October 2005

As I've made several posts lately expressing my joy for all things Google, I've made passing and joking comments about the "Cult of Google" and Google taking over the world and such.

Per haps I was closer to the truth than I knew!

How did I find this article? Through the news links on my Google home page.

I quit using the Google Toolbar when I switched to Firefox since it had a little search box in the browser. After checking out the most recent version, which is now compatible with the Firefox 1.5 Beta that I'm running, I once again have added the Google Toolbar to my browser. In addition to being able to do any kind of Google search (web page, images, etc.) it has built in spell checking for any web forms such as posting a message or creating a blog entry, it has an auto-fill function which can automatically fill in personal info for you so you don't have to type your name and address every time, and some other pretty nifty features. Head over to the link above and check it out for yourself!

You ever feel like you're in the role of Charlie Brown, and life is in the role of Lucy holding the football? Even though she always yanks the football away at the last second causing you to fall on your ass and get the wind knocked out of you, you keep thinking that this time is the time that she really means it when she says she won't move the football.

I had another moment today where I felt I must have been posessed by Mitch Hedberg:

"I make six figures. Unfortunately the first one is a 0."

Involving me and Dr. Cuddy from "House". That was unexpected.

It all started with this entry and, of course, its accompanying haiku.Then tonight, I was watching Saturday Night Live and there was a skit about a group of friends who keep getting together for a series of funerals as they each die in various ways. In one part Amy Poehler turned to her boyfriend in the skit and said "Oh, Heath!" In the next part when they're all at his funeral she explains "we were making love and he had a stroke."

Coincidence? I think not! Amy Poehler totally wants me.

In other conspiracy news, when we were finished watching "Threshold" tonight I proclaimed "Alien conspiracy? Alright. Alien audio signal able to alter human DNA? Alright. Last minute plane ticket which was transferrable? I don't think so!"

As I'm sure you all know by now, when I find some cool thing I feel the need to share it. I already knew about Google news and how you could totally customize it to show what you wanted, but today I found the customized Google home page. Just go to Google and click on "personalize this page" then go to town. It's now my home page and every new tab I open loads it up showing me the news of my choice, miscellaneous daily tidbits, movie times, weather, my Gmail inbox and more. Geeky joy!

Music lovers check out www.pandora.com. Very cool. You can make your own music station by putting in an artist or song and pandora then uses the Music Genome Project to "program" the station with stuff you might like. You can give songs a thumbs up or thimbs down to help train it. You can try it for free for 10 hours, and if you decide you dig it, it's only $36 a year!

It's quite in depth in it's methodology. Let's take a call from a listener! Hello, you're on the air!

While I still heartily recommend Mozilla Thunderbird for anyone who feels the need to have a mail client on their computer, or for those security freaks who think Google has some evil secret conspiracy going, I myself have become a full Gmail convert. I tried this once before but one thing sent me back to Thunderbird, and that was the fact that any mail I sent would show up as coming from my Gmail address instead of my heathallyn.com address. This has now been remedied. You can now set your address to show as coming from any address you actually own. There is a verification process involved so that not just anyone can enter you email as the "from" address, and now any mail I sen via Gmail shows up as coming from my heathallyn.com address, and all replies are sent to my heathallyn.com address (which in actuality just forwards to my Gmail address anyway. Basically this allows you to use Gmail as an email client for you current address, just as you would Thunderbird, Outlook or any other client.

I totally dig Gmail's interface and their completely different philosophy on mail handling (using "Labels" instead of "Folders", and much more). This way, I don't have to worry about whether or not a certain email I'm looking for is on my home or work computer, as it's all in my online Gmail account. I can easily use the search function to find any mail I'm looking for or sort by labels. I can set up filters to automatically apply labels to incoming mail.

As I've watched Gmail it has just kept getting better. One of the few downsides to be aware of is that there is no official way to set up an email distribution list in Gmail (as in you type in one name, and it sends to multiple people), but there is an unofficial work around to do so and they very well may add this in the future. You can also download Gmail Notifier to check every 2 minutes and notify you of new mail.

There are a ton of other features which I find innovative and generally cool, but if you think you might be interested the best place to get all the info is from the source.

There is also an excellent site full of Gmail tips. Join us in the Gmail cult! I have a ton of invites if anyone needs one.