Cloud Cool
Another day, another cool new technology thingy from Google.
If you ever wondered how you could live in the cloud, today’s introduction of the “chrome web store” may provide the beginnings of an answer.
But only the beginnings…
Using Chrome (the only browser that works) you can go here and download any number of free (or fee) apps.
Very cool.
These apps cover communications to games to utilities and almost everything in-between. So now, theoretically, I can trash Microsoft Office, Open Office, Photoshop, Print Shop and several other programs that reside on my computer and do the same tasks using cloud based, mostly free, apps.
Right?
Not Yet
Note the key word in the preceding paragraph: “Theoretically”.
Being me, I gave one app a try….and it did not work the way I needed it to work. Granted, it might be much harder to use than I hoped it would be, forcing me to spend a lot more time trying to figure out what went wrong. I will, but, for now….this stuff should be super easy. Like it is on my HTC Aria android based smart phone.
Gripe #1
Aviary is an advanced photo editing app and all I need are two very basic features to make me happy (at least for now):
- The ability to compress an image for web display.
- The ability to make a banner or logo with pictures, photos, and words.
Easy peasey, right? Wrong!
After waiting and waiting for my JPEG to upload….this is the error message I got:
Ooops…what the heck does it say? 🙂
I could not upload a 150 k JPEG image to even start a new logo for ForCarol.com. This should be easy. Oh well….my trip to the cloud will be delayed. 😦
Gripe #2
I know the apps are loaded, but, from my normal iGoogle home page…I CAN’T find them!
I looked everywhere (granted I did not spend a whole lot of time looking since I felt that it should be apparent). Arrrghhh. I’ll keep looking, but, it should be easy peasey to find them like it was when I first installed them (see pic).
UPDATE: I found out how to find the apps once they are installed. Click on the + (new tab) sign. You will then get the page shown above. Here is where the + sign is located in Chrome:
Conclusion
I will put my cloud computing hopes and dreams on hold for awhile. Some of the bugs / issues need to be ironed out (and I need to ramp up the learning curve), but, I am pretty sure we will get there…..eventually.
I sure hope so…
I also hope in the new year that software developers will test, debug, evaluate, modify, test, etc……a bit more carefully and thoughtfully…like the old days. I do like finding bugs / issues, but, geeez…give me a challenge. 🙂
I will be trying more apps in the next week or so….I’m pretty sure I’ll find some gems.
TechyMike: Technology Made Easy 