Google has a new notebook on pilot program stages with the super-sexy name of Cr-48. Yes, that’s sarcasm. Yes, I did sign up for the pilot program in the hopes the guys and gals in Mountain View will send a free notebook to me for testing purposes. Would I use it? Absolutely I would. I use my existing Dell mini 10v now on a daily basis, so yes, that...

Any of you reading this have been here before: You’re in the middle of an important project whether it be personal or business, and you encounter an error or an unexpected problem getting something done on your computer. Murphy’s Law seems to dictate that the more important the project is to you, the more complex or trying the problem seems to be. If...

It is no secret that Google makes their money by tracking your activity online and targeting ads to you based on your browsing habits. This is accomplished through a comprehensive data mining algorithm, but it is ultimately driven by the data Google has on you. That said, if you want to opt out of Google’s tracking of your browsing habits for the purposes...

Google Realtime is something new from Google where you type in what you’re searching for, and the result page shows you the most recent results. The twist is that the results page auto-updates itself as new results become present, hence "realtime". As soon as it happens, it will appear. I tested this using a popular site used often by many,...

If you use any of Google’s service offerings such as Gmail, Google Reader or Google Calendar you have probably noticed the interface is somewhat bland. However, using the Firefox add-on Google Redesigned you can customize the look of these pages: Google Redesigned [...] aims to fully redesign the look and feel of popular Google services. This is achieved...

Social Media giant Facebook is set to unleash the proverbial “dogs of war” on G-Mail tomorrow by announcing its own rival e-mail service to its over 500 million members. Facebook members can already chat and send private messages on the site – this branch out to external email is not a simple task, but a logical one. The company has been noted to have...

You may wonder that since there’s Google Maps, why would you want to use Google Earth? There are several things Google Earth does that make it worth having installed. Here are a few of them: County Borders Open the Layers panel, uncheck everything (look for Primary Database at top and click to deselect all), then expand Primary Database / Borders and...

Sometimes it takes a chart to really drive home what people are interested in on the internet. One of the best sources for this is Google Trends. Here’s a few that may take you by surprise: MySpace Trend link2007 was the year for MySpace, no question. Since that time it’s been steadily falling, with a serious downward drop from 2009 to...

Something must’ve frozen over. Because Apple has been loosening up their app restrictions lately, leading to what is now an official approval of Google Voice for the Iphone. There have been a couple of third-party apps in the app store approved recently (i.e. GV Mobile+), however Google now has the green light for an official Voice app. So, Google is now...

Google made a pretty significant announcement today: Google Instant. In a nutshell, it is instant search results. As you type into the seach box, it will begin pre-populating search results. It will also predict (as close as it can) what you may be trying to search for and give it to you. A few bullet points:It is rolling out starting today in the U.S. It will...

This is a guest post from the guys over at TestFreaks.com. So, you have a shiny new, or somewhat new, MacBook Pro, and you like to use Google Calendar. But instead of whipping out your browser every time, did you know that you can easily set up your Mac to sync with Google natively? Believe it or not, there are no additional programs or scripts needed to make it...

I have been a self-proclaimed “Google whore” for awhile now. I use it every day in more ways than one. In fact, if I step back from it and compare my usage of Google to my usage of the computer a few years ago, an argument could be made that Google is my new operating system. A cloud-based OS. Let’s look at the Google apps that I use all the...

I have been a Gmail user pretty much since the beginning. I was lucky enough to get an invite early on from a very generous person. I haven’t really started using Google Docs until the last year or so though. However, in the past few months I have come to truly enjoy using Google Docs. There are two basic ways to use Google Docs. If you have a Gmail...

By now you’ve most likely seen several articles like this one where the CEO of Google infers that anonymity on the web isn’t necessary and that the Internet’s future will contain none of it whatsoever. People freak out when they read stuff like that. Every time I read an article of that ilk I get a chuckle because the bitter truth is that the...

A few weeks ago, Google began rolling out a feature which allows you to be logged into more than one Google account at the same time without using any incognito browser hanky-panky. As a person who has more than one Google account, this is pretty handy. I used to, instead, just use different browsers when I wanted to check another account. For example, I’d...

You want free text messaging? Free visual voice mail? The ability to screen your calls and have custom voice mail greetings?Then you really need to check out Google Voice. It is now completely wide open (and free) to sign up for anybody in the U.S. I’ve had a Google Voice number for awhile. In fact, my main business line is now a Google Voice line. But,...

If you have multiple Google accounts for Gmail, Google Reader, etc. and have always been annoyed with having to sign in and out or use different browsers to access them, Google has pushed out a single sign in feature which addresses this issue: After clicking on the “change” link, Google informs that this is an advanced feature and that it will only...

Google Images is what you use to, obviously, search for images. Yesterday, Google updated the interface. Several big changes were made, including the elimination of by-page listings in favor of what’s known as “Infinite Scroll”. What is Infinite Scroll? It’s when you reach the bottom of any page of results and are presented with a...

In Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome you can use keywords to activate any web site that supports custom input (like google.com for example). Mapping sites are easy to set up for keyword shortcut searches as long as you know how to configure them. The way to use the keyword search once configured is to go to your address bar, type the word MAP followed by...

Optical Character Recognition, a.k.a. OCR, is a technology that converts an image of text into editable text. This is a technology that has been around for quite some time and was first used by most people in office-places as far back as the Windows 3.1 days. As far as where it was used, OCR was usually included as part of a fax software bundle. The fax machine,...