Slashdot Mirror
Google Pages Reviewed
Tam Hanna writes "We got access to a Google Pages review account. Get the full scoop on what Google Pages can do." The gist of it is that "Google Pages Is Not For You." It's for your mom ;)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Of hundreds of slashdot readers as they feel betrayed by their great and perfect "Google", since this isn't for them.......
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
So I couldn't help but notice that this article is just a dupe.
Apparently, a link to a blog with a couple paragraphs and screenshots of a service that has been covered before is newsworthy. Not in my opinion.
Oh, and if you go to that blog that's linked in the article, there is a "Contact Us" tab which results in the same e-mail that the author of this article (Tam Hanna) linked to their name. This isn't a review, it's a "Oooh, this is neat" article which is odd considering I have a Google Pages account and it's not that neat--it's functional and simplistic but limiting. And please do notice the ads (some by Google) surrounding Tam Hanna's blog. So they'll be making some cash off the Slashdot effect. What a tool Slashdot has become.
If you want an example of something they rejected to bring you a duped article, here's one I submitted this morning that some of you may or may not care about:
About a week ago, Robert Jordan wrote a letter to Locus in which he stated he has amyloidosis. Amyloidosis is a rare blood disease that leaves patients with a median of one (no treatment) to four (with treatment) years left to live. He confirmed this on his publisher's website. This is devastating news for fantasy enthusiasts but on his blog he spoke about the Wheel of Time series: "Worse comes to worst, I will finish A Memory of Light, so the main story arc, at least, will be completed." Let us all wish him a permanent recovery--if he can write the epic tomes of the Wheel of Time, surely beating amyloidosis will be trivial.
My work here is dung.
Neato... is this much different than say Geocities was? Just means myspace-like sites on google domains I think. Not my cup of tea.
more pages like this
Unless it allows page creation through one huge button entitled "MAKE WEBPAGE CLICK HERE" its not going to work for my mom.
In fact, now I come to think about it, she would have to a) Use a computer and b) Use the internet, first!
...not gonna happen
"Google Pages Is Not For You." It's for your mom
But what if I am my mom?!?
This guy's the limit!
Is that the ability to travel to other dimensions?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
ooks like the page has allready been /.ed, any one got a mirror?
Mirrordot
As for the "Suitable for Mum, not slashdotters" comment, its 100MB of webspace for free
That makes it suitable for me - even just to use to transfer large files around (when I'm behind a firewall that only lets port 80 through)
My pics.
My mom is still trying to figure out why they plugged a typewriter and a rolling soapdish into the tv.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
What is the difference to other web hosters? Google Pages lets you create your site online, but it has neither MySQL, PHP, nor FTP support. You see its NO replacement for a common web hosting service, but it is almost PERFECT for users who want to publish their last holiday photos or theirselves. They need no knowledge about web hosting and HTML developing. Of course FTP is important for professional webmasters, but private users dont need FTP or MySQL. They need an good but easy web hosting solution.
My sig has been answered.
The gist of it is that "Google Pages Is Not For You." It's for your mom ;)
So you not only have summarized TFA FOR me - so I don't have to RTFA - AND you're saying it's nothing for anyone but a sporadic user... Why are you wasting space on slasdot?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Did anyone really expect anything else? These kinds of webpages have a long history of being geared towards the mass-market, and the mass-market is semi-luddites. The primary market couldn't use HTML if their lives depended on it, let alone script anything. And one has to recognize that a site that does the things the average geek would want it to do would get too much traffic to give out for free. They can't really afford to have interesting websites on a service like this, or they'd go bankrupt.
Gadzooks.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
The gist of it is that "Google Pages Is Not For You." It's for your mom.
Hey - that's my motto too.
The gist of it is that "Google Pages Is Not For You." It's for your mom ;)
So it has a personal tech support agent and hand to hold built right into it?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Google Pages isn't for your, its for your Mom.... IN BED
Seriously though, did anyone thing that Google Pages would be met by anything but annoyance and derision by the uber-geeks of the slashdot crowd?
Its like discussing Garanimals (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=garanimals) in a fashion forum. I wish they had those for adults... sigh...
Upload all your images and other binary files, and use this as the bulk storage server for your website. Keep the PHP somewhere else, and use the free bandwidth offered by Google. Wonder what the cap on transfer/month is, or if there is a restriction on outside referals...
Google pages is alright for me. I'm not a web designer, nor do I care about all the gizmos you can do. I just want to push pics and text to the web, and even a basic Wiki would be fine for me.
What I need, and Geocities doesn't provide, is a fast ad-free ajaxy interface and "one login", i.e. gmail/gtalk/whatever login.
"One login to rule them all..."
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I've actually found this tool very usefull for starting out when designing webpages too.
It produces perfect cross-browser compatible seperation of CSS/HTML; no tables for one thing, and there's a whole bunch of template layouts to get started with (2 column. The rest just involves saving the source, tweaking the CSS to your own look & feel and adding content! Granted, the layouts are never exactly what you're looking for, but still, it's a good starting point.
