The Machets’ Blog

Name: Flash Earth Price: Free

There are many different companies that offer free maps. However, some areas are not covered my many map providers, and it can be quite difficult in finding out which one will return the best results. However, a new service called Flash Earth provides a very handy and simple way to search them all, including Google Maps, Microsoft VE, Yahoo! Maps, Ask.com, OpenLayers and NASA Terra.

Flash Earth has a great interface that is better than many of those on the official websites. Give it a go today!

Name: Google Pack Price: Free

Google Pack is a great program that downloads essential software for your computer and keeps them up to date for you. It is estimated that the average time for a new computer’s security to be compromised once it is connected to the internet is 12 minutes, so Google Pack should be one of the first programs to be installed on a new computer as it includes Ad-Aware and a trial for an antivirus utility (but you should probably get a better one like McAfee VirusScan or AVG Free Edition).

Google Pack comes with useful programs such as Adobe Reader to read pdf files, Mozilla Firefox for better web-browsing and Picasa; one of the best free photo managing applications. It also includes the Google Pack Screensaver so that you can enjoy your photos.

The programs included in Google Pack can be added and removed to suit your liking. Google Pack contains an excellent selection of essential and free programs, and what’s best is that they’re free!

Name: Google Browser Sync Price: Free

Wouldn’t it be nice if all your customised data could be accessed on multiple computers? With a new extension for Firefox, it’s now possible. Google Browser Sync continually synchronises the data of your choice (favourites, passwords, cookies, open tabs and windows) with an online server. With this system, you can install this extension onto multiple browsers on different computers and have the same information.

The best feature of this useful extension is the ability to restore tabs and windows from your last browser session. For example, if you close Firefox but have three open tabs with various websites, you’ll be able to restore any/all of these the next time you open the browser. For added security, any synchronised data can be encrypted. The only drawback of this extension is that you have to wait a little extra for Firefox to load, but Google promises that they’re “working on it.” It would also be nice to synchronise your other extensions and themes, but instead I resort to FEBE (Firefox Extension Backup Extension).

Google Browser Sync is only available on Mozilla Firefox.

Name: Google Calendar Price: Free

Google has released its much anticipated calendar. On first inspection, this new service is brilliant. From this clean, fast interface, you can add events by typing in a short sentence such as, “Dinner with John tomorrow 6pm.” You’re able to view your agenda very easily, and print out the day/week/month’s plan.

Google Calendar offers excellent integration with Gmail; however you don’t need a Gmail account. If you are using Gmail, you’ll be able to click a link if there is an event listed in from the sender. To make things a little clearer, if someone sends you an email, asking you to come to a meeting this Tuesday, Gmail will be able to recognise the date and event. You’ll then be able to add it to your calendar.

One of the greatest features of Google Calendar is that you can share and view other peoples’ calendars. What are the Australian Public Holidays? It’ll tell you. You could create a calendar that others can view, and another that was your own. This would be very useful in the businesses.

Another excellent idea integrated into GCal is the way you can manage invitations for an event; see who’s coming, and how many aren’t. Even better, Google Calendar doesn’t require the invitee to have a calendar with the company. You can let the guests invite others and let them view who’s coming as well. You can also deny them of those privileges.

Google Calendar is one of the best calendar solutions available. To get started, you’ll need an email address linked to a Google Account.

Edit 3/11/06: Post title changed for clarity.

Name: Picasa 2 Price: Free

For some time it has been very difficult to get your digital photos onto your computer, and then view and print them. Of course, a new digital camera comes with some very superficial software made by the manufacturer, but with it you are still not able to enhance your images by removing red-eye and lighting.

Google purchased an expensive program called Picasa in July 2004. Shortly after the takeover, Picasa became free. Since then, Google has released Picasa 2; the ultimate photo managing software for beginners right through to experts.

Picasa makes downloading photos from your camera to computer very easy. Simply connect the camera, and choose which photos you want on your PC. Once there, they can be easily categorised into folders. The best part of Picasa is probably how simple it is to edit the photos. Put in short, you can straighten them, rotate them, change them to black and white, soften them, sharpen them, add special effects, get rid of red eye in both humans and pets, and adjust the lighting and colour levels to enhance the image. Even better, most of these features are automatic; just tell it what you want and the computer will get to work!

Picasa makes it easy to print your photos, email them and put them online. When emailing photos, the program automatically resizes the files (so you can send many at a time, quickly). You can create a blog on Blogger and upload them there. Finally, you can copy them to CD or DVD; give them to friends or get them printed. You’ll save time at the professional printers and won’t have to pay any extra to use the editing features (like red eye and the others above).

