Alpesh Nakar's Blog

gMail certainly changed email management. Having been straddled with measly 2 MB mailboxes, unless you chose to host them professionally or used ISP-of-the-day provided mail boxes. Then if you did use ISP mail boxes, you had to worry about forwarding, etc. Seriously, how did we manage without gmail? I guess we did manage, but that is because we had no options and we had to keep mailboxes fit and trim

For me, I have been using my personal domain nakars DOT com since 2000 – self hosted at home, giving me the flexibility of imap, so I wasn’t too worried. For junk, I used variety of web-based providers and was never a fan of Hotmail. Trust me. I had couple of yahoo ids for trash mails.

And then gmail happened! Definitely looks leave a lot to be desired, but you have ways of getting around that. If you use gMail and Firefox, you are better off, customizing the looks and the works. The works = customization, integrating Google Reader in your mailbox. IT’s all about technology! Yes, its the scripts that drive gMail and as such the customizations are possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know, I was going to do the gmail in the series, but I got distracted with Google Docs and Spreadsheets!
I am writing this from Google Docs and this will be updated, as I explore features.

Alpesh Nakar
http://alpesh.nakars.com

Testing Google Docs.
It can be collaborated and when updated, you will be notified if you subscribe to RSS Feeds. This is subject to me inviting you!
It can be published and you can see the document from a unique URL assigned by Google which is this.
It has Revisions, revisions history. Now that is awesome!

It can be edited on the fly! It can be published to a blog as well!!
WOW. You sure need a broadband connection for this. I think. Lets see.
Wonder if I can use my Windows Mobile to access this.
I will try it tonight

First Edit: I published it to my SharePoint Blog and realised that my google services series is not published there. So, I was able to remove the post from Google Docs – Publish Option – Remove from Blog. My guess is that I will have to republish this. Lets see how it handles this.

Update: Does not work with Mobile. http://docs.google.com does not support this browser.

Secondly, Garamond fonts used in the document messed up my post and the blog site. Did you notice that before? Well, I was not amused. I am editing this from WordPress Editor and I am going to take a dig with normal fonts tomorrow. Lets see. I trust blogging/publishing is secondary. However, must note that you need a good connection. Is it true that you need a good broadband connection? You my readers, leave your comments on this.

Continuing from my earlier post on Google services, I look at how another Google Labs product has helped me in my ITsphere.

Before I got hooked on to Google Reader, I had tried many rss feed readers / aggregators. This post tracks my path to the final destination.

I would like to highlight the fact that I have not been into blogosphere for long. It’s less then a year *grins*

I started off with FireFox ‘bookmarking’ some feeds. And then IE7 beta got released and since I wasn’t really into rss feeds, I ported across to IE7 beta. Then the unstoppable happened!!! I was adding feeds by the dozens and since IE7 was in beta, I had to find a better alternative.  My quest to find an alternative, that I could use anywhere, anytime Not limited to one workstation. Honestly, I did not once think that Google Services would cater to my RSS Feed need. It just did not happen.

Well, so what was the alternative? It was Squeet! Yeah – the best solution I found then. Its your feeds in email, so nothing like it. Subscribed, received in Outlook, rules took care of everything else! They also had nice add-ons for IE7 & Firefox. It is rather unfortunate, that I had to move away from Squeet – in a way that is how I found Google Reader!!! Hooray! I was receiving rss feeds-Squeet-emails regularly and as I kept adding the feeds, Squeet matched it with performance. As a backup, I had some sites in IE 7 beta. After couple of months, I noticed IE 7 show new feed items. At that time, I was too busy with our Microsoft Operations Manager rollout, so had not noticed that emails from Squeet had been heading south! Hmm, I tried to login into my account and it was locked out – at Squeet. Well, the reason was that a lot of emails had been bouncing off. There was no reason, since I got all my emails. This was my work email. Also I have subscribed to a couple of SharePoint discussion groups and had been regularly receiving emails on them.

So absolutely no reason for rss feeds-Squeet-emails to fail. Well, I got the account unlocked couple of times. In the meantime I had started exploring live.com. Great clean concept, used only for rss feeds. I was able to import my opml, easily and without any dramas. Basically it had this Share Point look and web part concept ( the concept that I love). BUT! There is always a but! I found organizing my feeds bit too horrible!

So I moved on to Great News! Fantastic. I just loved it! However, this was workstation bound. And then… I came across Google Reader! Literally came across. Seriously, I have not considered any other RSS Feed readers out there. I love Gmail and I just got into Google Reader. I know, this post is supposed to by about Google Services, but bear in mind, there is always a reason, why you end with Google Services and this is what I am highlighting. Other products and services fail to deliver, their marketing and promises baseless, and Google Services don’t rave and rant, but deliver! Trust me, did you ever know or for now know, when will Google Reader come out of Google Labs, to be a fully functional Google Service like Google Search or Google Product like Writely? They will deliver and let you scramble for it aka gmail!

