Category: GReader

The New York Times highlights a a report published by the University of California, San Diego claiming that the average American consumes 34GB of content and 100,000 words a day. How is that possible, you ask? It’s all about bathing in the data.

This doesn't mean we read 100,000 words a day — it means that 100,000 words cross our eyes and ears in a single 24-hour period. That information comes through various channels, including the television, radio, the Web, text messages and video games.

In fact, the report focuses primarily on our insatiable appetite for information (11.8 hours of information a day fills our gluttonous info-bellies). [NYT]

The internet is, like, big. So’s this infographic showing just how crazy huge it is, and what 210 billion emails, 3 million Flickr images, 43 million gigabytes (on phones) sent on an average day really means. It hurts.

[Online Education]

Google Docs already has an option to export every document you check off, but checking them all off is a time-wasting pain. Now it’s much more simple to grab everything, 2 GB at a time, in zipped-up files.

The Digital Inspiration blog points out the new addition to Google Docs’ export options. Simply select any file by checking the box to its left, then hit the More Actions menu and select Export. In the box that pops up, there’s a check box at the bottom to “Export all your files (up to 2 GB),” which, for most users, covers just about everything. Those with more will be prompted with a list of the files that couldn’t be exported, so you can grab them next. You can also choose what format your files are downloaded in, which is mighty helpful as well.

At long last Mac and Linux users don’t have to feel like second class citizens in Chrome land: they’ve got official beta versions of Google’s browser to call their own. Of course, people have been running the open source Chromium version on both sides of the fence for ages, but beta brings with it a new level of stability and officialness. Google is also finally launching extensions for Chrome, which is available for the Windows and Linux versions of the browser, and with Mac compatibility on the way. There are already 300 extensions available, not a bad start, and hopefully a good indication of the sorts of added functionality we’ll be able to stuff into Chrome OS with the help of a seemingly-excited developer community.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Google Chrome hits beta for Mac and Linux, extensions available for extra-smug Windows and Linux users originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the more exciting features available with the new Office 2010 release from Microsoft is the ability to share and edit documents with their Office Web Apps service. Today we take a look at how it works with Office 2010.

A while ago we took an overview look at the Office Live Web Apps feature and what you can expect. Here we’re going to take a closer look at it’s features with Office 2010 and what you can can accomplish with the new service.

Using Microsoft Live Web Apps with Office 2010

In this example we take a look at sharing MS Office documents and also preparing them for collaboration online. Before sharing a document you can click on the File tab which they call Backstage view. It includes the feature Prepare for Sharing which allows you to inspect the document, check Accessibility, and check compatibility.

In the Document Inspector, decide which type of content you want to analyze.

It gives you the results and you can click to remove different aspects of the document.

Save to SkyDrive

Click on the Share tab on the left side where it gives you options to share the document on you SkyDrive, SharePoint, publish to your blog, or send as an email.

When you share it to your SkyDrive you’re prompted to log into your Live account.

After logging in you can select which folder on your SkyDrive to save the document in.

It takes a moment for the connection to be established, Explorer opens up showing the files you have in the SkyDrive folder and you can save it like you normally would on your local machine.

While the document is saving you will see a progress bar at the bottom of the document showing it is uploading to the server.

Office 2010 has a feature called Upload Center that allows you to keep track of the documents you upload. From here you can manage the documents you upload to the servers.

If the MS servers are unreachable for some reason, the document will be shown as a pending upload in the Backstage section and you can try to upload it again or cancel the changes.

Access and Edit Documents Online

To access and edit the uploaded documents from the web, you’ll need to log into your Windows live account and go into SkyDrive and select the document you want to work on.

In the next screen yourself and other collaborators can leave comments on the document.

To share a document with others you’ll need to make sure they have permission to the folder the docs are stored in, then send them the Web address link.

The Web Apps service currently has limited functionality compared to the desktop app, but it does allow basic editing and is a good way to share and collaborate on your documents.

The PowerPoint Web App lets you make quick edits and create new basic presentations. There is no save option as edits to a presentation are automatically saved.

With PowerPoint presentations you can kick off a slide show. This is handy if you want to share a presentation in read only mode to others on the web.

Currently you can only read, print, or open Word Web Apps…there is no ability to edit them online, but according to Microsoft that option is on the way.

 

Conclusion

Office Web Apps is still in technical preview and Office 2010 is in beta testing, but both are available to anyone and you might want to get started now. There are several ways to share and access documents online through Web Apps and also using SharePoint which is great for business. Another cool thing about Web Apps is they will work with browsers other than Internet Explorer. According to the site, it officially supports Internet Explorer 7 & 8, Firefox 3.5, and Safari 4 on Mac, although I have been able to get it to work fairly well in Google Chrome. If you’re looking for easy way to store, edit and share documents online or from a mobile device, Web Apps are an exciting new feature that you can start using now.

