Google Labs has a product called Web Accelerator which acts as a general web proxy, cache and compressor to speed access to many web pages. It currently integrates with Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer but can be configured manually to work with other web browsers such as Opera. Google’s Web Accelerator is designed for high speed web users such as those on cable or DSL connections. It is not really designed for dial-up users if there are still any of you out there. I am trying it out at work and will try it at home at some point. It is currently only available for Windows users so I don’t have much use for it at home. Maybe Dominica will give it a try.
While I was checking out new stuff at Google today I also took a quick test spin of Google web based Spreadsheet application. My first impression is that Google Spreadsheet is incredibly basic but it is very nicely done and, in fact, might be better than some of the heavy hitting spreadsheet apps like Excel and OpenOffice Calc for the average and lighter than average spreadsheet user. It is far less intimidating, requires no install and is very clean and easy to get started with. Very impressive. I doubt that I will find much use for it myself but maybe I will. I tend to use spreadsheets a bit more intensely than the average computer user.
Today was another slow day at the office. All week everything has been super slow. Kind of nice for a change. I managed to get a bit of work done on transferring old SGL Dailies over to the new system. I can’t wait until that work is all completed. All of 2001 – 2003 is done and most of 2005 is complete. I hope to wrap up 2005 yet this week. 2006 was all originally written to the WordPress system so it is there. 2004 is the only complete year that hasn’t been touched yet.
I got home and Dominica made dinner at home again tonight. Veggie chik patties and squash. We watched the second episode of Tru Calling. It is about the same as the first episode. I am not much into the contrived “new adventure each week” plot device thing but this isn’t bad for the genre. Right along the lines of Early Edition and Quantum Leap and five thousand other shows that I didn’t watch because they are all the same thing over and over again.
After dinner Dominica worked on her class work which she is really upset about because she is paying to take a networking class at SUNY Empire but instead they are just using a generic project management curriculum and using “networking” as the loose subject matter that they are managing. The professor is totally blowing off the class and all of the core material is included in “recommended reading” and is not even being discussed in the class discussions or addressed in the assignments so she is getting absolutely zero value from the class and it is so much work because it is not what the class was supposed to be that it is detracting from her other classes which are really good. I am not very happy with SUNY Empire right now either. They are just sitting on my degree and won’t process the paperwork. I have been calling for a month and they are no longer returning my calls. They just ignore me. For a MONTH!
I worked a little on my Motorola Q this evening before going to bed. I got IM+ installed onto it which is letting me chat over Jabber although I haven’t figured out how to turn on the encryption and I am concerned that it does not have any. But it is the only Jabber client that I found for the Q. I also got PocketPutty installed and working. Sort of. PocketPutty is one of the major applications that I am really concerned about getting working on the Q and it definitely runs and mostly does its job but it crashes really easily and there is no backspace or delete keys or any other type of function keys like cursor keys or the control key. So it “works” but isn’t useful until someone figures out those items. But once they do it looks like it is going to be a killer app for the Q. The Q is perfectly designed for that type of use.