Mashup: Gmail and Twitter

I have to say that I still have mixed feelings about Twitter. On the one hand, I see it as a powerful tool harnessing the ideas of crowdsourcing. As a way to add email one-to-many and many-to-one functionality. On the other hand, I find it yet another fire hose of information coming at me at a time when I am not thoughtfully considering my other fire hoses. If it can become an asynchronous tool (not IM) to reach/leverage many people/thought leaders that is integrated into my personalized main knowledge tool of the time (Gmail), I am in! LINK

I see a few specific benefits of using Gmail as my Twitter client:

1) One tool for multiple modes of communication (email, IM, Tweets, voice-mail?, etc)
2) The ability to “thread” the tweets I follow (inherent to Gmail)
3) The ability to archive and search threaded tweets (some clients probably do this all ready???)

Can someone (Google? Other?) Make this happen, please.

Google Docs as my new Blog Editor!?

This is a test to see if I can use my Google Docs account as a way to post to my WordPress blog. This is only a test! I am using the “Publish to Blog” feature in Google Docs.

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This didn’t post originally….I am now in WordPress trying to publish. No publish button….lets try saving it and giving it a category and see what happens…

OpenOffice.org and Google Docs….the missing link

A free extension is now available to better connect OpenOffice docs and Google Docs.  After the extension is installed, one-click will upload your current OpenOffice doc into your Google Docs account.  I need to test more the specifics such as sharing and publishing within Google Docs, but this seems to be yet another nail in the coffin of the  MS Office monopoly.

More info

Link to extension

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gOS: Interesting but not intuitive

After reading about gOS and the $200 machines it comes on now selling at Walmart, I had to try it for myself.  I downloaded the torrent, fired up Azureus, burned the DVD, and tried it on my Dell 610.

Notes:

• gOS is a custom version of Ubuntu with close Google integration (hence the g in gOS)
• Instead of installed apps, much of the functionality is based around one-click access to Google’s suite fo web-services
• Frees and open source OS

First impressions:

• Clean interface
• Not very intuitive
• Couldn’t remove mounted drives from desktop
• Unusual implementation of an OS X type doc (Apps on one side minimized apps/docs on the other)

Thoughts:

• I love the integration of web apps and installed apps in the OS.
• I think the GUI is to different from XP, KDE, Gnome, and not enough like OS X
• Everything feels v1.0 because it is v1.0….I will save any more time playing with this distro for v2.0

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“Google, Apple and the future of personal computing’

This article by Nick Carr seems very seasonable and very reasonable.  This can’t make Microsoft happy.  I wonder where FLOSS fits into all of this???  Both Apple and Google use FLOSS software.  Will the system be closed (AppleTV, iPhone, etc) or will Apple and Google let the “community” have their say.  Time will tell.  Regardless, this article should be on anyones list who cares about what their computing environment will look like in the near future.