If you’re following me on twitter you should be fully aware that I launched my new theme Saturday night, today I put the final design touches on it.
On Friday I had a simple design idea and with all of the ideas and inspiration that have accumulated over the last 6+ months I was obsessed in getting things cleaned up around here.
Here are some important points and areas of focus:
I still have a laundry list of things to do, some of the biggies:
Here’s a screen grab of all the apps I’ve downloaded already. I can’t give any full reviews just yet; no time and I haven’t played with them all just yet. First impressions though:
AIM: Why did I download that, I don’t use aim. Looking forward to a GTalk (native) app, the special iPhone web version will do for now.
Facebook: Pretty awesome. It’s going to be a great contacts backup.
Google Mobile App: I don’t really get it. It’s a start page for all of their iPhone web apps but has some great search functionality on the start page.
Loopt: Very interesting. It’s going to be a cool Twitter app, because of it’s location based social features.
Twitteriffic: Excellent twitter app: location, photos and all tweets. I hope Hahlo comes out with a premium app, I’d really like to see summize integration.
Pandora: didn’t work so well on edge the first time. Let’s see how it works tomorrow on 3G. I’m really stocked about this one.
Remote: Oh man, can’t wait to get this hooked up to the AppleTV.
Super Monkey Ball: graphics are excellent for a phone but I’m not very good at it…yet.
and the best app so far…
Enigmo: This game is fun. It’s going to be a blast to play this in line somewhere or just waiting around.
What I’m really looking forward to is the Wordpress App, now Jared and I wont be asked to update Mobile Admin anymore.
I’m glad someone said it, I’m just surprised it was Google.
The openness of the Internet is what made Google — and Yahoo! — possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It’s what makes the Internet such an exciting place.So Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.
This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.
It’s about time…
As a webmaster, you may have been concerned about your RSS/Atom feeds crowding out their associated HTML pages in Google’s search results. By serving feeds, we could cause a poor user experience:
1. Feeds increase the likelihood that users see duplicate search results.
2. Users clicking on a feed may miss valuable content available only in the HTML page.
To address these concerns, we prevent feeds from being returned in Google’s search results
I’d have to say, Serving feeds HAS caused a poor user experience.
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Taking feeds out of our web search results
Big news today, Google announced Android:
Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders…. Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform. We think the result will ultimately be a better and faster pace for innovation that will give mobile customers unforeseen applications and capabilities.
I remember the news in 2005 when Andy Rubin’s company called Android was acquired by Google and I would have thought, as many others did as well, that Google would be using the project to develop a branded/closed Google Mobile OS. Instead it’s open, which is great for everyone but what’s the Google strategy?
The downside of completely opening Android for Google would be permitting providers and suppliers to control whatever is on the device, meaning they could use the OS and not include any Google services. But the upside of supplying a superior product that doesn’t require the provider or supplier to license a proprietary OS that they don’t have control over will make Windows Mobile irrelevant as an OS alternative outside of the enterprise that’s locked into the Microsoft silo.
It looks like Gmail will finally be rolling out IMAP support for GMail.
Sync your inbox across devices instantly and automatically. Whether you read or write your email on your phone or on your desktop, changes you make to Gmail will be seen from anywhere you access your inbox. Don’t fret if you don’t see “IMAP Access” yet under the Settings menu. We’re rolling it out to everyone over the next few days.
And it looks like they did it all for the iPhone, maybe to compete with Yahoo!s support of IMAP. Either way you have to thank iPhone. 
I’m still curious as to how they’re going to solve the tagging labeling. Are they going to make each tag a folder or are they going to just ignore tags altogether? I hope it’s not the later because I use labels for almost all of my e-mail and I’m sure the majority of GMail users do as well. It looks like “changes” need to be defined or someone out there in the blogoshpere needs to post about how labels are handled.
The best solution I can think of is treating labels as folders, the problem will be e-mail duplication since mail could be labeled multiple times or simply once while still residing in the inbox.
Maybe labels aren’t such a good idea after all Google. It seems you’ve learned your lesson and re-configured the method in the new Google Reader, which handles tags and folders separately. Could this be the pre-cursor to a major overhaul for gmail? I hope so because their innovation in gmail years back has created incompatibilities with legacy software, in this case IMAP.
aside: I haven’t recived the option yet, either in gmail or my google apps account. Which also makes me wonder how long it’s going to take for my google Apps account to get this feature, in the past google rolls out new features to gmail users first and then after some time gives it to us apps users.
Update:
In order to “label” messages multiple times from within Apple Mail or the iPhone, you must copy the message(s) to each respective ‘Folder’ which corresponds with your Gmail Label. I think it’s time to move back to the idea of Folders as opposed to Labels. #
