I really liked Scribd Analytics feature (and that we have racked up 3200 reads in 11 months for Poets and Hackers). I think Google Docs /Drive should really incorporate more Scribd like document sharing features including social (now that Slideshare is off the market for a relatively cheap $119m) and turn on analytics by default
I really liked the heatmap on the document feature in the second screenshot.
Anyways nice to see someone out there cares for Poets &….
Here are some notes from reviewing Google Drive https://drive.google.com/ vs Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/.
1) Google Drive gives more free space upfront than Dropbox.5GB versus 2GB
2) Dropbox has a referral system 500 mb per referral while there is no referral system for Google Drive
3) The sync facility with Google Docs makes Google Drive especially useful for prior users of Google Docs.
4) API access to Google Drive is only for Chrome apps which is intriguing!
https://developers.google.com/drive/apps_overview
Apps will not have any API access to files unless users have first installed the app in Chrome Web Store.
You can use the Dropbox API much more easily –
See the platforms at
https://www.dropbox.com/developers/start/core
But-
(though I wonder if you set the R working directory to the local shared drive for Google Drive it should sync up as well but of course be slower –http://scrogster.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/using-dropbox-with-r-2/)
5) Google Drive icon is ugly (seriously, dude!) , but the features in the Windows app is just the same as the Dropbox App. Too similar 😉
6) Upgrade space is much more cheaper to Google Drive than Dropbox ( by Google Drive prices being exactly a quarter of prices on Dropbox and max storage being 16 times as much). This will affect power storage users. I expect to see some slowdown in Dropbox new business unless G Drive has outage (like Gmail) . Existing users at Dropbox probably wont shift for the small dollar amount- though it is quite easy to do so.
Install Google Drive on your local workstation and cut and paste your Dropbox local folder to the Google Drive local folder!!
7) Dropbox deserves credit for being first (like Hotmail and AOL) but Google Drive is almost better in all respects!
  Free |
FreeUp to 18 GB (2 GB + 500 MB per referral)
|
Account info |
  1 TB + |
TeamsPlans starting at 1 TB
|
Large shared quota, centralized admin and billing, and more! |
and finally I can download my Google spreadsheet file using-
require(RCurl)
download.file(url=”http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem”, destfile=”cacert.pem”)
b <- getURL(url,cainfo=”cacert.pem”)
write.table(b,quote = FALSE, sep = “,”,file=”test.csv”)
Previously (for past 3 5 7 hours)-
The codes at http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/09/using-google-spreadsheets-with-r-an-update.html dont work thanks to the SSL authentication issue. and the packages at [http://www.omegahat.org/RGoogleDocs/] and [https://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rgoogledata/] are missing in action.
So I mixed the codes at http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2009/09/how-to-use-a-google-spreadsheet-as-data-in-r.html and http://www.brocktibert.com/blog/2012/01/19/358/
and I get this error while using http://thebiobucket.blogspot.in/2012/03/r-function-to-read-data-from-google.html#more
Error in read.table(file = file, header = header, sep = sep, quote = quote, :
more columns than column names
Check out the new Google Plus Hangout with Extras
http://www.google.com/support/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1289346&ctx=go&hl=en
Hangouts with Extras is a simple and easy way to connect and collaborate with your colleagues in real time. With Hangouts with Extras you can:
Connect with multiple people simultaneously: With group video chat and web conferencing you can connect with multiple people around the world at the same time.
Share your screen: Ever look at something that you couldn’t quite put into words? Well, with screen sharing you give other people the ability to view what’s on your computer screen. You can choose an open window screen on your computer and give everyone in your meeting the ability to look at it. Learn More
Collaborate in real time: You can meet, share notes, and even work on documents at the same time.Learn More
For enterprises- you can throw out your video conferencing software and collaboration tools and get a new mobile app for free.
Small drawbacks in the Google Plus- lack of integration with Youtube (it is one way integration from youtube to hangouts but not the other way round fixed), lack of a whiteboard for sketches- (like again a shortcut to a google doc 🙂 ) or even bundling the record from your web cam to record your desktop.
Ultimately enterprises want to know how they can use this stuff for e-learning modules or webcasts.
