Google's new Dashboard sure would tie in nicely to Android, Chrome OS
When a few blog sites yesterday happened upon Google's YouTube video of the new Dashboard, they moved quickly to pull it down. Though the original video is still MIA, Google made an official announcement of the new feature on their own blog last night and the video above is now ready for public consumption.
While Dashboard is now live -- you can check yours out at
https://www.google.com/dashboard -- what's being talked about by most sites is how this move is all about transparency and privacy controls. Heck, even the official post hits on those points: "In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard."
The post continues, "Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings."
That's fantastic, and I'm sure it's a big part of the story, but I can't help thinking that there's a tie-in to other Google projects. Perhaps Chrome OS and Android, for example?
If Chrome OS is really going to enable location-independent computing across all your PCs, you're going to need easy access to something in Google's cloud which provides a heads-up display of your vitals.
Chrome OS and Android users are likely heavy users of Google's services, right? So why not give them a "My Computer" or "Control Panel"-type web page which provides easy access to settings and usage stats for Google Docs, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts,GDrive (coming soon?), Google Voice, and the rest of your Big G-cloud-powered apps?
But hey, if they were planning on making this play nicely with their OSes, shouldn't there be some kind of reference to Chrome somewhere? There is, of course - tucked away in the "other products" block:
It makes sense to me that Dashboard would be a perfect fit for Android and Chrome OS users - but what do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments!
While Dashboard is now live -- you can check yours out at
https://www.google.com/dashboard -- what's being talked about by most sites is how this move is all about transparency and privacy controls. Heck, even the official post hits on those points: "In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard."The post continues, "Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings."
That's fantastic, and I'm sure it's a big part of the story, but I can't help thinking that there's a tie-in to other Google projects. Perhaps Chrome OS and Android, for example?
If Chrome OS is really going to enable location-independent computing across all your PCs, you're going to need easy access to something in Google's cloud which provides a heads-up display of your vitals.
Chrome OS and Android users are likely heavy users of Google's services, right? So why not give them a "My Computer" or "Control Panel"-type web page which provides easy access to settings and usage stats for Google Docs, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts,
But hey, if they were planning on making this play nicely with their OSes, shouldn't there be some kind of reference to Chrome somewhere? There is, of course - tucked away in the "other products" block:
