COOL Google Apps & Docs

I am hyped at the recent innovation of "Google's Apps" & Sites. This is great to work with applications and documents directly online. In addition, a private site is possible for projects, collaboration etc.

I am really taken aback at the technology that Google is pushing to work with documents, spreadsheets, presentation documents (such as PowerPoint etc).

Google Docs works with RTF and HTML formatted documents (including other formats). Here is the kicker that takes this technology to the edge...you can work with all your documents in a central repository directly within the Google Sites. This is a great way to collaborate with others, work on projects, and any other documentation. There is also a revisions feature.

Comments are able to be posted and visible to everyone projects or documents. I was astonished on the ease of use of creating documents directly from within the Google Apps or Google Docs site.

Can you believe it? Students who seek a method to work on educational projects or research subjects (amongst other possibilities) have a slick way of doing this using Google technology. They can also invite other students or professors to view or contribute to their projects or documents and provide feedback directly on the site.

In doing all this you can publish your data directly from within the Google Sites and send a pubic link for others to view.

I suspect quite a few features will continue to be added as Google continues to lead cutting edge technology. I also believe that as usual, you will find other competitors mimicking this technology to keep pace.

For more information you can visit the following links:

1. Google Apps Overview - http://services.google.com/apps/resources/overviews/welcome/topicDocs/page16.html
2. Google Sites video overview - http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/video/sites_overview_video.html
3. Setup a site - http://docs.google.com

Parallels Virtual Machine used by other application

Have you heard of the cool application that runs Windows on your Mac? It is a very handy app!

I love it except I had one major thing go wrong that I learned the hard way 'how' to avoid (if at all possible) in the future. Well I was running Parallels and I inserted a USB dongle to view some pictures on a SD card. I ended up removing the dongle and suspending the virtual machine. Later when I went to resume the virtual machine I was presented with the following message:

"Virtual machine cannot be started because of the following problem:

Parallels Desktop is unable to access the virtual hard disk image file /Users/../Documents/Parallels/../*.hdd. The file is used by other application."

I tried so many things to get my virtual machine up and running again so I wouldn't lose my data...but alas...hope was gone! I went through all the knowledge base articles and Googled as many articles I could in hope of finding a solution but sadly - nothing.

I actually was determined to find a solution to this so I walked my Mac Laptop to the Parallels office in Renton, Washington. I know this was not normal protocol but asked to speak to someone. I worked with a lady named Tracy who was very helpful - though there is no known solution to date. But interesting - I did find some very interesting information about some best practices:

1) Try not to use snapshots (this is more of a VMWare feature that Parallels does include)
2) Backup the *.hdd file to an external hard drive if possible. If something goes kwirky - you got your backup via copy n' paste.
3) When closing down the virtual machine - Shut Off Windows within the virtual machine "first"

Look for more tech tidbits to come...
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