Google is the greatest company in the world. I wish I worked there. Until I do, I'm going to keep pointing out small mistakes they make in their otherwise amazing software.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
New Google Calendar Disaster
I used to have White Text on Colored backgrounds which was easy to read. Now I have Black Text on Colored backgrounds which is difficult to read. It's really incredible that Google would do something like this to Calendar. I guess I have to go through and change all my colors and font colors now. Because they changed something!?!?!?!?! WTF! Come on Google, don't make Calendar worse. Black Text on Dark Colored backgrounds, this is embarrassing.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Google Music Beta Crushes Amazon Cloud Player (but still doesn't have a way for me to clean up my library)
Google Music Beta really has it going on (if I only I could mass delete the duplicate songs and see the music I've uploaded separately) when compared to Amazon. Features that Google has, that Amazon doesn't (and desperately needs):
- Add to Playlist is nicely done with a series of dropdown menus.
- Thumbs Up and down buttons allow me to quickly rate songs (and a Thumbs up playlist, so I can listen to good songs)
- Play count column
- Columns that sort
- Controls are a nice frame, always visible.
I really like this product and wish I could use it more (he said with Amazon Cloud playing in the background). Right now the major problem is the dupes that were created during upload and the lack of tools to fix this problem (even a delete all would do it for me. Then I could just re-upload without the dupes. Really there's no multi select for anything. Guess that's the real problem. Seriously Beta.). Nobody wants to listen to a dupey library.
- Add to Playlist is nicely done with a series of dropdown menus.
- Thumbs Up and down buttons allow me to quickly rate songs (and a Thumbs up playlist, so I can listen to good songs)
- Play count column
- Columns that sort
- Controls are a nice frame, always visible.
I really like this product and wish I could use it more (he said with Amazon Cloud playing in the background). Right now the major problem is the dupes that were created during upload and the lack of tools to fix this problem (even a delete all would do it for me. Then I could just re-upload without the dupes. Really there's no multi select for anything. Guess that's the real problem. Seriously Beta.). Nobody wants to listen to a dupey library.
Blogger - "About Me" or "Profile" - choose one or the other!
It's very confusing. I was trying to copy the design settings of one blog to the other and on the Design page the gadget was labeled "About Me". When I searched the Gadget library, I found nothing. I later realized that "About Me" and "Profile" are the same widget. You'd think they'd both have the same name. That would only make sense.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Gmail Contacts - not very impressive
Messing with contacts today. Imported some from Apple Address book. It was easy for me, but a newb would have had to click through to instructions, it didn't just pop up and offer to connect to the address book and import the contacts.
Then I was working on Sorting. By First Name or by Last Name, but no Show by First Name, Sort by Last Name option. I moved into the Business tab and found all my Businesses sorted by Last Name, so Papa Murphy's was now Murphy's, Papa and Pizza Guys was transformed into Guys, Pizza. Obviously this was confusing, so I tried to switch the sorting back, only to be greeted by this error:
Also I'm pretty sure I don't have individual sort options based upon group, which means my businesses will always be this way (or maybe I'll have to edit them by hand to change their field to business from First Last. I also had to manually fix the phone number formats, which was annoying. 555-555-5555 should always convert to (555) 555-5555 even if it's in the format I was using for Skype +1555-555-5555)
Also my contacts have no photos. How about an option to import them from Facebook? (or even Google Profile, which I know you'd rather push instead) (could also import Phone Numbers, Birthdays, anything else that facebook has. We have all these social networks and all these APIs, but is there a way for the truly common man to leverage them? For example, I love RunKeeper, but I really want the Distance and Date recorded on my Google Calendar and right now I'm doing it by hand. Do I have to wait until Google buys Runkeeper or Facebook buys Runkeeper to get this kind of simple sharing functionality? Seems like a nobrainer.)
The contacts list is too small, doesn't seem to have any good sorting options and seems much more like an old fashion email contacts manager rather than a full fledged contacts manager/social network type page that I think you need it to be.
(now back to manually transferring Birthday information from my Birthday Calendar (imported to Gcal from Ical) into Contacts so that it will show up on Calendar and I'll only have one calendar. Who says I don't do important things?)
PS: I am really impressed by the persistant hilighting. You need to find a way to tell people about it, because it does cause a bit of a use change when the computer stops forgetting what you were doing and makes list making easy instead of tedious and stressful.
