Chris Pirillo » google-docs

What’s Better Than Microsoft PowerPoint?

Chris — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:45:31 +0000

What’s Better Than Microsoft PowerPoint? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Did you ever know how most presentations suck? It’s bad enough that people doing them tend to suck, as well. It’s not their fault, though. Most of the presentation software is just not that good. A good presentation shows pictures, and don’t have much text. The worst ones to watch are where the speaker just reads every word from the slides! They drive me nuts! What do you use to create presentations? Tell me you aren’t using desktop software! Adobe has thrown their hat into the ring. They have a basic, online office suite and a new presentation software!

Acrobat Presentations is excellent. You have tons of options. Best of all, of course, is the ability using an online platform gives you to easily collaborate with others. When you create a presentation with desktop software, it’s very difficult to allow multiple people to work together on it. Using Presentations, it’s a simple process.

Presentations is a better way to create, edit, and share presentations with others online. Built on the Adobe Flash platform, Presentations looks and behaves like a desktop presentation application – but operates inside a web browser.

It’s free, and cross-platform. There’s no reason to not try it!

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Keep Warm with Geeks

Chris — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:40:26 +0000

Keep Warm with Geeks is a post from Chris Pirillo

Is it just me, or is it freezing outside? Suddenly, we’ve jumped from Fall – right into Winter. It’s not officially Winter yet! Why the heck is it so cold?! Is this another one of those “getting old” symptoms? Well, whatever. At least crappy weather gives me a great reason to stay inside and see what’s going on inside of both Lockergnome and Geeks.

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Do you use Gmail’s New Features?

Chris — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:40:27 +0000

Do you use Gmail’s New Features? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Ah, yes… Gmail. It’s the free email service from Google, that can be accessed via the Web or by using a desktop client. They give you up to 6GB of space to use, pretty much for free. That’s beyond cool. There are a ton of free services that Google offers, such as Google Docs, which we’ve discussed before. Just the other night, they introduced us to Google Labs.

So what is this new feature, exactly? When you sign in to your Gmail account (or sign up for a new one), you’ll see “New! Gmail Labs!”. This resides as a tab within your Gmail settings. This allows you to add things like plugins, add-ons, Gmail widgets and the like to your account. They’re simply “hooks” that add to your experience with Gmail. They’re going to be slowly rolling these out, to test how they are received and used. For the more popular ones, they will eventually be made into full-on Gmail settings.

In essence, you have an opportunity to shape the future of Gmail. It’s pretty much the fastest web-based email out there, but I’ve never really liked the interface. Maybe they’ll come up with some interface tweaks. Check some of these out:

Google Code Search – allows you to search for public source code.
Google Page Creator – helps you create a Web page in minutes.
Google Dashboard Widgets for Mac – Quickly access Google products from within Dashboard.
Google News Alerts – Choose a topic and receive news alerts for it.
Google Notebook – Clip and collect information as you browse the web.

These are only a handful of the things you’ll find to play with in Google Labs. Give it a try today!

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Google Docs has a Community?!?!

Chris — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:01:33 +0000

Google Docs has a Community?!?! is a post from Chris Pirillo

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If you got an email from someone alledging to be on the “Google Docs Team”… would you believe it? I didn’t, because they were asking if I would like to post to the Google Docs blog to help other users. True enough… Google Docs is knocking on my Virtual door. Now they’ve started a YouTube channel.

I’m about to use Google Docs to engage the community. A few weeks ago, I announced my intention in developing an open-source platform where you can create your own little community, based on Drupal. At that point, it didn’t really have a name. Mike Arrington from TechCrunch ribbed me into finding a name. So… I went went Gnomepal. That’s kind of a little mix of my username, and the word Drupal. This will basically be a “community in a box”. This will be for non-technical people who want to create a community online. It’s not a blog or a forum… those are tools. It’s things like these all combined into one tidy little package.

As we’re assembling these resources, there is a list of questions we’re asking you to fill out in order to get your feedback on this project. These questions are based in an open Google Spreadsheet. The list of questions is for both community leaders… and members.

