Google Docs does a lot of things well, but…

Google Error

…writing an academic paper with APA formatting isn’t one of those things. Which I learned writing my first paper for my Masters last week.

The first is such a basic feature that I (wrongly) assumed that it was part of Google Docs – page numbering.  Um, turns out, I was wrong, but only discovered this at the last minute as I was cleaning up the formatting to make the paper submission ready.

Now, I could have gone in and manually added page numbers as this was a relatively small paper of 1500 words, but if I happened to be working on a 50 page paper (or, eeks, longer) that would have been a pain.

I did discover a page numbering hack, but it involved going into the HTML code – something I have no problem doing, but that others who are just looking for some basic word processing capabilities may not.

But the clincher for me was the failure to get APA references formatted correctly in the bibliography. The problem was the hanging indent in the second line of the reference. In order to get a hanging indent, I had to modify both the HTML and create a custom CSS class.

.hang {
        text-indent: -0.5in;
        margin-left: 0.5in;
}

I used inches since this was something that will be printed.

Again, not a huge problem for me, but for someone who doesn’t know either HTML or CSS a real barrier.

But the disappointing part was that when I applied the CSS to create the indent, it appeared to stick, but then it suddenly reverted back to no hanging indent. In front of my eyes. One minute it was there, the next it wasn’t.

I did some digging and I found that if I applied the style and then quickly hit save,that seemed to work (of all the kludges in the world, this has to be the kludgiest and makes NO sense to me). However, it was really random and occasionally I would be working on the document and it would suddenly revert back from the hanging indent to regular formatting.

Needless to say, this was both  frustrating and disappointing. The one time it did stick long enough for me to print/download, I noticed that the APA formatting worked when I printed a pdf copy of the paper, but when I downloaded a Word version (as requested by my instructor), the APA formatting was gone.

This was a deal breaker for me with regards to relying on Google Docs for anything more than casual use. Which is fine. It is still a hugely useful product. The night before, for example, one of my team members and I were working collaboratively on a Google Doc over IM. She was in Ontario and I was at home in BC and it worked flawlessly for collaboration.

But to rely on Google Docs for something as structured as an APA formatted paper? I downloaded Open Office last night.

Yes, there is a reason why it is still in Beta.

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New Netvibes feature: drag and follow widgets

A few days ago, just as the D2L user conference Fusion was starting in Minneapolis, I created a Twitter alert for the conference tag, #D2L09. Since I couldn’t attend this year I wanted to virtually keep track of what was happening at the conference.

To do this, I went to the Twitter search page and typed in the conference tag #D2L09, which brought up a list of tweets from the conference. From there I grabbed the RSS feed and manually created a widget in Netvibes (glowing fanboy praise of Netvibes in just a minute). With the widget created, I did not have to continually go back to Twitter and search for that tag every time I wanted a conference update – the tweets automatically appeared in the Netvibes widget as they rolled in.

Today, Netvibes released an update which will greatly simplify this process in the future – drag and follow widgets.

If you have a Twitter widget installed on your Netvibes page and you see a hashtag come through a tweet from someone you follow, all you have to do is click and drag the hash tag onto your Netvibes page. Netvibes automatically creates a new Twitter widget for you populated with Twitter search results for that hash tag. Very handy!

You can also do this with people you follow in either Twitter or Facebook. Drag their username and a breakout widget with just their stream is created. Also very handy for following a few key people in my network.

Okay, here is the Netvibes fanboy gushing (which could really be gushing about any of the current breed of customizable web startpages, from iGoogle to Pageflakes).  Of all the web tools I use, none (save Firefox) is more used than Netvibes, my personal startpage that is my aggregator for all things web.

When people ask me how I manage to keep track of all this web stuff, I say Netvibes. It is the dashboard from which I can monitor numerous email accounts, my Delicious, Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook networks, see who is commenting on and linking to my blogs, listen to podcasts, catch the current web zeitgeist,  and set up alerts for everything from Twitter tags to academic publications through our library. All the information I need is on one handy dandy page.

What began as a tool I used to keep track of blog subscriptions (functionality that has now been replaced for me by Google Reader and Feedly) is fast becoming a real time web monitoring service that allows me to quickly gauge what is going on and with who in my world.

If you haven’t explored the wonderful world of personal startpages, I highly recommend it. It is a powerful and (for me) indispensable tool to quickly and efficiently take the pulse of my network and track my interests across the web.

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Google Image Search adds license filter

Google announced a new feature for Image Search today that should make it easier for you to find, modify and reuse images from across the web.

Google Image Search now has a license filter which will allow you to filter out images based on the license type. This makes it much easier to find public domain or Creative Commons licensed images to reuse or modify.

To access the license filter you have to go to the Advanced Image Search options. At the bottom of the page you will see an option called usage rights with a dropdown list with the options to return images labelled for reuse, labelled for commercial reuse, labelled for reuse and modification and labelled for commercial reuse and modification.

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I've added Facebook Connect and Twitter login

I have been using Intense Debate as a comment system for a few months now on this blog and, after a few initial hiccups, have been happy with the system. I like the threaded comments and the ability to reply to comments via email without having to log in to my blog. And Intense Debate makes it easy for users to comment using video (which I have activated, but have yet to see an example of from readers).

But above all, I think comment systems do a better job in helping foster a sense of community in a blog. It makes it easier for me to keep track of repeat visitors and commentators, which helps me develop relationships with people who take the time and effort to post a comment.

To help with this last point, I have activated a couple of new Intense Debate options that might make it easier for people to leave comments.

You now have a number of options as to what “identity” you want to use when leaving a comment on the blog. You can do so anonymously as a guest, enter in a name & email address, sign in using an existing Intense Debate account or an OpenID account and now sign in using your Facebook or Twitter account.

What this means is that when you leave a comment using either Facebook or your Twitter account, the link back from your comment will go to either your public Facebook profile or your Twitter page. I am also hoping that it will make it easier for you to share content from the blog on either Facebook and Twitter, but at the moment I am still figuring out exactly how that part works. Still a work in progress…

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