Google Reader Shared Items

Open Office 2007 .DOCX Files in Gmail, Google [Google]

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Open Office 2007 .DOCX Files in Gmail, Google [Google]

The Google Operating System blog points out that both Google web search and Gmail can now read and convert Office 2007 documents, i.e. .DOCX files. That makes for easy mail-yourself conversion if you need it, or bulk-converting files to HTML, just like with PDF files. There are, of course, online tools like Zamzar for those without Gmail.


It's Official: The Canon 5D Mk II Will Turn Us All Into Professional Cinematographers [Canon 5D Mark II]

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It's Official: The Canon 5D Mk II Will Turn Us All Into Professional Cinematographers [Canon 5D Mark II]

Yeah, sure, it was cool to see a professional photographer spin HD video gold from the Canon 5D Mark II. But that guy is famous, had a mountain of equipment, a crew, and a freaking helicopter. Not so for the humble photographer and videographer at Akihabara News, who took the 5D, a few days and a laptop to shoot and splice together this stunningly beautiful five minute video.

The results are spectacular, and really drive home the point that with this $2700 camera, anyone with an eye for shooting and a laptop can create a cinematographic masterpiece. There is a discernible and annoying shake in some shots, but nothing that couldn't be remedied with a little jury rigging.

Make sure to enable the HD and smoothing options in the embed, and check out the second half of the video for more evidence that the 5D's low-light capabilities are completely unreal. Another lesson learned from this video: even the most amazing shots can be ruined by unsettling facial hair. Deal with it, Monsieur Akihabara. [Akihabara News]


louisgray.com: FriendFeed Offers Twitter A Chance to Play Lifestream

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louisgray.com: FriendFeed Offers Twitter A Chance to Play Lifestream

Shared by timlauer
Louis Gray posts about a new feature from FriendFeed that allows you to post items from your various social networks automatically to Twitter. For example you can set up FriendFeed to automatically post to Twitter when you make blog posts, Flickr posts and a number of other such social networking sites that you have set to update in FriendFeed. As he points out you might not want to do this for all of your activity, but the ability to have items automatically update in Twitter is a pretty nice feature...

Today, FriendFeed introduced a set of features that lets users update Twitter with all their FriendFeed activity, based on their own preferences - be it with native FriendFeed entries, or shares from popular sites, be they Disqus, Last.fm, YouTube, Flickr and many more.

Unlocking access to millions of books

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Unlocking access to millions of booksPosted by Adam M. Smith, Director, Product Management

We've always said that in a sense, Google Book Search is as old as Google itself. Back in their Ph.D. days, Larry and Sergey dreamed of a way to make it easier for anyone, anywhere, to access the information held within the world's books.

Today, we're excited to announce an agreement with U.S. authors and publishers that dramatically expands access to millions of books online, taking us one big step closer to fulfilling that dream. If approved by the Court, this agreement will unlock access to millions of out-of-print books to the benefit of users, authors and publishers.

To read more about the agreement, head over to the Official Google Blog. To read more about what this means for users, check out our microsite.

Google Labs adds Calendar, Docs gadget to Gmail

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Google Labs adds Calendar, Docs gadget to Gmail

Googlegadgets One of my native Google Apps dislikes is that the apps themselves are pretty disjointed. Sure there are links to the other apps if you're in one, but there's a productivity benefit to having certain data types on the same screen. You could go the Greasemonkey route of course, but Google just made the experience a little better with two new Labs features.

Within Gmail, you can now add an agenda view by hitting Settings, Labs and enabling the Google Calendar Gadget. Likewise, you'll see a Google Docs Gadget that offers searchable access to your docs, spreadsheets and presentations. While it's no big deal to have another browser tab open when you jump between Google Apps, it's nice to have an option that makes Gmail more like a client app. One of Outlook's strengths for example, are the many views that offer all of the at-a-glance data you need to be productive. While these new Gmail features don't offer the same elegant functionality, they do bring the web app closer.

Evernote

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Evernote

Shared by timlauer
Jon Hicks takes another look at Evernote. I too am finding this to be quite a useful tool for organizing information such as receipts, paper documents that for some reason my district does not send out as electronic files, and snapshots of things like white board notes and items notes with a mobile phone image...

