Seasoned bloggers knows people are rarely moved to comment on a blog post. Especially, one hit wonders sent from Google, who were simply looking for ‘Train times between Clapham and Norbiton’ and instead see some commuter rant aimed at South West Trains. However, microblogging has taught us that people are slightly more likely to grudgingly acknowledge an amusing one-liner with a ‘Like’ or a ‘Fave’. Clicking a button is quick and easy - even for lazy people....
A few weeks ago, I signed up for a invitation to Google Music. The service is only available in the US but, by a lucky chance of fate, I just happened to be connected to my corporate VPN so I was successful and an invitation duly arrived in my Inbox. Initially, the Google Music Manager software didn’t support Linux. Nor was the Ogg Vorbis audio format supported so I didn’t pursue it any further as both of these were show stoppers for me....
I have followed the development of Google Reader since it was launched in 2005. Having used Thunderbird and then NetVibes, I have used Google Reader for the last two years to read blogs. The main reason I like Reader are the UI, the keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation and the fact I can also use it on mobile devices and multiple computers. During that period, I have sporadically marked articles that interest, amuse or shock me on my ‘Shared Items’ feed and Google recently added improved support for the sharing of ‘Shared Items’....
Google have recently added some ‘social’ features to Google Reader which enables much improved sharing of people’s Shared Items. The features have re-energised my use of Reader as these were features I have wanted for a long time.
Although it’s very cool to post on the corporate message board: ‘Hey - why don’t we save the company millions of dollars by using Linux, Gmail and OpenOffice ?’, there are obvious barriers (security and Excel luddites to name but two) to large corporations adopting server based software. However, I always thought Google Mail would be an obvious fit for academic institutions to reduce the costs of software licenses and IT management....