Better Faster PC

Two Google related topics you should be aware of:

• A bunch of holes have been discovered in the security of the web application Google Docs. If you are a user of Google Docs and keep any sensitive information stored there you would want to read this. The article at TechCrunch is HERE. If you don’t know what a web application (webapp) is, then you might want to read the Wikipedia entry which is HERE
• Gmail is celebrating it’s fifth birthday soon and with that they have announced “Google is celebrating with the launch of an exciting new product”. What it is I am not sure, but come April 7 we will find out. Read more about it HERE and HERE

Do you use Gmail? If you do then you might want to check out this post on Lifehacker with a bunch of great tips from the Gmail Labs team to spice up your experience.

Check out the post HERE.

Website building for amateurs is a very difficult thing, if you don’t have HTML knowledge or have access to a quality WYSIWYG editor (which can be expensive), you are a bit stuck. Even if you do have a decent graphical web page creator, you will still have to have a fairly decent knowledge to be able to create a decent webpage, with no errors. There used to be almost no options in this department. Many web hosting services had a form of website creation tool but these were usually rather badly designed and the results were often mediocre unless you were willing to spend a lot of time and effort. Even then they were not really easy to use and often required knowledge of FTP and other things.

Today things are very different. With the rise of Web 2.0 and social networking the need and desire for people to have their own easily accessible platform to express themselves, through blogging or a personal website. The arrival of Synthasite has filled that gap and filled it well.

A quick summary, Synthasite is a website and/or blogging platform which is completely free and allows anyone (and even businesses) to sign-up for free. There are no catches, no banners or other advertisements forced onto you and the site is yours. They will even let you use another domain name (or you can just use a free one, though it will be yournamehere.synthasite.com).

What sets Synthasite apart from other free web hosts, is not the fact that it is a free service (though zero advertising is scarce!) but the interface you are presented with once you are ready to start building your site. The site seems to have been built from the ground up (and I am pretty sure it is) and looks absolutely lovely - and it is just not eye candy either. The interface is simple and easy to use - want to create a blog, do it with a few clicks - the same applies for websites. Now I know you are probably thinking,

‘Sure it creates sites easily but they are probably rubbish and it is not that easy to personalize them to what I want!’

Well, with Synthasite, that is just plain not true. In fact the best part is the customization options, which are large. Not only that, there is no coding knowledge required.

To be honest with you the best idea is for you to try it. If you are looking for a simple blogging platform or a website and don’t have knowledge of HTML coding or don’t have the time to learn a WYSIWYG editor then Synthasite is for you.

Seriously, check it out today, just click HERE.

Since I recently migrated to Gmail I am probably going to be loading on the Gmail stuff for a while! Anyway, here are a couple of things I found quite useful.

•  GmailAssistant - This is an Open Source project at Sourceforge.net, that means it is completely free. It is a JAVA application and does not require install, just double click the .JAR file and it will run provided you have JAVA installed. If you get a “Cannot find main class error”your file associations have been messed around with, possibly due to your ZIP program or an old installation of JAVA. Get a fresh install of JAVA from Sun HERE. GmailAssistant provides notifications from multiple Gmail accounts at once, so if you have more than one Gmail account and want to be notified of new mail in all accounts at the same time (while working for instance) check it out HERE. Otherwise the Google messaging client also gives notifications while you work, though this is only for a single account. Google Talk (or Gtalk) is HERE. There is also a more advanced Labs edition which you can get HERE, that gives desktop notifications for Gmail as well as Google Calendar.
• MakeUseOf.com has a great list - the Ultimate Gmail Collection - containing tips, tricks and other things just for Gmail. If you are looking for a certain kind of application for Gmail you might find it HERE.
• Labs & Themes for Gmail - I can’t provide a link as you must be logged in to your own Gmail account - so log in, click ‘Settings’ in top right corner and then look at the tabs at the top of the new window. The last two tabs on the right should be labelled Labs & Themes. Themes just make your Gmail look pretty and there are quite a variety. More interesting is Labs. If you read carefully through the Labs features you can enable a lot of powerful features in Gmail. In my personal account I have integrated Docs & Calendar into my Inbox as well as a few other nifty features. It really is worth checking out Labs features if you use Gmail a lot.
• If you can’t get the Gmail address you want (most of them seem to be taken, almost everything I could think of…) then sign up for another email account that is POP enabled and use Gmail to fetch mail from that account. There are tons of free accounts out there. I would recommend Zenbe as a decent one, with no advertising. That way you can still be johnsmith@zenbe.com instead of johnsmith1329@gmail.com which can be a bit confusing. Check out Zenbe HERE.

And that’s it!

Well, I have some bad news for you… Google has decided to “stop active development” of this product…the reason, I am not sure really. If you want to read about it at the Official Google Notebook Blog then just click HERE. That means no further updates and no new users!

