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Google Calendar to PDF

Jan 28th, 2010
by pollyalida.
3 comments

A colleague emailed today asking how to  get a nice print calendar out of Google Calendar. I have to confess, I’d never clicked on the little PRINT button on top of my calendar to see what the options are.

After fiddling with all the options, I think the AGENDA format prints out with the most useful info.

  • Open your Google Calendar
  • Select the AGENDA format at the top of the calendar
  • Click on the PRINT button on the same row of tabs at the top of the calendar
  • Select the range of dates you want to print
  • Select other options -  include printing descriptions, start and end times, lists of attendees and more.
  • Click on SAVE AS  at the bottom of that dialog box to create handy, full-color PDF file.

Thanks to a very old Lifehacker post for this tip!

Google Goggles on my Droid

Dec 29th, 2009
by pollyalida.
13 comments

Google Goggles uses pictures to search the web. This conjures visions of magic glasses that  capture the world around you and flash back info right through the magic glasses. Anyone remember the tv show Romper Room? I really, truly believed that the magic mirror was real.   Well Google Goggles is indeed real and it’s kind of what I was imagining it to be, sans glasses.

It currently runs on Android mobile devices and takes advantage of the great camera, GPS and tight integration with all things Google.

Open up the Goggles app, take a picture of product, a logo, a book – and the search tries to find something about the items in the image. (more…)

Google Real Time Search

Dec 18th, 2009
by pollyalida.
1 comment


(short screencast)

I suspect I’m starting to sound like a Google employee, but I’m just testing out lots of Google stuff for a bunch of workshops coming up.

This short screencast shows the new real time search feature in action. For hot topics with timely content, you may see a scrolling news feed of updates appearing in your search results. Results are pulled from Twitter, FriendFeed, news sites, blogs and more. (more at Search Engine Land) If you don’t see any real time updates, use the sidebar options to limit to “Latest” results or to “Updates”.

This screencast also shows a preview of the redesign that Google has been testing. Note the changes in the sidebar. These types of limiters have been available for a while, but they’ve been hiding behind a little “show options” link. In this redesign, all the options will be very visible. I like it!

Google’s new Browser Size tool

Dec 17th, 2009
by pollyalida.
2 comments

(larger photo)

Google Browser Size is a handy new tool that helps you visualize what portion of your website viewers can see on various browser screen sizes.

Looks like 98% of viewers can see my first headline, but none of the text of that post. 90% of viewers can see the lovely photo of Sara Kelly Johns (who would really rock as President of ALA by the way!)

Should I be changing anything on my blog layout as a result of using this tool?

(via Mashable: mashable.com/2009/12/16/google-browser-size/)

Google Fusion Tables

Nov 11th, 2009
by pollyalida.
1 comment

I discovered Google’s Fusion Tables tool while preparing for a workshop on Google Tools for Reference Staff at the CT Library Consortium’s Reference Roundtable meeting last week. I’m still exploring all the features!

Fusion Tables is a Google Labs project that lets you work with sets of data uploaded from Google Docs spreadsheets or other .xls files. It lets you create charts, graphs and maps to visualize your data, filter data to focus on subsets of your data and even merge it with other publicly available data tables to create new data sets.

One very handy visualization is the Intensity Map. This is based on geography and your table must have a column with some geogaphic information – states, countries, etc. For example a table with state population data from the census can be turned into this sort of data map:

The Filter feature lets you find data in your tables based on certain conditions and create new visualizations in a flash. For example, this map of states with population over 10 million.

If you make your data public, you can embed visualizations on other web pages.

The aggregate feature opens up all sorts of possibilities for sharing data sets. This feature lets you can pull in columns of data from data tables that others have shared.

Are you using this tool? Or do you have ideas for how it could be used? I’d love to see examples of what others are doing with it.

Google Books – Barcode scanning & Search your collection

Jun 5th, 2009
by pollyalida.
4 comments

Barcode your bookshelf with Google Books features a short video that shows how to use a bar code scanner to enter your books into your personal library on Google Books. I don’t have a scanner, but I bet lots of you do! Handy, fast way to get lots of books entered quickly.

Why bother adding books to Google Books? As they note at the end of the video, once you’ve built a collection, you can easily search the full text of just your own book collection. Handy for those  times  that you can’t remember which of your books has the information you’re looking for.

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