Michael Webb's Blog - All Comments

re: So what do you do in the Summer?

20308205 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:12:39 GMT

at the moment nothing but awaiting a holiday and booking my theory test

re: A Tale of Three Word Processors (or how I came to use MS Office instead of Google Docs)

David J Longman — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:34:53 GMT

Just read this post Michael. Funnily enough I came to a similar conclusion recently for all sorts of tiny reasons. I am very used to Word of course, and it tends to be the standard against which I evaluate other tools. Yes - Google Docs is great for producing nicely formatted text documents, and in collaboration of course it is superb.

But for writing that involves fair amounts of embedded objects, I find that Word is pretty much unbeatable. Moreover, it exports nicely into web-friendly formats so it's good for publishing.

Mind you I haven't really used OpenOffice much and will give it more time - but I have recently returned to my old friend MS Word as my core wordprocessor rather and I am giving up flighty liaisons with all those other attractive options !!!.

On the storage issue we not only need easier uploading but we need synchronisation. I would put this at the top of the list.

I would also like to see sync for Outlook too - there's another story here about the use of task lists, calendars and so forth, and how Outlook does all that, but we don't really exploit it. One reason is that the lack of synching makes it all a bit cumbersome to move this sort of daily data data between home, office and laptop.

I will follow up some of the other tips in the other comments - I've got Groove but never used it. Live Mesh looks interesting too.

re: A Tale of Three Word Processors (or how I came to use MS Office instead of Google Docs)

Michael Webb — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:47:00 GMT

Yes, it's made me realise how useful online storage is, so we are going to look at upgrade mLE's storage to make it easier to upload. Just to complete the story, I did end up using mLE storage in the end...it was easier when I was rushing to finish my assigment on a uni PC.

Thanks for the tips about Office Live and Mesh and Groove - I'll check those out.

re: A Tale of Three Word Processors (or how I came to use MS Office instead of Google Docs)

20082126 — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:01:57 GMT

Or how about the mLE's inbuilt storage?

re: A Tale of Three Word Processors (or how I came to use MS Office instead of Google Docs)

20207212 — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:10:09 GMT

Microsoft also has another great option:

Live Mesh - which I'm currently using with my Mac & PC, although it says Beta it works perfectly. its works on the web aswell, as an 'online desktop'.

Or if your using PC only:

Microsoft Groove - that way you can use MS office as its normal app but it will be synced with all the PC's.

re: A Tale of Three Word Processors (or how I came to use MS Office instead of Google Docs)

20214201 — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:59:49 GMT

Have you tired Microsoft office live? It is basically office online and you can share and collaborate just like Google docs.

Personally I use openoffice and connect it to google docs, So when I edit a document on my computer using openoffice it automatically saves to google docs.
The advantage with openoffice is that being open source there is always a plugin to make it do something that wish it would.

But then I use linux so I can make my computer act anyway I want.

re: Google Chrome

Michael Webb — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:56:09 GMT

Yes, the license thing was basically a mistake - this article shows the correction:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2329414,00.asp

Shows that even Google doesn't always ready EULAs!

After using it for a bit more, my other bit of feedback is that it is really fast at displaying pages compared to IE.

re: Google Chrome

20207212 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:32:16 GMT

they have fixed the issue with the copyright. all content generated is now the property of the chrome user.

I'm using at its is now my default browser on windows, but still use safari with me mac

re: Google Chrome

amarti01 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:32:49 GMT

There are also some concerns around Google's software license terms...

"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. "

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10030522-2.html

This does have serious privacy and copyright implications.

On a better note, apparently Chrome uses WebKit (webkit.org), the underlying technology within Apple's Safari browser, iPhone browser and also some Nokia phones.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=2208

What this means is more serious competition for IE with two good opensource platforms (Gekko/Firefox + Webkit) we may finally see an end to Microsoft's domination of the browser market.

re: Google Chrome

Daryl. — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:56:15 GMT

Like Sam, I'm waiting on a Mac version, but I'm quite excited about it I must say. It sounds fantastic, I think I'm gonna put it on my family's PC before I come back to uni.

re: Google Chrome

20207212 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:28:45 GMT

I downloaded it on my BootCamp partition and it is an amazing browser, super fast it is brilliantly fast with web 2.0. Also really like the most recently viewed pages thing, just hope it comes to Mac soon!!

re: Google Chrome

Martyn a.k.a NeOk — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:28:36 GMT

hmm might be worth getting it to have a look

re: So I finally bought an iPhone...

20207212 — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:07:06 GMT

i'm going to get mine on the weekend!!!

re: So I finally bought an iPhone...

Michael Webb — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:58:27 GMT

I like that question! You can ask it about almost anything, and if seriously pressed it's always hard to answer!

For me, I bought it for fun, and for the sheer joy of using it. Is that too geeky?

re: So I finally bought an iPhone...

David Knight — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:35:58 GMT

What's it for?