Use Google Docs with MS Office

Today I am working with Google Apps collaboration using MS Office tools on the front end: multi-person, simultaneous editing to the Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint application.  I have some large legacy work that I can’t simply convert to Google Docs but need the benefits of web-powered collaboration: online backup, view only web sharing, file revision history and it supports tools prior to Office 2010 which I can’t bring myself to upgrade to.

Text Editor Epistle Syncs with Dropbox on Android

I am always looking to leverage my most commonly used tools and Dropbox is among those.  Some call it using the API, others a product eco-system; leveraged properly, a powerful tool.

One of the Holy Grails of my existence is a simple text editor to use for taking notes and it appears that on the Android, Epistle fits the bill.

It links your notes in a folder called epistle in Dropbox and syncs easily. Simple Text Editor, powerful to use.  I edit on the other end with Notepad ++ which has its own ecosystem.

Now I may have to use tools to be able to generate scripts and actions with these simple files, for now, easy notes.

Chrome Extension: Highlight to Search

Everyone has a list and a love of AddOns and Extensions for Firefox and Google.  I am no different.  And I have gone through the period of time when I have a lot of them, and when I have less of them.  What made the largest difference in my use was when Google made it so Chrome syncs, which ends up auto-installing in new Chrome installations easily, although not the settings inside each extension.  And with Firefox I mastered FEBE with Box.Net to install profiles on new installations of Firefox.

Some extensions/addons are complete tools in themselves and some simply provide something that was missing and augments the actual browsing experience.  Highlight to Search which allows you to search keywords by highlighting instead of typing them into a search box is one of the latter.

I am enjoying this extension and it is setup in all my browers as they sync.  I am having minor issues getting i to work for https pages, despite setting the options for this function.  But it is so nice, try it out.

In The Shop: Miro 3.0 and the New Miro Video Converter

Drop on over to GetMiro.com and download the new Miro 3.0 which is billed as “Faster, louder, smoother, subtitles!” and upgrade.  For those who don’t use Miro to organize and play all your video files as well as subscribe to Hulu, TED and an amazing amount of other feeds, well, why not?

What I am playing with in the shop right now is the new MiroVideoConverter which not only promises to be the easiest way to convert almost anything to an MP4, but also one of the few desktop applications to encode Ogg Theora videos.