[a dense loner]

Wtf? Why do I have to come to your house and hand you an undisclosed sum of money in a brown paper bag then? At least the American football tops a nice touch after all these years tho

[a dense loner]

That was a reply to an earlier geek statement from jasper and somehow ended up in the middle of nowhere 

[slackline]

Google maps to include UK public transport data

All great, but...

A good article on Why the World needs OpenStreetMaps

As much as I find Google Maps useful, the fact that they alone control what is showed is enough to convince me to switch.

There is a comprehensive list of Android applications that use OpenStreetMaps which I'll be investigating and trialing.

Yet to find a decent replacement for Maps though, but I don't actually use it much.

I did find that NavFree worked pretty well when I drove to the Dolomites last year, matching my mates TomTom that he paid £80 for to have on his iphone.  This is just for navigation though and doesn't include the wealth of user generated data that is overlaid on the maps and is the point of the above article on Why the World needs OpenStreetMaps

EDIT : Incidentally just came across this OpenStreetMap site thenextis.com

[Jaspersharpe]

Wtf? Why do I have to come to your house and hand you an undisclosed sum of money in a brown paper bag then? At least the American football tops a nice touch after all these years tho

That's not true, I gave you the bank details for my Monaco account in the name of Harry Redknapp's dog. 

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Todays Google Doodle is a working Rubik's cube...still can't bloody do it.

[slackline]

A good article on Why the World needs OpenStreetMaps

Yet to find a decent replacement for Maps though, but I don't actually use it much.

Found OSMAnd to be a very good functional replacement so far.  Free version limited to downloading ten sets of maps (I'll probably upgrade to Pro at some point), but works very well off-line with these, lots of information/detail on OpenStreetMaps too.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

https://smartypins.withgoogle.com/

Nicely done except most questions are a bit easy and the map pretty much gives you the answer

[slackline]

Google Image Quiz guess what search returned the image.

[slackline]

[Clart]

Got an email last night saying that Google calendar sync will stop working at the end of July. I rely on this to to see works calendar on phone. Does anyone know of a work around or an alternative to sync between outlook and Google calendars?

,<rant>As an aside what is Google's problem with fixing things that aren't broke (Google sync, maps cache, location app etc). It's enough to make me think about looking at apple products. <\rant>

[slackline]

When you refer to syncing it sound as though there are perhaps two 'syncs' going on here.

1) You synchronise the work Outlook calendar with your Google Calendar.
2) You synchronise the appointments this pulls to your phone.

Which is it that the email has said will not be supported beyond July?  I suspect 1) and would be very surprised if it were 2).  If its 1) is there an explanation as to why?  It could be that Microsoft are changing the interface/format of their calendar (as they are prone to do with their proprietary formats/software) and Google may be fed up with spending time re-programming to work with a changing goal.

What people do with their free software and services is very much their business, if you want something specific you usually have to pay for it.  I never understand why people complain about free services/software.  I've decided to move away from Google Maps for reasons other than the annoying limits and manner in which you cache maps (see this article) in favour of OpenStreetMaps  and their Android client is very good, takes a little learning as with all new software, but very comprehensive and the navigation works very well.  Theres a Free version for which you can download upto 10 sets of maps for off-line usage (unlimited on the paid for version).  At some point I plan to add Jim's bouldering POI's to OpenStreetMaps.




Anyway, back to  .

If you use "Ok Google" to do voice searches/actions you can now correct things with No, I said.  Smart stuff.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

They stopped supporting Gsync a while back, but it's only now they are preventing it working. It used to work well at my work. The GApps Sync (GASMO) only works with Apps for Biz or Education accounts.

You can manually export from Outlook and import into Google. But this isn't a sync.

There are third party tools to do a proper synch, some of which are free, none of which I have tested:

http://www.fieldstonsoftware.com/software/gsyncit3/
http://oggsync.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/funambol/
http://www.companionlink.com/
http://sync2.com/
lots more listed here!
http://www.syncdroid.net/

You'll probably need admin rights to install most of them.

[Clart]

Yeh, syncing outlook calendar with Google calendar both ways is what I rely on Google sync for. My work, in their wisdom, don't allow remote access, which is absurd as I need to be able to book appointments when in the field and, more importantly, plan days I can take off to climb without going into the office to check my calendar. Our IT system blocks most things but seems oblivious to sync. Will try some of the programmes above and report back.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

If you can't install anything this might be worth a play
https://synqya.appspot.com/

[slackline]

hiddenfromgoogle.com for search terms which have been removed from Google.

[slackline]

How about we just constantly fuck with the Gmail compose window and make it smaller and less usable every 3 weeks?

[Falling Down]

I'll blow his trumpet for him but Tesla of UKB runs this teamhttp://www.wired.com/2014/07/google-project-zero/ as well as all of security for consumer products at Google.  When he's not bouldering or surfing...

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/starwars/

[slackline]

A month old, but...

Google OpenSource TensorFlow : Smarter Machine Learning for All

[slackline]

Confirm your Google Account Security and get an extra 2Gb of online storage.


Source

[slackline]

Confirm your Google Account Security and get an extra 2Gb of online storage.


Source

The free storage offer ends tomorrow (2016-02-11)

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Slow old desktop, laptop, netbook etc? Install ChromeOS on it for free...
http://www.neverware.com/freedownload

[slackline]

Looks like a fork of Chrome OS (based on old version numbers).  What does it offer over the Official Cr OS Linux ?


Chrome OS is purportedly being rolled into Android to work on PC architectures if this is to be believed

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Slow old desktop, laptop, netbook etc? Install ChromeOS on it for free...
http://www.neverware.com/freedownload

Just realised that link might auto-download a 500mb file, try this if you just want to read about it and not use up your data allowance
http://www.neverware.com/

[Fiend]

Somewhat related.

I got the Asus Flip Chromebook recently. Mostly, I like it. Great build quality, useful semi-tablet functionality, essential keyboard, decent screen, super-quick boot up, good price etc etc.

The only issue I am struggling with is the ChromeOS apps are fairly rubbish. I've been trying to get photo-editing apps, video-editing apps, and some half-way decent games. What is available seems to be online only (I don't even want to try editing 1+gigs worth of videos online), or, well, utter garbage (e.g. photo-editing app that you can't even crop or resize on). As for searching through "offline games" in the Chrome Apps store, it actually made me feel nauseous.

So I tried a few things - I tried installing both the ARC Welder and Twerk Android Runtime thingies, downloading android app .apks, and running them, I don't think I got a single one of those to work. I also tried installing Crouton and Unbuntu to get Linux working as an alternative to Chrome, indeed it got Linux working (awful, ugly, cumbersome thing that it was), but then I couldn't get Steam working as hoped as there was some 32bit / 64bit clash.

So..... Any ideas?? I know a small indie company like Google is going to struggle to get decent apps ported for it's OS, but even so, surely there must be something I can do / get??