Gizmos Grabowski

Google's Faster PDF Viewer

I have a new viewer for my PDF files: Google Docs, which now supports PDF files.

It must be embarassing for Adobe that I find it faster to view a PDF doc over the Internet in a Web browser than using Acrobat on my computer. 

The drawback to Google Docs is that I have to first upload any PDF file I want to view through Docs. But uploading to Docs seemed faster than using FTP or email to transmit PDF files. For now, I uploaded all of my ebooks -- around 40 of them. A bulk uploader would have been helpful.

Next thing Google needs to implement: seaching through PDF files.

Yahoo! Maps

Yahoo Maps is muchly improved, with a user interface that is much, much nicer than that of Google Maps. The Google product seems stodgy in comparison. And, all its interactivity works with the Opera Web browser.

I find Yahoo Maps faster than Google, especially when displaying satellite images with roads overlaid. Yahoo Maps also knew my home position, where as Google doesn't.

However, some data is missing from Yahoo. For example, it could not find the Comfort Inn in a city I'll be in this weekend. OTOH, Google cluttered up the map with dozens of other hotels markers, so that I could not spot "my" hotel. That's because it was listed as "A" and because it was first, it got overlaid by all the other hotel markers in the area.

maps.yahoo.com

Google Apps Save an Emergency

I had taken along an older notebook computer (should that be an "elder" notebook?) to get some work done on a short business trip. When I started it up, Windows complained of some error and refused to work.

How to get my writing done? Then I remembered: Google Apps. I had access to a nearby desktop computer, launched Google Docs, and wrote my thousand words.

Back home again, I didn't need to use a USB key to transfer the article from my aging notebook computer (whose wireless is flakey). I just accessed the article on my desktop computer through the Web browser.

Finally, a use for Google Docs. I'd tried it before, but found it an uncompelling replacement for my regular word processor, Atlantis from Rising Sun Solutions. It still isn't, but Docs is great as an emergency replacement.

Google Mail Likes Opera

I had been using FireFox with Google Mail, but today I noticed that GMail finally works with Opera. Before, I would get warnings that my favorite Web browser would not work with GMail, and then it truly wouldn't work.

But now it does. So that's good.

Indexing in the Cloud

I dabble in Google applications, but not wholeheartedly. I am not keen on one company knowing much about me. I love Picasa, I profit from AdSense, and I use Google Mail occasionally.

(I prefer Atlantis over Google Docs, Eudora over Google Mail, Yahoo News over Google News, and so on.)

Last night it occurred to me that Google Mail does have a significant advantage in one area, which might become increasingly important: indexing. For example, re-installing software that I downloaded, and now I need to hunt down the license number that was sent by email.

It's always been a painful wait to have Eudora find an email msg, because it holds 13 years of my mail. I haven't counted them all, but one folder alone -- press releases -- holds 12,000 messages going back to Jan, 2000. Other mailboxes are even bigger. Searching for an email in Eudora reminds me of doing hidden-line removal with CAD software in 1988 or waiting for Windows to boot in 2008.

Eudora has an indexing feature, as does Windows and other software. But you know the drawback: all that disc activity slows down the rest of the computer. In therms of Windows, I normally place documents in orderly folders, so I don't need Windows indexing -- which I've turned completely off in Vista.

This is one area where Google Mail is brilliant: Google does the indexing for you, on their computers. Searching email is fast; your computer is not slowed down by the indexing.

Theseus Competition for Google? No.

Deutesche Welle reports:

A group of German-led companies aims to create a multimedia search engine that tops Google.

Did Galileo, the European competitor to the America GPS satellite system, succeed? No, and Theseus will fail, too. You can tell by looking at the specs:

- EU approved.
- Subsidized by the German government.
- 22 partner organizations, companies, and universities, including SA and Siemens.
- Budget of nearly $300 million, of which more than half is government subsidy.
- Born out of the failed Quaero project, the search engine described by the then-president of France as "the answer to the global competitors of Google and Yahoo."

This project is not designed to replace Google. This is designed to hoodwink government into subsidizing jobs at profitable corporations. No wonder taxes keep going up in European nations.

Great new ideas are not generated when millions of Euros swirl about. (Think Microsoft.) Money suffocates the urgency that otherwise comes from the no-idea, no-food-on-the-table alternative.

There is no need to replace Google, other than as a salve for the wounded pride of some in the world's largest economic block. (Think Airbus A380.)

The name chosen for the project speaks its own prophecy: the mythological Theseus avoids getting lost in King Minos' maze by navigating through it with a thread. Today's Theseus is no one-man project bent on solving a problem out of desperation; no, today's Theseus is a committee designed to solve mythological problems by following the trail of Euros in the EU maze. And getting lost.

