Google Latitude can Go Wrong !

Yesterday, I was coming back from a business trip in France. During the travel back, the Thalys train shuttling me from Paris to Brussels suddenly came to a total stop. I wanted to know where we were so that I could estimate the remaining distance.

I looked at my Blackberry and could already see from the telecom operator name that we were in Belgium already. I then decided to use the Google Latitude application to get more information. Here is what I got:


And I got the address as well, confirming that Google really located me north of Vilvoorde and that it was not just a display error:
Where you know the Thalys, you know that you arrive to Brussels from the south and so you cannot be on the north. A few minutes later, I had the confirmation that we were well in the south as we crossed the Halle (Buizingen) train station. As you can see from the Google map below, there is quite around 40km between my reported position (B), and my actual position (A).


Moreover when refreshing my position, I noticed that while the train was driving north toward Brussels, my position was moving from north to south, also toward Brussels.

Who said that Google is always right ?
There is always one more bug I would say.

Sync Story

Since over a decade I have been using Microsoft Outlook. I started with Outlook Express then used Outlook 2000, XP, 2003, and currently 2007. With time, I have learned to master the product and to truly enjoy it. As a result, I used it for both professional and private emails, contacts, and calendar. A few years ago, I even started synchronizing my contacts and calendar events with my previous Nokia mobile phone. I liked very much having a calendar with me without having to carry a paper version on top of all accessories that a modern man must carry: wallet, keys (home and car), mobile, sun glasses, pens ... this without even talking about the laptop. But what I appreciated the most was being notified by my mobile about my appointments. Even when away from my computer, I was sure not to forget anything (as long as I had encoded it).

Then I changed of job and got a new laptop with that so wonderful application named Lotus Notes along with a BlackBerry already synchronized with it. My opinion about Lotus did not change since last year. I still do not like it and rarely miss an opinion to criticize it for many good (and bad let's remain honest) reasons: not user-friendly, slow to answer, not compatible with most Web2.0 portals like Facebook, LinkedIn or Naymz and I could continue my list of rants. In parallel of using Notes for business mails, contacts, and calendar, I kept using my Outlook for personal emails, contacts, and events. However, while the separation of mails is good for productivity reasons, and while I could take care of contacts by synchronizing my BlackBerry with my Outlook using the BlackBerry Desktop Manager application. Since years, I am indeed using a contact sub-folder of Outlook to organize and backup my mobile contacts.

So there I was, sitting between two seats for the calendar part and not really happy about it. Then one day I woke up deciding to fix the inconvenience of having private events in Outlook and business events in Lotus and on my Blackberry. I was looking for a simple and free solution but obviously the words simple and Lotus do not exist in the same sentence, and it gets worse when talking about software. Useless to say that I could never manage to connect directly my Outlook to the Domino server and always ended with some error message.

Ultimately I found out that Google Calendar proposes a tool to synchronize your Outlook Calendar with your Google Calendar. Google also proposes another tool to synchronize your BlackBerry calendar with your Google Calendar.

By transitivity and because 1+1=2, I have my solution: my outlook is synchronized with Google, which synchronizes with my BlackBerry, which in turn synchronizes with Lotus. Yes, it works. Yes, it is easy to install and no, there is nothing complex to configure. I'm happy as I have all my events on my BlackBerry and in Outlook and I still do not plan to use the Google Calendar interface itself.

So what's next ?
I seriously consider definitively dropping Lotus now as I can download emails from the Domino server using POP.

Google is the Heir of Sun Tzu

A few days ago I posted a pretty long article about my experience with setting up a SharePoint intranet. Less than twenty-four hours later, I received a LinkedIn invitation from someone working for the same company as I do but located at the other side of the world. That person kindly introduced himself to me, wrote a couple of nice words about my SharePoint article, and asked to be connected to each other. My first reflex was to immediately accept his network invitation - after all we are colleagues - and to thank him for his kind word.

I then started wondering how he had found my SharePoint blog article. My article was not the first one to be written about SharePoint. It is surely not the most detailed or the most complete article about that topic. Additionally my blog is not (yet ?) one of the most read and famous blogs of the world wide web. So how could he find me through that article so quickly ? Not even a day had passed since I had posted it on BlogSpot.

I then remembered that a few hours before getting the LinkedIn invitation, I had received my usual Google Alert digest. For those ignorant of Google Alerts mechanism, Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. In other words, you enter a keyword or two and Google will bring you the search results right into your mail and when something new it added on the Internet concerning that keyword then a it will appear in your next Google Alert. And on that day, my Google Alert digest tuned for my company name contained my SharePoint article. Needless to say that from there it became as clear as 1 + 1 = 2. All people using Google Alerts with the same keyword had received the link to my blog. This was the right explanation. It could not be otherwise and a few hours later I even received the written confirmation. It was a good guess.

So what is the true meaning of this story ?
Google knows it all. It knows everything available online about you, about your company, about your competitors. It knows what has changed or what is new, and it knows it before you do. As such, Google sets itself in straight line with Sun Tzu so famous principle:

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

Google Chrome Review

Like everyone these days I downloaded, installed, and started testing Google Chrome browser.

So first things first, my very first experience with the brand new Google Chrome browser has been ... a bug !



Funny, as this is the last thing as I expected as first experience with the new Google browser.

Now except this minor annoyance that vanished upon a simple click, the test was rather positive in the beginning. Google Chrome is fast upon displaying the pages, light to load but still eating quite some memory. So what are my first negative impressions ?

