New Google Home Page

Google has a new feature, over in Google Labs, called Personalize Your Home Page.

Now, you can have various things on your home page, like the first few e-mail's in you gMail inbox, various news items, the weather, movies, and so-on. Think of this as little widgets to display when you hit your home page button (if Google is your home page).

Now, I have a little Google menu showing up across the top right corner, with my e-mail address (after I've logged in), Classic Home, My Search History, My Account, and Sign Out. This is all pretty good, but I'm a little surprised that this menu is not tighter, with simpler wording.

The e-mail address is good, but if it's a gMail account, then I should be able to click on it to get to my gMail page. Instead of Classic Home, I think I would have a switch down below, next to the personalized news, weather and so-on, that simply reads "turn off" or something. History would be better than My Search History, Account is better than My Account, and I guess Sign Out is OK.

It just strikes me that for a company that used to stay within a certain number of words on the home page, that they are getting pretty wordy with the menu. But, of course, this is all in beta right now, so I'm sure it will get better.

Check it out!

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

This is my first book review, I think, so maybe I'll need to change my page title. I like books, movies, and music just like everyone else, so I might as well write about stuff I like, right?

I'm kind of into history lately, working on historical web sites and so-on. I try to read every day, so after hearing a review of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell on NPR, I decided to give it a try.

Most history books are kind of boring, in some way, but this book is a really fun read. Sarah takes us on a road trip will willing friends and relatives to all sorts of places where Presidents were assassinated, what happened just before and after the event, what lead the assassin to do what he did, etc. There are a lot of strange facts and artifacts all wrapped up in these things, and it's really kind of fun to find out what she discovers.

I've been a fan of Sarah's for quite a while, as she occasionally does an essay on This American Life. She's also quite the kid pop star now, doing the voice of Violet on Pixar's "The Incredibles". Pixar is one of my favorite companies...

Anyway, if you like American history, or if you're just a little bit curious, get this book! And maybe it will put in the mood for a road trip to New York or D.C. -- that's what happened to me!

Automator

One of the new features in Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) is called Automator. This is a great concept, but not really very new.

For those of you who know me, I was part of a team at ICOM who came up with the idea of a feature called Action/Reaction. It was sort of a visual scripting that was built into a product we worked on called WinView. An Action might be a button on the screen, and a Reaction might be to switch to another page.

With Automator, every program running on the system can potentially have Actions. That Action probably has an output, where you can string another Action to it. The result of one or more Actions strung together is called a Workflow, which can be saved. I noticed that you can even download a workflow. Apple has had something called Applesript for a long time, as a way of getting programs to talk to one another for automating tasks. This goes a step farther, being more visual and less "programmatic". This is a great feature for an operating system. Even if you don't use this feature, it's really nice to know it's there.

A long, long time ago, Windows had something called a Macro Recorder. But, it's long gone now. It provided something similar, but not quite as precise.

Systernals Freeware

If you work in the Windows world, like I do, there are times when you need some little utility to help you get over a rough spot. That's not to say that you might not need the same thing in Linux or on a Mac, but most of us use Windows. That's where Systernals Freeware comes in.

These guys are real Windows gurus. They have found legitimate bugs in Windows, telling Microsoft the details of what is going on. They actually teach Microsoft employees!

These tools can be pretty advanced, so I'm guessing that the audience would be people in your IT department, or someone in computer programming. The utilities help you find out what is going on, and can be very helpful in finding a problem.

Why freeware? Well, I think it's kind of like advertising for the software that they sell, over at Winternals.com. Systernals gives you a taste of what these guys can do, and Winternals gives you the packaged products that your boss can buy for you.

Take a look!

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

From the MAKE POVERTY HISTORY web site:

MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY brings together a wide cross section of nearly 400 charities, campaigns, trade unions, faith groups and celebrities who are united by a common belief that 2005 offers an unprecedented opportunity for global change.

As such MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY is not affiliated to any political party and does not comment on the individual records OR manifestos of different parties during the period of a general election.

Political parties and political organisations are not part of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY however members of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY are asking candidates from all main political parties to back the demands of the campaign.

Anyone wishing to examine the record of individual parties should evaluate their commitments and actions alongside those called for by MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY.

Individual members of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY may issue statements commenting on the parties in their individual capacity only.

The aim of the coalition is to encourage all political parties to adopt the policies that the coalition advocates and to build an ever greater movement committed to tackling world poverty.

Good Morning Silicon Valley

This is a web log that I read just about every day, via an e-mail message. Good Morning Silicon Valley recently launched a new blog site, that is much more of a real web log than before.

If you are interested in high tech news, this is the place to go! John links into articles at San Jose Mercury News, as well as various news sites all over the internet. He also links back to previous stories about a given subject, enabling a good read on something you might be interested in.

In addition the blog, you'll also find great links to other news bloggers on this site, such as Dan Gillmor's, who used to work for San Jose Mercury News.

Check it out!

Mac Mail 2.0

A couple of years ago, I decided to use a Mac for my e-mail machine. I also use it for web browsing, web site design, and other things. But, e-mail was my primary justification. After all, we develop Windows software. I evaluated the Mail program that came with Mac OSX, and decided that it was pretty good, so that's what I used. Other than it being a pretty boring name, I've liked it pretty well.

And now comes version 2, shipping with Tiger. I've been using it for a few days now -- some things I like, and others I don't.

