Tag Archives: software

How I Use Google Wave

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Reading this great article about Google Wave by Chris Brogan made me think it would be a good idea to share my own views about the latest piece of the Google Puzzle to become unveiled (well, there have been others but this one seems like the most relevant new tool to come out of Mountain View, CA in a while!)

Like most people you can talk to, Google Wave has been a tremendous help in collaborating remotely with others in project work. Specifically, working with David Edelman around the World Diabetes Day USA initiatives last year became A LOT easier thanks to Google Wave. We’d both be on Wave and speaking through Skype as we wrote on the same wave, creating content together, correcting each other on the spot, literally crafting the entire campaign while saving ourselves rework, follow-up emails and tons of replies/replies/replies.

So, in that respect, conference calls and meetings can turn into work sessions, increasing productivity big time. By having users be on the same Wave they can be more on the same page (that came out a little cheesy!)

What are the big shortcomings I am seeing with Google Wave?

  • It’s still a bit rough on the edges: it’s definitely still an early adopters space, kind of like Twitter back in 2006-early 2007. So not too many people (at least not ALL people) are there, which makes it challenging if you want to collaborate seamlessly.
  • It still is very isolated from the rest of the Google suite of products. The two specific products that I MISS seeing it connect with are: Gmail and GTalk. Connecting it with Gmail (notifications about updates on Waves, etc.) is a no-brainer to me (I don’t mean easy to implement, but valuable to the user). Connecting it with GTalk, supporting video and audio while being on the same wave would make the use of other complementary tools like Skype or iChat unnecessary, since you have all you need to host your collaborative work session within Google Wave.
  • Bots that let you do interesting things within Google Wave besides straightup content co-creation are still a mystery to most. Getting by useful Wave Bots (such as the bot that lets you tweet from within Wave) is still more of an art than something structured, reminding me at times of the dark early days of the web, back in 1994-96, when directories like Yahoo! were the way to find good sites…

In the meantime, while Google Wave continues to evolve and become more robust, check out this useful 101 put together by LifeHacker, to help people make the most of Google Wave.

Useful Firefox Add-Ons to Gain Space

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Or should I say, for people who absolutely need to have a ton of tabs open at the same time?

I’ve recently found two very useful Firefox add-ons:
-One, called Tab Mix Plus, I learned about as a result of starting my work here at Ning, which lets me organize tabs much better, stacked in two rows, highlighting the current tab, etc. It’s called
-The other one, which I learned about thanks to this post, called Vertigo. It lets you open your tabs vertically, thus gaining you back the room at the top and letting you more easily scan the titles of the open tabs.

Office for Mac: What a Difference 4 Years Make!

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Four years. That is how long it took for a new Microsoft Office for Mac to arrive, but it will be a reality this coming Tuesday, coinciding with the kickoff of MacWorld 2008 in San Francisco (no, I won’t be in attendance).

If you, like me, thought that MS Office for Mac 2008 sucked, make sure to pre-order your copy of the 2008 version by following the link below and you will also be contributing to make this blog a few pennies richer! :)


Apple Online Store

How to Set an Out of Office Message in Entourage

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How it’s done? Don’t kill yourself over it: it can’t be done… not natively, but it can be “hacked” by using Rules.

Follow the instructions on this PDF so you can let your colleagues that suffer in Entourage hell like you that you will not be in the office in the coming days… :)

Word to the wise: Do not (trust me), DO NOT send yourself a test message from within the actual account you are setting up this rule for. You will go into an endless loop of “Out of Office” replies that you can only stop by disabling the rule. :D

(yeah, you guessed it: I don’t love Entourage)

One Year of Using Basecamp

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My friend Gustavito brought Basecamp to our lives a year ago. Today, I can’t imagine managing web projects without it.

I want to share with you a fun video he did showcasing the power of messaging through Basecamp. We exploited the tool as much as it would let us, to stay on the same page with designers, developers, project managers and representatives from several different departments throughout the school, as we made Full Sail Online a reality this past October.

Almost Done Leaving the Laptop PC Behind

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Getting the MacBook to be an all-solution for my needs is closer to becoming a reality. In the past few days I’ve spent some time finding solutions to migrate the two biggest items that reside in my computer:
-My e-mail of the past 7 years.
-My personal finances (of the same period).

Dealing with my e-mail is something for which I’ve found a fantastic solution. After reading through some painfully long processes to get the WHOLE mailbox to come over to my Apple (via GMail), Luis made me realize something that I hadn’t thought of: I don’t really need ALL my e-mail from the past 7 years! :)

So today I am close to done archiving close to 95% of my e-mail, which I will be burning on a DVD (or two). That will leave me with “only” 260MB worth of mail to migrate (if I end up doing it).

As a permanent solution I’ve opted to use GMail, so all my aliases end up there instead of GoDaddy’s interface. That way, I am pretty much platform agnostic, whether I am on my Mac at home or at work (did I mention we got migrated to iMacs in the office? Pictures coming soon!)

As for personal finances, I am still working on that. I won’t move away from the laptop (where I use Microsoft Money) entirely until the new fiscal year. By then, I hope I’ve identified a good solution for the Mac, hopefully without having to use Bootcamp or Parallels (to run Money on Windows there). It seems more and more, Jan. 1, 2008, I will just start with a new software for this, with starting balances in my accounts, instead of going back 7 years of data and trying QIF files to behave well between Money and any software I go to… but we’ll see.

Any suggestions you have for Mac-based personal (and small business) finance management software, I am all ears.