Tag Archives: online

Mar 1 2011

Act Local, Impact Global – Google Cloud Connect & Microsoft Office

Moving in the opposite direction, there’s a new way to work locally and act globally, or more accurately, in the cloud, with the newly-released-to-everyone Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. This service allows two or more to work on the same Microsoft Office file (2003 forward / Windows PCs only) and back it up using Google Docs.

Cloud Connect adds a toolbar to the Microsoft Office interface. With that toolbar, you can give Microsoft Office the same online capabilities as Google Docs. You also can give Google Docs meaningful offline capability.

The killer feature is sharing and simultaneous editing of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files from within office, but via the great Google cloud. Synced files are continuously backed up and fitted out with a unique Web address for sharing. Even offline edits make it up -  Google Cloud Connect will sync those changes the next time you log onto the Web.

Don’t worry if you get too crazy with the edits – Cloud Connect stores previous versions and you can roll back to earlier versions if you want. When there are two or more edits to the same section at the same time, the user can choose which version to keep.

All you need is a free plug-in and a Google account. Google Cloud Connect works on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. However, sadly enough, it doesn’t work with Microsoft Office for Mac. Not sure if there is any hope for a Mac version in the future.

You can download here Google Cloud Connect onto your capable machine running the eligible Microsoft Office versions. And get cloud backup and collaboration within the Google ecosystem for free.

Feb 22 2011

Instant CV With pdfCV

Assuming that there is pain involved with drafting your curriculum vitae, web application pdfCV aims to ease that pain. The splash page promises that, if you add your information and select a template, you will be rewarded nearly instantaneously with a polished CV that you can download. Essentially, the app formats you information into an attractively designed document, removing that often time-consuming step of graphic layout. Other nice features include the ability to import information from LinkedIn and layout changes with a single click. I haven’t yet tried the app, so I can’t report on its efficacy, but what do you have to lose for free?

Feb 15 2011

Set & Forget A Text-Based Web Page with Pen.io

Have you ever needed to publish on-line a page of text and wished you could do it without having to add it to your web site or without enduring the aggravation of setting up yet another blog? Pen.io seeks to solve the problem of the “down and dirty” quick web publication problem with its simple, free, effective publishing tool. The site uses simple “PenUp” language to allow for rudimentary manipulation of the page, but it also supports HTML. You can drag and drop images into the editor for simple graphics. Pen.io offers the following information about its service:

How Do I Edit a Page?
Go to yourpagename.pen.io/edit – put “/edit” on the end of any Pen.io page to view the editing interface. In edit mode, just click the body of text to bring up input boxes

Can I create Multipage Sites?
Yes! The “:page” tag (without quotation marks), can be placed where you want to add a page break. Pagination will automatically get added.

Does Pen.io Support HTML?
Absolutely! Some HTML elements have been disabled but common HTML is accepted.

How Long Will Pages Remain Online?
There is no expire date on Pen.io pages. You can set and forget

What About my Privacy?
We don’t collect any personal information. Pen.io pages are public and expect other people to see them. We don’t recommend placing any personal information on a Pen.io page that you don’t want Google to see.

The resulting page is a beautifully elegant, simple layout of text – great, per Pen.io, for  publishing essays or ebooks, creating pages for upcoming events, sharing code snippets, sharing recipes or quick advertising. It couldn’t be easier – use Pen.io to expand your message with yet another publishing outpost on the Web.

Jan 1 2011

On-Line Privacy Public Service Announcement: Spokeo

Start the New Year off with a bang – check out what Spokeo knows about you. Spokeo, an online people search tool, warns up front that it’s not your grandma’s phone book. No, it certainly is not. My grandma’s phone book didn’t provide a map to my home, with a sat picture of it, as well as an estimated property value, my email addresses, age, relationship status and ages and names of my family members, hobbies, estimated income, social haunts and even more. Sure it may all reside somewhere in the public record, but a service that scours on- and off-line information, aggregating it in one easy-to-access location available to anyone seems just a wee bit on the sketchy side, even for my own open on-line sharing viewpoint.

I have known about Spokeo for a while, but some recent updates make it a bit spookier. In November, Spokeo 5.0 was released, implementing graphics, icons, and a new design intended to present information in a more visual way. Just a few days ago, Spokeo released Username search, which scans social networks, blogs, photo albums, dating sites, music networks, video sites, ecommerce stores, and other web services in real-time to help find online profiles with similar usernames.

If you really want to stalk, I mean, search someone, you can upgrade to premium ($14.95 for three months and $59 for a year) and get name, phone, email, username search, and an import feature allowing users to utilize their email address book and social network contacts to pull information. Premium membership also features a tracking system – once the account is added to a friend’s list, Spokeo will periodically check for new updates from the account, with notifications and an update counter.