Google Don't Need No Steenkin' OS

As Google yesterday announced that its Desktop software now runs on Linux, I realized that Google doesn't need to provide a Google-branded varient of the Linux operating system. All it needs to do is ensure that:

* All its desktop software runs on Linux.
* All its Web-based software runs in Linux-based Firefox.

Set up a nice Linux dialect like Ubantu on your notebook computer, and away you go: Word-compatible word processing, Excel-compatible spreadsheets, Gmail, Picasa, Maps, Earth, Sketchup, Warehouse, etc, etc. All of it running in the multiple workspaces that's standard with Linux.

All of your data available anywhere you can connect to the Internet.

The New Killer App

Ever since VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet, which ran initially only on Apple II computers, and which drove sales of that machine), marketeers have been on the hunt for The Next Killer App -- a software so compelling that it drives sales of hardware and more software.

I think I just read about the New Killer App: Google Spreadsheets Live Data. Imagine a single spreadsheet function that returns Google search info:

=GoogleLookup("Vancouver"; "mayor")

The result is shown in a spreadsheet cell. And works only in Google's online spreadsheet. Another unique function retrieves financial data:

=GoogleFinance("ADSK"; "volume")

Reason enough to abandon Excel?

How Much is Float Worth to Google?

Float is how American Express made its profits in its early days. You would buy AmEx Travellers Cheques, and then days or weeks later use them for payment. In the meantime, AmEx got paid twice: once, when you paid a fee to buy the cheques, and then again from investing your cash until it had to pay the merchant (and perhaps earning a third fee?).

I wonder how much profit Google makes from float? That's the money it earns from advertisers, but doesn't pay out to us until our accounts have at least $100 in them. I make more than $100 each month from AdSense, so there isn't much float there.

But after 1.5 years in Goggle's Book Search Partner Program, I've made just $17.92 -- which means I can expect to be paid after about ten years. By then, they'll have raised the limit to $200, and I'll have to wait another ten years, and on it goes.

I am guessing that Google needs to set aside that $17.92 for accounting purposes. But in the meantime, it can invest the float, and profit from the investment. Google pays me no interest for my cash that it keeps from me.

Multiply $17.92 by thousands (millions?) of under-$100 accounts, and suddenly we're talking real money -- some of which Google might never pay out. I haven't read anywhere anyone wondering about the size of Google's float. But it struck home when I read a blogger complaining of never being paid by Google, because over the years they kept raising the payout bar on her.

Perhaps someone might want to take up the task of calculating how much of Google's financial power comes from cleverly employing its customers' float. I wonder if Google sets the payout limit on the basis of how much float they need?

Google Thinking vs Microsoft Thinking

One of the puzzles of this era is why Google gets it and Microsoft doesn't (cf: Origami, Zune, TabletPC, MobileWindows, Live, Vista).

I've come to the conclusion that this is the reason: when a Google programmer creates a new features, he asks himself, "How do I want it to work?" When a Microsoft programmers creates the new feature, he asks, "How does a user want it to work?"

As an author of over 100 books about computer software, I have come to learn that it is better to write for the specific person (me) than for the amorphous person (everyone).

Hence the popularity of my best-selling "The Illustrated AutoCAD Quick Reference" series of books. (This is the only AutoCAD book I ever refer to.) I created the page design to suit me, so that I could quickly look up and find information about specific commands.

If I were to write the book for everyone else, then I would lose focus, because I don't know what everyone else wants. The result is a less useful book, and so a book that does not sell as well. You could call it "design by committee."

And that's what has happened to Microsoft. Their software no longer functions usefully. Perhaps the best example was when one version of Word counted words slowly. Microsoft countered that only computer journalists were worried about word counts. This showed how out of touch Microsoft is; my three kids need to hand papers to their teachers with specific word counts. Any Microsoft employee who would have written the software to suit themselves would have ensured that word-counts were near instant.

(Speaking of which, the latest update of the Atlantis word processor features a real-time word count feature on the status bar.)

I bounce my theory off industry execs, and they fine tune it for me. One suggested that perhaps Microsoft programmers do write features for themselves, but they are out of step with the rest of the world. He noted that his Treo-like phone (made by HTC) was a beautiful piece of hardware, but was burdened by Microsoft's mobile Windows running on it. Same with a Compaq iPaq he had been given: he now only uses it for Internet access, because all other Microsoft-designed PDA functions are too frustrating to use.

In contrast, the PalmPilot was successful, because Jeff Hawkins designed it to suit himself. Apple products are successful, because Steve Jobs designs them to suit himself.