40Tech

If the announcement of the impending shuttering of Google Reader sent a chill down your spine, you’re not alone. My first reaction to the news, after swearing to myself, was “well, that’s the risk of relying on a free service.” My next though was, “hmm, time to see what else is out there.” My first stop was to check out Fever.

Could Google be launching a competitor to Evernote and Springpad? Google scrapped its Notebooks app quite some time ago, but according to a story on the Verge yesterday, it looks like the company might be ready to get back into the note taking app business. Would you give it a try?

I’m sure that Google will insert many hooks into its other services, that will make the app very tempting. Still, there are a couple of reasons that I probably won’t be leaving Evernote anytime soon.

The recent brouhaha over the iOS 6 maps app called attention to the strengths of Google Maps. One strong point of Google Maps is its satellite and aerial imagery. That imagery isn’t great everywhere, though. Some geographic areas have images that are less current than others, or that were taken at fairly low resolutions. If you want to be notified when images in a particular area are updated, there’s a website that will do just that.

I love my Facebook friends. I really do. But the ones on the far left and far right don’t seem to get it. Their political posts are often filled with animosity or, worse yet, reliance on Fox News. They don’t sway anyone. Instead their posts foster annoyance, or even make them look like they’re a few cards short of a full deck. If you use Chrome as your web browser, you can escape all that.

If you hadn’t already heard, Google Chrome for iPhone and iPad was released this week — and it promptly became the #1 free app on the app store. This is something that we’ve been waiting for with baited breath, and something that I, personally, was never sure would happen properly due to the rivalry between Apple and Google.

Have no doubt, though, it’s here — and it takes the best of Google Chrome’s desktop browser and jams it neatly and prettily into your pocket.

I’ve found myself plenty busy lately. The new job, new baby, and newly four have been making it difficult to get sleep, let alone writing time. As a result, however, my obsession for to-do apps has flexed its brawn and muscled its way back to the forefront of my thoughts — especially after I accidentally discovered Any.DO.

Which is awesome!

I like Google Chrome. Love it, in fact. I love the extensions, I love the OS-style feel of it, and I love the apps integration that makes that feel possible. It long ago took over Firefox for me, and, while I love the foxy Fox, I’ve never been able to go back to it full [...]

So let’s talk. There’s been a lot of conversation around the web — and on this site — about possible alternatives for Evernote. Springpad was the goto app for many, though the most recent update has pulled them further away from that comparison, and drawn the ire of many users in the process. If you look at Springpad, though, as well as several other apps that offer services that are considered comparable to Evernote (Shelfster, Thinkery, OneNote and Catch, for example), you can define a general criteria for a note taking application that I think — no matter how odd it may sound — could also be met by Google’s latest cloud offering and the new face of Google Docs: Google Drive.

Stick with me. I’d love to have a conversation with you all about this.

Whether your website is for personal or business use, Google Analytics is a top tool you can use to monitor your site’s success. Here are 10 reasons why you should be using Google Analytics and how it can help you improve your website.

Google Reader is the best RSS subscription collector out there — but only as a base. In practice it has one of the ugliest user interfaces I’ve ever come across. It’s busy, cluttered, and generally hard to look at and use. If it weren’t for all of the apps that utilize Google Reader within their own UI, I’m guessing it would have tanked along with other unwieldy Google services. Thankfully, some enterprising folks have used browser technology to re-skin Reader into something that actually makes content easy to consume. One of the best is Reeder for Chrome.