Microsoft Office Web Apps

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Google's a company that's continually trying new things. It's braved the world of browsers, mobile phones, and, soon to be, operating systems. It still doesn't forget about its roots, though: search. The company has unveiled its implementation of real time search, which will be going live soon. As written about on Google's blog, the company claims its doing this as it does its best to bring consumers the latest, real time news, in an easy-to-read way. Now, whenever you search for a topic, you'll be able to see live updates from sites like FriendFeed and Twitter, enabling you to see what others have to say about what you're interested in (of course, you'll get updates from news sites, also).

Read full story…

I’m surprised this hasn’t come out sooner: Google Goggles is a visual search app for Android phones that scans products, books, movies, business cards, bar codes, artworks—a ton of stuff. It's like Google robot eyes in your phone.

While it's not pixel perfect in its judgment, what's impressive is its depth—unlike apps like ShopSavvy or SnapTell, Goggles aims to search everything, even if it admittedly isn’t great at IDing food or pets or cars. Yet. Plus, it’s got integrated augmented reality powers, so it’ll show you nearby businesses without you having to touch anything.

Considering Google’s rollout of QR codes to a bunch of places, clearly, they're planning to splash big with visual search before some upstarts get the ball rolling—I figure it's only a (short) matter of time before we see it on other smartphones besides Android 1.6. [Google]

Canada added 79,000 jobs last month as the country’s unemployment rate dipped 0.1 percentage points to 8.5 per cent, with the largest job gains coming in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.

I met my first serious girlfriend after my first divorce—yes, there are more of both—through a proto-Facebook created at Google. It was 2004, and it's name was Orkut. But social networks go back to 1995.

Click to zoom in

It all started with Classmates.com, which apparently has 50,000,000 users now. On the top of the pyramid is Facebook and its 300 million users, followed by MySpace’s 263 million. In the middle you have a huge constellation of sites, most of which I just can’t recognize. Trombi? Vampirefreaks? Bigadda? Cafemom? Geni? Itsmy? Qzone? Xanga?

Please, stop saying words. [Focus—Thanks David Keyes]

Windows only: If you use Windows Media Center to manage your movies, TV shows, and music, then you need to grab Media Browser, an open-source plug-in that displays your downloaded media and all its associated metadata and artwork in one slick layout.

After installing the free, open-source Media Browser plug-in, it only takes a few minutes to zip through the one-time setup wizard and choose which media you’d like the tool to aggregate for you. Then fire up Windows Media Center, and the Media Browser option will be listed among the Center’s native Movie, TV, and Music choices.

Although there are plenty of other Media Center plug-ins to choose from, and a couple of weeks back we highlighted the similar My Movies 3, this one gets high marks for the way it aggregates a wide range of recorded or ripped media and presents it with just enough eye-candy to make it pretty without being cluttered. It’s also open source, and with its low price of free, very easy on the wallet.

Media Browser only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7. What kinds of plug-ins improve your Windows Media Center experience? Kick around your ideas in the comments.

Windows: Earlier this week we highlighted how to download National Geographic’s stunning desktop wallpapers in one fell swoop. That method required some command-line work and didn’t grab 2007 images; NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader snags every 2007, 2008, and 2009 wallpaper with point-and-click ease.

Just download the app, point it toward the folder you want to download those wallpapers to, and let ‘er rip. NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader is entirely portable, so you don’t need to install anything to use it and you can easily pop it on your thumb drive to give the gift of awesome wallpapers everywhere you go this holiday season.

NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader is a free Windows download. If you’re on Linux or OS X, the previously mentioned method should get you there (minus the 2007 images) with a little more legwork.

The Hockey Night in Canada All Access Cam will make its debut during Friday’s telecast of the Montreal Canadiens’ centennial anniversary game against the Boston Bruins.

Google today launched a new, free DNS service—called Google Public DNS—aimed at making your web browsing experience even faster. Here's how it works:

For those of you who are unfamiliar with DNS (and it's cool if you are—as long as DNS is working, most people never need to know what's going on), Google offers an explanation:

Most of us aren’t familiar with DNS because it’s often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names – e.g., www.google.com – into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers – e.g., 74.125.45.100 – that computers use to communicate with one another.