What do you want in a community site?
What are your top 5 most important components / tools / features of a community site?
What pieces “must” be in place for Gnomepal’s first milestone in order for you to start using it to build a community?
Are there any parts that, if they weren’t available, would keep you from using Gnomepal for your community needs?
What frustrates you about your current community site(s)?
What do you love about your current community site(s)?
What tool(s) do you currently use to organize your community?
Is limited customization (color, logos, etc.) important to you?
Do you want to be able to narrow your feature set down to only a few, or to have the whole range of features always available?
How long would you be willing to spend updating your site (its content) each week?
Is it important that you be able to generate revenue with your site?
Is sharing revenue with your community members important?
Do your members pay dues or make donations to the community?
How active is your community? In what way?
How likely are you to set up a new community site within the next month? Six months? Year?
If you build a new community site on Gnomepal, would you allow all of your members to contribute promoted content, only a few members, or only yourself?
Would your site be private, or open to the general public?
Do you anticipate your community would need live (video or audio) content, or possibly event coordination tools?
Would you host the community site software on your own server, or would you prefer a tiered hosted solution?
How important is it to you that you be able to view detailed stats about your community site? (very, somewhat, not at all)

You can find all of the information about Gnomepal on the site. The way we’re building it is with total modularity and flexibility. This way, you can add only the components you want or need. We want to set up a hosted service, so that you can just answer a few questions with clicks of the mouse and BAM! Your community is set up. Instead of us saying “you have to use these services”… we’ll have it set up to be customized to your needs. You’ll be able to build your community on your terms. It doesn’t get any better than that!

The Ultimate Guide To Drupal - Step By Step Drupal Videos.

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How to use Google Docs for Live Polls and Quizzes

Chris — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:20:43 +0000

How to use Google Docs for Live Polls and Quizzes is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Did you know you can create a live poll using Google Docs and Spreadsheets? It’s quite simple, really. I stumbled across this recently when I needed to do a poll for something in a hurry, and needed to keep it anonymous. Here are the steps you need to take, in order to create your own poll or quiz!

Click New>Spreadsheet in Google Docs.
Click the “share” tab, and then title your poll.
Select “invite” to invite people to fill out the form.
Create the form with your possible answers.

Put in however many choices you want people to have.
Add Help text if you want.
Question Type: You can choose from text, paragraph text, multiple choice
I populated with numbers, so I could get the Spreadsheet application to interpret the data.

Choose recipients… either by adding your contact list… or giving out the URL to others.

Set up a formula to interpret and see your data.
In the next available column, type: =countif(B2:B500, 1) (this is just an example… use the proper rows and columns from your particular sheet).
Continue to make formulas for each of your answer possibility. For my second one, the formula was: =countif(B2:B500, 2)

I then wanted to create a chart to show my data. I entered another formula (C2:C4) and clicked the Chart button.
Choose the type of chart, and what cells you want the chart to graph for you.
Title your Chart, and choose your axis points.
If you want, you can format the number cells to hide them. I just made the font white, so it didn’t show.
Now I’m ready to publish my chart with the poll results. You can even choose to automatically re-publish and update every five minutes… and then share the link via RSS feed, or URL.

Pretty cool, eh?

How to Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation

Chris — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:27:25 +0000

How to Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – Gordon emailed to ask me if I’ve heard of Preezo.com. Preezo is a free website you can use to build presentations, much like with PowerPoint. You can easily build, share and email things with Preezo, so I decided to check it out.

Three of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, and Wirelesspacket.

Preezo looks to be an excellent site! Not only is it free to use, the layout is very clean and simple. The design is very similar to PowerPoint… “click to add title”, and such. How much easier can it get?

Online document-type storage applications such as GoogleDocs are quickly gaining in popularity. According to Kat, it’s made her life much easier. She can quickly log in to any of her Google Docs, update it, and save it. She lets me know when there are changes I need to check on via a quick sentence on Yahoo IM. There’s nothing to save, upload and email as an attachment. All I have to do is log in myself, and I’m there.

Want to make your presentations better? Don’t use so much clutter. Keep your content, but don’t add so much distraction that the viewer loses sight of what you are trying to share with them. Always remember: KISS. You all know what that means.

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How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.