Nels Wadycki » Google

Song from Google Nexus S Video

Nels — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:01:33 +0000

It wasn’t all that hard to find, but I bet a lot of people will be looking for the song from the Google Nexus S video since they don’t credit it in the video or on the YouTube page. (And since my wife is a French teacher, I thought maybe I could help other French teachers out here)

It’s called Allo Allo by Les Sans Culottes, which I believe translates to “Those Without Underwear”.

Here’s the song Allo Allo (Hello I Love You) on Amazon, and on YouTube.

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YouTube Movie Trailer

Nels — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:32:06 +0000

Awesome.

Thanks TechCrunch

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As the iPhone evolves, so does Gmail

Nels — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:10:13 +0000

But none of the recently announced innovations are making my eyes light up like a kid first gazing on his Easter basket.

First, from the Gmail Blog: Nested Labels and Message Preview. The Nested Labels thing actually did have me excited as though it were a chocolate egg or perhaps a Peep. But then I read this:

Please note that this lab doesn’t play nicely with the “Hide Read Labels” lab. You might not get exactly what you expect if you have both labs enabled; for example, the collapse/expand icons won’t always appear when they should.

and all the twinkle in my eyes was snuffed out. I tried it out and found it to be true. It didn’t work.

Honestly, the “Hide Read Labels” lab experiment is more important to me than sub-labels ever could be. Since I make extensive use of the keyboard shortcuts, I can navigate to any label I want with a simple “g + l” or “/” and the name of the label. I use the “Hide Read Labels” so that I only see labels with unread messages, which gives me a visual indicator of what has been filtered out of my Inbox and placed under another label for later viewing. Thus instead of viewing 44 labels, I can collapse my chatterbox (which I don’t use anyway since I have Trillian) and see my Calendar Gadget. Viewing Unread Messages and Upcoming Events is easily of more value than being able to have labels under other labels. Of course, the whole labeling system was designed so that you don’t really need nested labels at all. I know there are people who have not given up the folder hierarchy mindset, but it’s too bad that they’ll have to give up their hidden read labels in order to get it.

Another thing it’s too bad people have to give up in exchange for something else: Flash. We all know Steve Jobs hates Flash, and since Apple can do whatever they want, they’re free to disallow the use of Flash on the iPhone and iPad until a court of law says otherwise. It just seems kind of mean and pointless. I mean, even if Flash goes the way of Cobol, Adobe isn’t going to die. They have a suite of graphic design and image editing tools that is basically unparalleled. Photoshop : Graphic Design :: iPhone : Smartphones.

It really just seems like another iPhone “because we can” move. Much like the we don’t want a porn store excuse for not allowing unsigned apps on the iPhone. At least with that one they have a reason, but really it’s just another “because we can” move. It’s not about porn on the iPhone, it’s about apps which provide no revenue for Apple.

It’s certainly not a dumb move by Apple, and in this case (as opposed to the Flash case), they at least have a legitimate excuse to hide behind. I’m sure Google is betting that once they hit a tipping point in terms of number of apps, normal people (i.e., the non-geeks) will get outside of the default “must buy iPhone” mentality and at least consider that there are other possibilities.

The other iPhone point I wanted to make was more related to the point I was making about addition of new Gmail features and concerns iPhone OS 4. Honestly, Multitasking isn’t something I think I actually need. It seems great in theory, but I’m not sure what I would actually use it for. Since I can already listen to the iPod through the native app and then go do other things, I’m not sure what else I would want running in the background that doesn’t already provide push notifications (e.g., email, phone, etc). I would consider streaming internet music if there were a Lala app available, but since Apple bought Lala, I think that multitasking use case has all but died.

The folders thing will be nice, but again, not something I’m jumping up and down about. I have a pretty stable set of apps on my phone now, and while grouping them will probably make life a little easier, I’ve gotten pretty used to things as they are so I’m not singing out for joy at the thought of being able to reconfigure them a little bit more now… It’s a nice feature, but it’s also something that I would have already had if I’d gotten an Android phone. And if the Motorola Droid or the Nexus One had been around at this time last year, I probably would have.

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Web Apps = Automatic Upgrades

Nels — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:00:02 +0000

While it wasn’t one of the major factors I talked about in my previous post, the following is a quick and easy example of another reason that webapps kick ass: No Upgrade Cycle

Google launched Buzz 2 days ago, and already their making changes based on user feedback. But the best part is not that they’re making changes and responding so quickly, rather it’s that the update gets automatically pushed to everyone. No download. No install. Just, roll out, and boom, it’s there.

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Mobile + Cloud = Magic … Right Now!

Nels — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:40:53 +0000

It’s funny that the these two posts both appeared on TechCrunch just yesterday…

First: Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt on the Magical Potential of Mobile Cloud. I will re-blockquote:

The mobile platforms, Android and the others, are so powerful now that you can build client apps that do magical things that are connected with the cloud. This is I think the most visually obvious example of that…don’t limit your imagination to this set of problems. Anything where you can produce this phenomenal customer benefit when you have a mobile device broadly defined connected to the cloud….Obviously we like the price of free because the consumers like that as well and we can figure out ways to use advertising to pay for it.

The way he says it, he makes it sound like this is still a few years in coming… but then there’s this post about Lala.com’s iPhone app which was just submitted a few days ago, and basically does exactly what Schmidt was talking about: Use the mobile cloud to make magic happen.

I’ve already expounded on my love of Lala, and how I may never buy another mp3 again, and now that I’ll soon be able to (hopefully) listen to all my music on my iPhone from the cloud, why would I???? I can store a lot more music on Lala than I can on my iPhone, and at significantly lower cost!

