Google Presentations

Google Presentations is part of the Google Docs suite of software which is free and done online. This is the newest member of the three (others are spreadsheets and documents) and the most basic. Right now it is somewhat limited but simple presentations can be made and can be easily embedded into a website or blog (see below). Problems that I encountered are:

• No special characters
• No subscript/superscript
• Shapes are very limited
• No animations

Advantages to using this program are:

• No file transfers
• Sharing with others is super easy
• Presentations can be easily added to a website/blog (~4 clicks)
  
• Gchatting can occur within the program
• Videos can be added to presentations with ease
• Does not require any software installation
  

Hopefully Google Presentations will evolve like other members of the Google family and the world can move away from PowerPoint.

Presentation Created with Google Presentations

Adsense Not Working

Just tried to log into Adsense, and got the following message:

"The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later.
We apologize for any inconvenience."

Hopefully it doesn't last too long, Adsense if very addictive.

Google News Experiment

Google announced today that Google News will be undergoing some changes in the next week or so, these will be random and experimental. The whole purpose is for research and will only affect a small number of individuals, hopefully I will be one of them. I am a big fan of Google News, I love how the top stories are constantly updated, how alerts about topics can be sent to your email and how its just a whole collection of news available on the web. I think its an excellent resource for staying informed.

Popular Science and Google Earth

I just read this from the Google Earth Blog, Popular Science's July issue is highlighting the use of Google Earth for aiding in visualizing the environment. There are 5 visualizations highlighted:

1. Volcano Tracker: This is the coolest, basically watch volcanic ash plumes.
2. Storm Trooper: Watch air flights going into storms
3. Emotion Map:3-D visualization of people's emotions in Greenwhich, England
4. Arctic Eye: Watch the Arctic Ice melt
5. Flight of the Bird Flu: Track the bird flu virus

My favorites are the Volcano Tracker and Arctic Eye, I had problems getting the Bird Flu tracking to work properly.

Google Earth

I'm quite sure that most computer users have used/seen Google Earth in action, so I won't talk about how it works. This is just an amazing program, it has changed the way that we physically view our world and it is free although there are paid versions with more advanced features. This program is used everywhere from news to classrooms. Last week I attended the Summer 2008 American Society of Limnology and Oceanography ASLO conference, 90% of the sampling figures (excluding those produced by GIS software) included some sort of Google Earth image. Again, like all Google Products, the product is often updated, with high resolution imagery updates occurring approximately every 4 months. The latest update included:

• New navigation controls, but I sort of liked the older one better
• More 3-D buildings
• Watch the sun
• Street View
• High Res photos are dated, which was greatly needed

One more thing, this has been out for a while, but Google Earth has a flight simulator, all you have to do is press Ctrl+Alt+A, and begin flying around the world, enjoy!!!

Canadian Bill C-61

Check out the video below about the debate between the NDP and finance minister Jim Prentice, also listen to this audio file, all I'm going to say is that I'm not a fan of the Harper government.




The Debate!!

Google Maps for Mobile

Check out this video of the Google Maps for Mobile, this was a recent winner for a contest at the See into S60 blog, enjoy.


And the The winner is...