As part of their broad push for world domination, Google have invaded the land of online forms. The software maker Adobe offers a form solution — constructed in Acrobat, emailed out, then the data gathered via an Adobe server. The Google alternative is much simpler. Users log in to Google Documents, select ‘Create New Form’, choose an appropriate template, then start creating the questions, multiple choices, lists, etc that make up your desired form. Forms also offers logic branching, where the form recipient can jump sections of the form — eg. “if you have completed course A already, go to page 2″. The finalised form can then be emailed directly to your target audience. They fill out the form and the resultant data is sent to a spreadsheet setup in Google Docs. All very simple and very effective. So if you need to gather information from clients, wish to use a form as a sales tool or want to poll your own staff, Google Forms is a compelling offering — oh, and it is free.

When a search engine enables users to search for images, and offers search parameters such as pixel size, aspect ratio, dominant colour and image content, they must know that many images are going to be used contrary to the laws of copyright. With the ‘everything’s free’ ethos of web 2.0, such image use seems a victimless crime. Most users don’t have the budget for expensive images from online image libraries. However, those who do suffer twinges can now choose from a new set of options relating to the kind of license attached to the image. Options range from “not filtered by license” through to “labelled for reuse (but not commercial use) to “labelled for commercial use with modification”. Choosing the latter option dramatically reduces the number of hits for a given search, but at you are probably on the side of the angels (provided the web developer who set up the site in question is the legitimate owner of the image). As more people become aware of the range of image licensing options, hopefully more sites will be set up with this kind of image labelling, and the online image feast will get a little less risky.

http://www.creativepro.com/article/safely-find-and-use-images-google

Users of Google documents (or those seeking an alternative to Microsoft packages) will be interested to note the popular Google service now allows for any file type at all to be uploaded. This transforms Google docs into a de facto online hard drive.  Google Viewer will be able to open many, though not all of the common file types people might wish to upload. Users get 1Gb of space for free, then purchase additional memory at 25c per Gigabyte.  Google is working hard to encourage third party software developers to come up with services that add value to the basic Docs product.

Apple’s response to the Cloud, Mobile Me allows users to maintain an online address book that synchonises with the address book on their Mac, and also on their iPhone, iTouch and any other mobile device. Changes to one version are ‘pushed’ to the linked instances elsewhere. The same applies to the Calendar application. Enter the details of your mail server, and Mobile Me also functions as a webmail portal. Users are also encouraged to upload images into an album application, and a user-nominated portion of the 20Gb standard allocation is available as an online hard disk. As per Apple’s usual modus operandi, the interface is simple, clean and allows only limited customisation.

After a couple of days use, my initial reactions are as follows: I love the address book feature, which works as advertised. The calendar feature is fine, but not as good as Google Calendar. More research is needed to see if it is possible to synch Google Calendar with MobileMe. The mail service is easy to set up, but has a huge flaw, for my setup at least. Each time it pings the mail server, MobileMe downloads everything on it, even if the same emails have already been downloaded. Ping several times, and you will get several copies of the same email. Given my office Mac will download the emails later, I don’t want to set the server to delete an email if downloaded by MobileMe. Surely MobileMe should be able to recognise an email it has already downloaded. My web-based mail browser certainly has no such problem.

The disk space supplied by Apple is useful, but in a world of cheap and sometimes free online storage, AUD$119 is not overwhelmingly great. In summary, the service is good, but not revolutionary. It didn’t wow me the way DropBox or Google Earth did, but perhaps further enhancements are on the way, and MobileMe will go on to a more fully featured future. If not, my ardent hope is that Google somehow ties all of its online services together into a single integrated service — the cloud on steroids.

These days it is easy to accumulate large quantities of digital images. Hard disks are much bigger, digital cameras are ubiquitous and attached images are emailed in industrial quantities. The image viewing and search tools supplied by Messrs Gates and Jobs are functional, but often slow and not particularly exciting. Others have tried to fill this gap. Apple has iPhoto, Extensis has Portfolio and Adobe sells Photoshop Lightroom. A program called iView Media Pro was gobbled up by Microsoft, but still exists. All are excellent programs, but in our experience, they are just  not as fast and intuitive with large volumes of files as Google’s (free) Picasa.

After installation, the user instructs the folder manager to watch specified folders on her hard disk. Picasa can also watch folders on networked drives and removable media. The initial index of all image files  on a given volume can take many hours. The resultant database built up by Picasa is often large.

The interface is extremely clean. The default option is rows of image thumbnails, but alternatives include timeline and slideshow.  Searches are carried out ‘live’ — search results appear as the user types. Individual images can be opened and edited in a number of simple ways.  Scrolling through results or the overall image library is usually fast, particularly compared to previously mentioned programs.

Yet Picasa does have its flaws, or at least it can be pushed to breaking point. Image collections with more than ten thousand images may load quite happily in Picasa, but after a few searches, the program often slows dramatically. Picasa performs well in OS X, but even there, a very large image library can bring matters to a standstill.  Users are advised to watch only the folders they need, not the entire disc. It is also possible, if time consuming, to regenerate the database.

Picasa doesn’t just sit on your desktop. As befits a child of Google, Picasa offers access to Picasa Web Albums, where users can  store up to 1Gb of images on Google’s servers. Bloggers can also upload images from Picasa to their own blogs.

Useful how-tos for Picasa can be found here and here.

Overall, Picasa is a worthy and capable image viewer and suitable for the vast majority of computer users.

It’s easy to get addicted to the Google cloud. First it was Google Documents, then Google Calendar, then the contacts feature in Gmail , and Google Desktop and Sidebar, Blogger and Picasa … many of them viewed via the Google Chrome browser. Oh, and iGoogle, a way of creating a customisable home page.  Each of these services and others not mentioned here is frequently updated, richly featured and weirdest of all, free.  So what gives? As Robert Heinlein once observed, There Aint No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Reassuringly, this law still holds. Google uses these digital plums to generate customer loyalty,  drive traffic to its search engine and stimulate advertising revenue (99% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising).  If you use a Google product every day, or a whole constellation of them, then it seems logical that you would also use their search engine.

But as long as they are offering the services, why not take advantage? Keep in mind that what the Google giveth, the Google may taketh away. However, with such massive user bases building up for some of these services, the cost in customer outrage might be high enough to at least give Google pause if they are planning to withdraw one of their digital freebies.

Here’s a brief summary of some of the advantages of you Googelising your life (apologies to Derek Zoolander):

• Access to contacts independent of location (assuming you have an Internet connection): Gmail
• Access to word documents and spreadsheets independent of location: Documents
• Ability to sychronise mail and contacts between cloud and PC/Mac: Gmail, via various software solutions
• Access to a huge online email cache (that can also be converted by one utility into an online file storage facility): Gmail
• Blindingly fast image catalogue that automatically tracks and adds images in selected folders: Picasa
• Comprehensive database of everything on your computer, with search results delivered much faster than Windows: Desktop
• A fast and stable browser that won’t crash if one of the tabbed sessions fails: Chrome

On the debit side of the ledger, there are some disadvantages:

• Potential loss of privacy. Google is going to end up knowing a lot about you, your habits and interests, and possibly your friends. They may do no evil, but their interests are not necessarily congruent with yours.
• Over-reliance on a single provider

Google has competitors, but they don’t have Google’s depth and breadth. Google is able to swallow up smaller companies offering innovative online software solutions (YouTube, anyone?) and to encourage software developers to write programs that extend the functionality of Google freeware. The resulting situation has a momentum that does not yet seemed to have reached any inherent limits.