right these days. 

Picasa 3.0: What an Update!!!

What a week for Google, on Tuesday they released their own browser, Google Chrome, which has already passed Opera in number of users (Microsoft, you better be worried), and on Wednesday an impressive update was provided to Picasa. Beta version 3.0 has a ton of new features, here they are:

1. The new Blemish Tool which is similar to the clone tool in Photoshop and Eyedropper in Corel Photopaint allows the removal of unwanted areas in a photo. Unlike Photoshop or Photopaint, a preview is given before the effect is applied.
   
   
2.  Red-Eye removal is improved to provide better color matching of pupils.
   
   
3. Picasa now has Video editing, although basic, you can do such things as add soundtracks, title cards, and place photos together with various transition effects.
   
   
4. Picasa now has its own Photo Viewer, and is much better than the Windows Photo and Fax viewer. 
   
   
5. Collages can be automatically produced from a picture folder and has a bunch of options. 
   
   
6. Cropping is made a lot easier. Picasa provides 3 automatic cropping selections, along with preview thumbnails, manual mode and other ratios are also provided.
   
   
7. The coolest feature is Face Recognition. Within the program Picasa 3, photos can be filtered by those having faces. In Picasa Web Albums, name tags are possible, a face in a photo is tagged and pictures with that same face are found. So unlike Facebook which requires tagging every person in a photo, Web Albums can automatically do it for you. 
   
   
8. There is a new sync to web feature that automatically updates online albums when photos are added/edited on the computer.
   
   
9. The program is much faster.
   
   
10. A new text tool has been added to easily add text to any photo. 
    
    
11. There is a new Explore page that allows viewing of public photos all around the world. 

As you can tell, this is a massive update. Unless your into some heavy photo editing, save your money and go with Google Picasa. 

Picasa 3.0: Impressive Update

Google Chrome is Now Available for Download

I've been trying all day, but Google Chrome is now available for download here. Enjoy this new product and let me know your opinion of it.

Update: Chrome is super easy  to install, one of the easiest programs ever. I've only been playing with it for 15 mins but it is so fast, blazing fast. I'm trying to get use to the tab above the address bar view, its different but I kind of like it. Also, it recognizes previously viewed pages very well. I always had a problem with FireFox recognizing Google Docs, I would have to type in http://docs and it would pop up. With Chrome I just type in Do and I can easily select docs. Have fun playing with this new browser. 

Google Is Going to Have it's Own Browser: CHROME

I just got this breaking news from CNET news. Rumors have been floating around about a Google Browser, but today some European writers and developers received a 38 page comic of what the new browser will be like. Visit this site to see all 38 pages, I took a quick glance and it seems pretty awesome (increased stability, speed, and security). Let me know what you think. Note that the comic was drawn by cartoonist Scott McCloud, I love Google.

UPDATE!! Tomorrow a beta version of Chrome will be available in 100 countries.

Google Roundup for August 26th - September 1st

This summer has gone by so fast, I cannot believe that it is Labour Day, and back to work tomorrow followed by teaching. It has been a busy summer on the Google front, now its time for some more news:

• If your a blogger like myself, you'll notice a new feature over the next few weeks. The new feature is called Following and it allows you to know who is following your blog. When the followers icon is clicked on, followers can be browsed, along with the blogs they write and you can read any other blogs they are following. Also, a new tab has been added to the Blogger dashboard called Blogs I'm Following, this will show automatically the latest posts from blogs that you follow. I love social networking.

Blogger + Social Networking

• Related to the above bullet, for any Google Reader users, you will now see a special folder called Blogs I'm Following, which allows you to see all of the blogs that your following. In the future, Google Reader will become more social by adding the Google Friend Connect.
• Hurricane Gustav is all over the news, and if you want to check out its current track, click off the weather layer to see satellite photos, radar, storm tracks etc. Check out many of the weather tools available in Google Earth by clicking on this file created by the Google Earth people.
• For all of you GPS people (I think I may be one soon),WikiLoc is a site that allows users to upload and share GPS tracks. This is now available in Google Earth as its own layer.
• Here is some more good news for Google Earth and Maps users, a new satellite which will be launched on Sept. 4th, will provide imagery for both of these programs, and it does this super fast, an area the size of New Mexico can be done in 1 day!! The name of the satellite is the GeoEye-1 adn has the highest ground resolution color imagery commercially available.
• Google Sites had just received a nice improvement. In the past, if you wanted to add a Google Spreadsheet to your site, it would have to be published to the world (shared with everyone), but no more, the requirement has been dropped.
• Some new features have been introduced to Google Calendar, adding a friend's calendar, creating new events for those busy schedules, and reminder times have been improved, check out this blog for more details.
• IES (Integrated Environmental Solutions) has released a free plugin for Google Sketchup that calculates a building's energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. It looks like the environmental movement is here to stay!!
• YouTube has introduced a new caption feature to videos. Check out this page for more information.

Enjoy the rest of Labour Day, and remember to fill up with an extra dose of coffee in the morning. See you all next week.