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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!