GooSync goes to 100% commercial

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I’ve used GooSync to sync my Google Calendar with calendar on my Nokia E65 for couple years. It covers all my unassuming needs. But recently I received a notification from GooSync that they discontinue free version of their service. As an option for all free users they offer version Lite for €7 per year. Well it isn’t so big money to help the good and useful service improve its quality or just survive.

Google Chrome: hot or not?

Today Google is not just the best search engine in the world. It provides hosting for domain mail, on-line office, web mail service, RSS reader and much more. That’s why nobody was surprised when Google announced its web browser Chrome. Taking into account the quality of existing services people expect Chrome will be faster, more stable and more user friendly then Firefox or Opera. And it seems that their expectations come true:

I would say the greatest advantage of Chrome over Firefox is its ability to handle tabs in independent processes which means a browser or plugin bug, or an incorrectly coded web page can’t take down the whole browser, but just that tab or plugin alone.

and more:

It scores a 79/100 in the Acid 3 test (ahead of Firefox 3 (75/100) and behind Firefox 3.1 nightlies (85/100)). In the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark, it clearly beats Firefox 3.0.1: 3700ms vs 5100ms in my Dell Inspiron 6400 (2GHz Centrino Duo, 2GB RAM).

I was a bit disappointed Chrome’s licence agreements:

11. Content licence from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

I don’t write something special. But I’d like to grant all right to Google for all my content. I don’t know why but Google fixed the agreements:

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

P. S. I think that it’d be much better to release Chrome for Linux first and use invitation for beta testers. In that case Google would receive more professional feedback.

Android run on N810

Android on N810

Realise of Google’s mobile platform Android is one of the most coming events this year. So, Maemo geeks couldn’t ignore it. Result of their hacks is possibility to run Android on N810 (see the picture above). If you’re interested to have it on your tablet have a look that page from eLinux project wiki. At present time the eLinux.org is down. I suspect that too many Nokia’s Internet Tablet owners want to run Android on their devices. Personally I don’t see any reason to do that (the same as to install KDE on N810) except of spending time for fun. But this is my opinion and you may have different one, of course.

In any case, it’s cool hack and somebody may find it useful.

[via Planet Maemo]

GMail 2.0 rumors

Today I read in THG.ru about coming version of GMail. It should be much faster, will have advanced contact manager and will be integrated with Picasa. The target of GMail development team is 70% successful users which is a big number for completely free service. IMHO good advantage of GMail might be adding of Google Gears to offer off-line mode.

Google Presentation is released

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As many of you may know Google offers on-line versions of Word and Excel as Google Docs package. Recently new application was added there – Presentation. Now you can forget about MS Office completely. It’s so easy to create, modify or just view any well-known documents including presentations. The next step I guess will be a possibility to work with Google Docs off-line similar way as it’s done for Reader.

15 Firefox hacks to Pimp up Google Reader

Google Reader is enough power tool to read and manage your RSS subscriptions on-line. But it also can be improved to provide additional functionality with help you be more productivity with Reader. Library clips gives 15 receipts to pimp up the Google Reader. Those receipts are based on Firefox and Greasemonkey – tool which allows to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. So, if you’re IE or Opera fan they definitely are not for you. The most interesting IMHO Google Reader + Twitter, Google Reader + del.icio.us, Google Reader’s BlogThis2Me and Integrate Google Reader with Gmail. So, feel free to grub appropriate hack for you!

P. S. I found very annoying POP-up snap-shot adds on the Library clips. I understand that the blog should work for money as well but it’s very difficult to read articles when those dummy POP-ups appear for every link.

Google Desktop now on Linux

Recently Google announced a Linux version of its Desktop. It allows to search in local files and internet from one interface. Google Desktop supports many types of files such documents, images, music etc (it takes information from service data I guess). Moreover, you can make a search in your search history (sounds funny – search in the search, but I use that feature often) and GMail. Full list of features is available here.

Google Desktop is multilingual application. So, you may use it with your native language. Google Desktop for Linux can be downloaded from here.

Google Gears brings Web 2.0 to offline

Google released an open source toolkit for offline web apps – Google Gears:

It provides 3 significant components to the browser ecosystem. A multithreaded javascript environment, which provides a restricted background taks JavaScript environment for accessing remote data source without blocking the main UI. Adding support for local data storage is a new set of javascript APIs. The storage support transactional data based on SQLite. The last part is local application caching wich hosts data locally and pulls down updated data

The fist web application which starts to use Google Gears is Google Reader. I setup that feature today morning. It works perfect! Waiting for Gmail and Google Docs.

The new technology store online data to be available in offline mode will be very useful for travel web workers and people who have slow internet connection (yes, unfortunately 56K is reality in many places in the world).

[via O’Reilly Radar]