1. Go to https://geoauth.google.com/gev0/free_trial.html
  2. Fill out the form and submit
  3. Download Google Earth Pro and start install
  4. Check your email for username and the free key
  5. When installation prompts you, enter username and serial number, and tick ‘Automatic Login’

As you probably know, Google Earth Pro adds some useful extra features for AEC and BIM… enjoy.

via
LinkedIn

More on the free release:

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com.br/2015/01/google-earth-pro-is-now-free.html

There are lots of ways to share and track tasks among teams, and this is probably one of the most rudimentary (ie. least feature packed). But I have tested it, and it does actually work. Basically, you install a script from the instructions below, and it allows you to share a given Google task list with selected people.

Scroll down to How to Create a Shared Google Task List? and follow the steps after clicking below:
Shared Google Tasks: How to Share and Sync your Task List with Others

Daniel Monsén has created one of those addins where you just have to say “this makes sense”. The key feature of Bimframe Connect?  It allows users to import and export data from Revit to a Google Spreadsheet.

The overall concept is that you can export data to a Google Spreadsheet, collaborate using a web client or mobile device, then import the data and update the Revit model.  Collaborators obviously don’t need Revit – just access to the Google spreadsheet.

Personally, I love the idea.  The more transparent the Revit building database is, the easier it is to add intelligence to the model, share the model, and detect design problems.

Overview:

The above video includes the following info:
Email: daniel@bimframe.com to get trial key.

Download the version 0.8 beta trial add in here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxQhjQerGcutN3RCV0lCS2pmeFk&usp=sharing

There is a series of tutorials on Youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_8PPGYG2g576rssp9ykCw/feed

Plug this into your RSS reader:
http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/56667/tag/REVIT_FEEDS_RSS

I also burnt this feed to allow for easy subscribing (via email etc):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Revit_feeds_rssInoreader

I previously had used a shared folder on Google Reader to aggregate all of this into one RSS via Feedburner (and then into PDF), but obviously that method is broken now.

Dare I say that I think that InoReader is going to be my Google Reader replacement…

Some other notes
Another way to view the Revit Feed reading list, check out:
http://www.feedspot.com/folder/4RTJsGUe
(this one will not be updated, as I think I’m going to go with InoReader, not Feedspot)

Another idea
I thought I had found a way to aggregate my Revit Feeds into one RSS for easy reading / viewing.  Without getting into all the details, it uses a Yahoo Pipe to turn an OPML (containing many feeds) into one RSS feed, sorted by date.  Here it is:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=70129693f6803988c7fe858f4fb9822b&_render=rss&opml=http%3A%2F%2Fanonanon.p4o.net%2Fpipelist.xml

In the end, the result is not very predictable or reliable…

This is the pipe:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=70129693f6803988c7fe858f4fb9822b

Just go to https://www.google.com/takeout/ and login.

Many Google Services are supported – Blogger page export was recently added.  You can also backup all of your Google Drive docs and original Youtube videos.  The list goes on:

Some more info:
Google Takeout now offering Blogger and Google+ Page exports –

And some seemingly outdated (?) info at:
the Data Liberation Front 

Install the Google Drive desktop utility and the Skydrive desktop utility.  After syncing both of these utilities / folders, you will have an offline version of both sets of documents in folders like:

Then, use FreeFileSync to sync folders locally.  For example, I made a subfolder on my Skydrive called Google_Drive and synced all of my Drive documents to that Skydrive folder.  You would have to do something similar in the opposite direction too.

Once the desktop utilities have re-synced, you now have access to all of your docs from each cloud.

Note:  Skydrive docs can’t open .gdoc yet.

You may have guessed that I have started using Skydrive due to my recent acquisition of a Windows Phone 8 device, a Nokia Lumia 820…

More info:
Google Drive Help

In Google Docs, you probably know that you can upload files and view them with the Google Docs Viewer.

But did you know that Google Docs Viewer can display the following formats?

  • Apple Pages (.PAGES)
  • Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
  • Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
  • Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
  • PostScript (.EPS, .PS)

If you want to view something online, just put the URL of the file in at the following link:
Google Docs – Viewer

For a more complete list of filetypes, check out this link.

You can now filter Google Image Search to just show you SVG files. Here is an example search:
“Nintendo” SVG files

See Only Resize-Friendly Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) In Google Images | Lifehacker Australia

So what is so good about SVG? From the wiki page:

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic (i.e. interactive or animated).
The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.
SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files. This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted and, if required, compressed. Since they are XML files, SVG images can be created and edited with any text editor, but drawing programs are also available that support SVG file formats.

It seems the AUGI forum data situation is still up in the air – will all that user generated content ever become available again?

In the meantime *some* of the AUGI data can be accessed using the Google Cache.  For instance, if you want to find the Google Cache of an old AUGI page:

  1. Open Google.
  2. Get the old address of the AUGI page ( for example http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=71280&page=5 )
  3. Paste the address into Google and Search.
  4. When the result comes up, click on the ‘Cached’ link.  The actual link will look something like http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCUQIDAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3A1yS0KRA-4woJ%3Aforums.augi.com%2Fshowthread.php%253Ft%253D71280%2Bgetlevel%2Brevit%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dau%26client%3Dfirefox-a&rct=j&q=getlevel%20revit&ei=AG4BTZStF8HqrAfPqv2QDw&usg=AFQjCNEMUW1ouZzNr6ZVj2py2M6ZanqXig&sig2=BcJo4z9C6M5iCTRATFY00A&cad=rja

This won’t last forever…