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Google Google Google
I just wanted to post a kind of wrap up of the stuff from Google lately.
The new Google Desktop, specifically the Sidebar is kinda cool, but mostly pointless. Google Talk is cool, and I think the fact that it is open and Jabber based will mean that you will see a RAPID exspansion of the "built on top of Jabber" applications that will extend its functionality. However, a lot of the new Google stuff suffers from one common theme: lack of integration.
Why do I need a Google Talk window? Why can't my buddy list live inside my Sidebar? Why isn't the whole Hello! messaging system deprecated and moving to somthing Jabber based? Also, why doesn't Sidebar have the the extremely cool context function that Beagle Dashboard does on Linux? (Honestly, that's what I thought the cool of Sidebar would be.) Why didn't my Talk profile just start up with all the Gmail accounts that are in my Gmail contacts list?
Sidebar has some cool stuff. The autodiscovery of your browser stuff into the Web Clips box is pretty neat, and the kind of thing that only a good client app could do. Sidebar, however, isn't nearly as cool as Tiger Dashboard or Konfabulator. Not even talking about the "slick" factor, but the fact that Dashboard and Konfabulator are stupid simple to write modules for, whereas Google Desktop means "DontNET" only. Google Talk might be cool, again, one day, but the voice stuff isn't nearly as good as Skype's P2P stuff, it's not cross platform, and unless Google wants to open up their (supposedly great) proprietary audio codec, you won't see external support there. At least Skype is releasing binary API versions of their system.
Now, I think Google providing mainstream support for things like VLC and Jabber is great, but I guess I am missing why I should buy into the Google "way" if it doesn't really give me "better". The whole Windows-Centric thing, right down to Blogger For MS-Word is starting to grate on me too. They finally added RSS support to Google News -- after suing 3rd party impls out of existance, notably -- and they have SOAP and ATOM support in their Search or Groups and Mail respectively, which is great. It just leaves me wondering why there isn't more of a Web Service/XML loose coupling in all these desktop apps. Certainly the success of Blogger and (From their big competitor) Flickr and Konfabulator kinda goes to the point.
In short, the Google "fat client" stuff seems decidedly less "Web 2.0" than their web-based products. (How is that for buzzword compliant!)
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Comments
RE: Google Google Google
As someone who's not used any of the other sidebar thingys, I've got to say that I'm enjoying the sidebar. I really like the disk search stuff and i'm having fun setting up my little world view. Since I work and live in a MS environment (at least at this job) there isn't even the slightest discomforture with it being win-only.
RE: Google Google Google
Google should integrate all their client side functionality in a standards compliant enterprise portal that gets deployed locally on desktops/laptops/tablets and that seemlessly aggregates and caches content from Google's WSRP servers on the internet, displaying it a personalized AJAX UI. http://localhost/google
RE: Google Google Google
I'm using the sidebar and I think I'm getting to the point with all these sidebar things. Fun at first then quickly just something that is sucking up my valuable screen real estate.
Plus on a side note it is doing strange things when I remote desktop into my machine.
Bottom line: Google welcome to the world of corporate america where you have large payrolls of people and can't seem to produce anything near as neat as the stuff you did when you were young.
RE: Google Google Google
Couldn't agree more, actually. That is another thing I like about "Expose/Kompose". Having the widgets on a fullscreen flip-to is much better than the "sidebar" that eats my realestate or annoys me popping up when I overshoot the scrollbar with my mouse.
RE: Google Google Google
I like the sidebar, I especially like the desktop search itself (something I had long before sidebar - but still notable) and I like the new email popup thing in the sidebar, RSS in the sidebar, weather in the sidebar, and the system monitor sidebar plugin.
I get the most substantive use I guess out of the sidebar email thing, it indexes work and personal email as one, and displays notices I can filter (whereas the outlook thing at the office pings me even when it filters the message to a special folder - say BUILD notices).
Now I do agree with the integration stuff AND the sidebar could learn a LOT from Konfab in terms of "slickness" and of ease of development (I am not familiar with sidebar dev but have seen how simple Konfab stuff is).