Well done Google!
throw new NoSignatureException();
Not really, my mom uses Front page to do her website for school. To be honest, this IS more for me. I don't classify myself as one of the elite uber geeks, who can code a webpage in perl while debuggin a SQL server and have time to post snarky remarks on /. at the same time. I HATE coding webpages. I can't think of a more boring exercise in the world. Why do you think there are so many poorly designed ones? People stop learing how to do. Its just a whole lot easier for me to post my 100 MB of internet trash to web when all the hard design work is done for me. I can post some pics, make some jokes that are funny to me and my friends, and still have time to go out and have a life that doesn't revolve around the glow of my laptop monitor.
Elitist ruin every application regardless of what its for. When did the web bcome a place where on the instructed and capable can play. Why shouldn't anyone with a computer and internet connect be allowed to have thier own special little place to play, celebrate their own life and enjoy making webpage? Do you truly think that thier 100 MBs of usage and 1 - 2 view per month is really going to affect the upload bandwidth of your cable modem causing that critical sword strike you launched at lord Razak to fall wrong ruining the last 6 months of your life? Get off your internet high horse and let people enjoy it.
I have been maintaining a website on sourceforge for years now. I had to create the pages, then tar them up and use scp to transfer the tarball to SF's server, then log in and untar it, change authorites on the files so they could be served, do minor corrections with vi, etc. Nothing challenging but tedious as hell. I would have probably released more files if I didn't have to update the website each time.
I decided that I wanted to simplify the website, put everything on one page, pretty it up with a stylesheet, etc. I had no time to do this. Then Google Pages came along and I was able to create my new website by doing copy and paste from the old website. I was able to try many different stylesheets before deciding on the one I wanted, and I published the website by pressing one button. This combined with what sourceforge gives me is exactly what I wanted.
You can check out the website at http://nicestep.sourceforge.net/ . (You'll be redirected to the google pages version from my original site.)
Maybe Google has a secret strategy to easily increase the quality of their search results.
1) Make it easy to create a useless crap webpage.
2) All crap webpage designers flock to Google Pages.
3) Google just blocks Google Pages domain from search results.
4) ??????????
5) Profit!
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
As someone who's relatively web-savy (I've used Dreamweaver and Flash extensively in the past and I've grown to loathe Frontpage) I've got to say that I think GooglePages is a truly awesome innovation. Sure - there's no one thing about it that's really that great. But think about the fact that they've bundled the web-hosting, domain-name, and web-creation all into 1 package, made it simple, and made it free.
This isn't just for people who don't can't learn HTML. This is for anyone who wants to get a decent site on the itnernet but simply has better thaings to do than to learn to make attractive web pages from scratch. Face it - the GooglePages look pretty sweet (especially compared to Geocities, etc.)
There are a lot of people out there who would benefit from being able to create and maintain their own webpages who simply don't have the time to learn more tech stuff. I tried it out and was immediately convinced it would work perfectly for my dad (an English professor - http://terryl.givens.googlepages.com/ ). He doesn't need SQL, PHP, etc. No messageboards, no forums, no online-shopping, no registering. Just text, images, and some pdf/doc docs.
My dad's a smart man. He could learn all about web hosting, html, etc. if he wanted to. But he's got a PhD in Comparative Literature and he's a litle busy with doing his actual job to start learning how to do tech stuff. There are lot of professionals and other busy people out there like him. They would benefit from a very simple web site. Not just simple to design, but simple to order (try explaining domain names vs. web hosting to most non-techies) and maintain. Not to mention free.
GooglePages is not rocket science - but in my opinion it goes a long way towards hitting the sweet spot where convenience and function are optimized for people who want to be able to make web pages with no serious training.
I also think it's not a bad idea for techies either, if you're too busy with other stuff. I'm working full time, I do consulting part time, I have my own small company on top of that, and I'm about to start a masters program. I don't have time to mess with a web site, but it's important to keep a presence on the web (resume stuff). GooglePages is perfect for that.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
maybe he's contacted the FBI to start shutting the net down after Reg didn't do much
Hi,
i am editor at TamsPalm.
We currently have server problems. Probably someone hacked into our server and linked to the FBI site.
We'll try to fix this as soon as possible.
Alexander Gratz
I clicked on the link and ended up here:
r -review/
http://www.fbi.gov/?2006/03/29/google-page-creato
BTW, there's no review there.
Today it's Digg which attracts these people, and Slashdot has improved immensely as a result. While it ain't perfect - too many dupes, and too many funny contributions get marked "-1 Troll" - I can't ever remember Slashdot being as good as it is now.
The default mode of discourse on Slashdot looks like this:
While Digg's default discourse looks like this: Digg's a game and a social club, which is cool if you just want to meet people who think exactly like you. It doesn't have great discussions though, because it's designed to encourage groupthink.Enough of the four-digit old-timers still contribute to Slashdot, too. Digg's never had wise tribal elders - and with the group reinforcement now so strong, it's not going to start attracting them now.
So we owe Digg a big Thank-You. ;-)