Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 5:50PM So if you are setup to capture stats using the old Google Webmaster Tools you are going to need to switch.
Here’s the link you need to learn how: how to add Google Analytics to Website Builder
Monday, January 20, 2014 at 6:01AM I know we are all waiting for the day that there really is something useful that Google Glass can do for you. Well here is one being developed by Phillips Healthcare and Accenture to help surgeons interact with patient data to become more efficient and effective. If you are unaware of what Google Glass is then here is a brief explanation.
Google Glass is wearable technology that looks like eyeglasses, but without the lenses. Instead, a small prism on the right side displays information via a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection to the MyGlass app on Android or iOS devices.
Google Glass was rolled out to early adopter this past year and Google is encouraging users to share their ideas and innovations to help develop the base of applications that this new user interface device can take advantage of. Researchers from the Philips Digital Accelerator Lab has collaborated with Accenture Technology Labs to come up with potential uses of Google Glass in Clinical settings.
Anthony (Tony) Jones, M.D., is the vice president and chief marketing officer for patient care and clinical informatics at Philips Healthcare. He explains, “The most exciting potential application of Google Glass in healthcare is the ability to allow providers to ‘virtually’ be in two places at once, which will have a significant impact on workflow and patient care.”
The idea is for the surgeon or other medical professional to be able to verbally request information on patient status or show images like X-Rays, MRI or other digital images to be able to quickly and simply access information as a reference while working on the patient. Patient vitals or other information would also be at their fingertips to be able to react quickly as necessary to best take care of the patient all while keeping their eyes on the patient.
“It sounds simple, but small workflow improvements like this can reduce errors and have a significant impact on patient care,” Jones says.
Surgery is not the only place where this technology can make an impact. Think about first responders, either medical, fire or police that could be looking forward at the scene and have information being presented that will make their response more informed, safer and of course help with providing a positive outcome.
Currently there are some real issues with this technology that will need to be overcome before it becomes widely accepted. Battery life is the first one that comes to mine. some method of extending the battery life needs to be adapted before this becomes a valuable tool. Also, the display is still a little small so the detail will need to get better so that more information can be displayed at a time. This is a good step and I am looking forward to seeing where this goes into the future.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at 8:35AM Google with all that cash in their pocket is letting some of it go to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion. Nest makes smart thermostats and smoke alarms for the home and with all the focus at CES 2014 on Home Automation devices it isn’t surprising the Google grabbing someone like Nest.
Look at the ZDNet article by Larry Dignan for more detail on the acquisition and what it means for Google and the industry at large. He shows some interesting insight on how Google may use this acquisition and what it means for us consumers.
Nest Announcemant: https://nest.com/blog/2014/01/13/welcome-home/
Saturday, September 14, 2013 at 10:03AM My Nexus 7 died again for the third time so Google agreed to refund my money, took about two weeks for the credit to show up, and I used the credit towards buying a newer model of the Nexus 7. The two biggest differences that I have seen so far is the much better screen display and something I really wish the first generation had, a rear-facing camera. The stereo speakers seem a little louder to me and I was very impressed with how easily it moved all of my programs over to it from my Google account. Of course login’s and passwords didn’t come over but the most of the programs that I use did.
There were three models to choose from. The first two are Wi-Fi only and are differentiated by memory (16gb or 32gb) and the third is 32gb, LTE (T-Mobile) and Wi-Fi. I chose the 32gb Wi-Fi only for my updated unit, first I wanted to make sure I had as much room on it as possible and these days I am not getting anything but Wi-Fi since I have both a Verizon hotspot that I carry around with me and my phone (AT&T) will tether as a hotspot as well. While a little more expensive than the generation 1 version the addition of the camera makes a big difference to me and the way that I plan to use it. It is important to me as a work device to help me document site surveys but the absence of the ability to add external memory cards or USB sticks to it is the one thing that would really have liked to see included that was not.
I am impressed with the graphics, everything is much crisper and the sound coming from the stereo speakers seem adequate for personal use. While I haven’t directly timed battery life as of yet, it seems fairly decent. We streamed one of our audio shows for about 4 hours yesterday and at the end it showed about 43% battery life still available. When you consider that was coming over Wi-Fi the whole time and connecting to a Bluetooth speaker for it’s output that seems to be pretty good with that much over the air wireless activity. It feels a little heavier to me and also feels more substantial as compared to the earlier version. I’m sure the battery has something to do with the weight (.64 lbs.) but it feels like a better quality machine then the first generation.
First impression: You see nothing but smiles from me. I’ll report back with more info as I use it more.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 10:32AM If you are using Google Reader as your RSS consolidation source you are going to have to make some decisions on what you are going to do at the end of the month when Google turns off Reader. This is a big deal if you are using it, but there are several options that you can move to that will help with the transition. The best that I have found for myself so far is from Feedly. By creating an account with them before the end of the month you will be able to bring over your Google Reader settings automatically and be up and running within seconds.
I have setup categories for my Reader to make it easier to manage and work through the information that is flowing in and Feedly has kept all of that together automatically which makes great sense. It work with both Pocket and Instapaper for capturing long term the articles that I want to either come back to in more detail or keep for longer time for reference.
It works with bot iOS and Android devices and works really well within the Chrome Browser. So if you are like me and you are reaching for the closest mobile device when sitting down to read, it makes a lot of sense to have a program on all of the types of systems that you would possibly use it. Don’t wait to the last minute to make your choice of a new reader.
Friday, April 5, 2013 at 5:02PM Founder Arthur Frommer has bought his brand name back from Google, and he plans to continue publishing the printed guides. After Google announced that they were closing down the printed product of these guides a quick response from the original owner may guarantee publishing will begin again. Hopefully. When I was in the service I had several of his printed guide books in my car as we toured around Europe on the weekends. However with today’s electronic devices do we really need to have a physical book to be reading from? I have already purchased eBook guides that I use to get around different towns that my wife and I explore and I use either my phone or my Nexus 7 to be able to read them and this works out pretty well.
Frommer’s was founded in 1957 and has changed hands several times over the decades. Simon & Schuster bought the brand in 1977, and it shuffled through a handful of publishers before landing at John Wiley & Sons in 2001. Wiley said in March 2012 that it would sell off several of its publishing assets in a bid to re-focus the company, and Google bought Frommer's five months later.
Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 5:39PM So with all of the hype surrounding the Google decision to get rid of Google Reader I have had to decide what I am going to use post GRDR. I am not as happy with the interface in the desktop browsers but It is workable. It does fit in well both on my iPad and both the 7inch and 10.1 inch Android tablets that I am using.
It works nicely with Pocket, Instapaper and Email allowing me to grab things that I want to take more time with. I used GReader Pro prior to this on Android and Mr.Reader on IOS. These both had this same capability. I use these programs to allow me to quickly go through the RSS’s that I am scanning each day. I like it better than some of the other graphical programs like FlipBoard but I am worried what is going to happen July 1st when Google Reader disappears.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 8:56AM Google’s new note taking program seems to be taking a stab at the higher end note taking applications. Evernote of course is what comes to my mind being the current top contender in this application category. Evernote was initially put together as an application that can be accessed by many types of devices so your data is available to you no matter how you access. It is a
product that has far surpassed Microsoft’s OneNote which was the first to market and failed to capture the market share I thought it deserved primarily because it was only available on the Microsoft desktops. OneNote has been slow to coming to the cloud and this has been what has been holding it back.
Evernote is still king and both Google Keep and OneNote will have a hard battle ahead of them to surpass its current lead.
Here is a great comparison article by Christina Warren of Mashable discussing the differences between Evernote and Google Keep. Her conclusion, Evernote’s list of capabilities far exceed what Google is bringing to game. However, if you are a heavy Google application user, Keep’s integration with Google Drive might make it more appealing to you.
Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 11:04AM What the heck am I going to do? My daily routine both in the morning and in the evening is to quickly sift through the many RSS feeds that I have subscribed to and is managed in my Google Reader account. I use several different programs as well as Google’s web interface to work with these feeds but the central control has been my Google Reader account for years. Now that Google has put it on the discontinue list I am going to need to do something to replace it.
I am not a big user of Facebook or Twitter, I guess I am still old school there. When I sit down to comment on a something that catches my eye, I like to provide as much information about that subject as I can as both a reference for myself as well as for others. The reason I have this blog is to offer up information that I find helpful to clients as well as our service people.
So what am I going to do to replace this tool? One of the programs that is being talked about out there is called Feedly. In a recent post from Feedly, they state that they have been anticipating Google shutting down Google Reader and that they have been working a project they called Normandy which is a Feedly clone of the Google Reader API. Feedly is planning to seamlessly transition to their Normandy backend when Google Reader shuts down.
If you are a Google Reader, give Feedly a try before July 1st, and you will be able to migrate seamlessly:
Feedly for iOS
Feedly for Android
Feedly for Chrome
Feedly for Firefox
Feedly for Safari
Note 1: if you are migrating from Google Reader to feedly, here are some tips on how to personalize feedly to better match your existing workflows. If you have any feature request please add it on our feature request page.
Note 2: if you are a third party developer using the Google Reader API and would like to integrate with Normandy, please send an email to remi@feedly.com. We would love to keep the Google Reader ecosystem alive.
Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 11:33AM One of primary focus’s at Computer Connections is with our business customers. We spend a lot of our time supporting their software and hardware integration and maximizing their mobile and desktop productivity. With the emergence of more and more android development applications for us to use the ability to add customized applications to your mobile Android devices (phones and tablets) becomes a big bonus. This makes the Android environment more friendly business environment as well as better environments for government and educational users as well.
To setup this capability all you need to do is enable it in the developer console and then you can upload applications to the Play Store. This new section will allow a user to browse, download and update internal applications without the need to sideload them. To find out more information on this jump to Google Enterprise Blog located here.
Thursday, November 1, 2012 at 11:59AM Last week I had an issue with my new Nexus 7 but this week all is right with the world. I was able to get a taste of Google's support for Nexus 7 and the short of it is I am very impressed!
A little over 10 days ago I began having some lock up problems, deletion issues, and when I tried to do a factory reset I was unable to reset the Nexus 7 back to its factory defaults.
So I called up the 855-836-3987 support line to get some suggestions on what I should do. This is the Google Play device support team number and it is available 24/7. Two things impressed me. First I did not have a long wait for someone to pick up the phone and talk to me and second it was someone speaking to me in my Native American English!
After speaking to two separate technicians over a half hour period, we determined that this was a very strange failure and proceeded to process the RMA. I have to give them a credit card but 2 days later I had a new Nexus in my hands and I should the other one back to them. Except for the fact that the unit failed, it was quite painless to get this turned around. It took me about an hour and a half to reload my applications and to reenter my logins to my online accounts, but I seem to be getting really good at this.
Pro's: Nexus 7 Support
Con's: Nexus 7, and I broke you in just one month! Not good...
Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at 12:01PM 
The extension, "Send to Kindle for Google Chrome," allows users to send the entire webpage or just selected text to the device.
To get the extension for yourself, head on over to Amazon's Send To Kindle download page. Confirm the download on the Google Chrome Web store and sign in with your Amazon account. When you click the button, the content is formatted for the Kindle and then sent to your device a few minutes later. Amazon has said FireFox and Safari will get support "soon" but there was no mention of Internet Explorer.
Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 12:01PM I have had a little more time with the Nexus 7 and I have found a few quarks that have caused me a little frustration when I compare the same functions on my iOS devices.
Bluetooth Audio Streaming
The first has to do with Bluetooth streaming audio and Audible. I love to listen to my Audible audio books when I am driving in my car but there is some kind of lockup that occurs when I turn off the car and the book is still running. I have to totally power off the Nexus 7 and reset it to get the book to run on the device. This happens every time. My iPhone and iPad both don’t have a problem with this and keep going on their merry way. Once the Nexus has lost that Bluetooth connection it is frustratingly hard to get it back up and running.
Space Limitations
I also found myself loading up several books and podcasts and it didn’t take long for me to run out of space on the 16GB version. So I need to keep my eye on space limitations. However, most everything else seems to running fine. When I was running out of space the tablet began to run very slow and was timing out between functions. As soon as I backed off of the number of books and podcasts that I was running everything came back up to speed just fine.
