Solo Technology

I’ve been swamped at work this week and finally have had a couple hours to come up for air and skim some feeds. Wow! Lots of stuff going on this week.

What’s up with Google

Google announced some Docs & Spreadsheets updates today. The main excitement is that folks finally have the ability to do some charting. Add to that named ranges, cell comments, and a few more new features as well.

Oh, and one option I just can’t visualize ever using, but sounds delightfuly fraught with geekitude: Right click on text in a cell and get an option to search the web for it.

Zoli’s article has some Zoho comparisons and is a good read.

I keep wanting to spend more time using Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Heck, I use most of the other Google toys. But for some reason, this one just doesn’t “stick” with me. I end up with OpenOffice or Zoho at home and Excel at work. And can I just say that Zoho Sheet’s ability to drag and reorder tabs rocks? I love that.

Google also “pre-announced” the upcoming web based presentations application (”We’re Expecting“). Not much to really say as there’s not going to be anything to see for quite a while — some time this summer. I guess the real announcement here was the acquisition of Tonic Systems, the folks who will be adding the presentation stuff to Google Docs & Sheets.

Next up, Microsoft

Via Rich, I see that Microsoft has released something I sure never thought I’d see: A Firefox plugin for Windows Media Player. More at the Vista Team blog.

I’m darned close to speechless.

Will they do one for Opera next?

Moving along, a new test build of Windows Home Server was rolled out today. I received the email earlier and just noticed the blog posting. Good stuff, I really look forward to playing more with this. I’ve experimented with it via the free Virtual PC, but I’m at the point that I want it on dedicated hardware. I’m one large hard drive shy of making that happen… Ah well, soon perhaps.

Oh hey, speaking of Virtual PC: Two updated Virtual PC images were released yesterday. One XP with IE6 and one XP with IE7 (new!). Good stuff for testing whichever you don’t have installed (yeah yeah, assuming you’re on a windows platform to begin with!) . Virtual PC ‘07 is free too. They work until mid-August.

Wait — There’s More

StumbleUpon is being sold to eBay?!? Wow. And hey look: Google has this interesting “searching without a query” article up today. One option is to add recommendations button to your Google Toolbar. Click it and you will get a site based on your previous searches. There’s also some sort of recommendations tab option that I haven’t figured out yet.

Sounds kind of like a StumbleUpon competitor though, doesn’t it?

3 Responses to “Lots of news and releases”

1. Louisville Designer on April 19th, 2007 12:26 pm
   

   Google made their toolbar announcement at almost the exact same time the stumbleupon sale was announced. SEObook has a great post about it today (http://www.seobook.com/archives/002166.shtml), saying that since SU has adsense Google could do a better job of evaluating its worth than eBay could with just financials. Pretty soon I’m gonna really hate google.

2. ReviewSaurus on April 19th, 2007 3:37 pm
   

   Wow, that is one hot post! It seems that you’ve been a bit lazy chris Combined the news of both the companies together..he he he!

3. Chris on April 19th, 2007 9:34 pm
   

   @LD - yep, the timing is rather dodgy. The “recommendations” tab in the google personalized desktop has potential though. not really a SU killer, but…

   @ReviewSaurus - yep, I was a bit behind. The day job was very busy the first part of this week! I pretty much wrote this post while skimming through the backlog of articles in my feed reader.

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