Consumer Thoughts » Web Apps

Google Reader now supports offline reading

Kathryn — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:59:05 +0000

Google Gears, a browser extension (not just for Firefox!) that will allow you to take all your online applications offline, now supports Google Reader. You can download the most recent 2000 items for offline reading. It promises not to use up all your browser’s memory or slow it down, too.

Naturally, being from Google, Gears is in beta. If you are running Firefox 1.5+ or IE6+ on XP, Vista, Mac, or Linux, at the top right in Google Reader, you should see an Offline link. We can only hope offline Gmail is to follow. Google Docs & Spreadsheets (& Presenter) shouldn’t be far behind, either.

via Download Squad

I love Yahoo Pipes

Kathryn — Sat, 12 May 2007 23:01:05 +0000

I just switched from FeedBite to Yahoo Pipes. It’s so much more powerful and I’m loving it. You should try it out!

Wikiasari is not the best name

Kathryn — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 09:53:45 +0000

I’ve read that the name for the new Wiki-based search engine, Wikiasari, is taken from 2 words: Wiki, the Hawaiian word for “quick”, and Asari, the Japanese word meaning “rummage search.” But I don’t like the name. Here’s why:

1. It’s a mouthful at 5 syllables

2. Pronunciation and word division. The company behind it is named Wikia, so that has the potential for people to think of it as Wikia Sari, instead of Wiki Asari. Now, I pronounce it so that Sari rhymes with Sorry… and if someone doesn’t recognize the name, it could sound like you’re saying “I searched with Wikia, sorry.” This is kind of a negative connotation for your business, isn’t it? Even if it is pronounced so that sari rhymes with airy, it’s still going to get mispronounced.

Technorati Tags: wikiasari

Feed readers: Google Reader is my choice

Kathryn — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 23:39:46 +0000

I’ve been using the paid version of FeedDemon ($30) for a couple of years now, and until recently, it would have been hard to convince me to switch. I liked having a stand-alone app, and there was an unsupported hack that let me use Mozilla as the internal browser, instead of Internet Explorer. (Though I would have preferred Firefox, not the other Mozilla browser that it did use.)

However, even using the supported IE as the internal browser, I got fed up with FeedDemon’s crashes and freeze-ups, even on a pretty recent Windows installation. The memory usage also slowly climbed from 60M up to 150M, but even before the memory usage got that high, it would temporarily freeze up when switching between feeds and even between posts. I got really tired of waiting 5-20 seconds for the program to unfreeze.

About a year ago, FeedDemon was bought by NewsGator, and enabled feed sync – so if you read your feeds at work *and* at home, the unread feeds would match. I had problems with FeedDemon not being able to connect to the NewsGator server and thus, not displaying new posts at all! To be fair, this was when it was first implemented, and I hadn’t retried it recently.

Enter the new version of Google Reader… it seems great so far, and I think I’m switching permanently. It’s lightning-fast with no freezes, and clicking on the post title opens the original post in a new Firefox tab. An added bonus: it’s one less thing I have to back up. (Even though exporting an OPML file in FeedDemon is easy, with Google Reader I don’t even have to do that.) I’m so happy with no more crashes and freeze-ups!

Meevee sucks more than I thought

Kathryn — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:13:31 +0000

You may recall my October 1st post on how awful Meevee is. I’ve been happily using the redesigned TVGuide.com for weeks. I did send MeeVee an e-mail detailing why I was leaving. They replied today. Their autoresponder had said it would take 7-10 days for a response (already unacceptable), and it took them 30.

Microsoft Office 2007

Kathryn — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:55:09 +0000

Test out Microsoft Office 2007 without installing anything by heading to this link in Internet Explorer (sorry, doesn’t work in other browsers) and see what you think!

Performancing for Firefox: a must-have for bloggers

Kathryn — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 10:15:43 +0000

I’m using Performancing for Firefox to write this blog. It’s the best remote editing software I’ve found, and here’s why:

1. It is a Firefox extension – no need to start up an external program! It’s easily accessible from your status bar, or you can just hit F8.
2. My favorite feature: It has a built-in FTP client for image uploads. I don’t have to start up my FTP client every time I want to upload a picture!
3. You can use the regular, rich editor with built-in formatting tools, or switch over to an HTML mode.
4. It supports blog categories, pings, and will even insert Technorati tags for you. Although I don’t use it, it also supports del.icio.us.
5. In the middle of a blog post and you need to do some research? Your tabs stay open above the Performancing window, or you can minimize it and it will save what you’ve written so far!
6. It has an integrated free blog statistics program that you can sign up for.

Check out Performancing for Firefox – I’ve used other remote blogging software, and this one is the best I’ve found.

Beta is the new Under Construction

Kathryn — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 08:05:06 +0000

It seems that all the new “Web 2.0″ sites out there are in some form of extended beta. Will they turn out like all the “Web 1.0″ sites that were perenially “under construction?”

from Modern Life Is Rubbish