RHFtech Help Desk

I ran into an unresolvable problem with Google Chrome on a client’s XP machine this week. They use Chrome as their browser, on my recommendation. The computer was an underpowered eMachines T3120 model. Chrome is faster and less of a memory hog than other options so it made sense to me to use it on this slow box.

The error presented as a Google Chrome 104 error, "Chrome is unable to load the requested webpage." We couldn’t access any webpage. Oddly, other browsers—IE6, IE8, Firefox 3.6.6 and AOL 9.1—could access the Internet while Chrome would not.

Although new to me, this is not a new issue for Chrome. See http://bit.ly/bkU4xc . None of the various solutions that worked for others beset with this issue worked here. After wasting several hours trying to fix it, I gave up.

I reinstalled Windows XP and the applications. Fortunately, there weren’t many. I discovered on the reinstall that the Windows XP product key, which had been in use on the machine, failed the Windows Genuine Advantage tests and differed from the product key on the sticker affixed to the computer.

I wasted almost an hour of my time dealing with the product key problem. This reminded me that I NEVER have to waste time with this issue when reinstalling the operating system on a Mac. There are many reasons that consumers are moving away from Microsoft. This is one of them.

That solved the problem. I added Firefox to the reinstalled Windows XP applications list, in case the Chrome problem recurs. I also added 1GB of RAM, which made for a huge improvement in the computer’s usability.

I received the following email from the Google Apps team:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,
The Google Apps team

The busy Google software engineers have added extra features to the Google Calendar which are not enabled by default. You need to go Calendar Labs and enable the ones that appeal to you.

They recently added a Year View button (its on the right side of my calendar web page). Once you select the year and click the Go button a full year view shows up that looks like this.

Gmail Labs has two features that may save you embarrassment:

Don’t forget Bob

Got the Wrong Bob?

Enable them in Gmail by clicking on the Settings link in the upper right of the web page and clicking on the Labs tab or click on the beaker icon. The two Labs features are located next to each other near the bottom of the Labs list. Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button before leaving the Labs tab.

The Internet constantly changes.

Web 1.0 was static pages. Web 2.0 was about the browser as a platform. Google search and Gmail typify Web 2.0. The social web, Web 3.0, combines many forms of expression and communication, mashed up in a few Internet sites. The social web can be difficult to understand. Facebook and Twitter epitomize it.

Facebook has almost 300 million active account users. Twitter has 40+ million. Most people “get” Facebook. Its primary use is to share thoughts, photos and interests with Facebook friends. It is about conversations in a controlled group setting. The user has significant control over who can and cannot see their posts and personal information. You can publicly comment, direct message your friends (like using email) or go into a real-time chat mode.

Twitter is harder to comprehend. Posts are limited to 140 text characters. Twitter is like standing in the main room in Grand Central Terminal and shouting out a few words every so often. Someone in the crowd may respond. Most will ignore you. Twitter may be right for you if you want to know what Oprah is getting for lunch or whether Ashton Kutscher has anything to say.

The people that run Facebook are envious of Twitter. They have tweaked the Facebook interface to be more like Twitter. It is rumored that earlier this year they tried unsuccessfully to buy Twitter. Last week they announced that they had acquired FriendFeed, a less well-known, but more robust and feature-laden micro-blogging platform.

Wikipedia describes FriendFeed as, “…a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/Atom feed.” FriendFeed was founded by former Google employees who worked on the development of Gmail and Google Maps.

Google appears to be Facebook’s major competitor. This is difficult to see today. Google changed the Internet when its search engine came on the scene in 1998 and added advertising sales in 2000. The word “google” has entered the English language as a synonym for online search. But Google is much more than a search engine and advertising company. It owns and runs one of the world’s largest, if not the largest, fleet of servers. It has built a mobile phone operating system, Android, which is beginning to challenge RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple in the smartphone space. They sponsor Mozilla Firefox and are developing their own Google Chrome browser. They recently announced plans to create a desktop operating system, Google Chrome OS, which will compete with Windows and Apple OS X.

But the services that are truly visionary are the hodge-podge of Web 3.0 services Google offers. Gmail is growing rapidly and recently passed AOL to take third place worldwide. Its feature set is superior to the number one and two, Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Live/Hotmail offerings. Gmail integrates, although not seamlessly, with Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Talk/Chat, Google Voice, Picasa (photos), Blogger, and Google Reader. Someday they may integrate YouTube. Google Knol seems to be searching for its place in this collection. Google Reader’s recent changes have evolved it into a social tool, a place to share items and a feed reader for Twitter and FriendFeed.