- Google Chrome does not support activeX meaning you cannot use it to connect to some corporate VPNs.
- Google Chrome uses Internet Explorer's proxy settings. No progress there.
- Google Chrome seems to load and process the web pages before displaying them all at once. This can result in disturbing waiting times where nothing seems to happen until your requested page suddenly appears.

I will check and test this browser further as it can impact the development of the Star Wars Combine.

This post has been written with 100% recyclable electrons under Google Chrome.

I'm on the First Page of Google !

This week I got the pleasant surprise to discover that when one searched under Google.com for ICT Director then I appeared on the first page of results. It works also under Google.be and quite a few other countries as well.

Wow, I feel proud. :)

Two months ago I had indeed decided to increase my visibility on the Internet. By this I wanted my profile (and mostly my professional profile) to be easy to find. In order to reach that target, I looked at some of the existing online tools but at the same time, I knew already I would not want to waste too much time into this and certainly not spend a dime for it.

Therefore, I started with what I had: LinkedIn (which I find quite useful to keep tracks of friends' and former colleagues' career). I made sure to complete my profile, added a few more connections, and joined a couple of pertinent mostly IT-related groups.

Afterwards, I considered the too-famous FaceBook and filled a profile soon discovering that I really hated it. To me, FaceBook seems the best way to waste time and I am still waiting for any return from it. I already decided not to invest more time in it but to loosely maintain it.

My third step was to start this blog - The Voice of Recyclable Electrons - where the title is based on a sentence I used at the end of all my emails since the mid-nineties. I had first wanted to share impressions about movies but since then, I discovered that I preferred talking about ICT topics or experience. You could have guessed so from the recent posts by the way.

The fourth steps was to join the newly created Naymz network. I can tell you already that Naymz is extremely powerful to promote your profile, especially once you reach their RepScore level 10. At this stage, I am not even sure that you can go down after you reached level 10. Naymz uses all tips and tricks to promote your name and a few associated keywords through Google. It works quite fine with minimal effort from your part. I reached the level 10 within two weeks and started harvesting the benefits.

But all these registrations would probably not have worked as effectively as hoped if I had not decided to cross-link them all. On my blog, you find links to my LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Naymz profiles. On my Naymz profile, you will find again links to this blog and my other profiles. And so on, and son. Thanks to this mini web, I increased my own pertinence according to Google ultimately benefiting from the power of each site. Quite an interesting experience.

Start Harnessing the Power of Web 2.0 !

As of today, we all heard about Web 2.0. Many of us have an account in at least one of the well-known social networks like FaceBook, LinkedIn or actively use YouTube, MySpace, SecondLife, or any other similar N-Gen service.

However today, I want to insist on a simple yet effective way to really take advantage of all these brand new cool technologies. Something that everyone can use with minimal setup effort and benefit day after day without being one of these "nerds" spending more time as a virtual avatar that in the real world.

We all need and want to access news everyday. From radio newsflashes while in our car to TV news in the evening or newspapers while at home, we are all avid of news. The most active of us also consult some online news channels or blogs to get additional details or opinions about particular topics. And all these searches consume your time. Time being too precious to be wasted, let's see how to spare some.

As of today, I am confident at least 70% of you use Google as home page and therefore Google is the first page you see when opening your browser. Before going further, let me help those who use Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). If you use IE7, don't use Google as home page, and want to keep your current home page then simply go to "Tools ==> Internet Options" and add a new line after your home page. Type there http://www.google.com/ig. For everyone else, just replace www.google.com by http://www.google.com/ig.


Then go to http://www.google.com/ig. ig Stands for iGoogle and it will allow you to customize your own Google page with tons of things that interest you only. So first you need to create an account with Google. If you already have an account with Google because you use Gmail, Adsense, Google Analytics or whatever, then you do not need to create an account. Instead, simply use your existing login and password to log in.

Congratulations !
Now you can make the news come to you automatically. You can transform your iGoogle page into something similar to the below screenshot by adding RSS flows and/or widgets.

What can you add to that page ?
Well you can add widgets (think virtual gadgets) that provide a permanent link to an online translation service or to the Wikipedia search engine. You can display the time in any part of the world (useful if you work in an international company). You can watch some shares value ... There are countless widgets available, just click on the "Add stuff" link on the top right of your screen.

And what about news or blogs ?
This is where is comes easy and powerful. On all of your favorite news websites or blogs, you will find a RSS icon similar to this one. Then if this is the kind of site you frequently visit, just click that icon. Upon clicking, Google will ask you if you want to add this page to your iGoogle page or to your reader. Select the iGoogle page. Repeat the same procedure for all interesting blog or website (and I hope you will add this blog as well).


That's it ! From now, you can decide to remove some widget or RSS flow. You can change how they are organized on your page using the good old simple drag-and-drop system. You can have some RSS displaying 3 headlines or more. It is up to you to decide and your home page will always provide you with news you are interested in. If that's now harnessing Web 2.0, then what is ?

If you look at my own home page as example, you will see that I use it to get general national news (La Libre), world-wide news (CNN), economical news (L'Echo, Trends), political news (some blogs), news from my online game(Star Wars Combine), news about IT or Telecom stuff (Datanews, Joel on Software, video games news), and then some widgets like I described earlier..

And you know the best ? It works. It is easy for me to read what I want when I have time, to add a new RSS flow or to remove something I never check; all this using some Web 2.0 technologies and Google.

I hope this small article will be useful for you. In any case, do not hesitate to post a small comment, a suggestion, a critic, or whatever.