Google Sketchup Lets You Create and Share 3D Models

Google SketchUp is free software for Mac and PC that helps you create 3D models with ease. You can create a model and share it with Google Earth. The software is smart enough to do some of the work for you. Google is nice enough to provide video tutorials that help you get started.

Think about it. You can create furniture models easily and then design the new interior decor of your house. You can animate and share the videos. And many models are available for your use to play with for free. The program can access the net to get whatever it needs.

There is a free version and also a more powerful Pro version:

With the Google 3D Warehouse, everything you might need is already out there for you to quickly mock up your city, town, school project or that new bedroom set.

With the new version objects that are smarter and know how to react to you. drawing hints that are clearer and more consistent.

Google Sketchup [Google.com]

Google Reader Redesigned

Google Reader has launched a new interface design. I never really liked the old design of Google Reader. I had criticized the overuse of boxes, rules, lines and terminologies. Most of this has been fixed in the new version. The settings now says "Folders and Tags", but is it more clear what a tag is and what a folder is? I'm not sure. I guess it doesn't matter in practice.

The white backgrounds and the more simple design fits inline with usual Google offerings although not as simple as they've made search. It looks a lot like Google Docs. You can now hide elements that you don't want to see and the friend's shared social feature have been given more prominence. You can even hide the feed counts which can be useless if you have a lot of feeds that you don't plan to read thoroughly. There are bundles to get you started quickly with the recommended feeds and feed topics to fit your taste.

If you didn't know, Reader is a way of subscribing to web sites such as this one, news sites, audio and video programming, etc. You can reader more about the new design at the Official Google Reader Blog.

This post is a follow-up to Google Reader’s Design Kinda Sucks

Google Chrome Launches

Google Chrome, a new web browser has been released in Beta. So far in my testing, it seems pretty fast although understandably unstable at times. It's based on [[Webkit]], the open source rendering engine that Apple uses in it's Safari browser with some code adapted from the open source Firefox project. I love that there is a great amount of competition and innovation in the browser space.

Remember the old days, when web pages were basic text layouts? They were book-like. The infrastructure behind most modern browsers was designed to deal with the old web 1.0. In the era of the web 2.0 buzzword, we more often think of the web as an environment rich in applications. Google says that Chrome was built with that in mind

Features of the browser

The url bar and search bar are combined similar to the Firefox 3 "Awesome Bar". Google calls this the Omnibar. They also have a new tab page that appears to guess what you might want to look at next.

Another nice feature is that you can drag tabs out of the browser and make a new window. All of the tabs are separate processes, meaning that if a tab crashes you won't loose everything you have open in other tabs. Closing a tab frees up memory and even surfing to a new page releases the previous pages memory use. An internal task manager allows you to see what plugins and tabs are using the most of your computers energy. There is an "incognito mode" that allows you to prevent sites including Google from viewing your information. Pretty nifty.

Design

The design interface is minimalist. Especially when you maximize the window as the tabs will touch right against the top of your screen. It's a very nice way to see just the webpage and forget the interface you're seeing through. As it's based on webkit, the rendering engine is quite pretty. It takes a bit of getting used to, like most new programs, but I find the interface fairly intuitive and pleasant. It's all about viewing what's on the web (aka the cloud) and not the application, which is pretty much in Google's best interests of course. One good tip is that putting a question mark (?) in the omnibar before typing ensures a search. You can get the question mark to appear from anywhere by hitting ctrl-K.

Update September 6, 2008. I've seen many users complain about the lack of a home page button with the other navigation buttons. This is the default, but did you know you can just change this in the Google Chrome Options dialog? Just click the wrench icon for a menu, go to Options and in the Basics tab that opens check off the "Show homepage button in the toolbar" box. Simple!

Missing Google Deskbar

About four years ago, I shared a tip on using Gmail with Google Deskbar's minibrowser (DeskBAR not DeskTOP). Basically, you could get a small browser window right in your taskbar that would go away when you're done with it. The power of it came from the ability to set up keyboard shortcuts to quickly make it where you want to go on the web: Gmail, Search or whatever you could imagine Unfortunately, Google abandoned Google Deskbar soon after.

You can still download Deskbar at PC World if you want, but it's no longer supported by Google. Luckily, it turns out that some Deskbar fans have developed their own version of the software: Googol Deskbar! Let me know if you give it a run and if it's something you find useful. Or not as much.

Google Reader's Design Kinda Sucks

After reading about the design of social features for Google Reader, I was thinking about the overall design aesthetic of the product. Google Reader is just ugly. Why all of the blue and green boxes? It would fit in much better with Google's company brand if all of that was just left white. There are so many unnecessary design elements all over the thing. There are even inconsistent terminologies (folders and tags). They really need to revamp the whole look and consistency of the product. I use it everyday and think it's a really great product. The reader team really needs to stick with a simple UI that presents great content.

Google Reader's sidebar