Having Google Reader available when I’m not connected to the ‘net, is something I’ve wanted for a while. 

Luckily for me (I think) Google released Google Gears the other day - and made Google Reader implement it.

The idea itself is good - Being able to read your RSS feeds when you’re not connected to the ‘net, and have it sync back to the “mothership” (as the Googler’s put it) when you reconnect - marking read items as read, and downloading new content.

There’s a few key things missing though:

#1 - No Automatic Synchronisation.
I was hoping this would be something like Outlook in Exchange mode - i.e, I connect to a network, it realises it’s connected and updates all my items, sends mail that needs sending, downloading new bits, etc.

Google Reader however, doesn’t do this - it requires you to hit the Offline button, whence it takes a snapshot of some 2000 items (read? unread? latest? who knows).  Ideally it should do the synchronisation in the background - i.e when you’re connected, and it’s setup for offline usage - it should just sync in the background.

#2 - Doesn’t download even basic post resources (like images).

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER without images? ’nuff said. 

PS: Even if you’re actually connected, but that Offline button is pressed, you don’t get images.

#3 - Doesn’t remember previously sync’ed items (I think)

I go online. Then click offline - it pops up this little progress meter:

Once it’s finished syncing - if I hit online again, then offline - it pops up the same sync thingy, and takes just as long to download.

Okay, so Gears is a very very early beta*, and this is just the first implementation of Reader Offline, but I do hope they’ll fix these things and make it a truly seamless experience in later iterations.

* Aaron Boodman said something like “Google Gears is a real beta, not like our usual level of Beta” about a dozen times during his talk.

A year or two ago I saw a bit of a kids show - Sesame Street, I think it was. The segment I saw, left me amazed - the animated segment had someone telling kids what email was, and how to send it.   At that point, I realised two things: a) technology (and the internet specificly) really is everywhere, and b) kids are getting a heck of a start to this stuff.

Today I read on Slashdot, that a 13-year old CEO Anshul Samar ’stole the show’ at TiECON 2007, a “big technology conference in Santa Clara, California”.  The article on VentureBeat is quite informative, and worth reading. I do have to wonder if his inclusion of his 11-year-old sister as VP of Sales was his decison, or something to do with the parents insisting he share. 

Check out the game/company the they’re asking for USD$100k (!!) investment for - Elementeo. It appears to be a very well thought out card game, using various chemical elements and compounds for the play.

Good luck to them, I say - I’m just hoping they don’t decide to do away with anyone over 25 after they take over the world.

(For some reason, I’m reminded of the TISM Song - If You’re Not Famous At Fourteen, You’re Finished)

Randall is the guy behind XKCD - “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” as he puts it.   The comic is so chock full of geeky goodness, that it’s just about required reading as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, Randall went to MIT to give a lecture a few days, and, well - it looks like they all had a whole lot of fun. Except for the presence of RC Velociraptors. (At least appropriate countermeasures were available).

Someone also dropped plastic playpen balls from the roof , which had stickers with some certain… numbers on them that the AACS don’t want you to have.

Pictures galore over on the MIT Site.

Speaking of certain magic censored numbers - Thinkgeek have the appropriate t-shirt.

I’m the guy that, when forwarded an email about “amazing photos stored in an old Brownie Camera since 1941“, or this story about how some people get expensive paint-jobs for their cats will usually hit up Google for some Snopes reference.

So, today’s XKCD comic is quite up my alley:

Note: Comic is copyright, and used here under the Creative Commons licence. See XKCD for licence info

via Neowin, comes this great story in the UK Daily Mail:

Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.

Good to see atleast one cat using public transport - rather than driving a car around.

There’s a much more relaxed approach to animals on public transport in Europe & the UK, nothing like here in Aus where you’re likely to be set upon by passengers or officials.  

This is a crack up.

Man, I should have had this before I went to Italy. 

From Italy from the Inside (via Roberto D’Angelo’s MSDN Blog)

Absolutely brilliant.

Via Steve Clayton

Caution: NSFW.

via Userfriendly Link of the Day.

Windows Live Writer is an interesting bit of blog-client software.  It offers some MS Word-like features, but simpler - and lets you do blogging in a fairly light-weight and easy-to-use environment.

There are, however - things that really drive me up the wall with it, and there hasn’t been any new updates to LiveWriter for a long time. (August 11th, sheesh?!)

#1 - Image Quality

The LiveWriter has this annoying habit of blurring the pictures which are copied in, unless you remove it’s dropshadowing.

Here’s an example:

(with default drop-shadow setting)

(with photo-paper setting)

(with “Inherit from Weblog” setting)

It doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t change the default to “inherit”, and you can’t fix the blurring - Microsoft needs to fix this. Now.

You can tell blog entries that have been published with LiveWriter, simply by their image quality.

Here’s a completely non-random sampling of my morning’s RSS reading:

• Just a little more on “What is Community”
• How to Hack WCF - New Technology, Old Hacking Tricks
• Shadow Copy not working in Vista?

The common theme? (Apart from being Microsoft bloggers) They were all published with Windows Live Writer. The key indicator is that there’s dropshadows and blur on the images. Which makes them look (sorry guys) like those joke images that’ve been passed around, embedded in powerpoint documents sent via email through just about every person on the planet.

#2 - Dictionary Support

Having a spell-checker is kinda handy when you’re blogging - and I like that it operates like Outlook’s “spellcheck-on-send” feature.

The thing that really drives me up the wall is that you can’t install other dictionaries. Heck, it won’t even use the installed Office dictionary. 

 #3 - No Integrated Proxy Support

This isn’t so much of an issue, most of the time - but even my basic .NET apps let you use the windows account for authentication - it’s about 3 lines of code, plus some switching logic to determine if you need to use this setting.

This also means my password is sent in cleartext (rather than used to obtain a Kerberos token, which is used to authenticate against the proxy), and that I need to keep updating it (passwords expire every 60 days or so here).

Edit: Pingbacks were sent… damn, sorry folks. (I didn’t mean for that to happen)