It’s like I told my wife last night (talking about why I didn’t want anything more than watching a Bulls game for my birthday): I can get any DVD I want from Netflix, I can get any music I want on Lala, and I can get any book I want from the library. When you couple with that, the fact that I don’t really need any new clothes since I don’t even wear everything I own now, and the only thing that I really need for my birthday is more time.

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Record and Transcribe Notes for Yourself with Google Voice

Nels — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:53:12 +0000

There a few key settings in order to be able to record notes to yourself and have Google Voice transcribe them for you. You can get those from that Lifehacker link, but there’s an addition note I want to make now that I’ve actually tried this.

It works, but only sort of, and you have to speak really slowly and clearly. It’s hard and actually kind of takes some practice, because the first couple times I did it, I started off slow, and Google did well with the transcription, but then I focused more on what I wanted to say and not how I was saying it and the end of the transcriptions came out like a monkey was at the keyboard.

Nevertheless, you can usually get the gist of what you wanted to make a note of, and it’s usually easier to speed-dial your GV account than it is to try to pound out a text message (or even a “note” on your smartphone). It’s also more useful than a voice note (again, if your smartphone allows for that), because you get at least some of it transcribed correctly for you, and automatically emailed to you (instead of having to send it to yourself after recording and then transcribe it from there).

So, go ahead, all tens of you readers, give it a try (if you have Google Voice) and leave a comment with your experience, and if you don’t have GV, let me know if you use something else to record and/or transcribe notes to yourself on the go.

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Getting Things Done: Invisible Reminders With Google Calendar

Nels — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:03:31 +0000

An easy way to create an electronic Tickler file is by using Google Calendar, which can send you email, SMS, and “pop-up” reminders (which act as alerts when you sync with the iPhone Calendar), for any and all events you want.

But what about stuff that you don’t really want to see cluttering up your calendar? You just want to be reminded about it when you need to be reminded about it. The solution is simple. Just add another calendar (you can have as many as you want, I believe, but I wouldn’t think you’d need more than a few extra), and click on the name of it to hide all the events. You’ll see in the image here that I have two extra calendars called (very cleverly) “Invisible Reminders” and “Sweepstakes”. The first is for the kinds of reminders I described at the beginning of this paragraph, those things that should be heard, but not seen (or something like that). The other is reminders to enter daily contests to win prizes. I put the link to the web site as the “Where” of the event, and then get the reminders sent to me in the morning for mass processing. I schedule the events so that all the reminders are sitting there after I drop my wife off at work, and then I can just go through and click the links to open them all up in new tabs and then enter my email and submit. I haven’t actually won any yet, but at $10,000 per, it’s worth the 10 minutes or so in the morning for the chance that I might hit one some day.

Yes, I could just add one even called “Enter Sweepstakes” and keep all the URLs in there, but then I’d have to remember the different end dates for all of them (and there are usually about 5-6 going on at a time). When I have them each as individual events, I know that the ones to enter will be there in my Inbox, and my mind can stay at a low viscosity level.

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Gmail’s Magic Inbox

Nels — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:54:34 +0000

Google Operating System has found some Gmail code that indicates the coming of a social inbox!

So, not only will we have one inbox for Everything, but it’ll be organized by importance (or at least how important Google thinks things are).

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So, is it Opposite Day at Google?

Nels — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:57:24 +0000

From the Official Google Reader blog, a post about sharing with friends and making new friends. Now, I don’t have a lot of “Google Reader Friends” and I use my Shared Items to feed into a sidebar widget over here, so maybe I’m just not into the whole “sharing” thing enough, but this part seems really overly complicated to me:

By hovering over the name of an unfamiliar commenter you can see their profile picture and the links they’ve added to their Google Profile. Furthermore, you can click the “Start sharing” link to start sharing your shared items with that person!

This is a great way to add new people to your friends list. When that person next logs in, they’ll see an option to view your shared items as well as the option to start sharing with you. If they reciprocate, you’ll have a new friend in your Reader.

I mean, I guess they’re erring on the side of privacy but really, is a thing called Shared Items supposed to be all that private? It seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to do the Twitter-style follow for this one, and send The Sharer an email when The Follower starts viewing their shared items. Then The Sharer can reciprocate if they want by following The Follower, and if they don’t want to follow The Follower back, they don’t have to do anything (as opposed to having to make a decision in Google’s model). Yes, this means that The Sharer has to be willing to share their items publicly to start with, but that seems to have worked out pretty well for Twitter. And I’d argue that sharing and commenting on items via Google Reader is orders of magnitude less personal than the kind of things people put on Twitter. All this “privacy” thing means is that Google has to add this kind of disclaimer to make sure people can understand how it is going to work:

Note: You can stop sharing your items with someone at any time by visiting the Sharing settings link in your left sidebar. Also, if someone chooses to share with you, your shared items are not visible to that person unless you consent. Finally, the “start sharing” link in profile cards will also only appear to those users sharing with friends, and not those sharing only with chat buddies.

It just seems like a real backwards way of doing it.

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Post To And Read Your TO READ List From Anywhere With Email

Thank God Google! Suggest comes to Image Search

Nels — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:45:42 +0000

In searching for the image for my Aardvark post, I just discovered that Google has added the drop-down suggestion list to Image Search!

I just used it to find the images for this post! As someone who writes 3 (or maybe more ) blogs, and likes to use relevant images in his posts, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. But this guy can: