The G in Google Stands For Getting To Know Your Neighbors

By now I'm sure you've heard about Google Plus; in fact you have have signed up and are enjoying the world's newest social network, but did you know it's also a great way to get to know your neighbor too?  No, really!

Above is a screen grab of the Safari version of G+ from my iPhone.  As of when this is being written the iOs app is still awaiting Apple's approval but the mobile web version is pretty damned good and as you can see I circled the word "Nearby." When you click on that it takes you to status updates and things people have shared publicly from YOUR AREA.  (If you want to be part of that though make sure to grant Google permission to use your location data.)

To bring this discussion back around again to my original point; say you're new to a city and don't know any of your neighbors.  You go to the "nearby" stream on Google + read a post from someone that's perhaps in your neighborhood, you add them to one of your circles, the two of you become friends and voilà, the social network becomes even more social!

I don't know if the Google folks were thinking of that use case when they thought up the "nearby" feature but if sure seems like a great way to get to know some people you may have never had the chance to meet.

You can find me on Google + at THIS link or on Twitter HERE

Weathering The Storm Clouds

As you may know, the Sony Playstation Network was just recently brought back to life after being forced to shut down for almost a month due to meddling hackers.  I am not a gamer, but can just imagine how frustrating that must have been to not have access to those multi-player games, movies and more.  I know whenever Gmail or any of it's related services like Google docs or calendar gets knocked offline I start pulling my hair out.

And people are becoming more and more dependent on storing their files on the Internet.  Over the past two months both Amazon and Google have announced cloud based music services and just this week at the Google I/O conference the Chrome Books were unveiled which virtually can't function without web access, although some local storage is included and a few apps will be able to work offline.

Which brings me to the point of this blog entry.  No matter how bad you want it, don't allow everything you own to live in the cloud.  For sanity's sake, make backups or keep the originals on a local drive because you never know when those storm clouds will threaten.

One last thought before I leave.  How about one of you super smart developers out there make an "umbrella" app of sorts.  For example, whenever I create something online there's also an automatic option that pops up to download it to the machine I'm currently working on.  Emphasis on the word "option!"

What do you think? 

Easy Weather Search

Well, Google is at it again.  Making life easy for us.  Damn them!

If you want to find out what the weather is like where you are, just type 'weather' and the city name in to the Google main page search search box.

You'll get something like this!  

 
Then, under the current conditions and forecast it will give you the option to get a more detailed forecast from The Weather Channel, Weather Underground or AccuWeather.


Thank you Google!

ExtensionFM

I have two confessions to make.

#1, I'm stealing almost the entire concept for this blog from an article I just read.

#2, It's probably not a good idea to tell people to listen to music online when there's a perfectly good radio station probably playing their favorite song right now at 106.5 The buzz.

Ya know what?  People are going to get music wherever they can so I say who cares!

On that note, here we go.

I've found something called ExtensionFM and it's an add-on to your Google Chrome web browser. Don't have Chrome yet?  You may want to after reading this.  Click HERE to download it.

After you install the ExtensionFM add-on, any time you are on a page that has a link to a downloadable MP3 file, it will add a permanent link to that MP3 to its library, which looks a lot like iTunes. The ExtensionFM library is always accessible from Chrome!  Just click the icon in the upper-right corner of the browser, and you'll launch a tab with the library. You can then organize the MP3 links by source, artist, or album.

Don't know where to go for free mp3's?  There's a featured list of sites on the Extension's homepage.  Right now it includes Spinner, Pitchfork.com, Stereogum.com and Live Music Archive but this changes.

After visiting pages like these, ExtensionFM will continue to feed new links into the library with no further intervention from you.  Every time the sites are updated with more free MP3s, they'll appear in your library.

Thanks to Matt Rosoff at Cnet.com for the information!