Google Chrome Browser and my Brother printer Scanner

As part of my move to Google Drive and all it entails, I have been wondering how I might get on with my brother Printer Scanner. The printing side is just not a problem, but and here is the usual BUT, I at present have no way of connecting my Chrome browser to the scanner, I have to use the Apple interface and scan in that way save and then use the imported pdf file.

But there is a work around that seems to work. that is to use the scan button on the printer and set the destination to either mail or file.

Here's how it works. for mail, I have my printer connected via  USB link, so the Brother printer can see mac mail and uses that to link up, I send that to Gmail and all as before. Why it picks mac mail when I have it set up for Gmail is beyond me, yet this works so not a problem, although I managed to correct this simple by going into Mac mail and setting the default mail to Google Chrome.

The other method, and the one I shall use in the future, is to save to file, here as I use a Mac it saves it to the Photo folder, must be a setting somewhere that says save here, but no worries it's a simple drag and drop to the right google drive folder.

I don't have, a Chrome book, so can't test it, but if anyone has can they do a swift trial and let me know.

My.Sketchup is quickly coming of age

Have you had chance to play with my.sketchup.com lately, I should if I were you, its suddenly becoming a very useful tool.

I have left it alone for a month or two, and today I thought lets have a peep and see whats been added, well to my surprise, most of the major tools are there and working well.

First is section plane, and scene settings, these work well and the dialog box for playing the scenes is so easy to set.

Next is save, now if like me you use Chrome, then you might have to addmy.sketchup.com to the advanced privacy setting to allow it to communicate, but as its a named site ythis is the only one that it will allow.

Views works well and all the usual are there, so are styles, and to my mind are easier to use than the stand alone program.

Layers are also there and again I find them easy to use and set.

The two main menu pallets are simple to use, but not movable, but they work well and as so small they fold away without taking up to much Realestate.

As for upload I tried to load in a dwg but could not see how to do this, currently limited to skp, jpg & png

If layout is added, then this is going to change the whole CAD market, I can easily do my work on any Chrome book and thats simply going to do away with the rather expensive Mac I currently use, simply because I can't run Autocad or Vectorworks in any other way,

Saving models seems limited, and as far as I can tell, I can't share models with a team, so this area needs work.

Overall I like what I see, the improvements are working well and just need a few tweeks, plus one or two more functions added to make this a real product, but as it's still beta, I don't think I can moan to much, just ask nicely.

My ToDo list become so much more with Google Keep

For so long, and I have written about it her and in other places, but my todo list have gone through so many different formats, and for a long time this been a series of paper lists that were rewritten as new item appeared and old items completed. It beat electronic versions, in as much as I just like the feel of pencil and they are always there, as I use my Moleskin to keep the lists with a sort of yellow sticky note-it as a label for the current page that had the latest list.

I even went as far as copying the page to Evernote, my goto place for all storage for a while, well a long time,,,,,, that is till I found Google.Keep.

And keep for so many reasons has transformed a lot of my note keeping and todo lists ot tasks or as Keep describes their version, a Reminder.

So its so Keep that I moved, not so much as a complete goodby to Evernote, but more a trial, and I just clicked with the whole thing, ok so I am a big Google fan, and use Gmail and all it offers, Drive plus a lot more, so surprise, surprise, keep fitted better than I had hoped.

So I used keep to store information, the tagging worked and apart from not being able to drag in pdf documents I like every thing it offered, the small way-round the pdf was to store it in a folder within Drive and just gather a link for it and post that into the keep document, it works well.

Then I started to experiment with some of the functions, the best and one I want to promote here, is the reminder. Clicking this within any note allows me to add a date, and get this a time for any action, which appears in Google Cal, yes I use Cal as my main calendar, you have to switch the calendar from Task to Reminder, and low and behold they appear as a small blue icon, if you complete it then click the icon and mark as done, this leaves the note created in Keep intact, and ready for search to loo over it if needed, try and do that in Tasks or my old Moleskin list, almost impossible.

Also, the note in keep is tagged, with a variety, if needed, specific tags if the note applies to more than one project.

One word of slight warning, you can add a reminder straight from Calendar, and it works well, but there is not a note made in Keep, and I just found that adding notes to a keep note reminds me of things I need to know for that task rather than delving into my moleskin, or scraping the depths of my memory, so I make my reminders in Keep, and add my reminder from there.

So there it is, Keep is my new reminder to do things, a repository for my notes and links. The video below is my short overview. As for Evernote, sadly I don't see a use for it, except that I have a lot of notes stored in it, so it remains, that is till I sort a way of transferring it to Keep,,,, let you know !.