UVAgeek » Google

Bye Bye Goog-411

Dan — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:30:00 +0000

http://cid-0bc4c9d6d8f9371b.office.live.com/embedphoto.aspx/.Public/uvageek/GoogleMobileAppResults.PNGI’m a little saddened to read that Google is discontinuing their 411 service, however I figure that now that they the US population has freely provided millions of voices with different inflections, pronunciations and words, Google’s digital stomach is churning with information to dissect.

Nevertheless, with the capability ceasing and with smartphones a flurry, there are still ways to do voice searches on your phone without having to even make a phone call – though you will incur data charges should they apply… Checkout Google’s offerings yonder at http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html for more information. I loaded the Google Mobile App on my iPhone last night and have to say that it’s come a long way since version 1.0. If only it was as easy as just voice dialing a phone number though so as to not be distracted…

Sync’ing Google Calendar with Mozilla Thunderbird

Dan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:21:02 +0000

So you want to keep your desktop calendar synchronized and visualized through Mozilla Thunderbird because you just can get used to using something like Google Calendar’s web interface?

Look no further than the Lightning plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird along with the Win32 Provider add-on for Google Calendar for Lightning / Sunbird.

So how do I use them all together? Check out this blog entry…

http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239

Note that there are updated providers for Lightning and Sunbird… for the latest, check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

I’m using the 0.4 version of the provider for Google Calendar with Lightning integration in Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 with Lightning 0.8 and so far I’m liking it. The only thing that I’ve found isn’t working is the Invite Attendees functionality – otherwise, pretty tight integration.

Now Playing – Relient K – Mmhmm – When I Go Down

Google Increases gMail storage limit…

Dan — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:08:23 +0000

So the first thing that I think of when reading through the Google Operating System last night and came across this article regarding the storage capacity of gMail and how it’s going to go to Hotmail’s limit of 5 GB and add 1 GB on top of it. Google eloquently termed this "Infinity + 1" back in the day. I like to think of it more along the "These go to 11" terminology. So they link back to the official gmail blog article regarding the increase in storage. Holy moly! Overnight I went from about 2.9 GB to 3.3 GB – wow. And what’s better, my Google Apps e-mail account now has a whopping 25 GB of e-mail storage This made me smile though:

and chuckle a little bit thinking to myself, "Dang, that’s sweet."

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – The Best of Emerson, Lake & Palmer – C’est la Vie

Google Pack 4 Released

Dan — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:49:07 +0000

So there’s much buzz around the Internet community with Google‘s recent release of Google Pack 4 hailing Google for packaging StarOffice 8 as a part of the Google Pack. I think it’s pretty clever that they’ve worked out a deal with Sun Microsystems to be able to add this as a part of the pack considering that really it’s only available free to faculty, researchers and students (or at least that’s the rumor…). Some of the buzz on this was whether or not StarOffice would be as snappy as Microsoft Office is considering that it takes a minute or two to kick up on our friendly Ubuntu distribution.

I of course take the counter vantage point that is stepping back and looking at GP as a whole. Why can’t I download it if I’m a Windows XP x64 user?

It would seem quite reasonable to me to be able to pull down and use a copy since I’m sure that Google Engineers use the x64 edition of Windows XP since it’s a little more solid (so it shares the same kernel as Windows Server 2003, is that what’s confusing you Google Pack?).

So what’s that mean for me, downloading individual components if I can and running them. Guess I’ll have to come back some other time and hope to be able to get a copy of the Google Photos Screensaver.

As a caveat, yes, I’m using the 32-bit edition of the web browser and it still doesn’t see me as Windows XP 32-bit edition.