I seem to have adopted several of Google's products for running my on-line Activities. I have an iGoogle page where I have assembled various gadgets that let me see at a glance what is happening on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and others. I also use it to access my Gmail and Google Calendar. I find that keeping some of my data on-line is convenient when moving between home and office. It might be better on my PDA, but I haven't worked out how to synch PocketPC.

I have a couple of applications for a spreadsheet that I can access from wherever I may be, so I decided to check out Google Docs. The spreadsheet seems fairly capable, if a little slow. I've not tried the graphing options. You can export to various formats, including open ones. This has the potential to be another threat to Microsoft's monopoly, especially where people want to collaborate on documents. Office is far more than more people need anyway. It's amazing how far web applications have come in the last couple of years. I remember being amazed when I first saw Google Maps. Google are trying to get more of the market by providing the Apps platform where they will host applications written by others. There will be costs involved, but it's likely to be cheaper than rolling out your own hardware in many cases and more resilient to load spikes. I'd love to play, but need to find an itch to scratch.

I was just discussing the issues of being a non-Microsoft user with a colleague. It causes me a few issues with connecting to the office from home, but I have something that works. He considers the MS tax to be worth paying for the sake of less hassle. Ironically we were discussing this using the non-free Skype chat, but that's one of the compromises I have accepted. To get some stuff done I have to use a few non-free applications.

At HertsLUG this week Malc was educating us on the OOXML situation where MS have managed to force their 'standard' through the ISO. This seems to have been ignored by sites like the BBC. We still have a chance to make our opinions on this scandal heard by writing to the politicians, but I don't know if this will affect the outcome.

Also at the LUG I had my first hands-on with an Asus EEE. It was slightly bulkier than I expected, but is very neat. I'm not sure I would use the default Xandros GUI, but it seemed to handle the applications well. It even had Penguin Racer and Frozen Bubble installed. I gave the BBC iPlayer a quick try, but couldn't get it to do full screen. I don't really need a big, full-featured laptop, but one of these would be handy for when I'm away from home and want wireless internet and the ability to do various tasks, like photo editing or hacking.