As is reported by Newsbusters here, Google is once again thinking outside the box and offering something totally new and innovative. I have long enjoyed google news since it gets stories from all over the internet, based simply on popularity, rather then whatever bias the news provider has (granted, the most popular articles are usually biased, but at least I can browse through all the articles listed to get different points of view).

So Google news is not new, however they are planning on offering something very new along with the news. Along with every major news story they plan to have a place where those mentioned in the news article can make a statement concerning the news. So if the big news from the day was that Arnold was using his bazooka in the backyard, causing global warming, Arnold would be able to go on Google News and make a statement such as that his bazooka is a hybrid and so it is permissible. These responses to the news would be available alongside the news articles.

I think that if this is done right, and that if it is implemented by those making the news, then it could be a great thing. Those making the news can basically present their side of the story. Those accused in the news are given a forum to respond to accusations or reports. Also, clarifications could be made or details could be added. I could almost picture this completely bypassing reporters and the big news propagandists agencies as those who are involved in situations report the news directly to the public. Pretty awesome.

Click the image to see it full size:

I have talked about how great Google reader is before, and Google has an additional feature for Google reader that I have just implemented. Google reader allows you to tag any item you want in any blog as a shared item. Google then places that single blog entry that you tagged as an entry into your shared items page. So as you are reading through all the blogs you keep an eye on, with one click you can place any good blogs on your own page. Others can then click to that page and see what blog entries you think were good.

An additional feature for shared items is that you can put the RSS feeds from your shared items page on your blog, which I have done below. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of thebradlands.com you can see the latest five items from the blogs I read that I think were good.

This way I will keep an eye on all the blogs in the world, and all you have to do is click by thebradlands to see the good stuff. Googaliscious. By the way if you like this, but think it would be better suited somewhere else on thebradlands besides at the bottom of the main page, just let me know and I’ll move it around to wherever looks best.

Amazingly Google has done it again. They have given Google groups a make over and turned it into an extremely useful tool for any group. It now provides way more then just a news group. It provides a home page that would serve very well for most groups. It also allows members of the group to create other pages that are linked to from the home page, and there is a folder where group files such as pictures can be uploaded and quickly accessed. Here is a tour that Google provides.

I tried out some of the features with the Next Gen Men group that I am a member of and uploaded the pictures from Saturday mornings habitat project and added a very brief report of the project as a page. Pretty neat. Its very easy to maneuver around, is very well organized, and looks great.

Google reader is a great way to keep all your blogs in order. Basically you give google reader each of the blogs news feed and google reader lets you manage and view all blog content. The best part is that it is accessible from anywhere there is the internet, so whether you are at home or the lab or our friends house you can get at google reader and see all your blogs.

Ok so enough about what google reader is. The cool new thing they do is keep track of all of your blog trends. From the time you give google reader a blogs news feeds it begins counting how many posts it produced and how many you read. So you can see a list of all your blogs ranked from the ones that post most often to the ones that post the least. Currently thebradlands posts exactly one post per day according to my trends. Compare that with The Goat which has 6.4 posts a day and Wicked Outdoorsy which has 0.8 posts a day. You can also see stats like what time of day or days of the week do you read the most posts. I get excited by that kind of thing, so if that is boring to you then please forgive me.

Anyway, check it out. Just another wonderful offering from your friendly supreme of the world wide web, Google.

It has been one whole year since my first post to thebradlands, December 15th, 2005. I would like to thank my mom and dad, for bringing me into this world. Also my producer/ providor/ spellchecker/ factchecker Warren Myers. Of course I’d like to thank Jillian who has stuck with me through thick and thin and has helped me with my Spanish. And lastly all my fans who have made it fun for me to write knowing that you care enough to check by and read. Blogging has been a great way to vent my excitement in lots of different areas. Hopefully reading has energized you, and thebradlands has been an instrument to get you excited about life.

For those of you who read a lot of blogs, google reader is one of the most fantastic tools you will come accross.  Basically you enter your blogs url into google reader and it pics up the RSS feed for the sight.  Every time there is a new article on that site from then on it will indicate that, and it will show that the sight is undread until you read it.  Not only does it notify you of new articles, but you can read the articles in the google reader interface, so no need to click around to a million blogs.  Its like getting email only every new email is a blog from one of the blogs that you enjoy.  It also lets you sort the blogs into folders and there are lots of interface options.  One of the most useful tools from google so far!

Since I am already on a google kick today, I decided to download the latest version of Google Picasa which lets you upload pictures to a web space similar to flickr. Picasa does it much better then flickr (I have a flickr account and found the process of uploading photos to be extremely tedius and gave it up.) Picasa lets you highlight a folder and upload the whole thing to the web in a couple easy clicks.

So, if you would like to check out my web albums here is a link: http://picasaweb.google.com/wlfmachine. Right now the only pictures on there are some that Jillian took from her and my brothers and sisters trip to the beach today. There are a couple of pictures of James on there, so you can all see that he is indeed alive and well. Check back now and then and I’ll keep the web album updated with all the latest trips and pics.

This is what I thought was a very pretty picture of my wife and my sister… so no, neither are available!

This is a post coming to you from Google docs. Yes, Google has yet another offering to make your life simpler. Google now has Google spreadsheet and Google docs online. With Google docs you can create and edit a document, share it with others, giving them permission to either view or edit the document, and view revisions, so you can see what parts of the document you wrote and what parts they wrote. You can export the doc to the html, rtf, word, open office, and pdf formats. You can also publish it online, which basically means that Google gives you a link to the document that you can give to anyone to allow them to view it. Last but not least you can post the document to your blog, which is what I am doing right now. To post the doc to your blog you first have to give Google your blog settings. Once they know where your blog is and how to get at it, then you can just click a button and your document is added to your blog as a post. Very handy!

So Google spreadsheet allows the editing and viewing collaboration, but it does not yet allow you to publish or post to a blog. Hopefully those things are coming soon. They do however let you discuss with Google spreadsheet. Basically every spreadsheet has a chat room that everyone who is viewing the spreadsheet is automatically in. You can write whatever you want in the chat room and others viewing the spreadsheet see it. For some reason they don’t yet have this feature for docs, but I am guessing that it will soon be there as well. Most likely docs and spreadsheet were created by different companies bought out by Google, and the integration work is still taking place.

By the way both of these features are available from your gmail by clicking the link in the upper left hand corner. Google also indexes all of your spreadsheets and docs so they can quickly be searched by their owner and those who have rights to view them. Best of all, Google docs has a spellchecker! Oh yeah this just in as well: Google bought YouTube. Yay speedy online videos!

Hey guys, all five video clips are on google now, if you want to check them out. Here is the links to them. When you are putting videos on google then it takes google 3 or 4 days to watch them and approve them, and they do not display until that is done, soo, they are finally all up there.  Enjoy!