I have been hooked to Google Reader ever since and more so now, primarily because of the following reasons:

1. Web-Based: This eliminates my biggest hurdle of 24x7x365 access.
2. OPML: Import/Export was painless.
3. Manage Subscriptions: Bewdy! I was able to tag, manage my subscriptions as easily as you apply labels in Gmail.
4. Read View: Plain and simple, with a choice of expanded and list view. Automagically mark a feed read as soon as you move to the next feed.
5. Add Subscription: Never been so easy! Type in the Website address and voila!! – choose the tag or ‘folder’
6. List View: You can see updated subscriptions or all. Your subscriptions within the folders can be seen as a group or individual within the folder.
7. Marking – You can star (favorite) your feeds like Gmail.
8. Sharing – Does any other reader do this? For an example hit on My SharePoint Blog and check out what I mean by Sharing. This is awesome! You can even subscribe to my ‘shared feeds’ Basically, I share the feed and then if you have subscribed to the feeds, you will be notified. Another option for me to share – grab a code and put it on my blog/site and people can see what I have been upto
9. ITs my news reader Back when I was in India, I did not open any Website, any newspaper but my Google Reader, because it works and displays like a charm on my iPaq!!!! I was on top of all my feeds

Need I say more? What news reader rss feed aggregator you use?

Next in series – the mother of all Google Services, gMail!

My SharePointBlog

This is part 1 of a series of upcoming posts on Google Services.

Lets start with Google Search. We all live by Google Search. They certainly revolutionized search.

Arguably live.com is the step in the right direction, as far as search is concerned. I have found satisfactory results and solutions on live.com and not on Google Search.

Lets look at the actual results I got for my search: How To Install SharePoint 2007 Beta 2

Look at Google Search Results and now look at Live.com Results. Spot on! Live.com gave me the exact result – first link, first page.

Rod Trent at myITForum swears by live.com search.

However, I must admit, the first place to start search still remains Google and I believe that this is more out of a habit, then choice.

And then there is Google Mini, which is enterprise search. Could this be a threat to 2007 MOSS (Microsoft Office Server System)? Not really, as per the comments on this blog by Dan

From prospects and customers, many limitations to the Google Mini compared to SharePoint (or Coveo for SharePoint):
1. No security
2. One collection
3. No API
4. Low query throughput
5. No upgrade path for more documents (must buy full appliance for $30k/2 years)
6. Provided from an Advertising company, not an enterprise software company
7. No way to upgrade software
8. No SharePoint integration
9. No way to fix HW or OS issues
10. Must re-purchase every two years
11. No wildcard, no boolean, no stemming
12. Web content only
13. Page Rank does not work in enterprise
and dozens more.

Google is certainly the default option and with Google co-op for web publishers, integrating with adsense – smart choice too. Live.com has made available custom search macros, but you don’t make money out of it, so I will stay out of it. Unless live.com and MSN adcenter follow this business model.

Next to come… RSS Feed Reader….

yy6j24DqN91nzJ5

Its been almost a week, since I have been back.

Quick stats:

• Skimmed through hundreds of feed items in Google Reader. Yes skimmed. Why? Read on
• Read through 15 work emails - what 15?!!!

Yeah, you are right! I was on top of emails, thanks to HP iPaq 6300 series, Exchange 2003 SP2 – Push Email and last but not least – probably- cheapest gprs connectivity in the world.

You know how much it cost me? Wanna make a guess? 1…2…3… Ok, have you come up with an answer? Honestly email me or comment your answer. Would love to read it!! Come on…

Well I bought pre-paid with talk time of AU 30$. (I still have some talk time left… with international roaming in Australia!)

Ok, the point of the post…. GPRS. Well, to get activated, I called up the customer care. I was given2 options… Free GPRS to providers site. Settings will be sent via sms. (No good for me, its not a NOKIA) and option 2 – the real one – called Mobile Office would cost me as follows:

Activation – AU $ 1.5 (You read it right, although I could not believe it when I heard it!!)

Data Cost – (hold on….) Wanna make a guess…?  1…2…3… Ok… AU $ 0.20 per day UNLIMITED!!!! I almost dropped the PDA!! I was like, “Are you sure?” She said yes!

I am sure, corporates use exchange push mail and gprs, and they may or may not be using this. However this business model is targeting teens, grads – their first job most likely to be a call center – who have 100% disposable income and they are not interested in push mail and gprs, but ringones, wallpapers, etc which costs extra.

Well, whoever benefits from this, including me, its something that should be available here in Australia too. I just don’t believe, how we get ripped for downloading mails, or checking mails.

That brings me to another point and which is an upcoming post. In India, I did not only access office (exchange) mails, rss feeds but also my personal domain emails, gmail and live mails – benefits of google and gprs.

Well, what do you do at 0200 hours sitting in a hospital lounge?!!!

If you don’t want gmail chat to be activated when you sign in to your gmail account, then you can turn it off! 

Sometime last month, I lost chat in my Gmail! I emailed support but did not receive timely response. When I received the response, the support person asked some real duh questions!

Initially I thought my laptop was playing up. But no go at work or at home, on the workstations.

So, I did a bit of snooping around and at last I found a link at the bottom of the page. I had turned off chat and that was the reason, I could not sign into gmail chat from within gmail!

It’s that simple. On and off! Now I will never loose sleep over gmail chat!

Another Google acquisition – Jotspot via GoogleBlog

Who is JotSpot?

JotSpot, a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is the first application wiki company. Founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, the company is pioneering do-it-yourself application publishing to enable anyone to create, publish, and share collaborative and personalized wiki applications.

What is JotSpot’s product?

While other wikis only support plain old text, JotSpot’s wiki allows you to create rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries. It’s as easy as using a word processor — you don’t need to know HTML. Thousands of businesses are using JotSpot to manage projects, build an intranet, share files and stay in sync with colleagues and customers.

Competition for Microsoft SharePoint? What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments…

Jotspot HomePage