EReader
I find reading books on this tablet just as nice as most other tablets. The one thing that the Kindle has over the Nexus are the physical buttons to page forward and back on both sides of the screen. This makes it much easier to flip pages. It seems to be more of two handed gesture on the Nexus to flip pages.You can single tap on the edge of the screen to flip a page but you have to tap on right to flip forward and the left to flip back. I haven’t found anything in setting as of yet to change this.
Exchange Email
I have noticed that my Exchange email access is very slow. On my iOS devices they normally beat Outlook to receiving an email response from the Exchange server, which really surprises me. The email does get there but is extremely slow.
Monday, August 6, 2012 at 10:10AM This is not official but you may have incentive to buy a new Chromebook or Chromebox here shortly. According to reports from several sources there is code in the Chromium open source operating system hinting at this.
Reported by:
Google+ user François Beaufort spotted the promo within the Chromium Code review site. Looking at the code, you’ll notice several mentions of an “alternative GDrive promo” and, within one JavaScript file there is welcome text that says “Get 100 GB free with Google Drive.”
The Chromium code may tell the tale.
100GB on Google’s online storage service would normally cost $4.99 per month, so it’s a savings of about $60 a year for Chromebook and Chromebox owners.
This may not be much of an incentive for some people give the small difference in cost between a Chromebook pc and an entry level Windows based notebook.
Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 12:00PM By using the Internet, coupled with Obihai's state-aware, intelligent, secure, managed, application network called OBiTALK and our advanced OBi VoIP endpoints & applications, OBi users can aggregate and bridge services without the need for a service provider's intervention. With the OBi, you have the freedom to control almost every aspect and cost of your analog and digital communication life.
Stay In-Touch on Your Terms, Without Breaking the Bank
Given the multitude of ways and means by which we communicate with each other using the Internet, telephones and computers for conversations, instant messaging, e-mail and social networking it is clear that the currently available carrier services artificially restrict our ability and hinder us in our desire to stay in-touch with friends, family and work colleagues.
With the OBi, you can combine multiple services so that users can stay connected easily, without worrying about receiving a shockingly large bill from a telco or needing to cut conversations short, and potentially missing hearing an important piece of information or collaborating more effectively.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 1:09PM Engadget has posted we can expect two accessories for the Nexus 7 tablet that include a docking station and a smart cover. On the heals of the the Nexus 7 16GB version becoming available again on Google’s Play site we can start expecting a docking station and two styles of covers being release in August. Already showing the case on Google Play Store the entry level case is just $19.99 and a leather one will be available for around $40.
ASUS is showing the cases in many different colors so you can let your imagination go wild and get the color you like best!
No prices are shown on Asus’s site but you can see the six different colors that are available to choose from. Of course I am so bland I will probably consider staying with the ugly grey one but who knows?
The Nexus 7 dock is a simple wedge design with standard 3.5mm jack plugs that you can plug into active speakers for sound. It has a micro USB connector for charging your Nexus 7 by laying it into the holder. It appears that the four prong connector may have a use after all. There isn’t any video output connector so we don’t have that available in this version, it will be interesting to see if that will ever be an option. Probably not because it doesn’t appear to have the circuitry to support that.
Monday, July 23, 2012 at 7:25AM I find this device quite comfortable to hold and it is amazingly responsive. After the first hour using it I was feeling very comfortable learning the new Android 4.1 functions. Since I have been deeply embedded with IOS operating systems I found my initial learning curve to be short once I found out what the different system icons were and how to use them.
I added quite a few applications that I use everyday on my iPad and I wasn't disappointed at all, in fact, I was very impressed with how many of the applications had a better interface to them when compared to the iPad version of the app.
The Skype application runs rings around anything that I've seen on any other mobile device. It is more usable than the desktop version.
Evernote seems to be a little more elegant in the way it handles folders which is one of my chief complaints in the iPad version. One disappointment that Microsoft OneNote crashing on me so I quickly put that in the dark place until they get it right.
Setting up different kinds of connectivity was very simple and straightforward. It only took a second to connect this device to my Bluetooth connection in the car and to WiFi in both my house and my parent's.
I was a little worried when I plugged in my headset jack and it did not slip right in. The headset port is on the curve of the case and so it did not appear to go into the hole correctly. But once I had it installed it seemed to work fine.
