Google offensive

Long awaited, at least by me, changes to Bogger have come. Google is re-designing all of their tools to follow the same design as Google+. Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Translate, Search all already followed with the experimental switch - for all those that want to test new design a link shows up to switch. If you don't like it you can go back to traditional view.


I like the new ones. Smooth, easy, clear. That's what I like. It's little big - designed more for big screens that my small 12" laptop but it's not something that interferes much. When I started to use G+ I read quite quickly that there will be also change coming to Blogger, and finally there it is!


It's follows the sleek look that other products now have, uses the same clear types, options and settings. Cool stuff. Stats now are easy to see right away on dashboard, but the screen to write your post start incredibly small... 


Oh..I just wrote enough for the "page" I started writing on to automatically extend to a "full page view" - cool!!


The posts settings are on right hand column easy to access without need to scroll down the screen you are writing on. And the automatic change of the page is fantastic, I like to see what I'm writing without need to have to move back and forth. What I would like to see would be a word counter that shows also on the settings how many words I've produced... but hey for that I can use 750words.com page that I use anyway for my daily writing exercise. 


Playing around with options - most have the new look, some not yet - I clicked something in statistics page and found myself back in the old blogger view. Otherwise seems that first day of launch was quite stressful. 


On other Google news the Offline Gmail, Docs and Calendar are back! Google announced yesterday that they are rolling out the functionality back based on HTML5. For Gmail you will need an app from google web store, but it seems calendar and docs can work without it. I will see cos for now I can't find either the app or the option in the docs to use them offline. In the past there was a tool named google gears that allowed to work on some of them offline, now there is an app to install into Chrome. Need to research if it's also available for other web browsers.

"Your mom will not use it...."

Since Google launched their social platform Google+ (or G+ as I saw in net), I'm curiously reading blogs and internet news to track the revolution. One of articles used the above sentence, I don't really agree. 


My Mom is a Genius :)

Accounts fever

I’m usually quite happy with google tools - but few days ago I made a gigantic mistake of allowing myself to use ‘Multiple-sing in option’. I have few google accounts, for reasons not needed to be explained - yes I’m a spy... anyway.... to ease my life I decided to use a multiple sing-in and only switch accounts when needed.

Disaster number one: although google provides notification - in red so you don’t miss it - that only some of services will work, I happily marked everything “yes, I’m aware” and then cursed when docs opened always on the wrong one, as for some reasons it was marked default. Even when I logged in first with the other one, and following logic it should be the default... right??? HELP! I love google but really it’s not like them to make it sooo NOT intuitive.

Disaster number two: the option to sing out should work only on the one account I didn’t want to use... in theory. In practice every time I used sing out (instead of sing out of all accounts) I landed on the lovely page - to use google services please sing in. Agggrrhhh!!!

Before I’ve been using three web browsers to keep the main accounts separate and logged in always. Now when I use only Chrome I’m back to sing in/sing out dance that I just limited to two accounts to spare myself some headache.

Having several accounts is cool, as long as you don’t have to switch between them every day - it helps to direct most of email to only one of them, but it doesn’t work with other google tools. Pity.

All in all with Google implementing lots of changes due to Google+ campaign I hope they will fix some of this strange things - like why the links bar is not the same everywhere, or why blogger seems to stop in design in pre-beta-era...

Social Media Google+

Google starts marketing on their new social page attempt, I will say that I'm intrigued (more than I was with buzz or wave). I especially like the idea of circles that you choose to distribute content too, how many times any of you had to moderate your Facebook post to make it "appropriate" for everyone in your friends list? How many things you had to omit, or simply not share as choosing only few recipients was too difficult. Let see what the new attempt will bring. 


Google+ review on wired.com

Overall changes to look and feel of google changes - they added new look on the link bar (it's now black) and I love it, the search navi pane changed from colorful to gray, which I like too. All in all yes I'm google enthusiast, and I keep my fingers crossed for their success.