Tuesday, July 24, 2007

New iBloglines for iPhone

My RSS Reader of choice is Bloglines. This is a web aggregator, which allows me to read feeds anywhere, so that I can keep track of what I read both at home and in the office. Another very good reason for me to use a web reader is that I can easily read feeds of blocked websites.

Bloglines is considered an old service, especially compared to the new web2.0 Google Reader or Rojo. However it does what I need to do and I so am used to it that I find it hard to change.

Now Bloglines has a released a new version of their reader for iphone: iBloglines. This site actually looks very cool web2.0-like, even in my Firefox (don't have an iPhone) and it even feels faster.

I'd be curious to know how it works on the iPhone. Anyway, good job.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Good-bye Veronica Belmont

I listened to Buzz Out Loud #521, the last one with Veronica Belmont and I must say at the end it was very sad. I actually really liked that episode, I felt all hosts were very funny and had great chemistry, even more than usual.

I also liked the various clips that they played, the first few appearances by Veronica (which I missed, since I only joined about a year ago). But the best clip was the one at the end, a sort of blooper reel featuring Veronica, only it contained actual clips from the podcast, which makes it even funnier.

As I said a very funny episode, but a very sad ending. Tom said it himself, he didn't know how to end it. I think he even choked at the end, did he? I know Veronica and Molly did, when I heard their last "bye". I must admit I was teary when I heard that.

Anyway, it is really the end of an era. I wasn't a huge fan of the podcast, I didn't read the forum, never wrote an email, never called the voice mail. But I listened everyday for the past year, so obviously I was attached to listening to Veronica. I also watched a few of her videos, and she really worked great in front of the camera. So I am glad that she will now be the host of a video show of her own. I will surely be tuning in for her new venture at Mahalo.

I will surely miss her on BOL, but I can't wait for her new show.

Friday, July 13, 2007

New Google Docs & Spreadsheet Doc List

In June, Google released the new doc list for its Docs application. Unfortunately this new version has removed many of the main features that I used GDS for. One feature that I don't believe a lot of people care about is blogging to Wordpress.com.

Since Wordpress.com is blocked where I live, I used GDS to post to my ibcfilm.wordpress.com blog. It was very useful because the tags in GDS would map to Wordpress categories, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. I hope this is just a glitch and not a conscious decision to eliminate this feature. Without this feature my usage of GDS would decrease by 90%.

Other problems with this new version:

- The "Save & Close" button on a file editing window does not close the window anymore. It just goes back to the doc list, which was already open in a previous window, so now I have two of them. A solution would be to have tabs for each document.
- "Add to Folder" does not have scroll bar or "New Folder". So if I have a long list of folders I cannot scroll down to add it to the file. This is a huge bug.
- Archive button is gone. They say they will bring it back, but in the meantime I really miss it.
- Different sorting options (name, folder/sharing...) are not available anymore.

To me tags and folders are completely different concepts, so I do not like that my tags are now folders. For example I add as many tags to a file that would describe that document to me, so that it is easier to view these documents in different categories with other docs of the
same type. Folders are just a way to file these docs, but I don't want a huge list of folders all on one level. I always try to reduce the number of folders on the same level, and create as many sub folders as possible.

I would have preferred the introduction of folders as separate from tags. Why not keep both? If you are afraid that people get confused, then put it somewhere in the settings, so that more advanced users can decide which one to use (or both).

I must say this is the first time I am disappointed by a Google release. Hopefully the old version will be brought back (as an option for whoever wants it) or changes will be made to the new one. At this point I am forced to look for alternatives, at least for my blogging needs.