One of the features I think I'm going to love to use is the voice voice to text recognition. I actually used this to write most of this article. It certainly does make for a very handy dictation device. I believe it is using an off site translation system to convert my voice to text in much the same manner that Siri does. It also doesn't know that you can use the voice to text recognition in what is called offline mode as well. You have to download this function onto your Nexus 7 and it will take up space on your device as well.
So, do I think a 7 inch tablet is going to be useful for me? I do like the way it fits into my pocket. I like the size of it in my hand and it seems to have enough power to do most of the functions I would want it to do . So my first weekend with the Nexus 7 I'm going to give it a thumbs up and I can’t wait to give it more time to see what else it can do for me. I think Android 4.1 is what will make this device quite more important to its use than the previous versions of Android operating systems. And as Google says, “It is buttery!”
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 7:25AM PR: Ending the year with another clean energy investment.
Google has added another $94 million investment of four solar photovoltaic projects that is being built by Recurrent Energy near Sacromento, CA. This brings their entire investment in Solar Energy to $915 million. They have also committed themselves to providing funding to help more than 10,000 homeowners to install solare PV panels on their rooftops. They go on to state that this $94 million investment represents a much larger scale result than the individual rooftop installations providing a total capacity of 88 MW of energy, equivalent to the electricity consumed by more than 13,000 homes.
Google isn’t the sole investor in this project. They are investing with KKR and Recurrent Energy.Google’s posting states:
We’re joining KKR on their first renewable energy investment in the U.S. We believe investing in the renewable energy sector makes business sense and hope clean energy projects continue to attract new sources of capital to help the world move towards a more sustainable energy future
The energy produced by these projects is already contracted for 20 years with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). SMUD recently created a feed-in tariff program (FIT) to help green the grid for Sacramento-area residents. We’re excited that these projects are the first to be built under the program.
We’ve had a busy year at Google. Since January, we’ve invested more than $880 million in clean energy projects. We believe the world needs a wide range of solutions—from wind, to transmission, to solar PV and concentrated solar—and we look forward to new opportunities next year to further expand our portfolio of clean energy investments.
Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 10:28AM Do you want a quick review of the difference between Microsoft’s newly released Office 365 and Google’s Offerings? I ran across a good feature showdown in Lifehacker that gives you a good overview between what the companies offer you. In summary, looking at the major differences includes a tiered cost system with Microsoft that allows you to choose the services that you want, Microsoft is more feature rich in many of their applications, you can incorporate office pro plus as part of your package for full featured document creation.
If your organization already makes heavy use of Microsoft Exchange for mail and Microsoft Office for productivity, Office 365 will appeal to those who want a familiar, robust tool. Google Apps, and specifically Google Docs, feels barren and plain by comparison, even if it's more accessible and open.
Lync, a feature rich communications program, in Office 365 incorporates a unified communications interface with desktop and whiteboard sharing.
Office 365 requires a little workstation setup to be used fully where Google just needs a compatible browser.
Microsoft centers it file storage around SharePoint. Depending on how you feel about this it is either a good thing or a bad thing. One benefit, Office 365 with Office on the desktop grants offline access whereas Google Apps with Google Docs does not. Google says that they will be turning this ability back on this summer but at the time of this writing it is not available.
I feel that Microsoft has made a good stab at being a solid competitor to Google with Office 365. I have signed up for the trial version and as I work my way through all of different offerings I will continue to write about what I find. Meanwhile, take a look at the Lifehacker article and at both Google’s and Microsoft's sites for more information.
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 10:35AM I saw this information from several different sources today and decided to take a quick gander at the Google Art Project site. Currently Google has 17 museums from around the world available to view using the same basic techniques used in Google’s Street View. You can use the controls to walk around the Museum of your choice to give you a feel of how things are laid out, and where the various pieces of art are located in the Museum. You can then look at individual paintings in high resolution and a lot of detailed history about the painting or the artist. You can easily jump from museum to museum easily or from room to room within any one museum. You can even create your own personalized list of pieces that you are interested in.
Here is the Visitor Guide on how to use the site:
I have had a great deal of fun looking over this site but I am sorry to say that it requires a flash player to work properly and will not work on your IOS devices. Darn Apple! But it works well on my desktop and that is at least something.
