The procedure for setup is a bit challenging, but I’ve figured it out after setting it up for myself and both my parents. The key is to get all your contacts and calendar events into your GMail and Google Calendar. Then set up the syncing and it will update all the information to all devices.

Here’s the step-by-step directions and tutorial for other phones/mobile devices. It requires a Microsoft Exchange server setup.

Also, the Google Calendar gadget for Windows 7.

I downloaded the plug-in, extracted the files, and uploaded them into the wp-content/plugins folder.  And then went into my WordPress console and clicked on Plugins and clicked Activate.  Therefore, this blog post should suddenly appear elsewhere instantaneously.  I am curious to see.

I still have some problems with online storage. First of all, it’s not fast enough. It still relies on your Internet connection. If you want to open up and view each document, it requires time to either download or view in a Flash player type interface. For instance, I uploaded 20 old English exams I created into both services, and I wanted to quickly look through each document and see which ones I might want to update or delete.   It took too long to go through each one to see what was inside it. It would have been much easier on my desktop to open and look through them. Ultimately, it made me realize that I need to review each document on my main computer, delete and/or update the documents first, then upload them when they were perfect.  Forget editing the document online simply.  I also had trouble with tagging documents in Scribd. I uploaded a bunch of documents and tagged them incorrectly by mistake (leaving out a comma for example: teaching classmgt). Revising my tagging mistake was not easy because Scribd could not find any documents with my mistag, to allow me to reselect all and then change the tags. I became quickly frustrated with the time intensiveness of the interface and speed of each service and walked away for the day.

The  living in the cloud completely is still not a reality for me today.   It’s funny when I hear people talk about really doing it and abandoning operating systems.  This will not happen for a long time.  I want speed and privacy. I would not feel comfortable uploading drafts of my writing or major design projects.  I would not upload personal passwords or financial details.  It’s fascinating that people use services like Mint.com.  Sure, if you are just starting out and you create everything in the cloud, you should be fine. But if you already have created a lot of content or use professional level software like Photoshop or Flash, forget it. I’m relatively open minded, but as a power user, I am open to using cloud computing for what it’s good at.  Getting everything into the cloud is not that fast to accomplish, even if it is easy. Like all online services, sometimes it takes time to figure out all the nuisances of an online service (and there is no telling if it will disappear in ten years), to really test out the limits of the tools. Then you can see what works for you, and what is still needing improvement.

A new podcast I have enjoyed (i have listened to the last 2) is This Week in Google, which focuses on the new things happening with Google and cloud computing.  Leo Laporte is the host like so many other shows, but I have to admit so far, I have enjoyed this show more than any of the others.  I don’t think many people would enjoy it as much as I do since it is more about looking to the future, making cloud computing easier and more effective.  I love the value of cloud computing; however, I feel we have stepped back in terms of reinventing software that already worked again in an online form.  Google Docs is nowhere near what Microsoft Word has become.

The most recent episodes have discussed the newest features to Google Reader, notably it’s ability to Send stories to other services, mark all items read, publish instantaneously to Friendfeed, and more.  I swear that Google Reader is one of the greatest tools online.  It saves me tons of time and brings the news (that I care about) to me.  Besides reading my email and checking MLB.com, I live in Google Reader.

I have to admit that one section of this week’s discussion was the vagueness around all the ways you could mark an article in your feeds.  You can Like it, Share It, Share it with a Note, Comment on it, Tag it, Email it and Star it.  I’m exhausted even thinking about it!  I really have to agree that they either need to make it clear what all these things do or remove some of these options.  I don’t know what to consistently do.

I usually Star or Share.  Star allows me to make it a favorite which I can find in the future.  Share allows me to make it public and then create a RSS feed with these shared items for embedding on blogs, elsewhere.  Tagging annoys me because it creates a list of tags at the bottom, which I don’t want.  Maybe there is a way to hide those tags on the bottom listing.

Also, I’m still wondering when we will see Themes in Reader.  Reader could use a little color.

I’m not the type of person who likes to create web sites on these services.  If I want to make a website, I want total control of the content.  I usually would use a content management service like Drupal or Mambo or WordPress and put it up on my server.  The ease of owning a domain name and installing it yourself makes it preferred, and it escapes design limitations and the abundance of advertising tied to free services.

Google Sites is as easy to use as Google Documents.  It allowed me to easily create a site with an address and a name, add and edit pages, upload images, create a navigation sidebar, and change the color scheme/theme, and share it with others.  I was creating a site as a favor to a family member who wanted to preserve his site from the soon-to-be-defunct GeoCities.  It was a simple matter of copy and paste, either as text or HTML from one site to the other.  I had to save the images to my desktop computer and reupload them.

It is impressive how easy it’s become to create web pages.  The downsides are: all pages on Sites will look similar and some features are limited or hard to find (including the ability to reorder the navigation side bar–I eventually found it buried in the settings option), and the different text formats like 2 or 3 columns didn’t format how I wanted.  It also took me five minutes to find the delete site option.  The problem with many of these free web design services is they provide limited functionality in terms of formatting and appearance, but are great for students, beginners to web design, and those with time or financial constraints.

Also Google Reader desperately needs Themes!!!

Just this week, Gmail updated how labels are used, allowing you to drag messages into labels like folders.  Calling them labels might be confusing, but it is a great functionality.  You can also choose to show or hide the labels/folders most useful to your needs.  I use labels/folders all the time and GMail has in some sense become a To-Do list and a file cabinet for all my stuff.  If I want to remember something I send an email to myself (I’d love a note taking feature in GMail).  I fear that one day GMail will transform itself into something like Yahoo or HotMail with obnoxious photo advertisements.

Twitter also improved the functionality of its follow lists.  It allows you to view the last status update of all your followers and make changes easier. It’s an improvement and allows me to see who is no longer posting (Twitterfade).   I would like to see the follower list in more of a DataGrid type format (so I can view a long list of followers, last update, and date of last update).  Also, would be nice to see which of your followers you are following.

Twitter could also benefit from an easier way to make conversations without your replies going into your main feed.   I’m sure you can filter and weed out stuff using a third-party tool, but if Twitter wants to grow, it needs to work better at providing more functionality to its users.