Ref Tech Rob

I'm always on the lookout for good note-taking or organizational apps, and I must say, I've been intrigued by the development of Google Keep. At first, I thought that there was little to recommend it - it was just a way of keeping lists or notes on my Google account. I thought that the color coding was pretty neat, but it lacked quite a bit in comparison to other note or organizational apps. I went ahead and began using it as a quick way of recording notes and keeping them handy. I really  liked the speech to text angle on my tablet. It worked fairly well, and allowed me to take my notes hands-free while I was walking around. Since that initial impression, Google has quietly added updates and features, getting it to the point now where it has become extremely useful for me. In no particular order, Google has added: Reminders. The ability to capture and add photos to notes. The ability to export the notes in a variety of formats (on an Android device). The ability to ...

Don't let the title of this post fool you. I don't want to slam Evernote. I've been using Evernote regularly for a few years now, and I love how easy it is to capture, keep, and search for information with this unique tool. No, my goal here is to spur Evernote or its developers to solve a big problem with this information wrangling tool--retrieval. I have years worth of information locked up in Evernote, and it's not easy to retrieve. Once I do a search for notes or keywords, I'm reduced to opening each entry, and cutting and pasting to repurpose the information I need. It shouldn't be that way. I should be able to capture and dump my information so that it can be repurposed for my creative endeavors. If I've created the equivalent of subject related index cards, I should be able to dump them into a document, divided into groups by keyword. I want it to be more useful than other products, or even my old index card system. As I said, I don't really want...

There are so many tools for reading articles out there, that there is no way I could cover all of them. I will  tell you that the one that I have been using for a short time, Pocket (formerly  Readability  Read It Later), is one of the most useful PLN tools I have come across in a while. What a pleasant surprise that when I added the Pocket extension to Chrome, I found a Send to Pocket button next to each item in Google Reader. Each morning, I skim through Reader, picking titles or summaries that look intriguing. Later in the day, during breaks, or lunch, I open up the Pocket app in my Kindle Fire (if you sync it with wifi, the items are available offline) where I can read, delete, mark as favorite, or apply tags to each item. It even has a bulk edit function. Finally, Pocket is one of the supported services at IFTTT, so you can automate things like bookmarking at Diigo, links to Evernote, automated blog publishing, or a combination of these and other activities. Pock...

Our inaugural Cool Tool of the Week (CTOW)  is IFTT (If This Then That). With IFTTT, you can schedule actions for your favorite web services--kind of like a macro for the web. You create "recipes" on the site by selecting an application "Channel" that will act as a "Trigger", then you select another application to perform an "Action." Pieces of data from the Trigger are regarded as "Ingredients" in the recipe. For example, one of my Recipes checks my Pocket account for recently read items. It then takes those items and adds them to my diigo account as public bookmarks, along with any tags I may have added in Pocket. It performs this action every 15 minutes. I can chain together a number of recipes to automate a good chunk of my PLN. IFTTT is, at this time, a free service, though it looks like there are plans for a premium service in the future. Give it a try!

Google has finally re-released JotSpot as Google Sites . I've given it a quick look over the last couple of days, and I'm still not sure what to think. It seems slanted toward organizational use, so I don't believe that I, as an individual, can give it a complete test. It is being rolled out as a feature in the Google Apps category, but I think that they would be better off billing it as the feature-not that it's so great, mind you. When you tie a domain name to Google Apps, it starts you off at that stupid Google 'Start' page, which is basically just an iGoogle page with your logo at the top (if you add it). I haven't figured out how to change the default to my Sites page, which would be much more functional. My biggest gripe with Google, to this point, is their inability to really connect all of their features. Google's suite of applications still has the feel of a Frankenstein's monster assembly of parts which sometimes give an appearance o...

Just a heads-up to let everyone know that Microsoft and Adobe are entering the web office/applications fray. Microsoft announced the imminent release of their Live Office Workspace. Pre-registration is open now . Adobe announced the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity's Buzzword, a flash based online word processor. You can try it here --if you have Flash version 9 (which we don't at my place of work).

Hello everyone! I'm back after a long hiatus. My wife and I have been travelling and running paperwork here and there for the purpose of adopting our new daughter, Aly (see photo.) We have a little more work to do, but we're nearing the end (or beginning) of our journey. Anyway, I'm going to have a little time in the next few weeks to catch up on my reading and web experimentation. In the meantime, I've been looking at Google's combination of JotSpot, Google Docs, Google Pages, Blogger, Gmail, Google Calendar, Notebook, Picasa, and Google Base. I have been wondering how far they are from combining these items into a centralized screen and if they will allow users to create faceted displays. There may also be a way to combine these items into one Personalized Google page using widgets, but I am most interested in the ability to set up separate displays. For example, if someone had an interest in computers, libraries, chess, Superman, Chuck Berry, and the Baltimore...

For those of you who are interested in web-based word processing, Writely is now accepting new registrations. It will take me a while to see if there are any new features and to explore its capabilities, but I will post again if I find anything newsworthy.