Moonshots Beyond the Cloud

Whenever I can, I try to support bloggers and creators by buying their books or paying contributions. Hoping someone appreciates my writings and work, I set up a Buy Me A Coffee donation button on my blog and a link in my newsletter. Buy Me A Coffee is a creator support and crowdfunding platform similar to Patreon. The Buy Me A Coffee home page. Although it’s a smaller and younger startup, Buy Me A Coffee has some interesting advantages over Patreon . For example, it accepts one-time payments, not just membership subscriptions, and it doesn’t require an account for supporters. As a Google user there are a couple more Buy Me A Coffee features I like such as signing up with Google and supporting Google Pay via Stripe . I connected both supported payment processors, PayPal and Stripe. Creating a Buy Me A Coffee account is straightforward. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes, even to someone like me who obsesses over tweaking and playing with settings. Connecting Buy Me A...

I’m starting the weekly email newsletter Practicing Google: Practical resources on Google products and related tech . I’ll send out the first issue on January 24, 2020. The newsletter will help you do more with Google. I encourage you to subscribe, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time. About the newsletter Each Friday I’ll send you links to tips, tutorials, apps, in-depth information, and other practical, actionable, or hands-on resources . This content will expand your toolbox and help you do more things with Google products and related technologies, such as web apps and tools. The logo of the Practicing Google newsletter. The value of Practicing Google is it distills my extensive experience with all things Google. I’ve been using Google products since 1998, starting from the search engine. Besides a Google early adopter, in 2009 I was an Android early adopter . As a member of the Google Product Experts Program (formerly Top Contributors Program) since 2014, I ...

The Mercury Reader Chrome extension is a reader mode tool for cleaning off the clutter from web pages. It reformats the pages by removing distracting elements and leaving only text and images for a cleaner experience. Mercury Reader is one of my must-have extensions and I use it daily. A post of my blog reformatted with Mercury Reader. It’s installed on all my Chrome OS devices and it’s available whenever I need it. I can fire it up when visiting sites with tiny or illegible fonts, uncomfortable color combinations, pop-ups, excessively wide text margins, pages encrusted with ads, or with designs that interfere with reading. I don’t use a permanent ad-blocker , so Mercury Reader doubles as an on-demand ad blocker. The extension removes distracting features such as navigation elements, sidebars, headers, and ads . Besides the images, it leaves only the text and sets it with clean fonts and attributes that make reading more pleasing. Although it does a good job in most cases...

When saving an image on Chrome OS devices such as Chromebooks there’s a quick way of copying it to the clipboard for direct use. In the notification that appears when saving the image, click the button for copying to the clipboard. This way you can immediately use the image without reloading it from the local storage . For example, pasting the image into Gmail’s message composition window, in the post editor of an online discussion board, in a conversation of a messaging app, or in the content editor of nearly any platform that supports attaching images. The Chrome OS notification for saving an image with the option for copying it to the clipboard. I took the screenshot on my Chromebox, which I use in Italian. Chrome OS issues these notifications every time an app or extension saves an image. For example when saving images from the browser or a photo editor, or capturing and annotating screenshots . If you copy an image to the clipboard, the image file is still saved to the...

One reason I’m learning Python is its ecosystem. A culture of documentation and the countless learning and training resources create opportunities of growing as a developer. The table of contents of the Python documentation. There are all sorts of free and paid tutorials, books, videos, courses, and other materials on all aspects of the language, the tools, and the libraries. For example, I maintain a list of free Python books . Still, some important intermediate to advanced topics receive little or no attention. So, I’d like to offer some suggestions and feedback to Python authors and instructors on what may interest a hobbyist like me . Here are some ideas for topics to cover. Although I found something relevant, the material I’ve seen is still missing something. If you know of any such resources, please let me know. Not being a visual learner I’m more interested in text-based content than videos. I also prefer books to the more structured approach of courses. System...

The day I self-published my book Space Apps for Android I sent free coupons to 16 close friends. The Leanpub coupon generator. All of them share my interests and the topics the book covers. But none of the friends downloaded their free copy . Not a single one. Over the following days I sent free coupons to a few more friends who, again, didn’t download the book. It’s nothing personal. Aside from life and other distractions getting in the way, it’s just that my friends are likely not typical readers who actively seek content like my book. If you publish a book, don’t bother telling your friends and family. Aside from the lack of interest, there are other reasons not to have your friends download the book. If you publish on Amazon, your friend’s purchasing history may have a negative impact on the algorithmic recommendations and reduce the book’s visibility. Also, the feedback you can get from complete strangers is more candid than what friends or family will say not to sou...

The Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder Chrome extension is my favorite screenshot capture and editing tool. A screenshot annotated with Nimbus Screenshot on my Chromebox. I love the extension for its variety of capture options and annotation tools . I use Nimbus Screenshot on Chrome OS and it integrates well with the Google cloud as it lets me save to Google Drive. I use it for all the Chromebox and Chromebook screenshots I post to my blog and elsewhere. I live in the browser and the Google cloud, so It’s a good fit for my workflow. Although the extension can also do screen recording, I don’t take advantage of these features. Nimbus Screenshot is so handy I often fire it up for quickly annotating arbitrary images other than screenshots. I can add arrows, text, and other editable vector shapes such as ellipses and rectangles. In a pinch it doubles as a basic drawing app , often faster than opening a dedicated app. To annotate an image, select the Blank Screen ...