—————–END—————————-
Alternative uses-
Check out NY Met Museum with Friends (thanks to Google Art Project)
Play Linkin Park Playlist (100 videos) with Friends btw. great graphic redesign of Youtube icons!! Now if we could only convince the Google Docs to get more integrated with Open Office or LibreOffice templates
or even set up a DJ table session using Google Hangouts. with Extras of course.
But as it stands it may be good to go for webcasts !!
I use Windows 7 on my laptop (it came pre-installed) and Ubuntu using the VMWare Player. What are the advantages of using VM Player instead of creating a dual-boot system? Well I can quickly shift from Ubuntu to Windows and bakc again without restarting my computer everytime. Using this approach allows me to utilize software that run only on Windows and run software like Rattle, the R data mining GUI, that are much easier installed on Linux.
However if your statistical software is on your Virtual Disk , and your data is on your Windows disk, you need a way to move data from Windows to Ubuntu.
The solution to this as per Ubuntu forums is –http://communities.vmware.com/thread/55242
Open My Computer, browse to the folder you want to share. Right-click on the folder, select Properties. Sharing tab. Select the radio button to “Share this Folder”. Change the default generated name if you wish; add a description if you wish. Click the Permissions button to modify the security settings of what users can read/write to the share.
On the Linux side, it depends on the distro, the shell, and the window manager.
Well Ubuntu makes it really easy to configure the Linux steps to move data within Windows and Linux partitions.
NEW UPDATE-
VMmare makes it easy to share between your Windows (host) and Linux (guest) OS
Step 1
and step 2
Do this
and
Start the Wizard
when you finish the wizard and share a drive or folder- hey where do I see my shared ones-
see this folder in Linux- /mnt/hgfs (bingo!)
Hacker HW – Make this folder //mnt/hgfs a shortcut in Places your Ubuntu startup
Hacker Hw 2-
Upload using an anon email your VM dark data to Ubuntu one
Delete VM
Purge using software XX
Reinstall VM and bring back backup
Note time to do this
-General Sharing in Windows
Just open the Network tab in Ubuntu- see screenshots below-
Windows will now ask your Ubuntu user for login-
Once Logged in Windows from within Ubuntu Vmware, this is what happens
You see a tab called “users on “windows username”- pc appear on your Ubuntu Desktop (see top right of the screenshot)
If you double click it- you see your windows path
You can now just click and drag data between your windows and linux partitions , just the way you do it in Windows .
So based on this- if you want to build decision trees, artifical neural networks, regression models, and even time series models for zero capital expenditure- you can use both Ubuntu/R without compromising on your IT policy of Windows only in your organization (there is a shortage of Ubuntu trained IT administrators in the enterprise world)
Revised Installation Procedure for utilizing both Ubuntu /R/Rattle data mining on your Windows PC.
Using VMWare to build a free data mining system in R, as well as isolate your analytics system (thus using both Linux and Windows without overburdening your machine)
First Time
- http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0Download and Install
- http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/downloadDownload Only
- Create New Virtual Image in VM Ware Player
- Applications—–Terminal——sudo apt get-install R (to download and install)
- sudo R (to open R)
- Once R is opened type this —-install.packages(rattle)—– This will install rattle
- library(rattle) will load Rattle—–
- rattle() will open the GUI—-
Getting Data from Host to Guest VMNext Time
- Go to VM Player
- Open the VM
- sudo R in terminal to bring up R
- library(rattle) within R
- rattle()
At this point even if you dont know any Linux and dont know any R, you can create data mining models using the Rattle GUI (and time series model using E pack in the R Commander GUI) – What can Rattle do in data mining? See this slideshow-http://www.decisionstats.com/data-mining-with-r-gui-rattle-rstats/If Google Docs is banned as per your enterprise organizational IT policy of having Windows Explorer only- well you can see these screenshots http://rattle.togaware.com/rattle-screenshots.html
Just an announcement from The Document Foundation (which has notable supporters including Google etc at http://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/)
With both Google Docs and Libre Office – it seems like a flank attack on Office productivity software (from the cloud and from the PC/tablet ground)- however Microsoft’s Sharepoint is much better in collobration compared to the Google Docs and it has huge number of templates (more than the 38 extensions and 13 templates right now at the links below (just like WordPress has huge number of themes compared to Blogger)
Anyways, check out- it is an interesting start
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/
Extension Releases
….
and http://templates.libreoffice.org/
iOS
50 GB +
100 GB +
DECISION STATS 