The announced Google Wave seems to sew together all of these services and more into a unified communication and collaboration platform that appears ready to zoom past Facebook, just like Gmail extended the email client far beyond what had been done before. We use Google to surf the web today. I’m looking forward to catching the Google Wave real soon.

If you use Google Calendar, take a look at Labs. The World clock, Jump to date, Next Meeting, and Free or Busy gadgets are quite useful.

You can access the Labs features by clicking on the links menu (upper right on the Calendar screen): on the  beaker icon, the Settings link, or the New: Labs features link.

Once there, you can enable or disable the various gadgets. Don’t forget to click the Save button.

The Background image gadget lets you add an image via the General Settings page. The image needs to be on the web so a Google image search is in order.

The Attach Google Docs widget lets you add a document, spreadsheet or presentation to your appointment. Attendees can view or download the file.

The other four Labs gadgets alter the Calendar appearance by adding themselves to the right side column of the Calendar page, that looks like this:

Gmail added a new feature, Inserting images, to its Labs, a place for testing out ideas. You can now place images into your email rather than attaching them. You first need to enable this feature in your Gmail or Google for Apps mail settings..

1. Click on the Settings link in the Gmail menu, along the upper right of the web page.
2. Next click on the Labs link.
3. Scroll down close to the bottom of the web page to locate the Inserting Images feature.
4. Click on the Enable radio button.
5. Click on the Save Changes button.

You can now embed images in your emails.

A new control for images has been added to your Compose Mail toolbar.

You can click on the control to add images from your computer or from a web address (URL).

It is nice being an expert, the go-to guy when technology puzzles people. But that reputation has its downside. My clients and friends often query me for answers to simple questions. They must be ignorant of the power of Google or think that I will save them the time and effort of searching. Of course, they do not think I should charge for answering their queries. It only takes me a moment, perhaps a few minutes, or maybe no more than half-an-hour, well maybe an hour or two to answer them.

Yesterday, while doing a home theater installation, I received an email on my BlackBerry from a friend and client with the subject “can you print a large spreadsheet and get it to reduce to fit 8 1/2 x 11 paper?”

I have used electronic spreadsheets since 1981 and paper versions long before that. Once, I was an expert in using and programming Microsoft Excel. My Excel chops have withered but I still remember how to set up a worksheet to print the way I want.

If you have Excel 2007 you click on the Office button, select Print > Print Preview and then click on the Page Setup control in the Ribbon. If you have Excel 2003 or earlier you click on the menu items File > Page Setup…

The Page Setup dialog appears and one would then select the Scaling options they want on the Page tab.

I am sure he needed to do something in a rush and did not want to spend the time looking for the answer to his question. I did not have the time to shift gears in the middle of the late day installation and walk him through this, especially typing this out on my BlackBerry. I needed to finish the job at hand.

But I try to always promptly respond to these types of questions. I diverted my attention and took the time to respond to his exact question, “can you print a large spreadsheet and get it to reduce to fit 8 1/2 x 11 paper?” My answer was “Yup.”

When I need to find a graphic image—photo, picture, or drawing— I used to use Google’s Images search. However, there is an alternative interface, Google Image Ripper, that improves on Google.

Google Image Ripper (GIR) saves steps. GIR serves up the images. Google Images search serves up thumbnails with links to the webpages and maybe the image.

The nsfw (not suitable for work) check box on GIR is a content filter. If checked, images that might make you blush or offend you are displayed.

Below are screen shots of my search for small TiVo images on both sites.

The engineers at Gmail are continually tweaking Gmail, adding new features. These features are nice additions, but I wonder if they aren’t muddying the application with too many features.

Undo Send, the latest change, adds the ability to stop a message from being sent after you click on the Send button. The undo capability lasts a few seconds and is not user-editable.  I have a similar feature enabled in Microsoft Outlook, where I instruct Outlook to wait 60 seconds before sending any email.  The Thunderbird add-on Send Later provides similar functionality.

You will find the Gmail feature in the Labs section of Settings.

Undo Send

Gmail Labs description