Finally Got Google Sites aka. Jotspot Reborn

Google finally launched the reborn Jotspot as Google sites. It is slick and elegant and acts as I thought it would as a Google App.

It seamlessly integrates with other Google Apps.

However it seems to be only launched for Google Apps? Which is continuing the confusion about the separation between my Google Apps for My Domain and my FREE primary Google Account which I use heavily.

In addition it isn't available in my current Google Apps for my domain. I had to sign up for a new account with a domain I had laying around to get at it.

A little frustrating, but I am still excited to play with. I will be working with it and see what I can get done.

Wooohoo!!

Gmail Greasemonkey API issue and Social Programming

I really like Google approach to extending their applications beyond their core features and encouraging research and development by the masses.

I was just reading a post on the Official Gmail Blog: Gmail Greasemonkey API issue. They outline how they have updated Gmail Javascript to load in an iframe.

They talk about how this change may create some side effects in how some scripts work.

They fully embrace the fact that Greasemonkey is a widely adopted method of extending applications, including most of the core Google Platform Applications.

I just am really impressed how they allow and even work with the masses of hackers and coders out there, who are wanting to get the most out of applications they use.

This type of open research and development and social programming is great, and I feel it is one of the reasons why Google continues to stay at #1.

2008 is off to a good start for blogging

In 2008 I have started really using Blogger as an extension of my idea and content platform.

With this post I now have 42 posts for January of 2008 which beats the 41 entries I posted in the entire year of 2007.

Really feeling my voice this year.

Google Platform for Writing

I use the "Google Platform" to help me build and evolve my central "content platform". For either one project or across all of them.

I too am a software developer so I approach very similar.
I have been using Google Platform to organize and publish my thoughts for some time now. I have wanted to start blogging on how I do this and work to organize my thoughts in a way I can share with others. I was reading Development Approaches to Writing?, by Fred Stutzman today about his development process approach to writing. So let me start with a basic post about this and I will work to refine.

Everything starts in Google Notebook, because I can harvest from a web page or blog with just a right click and it keeps the reference to the original piece. I can also just capture my own thoughts as I am surfing using my firefox add-in as well.

I can then organize these "notes" into notebooks by relevancy. I can further refine and handle the evolution by scripts using the Google Notebook API.

Then as information and throughts mature I migrate to Google Docs with a simple right click in Google Notebook.

Once in Google Docs I can refine more formally and with the assistance of others if necessary through collaboration.

Then I can also organize data in spreadsheets and evolve aspects into presentations.

From there I can publish to blogger, PDF, a book or whatever publishing format I wish.

I like the Google Platform because of how the applications compliment and work together, however the API is the biggest piece that allows me to work with things programmatically using scripts.

Google Home for Your Kids

A while back I started helping my daughter Kaia build her blog at http://kaialane.blogspot.com/. She really likes making pictures and stories and posting there from time to time.

Recently she has been learning to read and write more so she started to want to chat with me and got on her mom's IM and would talk to me at work.

So recently she said she wanted to chat with me on her own chat. So I set up a Google Account for her and setup a Gmail account so she can email and use google chat to talk with me.

I live on my Google Home Page so this was a great way for her to interact with me. I taught her how to use it and she now uses the IGoogle as her start page and chats with me.

It got me thinking of other advantages of having my kids use a Google Home Page such as family bookmarking, and monitoring their web behavior using Google Web History.

More to come on this topic.

Application Ideas: Google Project

I have this notebook of application ideas that I have from time to time. Its overflowing with lots of stupid ideas.

So I am just going to start posting them here and see if someone has done something like it out there or maybe someone will get motivated and do it for me.

Most ideas I have if I perform a little due diligence, I can find someone who is doing something similar. However some I think are unique.

Here we go:

I would like a Google Project Tracking solution to bring all my users, email, tasks, blogs, videos, docs, notebooks, events, and all my other stuff under one umbrella on the Google Platform. It would work nicely with Remember the Milk task system.

My Profile Organization

In a few of my last posts I talk about organizing myself and developing a routine. One thing I am working on is creating a platform and routine that I work on everyday to help organize my world both internally and externally.

I have started by creating an outline in Google Docs that I keep updated. This has all the elements of my world. It is pretty large so I won't list here. But it outlines everything about myself and what I am working on.

I run down this outline at least once per day and and see what has changed and what needs maintenance.

I am using Blogger to keep track of a lot of this and using it as part of the platform for tracking the data. It is one piece of how I use Google as a Content Platform.

I will keep refining this and posting my perspective of this.

Google Data API Integration

I was syncing up some of my OWS Network systems with the complementing Google systems today. Such as when you post a blog entry to your blog it will post to Blogger, and when you post an calendar entry to your web site it automatically publishes to Google Calendar.

So I started working with the Google Data API, and I noticed when you click on code samples and references it just sends to directly to Zend Framework. They have created Zend GData which gives you read / write access to the Google Data API's.

It is a very nice set of PHP classes that allow you to work with Calendar, Spreadsheets, Blogger, CodeSearch, and Base.

It saved me a lot of time and energy and gave me nice set of tools to get my systems integrated with Google right away.

My Online Information Storage

I was just thinking how much information I am putting on the Internet. I pretty much migrated to a web-existence completely.

Only think I store locally are temporary files and my music.

I store all my thoughts in my Google Notebook, all my docs on Google Docs. This is a lot of trust. What happens if my Google Account just goes away?

What would make me feel better about the storage of all my information not from a privacy point of view, but from a backup perspective.

I have thought about using another Google Account and the Google API to move the data from my primary account to a secondary or backup Google Account. Would take some time but could be done.

Now I am also thinking about storing at Amazon S3 or Amazon SimpleDB when ready.

I will let everyone know when I make a move on this.

Google Apps & Features

Google is really rock'n lately!

I have been really impressed with the line of products and features lately. I was impressed with Android and OpenSocial, but some of the latest incremental features are just working for me.

I really see things slowly coming together.

IGoogle just added the ability to share a tab with other Google users. This really opens up the possibilities for collaboration. Combined with Google Code, GData, and their IGoogle widgets you can really build just about anything. For project management, work pages, etc.

They also added where you can change the layout of your IGoogle page to different column formats.

Another system that is really coming is the contact manager for Gmail and Chat. They have added contact group which I see as the prelude of whats to come. I predict with the introduction of OpenSocial we will see the entire Google Platform take on more of the characteristics of a social network in the next year, allowing for more collaboration.

It's getting good.

It is all coming together...slowly...but surely.