Great Googly Moogly
Posted on | July 25, 2008 at 11:48 pm | 5 Comments
I’m finally acquiescing and allowing Google to take over my life. I recently became the last person I know to get a gmail account. (That address is the first three letters of my real first name, followed by my full last name, at gmail.com. If you send me e-mail, please use that instead of my old address.) It’s got some problems, but I like it a lot. The colored labels are cool. The label system itself is pretty neat, though it took some adjustment time to get used to. It’s a lot like folders, except that you can put a message into more than one “folder”. The only thing I really don’t like is that the filter creation is fairly primitive. I’m sure there are easier ways to do the filtering I’m doing, but I haven’t delved too deeply into all the secret language stuff yet. Combining criteria is tough. And the filter UI is not very well done. But I assume that will all get better as the system changes. And where’s the “trusted sender” list? The user interface in general is better than the one for my ISP’s web client, so it’s nice to have a consistent mail interface I can use from anywhere. I can even see using it as my main e-mail client on my home computer, instead of Eudora, which I was using for my ISP mail. I like having all my old e-mail archives accessible from everywhere (mail server space was limited with my ISP), even though part of me worries about that. The iPhone gmail client is pretty keen and clean, which makes me want to do more e-mail from the phone.
I’ve also switched my RSS feed reading from the Sage extension in Firefox to Google Reader. Sage was okay, but you had to set it up independently and re-add every subscription on every machine where you were accessing Firefox, and of course you couldn’t use it if the machine didn’t have Firefox. And if you read an item on one machine, it didn’t get marked as read on another. No problems like that with Google Reader – once you’ve read something, it’s read all over. And it constantly updates, so you don’t have to tell it to go search the feeds like Sage. Sage also ends up taking up a lot of screen real estate, as it is there for every tab in Firefox. Google Reader only takes up sidebar space on the tab where you’re viewing it. The iPhone client for Google Reader is pretty swell too. With the iPhone taking over my world (and my life), that’s pretty important.
I’m sure at some point Google will have a replacement for practically everything. It will even start writing my blog entries for me, and they’ll make more sense. Jieuoi Hoiudhk yiuyeo.
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Road vomit. I was driving to work today and was stopped behind a car at a red light. The driver of that car suddenly opened his door and vomited long and hard onto the road. I’m talking huge pink chunks of something, maybe his lungs. It was quite the sight. The light turned green and he was still a bit involved with that, but managed to make it through the green light anyway. Very impressive. I had a fun time dodging the mess in the road. Then when he got across the intersection, he stopped at the first available space on the side of the road, opened the door, and let loose with some more. I got a real closeup view of that one. The guy was a vomiting machine. He was dressed in workout clothes – looks like he had just come from the gym. Probably got some bad wheat grass at the juice bar or something. That’s why I don’t go to gyms.
One of my fears is having to throw up while driving. I guess it’s good for me to see that it can be done and survived, without messing up the interior of the car too much.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “piss off my neighbor with porn”.
Comments
5 Responses to “Great Googly Moogly”
July 26th, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
As you may know, Google recently completed it’s acquisition of my life too, what with me using gmail, google calendar, reminders, and to a limited extent google documents. There’s still another web app they haven’t replaced for me, and that’s Ta-Da lists (http://www.tadalist.com/). I have several lists of “things to get to at no specific time” on there.
As for road puking – I abhor it’s little brother road spitting. I guess as a guy who isn’t much into sports I’m just a failure at high-octane machismo, but I don’t know why so many dudes can’t make it through a light without having to lean out the door and expectorate!
July 27th, 2008 @ 9:00 am
I’m still doing my to-do lists on my Palm PDA, using Datebk6 (along with many other things I still use that app for). I’m just waiting for an iPhone version of that app, and I think it’s possible that will come to pass before too long.
It’s weird that the iPhone is so Google friendly with Reader and Gmail and all, and yet it won’t sync with Google calendar/contacts. However, it will sync contacts with the Yahoo Address Book.
July 27th, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
I pretty much had to move to Gmail after an abrupt upsurge in spam last year. I stubbornly stick to allowing “wildcard” addresses on my (several) domains, which means I get XYZ234FreeMoney@mydomain.com sorts of random crap rather than just the ones which manage to find my actual inbox name. Mozilla filtering was able to handle this, though, until about a year ago when I suddenly began getting hundreds per hour for some reason.
Luckily, Gmail had opened up IMAP by then so I could move painlessly – and in fact it allowed me to drop my web hosting account entirely, which I’d been holding onto primarily for Email purposes since I have no real need for a web presence these days.
I’ve used Google Reader since I started using RSS, though, and have a hard time imagining anything else. Keeps all my podcasts sorted.
July 28th, 2008 @ 7:16 am
Whoo-hoo! As you know, I’m responsible for the PSTOTD leading to your blog…
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:24 am
As you know, I’m responsible for the PSTOTD leading to your blog…
No, I didn’t notice that. And now it’s rolled off the end of the log, so I can’t verify…