I’m not sure if there are new features in there, but recently I’ve been changing my mind. Part of the reason for this is the iPhone app: it becomes a way of collecting data when I’m out – voice notes, text notes and photos, which can then be synced and searched later.

Using WordPress and Google Reader Notes to Make Blog Posts...

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I've never been much of a long form blogger. Maybe that's why I have been attracted to tools such as Flickr and Twitter. Anyway for the 3 or 4 folks out there who have bothered to look, you may of noticed that for much of the past few months my weblog remained dormant. I've been busy with school and doing lots of writing for my staff and community, just not much that makes it on to my weblog.

During this time, I have also begun to use Google Reader as my main tool for mining RSS feeds and keeping up with news and content related to my work and interests. Both on my computer, and on my phone, Google Reader is the tool I use to keep up with news related to school, my profession, and things that I am interested in. In addition I have started to utilize the share feature in Google Reader. This tool allows you to note items and share them with others. In addition Google Reader also has a notes feature that allows you to add an annotation to items that you share from your reader. Both the Share and Notes tools create unique pages that list the items shared or noted. In addition both also produce an RSS feed. There is also a bookmarklet that you can install in your browser that will let you add any page you visit to your Google Reader Shared Items.

I have been looking for a way to incorporate my Google Reader notes into my blog. While sidebar plugins are available, I have been looking for a way to make items noted in Google Reader appear as posts in my WordPress blog. I recently found a WordPress Plugin called WP-O-Matic that will allow you to grab RSS feeds and repost the contents on your blog. While not a perfect solution, and one with a few bugs, I have begun to use it and for the most part am happy with the solution.

Here is how it works. I installed the WP-O-Matic plugin in my WordPress installation. WP-O-Matic has quite a few features and can be used to create custom feed collections for posting. In my case I just set it up to follow the RSS feed from my Google Reader Notes. Once configured properly, WP-O-Matic will grab your latest Google Reader Items with Notes and publish them to your site. My initial results were problematic because the items were being posted multiple times. I did some research and found a fix to this problem and since have been quite happy with the work flow. The first screencast below demonstrates how notes work from within Google Reader and how I use the WordPress plugin to grab them and repost them in my blog. The second screencast show how to use the Note in Reader bookmarklet to post from any web page.

Matthew Yglesias » Regular Needs Children

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Matthew Yglesias » Regular Needs Children

Shared by timlauer
Matthew Yglesias points out that if you believe that special needs children and their families need support, then it isn't much of a stretch to realize that other children and their families may also need support... by way of Tom Hoffman...

It’s nice, I suppose, that Sarah Palin’s experience raising a special needs child has awakened her to the importance of generous public support for such children. And it’d also be nice to think that John McCain’s embrace of this issue reflects a genuine Palin-inspired awakening on his part, rather than a cynical recognition that standard conservative policies that would normally evade attention despite their hideously immoral consequences would be highlighted by the case of Trig Palin. And so good for them. Obviously, special needs children deserve to have their needs taken care of. But of course all children have a lot of needs. And the moral logic that supports taking care of the needs of children with special needs also, of course, supports the idea of supporting all children with their needs.

The Lightning Rod - The Atlantic

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The Lightning Rod - The Atlantic

Shared by timlauer
Reminds me a bit of our former leadership... I'll leave it at that...

MICHELLE RHEE CHARGED IN as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools wielding BlackBerrys and data—and a giant axe. She has made a city with possibly the country’s worst public schools ground zero for education reform, and attracted a cadre of young zealots some critics call “Rhee-bots.” Now the changes that she insists schoolchildren need are colliding head-on with the political wants of adults.

Powering a clean energy revolution

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Powering a clean energy revolution

Shared by timlauer
Google has created a little web calculator to help people realize some of the simple steps they can do to save energy, money, and reduce their carbon footprint. A nice tool to use with students when discussing energy conservation...

Spooked by high energy prices? Save money with these tips.

Halloween is nearly here, and the days are getting shorter. Does the prospect of high energy prices this winter make your blood run cold? Check out how much you can save by taking the following simple steps.