You like Google Docs! I like Google Docs! We all like Google Docs!
If you fall into one of those three categories, then you know that Google Docs is a great, Web-based tool for creating, editing, and sharing documents—especially among larger groups of contributors than merely yourself. However, you'll also know that Google Docs is fairly worthless if you aren't browsing it from its official home page. Minus a few tricks here and there, there's really little you can do outside of Google Docs: It's the website or it's nuttin'
Well, a new freeware tool has just popped up on our radar that gives you some new "offline" functionality for Google Docs. And by that, we don't mean offline as in "no Internet connection." Rather, Google Docs Notifier does exactly as its name suggests: This utility lives in your system tray and tells you whenever a new document has been assigned to your account. And, if you're sharing documents with others, the utility will notify you exactly when someone else has made a change.
Although you can't pull up every document within Google Docs at the click of a button, Google Docs Notifier does give you the ability to quick-click zyour way to any documents in your account that happen to be unread. We'd love for a future version of this app to give us taskbar-based access to any Google Doc in our library but, as it stands, it sure is handy to be able to quickly jump to a document that a coworker has just put his or her stamp on.
Last year, Warpia's Wireless PC-to-TV AV adapter convinced us that ultra-wideband was a viable means of wirelessly transmitting video, so we were enthused to hear about the company's StreamHD, which is capable of transmitting 1080p video from a PC to another display. We were even more enthused to find out that it actually works.
Much like last year's offering, the StreamHD consists of two parts. You plug a USB dongle into your PC, which communicates with a base unit that plugs into any display's HDMI port. After installation, Windows sees the Warpia-created screen as another display, meaning you can duplicate it, extend it, and rearrange it as you would with any extra screen. The StreamHD also transmits sound, which will automatically play via HDMI, but the base unit also has an optical-out port and a 3.5mm analog-out port so you can connect it to other sound devices.
We found the StreamHD capable of transmitting video at distances of up to 22 feet with very little degradation or stuttering. The greater the distance, the more important line of sight is.
So how does it all work out? Pretty great. We tested the Stream HD across a variety of system and room configurations involving laptops, desktops, projectors, and big-screen TVs. We tested the device in the Maximum PC Lab, a home office, and a fairly typical living room setup. In all cases, we found that the StreamHD not only works, but it works surprisingly well.
When we streamed HD videos from Vimeo's website in 720p to our Epson 1080p projector, we were surprised to find that the two versions were nearly indistinguishable from each other. There was a tiny bit more compression artifacting visible on the big screen, but you had to look carefully to find it. When we challenged the StreamHD by transmitting a Blu-ray rip of V for Vendetta from our laptop to a 46-inch LED display, we were pleasantly surprised. Yes, there was noticeable banding, particularly in dark scenes, but it wasn't anything near as bad as we expected. In short, it was watchable.
With fantasies of playing Total War: Shogun 2 on the big screen with no cables, we tested the StreamHD with gaming. This took a bit of Windows wrangling; we had to set our projector as our primary display, and even then we experienced bad enough flickering that the game was pretty much unplayable. Whether it's a driver issue, bandwidth issue, or simply some weirdness of trying to shunt the Direct3D stream to another device, we don't know. But we do know it doesn't work.
So you can't have it all, but we still consider the StreamHD an invaluable and convenient asset for tethering a PC to a big screen—or any size screen, for that matter. $160, www.warpia.com
Google employees the world over now have reason to hope that the nerdy engineers running Google understand the social web more than stereotypes would lead us to think. Newly minted CEO Larry page just sent out a memo to all staff to let them know that 25% of all bonuses will be based on the success or failure of Google social strategy in 2011.
"This is a joint effort so it's important that we all get behind it," Page reportedly wrote. Even employees that are not directly involved in social products are expected to be involved with testing and giving feedback. He also encouraged Googlers to get family and friends using Google's social tools. Lats year, Google gave out $1000 bonuses and 10% raises.
What it comes down to is that Google's annual bonuses will shrink or grow by 25% depending on Google's social performance. The search giant has been seen as plodding through social unsuccessfully so far, but maybe this will give them the impetus they need to finally pull it off.
You like Google Docs! I like Google Docs! We all like Google Docs!
Google employees the world over now have reason to hope that the nerdy engineers running Google understand the social web more than stereotypes would lead us to think. Newly minted CEO Larry page just sent out a memo to all staff to let them know that 