Spokeo’s information is scary accurate, but not completely accurate. Thus, one might be given the mistaken impression that all of the information presented is spot on, which it most decidedly is not if my own search was any indication.

Today I found a quick procedure for pulling yourself out of the database, which you may want to do when you see what Spokeo can spit out about you to anyone with an internet connection, thanks to Chris Hardwick over at the Nerdist blog. To summarize:

1. Navigate to Spokeo
2. Search your name in the box
3. Copy the URL when you get your result
4. Look for the Privacy link in very small type at the bottom of the page. Click.
5. Complete the form by pasting the URL in the field “To remove a listing from Spokeo…”
6. Enter a dummy email (create one for this purpose with Yahoo, Gmail or one of those temp email services). You don’t want the Spokeo creeps getting a hold of you, that’s for sure.
7. Click “Remove Listing”
8. When you get the email in your dummy account, click on the link “To complete the removal process…”
9. Go into your browser preferences and search your cookies for “spokeo.” Delete them.

Then, lean back and rest comfortably until the next on-line privacy hullabaloo. Go ahead, thank me.

Dec 8 2010

Aviary: A Bird of a Different Feather

Sure I’m a lawyer. But I am also a graphic artist and illustrator too, in my wads of spare time. A few years back, I started to teach myself to use computers to make art, negotiating the transition in technique from traditional media to the very different process of thinking in layers and elements. I got myself a Vector graphics program and figured it out. And let me tell you, decent graphics programs are not cheap.

Not that very long ago, my vector program decided to slip into a coma, which was a problem as I was in the midst of a couple of graphics projects. How I wish I knew back then about Aviary.

Go on, ask: what’s Aviary? Aviary (link here) is a suite of surprisingly powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. Their applications span the creative genres, from graphic design to audio editing. All you have to do is fill out your free account and get creating! Did I say free? By George, I did!

I’ll come right out and say it: learning how to manipulate graphics tools such as these is not an easy process. There is definitely a noticeable learning curve to be climbed. However, couple that learning curve with the comparably steep price these programs usually command and you pretty much have a Great Wall of China standing in the way of the average person’s desire to learn how to create and manipulate their own graphics, images and music clips.

When you reduce that number to free, the process becomes far more compelling. And Aviary is mindful of that – you have to check out their absolutely amazing tutorials (link here). There has to have been some point in your online career when you wished you could “Photoshop” and image or draw a logo or, perhaps, create a sound clip to add to a video or audio ‘cast. With Aviary, there is no expense other than your time coupled with your Web browser (and a hopefully decently fast processor).

There is an Aviary Pro paid level with access to additional features for $24.95 per year. This pro or “Blue” membership gives you unlimited storage and allows you to create private works, remove the Aviary watermark from images, access all tutorials, and increases means of participating in online communities and promotional features. This is peanuts, folks.

Once you finish your masterpiece, you can export a flat version of files (like jpg and gif) to your computer. Unflattened work (layers intact) will remain on Aviary’s servers. Eventually, Aviary promises to add a paid service allowing export of these workable files, but for now, only your finished product is functionally downloadable.

Aviary is also an online community. You can connect to your social networks to find friends. You can make your creations public and share with others, who can then comment on them. You also can collaborate with Aviary’s community of artists, or hire Aviary to put their considerable design expertise to work for you. Who are these amazing people?

Aviary is on a mission to make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing. We’re a privately held company currently headquartered in New York City with team members around the world. Our founders also created Worth1000.com, a talented community of 500,000 digital artists that participate in amazing daily contests.

All I can say is, the sky’s the limit with this great set of free graphics tools for the do-it-yourself-er.

Oct 7 2010

DooID – Another Virtual Biz Card Option

I really like Flavors.me (link here), a free virtual and visual web page containing a resume of your on-line life. Another option that combines the benefits of Flavors.me and Retaggr (link here) is DooID (link here).

DooID, still in beta, bills itself as an on-line business card, but shares more with Flavors.me’s landing page-type service and non-techy interface. Sign up for your account and you are presented with an easy to use dashboard with options for setting up links to your other web hangouts, contact information, formatting and layout, much like Flavors.me.

However, DooID does offer a couple of distinguishing features. For one, you can set your contact information to private, resulting in a pop up box for visitors seeking a password for access. You can privacy protect information that you might want to offer but not openly promote to the web at large.

Additionally, DooID has a few “add ons” – little widget-like boxes that give additional functionality, such as an email signature, video bio, and map. The paid version gives you more layout options and more add-ons. DooID also includes a VCard link so that visitors can download your information into their own address books. Of course, you can share your masterpiece with the web via the sharing tools:

 

The end result is a slick page containing your pertinent information and links. DooID expands your territory on-line and promotes your brand and content via yet another web connection. All the better because of its ease of use, even for the non-tech-savvy. Check it out and, if you set up a page, link it back here in the comments – would love to see the results.

