Gmail - All Mail
Google opened the next level of the Gmail beta to blogger customers. So, I've got mine.
Very impressive. The UI is far snappier than any webmail I've used, faster in some ways than Eudora 6 (which is, admittedly, abysmally slow for a desktop app). Lots of JavaScript. Runs fine in FireFox. Very simple UI of course, but elegant. Very Googleish.
It will come in very handy. I may set up some of my email systems to routinely copy messages to gmail, providing an accessible archive of my email. It will also be heavily used for file transfers. If I want to move a file from one system to another, I'll just sent it to myself. Unlike conventional email, when I send a message to myself via gmail only ONE message is created (not a send and receive message). So Gmail will be a highly efficient mechanism for file transfer and for quick offsite backups.
update
This is exciting. I'm finding many uses for Gmail in combination with Google's usenet postings and blogger postings. I routinely bcc items to gmail, which is becoming a kind of router for files and messages between services. Everything sits in my inbox, where I can search and sort.
Gmail represents a hard data lock though -- Google owns all the data. If there's anything I do that I don't want to lose, I copy it to my own machines. Increasingly, however, I'm throwing data out in one form or another.
Once Google starts integrating GMail (really threaded messaging > traditional email) with RSS feeds (blogger, blogines) ... Well, it's great to have an exciting and innovative company other than Apple in the world. For all his wealth and power, I wonder if seeing brilliance in other places somehow bugs Bill Gates ... probably not :-).
update
It's not really email. It's more of a message oriented file system. There's really one container -- the "ALL" container. Instead of "folders" you have "labels" -- which are categories for items. Items can be messages or files with message metadata. Threading provides a secondary way to traverse the file system. Searches are combined with "labels". The quick keys provide a UNIX like experience -- Google's UI paradigm is a cross between UNIX command line and GUI across all their applications.
Very subversive.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Friday, April 23, 2004
Project Planning & Scheduling Software -- Project KickStart
Project Planning & Scheduling Software -- Project KickStart
KickStart integrates with Outlook -- sort of. KS projects become Outlook task categories, and KS tasks become Outlook tasks. There's no synchronization -- KS is always the source of truth and it overwrites the Outlook categories. Without Outlook that tasks must be treated as "read only" or moved out of the KS categories.
I'm going to experiment with this a bit. I'll preface each KS project with the prefix ks_ so I know not to touch those tasks in Outlook. They will also display on my Palm (unfortunately, due to PalmOne's failures, Palm synchronization is not what it used to be ...).
john
KickStart integrates with Outlook -- sort of. KS projects become Outlook task categories, and KS tasks become Outlook tasks. There's no synchronization -- KS is always the source of truth and it overwrites the Outlook categories. Without Outlook that tasks must be treated as "read only" or moved out of the KS categories.
I'm going to experiment with this a bit. I'll preface each KS project with the prefix ks_ so I know not to touch those tasks in Outlook. They will also display on my Palm (unfortunately, due to PalmOne's failures, Palm synchronization is not what it used to be ...).
john
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Topix.net and mangled advertisements
Digital Cameras News - Topix.net
Topix.net is a largescale news aggregator. I prefer Google's front page, but Topix has a very large ontology (knowledge structure) of news topics. That's not evident from the front page, but if you search on a topic you can quickly get long lists of topic domains -- about 250,000 according to an NPR show.
This is their topic collection for digital cameras. They do some kind of limited RSS feed as well. I'll experiment with this and probably link from my news page to very specific Topix.net domains -- such as digital photography.
They seem to use the targeted advertising business model, which could be a great fit to these focal domains. It doesn't work so well when searching on domains that aren't in their ontology. Here's an ad associated with results from a search on "plague":
Topix.net is a largescale news aggregator. I prefer Google's front page, but Topix has a very large ontology (knowledge structure) of news topics. That's not evident from the front page, but if you search on a topic you can quickly get long lists of topic domains -- about 250,000 according to an NPR show.
This is their topic collection for digital cameras. They do some kind of limited RSS feed as well. I'll experiment with this and probably link from my news page to very specific Topix.net domains -- such as digital photography.
They seem to use the targeted advertising business model, which could be a great fit to these focal domains. It doesn't work so well when searching on domains that aren't in their ontology. Here's an ad associated with results from a search on "plague":
Buy Plague Products
We link to merchants which offer Plague products for sale.
PC Magazine: Top 100 Lesser Known Web Sites
PC Magazine: Top 100 Web Sites
PCMagazine (I fondly remember the original ZDNet BBS ...) has a list of 100 web sites -- but it's not the usual list. These are "lesser known gems" divided into 12 categories (lifestyle, photography, etc). At the top right side of each page there's a short list of the entires, so you don't have to navigate the entire page. I may comment here on the one's I end up liking, but they're worth a review. Many, but not all, are familiar to me.
The persistent URL for this page may also be: www.pcmag.com/top100websites
PCMagazine (I fondly remember the original ZDNet BBS ...) has a list of 100 web sites -- but it's not the usual list. These are "lesser known gems" divided into 12 categories (lifestyle, photography, etc). At the top right side of each page there's a short list of the entires, so you don't have to navigate the entire page. I may comment here on the one's I end up liking, but they're worth a review. Many, but not all, are familiar to me.
The persistent URL for this page may also be: www.pcmag.com/top100websites
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client
PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client
I lost track of this app a while ago. It's free and worked when I last used it. Need to try it again.
I lost track of this app a while ago. It's free and worked when I last used it. Need to try it again.
Monday, April 19, 2004
The New York Times > Movies > Scanning at 4000 lines per frame
The New York Times > Movies > 600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD's
Neat story, makes me think again of the digital vs. 35 mm discussion.
If a 35 mm film were square, and a "line" was a pixel, this would be the equivalent of a scanning 8000x8000 pixels, or 64 megapixels. I think that a 35mm still image has resolution within a factor of 2-3 of this number, so it's not so far off.
In practice 12-16 megapixel CCDs seem to produce images of equal sharpness to 35 mm negatives. Given advances in technology (such as in-camera variable tonal range adjustment) and a straightforward extrapolation of today's sensors we should equal the effective resolution and color capture of consumer-grade 35mm still cameras within 2 years. With appropriate use of JPEG2000 compression the images should be manageable.
I'd love to read an article that explored these numbers in more depth.
Engineers calculate that 4,000 lines of data would be needed to reproduce all the visual information in a frame of [35mm movie] film ...
By contrast, most DVD's these days — good as many look — begin with a compromise: they're scanned at just 1,080 lines, at most 2,000 (sometimes as few as 480), and the source is almost always not the original negative but a copy.
Neat story, makes me think again of the digital vs. 35 mm discussion.
If a 35 mm film were square, and a "line" was a pixel, this would be the equivalent of a scanning 8000x8000 pixels, or 64 megapixels. I think that a 35mm still image has resolution within a factor of 2-3 of this number, so it's not so far off.
In practice 12-16 megapixel CCDs seem to produce images of equal sharpness to 35 mm negatives. Given advances in technology (such as in-camera variable tonal range adjustment) and a straightforward extrapolation of today's sensors we should equal the effective resolution and color capture of consumer-grade 35mm still cameras within 2 years. With appropriate use of JPEG2000 compression the images should be manageable.
I'd love to read an article that explored these numbers in more depth.
Northern Softworks: Panther Cache Cleaner is essential?
Northern Softworks
The current version of OS X runs very well indeed -- but it does have problems with corrupted cache files. This $10 utility has been highly recommended.
The current version of OS X runs very well indeed -- but it does have problems with corrupted cache files. This $10 utility has been highly recommended.
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