Rui CarmoGot a bazillion things to do, and besides being dog tired I feel a migraine coming on. But here are some notes on the latest Google hoopla.
Maybe it's my craving for budget spreadsheets, but Google Spreadsheets is the first of their web-based apps that I actually find useful (no, I don't use their web interface for e-mail). It actually looks useful a bit beyond the "ah, useful toy" stage - I mean, the thing even supports VLOOKUP!
Anyway, and despite the usual qualms and gripes (storing my data on the net, browser support, etc.) it seems handy for planning shopping trips as well as tossing some tables back and forth between friends and family - maybe, just maybe, CSCW is finally coming by way of Web 2.0.
Buggered if I'll ever store anything important on it, though.
Of a bit more interest is the new Mac Video Player, which I'm finding quite interesting. For one, the innards bear no real clue as to its heritage (although there are a few X.509 bits inside, which I assume to be part of their DRM), and the UI is the spitting image of its Flash player.
Even if it's not a "generic" video player, I think it is (yet another) fitting snub to Apple, whose QuickTime won't play full-screen unless you try to buy the Pro version.
Interesting how "free" stuff puts arbitrary (and dumb) feature crippling into focus.