Google Public DNS, then, aims to replace your ISP’s default DNS with a (hopefully) faster, safer, and more reliable alternative. Google Public DNS isn’t the first freely available alternate DNS we’ve seen. Previously mentioned OpenDNS is an excellent DNS alternative (it boasts keyboard shortcuts, parental filters, and more), but—for better or worse—we're guessing that even more people may be interested in Google's offering.

To set up your computer or router to use Google Public DNS, hit up Google’s instructions (they’ve got specific instructions for Windows, Mac, Linux, or your router).

I swapped my DNS to Google’s service earlier today and so far my page loading seems to have a spring it its step, but you know how these things go. If you give it a try, let’s hear whether things are feeling snappier for you in the comments.

Update: Reader Manu writes in to share the results of his Google Public DNS testing, and Google’s DNS looks pretty blazing—particularly for international users. For folks in the U.S., OpenDNS looks like it may still be a touch faster—at least according to Manu's results.

About 30 per cent of young people in the U.S. have been involved in some form of ‘sexting’ and nearly half of those say they don’t see it as a serious problem, a survey suggests.

If you dug how Google’s experiment with a single-word homepage looked, you'll be pleased to know that the search service's homepage is indeed sticking with that look—kind of.

The page shows just the logo, elongated search bar, and two buttons when you first arrive, and then the top-level menus fade in when you interact with it. It may not show up right away, but after a hard refresh—or cookie wipe—you should start seeing the new effects.

If you’ve ever wondered how Google goes about testing and re-re-designing a page layout, hit the link to read up on how 10 different designs, some of them almost practical jokes, led to the Mountain View firm’s decision. And tell us what you think of Google’s semi-new look in the comments.

Google’s not the only one in the game when it comes to wild mapping tech, and while Microsoft’s excellent collection of bird’s eye photos has never gotten it quite the attention of Google’s Street View, the hope is that lasers and its much-lauded Photosynth tool can do the trick. Microsoft has done up a Street View-style canvassing of 56 US cities with cars that not only snap photos but include range-finding lasers to map out the architecture in 3D. The Silverlight-based viewer for this view (dubbed Streetside) is similar in interface to Google Maps, a tad slower, and rather visually impressive. In addition, Microsoft is leaning on its Photosynth technology to collect navigable panoramas of scenery and even building interiors. Finally, Microsoft has tacked on “apps” of sorts, little overlays that include traffic cameras, restaurants, a Twitter API and so forth. All of this coupled with an improved version of the bird’s eye view is quite a visual treat, but the Silverlight requirement and non-Google-ness of it all might keep away the Bing-averse among us. But really, with all this tit-for-tat going on between Microsoft and Google, we have to wonder what sort of stone age we’d be stuck in if we didn’t have these two behemoths going at each other like this. The “Beta” is live now at the source link.

[Thanks, Aimee]

Microsoft giving Bing Maps a 3D overhaul, tacking on apps for good measure originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A basic human desire is to look for life beyond Planet Earth. We look at the stars wondering if a tentacled creature is gazing back at us and we ponder if life on Earth was spawned by alien bacteria hitching …

Designer Damjan Stanković has a novel solution for street pollution, and it doesn’t involve biofuels made from bunnies or boxy concept cars. His Red Dot Award-winning Eko traffic light brings the progress bar to the streets, eliminating those frustrating 90 seconds that we endure at intersections.

Stanković is not, however, attempting to assuage your annoyance at having to wait; instead, the progress bar is intended to show motorists exactly how much time will pass before the light goes green. During this lull, drivers can shut off their motors to conserve gas and prevent idling emissions.

Continue reading Traffic Light Counts Down To Green, Promotes Eco-Awareness

Filed under: Web

Traffic Light Counts Down To Green, Promotes Eco-Awareness originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox: If you need a simple screen recording tool but don’t want to install an extra application just for the task, the CaptureFox extension brings screen recording to Firefox.

Once you install the extension, a small icon is placed in the right hand side of your status bar—for those of you who have banished your status bars for extra screen space, you can hit CTRL+SHIFT+U or open it from the Tools menu instead—clicking on it pulls up the menu you see in the screenshot above.

After you select the settings you want, you can begin capturing. The capture can be limited to the Firefox windows or cover the whole screen and you can select your video quality, frame rate, codec, and filename. Check out the video below to see it in action.

If you’re looking for a stand-alone or web-based screencasting tool, check out our recent Hive Five on best screencasting tools. Have a tool for screencasting you couldn’t live without? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

You can visit the CaptureFox site at the link below for additional information or jump right to the Mozilla Add-on page for CaptureFox here. CaptureFox is free and works wherever Firefox does.