1) It works, basically like it used to work, but it's a little better, in most regards.
2) My Address Book program, integrated with Mail, still has a problem. It must be the database, but I still don't know how to fix it. It works, as long as I don't do this one little thing...
3) I used to get a little one line message, telling me that Mail was connecting, receiving e-mail, or whatever. I had status, when it was busy retrieving stuff. It's all gone now, and I really miss it.
4) The buttons got moved. I really hate that. I think I can re-configure it, but my "junk" button is in a different spot, and we all use our junk/spam buttons a lot.
5) The mailbox list looks better, but now I have to scroll. I know I have too many mailboxes, but this is an inconvenience that I could have done without.
6) The searching is great! Mail has the Spotlight searching built into it, and it works like a charm. I used to always have problems with searching a certain mailbox or the From/To field or whatever. Now, search does it all.
7) The new smart mailbox thing sounds cool, and I'm used to something like this in iTunes. But, it doesn't move the mail, it just groups it. Maybe I'm not thinking about it right, so I'm not sure if I like this feature yet.

Maybe it was too early for me to review Mail. Sometimes, I think it's harder to migrate from something old to something new. Mail 2.0 works well, it's just not a slam dunk for me. Not yet, anyway...

Google Web Accelerator

The newest little program to hit Google Labs is called the Google Web Accelerator. This is a little program that runs in Windows XP and Windows 2003 SP3, for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

How does it work? I mean, how can a little program like this make the internet faster for DSL/Cable Modem/Broadband users? Apparently, there a whole lot of web sites sort of stored on Google servers, like a the browser cache on your hard disk. Google's servers are super fast, so therefore, the page loads quicker. It also starts loading the pages that you might click on, from whatever page you are on now (known as prefetch).

Does it work? I don't know, I just started playing with it. Supposedly, I've saved a few seconds, but people who browse a lot might save an hour per day. Quite a savings for a free download. There are some privacy concerns, and the program is in beta, like most things Google. But, this is a cool little piece of code...

I'm almost positive that Google will one day have their own browser. They have so many little Windows utilities now, for both IE and Firefox, and they hired the primary Firefox programmer.

Use caution with this program, but you can turn it off and uninstall it, if you don't like it.

Dashboard

When I first heard about Dashboard, I did what just about everyone else did. I assumed it was just a Konfabulator knock-off. It sort of is, I guess, except I'm actually using Dashboard, so far anyway.

My first impression was "this is cute, but I probably won't use it". Today, I used it, and I learned something. You see, these little Widgets are very focused, getting data from the internet or from your computer, or both. When I used Dashboard today, it was a very simple thing. I wanted to get the telephone number of a local restaurant, in this case, PF Changs. PF Changs is a chain restaurant.

Typically, I would type PF Changs into Google, find the home page of the restaurant chain, then scroll through the list of states until I found Michigan, and then find the number. Today, I went to my Yellow Pages Widget, typed in PF Changs, and I was given one address and one telephone number. You see, the Widget knows my zip code. I can't remember if I typed it in, or if it got the information from my computer settings. My point is, it was quick. Probably the fastest way to find a local telephone number of a business.

A small surprise happened after installing Tiger, and updating my Ovolab Phlink program. Phlink includes two Widgets, so my recent Caller ID list is available in Dashboard as well. I have 5 clocks, for different time zones at the top of my Dashboard page, so that I don't have to do all of that math to find out what time it is in California or London.

And, let me emphasize again, that this is very fast. For example, there is a Calculator Widget. Why? I mean, you have a Calculator on the Mac, right? But, it takes 2 or 3 seconds to start it up. Dashboard is instead, and fast. And, it's a whole new "desktop", with lots of information available right in front of you (weather, stock prices, calendar, etc.).

Right now, I like it. I'm not sure that I would upgrade to Tiger, just for this feature, but it is part of the over 200 new features offered. Watch the movie on the web site for a demonstration!

Safari 2.0

I've just loaded the new OS X 10.4 (Tiger) operating system for Macs. As part of the 200 new features, there are a couple of things in Safari that I would like to share with you.

First, they have this new RSS feature. An RSS file is a simple, standard way to hold news articles. These may be generated from a news web site, or a web log, or any number of ways. This kind of thing might seem confusing to the typical person who browses the web, but Apple has made it much simpler. If you go to a web site who has an RSS feed, an RSS symbol will appear in the URL area of the browser. When you click on this, you will get a very nice looking RSS page, with just the news feeds. No advertisements or anything. Just the text and photos from the raw data. And, you get navigation links to the history of anything on that site, in RSS form. I don't know yet if I will actually use this feature, but it's nice to see a little innovation.

Firefox has an RSS feature, but it's a bookmark menu. I think it's very interesting to see how the typical web browsing experience is starting to change, in regards to RSS.

Safari also built PDF viewing right into the browser. Every browser should do this. As far as I know, Safari is the first. Plug-ins are great, but built-in viewing is even better.

You can now enter Private Browsing mode. This means that the history of what you did is not recorded. You can also reset all of your history, right from the Safari menu. Firefox has something like this, but Safari's is even handier, and they don't have the Private Browsing mode.

I've really missed the ability to send a link to a web page, from the browser. I got used to this in the Netscape Communicator days, and now Safari has it! And Safari can now save a web page, complete with images and everything. This feature is perfect for saving a receipt, after you've made an online purchase!

There are a couple of other things as well, so check it out! If you own a Mac, maybe you'll want to upgrade to Tiger!