Before you fall into a horrible depression regarding this distressing news why not check out some other great alternatives. What do I personally use? Honestly, .txt files! That is my personal choice, but that is my personal preference and I am sure you are different to me so here is a little list of a couple of worthwile alternatives to the now seemingly redundant Google Notebook.

• Notefish
• Stickies
• Zoho Notebook
• Notezz!
• Yahoo! Notepad

So, you have no reason to walk around in a horrible mood for the rest of the day!

 In parts of the world AOL.com is a big player in the internet start page business. Receiving 115 Million Page Views a month means that there is a lot of potential to make some money and AOL remains a big name in the search / portal segment of the internet.

The AOL.com start page has undergone a major redesign. Now, I have never used AOL so I can’t give you a comparison but what interests me is that the AOL page gives you access to Gmail, Facebook, Hotmail to name but a few.

It’s an interesting concept. Allowing your users to access COMPETITORS services from your own page, thereby keeping them on YOUR site network as opposed to them closing the tab / window or navigating away to check Gmail for instance. It is a “necessary evil” in a clever effort to hang onto the clicks…

The new AOL.com is HERE and you can read more about it HERE.

In these days of Web 2.0 a service like a personal website of your own is no longer a dream, only for those with high technical knowledge. Historically, you would have to have had a good working knowledge of HTML or had expensive software to produce a working website.

Things really have changed and with the availability of Open Source software and online website creation tools almost anyone is able to launch their very own website!

So where to begin:

• If you have no skills in designing your own site then something like Synthasite is a great option. Basically Synthasite offers online website building. So simple that even a novice can have a website up and running in no time.
• Second option, if you are interested in creating a web page from scratch then a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is a good option. This will require more time and energy then the previously mentioned alternative but you will be less restricted. KompoZer is a completely free WYSIWYG editor for creating websites and has more than enough functionality for individual use.
• HTML Coding from scratch. This is not recommended for anyone starting out but if you are wanting to get seriously into website design and creation learning HTML is a good idea. There are plenty of FREE tutorials on the internet for this purpose, just use Google to find a tutorial that suits you. You will need a good text editor for writing HTML code in. Notepad++, which I have mentioned before, is a good editor
• Free website hosting with NO BANNERS is something you would also need. Free hosting is not usually as good as hosting you pay for but for simple pages free hosting with no advertising will be fine. Synthasite (mentioned earlier) incorporates free hosting but for the other options you will need a host. No advertising or banners is a good idea as they usually ruin the layout of the web page you have created.

This is not intended as a comprehensive guide to getting your first website up and running but a good starting point. So, what are you waiting for, get that website up today!

Microsoft Research is working on a new customized search engine. What does it do? Well, using the principals of Web 2.0 it allows users to interact with the results page.

You type in a search, view the results, then you can rank the results, write some notes  or share the results with friends. U Rank easily allows you to create lists, so, let’s say there is a certain set of searches you conduct reguarly then U Rank will allow you to create a list for that.

Sounds interesting. Unfortunately I am not able to test it as I do not have a Windows Live ID, which is required fot signing up for testing but if you want to read about it or try it out yourself the link is HERE.

Zoho offer a suite of online Web 2.0 office products and now they also offer a Webmail service. If you are looking for a new email address then it might be a good idea to check them out.

The Zoho Suite is online and is highly rated amongst online office applications. By launching their own mail service they are hoping to further streamline their user base, offering better integration of web services to the mobile office community.

Generally regarded as one of the better online application services one must assume that their webmail service will also be top quality.

If you want to check out Zoho Mail then take a look HERE.

Well, a lot of things are happening in the software world but this comes as news to me, Microsoft is releasing a new operating system, not Vista, or Windows 7 but something code-named “Windows Cloud” which is aimed at people ‘developing’ web applications.

Web applications are things like Google Docs which are based on the internet but act similar (soon the same) as programs installed on your hard drive.

I find this news interesting. Google releases Chrome, nicely placed to integrate with their own web apps and all of a sudden Microsoft releases an OS (operating system) aimed, very squarely, at a similiar niche in the market. Somewhere in Google’s future plans must be the idea of full integration of Chrome and Google Docs (and others). Microsoft releasing “Windows Cloud”, basically an OS aimed at capturing anyone interested in Web App usage would place a big, hefty block in Google’s otherwise quite clear path.

Whether this also means that in the future we may see two concurrent retail Windows versions side-by-side on shelves is another point. Imagine a world where you either buy the full price Windows for home use, or just buy the lite “Windows Cloud” version for using all your favorite Web based applications, perfect for a world where Netbooks are becoming a more desirable item.

 I think it would be great to see further diversification of the Windows brand, especially aimed more at home users and the new emerging Web application environment.