NathanHJones.comJust thinking outloud

Google Docs rolled out a pretty necessary feature today if they intend to get people using their presentation tool. They rolled out the ability to save your Google Presentations as PowerPoint (PPT) files. Honestly, I’m a disappointed it took so long but I understand their quest to take over the world and keep people inside their applications.

Like it or not, Microsoft still commands a huge share of the presentation software market with it’s PowerPoint product. In order for Google, or any of the other start-ups, to ease the transition for users it’s imperative they allow users to save in the traditional PPT format. If users know they won’t impact how other people have to view something, they’ll be a little more likely to make the move from desktop to webtop.

I personally like the online collaboration features that Google has built into the ‘Docs’ application but not many of my friends and family are into it. And for those of you that work in large corporations, let’s be honest, you’ll be sending out presentations as attachments for a while longer.

Good job Google, keep ‘em coming!

In a bold move, Google is planning to roll out AdSense for conversations to help you monetize your daily interactions with…well…everyone. The new AdSense system displays contextual advertising on an “unobtrusive screen” (below) mounted to your head. Apparently, when you sign up for the service they’ll send you an adjustable screen that you can customize.

If there aren’t any relevant ads displayed, they suggest repeating yourself or to continue rambling on until the system picks up your conversation. They’ve implemented a pretty neat click process - they transport you directly to the site with their Teleportation Technology. They also mention that you can opt to have the product placed directly in your hands, though they are not clear what kind of setup configuration is required for this.

I think AdSense for Conversations is by far the best April Fools joke Google managed today. However, I will admit that I enjoyed the fact that they admitted to using the e-flux capacitor to solve causality issues in Gmail Custom Time.

(photo credit: AdSense blog)

Is Google creating a time machine? I logged into Gmail this evening (let’s be honest, it’s now morning) to do a little work and was greeted by a new link which is not live. Well, it’s visible but it doesn’t navigate anywhere but a 404, page not found. Great, no offense Google but it kind of kills the joke when it’s a dud after I find it.

Some of you may remember last year’s Gmail April Fools joke - Gmail Paper. Basically, they offered a free service for you to print all your email and they would send it to you on paper. Where do they come up with this stuff?!?

So how will Gmail Custom Time play out? I’m guessing a ’service’ to let you set times emails will be sent (I can actually see a use for this) or when an email should have been sent.

Here’s a shot from my Gmail account.

UPDATE: The link in Gmail is now live and it’s pointing to a page with a similar format to last year’s April Fools. The joke this year is a feature that allows you to set the time emails are ’sent’ as I predicted above. Now I can tell my boss that I sent him that email hours ago even though I didn’t. “Hey boss, refresh your inbox, I know I sent you that TPS report.” Obviously this wouldn’t really work (it’s like printing “hundred of thousands” of emails and having them delivered)…let’s hope they have something else for us when I wake up.

As I’ve stated several times, I love the various Google products and use several of them on a daily basis. My Gmail is open almost all day long, I use Google Reader to sort, manage and read my news, I share photos and documents with Picasa and Google Docs and I communicate with people all over the world (literally) with Google Talk. When I start my own business I’ll probably use Google Apps to keep costs low and because it allows me the ability to use the Gmail web interface and it’s easy to install. Simply put, they have created an amazing suite of free services but as my usage grows, so does the need for a few enhancements to make things even better.

Since Gmail released the IMAP feature a few months ago I’ve been a pretty happy camper. While I’m pretty happy, there is always room for improvement. I think Gmail recognizes that since they’re continually releasing new features! Keep it up guys.

• Tagging: The ability to label emails with several tags is great but having to select them from a drop down list is inefficient. It would be great if there was a type-ahead feature that auto-completed tags as I began typing them. It would also be great if you could apply multiple tags to filters.
• Filtering: Gmail has a great filter set-up but there is one thing I’d like to see added. The ability to apply multiple tags to filtered messages. Some people may not use tags to quite the same extent I do but I like to keep an organized mailbox. With my travels for work I also like to make sure I keep as many records as possible and there are some emails that I get on a regular basis that I like filtered into two buckets. Hotel receipts are the main culprit (expense reporting can be such a pain). Currently, I just have to filter it with one tag and add the second manually. Not a huge deal, but it would definitely be a time saver.
• Shortcut Keys: For those of us that use Outlook all day for corporate email, shortcut keys are where it’s at. I can successfully navigate almost all of Outlook (that I use at least) without touching the mouse. Google has done a pretty good job building out the shortcut keys but some of them are counter-intuitive. Maybe the problem is they just aren’t intuitive based on the Windows habits that we have all picked up. I’d like to see the ability to customize your shortcut keys or at least add a few more like ‘ALT+s’ to quickly send an email from compose mode.

If I new anything about writing GreaseMonkey scripts or had a couple hours of extra time I would consider writing a couple of these enhancements myself. But…since I don’t and I have no extra time I’m hoping the various Google teams go ahead and step-up.

These are obviously just my opinions but I think they’re enhancements that would benefit the masses.

Well, it had been a while since I had posted because things at work had been hectic. Oh, and I’m getting over a little flu. But my two posts recently were things I just couldn’t let go. What great productivity enhancers…soon enough I’ll be flying Southwest Airlines.

I get tons of email - between work and personal email I don’t know how I ever do anything but email (I’m working on implementing Tim Ferris’ recent email suggestions, but I’m not there yet). Anyways, I get a lot of email and I love hearing new methods for filtering message so that I know exactly what I have to read and what can wait until later. While reading my daily blogs today I stumbled on this little beauty - all Gmail users are given two email addresses.

In short - Google gives you two email addresses when you sign up for a Gmail account. youraccount@gmail.com and youraccount@googlemail.com both end up in your Gmail inbox. Lucky for you, this provides you with a simple way of filtering email from friends, family and coworkers differently than email from random places such as Amazon, Comcast, Cingular, etc.

All you have to do is continue using your Gmail address for the emails that you want to read immediately and start using your @googlemail.com address for all your other communication such as hotel reservations, bill notifications, online orders, news subscriptions, etc. Then create a filter in Gmail with youraccount@googlemail.com in the ‘to’ field. Have this filter apply a label to the email and archive for you to revisit later.

Give it a test and email yourself at youremail@googlemail.com.

The Gmail team has been rolling out feature after feature lately (well, if you’re using IE7 or Firefox 2) and they finally added something I’ll use on a daily basis.

You now have the ability to remain ‘invisible’ while chatting through the Gmail interface. This allows you to initiate all conversations with the people you want since nobody else can see that you’re online. No more pesky work related IMs!

If you’re one of those people that occasionally uses both Gmail (where I’m always logged in to chat) and the Google Talk desktop application be careful. Since the Google Talk application doesn’t support ‘invisible’ mode yet, if you’re logged into both your status will show up as online even if you’re set as ‘invisible’ in Gmail Chat.

Here’s a quick shot of ‘invisible’ mode in action…