I now have Konfab disabled, I used it for RSS and weather and sys mon, now that all in my sidebar. Konfab does have better looking widgets, lots more stuff, and easy to create, but I just never got into using the "countdown to burning man" or "Yoda" widgets and such - I was using the far more austere "clock", "weather" and "RSS" (and frankly there are no good Konfab RSS widgets, I tried many, none are just look cool, display whatever feeds I give it, they all have X hard coded feeds and then maybe allow you to add a few "custom").
I also hate the Win only stuff, thats silly. I use mainly Win for desktop, but like to be able to use the SAME stuff on Linux. I like FF for that reason, like Eclipse for that reason, like Konfab . . . nevermind ;). I think its mainly silly not because there are so many Linux desktops that need it, but because it would have been trivial to support - at least for talk, it being Jabber based and such.
RE: Google Google Google
Actually the more I use the sidebar, the less impressed I am. I do like having it, like the widgets, but it updates rarely, has no way for me to tell it to update ("News" and "Web Clips" and "Whats Hot" for example). It frequently bombs out for hours at a time on the "weather" widget saying server not available. It takes forever to index the email each time I restart (not sure why, but when I restart the "Email" widget is blank - got here today at 7AM - still says "Currently indexing . . . ".
This thing has potential, for sure, but it seems very slow right now, completely not Google like.
Also, I concur about the screen real estate, the Konspose thing is nice, also just having the damn widgets in the background on the desktop is nice (view desktop with widgets in background - much like konspose). This sidebar all the time is getting a bit crowded. (Especially when its not updating any content ;))
RE: Google Google Google
The "currently indexing" bit is just a drawback of recent installation. It will take it a while to index everything (just think of all those .java files on your machine it has to spend a second or so on). Once it is running, though, it reindexes on file writes and gets much much faster.
RE: Google Google Google
@Currently Indexing
Thats what I thought YESTERDAY when it did that shit, and was done, today it started and took hours again.
RE: Google Google Google
Ok so I have never tried Konfab before and thought I would give it a shot. I think I am happier with this than anything I've seen lately. I love the install, walking you through the product - very well done. I'm going to see if the opacity setting really works for me - it gives me my real estate back but we'll see how it goes. Sure makes Google look bad by comparison so far though.
RE: Google Google Google
I guess I'm the only one using the autohide sidebar. I don't give up screen realestate to anything, but the autohide makes me happy.
Also, after I let it index and do it's thing overnight, it was all caught up on indexing and has not been a problem since (The installer or help file recommends this anyway.)
I've seen tales about the weather server problem, but I've never had it occur.
So to sum up:
Realestate not a problem because I use the auto-hide. Functionality is 100% there and fully indexed (500k+ items) and it works.
I would like the "go update stuff now" button though.
Remember that it barely tries to do anything while you are active on the computer.... so even if you are just browsing the web, it doesn't do anything until you are completely idle.
RE: Google Google Google
Yeah I didnt notice the auto hide, that is sorta like Konspose, but its an area of the screen that triggers the view rather than a special key combo. Auto hide works well for me too (now that I noticed its there!).
As for the email index, I understand the way this stuff works, what the index is supposed to do when it builds, etc, its just strange that it WORKED YESTERDAY (after its initial index) and then had to stop again and say "indexing" for a few hours. Its done now, back to working, but just strange that it had to fall back once it had an index at one point.
And Konfab is really really nice, yes, also nice thats its Win and Mac, but it does have some issues also. Every once in a while my Konfab moves the icons, after a restart or whatever, and *where* they are placed is very important. I also had a few Konfab widgets just full of bugs (the tv listings one). Not the fault of the Konfab folks, but still annoying. After the initial "hey this is cool" for Konfab wore off, I was using just weather, clock, rss, sys monitor - now thats basically in the Google thing, AND IT has the email index, desktop index, so I am using it anyway, I dont need both anymore.