2004 June

Google’s Gmail And Me

I was graciously given an invitation to use Google’s Gmail and I happily signed up. I know I’ve been critical in past posts on Gmail, mostly due to the shaky policy that Google has implemented for Gmail. However, I’ve grown to realize that Google hasn’t given us any reason to not trust them yet. They’ve been champions of the internet, and have given us great services over the years, so why should we blast them now when we have no reason to?

With that said, I plan on using my new Gmail address as my main personal email address now. I’ve discovered the benefits far outweigh having POP3 access and using an email client. For one thing, portability, being able to check email on any computer with an internet connection. 1GB of space means I won’t have to delete the emails, and I can search emails in the archives, which has been a useful feature for me for years when working at 3DGPU.

Not to mention there are already a bunch of hacks/programs that will make your Gmail’ing experience better. Such as GmailCompose, a wonderful extension for Firefox. G-Mailto makes it so when you click on an email link, it brings up Gmail’s compose mail interface. There’s also GTray, an app that sits in your tray and checks your Gmail for any mail, and lets you quickly go to compose an email. There’s Getmail For Hotmail, which lets you forward your emails from Hotmail to Gmail. You can even import your .mbox format emails into Gmail. With this much support so early into the service, that can only be a good thing.

Click on Contact above if you wish to email me, updated to the new Gmail address.

Firefox 0.9.1 Released

There’s a new version of my favorite web browser, Firefox, which is available for download. It’s now at version 0.9.1, which has these updates/fixes:

• New Default Theme
  An updated Default Theme now presents a uniform appearance across all three platforms - a new crisp, clear look for Windows users. Finetuning for GNOME will follow in future releases.
• Comprehensive Data Migration
  Switching to Firefox has never been easier now that Firefox imports data like Favorites, History, Settings, Cookies and Passwords from Internet Explorer. Firefox can also import from Mozilla 1.x, Netscape 4.x, 6.x and 7.x, and Opera. MacOS X and Linux migrators for browsers like Safari, OmniWeb, Konqueror etc. will arrive in future releases.
• Extension/Theme Manager
  New Extension and Theme Managers provide a convenient way to manage and update your add-ons. SmartUpdate also notifies you of updates to Firefox.
• Smaller Download
  Windows users will find Firefox is now only 4.7MB to download.
• Help
  A new online help system is available.
• Lots of bug fixes and improvements
  Copy Image, the ability to delete individual items from Autocomplete lists, SMB/SFTP support on GNOME via gnome-vfs, better Bookmarks, Search and many other refinements fine tune the browsing experience.

Ambient Nights - Life As It Is

Once again, Spoofy has created a masterpiece in ambient pleasure, with a new Ambient Nights mix, called Life As It Is. It starts off with a fascinating line from a movie that I’m going to paste here for your reading pleasure:

“‘Life as it is.’ I have lived for over forty years and I’ve seen ‘life as it is’. Pain. Misery. Cruelty beyond belief. I’ve heard all the voices of God’s noblest creature — moans from bundles of filth in the street. I’ve been a soldier and a slave. I’ve seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I’ve held them at the last moment. These were men who saw ‘life as it is,’ but they died despairing. No glory. No bray of last words. Only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning, ‘Why?’ I do not think they were asking why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all — to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” –as Miguel de Cervantes in MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972)

If you love ambient music, I highly recommend checking out Ambient Nights. It’s musical heaven masterfully put together.

Bill Gates To Start Blogging?

The rumor mill is hinting that Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, may start writing on his own personal blog. If he does post in his own blog, I have a feeling anyone on his blogroll will wish he’d get slashdotted instead of billgate’d daily. It should be interesting to see what he would have to say, and whether he goes about hyping Microsoft products.

“Bill and the company are very enthusiastic about blogging,” he said. “Bill talked a lot about the power and potential of blogging at the CEO Summit and the advantages it gives to communicating and sharing information with a wide range of potential audiences.”

Glad to see it only took him 4 years to realize that. :)

Mating Bulls

A funny joke I saw in our forums at 3DGPU:

The Rodeo

A man took his wife to the Rodeo and one of the exhibits is that of breeding bulls. They went up to the first pen and there was a sign that said: “This bull mated 50 times last year.”

The wife poked her husband in the ribs and said, “He mated 50 times last year.”

They walked a little further and saw another pen with a sign that said: “This bull mated 120 times last year.”

The wife hit her husband and said, “That’s more than twice a week! You could learn a lot from him.”

They walked further and a third pen had a bull with a sign saying: “This bull mated 365 times last year.”

The wife got really excited and said, “That’s once a day. You Could REALLY learn something from this one..”

The husband looked at her and said, “Go up and ask him if it was with the same cow.”

The husband is expected to recover.

ShortStats

I’ve tried numerous stat tracking scripts over the years, and I’ve been more frustrated than pleased by the results. So many have been either too bloated for such a simple request, not very effective, or doesn’t work at all. I’ve finally found one that I love and had no trouble with getting it to work — ShortStats. Courtesy of ShawnInman.com, it uses an ingenious CSS element, overflow: auto, all information is presented in one page, and they’re all useful information that helps you understand the visitors of your site. I’ve found this via ThoughtAnomalies.com.

Person Familiar With Gmail Speaks Out

A lady that worked on the technology that scans the content of the emails to present to you advertisements based on keywords, has spoken about the controversy behind Gmail and the technology it uses, and why we shouldn’t worry. Phy posted it in the comments for the post I made earlier, Gmail Is Too Creepy, so you can read it here:

“I personally don’t think this technology is an invasion of privacy – the emails are being scanned for content, yes, but the results of that scan are used to present *you* with relevant ads. The results of the scan are not stored anywhere, and even if you click on one of the advertising links, the advertisers aren’t given any data on *why* their ad was brought up as potentially relevant to you. The advertisers don’t even know *who* clicked over to their site – when you click on the link, Google tracks that there was a click-through (but not who clicked through) and then just opens the target page in a new window. So information about what kinds of messages you read isn’t being distributed anywhere, or used for any purpose other than to make your personal experience better. Yes, the result is that Google hopes to make more money on the ads because they are more relevant to you, but the data about what you’re reading doesn’t go anywhere.”

Max Thrane has also posted his thoughts on Gmail and the ridiculous things people will do to get an invitation.