Google Chrome Sync Feature

Yesterday, while I was on the computer, I tried to open an application and the computer decided to freeze. Nothing that a reset can't fix, I thought. So I reset, and waited. And waited. And waited...but Windows would not start, I was stuck at a black screen with nothing I can do. Safe Mode did not work. Last known good configuration did not work. Nothing worked. Luckily, I had another partition with an older copy of Windows that still worked. I booted that copy and reinstalled Windows, and selected the Repair option for the affected partition. That fixed it and, thankfully, everything is back to normal.

The reason I'm telling you all this is due to the fact that the main thing I was interested in saving was the data that Chrome stores: Bookmarks, Settings, Passwords and so on. I managed to find where it saves its information in Documents and Settings, yes, but that was cumbersome and it does not allow merger with another copy of Chrome on another machine. It will only allow overwrite, and that is something I don't want.

After some clicking, it turns out that Chrome has a nice feature called Sync, found in Options under Personal Stuff. Sync is very easy, all you need is a Gmail account and you're all set. Sync stores your settings and bookmarks in the Cloud, on Google servers with access from any computer. Just log in with your Gmail account and it will Sync all the information you've selected. This is very good if you're recovering from a crash.

I have used other bookmark managers before, namely Foxmarks, but after a while, it became too heavy. It is especially noticeable when you first start your browser and it starts to sync. The browser became so slow and annoying that I decided not to drop Foxmarks and risk losing the data. It is also restricted to bookmarks and passwords, settings are not saved. I did not know of Chrome's Sync feature until today, and that is why I've been without a backup all this time. Never again!

Note, I remember using a Firefox extension that allowed you to save your settings and data to a file, and if I remember correctly, there was a 3rd party service that would do host your data on their servers. It works the same as Chrome's Sync, but the main difference here is that Sync is not 3rd party and it's not an extension. It's a built in feature, ready to go.

Way to go Chrome!

Glide Present II

I've been away from this blog for too long. I stumbled upon it today while looking for something, and I remembered that it was here. When I got here, I started reading the entries and thought I should continue with Glide and their offerings. This entry is about their presenter, as you can see from the title.

My first encounter with Present was not so good, I obviously was in a hurry, or was expecting it to be more like PowerPoint. Today, I had a bit more time and was expecting it to be different from PP. I created a test presentation with about five pages. The experience was smooth and straightforward. When I tried to save the presentation, it took longer than expected, but worked OK. Those were the pros. The cons are not directly related to Present, but rather to some 'logistics' surrounding it.

Glide Present provides an Export feature. The only export options are PowerPoint and PDF, which is fine. But the problem with their export is that it does not happen right away; it is queued for later export. That later export never occurred! I looked around the site to see if there's some way to know how long I have to wait in queue, or to cancel the export, but there was no indicator whatsoever. Export is a great feature, but definitely needs to be improved.

Another good feature provided by Glide is eMail. Direct from Present, you can click the eMail button, and it will pop up a window with a standard email client 'Compose' page. Your current presentation is attached to the email already, just enter the recipient's address, subject and body and you're all set. Or are you?

Your recipient will be surprised to find that there is no attachment, just a link in the mail body to the presentation on Glide website. They will get another surprise when they are prompted to enter their password. And finally, the shock, when they enter their password (assuming they are registered Glide members), they will see the password as it is being typed, there are no stars (****) to hide it. A minor bug, yes, but after the bad experience so far, it kinda adds up.

After your recipient is logged in, they are presented with a page with options to view or download the presentation. The view option worked fine, but the download option opened an empty page and it would not download. Shame that such an important feature has not been given the time it deserves.

To conclude, Glide has a good presenter, good export and sharing options (email), but they don't work as they should at this moment. I will send Glide my notes and hopefully they will get things fixed.

Seeya next time.

Glide OS Present

After seeing Google's presentation software attempt, I thought to myself "this is because it's on the web, they can't really make it too sophisticated". Then I heard about Glide OS having a significantly more sophisticated presenter that can take out MS PowerPoint. I signed up for Glide and gave it a try. I will share with you my first attempt at it.

First glance will tell you it's far more advanced than Google's. A right click of the mouse will tell you that it is Flash based. I'm a fan of Flash and it's capabilities, it's a very powerful system, no doubt. The presenter is features-rich, yes, but it takes some getting used to. I had a hard time figuring out how to control the slides and the text. It differs from what I'm used in PowerPoint. I don't know why they decided to make it different, I want things to work the way I'm used to them working, I don't want to re-learn everything from scratch just to use your system. I got frustrated and decided to come write this blog instead of struggling with it and postponed creating the presentation until a later time. You will hear about that in a coming blog entry, so stay tuned.

My thoughts are that Glide provides a good presenter, but it will take a little time to master it. Google need to improve their presenter and they need to make it easier to use than Glide and PowerPoint. I look forward to finding a true replacement for PowerPoint, which I never liked, and I hope that replacement arrives soon.

4Shared Desktop

I previously wrote about some issues with 4shared Desktop application. I have downloaded it onto another computer and it seems to be working without any problems. It says it's the same release, but I doubt it. It has not given me any real errors so far. There was this one file that it would not upload using the synchronizer, but it handled it pretty well using the regular upload.

Great job 4shared folks!

Publish Post

Glide OS

Here's a step that seems to be in the right direction as far as Clouds are concerned. Glide OS is an ad-free platform that runs from within your browser, on almost any system. Including mobiles. Glide runs on "Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre, Symbian and Windows Mobile" - Glide website. Glide provides a set of applications, such as office tools, presentation creator, image editor, and more. Included is a huge amount of free online storage to store your created files. Glide also allows you to store your files locally, unlike Google's Chromium OS, which has only an online option. They also provide a Sync app to synchronize your home and work files. With access from anywhere, especially mobile, this sounds like it could be the best offering thus far.

I just signed up for their free account, I will take it for a spin and write some more. Their free account gives you 30 GB and their premium account is 250 GB for $50 a year.

Check them out here if you're in a hurry to get started:

http://www.glideos.com/

Til next time...

4shared Desktop Sync

I discovered that 4shared Desktop software's synchronization feature is great and can be used to sync directories and subdirectories in a really nice way. And I discovered it has some bugs as well.

For starters, one of the folder's subfolders that are in my local sync folder were "taken out" of that folder and placed in the parent directory on the server. I wish it took all of them out of that folder or the rest of the subfolders out of the folder, but no, it was just this one folder, and it even took out the subfolders within the subfolders and placed them in the parent directory. That is some twisted programming!

I was synchronizing a big folder, I think about 2GB. It took a while to analyze it and to upload the files. It did not finish in one session and it resumed after I restarted the computer. This is great, I love smart software that doesn't need to be retold everything. I was happy and relaxed that my sync operation is in good hands and that Desktop will do all the work and I will have my backup safely in the cloud. Cloud number 9, as it turns out. I come in one day, open Desktop to check on my files and operation and the upload list is empty and the sync job has been deleted. I refresh and double check and look here and there, even under the carpet, for my sync job, and it is no where to be found! Typical smart software. Now I have no idea what's uploaded and what's not and no idea how to proceed(maybe by finding a new service?)

Til next time...