Google Docs & Spreadsheets on Opera

Opera is a great browser, but unfortunately it does not work with many of the web 2.0 sites. Google services in particular seem to ignore Opera.

However it is possible to use Google Docs & Spreadsheet in Opera, with some tweaks:

- Browse to docs.google.com. It will tell you that you cannot use this browser.
- Right click on the page and go to "Edit site preferences..."
- In the "Network" tab, choose "Mark as Internet Explorer" for the "Browser identification".

Once you load the doc list, click on a spreadsheet and repeat the same steps for spreadsheets.google.com.

It works ok, some things look bad, but the main functionalities are there. However, one huge problem: you cannot edit docs, only view them. Spreadsheets are fine.

Hopefully the soon to be released Opera 9.1 will solve this problem.

For the moment I am still using Firefox.

Writely + Google Spreadsheets = Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Today I found out that Google combined Writely and Spreadsheets. I haven't seen this announced anywhere, but I might have missed it. The new service is now called Google Docs & Spreadsheets (from now on GDS). I wonder why don't they just call it Google Office, it is much easier!!

Being a user of both Writely and Google Spreadsheets, I will write down the main differences I have noted in the hour I've been using the new GDS.

GDS now uses Writely's file manager to list both docs and spreadsheets. I am really happy about this, since I was missing this on the old Spreadsheets. All the main actions remain: tag, delete, archive, star, delete. The old Writely design has been changed to match all other Google services, and the Writely brand is nowhere to be seen. So we can assume that the Writely aquisition is complete.

Following are some minor changes/bugs:

• When trying to assign/remove tag to files, the tag list is not complete. However if you click on the Browse D&S button it will show all my tags. I am sure this will be rectified in the future.
• There is an unarchive button that I don't think was in Writely. Usually active docs are those modified in the last 30 days. Older files are archived. The unarchive button simply changes the timestamp of a file to "7 hours ago" and bumps it up to the active list. This doesn't seem an elegant way to do this, I wish they could come up with something better, but for the moment it works.
• It is now possible to save any file as PDF. I tried saving a spreadsheet but it didn't look very good. Maybe I have to play with the settings.
• Not sure if this is new, but it is now possible to open gmail attachments with GDS, which is a very nice integration of services.
• Posting to a blog works as well as before, even updating the post. I tried updating with Writely but it didn't work in the past.

There are probably other things, but I haven't found them yet. What's missing is blogging to Blogger Beta, and setting up multiple blogs.

Overall I am very happy with this change, it still needs some bug fixing and important features, but this is already a great product. Next step: presentation files?

GoogleTube is here!

So it is finally confirmed: Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction.

I think this is a good thing for YouTube, since they were burning bandwidth money while not having a clear business plan. But with Google backing them now, they will have the freedom to develop their platform and improve their services.

On the other hand, I hope Google has a plan for YouTube. Maybe their ad plan will work with it, I hope so for them. In the meantime I am just glad that I can keep using YouTube for the forseeable future.

Technorati claim

Nothing to see here. Move along. Technorati Profile

Google Reader? no, Bloglines!

I have many RSS feeds to read daily, so I used a web aggregator to read them. I chose a web and not a desktop aggregator because I wanted to read them both at home and at work, and I also cannot install programs at work. Not to mention that if I install a program which downloads feeds every hour I would skyrocket to the top of internet users in my company and flagged by IT (which actually happened to me, when I used Opera for a little while, so dumb!!).

So my aggregator of choice is Bloglines. It really does everything I need, even though it might not be the best one. I tried Rojo and Newsgator, but I couldn't get their feed display. So I always stuck with Bloglines, even though it seemed to lag behind the web 2.0 revolution.

Last week Google Reader was revamped, and it seemed very attractive to me. The new interface was very cool, and almost similar to what I was used on Bloglines. And it was very fast. I almost decided to switch to it and have one more Google application (after Writely, Spreadsheet, Gmail, and this blog). However for some reason it wouldn't load at work. I could log in and see the main Reader page, but my feeds weren't loading.

Plus, on the same day I tried Reader, Bloglines comes up with its own little changes, which were actually nice enough to convince me to stay with them. The main change was an ajaxy left pane which containes the feeds tree. Previously it was normal html, so whenever the left pane was refreshed it was reloaded completely. Now if there are new posts, the left pane simply updates the post count, without reloading the whole frame.

I will always monitor what Google Reader and others introduce in the future, but for the momet I am happy with Bloglines.

R.I.P. EvokeTV

EvokeTV was a great TV listing site. You could rate your shows/episodes, and get a feed of all your favorite shows, that would update before each episode's showing. It was a wonderful tool to help keep track of new episodes.

Notice I use the past, since it was just announced in their blog that EvokeTV is no more.

This is very sad for me, and just as the TV season is starting. I hope either they can continue their site in the future, or someone else creates a new site. I can't believe this isn't used by everyone.