2007 has been a great year for the Grinn Blog. We've had some great feedback from all of you, and launched two new series articles, This Weekends Tech Deals, and Historic Tech from Today. But the articles that keep you guys coming back are exactly the ones we wanted this blog to be all about: The articles that help you be more productive with your tech, and keep the tech from keeping you down! With that I bring you a review of the top 5 most popular articles of 2005:
1. Incorporate Google Calendar Into Outlook Published way back in April of 2006, this still remains our most popular article. It is a detailed how-to for syncing your Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook using a program called Remote Calendars.
2. Add to Google Calendar by Talking Into Your Cell You guys sure like your Google Calendars. This article introduces our Jott2GCal application that allows you to add (and now retrieve) Google Calendar events using the popular Jott service. Since then Jott has released their own Google Calendar implementation, but you guys seem to like ours, so we'll keep developing it!
3. Your Connection to the Server Has Been Lost We had a problem and had a heck of a time finding the solution. So, when we did resolve the issue, we posted about it to share that solution with you. This article serves to correct the infamous "Your connection to the server has been lost" issue with Battlefield 2142, and apparently it serves it's purpose well because it claims the #3 spot on our list.
4. How to Fix the Azureus Disk Read Error Yet another case of us sharing in an issue. We found a compatibility issue between the popular P2P application Azureus and Google Desktop. Here, we tell you the simple measures you can take to resolve this issue.
5. 10 REALLY Weird Instructables If you have yet to visit "The world's biggest show-and-tell", instructables.com, you should start with our list of the wierdest. Does anyone else find a list making the list of our 5 most popular articles a little ironic?
Jott told me a little while ago that they were looking to develop their own Google Calendar addition to Jott Links. Knowing this, I had been holding off on any new developments with Jott2GCal, since their version would likely make mine obsolete. It looks like they finally came out with it this week. It's functionality is a little more limited than ours, but knowing Jott it probably works very well.
One way theirs differs from Jott2GCal is in calendar selection. In ours, users can optionally preface their Jott with the name of the calendar they wish to invoke (for example, "Personal Calendar, buy cookies today at noon.") In Jott's new Jott Link you select which calendar you wish that Jott Link to point to.
Although this approach limits you in what calendars you can Jott to, it does simplify voice entry. The idea is to set up multiple Google Calendar Jott Links, giving them the Link Name of the calendar the Link is pointing to. For example, if you have a Business calendar and a Personal calendar, you might set up two seperate Jott Links - one called "Business Calendar" and one called "Personal Calendar". You can also Ctrl+Click to select multiple calendars from the list, which will add your event to all the calendars you've selected.
Another noticeable difference is in how they authenticate your Google account and attach it to your Jott Link. Where we require your Gmail Address and Password, Jott's uses Google's 3rd Party Authorization Token which essentially redirects you to Google's website for authorization. The benefit of this is that you don't have to worry about the folks at Jott knowing your password. The downside is that you can't use Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD) with it.
So, if you use GAFYD or like our brand of multiple calendar support, I'd stick with our Jott2GCal. Otherwise, I'm sure their Jott Link is worth giving a shot.
The web is abuzz with talk of Google's new mobile OS, Android. What I find interesting is the stark contrast between Apple's tyrannical stance against people developing their own apps for the iPhone, and Google's stance that outside apps can only lead to the melioration of their product. Apple has blocked users from developing apps for the iPhone, going as far as causing all outside apps that were developed for the iPhone to be bricked. Google has done quite the opposite. Their new Android mobile operating system not only is designed specifically to allow programmers to produce apps for it easily and is not tied to any specific phone or carrier, but the entire operating system will be made open-source sometime next year!
For those of you guys that missed it, Google today announced that they are in fact not making a cellphone or mobile device, but instead were actually developing an open-source operating system for cellphones and mobile devices. The software is known as Android. C'mon, are you really surprised that a software company developed software and not a device? Here's the scoop on Android:
The OS is free for mobile providers (or anyone else) to put it on their phones. Google plans to make their money off ads displayed to the users of the phone (not sure if it's on the phone itself or simply when browsing Google's pages.)
The OS itself will go open-source sometime next year.
It has been suggested that the design of the phones may be similar to the iPhone (with touch screens and what-not) but I'm guessing the OS's interface will not be tied to one particular navigation or input system.
Google will continue developing mobile versions of its web-based applications such as Google Maps and GMail for those of us with non-Android phones to continue to use.
Google has also announced the Open Handset Alliance: A group of developers, manufacturers and providers to "commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform."
Android-powered phones are not expected to be available until the second half of 2008.
Again, all of this is such a contrast to how Apple has handled outside development on their iPhone. Jobs was quoted as saying, "These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them." And that, "'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up." People figured out a way to get their own apps on their (own) iPhones, but instead of voiding their warranty (or thanking them for making the iPhone waaaay better), Apple blocked their apps with their latest patch. It has taken a huge public outcry and several lawsuits to get Apple to finally open the iPhone a bit. They've now announced that they'll be releasing a developer kit this February.
As you can see, I'm a little pissed at Apple for locking down the iPhone. It would be a glorious device to develop on, but right now isn't worth the risk of Apple killing any apps one would develop on it. As for me, I'm not holding my breath for iPhone's developer kit release, either. As a developer, why should I settle for semi-open-source when the real thing is right around the corner?
Since the coining of the phrase "Web 2.0" people have been talking about Web 3.0 will be. Some (including myself) say a big part of this is the Mobile Web, accessed from anywhere with a plethora of devices instead of just on your personal computer. Others see it as primarily focused on tying all the different parts of the web together into one big happy... Thing. But everyone agrees it will involve, at least in part, the arrival of the Semantic Web.
From the start the Internet has been geared towards readability by humans. Although search engines like Google may appear to have a grasp on what information is out there, computers have little or no real understanding of the meaning of the data we put into them. So, as the Web grows it becomes increasingly more difficult for our computer friends to sift through the sea of online data to find the information we really desire.
That's where the Semantic Web comes into play. According to the American Heritage Dictionaries, semantic means "Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language." The goal behind the Semantic Web is to give computers an understanding of what the internet's immense amounts of information actually means. This means cataloging that data with tags that computers can grasp.
To semantically categorize the entire Web would be next to impossible, partially because the Web grows at such a phenomenal rate. That brings us to Twine. It is making an attempt at being the first "mainstream semantic web application." It aims to index your entire digital life: emails, bookmarks, documents, RSS feeds, contacts, photos, videos, product info, data records, etc. into something meaningful not only to you, but to the Twine engine itself. You will then be able to search that data - And not just your data but the data of all your friends that use Twine. When you search it will tell you not only what it found but who it belongs to, organizing your results by how close that person is to you. There will be plenty of browser plugins, widgets and programming APIs to help you add to and take data out of Twine.
Unfortunately, although Twine has been officially announced, it isn't yet available for public use. You can however sign up on their website to be beta tester once beta testing goes public.
