JaysonSchultz.com

So a couple of things caught my attention today that I wanted to share. The first of which is that my love affair with Google continues. There’s news today that from some documentation found on Google Docs, Google appears to be getting ready to launch “Google Presently”, a web based presentation application aimed to compete with Microsoft Powerpoint. At this point, Google’s office suite would be nearly complete! As a matter of fact just today, I ran into a problem with my install of Excel. That’s when I realized that I sitll had Google Docs to fall back on. For the limited operation that I was trying to do, I had all the tools there at my finger tips. With the introduction of “Presently”, this is just one more tool. Heck if I were a student now, I might even shun all MS Office products and use Google Apps!

On another note, just months after the whole Dell battery fiasco, it looks like there’s a bit of nasty press swirling around the computer giant again. It looks like a grounding problem on some Dell laptops could cause a nasty shock of between 19 and 139 Volts! Now before everyone panics, lets keep in mind that what really matters is current (I = V/R). So while 139 volts likely won’t kill you, let’s just say that this wouldn’t be an expericne you would want to repeat. From what I can tell, affected laptops are Dell 9400/e1705/m1710/m90.

And one final musing for the night. An esteemed New York State Senator is trying to impose a fine for using portable electronic devices while walking. His position cites three recent cases where people have been killed because they weren’t paying attention and were too focused on their electronic devices. Let me tell you something. It is certainly unfortunate that this happened to these individuals, but I’m thinking this is one battleground that the government needs to stay out of. I mean seiously, why did they get hit in the first place? Was it because the vehicle operator was too busy chatting on the cell phone? Or were they distracted by a digital billboard?

And by the way, the migration to WordPress 2.1 didn’t quite go as seemlessly as I was hoping for. As a matter of fact, I’ve had to look for some new plugins to replace/upgrade what I used previously for several things including my news feeds, links page, and del.icio.us link roll in the sidebar. Oh well, such is life!

Technorati Tags: Dell, Dumb Laws, Stupid Politicians, Google Presently, WordPress 2.1

My love affair with Google continues. I just got access to Google Spreadsheets and let me tell you, it’s pretty cool! As per my previous post, I don’t think that MS Office is on it’s way out, by any means but the features that Google Spreadsheets offers are very impressive for an AJAX app. For example, selecting mulitple rows and resizing one resizes all rows equally. Also, many functions are available to help most calculations that would be performed day in and day out.

There are a few features that were left out for obvious reasons. For example if you were looking to integrate a spreadsheet with your Word Document, your out of luck since Google only offers spreadsheets. But I was disappointed that two features that I often use in Excel are not in Google Spreadsheets: graphing abillities and autofill. While I can understand that graphing would require quite a bit of extra code, I can’t tell you how many times I use the autofill function. Perhaps these are features that Google will introduce at a later date.

One feature that I did enjoy that is easier to use in Google Spreadsheets than MS Excel is the abillity to collaborate on documents with your friends and colleagues. Moreover, when multiple users log in at the same time to view a document, any changes made by user 1 are seen in realtime by user 2. There is even a builtin chat feature (who would’ve guessed?) that allows users to IM each other about the document. This is VERY SLICK.
For now, Google Spreadsheets is a sold app that can be used in absence of Excel or any other full blown spreadsheet application. However, as I noted there are a few missing features that can make spreadsheet life a bit more difficult. In the current version, I give Google an “A” for effort, but I give the entire product a 3.5 out of 5.

Technorati Tags: Google Spreadsheets, Google Spreadsheets review, AJAX, collaboration

Today, Google announced Google Spreadsheets.  Bascially, this is an online spreadsheet application that will allow users to perform basic manipulation of CXV and XLS files.  While there won’t be as many features in this online app as there are in Excel, Google hopes to take market share from Microsoft.  But will this invalidate the need for MS Office?  I’m willing to be not.  While some early adopters will be first in line to use the new online app, JaysonSchutlz.com is forcasting that the majority of home users will not use the online app and will continue to line Mr. Gates’ wallet.  Other companies have tried the online office app thiing, granted AjaxWRITE is not Google, but the point is, I don’t think we need to worry to much about our friends that brought us Clippy.  Additionally, there have been other free full blown office suites available for a while, but M$ Office is still used by a majority of home users, business, and educational outlets.  With that said, I do absolutely adore almost everything created by Google.  Heck, my mail for this site is hosted through them.  I have applied for the product evaluation.  If I get access, rest assured I will post my own review to this site.  Now if we can just fix the errors in our spreadsheets…  Can Google help there to? 

Technorati Tags: Google Spreadsheets, AjaxWrite, spreadsheets, AJAX

It looks like your eBay auctions may start carrying a new feature… “I accept Google Checkout.” According to a ZDNet story, it looks like Google is about to unveil a new service called Google Checkout. Early report speculate that this will be an online bill payment service. Just when you thought that there was a space that Google didn’t have a product, think again. Of course, when it’s released, Google Checkout will be in Beta for the next 10 years…

Technorati Tags: Google Checkout, Paypal