Alfred's musings

I've just stumbled over this good blog post from Vadim on how offline works on CR-48... I might just get a few MP3's along for the train journey, when I can't pick up the tethering (local mobile wifi hotspot created by 3g phone) from my Android phone: Chrome OS Notebook Cr-48, AKA Mario: Local user files on Cr-48

Google apps can be a game changer for most businesses, but many of these businesses have not yet had the chance to see what apps could do for 'em. One of the reasons why people have not yet spoken to Google, is because we're perhaps not yet been in their neighbourhood. Well - we're changing that. Have a look at our roadshow in the UK ... See you there!

In ChromeOS on the CR-48, you can't resize your browser window. It's always full screen. You can create more tabs, but when you do "create new window" (or CTRL-Shift N), you get a new browser window. Where? Well... sort of to the right of your current screen... and the screen then shifts to be filled with this new window. And you can rapidly switch back to other "windows" with ALT+1 (or 2 or 3..9). I love this. I tend to have mail/calendar/contacts open on screen 1, temporary research (e.g. the presentation or whatever open on screen 2), and then frequently some incognito windows for logging on to e.g. this blog with different credentials as my logon. And it allows for instant switching... something *very* useful also in presentations with demos... it's as good as having several machines to your disposal.

Funny - when I recently was in South Africa, I waked up to a sales person in Incredible Connection, and asked him:"What do you think of Chrome notebooks? Do you sell 'em? Will they be any good?" His response:"Nah... anything that shiny will scratch easily. Every time you put that in your bag, you will be worried that it get another nasty scratch." Little did he know that not all things Chrome is shiny. :) I've received my new shiny (actually, matt) Chrome OS notebook, and I love it. I'll keep you posted on my learnings and experiences, but I'm so confident that it's the route to go, that I've switched to *only* using my ChromeOS CR-48 notebook. So what was my first few hours like? Impressed. Despite having a lot of Windows running in my heritage, I learnt to also love my Mac over the last year... and the CR-48 machine certainly had the best bits of the Mac, even in this pre-release version. The keyboard touch and layout, the touch pad (...

I just saw that Tesco is now selling private cloud generators for cheap . I'm very tempted to buy!

Just as I arrived at Google this morning, I discovered what *really* happens to the 5bn-odd spam emails that Postini (or more accurately GMS, Google message security) catches each day for 100k businesses and 20m users (oh... not counting gmail users...) Spam removal services at Google Once caught, the spam is packed densely in these yellow boxes (that resembles some nuclear waste removal boxes), and are then taken away by these friendly people, to be stored somewhere where the sun does not ever shine.

I had the privilege to attend an exclusive presentation course delivered by the   Bob McDowell  (Microsoft) many moons ago, and some of his advice to deliver great presentations still resonate in my ears. He hated Powerpoint. He loved the "b" button during powerpoints, and he really made me change the way I deliver presentations for good. Listen to the audience first. Craft a good story. let the slide *compliment* your talk, not distract from or duplicate. Recently, I shared some of these secrets and learnings with  Martin Manser , and he published a good short, sharp book on the topic . And when I saw this 4 minute comedy on poor powerpointing , I thought it's worth sharing it! And while on the topic: SlideRocket and Prezi are two alternatives that are amongst my favorites for delivering eye-popping presentations!