Then I was working on Sorting. By First Name or by Last Name, but no Show by First Name, Sort by Last Name option. I moved into the Business tab and found all my Businesses sorted by Last Name, so Papa Murphy's was now Murphy's, Papa and Pizza Guys was transformed into Guys, Pizza. Obviously this was confusing, so I tried to switch the sorting back, only to be greeted by this error:
 |
| the error was confusing and didn't add much to my user experience. |
Also I'm pretty sure I don't have individual sort options based upon group, which means my businesses will always be this way (or maybe I'll have to edit them by hand to change their field to business from First Last. I also had to manually fix the phone number formats, which was annoying. 555-555-5555 should always convert to (555) 555-5555 even if it's in the format I was using for Skype +1555-555-5555)
Also my contacts have no photos. How about an option to import them from Facebook? (or even Google Profile, which I know you'd rather push instead) (could also import Phone Numbers, Birthdays, anything else that facebook has. We have all these social networks and all these APIs, but is there a way for the truly common man to leverage them? For example, I love RunKeeper, but I really want the Distance and Date recorded on my Google Calendar and right now I'm doing it by hand. Do I have to wait until Google buys Runkeeper or Facebook buys Runkeeper to get this kind of simple sharing functionality? Seems like a nobrainer.)
The contacts list is too small, doesn't seem to have any good sorting options and seems much more like an old fashion email contacts manager rather than a full fledged contacts manager/social network type page that I think you need it to be.
(now back to manually transferring Birthday information from my Birthday Calendar (imported to Gcal from Ical) into Contacts so that it will show up on Calendar and I'll only have one calendar. Who says I don't do important things?)
PS: I am really impressed by the persistant hilighting. You need to find a way to tell people about it, because it does cause a bit of a use change when the computer stops forgetting what you were doing and makes list making easy instead of tedious and stressful.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Goo.gl - The Name of Google's URL Shortener shouldn't start with a G
Sure, I want to stop using bit.ly. The domain name is from Libya and I'm no more attached to the name bitly than I am to any other cutely named short url service. I'd like to use Google's "Goo.gl", but it's hard to get it to come up in the address bar, because it's named the same as Google, which always comes up when I push G, or Go, or Goo (I have to type "goo."). Whereas bit.ly comes up when I type bi. Maybe if Goo.gl had a name that didn't start to G it would be more popular and easier to use.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Blogger - Difficult to create Image with a link
It's easy to upload an image.
It's easy to make a link.
It's not easy to make an image with a link.
Why is that?
(I can add a caption that's a link, but it's not the same. This goes to the general theme that Blogger needs to be more like Tumblr where you can quickly blog an image with a link or a video and move on. The publishing side of Blogger is near perfect, but the "quick publishing" side, needs a lot of work.
It's easy to make a link.
Why is that?
(I can add a caption that's a link, but it's not the same. This goes to the general theme that Blogger needs to be more like Tumblr where you can quickly blog an image with a link or a video and move on. The publishing side of Blogger is near perfect, but the "quick publishing" side, needs a lot of work.
Google develops Time Machine, casually announces it in Google Calendar
Good news! Google has developed a time machine! And what an odd, casual way of announcing it. Just saw this small message across the bottom of my Google Calendar today. I am of course, excited to Learn More.
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Saturday, June 4, 2011
Blogger - blog this widget is pathetic
It has a nice button and it looks good in my chrome button bar, but the Blog This extension is worthless and badly needs to be upgraded to crush tumblr.
Situation: I'm on a blog, I want to publish an image from that blog on my blog with a link and some text.
Blog this Widget: loads a link to the blog. No easy way to add a picture, or anything else really.
Tumblr Widget: can load the image with text, can load an embedded version of a youtube, quote from an article with a link to an article, etc, etc.
There's no reason that Blogger shouldn't have this functionality.
Situation: I'm on a blog, I want to publish an image from that blog on my blog with a link and some text.
Blog this Widget: loads a link to the blog. No easy way to add a picture, or anything else really.
Tumblr Widget: can load the image with text, can load an embedded version of a youtube, quote from an article with a link to an article, etc, etc.
There's no reason that Blogger shouldn't have this functionality.
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