Scripting for the Google Web

Not too long ago, Google announced the availability of scripting for the web for Google Apps Standard Edition customers too. If you play with a little bit, you will begin to see the power of JavaScript in its ability to provide meaningful automating capability to web documents, particularly as it is being promoted by Google.

A very interesting application in automating — screenscraping as it is called by the author, Tony Hirst — can be studied here:
Screenscraping With Google Spreadsheets App Script and the =importHTML() Formula.
The author illustrates how council elections results of the town of Lichfield, UK, can be analyzed using Google App Script.

While the Internet is well known to be a great equalizer, it is also true that it also a great personalizer, thanks to scripting everywhere -- at the [browser] client and in the [server in the] cloud.

The state of globally accessible health information on the Internet.

The Google blog post titled Listening to Google Health users is illustrative of the work in front of us before we can claim universal accessibility of health information over the net. The ICD codes have been in use for quite some time now, since 1893 in some form or the other, but the Google Health episode brings forth the need for greater accuracy in defining these codes and their descriptions.

The point to be noted is that computerization greatly helps, and sometimes accelerates, correct classifications.

Use of arbitrary HTML in Gmail signature block.

If you have been wondering about when Google will get around to accepting arbitrary HTML in Gmail signature blocks, look no more! There is a published solution, on the web, but with one constraint: 

You have to use Firefox as your browser. A web developer named Chris Pollock has made that publicly available as a Firefox add-on.

 
I have started using it, and love it. Don't you relish the ubiquity, and hence the shareable characteristic, of the Internet?