netsmurfMac love from Google
It seems lately that Google is really trying to please Mac users. For loyal users of an OS with a small market share, we're used to getting passed over and seeing the Windows only show up for applications and on websites. A few months ago I was flustered because I purchased a media package from fiba.org so I could watch the FIBA Basketball World Chammpionships. I saw that they were using Windows Media Player, and I could view streaming video on their site from past games so I figured it would be no problem especially since I had Flip4Mac installed as well as the WMV plugin for Firefox. Come game day, I go on fiba.org and navigate to the stream for the game I wanted to watch live and in big letters I get "Macintosh Not Suported." Great, I pay for video that I can' t see.
To get off that rant, Google Video was doing the same thing for video that could be purchased from their site, until recently. Google added Mac support for the video site and Safari support for Google Calendars among a few other things. On Monday they launched the official Google Mac Blog and now that they have a Mac team in place, they will be using the blog to inform Mac users "about everything Google is doing to support Mac users."
They also now have a site dedicated to Google software downloads for the Mac, which is currently populated with dashboard widgets, Google Earth, Toolbar, Sketchup, Notifier and Picasa Web Albums Uploader. Notifier and Google Earth are currently my favorites on the alerting me when I have new Gmail and getting directions and seeing satellite images for just about every address you enter.
Since I am on the subject of Google, they recently merged their Writely and Spreadsheet services together to form Google Docs & Spreasheets. They seem to really be going after Microsoft and Zoho to dominate the web office space. All it takes is a google account to use Docs & Spreadsheets, which you will already have if you use Gmail or any of their other web apps like the recently improved Google Reader. I've already been using Spreadsheets for some time and love the ease of use and that my spreadsheets stay online and I don't have to email myself files, lug around a CD or thumb drives or worry about another computer having Excel. I was also a Writely user before Google purchased they were acquired by Google and have really liked the service for the reasons stated above about Spreadsheets. If you haven't had a chance to check either of them out, go over to docs.google.com and sign in with your Google account or register a new one.
They also now have a site dedicated to Google software downloads for the Mac, which is currently populated with dashboard widgets, Google Earth, Toolbar, Sketchup, Notifier and Picasa Web Albums Uploader. Notifier and Google Earth are currently my favorites on the alerting me when I have new Gmail and getting directions and seeing satellite images for just about every address you enter.
Who needs office with web apps like Docs & Spreadsheets around?
Since I am on the subject of Google, they recently merged their Writely and Spreadsheet services together to form Google Docs & Spreasheets. They seem to really be going after Microsoft and Zoho to dominate the web office space. All it takes is a google account to use Docs & Spreadsheets, which you will already have if you use Gmail or any of their other web apps like the recently improved Google Reader. I've already been using Spreadsheets for some time and love the ease of use and that my spreadsheets stay online and I don't have to email myself files, lug around a CD or thumb drives or worry about another computer having Excel. I was also a Writely user before Google purchased they were acquired by Google and have really liked the service for the reasons stated above about Spreadsheets. If you haven't had a chance to check either of them out, go over to docs.google.com and sign in with your Google account or register a new one.
