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Open Office 2007 .DOCX Files in Gmail, Google [Google]

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Open Office 2007 .DOCX Files in Gmail, Google [Google]

The Google Operating System blog points out that both Google web search and Gmail can now read and convert Office 2007 documents, i.e. .DOCX files. That makes for easy mail-yourself conversion if you need it, or bulk-converting files to HTML, just like with PDF files. There are, of course, online tools like Zamzar for those without Gmail.


It's Official: The Canon 5D Mk II Will Turn Us All Into Professional Cinematographers [Canon 5D Mark II]

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It's Official: The Canon 5D Mk II Will Turn Us All Into Professional Cinematographers [Canon 5D Mark II]

Yeah, sure, it was cool to see a professional photographer spin HD video gold from the Canon 5D Mark II. But that guy is famous, had a mountain of equipment, a crew, and a freaking helicopter. Not so for the humble photographer and videographer at Akihabara News, who took the 5D, a few days and a laptop to shoot and splice together this stunningly beautiful five minute video.

The results are spectacular, and really drive home the point that with this $2700 camera, anyone with an eye for shooting and a laptop can create a cinematographic masterpiece. There is a discernible and annoying shake in some shots, but nothing that couldn't be remedied with a little jury rigging.

Make sure to enable the HD and smoothing options in the embed, and check out the second half of the video for more evidence that the 5D's low-light capabilities are completely unreal. Another lesson learned from this video: even the most amazing shots can be ruined by unsettling facial hair. Deal with it, Monsieur Akihabara. [Akihabara News]


louisgray.com: FriendFeed Offers Twitter A Chance to Play Lifestream

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louisgray.com: FriendFeed Offers Twitter A Chance to Play Lifestream

Shared by timlauer
Louis Gray posts about a new feature from FriendFeed that allows you to post items from your various social networks automatically to Twitter. For example you can set up FriendFeed to automatically post to Twitter when you make blog posts, Flickr posts and a number of other such social networking sites that you have set to update in FriendFeed. As he points out you might not want to do this for all of your activity, but the ability to have items automatically update in Twitter is a pretty nice feature...

Today, FriendFeed introduced a set of features that lets users update Twitter with all their FriendFeed activity, based on their own preferences - be it with native FriendFeed entries, or shares from popular sites, be they Disqus, Last.fm, YouTube, Flickr and many more.

Unlocking access to millions of books

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Unlocking access to millions of booksPosted by Adam M. Smith, Director, Product Management

We've always said that in a sense, Google Book Search is as old as Google itself. Back in their Ph.D. days, Larry and Sergey dreamed of a way to make it easier for anyone, anywhere, to access the information held within the world's books.

Today, we're excited to announce an agreement with U.S. authors and publishers that dramatically expands access to millions of books online, taking us one big step closer to fulfilling that dream. If approved by the Court, this agreement will unlock access to millions of out-of-print books to the benefit of users, authors and publishers.

To read more about the agreement, head over to the Official Google Blog. To read more about what this means for users, check out our microsite.

Google Labs adds Calendar, Docs gadget to Gmail

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Google Labs adds Calendar, Docs gadget to Gmail

Googlegadgets One of my native Google Apps dislikes is that the apps themselves are pretty disjointed. Sure there are links to the other apps if you're in one, but there's a productivity benefit to having certain data types on the same screen. You could go the Greasemonkey route of course, but Google just made the experience a little better with two new Labs features.

Within Gmail, you can now add an agenda view by hitting Settings, Labs and enabling the Google Calendar Gadget. Likewise, you'll see a Google Docs Gadget that offers searchable access to your docs, spreadsheets and presentations. While it's no big deal to have another browser tab open when you jump between Google Apps, it's nice to have an option that makes Gmail more like a client app. One of Outlook's strengths for example, are the many views that offer all of the at-a-glance data you need to be productive. While these new Gmail features don't offer the same elegant functionality, they do bring the web app closer.

Evernote

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Evernote

Shared by timlauer
Jon Hicks takes another look at Evernote. I too am finding this to be quite a useful tool for organizing information such as receipts, paper documents that for some reason my district does not send out as electronic files, and snapshots of things like white board notes and items notes with a mobile phone image...

I’m not sure if there are new features in there, but recently I’ve been changing my mind. Part of the reason for this is the iPhone app: it becomes a way of collecting data when I’m out – voice notes, text notes and photos, which can then be synced and searched later.