Jun 22 2010

More Free OCR Fun

Last week, I posted about a free Web utility that would allow you to upload scanned documents and apply OCR treatment. Now Google Docs has trotted out a free OCR feature available for on-line docs, per the Google Operating System Blog (link here).

The option appears during the uploading process: Docs users are presented with a clickable link that will run an OCR scan of docs uploaded into user accounts. Those familiar with OCR know that the process extracts characters and inserts them into a new text document. PDFs apparently do better with the process and simply black text on white background yields the best result. 

As far as those results, users report some formatting loss and less than perfect end product. And, you will need to separately load and save the PDF if you want both the original and the OCR’d version of the doc. Still, while it may not be the power tool you are looking for, it does offer a free option for simple scans and searchable saves of images, business cards or simple records.

Jun 3 2010

Bringing Style Up To Speed

Back in April (link here), I breathed a sigh of relief as the AP announced it was now permissible to write website, instead of web site. I am back to tell you that the 2010 AP Stylebook Online (link here) is now out in all its glory, with more help for other modern terms. Some history on the Stylebook:

The Stylebook was first produced in 1953 as a stapled collection of rules totaling 60 pages, and has grown to a publication of more than 450 pages today. The book’s creation was prompted in part by a technical change in the way the AP transmitted news as well as a need for consistency among a worldwide editorial staff that produced stories for newspapers with a variety of style preferences. There have been major periodic revisions over the past few decades, the last in 2008, and the print edition is now updated annually.

The new guidelines include many entries pertaining to social media usage. Many will come as no surprise (new ways to use the terms “fan”, “friend”, “trending”, “retweet”, “unfriend” and “follow”). Others make me scratch my head a bit (separating out smartphone into smart phone and hyphenating e-reader). Thankfully, the AP guidelines discuss some common sense rules for journalists as to how to use (and not use) social media in their research and reporting. As well as a healthy dose of acronyms generated by the texting generation. Go figure. From the site:

The new Social Media Guidelines section includes information and policies on using tools like Facebook and Twitter, how journalists can apply them to their work and how to verify sources found through them. Also included are 42 separate entries on such terms as app, blogs, click-throughs, friend and unfriend, metadata, RSS, search engine optimization, smart phone, trending, widget and wiki.

Just so you know, Web is capitalized when it is used as the shortened form of World Wide Web and e-mail is still hyphenated. You can buy the Stylebook here (link).

Mar 5 2010

Smart Tools Are Free Tools

If you hadn’t already noticed, I am always sniffing out cool tools on the Web. I am particularly fond of free ones. That is why I jumped all over this great guest article by Lifehacker writer Adam Pash over at PCWorld, titled 19 Freebies for Smart Web Browsing, Social Networking (link here). There were quite a few I actually hadn’t yet heard of. Not all were exciting, but a few of my favs are listed here. Or hit the jump above to get the full list.

I like CeeVee (link here), an online resume builder. There are tools to share it with Twitter, Facebook or a custom web address.

Lazarus (link here) is a Firefox add-on that records your key strokes. This is particularly useful when blogging in your on-line editor and you find yourself without an undo function. Just right click and hit Recover Text.

Mailbrowsr (link here) offers great added functionality to Gmail. It is a beta Firefox and IE add-on. Offers Calendar integration and organizational filters lacking from the basic application.

My Brainshark (link here) allows you to add audio to a PowerPoint presentation by simply uploading your slidedeck, calling a special number and talking.

Use Outsync (link here) to incorporate Facebook photos with your Outlook contacts. And manage Twitter from Outlook with Twinbox (link here).

Handle two Twitter feeds at once with SplitTweet (link here). Allows basic functionality and search across multiple accounts.

This should keep you busy for a little while. Have fun!

Mar 2 2010

Automating Your Editing

Editing seems one of those skills better left to a human, at least for the final pass-through stage. But even a human can overlook important grammatical errors, particularly if that human’s bleeding eyes have made too many passes over the work and the caffeine is on its way out of the system.

Can’t hurt to make use of a robot as another failsafe. Enter Paperrater (link here).

Paperraater is a free web service that checks your work for grammatical and spelling errors and plagiarism issues. Simply paste the text into the web editor, specify the type of paper, and receive back a detailed examination of the work, complete with feedback on originality, vocabulary, style, corrections for misspelled words, incorrect grammar, and word choice. Paperrater will also supply tips and examples for improving the masterpiece.

Worried about the source of these suggestions? Apparently, the Paperrater app has been developed by linguistics professionals and graduate students, presumably in relevant areas of study.

Very, very interesting.

Hat tip to MakeUseOf.