It has been a while since I last posted. I have been traveling a lot for work, this is the busy season for college recruitment. During this time away from Blogger I have been exploring Google+. Must say I enjoy Google+ better than Facebook. Facebook during the same time did a few updates to personal streams and page insights that I don't think have really improved the user experience. I never played games on facebook and got annoyed when friends played and posted things in their stream, which I prompted blocked. G+ has the games stream split so you only see the notifications when you are in that section. The use of circle also allows you to share only with those friends that play, rather than making it public. My G+ game blog will be more complete on another day.
While Facebook has been flailing, Google has been rather quickly revamping their products with new looks for Google Docs and calendar that have really stream lined their look and made it easier for me to find items on the screen. Many of the items with Docs and Calendar have gotten new feature, which makes migrating to the cloud easier. You no longer feel that you are loosing features my moving to online apps. I did a quick trial on the new presentations formats and I now feel comfortable using them instead of having to use another app for holding my recruiting slide decks (table slide shows and classroom presentations)
Just today I finally got around to looking over the revamp of blogger. I think it is wonderful. I love the Dynamic view template both as a reader and blogger. I might start blogging more often. I saw some professional bloggers on G+ say that G+ might be a better platform for them do to the innate social feature. WHy have two platforms when you can do it on one. Time will tell how that goes.
Then just tonight, the Chrome update created game store and music store icons for the new tab page. I am excited to see where this may go.
Finally, Chrome recently change the format of the new tab page, and it looks a lot like a tablet set up. The sleek, minimalist design of docs, calendar, and blogger only add to the thoughts that Google is predicting that the tablet is the future. I don't have a tablet yet but I am glad that the two formats are starting to merge into one experience. I hope they keep the Chromebook around for education, I think the price point and easy replacement will help get more kids connected to the web tools.
My Apple vs Android/Chrome blog will be down the lone on where I think this will all be in 5 years.
