Posted 11/19/09 at 06:10:45 PM by David Murphy

Ever have one of those moments?  You know the one: When it's so difficult to teach someone how to accomplish an everyday task in a particular application that you up and grab the keyboard and mouse yourself and just get 'er done, as it were. Isn't that frustrating?  Doesn't your passionate rage for simplifying the art of attaching files to email terrify your coworkers, friends, and loved ones?  Wouldn't you like a better way to show someone how to accomplish desktop tasks, one that doesn't actually require you to get up from your chair or, better yet, even pick up a phone?

In a move that's sure to sooth the savage beast that's been identified as a computer expert by his or her flock of advice-seeking peers, the Web app ScreenToaster is a perfectly packaged solution for showing people how to get stuff done on a PC. It does this by taking a live video (complete with audio, if you so choose) of whatever it is you're doing on your desktop, straight out of your Web browser--no additional software installation is necessary, save for a requisite click on the "accept" button for a piece of Java.

But surely the app can't be just that easy?  There has to be another catch!

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Posted 11/19/09 at 03:00:12 PM by Will Smith & Norman Chan

Google pulled the wraps off of Chrome OS today, and while there isn't a general availability announcement today, they spoke briefly about the Chrome browser (Linux and Mac versions due this year, along with support for extensions) before diving into the nascent OS. You can expect to see Chrome ship in about a year, and showed the first glimpses of the new OS, details about the architecture, the hardware it will run on, and gave us the first hints about what the Google Cloud OS will really look like.

Here's why Chrome OS won't be replacing Windows anytime soon. 

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Posted 11/12/09 at 08:01:59 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Google Wave is really just a rough pre-beta right now. So any attempts to clean it up and add features are more than welcome. Today the Wave team posted about the newest feature, following waves. This should make the process of managing public waves much less awkward.

From now on, clicking on a public wave will no longer mean it stays in your inbox forever. To stay updated on a public wave, you just hit the “Follow” button. When you are added to a wave or you contribute to one, you will be following it. Hitting the “Archive” button will remove a public wave from your inbox.

Public waves that you have only opened will now automatically fall off your inbox eventually. Finally, the “mute” feature has been replaced by “Unfollow”. Clicking the unfollow button will remove a wave from the inbox immediately. Google may eventually expand the whole “Following” idea to people, groups, and searches. So if Wave wasn’t confusing enough already, you have this to contend with.

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Posted 11/12/09 at 03:15:00 PM by David Murphy

If war movies, zombies hordes, or stormtroopers have taught us anything, it's that there's power to be had in numbers--well, maybe not the stormtroopers. Regardless, a number of Web apps take advantage of this philosophy to offer increased functionality, awesome services, or cheap deals for those who are part of a herd. Kickstarter, for example, allows groups of people to team up and pledge funding for a number of independent projects. If a project meets its funding goal, then everyone who pledge an amount has to pay. If not, nobody pays a dime.

But you don't want to pay money. No, you want to save money. Have no fear--there's a Web app that takes this altruistic function and spins it on its head. Instead of pledging to donate, you're pledging to buy at group-discount prices!

 Read on to find out how it works!

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Posted 11/05/09 at 05:00:00 PM by Florence Ion

Start pages aren’t always everyone’s forte when it comes to reading their favorite daily sites all on one page. Thankfully, there’s a web app for that. Feedweaver allows you to simply choose the most relevant RSS feed links, mash it in with 19 others you’re passionate about, and view them all on one glorious page as if they’re all one entity.

Read on to find out more! 

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Posted 10/29/09 at 05:45:02 PM by Florence Ion

Perhaps one of the most frustrating points of owning a printer comes down to what is actually getting printed. Driving directions always end up with a few extra pages barely containing even a sentence worth of ink, rendering the single sheet of paper practically useless. Fortunately, The Printliminator helps eradicate these exasperating situations by converting any webpage into an economical, simple to print document.

The Printliminator is a bookmarkable link that makes any webpage to print. Once you click the link, this simple tool shows up in the top right corner in your browser window with options to remove any extraneous elements from the page and irrelevant graphics for economical printing. You can select “Remove all Graphics” to quickly zap out any video previews and high-resolution color images.

 Read on for more details!

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Posted 10/28/09 at 08:39:08 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Google already knows more about you than you probably care to think about. In the not too distant future, they might also know about your power usage patterns. Google’s PowerMeter utility monitoring service has finally found its first partners. First Utility in the UK, and Yello Strom, a German utility, have both signed up to deliver customer usage data to Google (provided the customer agrees).

PowerMeter will collect electricity data every half hour and gas data once a day. Customers can view the aggregated data on the PowerMeter website where it will have been used to generate some nifty graphs and tables. Participating customers will receive the service at no charge.

The hope is that PoweMeter users will be more conscious of their energy use. Yello Strom executive director, Martin Vesper, said of the service, “When people know exactly what is going on with their energy usage, they can use energy efficiently without sacrificing convenience.” Google indicated that PowerMeter is a project from Google.org, Google’s philanthropic foundation. So, would you sign up if you could?

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Posted 10/27/09 at 02:24:21 PM by Bart Salisbury

Word has filtered out of the Google Wave Google Technology User Group’s London meeting that Google Wave will be opening an app store. The move, according to Zee over at The Next Web, signals Google’s commitment to this new technology, and provides encouragement for developers to expand Google Wave’s potential.

Google Wave is a real-time collaborative tool that permits groups to interactively ‘converse’ on a project, using richly formatted text, photos, videos and maps. Real-time here is taken to the extreme, with key-stokes shared among participants as they occur--no waiting for the press of a return key to send your thoughts along. The use of what Google calls “concurrency control technology” allows all participants in a wave to edit rich media at the same time.

Third-party developers have already come up with apps for teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and multiplayer gaming. The creation of an app store, similar to what Apple has done for iPhone apps, would provide additional incentive to developers to produce new, innovative add-ons for the Wave environment.

Other news from the London meeting includes Google’s plans to have an extension gallery up and running in a few months; ‘hooks’ which invoke actions, such as opening a new wave or launching a shortcut; merging waves; and deployment on networks and intranets for internal use by businesses. Google Mail, however, doesn’t appear headed for integration.

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