• Google Chart API - Google Code: Holy shit that’s nifty.
  » api charts code cool goog google webdev

We use a fairly complicated spreadsheet full of formulas and pretty colors in my house to keep track of bills. This is shared on the network, but as it lives on my computer it is not available when my pc is off (alas, I have not got around to creating a fileserver yet). It occurred to me to me tonight, as I was filling in this month’s values, to try Google Docs & Spreadsheets and see if it might work for what I do. Incidentally, at first I couldn’t remember what it was called, so I googled “Google Office.” Any guesses what the first result for that query was? Anyway, so I click “upload,” upload my spreadsheet, click “share,” start typing the addresses of my housemates and they are completed from my gmail address book.

In short: yeah, so it’s over, and Google won. The end. Productivity applications are now commodity software, and Microsoft is so fucked.

• Breaking: Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick: I wonder if there was any regulatory oversight on this. This does very nearly create an online advertising monopoly. MS and Yahoo may have no other choice but to gang up when it comes down to it.
  » advertising biz goog google news

• ‘Thirst for knowledge’ may be opium craving: More fun with fMRI’s. Hypothesis: the ‘click’ of understanding a new idea is the brain releasing an opioid substance. Similar chemical activity occurs when viewing a piece of art for the first time.
  » geek neurology news science
• rare yo mamma jokes - Google Search: First result! w3wt!
  » goog stupid

The Google, Yahoo, and Flickr user persistance things have all been updated again. Now it’s possible to input another user ID without editing the script or turning off Greasemonkey. The example usage would be if you had a guest at your computer.

The next thing that’s going to be requested is to have the setup not involve editing the scripts directly, and it is possible, but… Well there is no ‘but’ really. I’m just lazy. But I’ll get around to it.

User scripts roundup. Three new ones, lots of changes to old ones. First the new and semi-new:

• googLogin.user.js [screenshot] - Google user persistance thing, by request. Useful for households with several google/gmail accounts, provides a select box for multiple user id’s, just like yhooLogin.

• flickrLogin.user.js [screenshot] - Flickr user persistance thing, which I should have thought of a long time ago, in a household with five Flickr users residing or visiting regularly.
• FlickrMail.user.js [screenshot] - FlickrMail from user icon, adds a link to FlickrMail a user to the the little mouseover-popup on their user icon.

Updates:

• yhoologin.user.js - Yahoo user persistance thing: return of the revenge of the attack of the ugly hack: it now works with Yahoo! Mail. I also added a simple timesaving thing which has been incorporated into all the similar new scripts. Selecting a user id from the dropdown will now put the focus back to the password field. All those saved clicks add up. I’m just doing my part in the fight against entropy, postponing the heat death of the universe.
• flickrPhotoPageEnhancer.user.js - Flickr photo page enhancer has also been updated, as detailed here. Some pretty important changes were made, so you should intall the newest version.

(Greasemonkey? See all of my userscripts.)

Why Google is like Wal-Mart: summarizing a lot of the things of late that have put a dent in Google’s warm-and-fuzziness factor. The article doesn’t really touch on their largest similarity, however: both companies are better at what they do than anybody else, and because of this, they get away with pretty much anything they want.

The blogger date enhancer is broken again, and I can’t figure out why. Maintaining this script is taking a lot more time than I thought (read: none), so I’m de-listing it from the user scripts repository. If I get around to fixing it, I’ll make it available for download again. Right now I don’t have the time or inclination.

My user script bloggerDate.user.js fails miserably in Greasemonkey 0.3. And y’know what? F*ck it. I’ll worry about it when 0.3 is actually released.

Update 4/13/2005: Thanks to some quick help from Tony Chang on the Greasemonkey mailing list, bloggerdate.user.js now works with Greasemonkey 0.3.

For the curious, the problem was that a change has been made which keeps variables created in scripts seperate from the document. I needed only alter the function declaration from function setPostDate(blah) to window.setPostDate = function setPostDate(blah)