damon's blog » Web2.0

Can Google do everything?

damon — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:22:51 +0000

I am slowly making my way through the ever-growing list of Google Apps available on their website and have just had my first dabble with Google Notebook. From my early observations it seems to be a reasonable (but not ultimate) alternative to del.icio.us for all your online bookmarking needs.

Similarities

Both enable to to quickly add a bookmark/reference of a website to a central online location.
Both use a nifty Firefox plugin to get the job done.
Both are searchable.
Both use labels, but while del.icio.us can assign many labels to one link, Notebook allows a link to belong to only one label (or notebook).
Both allow you to share your bookmarks with others.

Differences

del.icio.us user pages are visible to everyone, Notebook pages have to specifically shared.
del.icio.us allows you to save a single link for a friend, which will appear in a special list on the recipient’s page, but Notebook only allows the sharing of a whole notebook.
You can use Notebook as a simple note-taking tool without having a link to the original source.

Conclusions

I like the idea of having all the online services that I use in a central location. Google is making a good go of making this a reality. But for the time being I think del.icio.us will continue to be my online bookmarker of choice, just because of the multi-label and networking functions.

I’m sure these two applications were not designed to be in direct competition – which makes a direct comparison a bit unfair – I couldn’t help but notice that they both provide a similar service.

My Google usage

Daily use:

Search
Gmail
Calendar
Reader

Weekly use:

Maps

Less frequent use:

News
Images
Docs and Spreadsheets
Groups

The last word

While Google may not be catering perfectly to everything I do on the internet, they’re making a damn good go of it. Here’s hoping they don’t get all nasty and start charging for all their services.

Register and forget

damon — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:24:37 +0000

Following on from my last post, here is a list of websites that I have registered at, but never really visit/use:

In order of them popping out of my brain:

C’orked (Wine)
WAYN (Social networking/travel)
Access World Forums (MS Access Forum)
last.fm (Music)
SonyEricsson
POST Billpay
Remember The Milk (Reminders and To Do lists)

Well, that list isn’t nearly as big as I thought it would be. Maybe there are more, but I think you get the point.

Timeline of a MySpace profile

damon — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:59:41 +0000

This morning on the drive to work I was listening to Hughesy & Kate on Nova100, and Hughesy was talking about canceling his MySpace account because it was taking up too much of his time. It reminded me that I registered on MySpace some time ago, but unlike Hughesy, it has taken up NONE of my time. In fact, I had totally forgotten about it until now.

As a weird coincidence, when I arrived at work and checked my emails, I had “You’ve got a new message from Marilyn on MySpace!” waiting in my inbox. What a perfect time to log in and check out what’s been happening since I first registered. I used the super-cool Gmail search feature to find my registration email to remind myself of my login details and surfed my way over to MySpace.

When I logged in it was easy to see that I still had only one friend: my real-life friend John from Barking Sparrows

In the 8 months since I registered my account, I had 40 profile views, no comments and only 1 friend. It was time to cancel my account:

Then I was asked 4,000 times to confirm that I wanted to erase myself from the early-teen hangout forever:

So to all my non-existent MySpace mates, you will have to try getting in touch with me another way from now on.