Google has announced Google Browser Sync, a Firefox Plugin that basically backs up your bookmarks, passwords, cookies and what not to the Google servers so you can access them from anywhere in the world if you are away from your computer.

Honest thoughts: do people really want to give Google access to everything? I guess they probably know everything about me anyway, given they can find it all in my gmail account, but I’m not sure I want Google tracking every single last thing I do online more than they do already 🙂

Tags: Google Browser Sync

Got my invite today to Google Spreadsheets, initial thoughts: it’s pretty damn cool.

It’s quick, and it seems to do everything I’d ever want to do with a spreadsheet, at least is plays like Excel does in terms of formula which is…well cool.

Is it a Microsoft killer? I still don’t think so, but there is little doubt that, particularly compared to Writely, that Google Spreadsheets has more potential, particularly in terms of group collaboration, to gain a decent number of users. Certainly for people who travel a lot, this is going to be very, very handy.

Screen shots as follows (click to enlarge):

Tags: Google Spreadsheets

Very nice for TypePad users, although I’m interested to know how SixApart is implementing it, modredirect through .htaccess perhaps? From Techcrunch:

Feedburner and TypePad will announce a partnership on Thursday that will allow TypePad users to automatically redirect their existing TypePad RSS feed into Feedburner. Until now, if a TypePad user wanted to transfer RSS subscribers to a Feedburner RSS feed (and take advantage of Feedburner stats for those subscribers), each subscriber to the old feed would be required to change their subscription to the new feed. Since subscribers have little incentive to do this, many Feedburner publishers end up managing multiple RSS feeds over time. This partnership will save them the hassle of doing that.

I was fortunate enough to receive an invite overnight from Anil Dash to SixApart’s new blogging/ social networking tool Vox (previously known as Comet).

I’ve just had a quick play with it. Initial thoughts:

1. Vox has the potential to be a big hit. It works quickly, presents well, and has some nice features.

2. The navigation options are a little confusing at first, but then again I’m someone who struggles to work out MySpace as well, so it could be just me.

3. My invite was to a “starter account” which is basically gives you the ability to comment on other peoples posts, manage friends and set up a profile. I’m not quite sure what use it is though, hopefully I’ll eventually get an invite to the “standard account” that has all the bells and whistles on it.

Is this a MySpace killer? Probably not, but in terms of reaching a broader audience for SixApart, particularly Generation Y and the MySpace crowd, with a bit of luck and some shrewd marketing, I can see this service going gang busters for SixApart, and possibly taking a big chunk of market share in this space, particularly now we are seeing news reports that MySpace users are finding that service “too mainstream” and are starting to look at other services.

In summary: think Flickr combined with social networking, blogging and tagging = Vox.

Very nice indeed. Congrats to the SixApart team on a product that shows a lot of promise.

PS: My Vox page is at http://nichenet.vox.com

Tags: Vox, SixApart

Jay Allen posts at the MT News blog that MT 3.3 beta is live. I’d love to know from someone at SixApart whether I can download it and have a play with it. I know the licensing has been progressively improving over time, but….well unless someone says: “OK Duncan, you can download it and play with it legally, as long as you don’t make a quid from it”, I remain hesitant, but the geek in me wants to play. It’s been a long time since I’ve installed MT, and I’d love to update my skill set by seeing the improvements that have been made to the mother of all blogware.

If you’ve given the latest and greatest version of MT a spin, let me know in the comments. By all means, link to your post in the comments.

Tags: SixApart, MovableType, Jay Allen

Mike Arrington at Techcrunch reports on rumours that PubSub is imploding, which is interesting given they’ve just announced a deal with Burrellesluce Media Monitoring Services.

Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I tried using PubSub, I gave up on these guys a long time ago, particularly when Technorati started to get their act together again. Unfortunately whilst they had a lot of promise when they initially launched, they quickly sort of faded into the B-List blog search category for my liking, which is a shame, given they have some nifty charting tools and what not. Will be interesting to see how this story plays out, whether PubSub may eventually fail and close shop, or even be bought out by someone else.

Tags: PubSub, Technorati

Steve Rubel reports on references at Google’s Picasa to “Web Albums”, a potential competitor to Flickr perhaps?

I love Picasa, it’s one of those apps I recommend to anyone and everyone who has a digital camera. I long since abondoned my Kodak Picture software for Picasa…it’s a great program, sure it doesn’t have all the image editing features of a program such as Photoshop, but for downloading and managing pictures from a digital camera (and all and any images you have on your hard disk) it’s brilliant. Now if only I could post photos from Picasa to Flickr I’d be happy! 🙂

Tags: Picasa, Flickr

Looks like Microsoft has caught the Social Networking bug, with news that the uber-firm is planning to role out Social Networking features as part of their MSN Spaces offering, with testing already under way in of all places….Australia (there’s a first for everything!).

Interesting play though in the evolution of the blogosphere. Where as Social Networking sites such as MySpace bolt on blogging as an additional feature, now we have a blogging setups bolting on social networking features. This also after recent news about SixApart’s upcoming Comet launch which smells and looks like social networking as well.

The lines between social networking and blogging continue to blur. Perhaps we need a new name to merge the blogosphere with social networking….networksphere perhaps, anyone got any other ideas for a new name?

Tags: MSN Spaces, MySpace

Jeremy and I don’t often see eye to eye on certain tech things relating to Microsoft, I’ve always been an Open Source fanwhore where as Jeremy spent time working for (or was that with) Microsoft, and tends to be rather pro-Microsoft (I’m not anti-Microsoft (I use XP for example), I just prefer to have choice in a marketplace), however I’ll agree with him on this:

Google Office is not a Microsoft killer.

Far from it. Sure, Google’s growing suite of online enterprise tools will find a nice niche in the marketplace, but they aren’t going to damage Microsoft Office any time shortly, and neither will many of the other Web 2.0 apps out there.

What Google and other Web 2.0 companies do know however is that the long tail is long, and that there is great potential with these sorts of products, but we are a very, very long way from getting to the stage where Microsoft Office is going to be knocked off its perch, after all, how many people out there even know what Web 2.0 is? Anyone for Ajax? Are Corporate buyers going to start using Google Office….I don’t think think so, after all, they could be using Open Office now for free, and they aren’t (which is rather stupid really give how great it is).

So enough with the hype already people. Take a couple of Panadols and have a nice lie down.

Tags: Google Office

Fun reading.