Picasa is the best photo editing and management solution available. It makes editing and printing photos a breeze. To download Picasa, go to picasa.google.com

For a while now, rumours of a redesigned Google have been spreading. They have turned out to be true, and you can test it out, thanks to Garett Rogers. If you use Firefox, You can try the new look Google out very easily. Simple drag this link (Toggle Google Look) to your bookmarks toolbar, then go to google.com and search for something. Finally, click the button in the bookmarks toolbar, and voila! If you’d rather wait, in the meantime you can click the picture in this post to see what you can expect.

Rumour had it that Google was about to launch a new calendar service. This turns out to be true, as Paul Stone has discovered. He came across another program called Google Links, where you can customise shortcuts and add them to the top of the webpage. One of the links you could add is called “Google CL2.” Under it, the text “A calendar for you and the world” can be found. Unfortunately, it cannot be accessed at this time. This proves that an excellent new service from Google will be coming our way soon. As soon as it’s released, we’ll write a review on The Machets’ Blog.

Edit 2/3/06: The link removed as it no longer works.
Update 28/6/06: Google Calendar has been released; you can find our review of it here.

There are many different toolbars available to enhance your internet experience, but the fact is that there are few that actually live up to their hype. The best toolbar available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox is the Google Toolbar.

The Google Toolbar allows you to search websites instantly. That’s right - no need to type in www.googl… What is even better is that you can also search Google Images, Localised Search, News or your Gmail account if you have one. Again, you do not need to change pages to access the various searches. The toolbar comes with many other features as well, including a spell checker and the ability to have your personal details typed into to online forms automatically (auto-fill).

Yesterday, Google released an updated version of their toolbar for Internet Explorer, where you can do all of the aforementioned tasks as well as bookmark and view webpages, and email a webpage to someone. The new toolbar allows you to add and delete features that various companies create that make life simpler and easier, such as searching articles on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, the Google Toolbar developers tend to lean closer to Internet Explorer (IE) as far as updates and features go. This is probably due to IE’s design flaws and bugs. For example, up until recently the Microsoft browser had no inbuilt pop-up blocker. Still today, many users have not downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 2 which contained the crucial update. Windows 2000 users and before cannot download the latest version of IE which includes one. The toolbar includes a blocker in Internet Explorer that is very successful and user-friendly. As Firefox already has a pop-up blocker, the feature is unavailable. Google has also not developed a Firefox version (4 - the latest) of the toolbar.

The Google Toolbar is a very worthwhile addition to both IE and Firefox. IE users will find it more useful than Firefox simply because of the browser’s inability to perform. We have decided to give the Google Toolbar for IE a rating of 5 out of 5; the Google Toolbar for Firefox receives a 4 out of five.

You can download the toolbar for IE for free here, or the toolbar for Firefox here. If you are still stuck using IE6, try Firefox with the Google Toolbar by clicking the button below.
Google announced the Google Toolbar for IE version 4 yesterday on the Official Google Blog.

Average of both versions.

Google has come up with many great services. One of their best is the Personalised Homepage, where you can choose what RSS feeds you want to have on your own customised homepage. For more information about RSS, please click here. To start off, there are a number of preset feeds that you can add and remove. You can then add your own by simply searching for the particular feed name, such as “machet” if you are looking for The Machets’ Blog. The feeds are displayed in three rows and link back to the original post.

Unfortunately, your own RSS feeds only display the title of the post, with a link to see the story. This is where the Google Personalised Homepage has its downfall, where you can’t do what is written on the box. You can personalise it to some extent, but the fine details are left out. On most feeds, users only have the ability to choose how many titles are displayed. Some of the preset feeds have extra information appended to them, including the news stories, quotes of the day and your Gmail inbox.

Overall, the Google Personalised Homepage is a good service. I have it as my homepage and it loads quickly without many troubles. Google still needs to flatten out little problems and improve the service, but otherwise it gets a reasonable score of three out of five.

The Google Personalised Homepage requires a Google Account or Gmail account. To access the service, go to google.com/ig or google.com.au/ig for Australians. You can use the two localised serviced interchangeably, and you should to get the most suitable for your needs.

Orkut is a new way to communicate. Orkut is an online community where users can talk about absolutely anything, including pets, computers, food, games, travel and more. At the time or writing, Orkut has still been avaliable by invitation only. According to Google, the creator of Orkut, the reasoning for keeping the service invitation only is so it “…won’t grow too large, too quickly and everyone will have at least one person to vouch for them.”

As a user, you can create a new topic or contribute to another. You can talk about anything you like such as your hobbies. Orkut is an excellent way to communicate and has many added features that many of its competitors lack. Orkut is adfree, has a clean and simple interface, and doesn’t cost a cent.

Recently, Google migrated Orkut accounts onto its database, so you need to have either a Google Account, avaliable from google.com/accounts, a Gmail account or another participating Google service.

Thanks to the Machets’ Blog, you can now join Orkut. Simply send us an email by clicking the contact us link to the right and you’ll be able to join the thousands of active users online.