Just a Dream

Note: This started this post intending to write about something else, but these thoughts came out.

Note 2: Today I read this post.

This looked like something out of the Wizard of Oz. 

When I first read that Google Reader was being shut down, I was not too worried. After thinking about it, I started to get worried about the other Google services I rely on. It was not too long ago that my starting page on my browser was iGoogle.com. I am still sore about that being discontinued.

As a side note, I was thinking about it, and here is the Google services I use and their replacements.

Sites -- Wikispaces

Blogger -- Wordpress

Docs -- MS Word :(

Drive -- Dropbox

Gmail -- Yahoo Mail

YouTube -- Vimio?

Products I Would Like

Video Search
Tonight I was watching a long video. I was not interested in watching the whole 45-minute clip, and I found myself clicking ahead on the time bar at the bottom of the video player. Then I thought, it would really like a way to search for a keyword in the video, and then when I search for it, the video is brought to about 5 seconds before that point.

There will be many videos that have the same words repeated over and over, but maybe for those there could be a list that pops down below the search bar where the instances and the time are shown.


A Better Collaborative Site
I am currently doing a project that incorporates (1) TimeBridge for scheduling meetings, (2) a Ning, (3) a wiki, (4) a Google Group, (5) Google Docs, (6) a Website, and (7) Email. Seven different tools to collaborate. There must be a better way of doing this.

I would like to see Google bring together several of their products to make a better site for collaborative products. I think they have several good ones, but it would be great to be able to:

• put documents into a site where they are displayed [without clicking a link]
• have a drop down of any relevant notifications like the Google Plus button in the upper right hand corner
• be able to have attachments
• have different layouts
• have customizable widgets like iGoogle did
• be able to use Google Hangouts

 I think these ideas sound good, but I am sure that there are people working on better products. I just have to wait.